by Tom Jordan
Another problem for a later time.
“It’s clear up here,” Marco said. “I’ll follow you guys to the destination.”
“Copy,” Jade answered. She turned to Tommy. “You ready?”
“Check it out,” he said, pointing to the holomenu in front of her. She looked at the display and saw a series of maneuvers planned: atmospheric exit, a path out of Balenos A's orbit, and the SFM jump point to the gate to their target system. A holographic green line floated in front of her and, from her viewing angle, it shot upward in a sharp curve. She could fly the line straight to where they needed to be.
“Alright!” she said cheerfully. “Looks like we’re set! Nice work!” She feathered the throttle and eased the stick, lifting gently off the ground. Retracting her landing skids, she angled Ghost away from the plateau and accelerated into the atmosphere.
Jade kept the throttle in a comfortable zone, pressing her and Tommy into the seats with several gs’ worth of force. Tommy had planned the flight path well, bringing them away from the surface without too much discomfort. The soot, lightning, and dull glow of Balenos A gave way to its foggy atmospheric layers, which surrounded them in a murky haze. Flying through the dense clouds made it clear that the planet was a hellish greenhouse, its gray atmosphere preventing bright light from passing through while retaining the infrared energy that reached the surface. All Jade could see was the sinuous holographic line against the backdrop of gray.
She followed the guide out of the planet’s grip. An infinity of sparkling starlight and distant, colorful nebulae shone against deep black as the atmosphere faded. The ghostly blue of the Small Magellanic Cloud—a dwarf galaxy and one of the Milky Way’s nearest neighbors—drew her eye, as it often did. No matter how many times Jade departed from planets or space docks, the infinite expanse of the universe left her in awe.
The map showed Henning’s and Marco’s ships close behind her.
“Preparing to jump to the system gate. From there we hit the Rhogana 20 system,” Tommy said.
Jade smiled and relaxed into her chair. She could almost forget the troubles in their recent past. “This is so leisurely,” she said. “I can just fly!”
“What, Mosso never did any of this stuff for you?”
“No, never!”
“No wonder he was relieved of duty. I don’t doubt his loyalty, but it sounds like he wasn’t pulling his weight around here.”
“Hey,” Jade scolded. “I won’t have you speaking ill of my crew!”
“Sorry, Captain. It won’t happen again.”
“See that it doesn’t, Flight Commander.”
“Oh,” Tommy said, looking at her through a holomenu. “It’s Flight Commander now?”
“That’s right. I run a tight ship. Don’t let me down.” Jade flew along the holographic line and out of Balenos A’s orbit. The act of flying—and her connection to her ship through her flight stick—calmed her thoughts. Jade felt a new sense of comfort having someone else aboard, and her optimism that things might actually work out was growing.
“You never finished telling me about Gliese,” she said.
Tommy perked up a bit. “Oh, yeah! Let me tell you.” He pointed at her. “That was a life-changing thing. To step onto the surface of a completely alien world packed with life…nothing was the same for me after that. Nothing. No matter who you are or what’s going on in your life…” He shook his head. “That will change your perspective. Maybe that’s why I’m taking this thing about my ship so well.”
“Oh? How so?” Jade was glad to see Tommy animated and talkative, like his normal self. Some of the residual tension from their discussion about her and Marco seemed to be fading.
He paused, lacing his fingers behind his head, his lips pursed as he thought. “Gliese 581g, this whole world, has been out there in space for billions of years. Literally gigayears. We knew nothing about it until very recently in our history. I mean, dinosaurs were roaming around on Earth while life was forming and evolving and doing its thing on Gliese. It went on without us. It didn’t know about us, and we didn’t know about it.” He looked over and they met each other’s eyes. “It’s…so cosmic. You know?”
He was silent for a moment and shook his head before continuing. “After going there, I figured none of my terrestrial concerns should have any bearing on how I spend my brief existence. Family, career, expectations, society…who cares? Gliese will be cooking right along after I’m gone. I’m such a small entity in the unending vastness of the universe. My life is my own. I need to make things count for myself.” He glanced over at Jade, who smoothly sailed the ship along toward the next waypoint, the planet’s surface sinking behind them. “I wish I could articulate it better. I’m sure it sounds selfish.”
Jade was quick to shake her head. “No! Absolutely not. I agree with you completely. I want the freedom to choose my own kind of life. That’s why I enrolled in flight school. It’s why I was working so hard moving cargo. I didn’t want to just pick from a limited set of careers on a small colony. I wanted to push myself. To do something bigger. My dad called me selfish for doing that, so I guess I’m as guilty as you. Team Selfish.”
Tommy glanced out the starboard canopy, away from her. Jade sent a smiley face character to his station to lighten the mood. Tommy chuckled. “So tell me about the planet already!” she said.
“Oh, man, you would have loved it. So you remember I said I was shuttling science teams to and from the surface?”
“Yes.”
“Well, they gave me a briefing that I barely remember since I was so giddy I couldn’t think straight. At that time there were no pictures, no video, really nothing describing what was on the planet. I was one of the first few dozen people there. So I was totally in the dark about the whole thing!”
Jade smiled, savoring the suspense as she flew. Tommy gestured wildly, his eyes bright with excitement as he relived the experience. “The first time I saw the planet was when I flew this team down in the shuttle, and our landing site was on the night side. On the approach I can see there’s places where it’s like, glowing, shimmering, right? There’s something about it. I’m dropping in toward the landing platform they set up, because they don’t want to ruin anything down there. Totally pristine other than this little landing platform and a prefab structure they had goin’.”
Tommy rubbed his forehead, spreading some of the greasy residue that he’d been unable to remove entirely from his hands. “So these guys are prepping their sample-collecting gear and I’m up there freaking out, right? Night landing, total instrument flight on an alien planet! But I’m sitting there sweating, pretending I’m mister cool. I’m like, Check out my composure, guys, I’m such a pro pilot. I take us close to the surface and it’s totally covered in glowing biomass. One area is green, another is blue, another is purple, all mixing with each other. There’s flashing and strobing. It’s indescribable. The whole planet is completely covered in ecosystems of what’s basically fungus or corals or something, and they’re all bioluminescent. Everything.”
“Everything glows?” Jade said. Tommy never stopped nodding, his hair bouncing around in the low gravity.
“Yeah! Like, you know how birds use plumage or something? Or a better example, bioluminescent creatures in Earth’s oceans they teach you about in school? It’s just that. All the communicating, mating—everything is done with light. Something with their metabolism and energy storage is connected to it as well. The entire surface is covered with this glowing life. All kinds of varieties.”
“That sounds amazing!”
He grinned and nodded. “Some of the organisms are larger, like these huge fern things. Other types are small ground cover. It’s like a forest, with things living at different layers. Sometimes mist rolls in, and it’s like being in clouds of light. All around you.”
“Are there any large fauna, animals, anything like that?”
“I was told there were, but never got to see them or any pictures. The researchers to
ld me about these things they called goliaths. Let me tell you, while they collected samples and did their work I just stared out the canopy, literally for hours.” He leaned back in the chair. “I still have dreams about it. They let me make one final flight over the surface before leaving. The mountains there are enormous. Canyons, waterfalls…I could even see things glowing under the ocean. Schools of things. And some big things.”
Jade exhaled through pursed lips, absorbing everything Tommy’d said. She imagined the impact it must make on you to see something like that. It’d clearly made an impact on Tommy. Jade had visited many worlds, both terraformed and barren, and seen stars of a variety of types—even one neutron star. Yet she imagined the emotional weight of a planet full of alien life would surpass any of that. She wished she could visit the planet like Tommy had, but consoled herself with the knowledge that she was privileged to have seen things that humans had only been able to access in the last few hundred years of history.
At least Tommy had been able to visit Gliese, and she was grateful for that.
“Alright,” Jade said. “SFM jump will be ready in just a minute. Let’s get out of here.”
Chapter 16
Bakhti watched as the temperature readout climbed. Ninety percent of the safety limit, then one hundred, then one-ten, one-fifteen, and up it went, her anxiety rising along with it. Her boot tapped a rapid beat on the deck.
The prototype stealth system aboard Stormwulf masked her thrusters’ heat output by redirecting energy into internal heat sinks, but running in stealth mode this way generated a ton of heat. Pursuing the other team at a safe distance and leaving atmo in stealth mode now caused her ship to scream alarms at her. Warnings looped in English until the computer figured no one aboard must understand it, and then repeated in other languages: Chinese and Hindi, both of which Bakhti spoke, then German, Korean, and Spanish, followed by others she couldn’t recognize.
She looked at her display panels. She didn't have a circular orbit yet, but she was headed to a high apoapsis, like an arrow fired into the sky. She cut the engines in order to coast for a while and let the heat sinks cool to a safe temperature. Then, she could break free of the planet's grip once the system had a chance to cool.
She was working on a timer. Now that she’d had a chance to calm herself and think more clearly, she focused on her objective of recovering the crate. Eliminating the other team was preferable, but optional. The crate was primary. Her chances of success increased if she could reach Colonel Brand, but without any communication from him, she had no idea where he’d retreated to.
Bakhti knew that one of the pilots, Jade, had a damaged ship and that there were only so many places to go for repair, but she couldn’t make a guess where they were headed. She had to follow the crate. She cycled through her weapon and utility modules until she found what she was looking for: a tracking drone. Its tiny, round body and four articulated appendages appeared on her display. She hadn’t used one before, but it seemed straightforward. She loaded three of the four that she had aboard, programmed each to seek one of the three ships, and fired them in sequence.
She saw a pinpoint of light as each drone left the ship and engaged its small thruster. The black, nearly invisible devices shot toward the three ships at the edge of her radar. She watched her map as each tracker merged with its assigned target—one to Ghost of Jupiter, one to Audacity, and one to Rebel Star. She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding in. She couldn’t forfeit the advantage of stealth right now—she wouldn’t get away from a three-on-one battle, let alone recover the crate.
The probes began to send back velocities and positions. Bakhti had read all the documentation on Stormwulf’s new gear while it was being installed at the start of this mission, and had learned that these probes used quantum-entangled communicators. They would report their data instantly to their control module aboard Stormwulf, no matter where in the galaxy they ended up.
Bakhti slowed. Her prey would likely be jumping to another system since they were making a direct course for the nearest SFM gate. She had no need to close the distance to them now. Better to let them leave the system without noticing her, and then follow once they cleared the station. She reengaged her thrusters and stealth system before the planet’s gravity well pulled her back to the vile place.
A patient wait confirmed her suspicions as the enemy made local SFM hops to the gate station, then charged their drives and departed the Balenos system. Bakhti’s tracking probes relayed a new position based on public navigation beacons within the Rhogana 20 system.
She prepared to jump across space in pursuit of her prey.
Chapter 17
The blinding tunnel of light withdrew and the stars collapsed back into distant pinpoints as Ghost emerged into normal space. Jade watched, admiring the rainbow coronas surrounding the ship as they dissipated. The wavering edge of the star tunnel floated past.
“We’ve arrived, Captain. Stellar data confirms we’re in the Rhogana 20 system. Sending our ident now.” Jade looked over at Tommy in the copilot chair and perked up on seeing his ever-present grin.
Before the SFM jump, the pair had squeezed into their exo suits at Tommy’s suggestion. Life support fields were ubiquoutous, reliable safety measures, but the damage to Ghost’s electrical system caused him concern, and he didn’t want to make an energy-intensive jump without the suits.
“So I guess ‘Captain’ is going to be a thing now?” she asked, twisting her hand within the glove to try and get a better grip on the flight stick.
“Aye, ma’am.”
She shook her head and rolled her eyes, then swung the ship around in an arc so that she could take a quick visual survey. Generally, a system’s star was bright enough to stand out even at the extreme distances involved within star systems, but she was only seeing a uniform star field sprinkled with blotches of distant nebulae.
“Okay, where’s the star?” she asked. “Or stars?”
Tommy browsed through a holomenu floating in front of his seat, his movements slowed by the cumbersome white suit “This is a single-star system.” He took on the tone of an enthusiastic tour guide. “Rhogana 20 is a class-L dwarf star burning at a pleasant 2,100 degrees Kelvin, located—” he set the computer to highlight the distant star’s position with a holographic square, “—here.”
Jade did her best to stretch her arms overhead and felt her mood continue to lift. Her conversations with Tommy were a joy and felt natural, just like they had in flight school. The simmering unease from their earlier disagreement was draining away.
A status update flashed in her view, and Jade checked her map. Marco had just arrived in the system—no Henning yet. Jade blew at a strand of hair that had escaped her hair tie and thought how she’d love a bath or shower right now.
Did Audacity have a shower?
“Excellent. And our destination, Flight Commander?”
“The Keillor asteroid,” Tommy answered. “Just under three million kilometers.” Looking down, he tapped at the interface on his flight seat’s arms. “Here,” he said, and pointed at a new reticle as it popped up in Jade’s view.
Jade checked her map again to confirm Henning hadn’t arrived yet. Inter-system jumps were an interesting and puzzling process. Generating artificial wormholes to cross extreme distances—orders of magnitude faster than using any known type of propulsion—could vastly extend a ship’s reach across space, but it had some strange effects. One of these was called the Time Extension Paradox, or TEP. This meant that the passage of time within the wormholes used for travel had an element of randomness.
The average distance for wormhole jumps was around thirty light-years. If two ships traveled this distance to the same destination system from the same system of origin, they might take anywhere from twelve seconds to seven and a half minutes to arrive, with each ship taking a different amount of time from the others for no discernible reason. Because of this, Henning might arrive several minutes after Jade, Tommy, an
d Marco despite leaving from the same place.
The existence of the Time Extension Paradox troubled Jade, specifically the incomplete understanding of the science behind wormhole travel. What was stopping a ship from opening a wormhole and never arriving? If it could take up to seven and a half minutes, why not eight? Why not an hour, or a year, or a century? Spacetime Field Manipulator gates and ship-drive technology were ubiquitous, yet she frequently pondered their physics-defying nature while she zipped across the galaxy within the unsettling—if beautiful—wormholes.
“Oh, I’ve got him,” Tommy said. “It’s Audacity. Henning’s here.”
“How are you guys doing?” Jade asked over the channel now that the other members of her team had arrived.
“All good here,” Henning said.
“Let’s go,” Marco said. “Our ships are in better shape, so Saito goes first. One local jump to the station. We’ll follow you in.”
“Understood,” she replied. She looked over at Tommy. “What do you say, Flight Commander? Want to jump us to the asteroid and take the controls for a bit?”
Tommy rubbed his hands together, then grabbed hold of his chair’s flight stick and throttle controls. “You know I do!”
Jade reclined her seat and attempted to cross her arms until the suit prevented it, but was able to put her boots up on the console. “Very well, Flight Commander. Prepare the SFM for a jump.”
Tommy tapped controls, opening one more wormhole and bringing them into normal space just ahead of their destination. He gradually increased the throttle and pointed the ship at their target. Jade listened with amusement as he rattled off statistics and facts about the equipment and systems that Miyamoto Space Technologies had built into this ship, the Mark IV, and in what specific ways it surpassed his prior ship, the Mark II. He recited figures for reactor output, thruster force, and maximum Mach velocity within standard terraformed Earthlike atmospheres. Jade admired his enthusiasm and was impressed how much he knew about the Mark IV.