Excelsior

by Jasper T. Scott

  Alexander looked up from the tactical map, mentally switching focus back to his side of the conflict. “Helm! Get us away!”

  “Already ahead of you, sir! Brace for maximum thrust!”

  There came a deafening roar, and then a train ran over him. The weight was unbearable. Alexander’s lips parted in a grimace, and his heart felt like it actually stopped. Maximum regulation thrust for short periods was ten Gs. Acceleration eased after just a few seconds, and Alexander’s head lolled. He blinked spots from his eyes and fought a sudden urge to vomit.

  “We’re out of the blast radius, sir!” Davorian reported from the helm.

  Alexander panned the tactical map over to his side of the conflict and watched the wave of enemy missiles drawing near to Lewis station. The fighter group was still in hot pursuit, firing at extreme range with bright golden streams of highly inaccurate projectiles.

  The number of ordnance incoming had dropped to less than 4,000 missiles. Alexander grimaced, hoping that between the Lincoln and Lewis Station they could intercept the rest.

  “Sensors! Are any of those missiles tracking us?”

  “It’s tough to tell at this range, sir.”

  They weren’t far enough from the station to distinguish incoming missile trajectories. “Davorian, put some more distance between us and the station. Four Gs thrust; keep that up until we identify incoming missiles.”

  “Aye-aye, sir.”

  Acceleration intensified once more, not nearly as bad as before, but still enough to make breathing labored and talking a chore.

  “Sensors… track missiles whose vectors shift with ours. Highlight them on the tactical. Gunnery—as soon as you spot those missiles, start firing.”

  “At this range, sir? Odds are—”

  “Still better than nothing, Lieutenant!” Alexander gritted out between gasps for air.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Finally, Williams reported from the sensors station. “Incoming missiles detected!”

  Davorian killed thrust and Alexander took a quick gulp of air. “How many?”

  “Over 1,000.”

  “ETA?”

  “Ten minutes.”

  “Gunnery, how many can we shoot down before they reach us? Best case scenario, please.”

  “Best case… we’ll have fifteen seconds to intercept after they reach our ELR. We might do it, but when their laser-armed fragments start targeting our guns, interception rates are going to drop fast.”

  “In other words we’re fucked.”

  A few heads turned at the expletive, but no one was going to cite code-of-conduct regulations to him at a time like this. Alexander thought about his dead-dropped ordnance with a pang of regret. If he still had those missiles he could have fired them to intercept the enemy’s ordnance and evened the odds.

  “Captain! We have a transmission incoming from Orbital One!”

  “Full screen. I’ll watch—everyone else, keep eyes on your stations!”

  A chorus of aye-ayes echoed from the crew, and then Admiral Flores’ face appeared on the MHD. She looked haggard. Her face was drawn, and her eyes were wide and staring. Officers were yelling at each other in the background behind her.

  “Captain de Leon,” the admiral said. “I hope I’ve reached you in time.”

  Alexander frowned. With the distance between them being what it was, there was no sense in him replying. The transmission had to have been sent over five minutes ago.

  “The Confederates have launched a sneak attack in orbit,” Flores went on.

  Suddenly the lights went out on the admiral’s end of the transmission. Holo displays running on battery backups glowed bright blue behind her. Golden sparks flew, and then the lights were back, but much dimmer than before. One of the bulkheads belched a gout of flame, and Admiral Flores yelled for someone to put it out.

  She turned back to face the camera. “They tricked us, Captain. This was never about a wormhole. It was about drawing our forces away from Earth so they could launch an attack on our space elevator. Orbital One has been cut free of Earth with enemy ordnance in hot pursuit. It’s only a matter of time before the nukes start flying back on Earth, and that means our green planet is headed for a nuclear winter. Now reaching Wonderland is more important than ever. Operation Alice is a go, Captain. Your job is to assess the planet for habitability. We’ll come get you as planned if we still can, and if we can’t then—”

  A sudden roar interrupted her, followed by a dazzling flare of light. Flores turned toward it just before the brightness consumed both her and her transmission.

  It took a moment for reality to sink in. Orbital One was gone.

  “Davorian! What’s our ETA to the wormhole under maximum thrust? Can we make it before those missiles hit?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Can we get back to Lewis Station?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do it. Comms, get me Admiral Gaulle!”

  The Admiral’s face appeared on-screen a moment later. He was strapped into an acceleration couch aboard a cramped-looking lifeboat with row upon row of crew strapped in behind him. His teeth were gritted and his lips were peeled back in a g-force-induced grimace.

  “What can I… do for you… Captain?” Gaulle said between gasps for air.

  “Do you have remote access to the station’s defenses?”

  “We do.”

  “Did you see Admiral Flores’ last transmission?”

  “Yes…”

  “We need your help if we’re going to make it to Wonderland, Admiral. Can you prioritize interception of the missiles tracking us?”

  “Send me the… targets, and I’ll see… what I can do.”

  Alexander nodded. “Thank you.” A thought occurred to him then. “Do you have any missiles of your own on the station?”

  “Why?”

  Alexander blinked. Admiral Gaulle couldn’t be that stupid. “You can use them to intercept!”

  Gaulle shook his head. “Fired them all days ago. Earth-bound.”

  Alexander’s jaw dropped. Lewis Station was about to be obliterated because the upper echelons had decided that Earth needed more missiles.

  “I hope it was worth it.”

  “So do I. Good luck, Captain.”

  The transmission ended.

  “Comms! Send Admiral Gaulle the target data for the missiles tracking us.”

  “Already sent, sir.”

  “Good. Lieutenant Stone, get our fighters and drones to focus on the same targets.”

  “Roger that, Captain.”

  Alexander watched the incoming missiles on the tactical map. They were just five minutes away. Lewis Station and the Lincoln poured steady streams of projectiles at them, intercepting a couple of missiles with every passing second.

  Time dragged by at the speed of sloth. Minutes felt like hours. The number of incoming ordnance dropped below 3000. ETA hit thirty seconds.

  Alexander sat up straighter in his chair. “Start firing lasers!”

  “We still have fifteen seconds to ELR,” Lieutenant Cardinal objected.

  “Concentrate your fire! We’ll kill a few.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  There were still over 800 warheads aimed at the Lincoln.

  Bright blue lasers lanced out in streams of twos and threes. Sure enough, a few extra missiles winked off the grid. Then enemy ordnance reached ELR, and both Lewis Station and the Lincoln began shooting them down in earnest. Incoming missiles winked off the grid by the hundreds. Alexander breathed a sigh of relief. Then he noticed that the number of missiles heading for the Lincoln wasn’t dropping as fast as the overall count.

  That was wrong. A closer look at the tactical map revealed that Lewis Station had devoted only a small fraction of its guns to covering the Lincoln. Admiral Gaulle was still determined to save his station.

  Alexander cursed under his breath.

  The enemy’s laser-armed ordnance opened fire next. Something shuddered and a muffled bang reached Alexan
der’s ears. He froze. That sound hadn’t been simulated.

  “Taking fire!” McAdams reported. “We’re venting atmosphere on decks four, five, and six!”

  The ship’s storage. They were venting valuable supplies into space.

  “Lock it down!” Alexander roared.

  “Deploying repair drones…”

  The number of incoming ordnance dropped below 400. ETA five seconds.

  “Brace for impact!” Hayes warned.

  “Helm! Set thrust to 50 Gs!”

  There was no time to hesitate, and Davorian didn’t.

  Alexander felt himself slam into a brick wall. That wall was the back of his acceleration couch. Conscious thought ceased. His chest stopped moving, and his heart froze.

  After an indeterminate period of time, the acceleration stopped. It took a moment for Alexander’s lungs to remember how to breathe. As his heart went back to beating, a searing headache stabbed him behind his eyes.

  A quick look at the tactical map revealed that all of the incoming missiles had been intercepted. That last-ditch evasive maneuver had bought them the time they needed.

  The station had not been so lucky.

  “Multiple impacts on Lewis Station!” Lieutenant Williams reported.

  “On-screen!”

  The MHD switched to a view from the Lincoln’s rear cameras, and they saw Lewis Station drifting in three pieces. The bones of the station’s superstructure were showing, hull plates clinging here and there, charred black and looking like torn bits of paper.

  Then the rest of the missiles hit those remains and blotted out the tactical map with a wash of EM interference. When things came back into focus, Lewis Station was gone.

  Alexander sighed. “Davorian, get us through the Looking Glass.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Commander Korbin turned to him, her blue eyes wide and glassy. “What about Earth?”

  Alexander shook his head. “Our orders are clear, Commander. We are to get to Wonderland and assess the planet for habitability.”

  “You have a wife on Earth, Captain. I have two children.”

  “And I have to believe that they’ll be waiting for us when we get back.”

  “The odds of that are—”

  “Better than nothing,” Alexander replied. He turned back to the fore. “McAdams, how are repairs coming along?”

  “The hull breach is sealed, sir…”

  “But?”

  “We lost a lot of supplies.”

  “Then we have no choice. We have to go back,” Korbin said.

  Alexander shot her a look. “Williams! How long can we last with what’s left? Do we still have enough supplies to get us to Wonderland and back?” Besides being the ship’s sensors operator, Lieutenant Williams was also the ship’s quartermaster, so he would know.

  “The supplies closest to the outer hull were mostly non-essential equipment, and they were all locked down before launch. In terms of food and other critical supplies, we should still have everything we need.”

  “Then our mission stands. Lieutenant Stone—”

  “Sir?”

  “Recall our fighters and drones. Coordinate your efforts with the helm to make sure they’re all docked before we enter the wormhole.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The MHD showed stars panning by as the Lincoln rotated on the spot. The Looking Glass came into view, looking like a clear glass marble. It was hard to imagine that through there lay humanity’s only hope for survival—a planet that only probes had ever seen, and even then, just for a few minutes at a time. There was no way to be sure that it really was habitable, or even that its ecology wouldn’t be completely hostile to humans. What if all the planet’s water was poisonous? Or if the air wasn’t breathable? Toxic? The planet could also be home to a host of deadly pathogens. Or maybe it was plagued by high surface winds that would make growing food next to impossible.

  The list of possibilities was endless.

  Chances were it would be easier to colonize than the Moon, Mars, Titan, or Europa, but it would likely still be a far cry from Earth. Alexander couldn’t believe that this was what humanity had come to.

  What have we done? he wondered.

  He was still wondering that long after the remainder of the 61st Squadron was aboard and the Lincoln passed through the wormhole.

  What.

  Have.

  We.

  Done?

  Chapter 4

  “Setting acceleration to point five Gs,” Lieutenant Davorian replied.

  Alexander swallowed thickly and nodded.

  “Acceleration set.”

  “Lieutenant Williams, confirm no hostiles inbound.”

  “We’re clear, sir.”

  Alexander turned to look at the comms station. “Hayes, set condition green, and alert the crew.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now what?” Korbin asked, turning to him.

  “Now we stretch our legs.”

  The bridge came alive with the sound of seat harnesses unbuckling. Alexander unbuckled his own harness and mentally disconnected his relief tubes. That done, he manually withdrew his nutrient line. Finally, he reached up and twisted his helmet, breaking the airtight seal with a squeal of escaping air. He pulled off the helmet and attached it to the magnetic rack behind his headrest. The HUD was gone, and his mental interface to the ship went with it, but they’d have plenty of warning if something happened to change their alert status. The nearest possible hostiles were back on Earth, and that was at least a week away.

  “Williams, you have the first watch.”

  “Yes, sir,” Williams said, sighing as he sunk back into the sensors station.

  “Everyone else, come with me. Hayes, have the rest of the crew report to the Officer’s Lounge, and then come on down.”

  “Roger.”

  Alexander reached up to the rails on the front of his armrests and pulled himself up out of the captain’s couch. At point five Gs, it was easy to suspend his weight above the chair and push backward to land on the deck behind the headrest. Commander Korbin landed beside him a moment later, both of them now free of their helmets.

  Looking up, Alexander saw the rest of the crew climbing down the ladders from their stations. Some of them simply jumped down and landed with muffled thuds around him. Alexander frowned. That was against regulations, even in low gravity, but he wasn’t going to reprimand them now. They all had bigger problems to deal with.

  Once everyone except Williams was standing on the deck, Alexander turned and headed for the elevators at the back of the bridge. He felt light and bouncy in the ship’s half gravity, and he had to consciously watch his steps to avoid walking too fast and tripping over his own feet. After spending a week seated in their chairs with nothing but a few mandatory breaks to stretch their legs, walking felt like a strange new luxury.

  They reached the elevators and Alexander gestured for the doors of the nearest lift to open. The control panel tracked his gesture and the elevator opened with a whisper. Alexander walked in and selected one of the glowing green buttons, the one labeled ‘Officer’s Lounge (12).’

  The doors slid shut and the lift went up two floors to the lounge on deck twelve. The doors opened to reveal a circular room with a wraparound vista of space. Furnishings and decorations were sparse and utilitarian since everything had to be bolted to the deck. Holoscreens reproduced feeds from cameras mounted on the outer hull, providing a dazzling, panoramic view of space. The geometry of spacetime inside the wormhole subtly warped that view, as if they were looking out through a fisheye lens.

  “Go make yourselves comfortable. Once everyone’s here, we’ll begin.” Alexander walked over to the bar and took a seat on one of the stools. He idly glanced around the naked bar, wishing sorely for a drink, but they were all still on duty, and everything was still locked down in the cabinets. Couldn’t have whiskey bottles cracking together at 10 Gs.

  A waste of perfectly good Scotch.

 
Damaging sensitive equipment inside the lounge was a secondary concern.

  After a few minutes Commander Korbin came and sat down beside him. “Sir,” she said.

  “You can call me Alex. We’re going to be off duty for a while, Sirena.”