by D. J. Holmes
“What is going on?” Jones demanded from Intrepid’s Captain’s chair. “I want a status report now,” he followed up when no one answered. All around him Alveraz could hear officers tapping on their consoles and whispering to one another, he still couldn’t’ see anything.
“We seem to have lost power,” Maguire eventually said. “But it makes no sense. None of the emergency capacitors have kicked in either. It’s like everything has been drained!”
“Not everything,” Alveraz said as he pulled out his personal datapad. It switched on instantly and was currently providing the only light source on the bridge. “Just everything connected to our central systems.”
“Right,” Jones said as he pulled out his COM unit and activated it. “Chief O’Rielly, what is the status of our reactors?... Chief,” Jones repeated when there was no answer.
“Our COM systems are directly tied into the central computer Lieutenant,” Sub Lieutenant Evans, Intrepid’s COMs officer said. “The internal COMs are supposed to be supported by one of the emergency capacitors. But if they are all offline as well…”
Jones swore and then paused, clearly thinking. “Evans, you’re no use here then. Get yourself down to engineering and see what is going on. I want a full report as soon as O’Rielly has one. Specifically, I want to know if and when the reactors can be brought online. Maguire, go and join up with the repair teams. Figure out just what has happened. Their priority will be getting our emergency capacitors working, but if they are all drained, they’ll be useless to us until the reactors come back on. If that’s the case, focus on removing the Kalassai weapons that hit our hull. There must be nearly a hundred of them. For all we know they could do whatever they did again as soon as we reboot the reactors.”
“Yes Lieutenant,” Maguire said as she unbuckled her seat restraints and began to float out of her command chair. With no power, Intrepid’s artificial gravity generators were also offline.
“We should send someone to the marine barracks,” Alveraz suggested. “Their COM units are designed to work off ship. They shouldn’t be tied into our main systems.”
“Good thinking,” Jones responded. “Maguire, Evans, swing by the marine barracks and pick up a COM unit each. Organize for the marines to spread out to our main sections with the rest of their COM units. We’ll use them until we get our systems back up and running.”
“We should send someone to an observation blister that is facing the Kalassai ship,” Alveraz said to Jones as Maguire and Evans left. “We might get a visual of what they’re up to.”
“I’ll go,” Seth said as he jumped to his feet. “I’ll swing by the marine barracks and pick up one of their COM units as well.”
“Very well,” Alveraz said as he nodded to the young computer tech. As Jones got to work organizing the rest of his bridge crew, Alveraz was left to his thoughts. Immediately his mind went to Emilie. If the Kalassai had turned hostile, it meant nothing good for her. She could already be dead for all he knew. At the very least, she had been taken prisoner. And if they leave the system, we’ll never be able to find them again. She could be lost to him forever. You don’t know that, he told himself in a tone of voice that sounded eerily like one Emilie sometimes used on him. However, despite knowing that Emilie would never give up on him without knowing for sure, over the next ten minutes, as Jones and his other officers worked to get things under control, he couldn’t help the negative emotions that grew within him. When Seth’s voice came over the COM unit, his mood worsened.
“Bridge officers, calling the bridge officers,” Seth said in his typically energetic way. “I’m afraid it’s not good news. I can see Wayfarer, but she is getting smaller and smaller by the second. Either we are drifting away from her or she is leaving.”
“Acknowledged,” Jones replied, “keep your eye on her and let us know when you can’t see her anymore.” He turned to Alvarez. “Well, that answers that question. Until we get power back though, there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“No,” Alvarez agreed as a sharp sense of loss suddenly struck him. Emilie was gone.
*
In the end, it took a full six hours for Intrepid’s Chief Engineer to get the reactors fully working again. Jones’ prediction had been right. It wasn’t until every one of the alien weapons had been removed from Intrepid’s hull that the fusion reactors had properly reinitiated.
“I believe they are designed to release some kind of particle wave,” Dr. Matthews explained to Intrepid’s officers in the cruiser’s main briefing room. She was holding one of the small alien weapons. “The wave interfered with our reactors and energy conduits. I have no idea how they did it though. It’s going to take some work to figure it out. I’m not sure if we’ll be able to come up with a counter even if we do.”
“I’m sure you will make it your top priority all the same,” Alvarez responded. He turned to face Jones and Maguire. “But it doesn’t help us figure out what to do now. Wayfarer has a six-hour head start. We need to get going.”
“It’s not as simple as that,” Jones replied. With Emilie’s abduction confirmed, he had become Intrepid’s Acting Captain. “We have no way to track them and no idea where they are going. We cannot just head off into the unknown with a blind hope of finding them.”
“It’s what she would do for anyone of us,” Alvarez pushed back as he looked from officer to officer.
“Are you sure?” Matthews asked. “Finding the Kalassai was her priority. She spent the last six months pursuing them. Now we’ve found them. We also know we will struggle, if not find it impossible to detect their ships with the sensor technology we have. And now we know they are hostile. These are all things that we need to inform our leaders about. They could be making long-term strategic decisions based on Emilie’s initial reports. If they think there may be more potential allies in this area of space instead of another hostile race, they could be making bad decisions. We have a responsibility to get our intelligence back to Earth.”
Alvarez couldn’t help but growl. He detected the same tone in Matthews’ voice that she had used to argue against Emilie hours before.
Matthews held up her hands. “This isn’t personal. It’s purely logical. We don’t know where they’ve gone, we can’t detect them, and we have important strategic information. If we go after them, we could spend another six months searching in vain. That’s six months Earth wouldn’t know about the Kalassai, and six months that Intrepid could be doing something more useful.”
Alvarez growled again. Nothing was more useful than finding Emilie and bringing her back. “Perhaps Doctor Matthews misspoke,” Jones said as he tried to put himself in the middle of the dispute. “Nothing is more important than getting our Captain back. But if that’s not possible, then we must reassess our priorities.”
“We still don’t know for sure what just happened,” Alvarez insisted. “The Kalassai disabled us yes. But if they wanted, they could have destroyed us. Instead they let us go. Yet they knew that we know about them. We got close-up scans of their ships. Why let us go?”
“They are good points commander,” Jones said. “Points that we can share with fleet intelligence. But I don’t know how they help us now. We have no idea where Wayfarer has gone.”
“We know where they were going before we intercepted them,” Alvarez responded. “We know the shift passage they were heading towards. That’s where we should go.”
“And then where?” Jones pushed. “When we get to the next system what do we do?” as he spoke, Jones brought up a holographic map. “Look, according to the Conclave star maps the system they were heading towards has three other shift passages leading away from it. Which one do we take them?”
Alvarez shook his shoulders. “I don’t know. We will see what we see when we get there. But we have to try. We cannot just turn and leave here without trying.”
Jones lowered his head. “I feel what you’re saying. But how can we justify going twelve days out of our way when we know it will be
a dead end?”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Alvarez insisted. When Jones didn’t reply, Alvarez looked from officer to officer. His eyes were pleading with them to join the discussion. He knew Jones was a good officer, that Intrepid’s First Lieutenant wanted to get Emilie back almost as badly as he did, he just needed a little more encouragement. Surely one of the other officers would weigh in on their Captain’s side. None of them would meet his eyes though. Alveraz wanted to curse them all yet he knew he couldn’t. They all thought it was impossible to track the Kalassai ship. Given that, their feelings were understandable.
“Perhaps it won’t be a dead end after all,” Seth said almost absentmindedly from where he sat in the corner of the room. He had spent the entire meeting hunched over his datapad.
“What are you talking about?” Alvarez snapped.
“Well…” Seth said sheepishly as he looked up and found everyone staring at him.
“Out with it,” Alvarez pressed.
“I… You’re maybe not going to like this, but curiosity got the better of me,” Seth said just as hesitantly. But as he continued he got faster and faster. “When we were sat stationary beside Wayfarer for so long before they attacked, I got bored. I launched one of my micro drones to get a closer look at Wayfarer’s hull. The drone attached itself to the Kalassai ship to get a small atomic sample. When the Kalassai attacked, I lost all contact with the drone. It should still be attached to their ship. I’ve just been playing with Intrepid’s sensors, I think we can pick up some of the trace particles from the drone.”
“You did what?” Jones responded angrily before Seth had finished speaking. “Who on Earth gave you permission to do such a thing? How do we know it wasn’t your actions that caused them to respond so aggressively?”
Alvarez wanted to know the answers to Jones’ questions too but it didn’t matter now. What had happened had happened. “You mean we can track Wayfarer’s course?” he said loudly enough to cut across Jones.
Seth looked from Jones to Alvarez and clearly decided who he wanted to answer. Glancing down at his datapad he tapped it a couple of times and looked back up as the image on the holo projector changed. A small dotted line appeared leading away from Intrepid. “It’s extremely faint, only a few heavy metal particles fall off the micro drone’s hull now and again. But in open space, it’s enough to track. At least to give us a course. If Wayfarer goes through a dense particle cloud or cuts across an area of space where other ships have been, we could lose it. But it is clear enough at the moment to follow.”
Alvarez turned to Jones. “Now, we have no excuse. We know which shift passage they were going to, and we can confirm it. At the very least we have to go to the next system and see if we can pick up the trail. We can deal with Seth’s insubordination later.”
Jones closed his eyes for several seconds. “All right,” he said without opening them. “All right, we can’t leave our Captain behind.” His eyes snapped open. “Let’s get to work, set course to follow Seth’s signal. If we can get to the next system before Wayfarer leaves it, we can maybe contact them and apologize. At the very least they may release Captain Kansas to us if we offer some kind of compensation. Let’s get to work ladies and gentlemen.”
Alvarez nodded vigorously and stood as the rest of the officers did so. He moved over to Jones and clasped the Lieutenant’s forearm. “Thank you,” he half whispered as the other officers filed past him. “Thank you.”
“As long as there’s a chance, I’m not going to leave her behind,” Jones replied. “We just needed a chance.”
Alvarez released Jones and allowed him to head to the bridge. He then settled his gaze on Seth. The technician was still sitting in his chair, eyes on his datapad. Alvarez moved towards him, he didn’t know whether he wanted to throttle the young man or throw him in the air in celebration. Being outside Intrepid’s line of command however meant Jones would be the one to decide what to do with him. “Right you,” he said as he grabbed Seth’s shoulder and lifted him to his feet. “You’re going to talk me through exactly what you were trying to do, and how good this trail is going to be. We need to anticipate any problems we might come across and plan a counter to them now. We cannot leave anything to chance. Emilie’s life depends on it, and perhaps, so does yours.” Alvarez didn’t turn his gaze away from Seth’s, though he didn’t mean it, he wanted to put the fear of god into his computer engineer. As good as Seth was, he did not want the engineer’s curiosity getting them in any more trouble or causing them to lose Wayfarer.
Chapter 18
Today seventy percent of the Human colonies in the Empire can trace their lineage back to the thirty prominent colonies of the Karacknid War Era. Most do so proudly.
-Excerpt from Empire Rising, 3002 AD.
IS Drake, outskirts of the New Delhi system, 9th November 2482 AD (three and a half weeks after leaving Earth).
“This is Captain Stalker of IS Ferret, Admiral,” Miyagi said as he gestured for the young Captain to step into James’ office.
“Captain,” James responded as he and Johnston stood. “At ease,” he added after they exchanged salutes. “I want a complete update on everything that has been going on in system.” He sat and motioned for Stalker to sit opposite him.
“Of course Grand Admiral,” Stalker replied. “Where should I start?”
“From the beginning,” James requested.
“Right,” Ferret’s Captain said as she took a moment to gather her thoughts. “Well… we’ve been in system for the last four months. Initially things were pretty quiet. Culthrapori has the place locked up pretty tight so there was no real news coming in and out. As a result we focused much of our intelligence gathering on Culthrapori himself and the government he formed. It took us awhile but we have developed contacts on several freighters that visit the system regularly. They in turn have contacts on the orbital stations. We get updates every two or three days.”
James nodded, “What have you found?”
“As I said, our initial efforts were focused on Culthrapori. He has assumed almost total control over the government and main institutions on the planet. Those who wouldn’t toe the line have either disappeared or been imprisoned. They have all been replaced by New Delhi Nationalists, that is the name Culthrapori and his cronies have taken for themselves. From what we can tell their main objectives are to lock down the planet to prevent opposition movements growing, and to push a massive propaganda campaign. Its message is twofold, first they have been focusing on the right of India’s colonies to rule themselves; as well as the need for them to do so in order to be strong enough to stand against the Karacknids. Apparently it was the previous government’s attachments to other political entities that brought the Karacknids’ wrath against Earth in the first place. Second, their propaganda has been proclaiming the evils of our Empire. As far as Culthrapori is concerned, Empress Christine and you are power hungry dictators. He has been making it sound like preventing you two from crushing Humanity under an iron fist is his destiny. We have plenty of examples of the propaganda that is being put out we can show you.”
“Maybe later,” James replied. He had seen more than enough such propaganda from others on Earth and further afield who opposed the Empire. “What do you know about the alliances that Culthrapori is trying to forge with other nearby colonies?”
“That ties in with his second propaganda focus. In order to hold back your tide of evil, Culthrapori has been insisting that all freedom loving colonies should band together for their common defense. By our count, there are now representatives from eleven other colonies in system.”
“Do we know if any formal agreements have been made yet?” Johnston asked.
Stalker shook her head. “Not as far as we can tell. But we have no contacts within Culthrapori’s inner circle, so there could be something that hasn’t been made public yet.”
Johnston looked to James. James nodded in return. It was something they had discussed many times on the journey t
o New Delhi. If the colony had made any formal agreements with other colonies, their job would become a hundred times harder. At the very least, it could mean that if they had to confront Culthrapori, other colonies could interpret it as an attack on them. If open hostility broke out, whatever agreements Culthrapori already had in place could drag more systems into the conflict. Knowing that Stalker and her team hadn’t picked up any information on any agreements being signed yet was good, but given her limited intelligence, it was still a serious concern. “We need to get a firmer picture of just what kind of negotiations are going on between the representatives and confirm if any agreements have been made,” James said. “That is our number one priority.”
Stalker nodded. “I’ll put my people onto it right away. But, as I said, the reach of our information gathering only goes to New Delhi’s orbitals.”
“Something we shall have to remedy,” James replied. “But we can think more about that in a moment. “You said initially your focus was on Culthrapori and his government. What has changed?”