“I’m not sure,” he said. “We might be in trouble.”
“Again?” she asked, tapping him on the shoulder and pointing at the other seat. “What this time?”
“I’m not sure how to explain it,” he said, getting up and stretching. He’d been sitting in one position for a while. It felt like he left most of his blood supply behind when he stood up.
Before he sat down again in the other seat, he tapped into his commlink. “Angel If you’re not on watch over the window washer can you report to the ConDeck?”
“On my way, Boss,” she said. “I’m not supposed to swap out with Quinn for another hour. What’s up?”
“When you get here,” he said, tapping back out of the comm.
“Have you had anything to eat?” Nuko asked. She was staring at him and not the screen, so he flipped on a professional level glare and pointed at her console.
“We need to be double sharp,” he said, offering no other explanation.
“What the hell has you rattled?” she asked, bristling at his tone.
“I want you to keep your eye on that screen every moment you are on duty, from now until we’re out of this system,” he said. “If you need to get up to take a crap, you call me in to take over.”
“Are you serious?” she looked up at him in surprise.
“As serious as an open airlock,” he said, nodding and firing off another angry eyeball in her direction.
“Marti can watch the sensors and never blinks,” she said.
“Yah, but we might be looking for something that’s never been seen before,” he said.
“It would help if I knew what you meant by that,” she said.
“I honestly don’t know,” he said. “But if anything looks strange on that screen. I don’t care if your brain says it’s a sensor twitch, or a power surge, or even eye snot, you hit the panic button and get the coils online. Even a second of hesitation might be too much.”
“What the frak are you talking about?” she asked, turning to face him and getting another dose of his frustration aimed in her direction. “Did you miss your meds this morning?”
“Do what I say,” he said. “Please, just do it.”
She turned back toward her control station and settled into a posture that matched the one he’d kept for the last several hours. “It would help if I knew what was going on,” she said under her breath but loud enough he could hear her displeasure.
The door opened and before Angel had made it all the way into the ConDeck, he twisted his seat around and said, “If they board us at any point, your job is to make sure personally that Kaycee is not taken. Under any circumstances.”
“Yah, Boss,” she said, almost sliding to a stop. “I assume there is a reason you want me to shield wall for her in particular.”
“Yah,” he said.
“I’m just going to go with the hypothetical assumption of us being boarded for the sake of understanding the orders, but what if I am on guard duty with the prisoner?”
“Shoot him and get to her,” he said.
“What the frak is up with you?” Nuko asked, glancing over at him again.
Ethan snapped his fingers and pointed at her console without looking away from Angel. “Fine. You can just stun him, but if we hit the panic button up here, you are not to waste even a millisecond. Drop him and run over anything that gets in your way to get to her side. And then, no matter what happens, do not let her be captured.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “I’m a bit foggy as to why, but if you say she needs to be protected extra serious like, then that’s what I’ll do. But I’m with Nuko on this point in saying it would help to know what you’re so tweaked about.”
“Kaycee explained something to me, and if even half of it scans true, she personally might be a bigger target for Jetaar than anything down on the surface,” he said. “At this point he has no clue that she might be the kind of scientist he’s specifically looking for, but if he catches any stink in the wind, he’ll be on us so fast we won’t see him coming. Maybe literally.”
“We’ll see him coming and then we make feet,” Nuko said, without looking up. “I thought the plan was to stand up on the big legs and run like hell, so he’ll try to chase.”
“If he’s driving that fast ship that Leo mentioned the first time we talked to him, we may not see Jetaar until he appears on our decks. And without a doubt we won’t be able to outrun him even with the overdrive coils working too,” he said. “That’s why you keep your eyes on the sensors and don’t blink.”
“This sounds like a joke,” Nuko growled, obviously feeling like she was not finding the punch line amusing.
“I’m deadly serious,” he said. “The ship Jetaar supposedly has might be real, and if it is, we’re no match for it. Neither are the defenses they’re trying to get set up down there.”
The handler nodded. “I thought there was something in some of the answers he gave Dr. Tegan that rattled Kaycee. I couldn’t pin it on anything in particular but she seemed more worried the longer he talked.”
Ethan nodded. “She said there’s something in her schooling that if he knew about, would give him the tools he needs to get that ship fully operational.”
“Like what?” Angel asked.
“I don’t know, but if he could somehow capture her, she is the key he needs to get it working. At that point there isn’t anything safe in the galaxy.”
“And you’re sure she’s not suffering from ego-giganticus?” the pilot asked.
“Not even a little,” he said. “It could all be a fantasy trip, but I don’t think it’s worth risking.”
“Do you want me to sit on her lap, or should I wait until you order us to panic?” Angel asked.
“For now, keep it business as usual on the outside,” he said. “I don’t want Kaycee to know we’ve got an extra layer of protection wrapped around her unless we have no choice.”
“Cando,” she said. “Anything else?”
He shook his head and sent her off with a wave of his hand.
“Hopefully, we’ll get lucky and we’ll be a long away before Jetaar shows up,” he said, closing his eyes for a minute.
“Why don’t you go get some sleep,” Nuko said. “You were up all night weren’t you?”
He nodded, overwhelmed by the need to yawn. “I think I’ll kick back in the ready room in case you need me. That way I’ll be close.”
“You could use your quarters and be more comfortable. It’s only a few seconds further away.”
Of course, she was right and his bed sounded awfully inviting. He pushed back from the console and stood up, feeling like he’d left even more blood behind.
“Hang on, Rene is wanting to talk to you,” she said.
The engineer had been down on the surface for half a day already. Maybe he’d have a progress report. He blinked several times before he leaned back against the seat. “Put him through,” he said.
“Boss, I need to use the ship’s sensors to run a high definition sweep of the EMF field across the whole planet,” Rene said.
“That’s not possible,” he said. “We’ve got to keep eyeballs open for Jetaar.”
“If you want me to get this job done, we’ve got no choice,” he said.
“Our situation up here has changed, and we have to be extra focused to keep him from making a surprise run at us.”
“I get that. Marti told me you have a new situation impacting things, although she didn’t go into details,” he said. “Here’s the reality I’m up against. Without a HD scan of the planet’s electromagnetic field, I can’t determine where the power is coming from. I’ve got an idea that might work based on what I’m seeing locally, but without the wide perspective of the ship’s sensors, I won’t be able to go any further without getting someone killed trying to hook into it.”
“Why?”
“There’s a low frequency signal that seems to be what carries the energy. Once I get a clear enough map of it, I should be able to bu
ild an antenna and receiver to connect to it. The problem is if we don’t find the source, I can’t shut it down long enough to tie into it. That means I’d be stuck trying with the hardware hot, and that’s an absolute nogo.”
Ethan let out a long noisy sigh and sat back down.
“This field has an energy density substantially higher than anything I’ve worked with, and because we’re stuck using our technology to tap into it, I’m not sure it’ll behave so I can transform it to a safe level. If I can’t get that done, there’s no way I can work with it live.”
“Given what’s going on, I’m not sure we can risk giving you the sensors,” he said.
“Then I’ll have to pack up my toys and call it a day,” Rene said. “I can let Makhbar know he’s not getting his guns.”
“Frag me,” Ethan swore. There was no way he felt good about leaving them defenseless even though artillery might be no match for Jetaar’s supership. He drummed his fingers on the edge of the console and chewed on his lip. “How long would it take to do the sensor sweeps?” he asked.
“A couple orbits,” he said. “Marti and I worked out the most efficient scanning pattern. We’ll only need the EM and GI gear on the planet side of the ship, so you’ll only lose the automated processor circuits on the outward apertures while we suck in data. You can manually keep eyeballs on the sensors facing spaceward. At least you won’t be completely blind that way.”
“That will give you enough of what you need?”
“We’ll have to build a three-dimensional field density topographical projection, and then from that we’ll—”
“Spare me the brain stretching,” Ethan said. “How soon do you need to start?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Hey, Boss have you got a minute?” Rene asked over his command comm earpiece.
Ethan was standing in the galley looking for something to eat. He’d stolen a couple hours sleep after they’d finished the scans and although he felt a little better, he was only this side of continuous frustration. It didn’t help that Quintan had rearranged things to be able to cook his massive feast style breakfasts, and nothing was where it used to be. So far, he’d found a plate and some utensils but not much more.
“Yah, I just finished a short shift of horizontal duty,” he said. “What’s swinging?”
Quinn might have heard him banging around looking for things and appeared at the door before his frustration boiled over into a full-on rage.
“Coffee,” he whispered. “Squeeze extra caffeine into it if you can.”
“Aye. Cap’n,” he said, shooing Ethan out of the galley.
“The data we got is giving us some good information but there’s a problem making sense of it,” Rene said.
“You and Marti are the brains,” he said as he dropped into the nearest seat and waited for Quinn to bring his cup out. “If you two can’t make it fit together, there’s no frakking chance that I can.”
“Maybe. But it’s more a matter of what we’re seeing fits together but doesn’t work in reality.”
“Oh I get it. You’re telling me I’m not connected enough in reality to talk you out of your harebrained ideas?” Ethan asked, not sure if he should feel insulted or amused.
“Close,” Rene laughed. “Remember I said there was a specific frequency inside the field?”
“Yah,” he said as the handler brought out a cup and what looked like slices of some kind of purple fruit.
“We figured out that we can use the wave form of that frequency as a way to directionalize the field,” he said.
“Still with you for the most part,” he said, giving Quinn an approving nod as he took a bite of the fruit and washed it down with a sip of the coffee.
“Because the wave has a polarization component to it, we can use the angular rotation of that to get a direction to look to find the source,” the engineer said. “The problem is that it’s telling us to look someplace where we know it can’t be.”
“Where’s that?” he asked
“In space.”
“Like in orbit? There’s nothing up here but us at the moment,” he said.
“No like near the primary stars,” Rene said.
“Is this some kind of solar powered system? Those are notoriously weak, aren’t they?”
“They are, but it doesn’t look like it’s the stars. It’s near them.”
“You mean it’s in a close orbit,” Ethan said.
“If it were, it would be moving fast,” he said. “It wouldn’t arc far across the sky, but it would be visibly changing angle over the course of several hours.”
“If it’s not close to the stars, where is it?” The coffee was helping, but he still felt like he was falling behind.
“It’s on the other side,” Rene said. “That gas giant is almost exactly where the field seems to originate.”
“That’s got to be almost a light-hour away. What could be kicking out enough energy to power the toys on this planet from all the way across the system?”
“I don’t know, but that’s what it looks like. If we can confirm that’s the source, then the planet is about to go into conjunction with one of the stars. The field might shut down while it does.”
“What makes you say that would kill it?” he asked.
“The charge density of the field is dropping as the giant slides behind the corona. That might indicate magnetic obstruction, or stellar plasma occluding the field. I don’t know if it will continue but if you could check it out that would be helpful.”
“Check it out? You’re suggesting we take the Dawn all the way across the system to investigate?” Ethan’s first impulse was to say no.
“Marti will have to drop her connection to her automech, but it’s only a few minutes across at cruise speed.”
“You and Marti’s body won’t be coming with us?”
“Marti lives inside the ship,” the engineer reminded him. “I figure if you can confirm that’s the source, it’ll give a day or so to get the hardware cobbled together and into place before the conjunction. That will be tight, but I think if I don’t sleep at all, I should be ready to hook up to the field while it’s down.”
“You’ve figured out how to do it?” he asked.
“If I can make that window, I can do it,” he said. “You’ll need to determine that something over there is generating the field, and maybe how it’s doing it. Then if you can track the field from that end, you might be able to see if there is some kind of relay installation that will skip the power around the star.”
“I can’t believe that an advanced civilization wouldn’t have figured out how to avoid blackouts. Especially ones that happen every year,” Ethan said.
“The only thing that supports the idea that things might shut off, is that several of the people who’ve been here a while say there are times when everything seems to quit working for no reason,” Rene said. “It happens a couple times a year, but nobody thought to record the dates and times to see if there was a pattern to it. They wrote it off to a maintenance process they didn’t understand.”
“Sometimes scientists can’t see something even when it’s staring them in the face,” the captain said.
“That’s why engineers are better at making things work.”
“Alright, dealing with the obvious for a minute,” Ethan said, “if we take the Dawn over for a looksee, it leaves you here with no cover.”
“You being here isn’t cover, it’s an escape plan,” he said. “You’re also the lookout tower. But the long range sensors are more than capable of seeing all the way back to here, and you can do the same thing we did when we scanned this end of the power system. Use the sensors on one side of the ship to do science and the ones on the other to keep an eye out. It will slow the data acquisition down some, but that will keep you from being a nervous flatch.”
“I’m not a nervous flatch,” he said. “Truth is it doesn’t feel safe running around without an engineer on the ship, especially in what might be ho
stile territory.”
“Yah, but I can’t be two places at once,” Rene said. “You and Marti know enough to keep the ship running if things get sticky.”
“Sending us to investigate is the only way you’re going to get this working?
“I can’t say that as an absolute fact, but it’ll certainly make my job easier.”
“Fine, I’ll let Nuko know we’re going on a field trip. I think she’ll like the idea of an outing, anyway. She’s getting damned tired of only watching the sensor screen.” Picking up his coffee cup, he headed back to the ConDeck. “What are we looking for? He asked as he entered the lift and leaned against the back edge of the cage railing.
“Marti will run the sensors, but once you get eyeballs on it, it should be obvious.”
“Is it going to be possible to even get close enough to tell? Won’t that be kicking out a massive EM field?” he asked.
“It might be,” Rene admitted. “Sneak up on it to be safe.”
“Understood,” he said as he walked into the ConDeck and startled Nuko. She was staring at the screen on her console.
“We’ll be moving as soon as Marti’s back aboard,” he said.
“I have always been here, Captain,” it said.
“Then let’s do this, if you’re ready,” he said. “We’ll be back as soon as we can,” he added as he tapped out of his command channel.
“Let me take over the sensors,” he said, dropping into his seat. “We’re going for a little run to check something out.”
“Isn’t Rene still on the planet?”
“It’s his idea,” he said. “He wants us to take a look at the gas giant across the system. He thinks it’s the source of the power down there.”
“That’s a long way over.”
“We’ll cruise it,” he said. “Get us away from the planet and then kick it in the ass. I don’t want to waste any more time than we have to.”
“It would be advisable to drop out of cruise at least ten million klick from the planet until we have identified the source of the field,” Marti suggested.
“Whatever you say. I just work here,” Ethan said. He punched into the shipwide commlink. “All hands we’re going on a short run to collect some sensor data. Prepare for maneuvering and a jump to light speed.”
Wings of Earth- Season One Page 32