The expansion box set, p.22
The Expansion Box Set, page 22
part #1 of The Expansion Series
“Commander Wright?” she asked, not waiting for any response or offering a hand to shake. “My name is Crawford. I’m the section chief in joint command of these missions.”
The commander nodded, standing stiffly and finding himself outmatched by her slightly above-average height.
“Commander, I’m not at liberty to discuss the finer points, but what I can say is that the mission parameters have changed. The UNID thanks you for your service, but we will be appointing a different commanding officer from here on and you will be reassigned.” She nodded, offered the slightest hint of a smile as though she had seen someone do that once and tried to emulate it, and turned to walk away.
She had made it as far as reaching for the door handle before he found his voice.
“This… this is preposterous,” he exploded. “I did not give up my previous command, my quarters, almost all of my possessions simply for the UNI-bloody-D to change its mind and cast me aside like some common seaman. I demand to speak to your superiors; perhaps they will see my worth and reward me with command, as they previously promised.”
Crawford stopped and turned to face him. Seeing the short bull of a man’s chest heaving up and down reminded her of a toddler who was on the verge of throwing the mother of all tantrums.
“Sir,” she said, this time with a small smile that was genuine. “Before I respond, might I enquire as to why you feel that you’re the best qualified and most appropriate officer to command the fleet we aim to send out of the solar system?”
Commander Wright stammered, unable to answer after being put on the spot and covering that uncertainty in himself with bluster.
“Who are you to ask me that?” he said in a voice slightly louder than he intended. “How dare you question my abili—”
“Would you order your ships to fire on other UN vessels, if required, to achieve the mission objectives?” she asked, silencing him. “Would you order the troops put under your command to board a ship and capture or kill the crew to seize control of it? Are you competent enough to strategize battle plans to secure facilities on alien worlds?”
“Why on Earth would I?” he blurted out, his face red with temper and frustration. “What possible circumstances would dictate that I—”
“Sir, very simply put, we feel that you lack the tenacity to get the job done. We have assigned a man who is battle-tested to lead the fleet, and frankly, I believe that to award you a command of one of those ships would jeopardize the mission through your own need to undermine the overall commander.”
He stopped his next words before they started to come out of his mouth. That was exactly what he would do, if he was being honest with himself. In an instant of clarity, he knew that what she said was right, but what was more, it would doubtless be backed up by any number of psych-evals and anecdotal evidence. He tried another approach, still desperate to get on the mission and immortalize his name.
“If,” he said carefully, “I knew the person you were planning to make admiral, I could give assurances that I would abide by their command unquestioningly.”
Crawford seemed to assess him, to weigh up his words to find any hidden agenda in them. In the end, she saw no harm in revealing the identity of their prime candidate to lead the colony fleet to Proxima.
“We have someone in mind,” she said just as carefully, “but he has power of veto over all UN personnel listings. It’s not me you’d have to convince.”
Wright’s eyebrows rose to silently ask the question of who exactly he had to blow around there to get a job.
“Commander Dassiova will be promoted to admiral prior to mission launch.”
UN shipbuilding yards, Earth orbit
“It’s a helluva responsibility, Elias,” said the old man dismissively.
His wrinkled face was too close to the viewscreen, as though the previous two decades of having a newer video unit as his home comm device were still a novelty to him. Dassiova fought the urge to tell his father to lean back so he could see him, because he knew he was leaning closer to see the screen where his son was displayed. The stubborn old man, a veteran of the UNPF himself, had refused the laser corrective eye surgery so many times that the healthcare program given to everyone who served simply stopped offering him the option. That meant that every time the dutiful son logged on his weekly call to the old man, he had to suffer a conversation with a close-up of his hairy nostrils and just deal with it.
“Yes, sir, it is,” he told his father. “But it’s a huge responsibility and it will be a first for mankind.”
Dassiova senior gave a gruff grunt of agreement. It was clear that he disapproved simply because it was an idea invented by younger people.
“Plus,” Dassiova said, unsure how the old man would respond, “I’ll make admiral, they tell me.”
A loud barking croak came from the other end of the viewscreen, showing an open mouth with most of the teeth missing, and a curious racking, huffing noise came over the speakers. It was breathless laughter at Elias’s expense, which was what he was worried about. His father had served eighteen years, rising to the rank of master petty officer before an injury in training ended his career. He still limped as a result of the poor battlefield surgical care that was offered back then, but returning home to his young son was supposed to be a positive thing for the whole family. When the young Elias Dassiova grew up and left school to join the UNPF, his father had been proud until he realized that his boy had been selected for the Officer Training Academy on his aptitude scores.
Young Ensign Dassiova, sent away to active conflicts still flaring up in the Middle East as soon as he had qualified, spent his graduation ceremony scanning the crowds and wearing his service medals on the breast of his ill-fitting suit. He never saw his father, and part of him hardened that day.
“Yes,” he said sternly, “I’ll be an admiral. And it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to check in with you every week. I’ve organized for the care company to increase their visits while I’m… away.”
The old man still laughed, a cruel and derisive laugh at his expense. When so many thousands of men and women would be desperate to gain his attention and approval, this one mean old man held the power of acceptance over him.
“Look after yourself, Dad,” he told him. “Do what the nurses say and don’t give them any trouble.”
“Yes sir, Admiral Eli, sir!” the old man laughed mockingly as his son cut the connection.
He left his private quarters on base, walking the short distance to the mess hall. He wore the shirtsleeve-order uniform of the UNPF and similarly dressed young men and women stopped in the corridors to snap to attention and salute him as he passed. Dassiova returned the salutes, wishing he could get a moment to breathe. There were so many subordinates crammed into the small complex for build-up training. The privilege of rank and seniority allowed him to take his meals separately, but despite the crammed mess hall, he preferred that the men and women who made up the crew of his fleet saw him eating and training alongside them.
He exchanged nods and greetings, luckily not having to suffer the endless string of salutes—those weren’t required in the mess halls or crash decks unless prompted. He took a white tray, sliding it along the rails and picking up the individual portions of food as he listened to the conversations going on around him. He finished with three glasses of fresh orange juice, which clinked together as he looked for a place to sit and eat. Picking an empty gap near a group of young, fit-looking seamen wearing the lightning bolt badges he was looking for, he rested his tray and downed the first glass of juice. He had a vague idea in his head, an idea to put fresh eyes on the problem he had been updated about daily. He felt that a good, old-fashioned in the trenches approach might help, hence his reason for seeking out the electrical engineers.
“I heard it was a deep-space mission,” one of them said.
“Bullshit,” another countered. “It’s a Red Run. Has to be.”
“Oh, and you’re an expert? How many times you been to Mars, Hunter?”
“Once,” Hunter replied quickly. “What’s your count, Judge?” He smiled at her sullen silence, as he knew they had only been on the same journey to the red planet and back together.
Dassiova glanced up; the tall young man who had spoken was sporting a petty officer class two rank and eyeballing a young female in the jump suit of an engineer rating. He guessed she was Judge. Her lack of an answer and Hunter’s arrogance prompted Dassiova to offer his opinion.
“It’s a Red Run,” he said quietly, sensing them all turn to see the senior commander sitting beside them as they talked shit about his mission. “At least it is to begin with, and I’d know because I’ve done seven of them. We may be going a little farther than that, in time.”
Silence answered him, either through fear or confusion, he couldn’t be sure. He chopped at the thick oatmeal with his spoon before trying some. He turned and looked at them genially, which seemed to only have the effect of scaring them more.
“At ease, kids,” he said, hoping to relax them. They all lapsed deeper into the silence as they ate their breakfast.
“Sir?”
Dassiova looked up to see Judge looking straight at him.
“What is it, Judge?” She colored up involuntarily at his use of her name but held her own.
“What have we got that’s farther than Mars?”
Dassiova smiled.
“All in good time,” he told her. “What’s your assignment?”
“We’re electrical engineers assigned to the Venture, sir,” she responded.
“Flagship of the fleet?” Dassiova asked with a smile. “Not a bad gig. You seen her yet?”
Heads shook hesitantly, but only Judge had the strength of character to answer him: “Negative.”
“What are your orders today?” he asked her.
“Training on ship systems,” she recited, “and PT.”
“Well, you look fit and healthy enough,” he told her. “Petty Officer Hunter?”
“…Sir?”
“Seaman Judge is assigned to me for today. Give your officer my compliments that I’ll be borrowing her.”
27
Deep space near Proxima Centauri
“Good morning everyone,” Captain Torres said as he took his seat from a grateful bridge officer who had occupied it for the night shift. “Tactical? Sitrep please.”
“Morning, sir,” the crewman at the tactical station responded. “We currently have eighty percent of our recon drones in the water. All are reporting functional and feeding telemetry back to the mainframe.”
“Any signal contacts?”
“Negative, sir,” the comm operator responded. “Cyclic scanning of all frequencies shows both high and low frequency waves, but they appear to be just bouncing around. Nothing seems to be aimed at us and nothing bears any recognizable language.”
“I trust we’re recording it all for analysis back home?”
“Affirmative, sir.”
“Good,” Torres said, pausing to take a sip of coffee. “Commander?”
Leslie Brandt turned around in her chair to face the young man who had once been her ensign when she was a lowly petty officer.
“Captain?” she asked him, eying his coffee and wishing she had thought to bring herself a cup.
“What’s our state of combat readiness?”
“Always ready, sir,” she snapped back, with the earnest tone of an over-eager recruit. “We have a standby team on rotation at all times. I’ve commandeered a storage area near to the armory for the on-call troops to crash, and Paterson’s given us a couple of engineers to work on the gun automation links.”
That last fact was helpful, as the four devastatingly powerful and accurate quad minigun emplacements were being accessed by a few key personnel. They were able to remotely activate and operate the guns using the links through their armor’s interactive display; like a kind of virtual reality video game with real life stakes.
“That’s good,” Torres said as he tapped at the display screen built in to the arm on his captain’s chair. He turned his attention back to the task in hand.
“Tactical, what’s the run time on this line?” he asked. Long-lining—the process of dropping reconnaissance drones in space, then returning for them to dock back to their ship to download data and recharge—came from an ancient Earth practice. Humans would take a boat out into rough sea and literally dropping a long fishing line into the waves. The line would have hooks all along it, then the fishermen would wait before going back and dragging on board all the fish that had taken the bait.
It had been banned in the Americas for humanitarian reasons—so many of the large ocean predators the practice killed were endangered. But the theory had curiously lived on in space exploration.
They had reached the end of their line of drones, always maintaining a certain percentage on board in case of losses, and Torres gave the orders to bring them about. They were to plot a jump course for the start of their line.
Even though the co-ordinates were a sure thing, their jumps were still out by a random factor, putting them anywhere between five thousand and fifteen thousand kilometers away from their intended destination.
Paterson had been working on that around the clock for the first few days before he fell asleep in a senior officer’s briefing and Torres ordered him to get some rack time. In spite of this effort, he was still no closer to figuring out why their jumps never took them to the precise place they wanted to be. Instead, they stayed well back from the safety line and never plotted a jump near any planetary bodies.
Just in case.
“All set, Captain,” Rogers said from the helm.
“Punch it.”
Brandt felt a lurch in her stomach, like a sudden but fleeting sensation of weightlessness, It disappeared almost the same second it assailed her. As many refinements as Paterson made to the jump process when the Fold Drive engaged, she still felt it and was still left slightly disorientated after they re-emerged into normal space. The shield harmonics matched that of the Fold Drive’s magnetic field emitter perfectly, and Paterson had even experimented with the ship’s gravity emitter to increase its power output in the moments before a jump, but it still wasn’t seamless.
The scientific facts of their jumps had nagged at her in the night, keeping her awake as she tried to comprehend it all. How could they exist where they were and yet not exist in any place or time that anyone could see them? They simply disappeared from one place and reappeared in another, but remained in existence somewhere in between.
Where did we go? Did we go anywhere? Are we real, or is there another version of us back where we started still?
The tiredness, she realized, had made her questions fall off the edge into partial insanity.
Jolted back to the moment as they dropped out of the artificially created wormhole, she mentally steadied herself and glanced down at the screen to the right of her chair.
“Marker detected off our stern, Captain,” the technical officer said. “We’ve overshot it by… eight thousand clicks.”
“Bring us about,” Torres said. “Start reeling them in. Mister Sarvanto, you have the bridge.” He stood, indicating to Brandt with a twitch of his head that she should accompany him. He scanned the UN Intelligence Directorate bio-implant in his left forearm over the reader to open the door to the secure commlink room.
He sat, inputting the authorization codes to start the tiny Fold Drive emitter. This array served as their sub-space communication and allowed them to contact Earth without waiting the forty or so years a message would normally take them. They waited as the call went unanswered, each growing slightly nervous before the screen blinked to life with a dull beep and a suited woman with short hair sat down to face them.
“Captain Torres, Commander Brandt,” she said formally, “my name is Crawford.”
“Hi,” Torres said for want of a more constructive response. He detected no rank by which to address her, and he didn’t think she looked like a ‘Ma’am’ despite evidently being in a position of authority. He had spent enough time in the company of spooks to recognize one, and he was pretty sure he recognized this particular shady UNID agent.
“Allow me to bring you up to speed with what has been going on,” Crawford said. “As I’m sure you’re aware, you and the entire crew have been disavowed and are speculated to be operating independently of any territory. Obviously, if and when you return with positive results that will have a constructive bearing on human technological advancement, then the true story can emerge in part, and over time, of course.” She paused, allowing both Torres and Brandt to fully consider the words she had used. “How far into the reconnaissance of the system are you?”
“We’ve mapped almost ten percent so far,” Torres said, “and we’ve yet to get close to the nearest exoplanet. But our scans indicated nothing of interest there unless we go in for a closer look. By my best guess, we’ll be approaching it within a week, then we can jump ahead a couple light years to investigate the twin suns and any planets orbiting them.”
“That’s good,” Crawford said. “Following that, we will need you to complete the recon of the primary areas of interest in the system and get sample readings from every moon and planetoid along the way.”
“Crawford?” Torres asked politely. “Mind if I ask again what our primary goal is? Are we searching for intelligent life, resources or are we homesteading?”
“You’re observing, analyzing and reporting back, Captain,” Crawford told him with a hint of sternness in her words. Her expression said, ’don’t ask.’ Her face and her tone told him to do his job and leave the bigger-picture thinking to others.
“Understood,” Torres said quickly with forced joviality to change the subject. “Stand by to receive the full data on the adjustments to the Fold Drive.” He tapped a few commands on the desk display before looking up to see Crawford’s eyes glance at the incoming data file.
