The expansion box set, p.38
The Expansion Box Set, page 38
part #1 of The Expansion Series
“A little over an hour and twenty, sir.”
Their fleet had previously sent out long-range probes, the unimaginably expensive single-use ones with miniature Fold Drives and subspace comm arrays. What they had not detected before they had been picked up and destroyed was the planet on the far side of the bigger of the twin suns in the system. They suspected there was a planet there, because the Kuldar intelligence suggested that the Va’alen were mining for resources, but they hadn’t been able to get a close enough look.
They looked at it at maximum magnification. The collective gasp that ran through the bridge had them all staring at the display. It was Earth—not their Earth but a planet so similar that without looking closely at the shapes of the continental plates, none of them could say that they weren’t looking at their own planet.
Torres had brought up one of the science team to the bridge, a cosmologist who was onboard to map the system as accurately as possible from the sensor data they received. His opinion made for a simple explanation.
“There’s nothing overly unique about our planet,” he said. “Just the formation of land masses which have changed entirely over a relatively short period of time—short in galactic terms anyway. You’re aware of the concept of the goldilocks band?”
Torres was. It was space colonization 101 for anyone actually going out there. Being the right distance from the sun to allow for liquid water to exist was the basis of planetary life. His expression told the scientist to try not to patronize him.
“Well, this planet appears about the same size and mass as our own but is a little further away from the sun.”
“But that sun is bigger than ours,” Torres pointed out.
“Precisely, which evens out to provide the same kind of conditions. I’d wager it’s almost a replica of Earth, so long as no stinky humans have poisoned it.”
“Facts, not opinions,” Torres reminded him.
“Sorry,” he said. “When your probe sends back the data, I think we’ll be looking at a viable planet to populate.”
He left out his thought about the option of stripping it bare and burning all of the natural resources to set the timer on that viability expiring. Torres thanked him and politely dismissed him from the bridge as they sat and waited for the probe to return. It was technically outside of their mission parameters, but having expended the energy and resources to infiltrate so far into enemy-held territory, Torres would have felt remiss not to investigate, just so long as it didn’t compromise their primary objective.
“Tactical, can we see the Va’alen hub from here?” he asked.
“No, sir, it’s on the other side of Alpha Centauri from us.”
Torres chewed the inside of his lip. He mulled over his options and found no way to safely cut the corners. They would just have to deal with a delay of an hour before resuming the mission.
“Stay on the sensors,” he told his crew. “I don’t want any surprises while we’re camped out here.”
“Any sign of them yet?” Admiral Dassiova asked his bridge crew.
They were using active sensors, given that the enemy already knew they were there, and as a precaution were all lined up pointing out of the system ready to jump if any overwhelming force threatened them. The Ichi was now light years away on reconnaissance, a job she had been built for, although now enhanced tenfold with the retrofitted addition of the alien shroud device. Dassiova much preferred shroud device to a cloaking field, as someone had wanted to name it, and decided to stick with the translation of the alien word for the hardware.
“Nothing yet, sir,” one of his crew called out in response. “Do you want to hail them?”
Dassiova turned to stare at the young man who had spoken.
“You ever play hide and seek as a kid?” he asked casually.
“Err, I guess…” the young man answered.
“You ever shout out to your other buddies hiding when the kid looking for you was around?”
“Understood, sir, sorry.”
“Dumbass,” the admiral muttered not quite under his breath. He was contemplating kicking the kid off his bridge for medal-winning stupidity, but settled on that being a too harsh. He had made his point.
An excited shout made the admiral jump in his chair.
“Fold Drive signal detected!” They waited in impatient anticipation of the next words. “It’s the Ichi. She’s hailing you directly, Admiral.”
“On screen,” he growled.
Torres’s face blinked into life on the main display with Halstead’s just beside it.
“Captains,” Dassiova said in gruff greeting.
“Admiral,” Torres said intensely. “We’ve accomplished the mission and then some, but we now have a ticking clock.”
46
Deep Space near Proxima Centauri
“So, you’re telling me there’s a viable Earth-like planet on the far side of this system?” the admiral asked the two tired-looking captains seated opposite him in his main briefing room.
“Yes, sir,” Halstead answered, pushing a datapad across the wide table towards him. “Atmospheric readings from the probe show it to have the same gas components as our own, only a little richer and with almost none of the pollution we have in ours.”
Dassiova grunted as he read the report. He didn’t actually know the percentage composition of Earth’s atmosphere off the top of his head but decided not to announce his ignorance. “And what about the primary mission objective?”
“Achieved, sir,” Torres said. “But I need to report in reverse order. We have a threat incoming, and it isn’t one that we can withstand.”
“Don’t just sit there looking pretty, Torres. Spit it out!”
After the probe had done a seemingly lazy lap of the planet from high in the atmosphere, the officer controlling it from the tactical station engaged the engine and maneuvering thrusters just the right amount to break it out of atmosphere and send it back towards them.
Deciding it was best not to risk discovery by retrieving the entire probe, and also because he was anxious to get on with the mission, the tactical officer ordered the data be downloaded remotely and then had the probe set on a course to burn up in the larger of the two suns.
“Set a course for the gateway device,” he ordered the helm. “Half speed.”
“Aye, aye, sir, our time to contact is…” he dragged out the word as it was calculating, “one hour fifteen.”
“Understood,” Torres acknowledged before hitting the ship-wide transmission channel. “All hands, this is the Captain. Remain at battle stations; we are approaching the objective in one hour. Torres out.”
Tense silence filled the bridge, as it likely did on the other decks in nervous anticipation of their mission to sneak into the enemy’s back yard.
An hour seemed to take far longer than under almost any other circumstance. That was how it felt to the captain, sitting in his chair the entire time and trying not to show how nervous he truly was. He especially didn’t want to seem anxious in front of the more experienced Captain Halstead. He could have watched a couple of old re-runs of his favorite shows in that time. He could have read a book or even grabbed himself a precious bit of rack time, but none of those things was even a remote possibility under the conditions. The seconds ticked down agonizingly until an unexpected curse came from beside him.
“Well, smack my ass,” Halstead blurted out. She suddenly remembered herself and fought the flush of color rising in her cheeks. “That planet—it’s just like home.”
She had been reviewing the sensor data from the probe, something Torres had all but forgotten about, and pointed at his console so that he could review it himself.
“Well I’ll be damned,” he muttered. “Well this certainly changes things. There’s no way Earth will give up on this system now.”
“There’s more,” Halstead told him. She continued to look down at the screen beside her. “It’s got animal life—I mean there are life-sign readings all over the planet, but there’s no evidence of structures or anything to say that higher-evolved lifeforms are there.”
“So… like Earth but younger?” Torres asked. “In evolutionary terms, I mean.”
“Could be.”
“I wonder if—” Torres started to say before a shout cut him off.
“Contact! Dead ahead!” shouted the tactical officer.
“Calm yourself,” Torres said in a low voice. He forced himself not to sound as frightened and excited as the young officer was. “Report.”
“I’m reading two—no, three readings. The same kind of energy reading as the Va’alen ships.”
“Distance?” Torres asked.
“Twelve thousand kilometers and closing, sir. I don’t know how they got so close without us detecting them.”
“They came around the sun,” Rogers said from the helm. “They were masked by the solar radiation.”
“What’s their trajectory?” Torres asked, shifting in his seat and trying not to sound worried.
“Err…uh…” the tactical officer said. “Err…”
“Take your time,” he told him. “Get it right.”
“It looks like an intercept course, sir,” he said. “But they’re going to overshoot us at our current speed.”
“I am of the opinion that their course could be a coincidence,” Torres said, glancing at Halstead to see if she agreed with his gut feeling. She gave the slightest nod in support. He was careful not to show his bridge crew that he was looking to someone else for answers. “All ahead stop. Monitor them to see if they change course. Signal the guns to be ready but not to fire without my express order. Get a confirmation on that. And lay in jump coordinates out of here just to be safe.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” chorused the officers manning the tactical, helm and comm stations.
Ten agonizing seconds passed until the report came back to him.
“No change to speed or direction, Captain,” he said with obvious relief.
“Extend their trajectory and check it against our point of entry after jump,” Torres ordered.
“Yep, that’s where they’re heading,” the tactical officer responded. He suddenly remembered himself, sat more upright and added a hasty, “Sir,” on the end.
“Resume course,” the captain ordered. “Guns to stand down; get those safety catches back on. Let the Va’alen go poking around in empty space; that should keep them busy.”
The next ten minutes to target went by more quickly, as though the win of remaining undetected had lifted the veil of nervousness stifling the air on the bridge.
“Gateway device in visual range, Captain.”
“Let’s see it,” he said.
All eyes turned to the large display. The gateway came into view, only half of it visible as the angle of it caught the sun side-on and highlighted the nearest, massive curve of the ring floating in space.
“Reminds me of a game I played once…” the young tactical officer murmured.
“Passive scans?” Torres prompted, refocusing on the kid he was about to have replaced if he didn’t get his act together.
“Yes, sir,” the young man snapped, almost jumping in his chair as his concentration was forced back to his job. “No cloaked readings around the device… some readings farther ahead but… no, can’t detect anything on passive for certain. We’re in the clear.”
“Take us in, one quarter speed,” Torres ordered. He leaned forward in his chair. “I want to see how close we can get without triggering any defense protocols. Keep an eye on that console, Ensign. I do not want any power surges spooling up without knowing about it; that thing might have weapons or some kind of point defense guns. In fact, Mister Sarvanto, would you mind relieving the young ensign? I’m sure he needs a bottle or a nap.”
“Aye, sir,” Sarvanto replied, the tone of his voice making it clear that he didn’t care for Torres mocking one of the crew in front of everyone.
Torres heard it after he had said it. He softened the blow with his next words. “Ensign, stay with Mister Sarvanto and watch what he does.”
The kid smiled and nodded, returning to his station as an observer.
“Is it shielded?” Halstead asked as she too leaned forward to see the unusual and massive device.
“Not as far as I can see, ma’am,” Sarvanto reported.
“Keep jump coordinates locked-in,” Torres said. “I don’t want any surprises.”
His order was acknowledged by the helm. They crept closer at what, in the void of space, was a slow speed but on the surface of a planet would tear trees out of the ground with the force of their passing.
“One thousand kilometers,” the helmsman called out.
“Still no sign of shields or energy surges,” Sarvanto echoed.
“Keep her steady,” Torres said, not knowing what he meant but pleased to be sounding captainy and reassuring.
“Five hundred kilometers.”
“Still all clear,” Sarvanto said.
“Hold us at fifty kilometers,” Torres ordered.
“All stop, fifty kilometers from target,” the helmsman said in a low, controlled voice as though speaking loudly could get them caught.
“Passive sensors?” Torres asked.
“It appears to be dormant,” Sarvanto answered. “No enemy readings.”
Torres glanced at Halstead.
“Worth risking an active sensor ping?” she asked.
Torres shook his head.
“I don’t want them knowing that this is our target and covering it with guns before we’re back,” he said a low voice.
Halstead nodded, adding the ground-pounder’s SpecOps playbook to her own for future use.
“Okay, set us a course back to empty space where we can jump,” he ordered. “Keep us slow until we’ve put five thousand kilometers between us and the gateway, then go to two-thirds speed.”
“Aye, aye,” came the soft response from the helm.
The shrouded Ichi turned slowly about and drifted away.
They travelled unmolested away from the device, choosing not to head past it to approach the Va’alen hub—that could wait until there were far more ships on their side and within firing range. Instead, they chose a different spot of empty void to jump from, seeing as there were at least a dozen enemy ships scouring that sector last they saw. At what Torres believed was a safe distance, and far enough away from the gateway device, he ordered the jump back to the fleet in two short hops.
“Take us halfway,” he told the helmsman. “Then recalculate and jump closer to the fleet.”
He didn’t risk sending a subspace comm to the admiral—their intel confirmed that the Va’alen could detect the energy signal of a jump, which meant they may be capable of detecting their long-range comms.
“Jump ready, sir.”
“Hit it.”
“Contact!” Sarvanto said loudly. He immediately added in a voice laced with more than a touch of hysteria, “Correction, contacts. Lots of them.”
“Where?” Torres barked.
“Eight thousand kilometers to our rear… there are… there are too many to count. I’m reading them as one massive contact with others that keep breaking off from the fringes constantly.”
“Speed and heading?”
“Fast, can’t say for certain but I estimate that they are travelling at close to our flank speed.”
“Heading?” Torres prompted again, allowing his fear to rule his mouth.
“Working on it,” Sarvanto said as his fingertips danced across the terminal’s glass surface. “Heading is… heading leads directly back towards the fleet, Captain.”
“Plot a jump,” Torres said. “RFN.”
“Jump ready,” the helmsman reported.
“Do it now.”
“Unknown numbers heading our way then?” Dassiova asked, a hint of tiredness in his words.
“Yes, sir,” Torres said as he swallowed down the lump in his throat. “We estimate that we have maybe sixteen hours to jump away before they’re in this sector. Our best guess is they sent a sizeable force after we destroyed their forces in this sector.”
Dassiova leaned forward to rest his elbows on the desk and rubbed his temples. “Are we ready to launch the Norton?”
“In three hours,” Captain Halstead answered.
“And how long to complete that mission and get back here?” the admiral asked. He could already guess he wouldn’t like the answer.
“Twelve hours,” Torres said. He had checked the information before reporting to the fleet commander. “Assuming that we have to jump into a different vacant sector and travel to target at sub-light speeds. We can cut on time by jumping straight back in the Tanto, docking with the Ichi and all of us jumping out of the system.”
“You’re making a lot of assumptions for a one-hour safety window, Captain,” Dassiova said.
Torres said nothing.
“Alright, put everything we have into getting the ships ready. Launch as soon as you have a green light.”
47
Deep Space near Alpha Centauri
“Jump complete,” the chief helmswoman of the Norton reported.
“Nothing on sensors,” Torres said from the position he had taken at the tactical station.
Their mission had gone ahead with only four of them: two pilots and the two captains. It must have breached a dozen regulations, but the admiral had far bigger fish to fry than solving arguments over who got to go on what most would call a suicide mission.
“Shroud is holding,” Torres told Halstead
She monitored the comm station where she helped input the navigational data. The other person on the mission, carrying the loneliest job of all of them, was Torres’s chief pilot, sitting in the Tanto. The Tanto was docked to the nearest emergency airlock on their starboard side facing the stern. The emergency belly hatch of the small craft was open to the interior of the Norton, effectively part of its atmosphere until they sealed it and cut away.
