Resolute Omnibus (The War for Terra) Page 7

  “There is only one plate,” he said, indicating the inside of the ship. “What am I supposed to eat?”

  As he turned back to her, she pressed up against him. He felt her lips on his, her tongue caressing, probing for entry. He returned the kiss, at first slowly and carefully, but with building passion. She threw her arms around him, pushing him back into the shuttle. He tripped on the edge of the door and they both tumbled inside. As she pushed herself up, straddling his waist and looking down to him, another giggle escaped her.

  “I’m sure we’ll come up with something.”

  8

  The Terran Princess glided through the blue-brown haze of M-space. Inhabiting the barrier between one dimension and another, M-space was a membrane that divided reality. It ignored the laws of normal space, twisting the distances between heavy gravitational objects like stars and planets, and slowing time. The fusion generator on board the Princess created a field of electromagnetic energy that propelled the ship through M-space and created a pocket of normal universe to protect it.

  Lee Pearce looked through the bridge viewport at the shifting globs that made up the illusion of matter in M-space. When he had first seen the dimensional barrier, he was fascinated with the liquid motion of the weird particles that existed here. He was still fascinated with it, but now he saw the area of nothing as a prison that kept him from arriving home.

  Captain Ortiz stood at his left, also staring at the shifting illusion on the screen. The Princess was about to arrive at the newest set of coordinates they had found for the lost fleet. They had been following the trail for almost two weeks now and the passengers and crew had become restless with the chase. Several of the passengers had sent word to the captain that they wanted him to abandon the hunt and return to hiding in dead space. Ortiz had ignored the request and continued to jump from place to place. He felt that the possibility of finding the battle fleet outweighed the danger of abandoning the hunt.

  “Approaching our jump point, Captain,” said Curtis Stone. “Readying for the exit projection.”

  If seen from the outside, the Terran Princess looked like a large fish. She was narrow with tall sides that rounded at the keel. The bow was curved down to the landing bay, where a curved energy projector kept stray meteorites from striking the cruise liner. Near the aft quarter, a large ring wrapped around the hull and glowed bright white in the M-space light. The ring was the projector that allowed the ship to enter and exit jump points, and kept the strong energies of M-space from crushing the ship. The annular ring blazed brightly for a moment and a dark swirl appeared in front of the bow.

  From the bridge, the vortex of the exit point swirled around a dark center. The energies washed over the Princess as she left dimensional space. Immediately, a blazing fire of energy erupted around the cruise liner. The fireball encircled the ship for a few seconds, blinding the view screen until it bled the excess energy out into the vacuum of space. As the view screen cleared, darkness, littered with a few stars, appeared on the display.

  “Scanning, sir,” said the sensor officer from the lower deck. “I am not reading any local stars, sir. The place looks dead.”

  “Kama,” said the captain. “Are you picking up any more breadcrumbs?”

  The communications officer was bent over her console, tapping at keys and concentrating.

  “Negative, sir,” she replied. “I’m not registering anything. Not even background static.”

  Pearce looked at Ortiz. The inability of the woman to read any signals at all meant only one of two things. Either they had lost their antenna during the jump, or they were being jammed. The captain walked back to his command chair.

  “Moore,” he ordered. “Give me a tactical map on my screen. I want to know where we are.”

  The security officer fed the data to the holographic display on the upper deck. As the scans filled in the local area, the captain stared out the view screen at the darkness outside. He glanced down to see that there was a planet in the area that seemed to have a debris field orbiting it. With no sun, the planet appeared to be a frozen rock.

  “Helm, take us closer to that planetoid,” the captain ordered. “I want deep scans of the debris field as well. I need to know if the fleet is here or if we’re chasing clues again.”

  The Princess turned towards the dark world in a slow and cautious arc. She had her running lights off to avoid detection. The reflected light of distant stars was the only illumination in the system. Lee strained his eyes, trying to make out any details of the planet ahead or the smaller ring of debris.

  “Sir,” announced the security officer, Moore. “I am reading a lot of common asteroids in the field surrounding the planet. Trace metals and ice mostly, but there does seem to be composite metals near the equator area. The communications interference is making it hard to scan though. It seems that there is a blanket jamming signal being broadcast.”

  Ortiz and Pearce exchanged glances at this news. If they were being jammed by a sophisticated system, then there had to be someone in this system who knew they were there.

  “Activate shielding, Moore,” ordered the captain. “Charge up the lasers.”

  “Aye, sir,” replied the security man.

  A pale glow surrounded the Princess as the plasma screens activated. Shield panels closed on the outer skin of the cruise ship. It seemed to Pearce that the entire ship held its breath as they approached the dead world. He wished that his fighter, still being repaired in the hangar, were operational.

  The ship moved in towards the debris field at the equatorial line of the planet. Although there was no light to see the world or its ring, the sensors were augmenting the image on the view screen. It looked to the commander like a graveyard.

  Asteroids, chunks of rock the size of city blocks, circled the planet in lazy orbits. In between some of the larger rocks, metallic debris tumbled and moved. In the midst of the rock and metal ring, a large, dark object floated along like a log drifting along a meandering river.

  The ship was large, almost as large as the Princess, but with none of the decoration that the passenger liner sported. The armored skin looked pitted with impacts as though it had been caught in a hailstorm. There were no lights to illuminate the ship and it looked derelict. Pearce tapped a control on the command chair armrest. A faint lance formed around the outer edge of the ship, defining its shape.

  “That’s a Confederation destroyer,” he said, tracing the line around the image. “It’s a human ship.”

  A wave of excitement seemed to sweep across the bridge. They had been searching for the remains of the fleet for so long and now it appeared they had found it. Their energy was tempered, however, by the sight of the dark ship drifting lifelessly in the dark.

  “Kama,” said the captain. “Can you tell if the jamming signal is coming from that ship?”

  “Negative, Captain,” the communications officer replied, checking her screen. “I don’t think so. The signal isn’t centered here. I will run a negative scan to see if I can pinpoint the origin.”

  She began to press buttons on her panel, reversing the communication scan signal to try and find where the jamming signal was strongest by finding where there was the least static. It was like looking for the center of a hole by listening to where the echo was quietest, but it was still the best plan they had.

  “I’ve got it, sir,” said Yu. “We need to turn forty degrees to starboard with a negative fifteen degree declination. Whatever is sending out that signal is about fifty kilometers that way.”

  “Helm,” ordered the captain. “Take us in. Mister Moore, let them see we’re friendly. Light us up.”

  “Captain,” began Pearce, “we still don’t know if these ships are friendly or not. Showing ourselves will make it easy for them to track us.”

  “I know, Commander,” replied the captain. “But one or the other of us needs to make the first move and it might as well be the big friendly cruise ship.”

  The Terran Princess had strips
of lighting running down its hull, primarily for decoration. Dotted along the hull were also circular ports that imitated windows. The company who designed the ship had wanted to give the impression that the passengers could look out of the windows and wave to their loved ones as the ship pulled in and out of port. In fact, there were no external windows on the ship at all. The closest thing was the vast clear covering of the topmost pool deck that had a retractable shield, now closed.

  When the ship lit up, it projected lights out to the dark system. Asteroids and debris suddenly seemed much closer on the view screen now that they could see them. The Princess had become a lantern shining in the darkness for all to see. Pearce only hoped that the people on the ships didn’t decide to shoot out the lights.

  Carefully navigating around the orbiting rock, the Princess entered a clearing around the object projecting the jamming signal. Once again, Pearce called up an outline so they could see the object more clearly. Its enormous size was not apparent as they approached, but the glowing lines showed it to be a manmade object almost two kilometers long.

  The bridge door opened and Melaina Petros walked onto the lower deck, her eyes transfixed on the view screen. She quickly ascended the ramp to the upper command level to join the captain and Pearce. Tuxor had followed behind her, one set of hands clasped behind his back and his flippers crossed over his muscular chest.

  “My God,” she whispered. “It’s a Zeus class carrier. It must be the lost fleet.”

  Captain Ortiz looked to the woman, pursing his lips at her excitement.

  “Miss Petros,” he said, “we have had no signal from the carrier and it appears to be jamming all our attempts at communications. Do you have any suggestions?”

  Melaina looked back at the older man, blinking away her awe at the sight of the hulking warship on the screen. Since she had technically been a part of the battle group when she was on the Edison, she would be the best person to ask about the ship.

  “Captain,” she explained, “my team and I were just engineers. The captain of the Edison never shared anything with us about signal codes or identity frequencies. I can tell you this, though: she already knows who you are.”

  The four looked back to the screen and the carrier that they were approaching. It was double-hulled, like a catamaran, and thickly armored. In the darkness, none of them could see if the weapons were intact or damaged. All they knew was that the ship had no lights and no signs of life.

  “Mister Moore,” the captain began, “have the deck boss prepare a shuttle to board that ship. I want to see if there is anyone—”

  Before the captain finished his sentence, the carrier blazed back to life, its running lights coming on all at once, startling everyone on the bridge. They could see now that multiple weapons ports were open and the cannon turrets were pointed directly at the Princess. Along the side of the carrier, letters almost as tall as the cruise liner identified the warship.

  “It’s the Baal,” Melaina said. “That’s Hathaway’s ship.”

  On the front of the port hull, a large hangar door split open and retracted. Landing lights began flashing on the open deck. Ortiz and Pearce looked at each other. Tuxor stepped forward to the railing separating the upper and lower bridge decks. He seemed to be studying the carrier with his deep black eyes.

  “It seems they have put out the welcome mat,” he said to the bridge.

  Pearce, Melaina and Ortiz joined the big alien at the rail, staring hard at the open doorway to the carrier.

  “Either that or we’ve just been invited to our own execution,” said Lee.

  Moore, who had continued to monitor his station as the exchange took place, turned to look up at the captain. Although only a few years older than Pearce, he had deep lines etched in his hard, angular face. Pearce had once heard that the man had served in the Army of the Confederacy before leaving it for civilian duty.

  “Sir,” he began, “their weapons are not charging. I’m close enough now to get a scan of their power signature. I don’t think they have enough power to fire. I can’t read anything from their reactor.”

  Ortiz looked at his security chief with concern. The other man turned back to his console and continued to monitor the warship on his screen. The captain rubbed his short beard and tried to think about the actions of the carrier.

  “Henry,” he said, addressing the security man by his given name. “Do we have enough men to go over there?”

  Moore turned back to his captain. His eyes seemed to wander upwards for a moment as he concentrated on the question.

  “There are a few passengers who have military experience that we could draft,” he replied. “I could probably get about fifty crew and passengers together pretty quickly.”

  “Get the weapons from the prison transport and arm yourselves,” said Ortiz. “Just because they’ve opened the door doesn’t mean they don’t still want to throw us in the oven.”

  Moore had searched the Ch’Tauk transport after they had arrived in the hangar and confiscated plasma weapons and vacuum suits. Since the Princess had no energy or projectile weapons stores, Moore had decided to store them in the security office.

  “Aye, sir,” said the security man.

  “Commander,” said the captain. “I want you to go along and help out any way you can. You’re the closest thing we have to the military chain of command here.”

  Lee left the bridge with Moore, hoping that this wouldn’t be the last time he saw the command deck of the cruise ship.

  9

  Assembling in the main hangar bay, the boarding team looked odd. Some of them were wearing commercial vacuum suits, decorated in bright colors with company logos stenciled over their chests. Others were wearing utility suits taken from the ship’s engineering levels. Still others wore what looked like full combat armor, bulky and overly large for their human frames. These suits had been salvaged from the Ch’Tauk ship, along with the rifles and sidearms that the teams were carrying.

  Lee had a service sidearm that he had rarely taken from his quarters in the past three years. He wore his own flight suit and carried his helmet at his waist on the little clip. He was checking the seals on his portable breathing pack as Henry Moore stepped into the group. True to his word, it had taken almost thirty minutes to assemble the group in the bay and evaluate who had the military training for the operation.

  “Listen up, people,” said Moore, his voice amplified by the security vacuum suit he wore. “I want you to double-check the weapons you have been issued. If you have a plasma rifle, make sure the safety is on. If you were given a pistol, be sure you have a round in the chamber now.”

  The instructions were accompanied by the sound of clicks and sliding metal as the makeshift team looked over their weapons. One of the men, a civilian in a bold royal blue vacuum suit, dropped the pistol he had been given. The crack of metal on the deck startled the other passengers and several began laughing nervously amongst themselves.

  “Gentlemen and ladies,” said Moore. “I have to remind you that we are about to board a Confederacy military vessel. We don’t know if this ship has humans or something else on board. This is no laughing matter. Some of you could be very badly hurt if you fail to follow instructions when they are given.”

  The laughter died down as the seriousness of the upcoming mission started to sink in. The trained security men had issued the ship’s complement of stun batons to the entire team and some of the team had them slid into their belts like swords. Lee knew that was the best way to zap yourself unconscious the first time you sat down. He wandered around the group and let the recruits know.

  “Alright, folks,” a voice announced from the airlock door. “Time to saddle up.”

  Alice strode across the deck in a tight-fitting engineering suit. She and Pearce had barely spoken since the night in the shuttle and he stared at her as she approached the group. She had a helmet clipped to her own utility belt almost the same way he had fastened his, but he thought it looked much better o
n her. She stepped towards a long passenger shuttle decorated in the ship’s royal blue paint scheme.

  “Let’s go,” she said, passing Lee with barely a nod and signaling the door to the shuttle open. “Single file line, please, and no pushing.”

  The group started to line up with the security team spacing themselves out every few people or so. Moore and Pearce stood at the door with Alice as the group boarded the shuttle, making sure no one tripped or stumbled into the ship. As the last one boarded, Moore nodded to Lee and stepped aboard himself. That left Alice and Lee alone on the deck.

  “Alice,” Lee began, “I didn’t know you were a pilot.”

  “Well, Commander,” she replied coyly. “We really haven’t done a lot of talking. Get in. The captain wants us out the door in less than sixty seconds.”

  “Maybe when we get back,” Lee said, “we could get some dinner in the lounge and get to know each other better?”

  In response, Alice placed her hand on his shoulder and pushed him into the shuttle. As he walked down the short wide aisle between seats, she closed the door and entered the sealed cockpit. He found a seat next to a civilian passenger in a bright yellow vacuum suit. The seat restraints were snapped in place and the ship’s engines began to hum.

  It only took a few minutes for the bay to depressurize and the doors to open to space. The passenger shuttle had large windows for arriving guests to see the Princess in all her glory and as the ship cleared the hangar doors, Lee looked at the ship glowing in the darkness. He tried to imagine what the ship must look like to the fleet after being away from any Earth vessel for so long. As the picture formed in his mind, the ship veered off and he lost sight of the cruise ship.

  “Alright, team,” said Moore over the ship’s speaker system. “Let’s all put on our helmets and start our breather tanks. I have no idea if there is any air when we land.”

  Lee pulled his helmet from his belt and slid it over the tight cap of his vacuum suit. The man next to him was struggling with the straps that would seal his helmet and facemask in place. Lee turned and helped the man fasten the mask securely and activate his breather.