Assault on Ambrose Station: A Seth Donovan Novel (18 page)

27.

Our journey continued through the Gossamer System. Unfortunately, the salvage from the Ghantri ambush was little more than armour plating and several souvenirs for the crew to examine. Our first beamer shot had ruptured a primary fuel reservoir and secondary explosions had done a decent job of ripping the ship apart. We couldn’t even tell much about what configuration the ship had been.

I dreamed more and more about the eye, it was always in my dreams about the nanite seas. I began to think that this was the Eye of Ar’od Dar that I was imagining, not the telescope, but the deity. What significance this held, I had no idea. I mentioned it to Zoe, as I often spoke about my dreams with her during our sessions. She was familiar with my recurring sea dreams, and often broke them down into meanings for me to analyse. It wasn’t like I was reading my horoscope or anything, but she explained there was a real possibility that my subconscious mind was in communication with the nanites, or at least my implant.

She called it sub-neurological feedback, saying it was completely normal. Either my subconscious was influencing my nanites to display information in certain ways that made me dream of these things, or my implant was using the same neuro-pathways that normally send data to my subconscious mind.

However, this eye? It baffled her. Sure, I can have nightmares, even in this state. I had dreamed about the nano-proliferation specialist tending to the brain on the Blade of Xerxes enough to know this was true. Nevertheless, to have a construct so vividly and symbolically recurring in these dreams was new.

I had other problems, too. Zoe and I couldn’t come up with a solution to our problem about our future. She appeared as reluctant as I to ruin a good thing. At least Max had stopped nagging me about talking to her. I could tell she would start again, but at least she would include Zoe in her prodding this time. Galaxy knows, we both needed it.

The weeks wore on. Each day brought us closer to Ambrose Station, to the place where my life had changed irrevocably. I found myself looking backwards, at what might have been. If the Push had been successful, if the losses there had not been so personal. I wondered if I would be the person I was today. Would I be stronger? On the other hand, would I never have known the limits of my will, my soul? Was that better than knowing?

A conversation with Fel, one evening, answered many of the questions I asked myself. We had just finished a meal and were savouring the contentment one feels after sating one’s hunger. A kind of stupor had befallen us and our words flowed more readily into introspective topics.

“Tell me, Fel,” I began, “how an Orlii deals with personal loss.”

“Well, you would have to start by defining what constitutes a personal loss. Then measure its magnitude.”

“The passing of a friend. How did Eric’s death affect you?”

“Do you wish to know how the Orlii mourn? Or me in particular?”

“The Orlii in general.”

“We remember them. We remember what they stood for, and what they meant to us. We try to honour that memory. We’re very similar, in that regard, to humans.”

“I’ve never seen an Orlii cry.”

“We don’t cry to express our sadness, but you know we show our emotions through our eye colour. Our society is very open, you would guess, as one cannot hide their foremost emotions from anyone they converse with.”

“I remember your eyes were a deep brown at the sending off we gave Eric.”

“Yes. Sadness is the colour of the
Tindefal
tree. There are many Orlii poems about these beautiful, mourning trees. They bloom only once in their long lifespans, the oldest in our home system of Stuhs Erlo is well over two millennia. It’s not on Orlis, but on the moon colony.”

“I didn’t know the Orlii had space travel back that far.”

“Oh, yes. We’d begun exploring our star system when the humans came upon our worlds that fateful day.”

“I’ll admit, I’m not all that familiar with the history. All I know is we’ve been allies for over a thousand years.”

“We had
The Way
, even back then. Perhaps it was the nature of those brave explorers, the kind of person one must be to have that profession. We were as kindred spirits, both enraptured with each other. Our ancestors were patient and non-assuming. Yours were curious and respectful. The perfect first contact.”

“How do you think it would have gone if the Garz’a were the ones who made first contact?”

“Ha, we’d probably have gone to war.”

“What kind of society would we live in then, I wonder?”

“You mean had the humans and Orlii not become such fast allies? If the next species encountered hadn’t been shown that such cooperation between disparate peoples was possible? The Garz’a had fought us at first, if you remember?”

“I do, it was an Orlii captain who had brought peace.”

“Captain Elanger’to Efferdal’gha. She was a magnificent person, a true explorer and scientist.”

“I didn’t know her name.”

“We’ve a bust made in her likeness on the Fel’dor cloister. Several of her teachings were incorporated into
The Way
. ‘First seek understanding, then seek to be understood’. This was her motto.”

“So how do you think we would have turned out?”

He pondered the question for a while before answering. “The Destroyers would have wiped us out, I think.”

The harshness of his prediction caught me off guard. “That’s a fairly bleak assessment.”

“That war was one of the most horrific events in galactic history. At least as far as the Human-Orlii-Garz’a histories go.”

“The Garz’a were well prepared, at least. They knew something about the Destroyers.”

“Yes, but how much was merely myth made to fit the events of the day?”

“Still, you think whoever was in control of the galaxy at the time wouldn’t have been able to fight them off?”

“In my opinion, no. It took the resources of all the inner systems, the oldest Networks, just to hold them back. Trillions of sentients perished. Without the humans to adapt to the crisis, without the Orlii to suggest subtle strategies or the Garz’a to act with celerity we would have fallen. We three races complement each other perfectly. The Galactic Exploratory Alliance already had the groundwork for an organisation capable of drawing on such resources – the Protectorate was merely the fruit of our people’s union. The Destroyer War was our crucible. Our victory gave us the right to rule, so to speak.”

“You think that without the War, the Protectorate wouldn’t have been formed?”

“There had been no need. Local conflicts rarely spread beyond star systems, almost never beyond a Network’s borders. The Protectorate proved beyond a doubt to the whole galaxy that it could guard against those who would undo all that we had worked for. The galaxy is a safer place because of their sacrifices.”

I pondered his words for a while. He watched me from across the table, also deep in thought. He seemed to come to a revelation, leaning forward conspiratorially.

“You know, I see parables to this history and yours.”

“How so?”

“The Push was your crucible, as the Destroyer War was the Protectorates.”

“But I’m not going to go on and protect the galaxy!”

“No, but you do your best to, regardless.”

“How so?”

“You proved, beyond a doubt, that your will to survive - your willingness to do what is necessary – was enough to see you through one of the most horrific things to ever befall a man. Here you are, bravely headed back to possibly face yet another hardship of similar wrath.”

“I didn’t exactly have much choice.”

“Even so, you give the rest of us hope.”

“That’s a heavy burden to place on my shoulders. I have doubts, just like anyone else.”

“Courage isn’t the lack of fear. It’s tasting of fear, yet facing it anyway.”

“You think that if I hadn’t been left behind in The Push, or been wounded so, we wouldn’t be doing as well as we are?”

“Of course we wouldn’t have. Even if you had not saved the entire crew multiple times already, you inspire the rest of us to try. Even Crege is heartened by your efforts. You know what he is like when he spends even one day in sickbay. Now, he is essentially crippled for months.”

“Yeah, I would have thought he’d be more maudlin than he is. He complains bitterly, but he doesn’t seem depressed.”

“That’s because of you.”

I rubbed my chin, thinking about what he said. “It’s not only me. We’ve all done our part.”

“Of course, but at the heart of all that – there you stand. Even Artemis feels something of what you bring to this ship. She strikes me as a very hard woman to impress, but you’ve gained her respect.”

“She
did
bust me out of prison.”

“An act I doubt she’d have performed for anyone else on this ship.”

“I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how things would have turned out if I hadn’t joined The Push, or lost my squad.”

“You’d be you, but you would not be as strong a person as you are today. Even steel needs to be tempered in order to show its true strength. Our crew would not be as strong as we are without your sacrifice.”

“You truly believe that?”

“Yes.”

His words had affected me. I began to think on what he had said, but I was not fully convinced. I still needed some soul searching, some closure that made all that I had suffered make sense. I was hoping I would find that on Ambrose Station.

28.

Month three of our journey into Gossamer was fast approaching when we arrived at the empty zone, as we’d come to calling it. It was here that we ran the greatest risk of detection by the Eye of Ar’od Dar. We were well and truly paranoid by this time, for a number of reasons.

Chiefly among these was our sensors. Several times we’d spotted weak signals aft of us, as if we were being followed through the system. Maxine even had us shut down our propulsion and go dark for two days, listening. We could find nothing, in the end, and resumed our journey. It had the senior officers nervous, for if we were being followed then this empty zone was the perfect time for them to attack us. We’d be without power, propulsion or shields for four long days while we drifted between cover.

If they attacked us then, if we survived, we’d be engaging in combat while under the watchful eye of the Ghantri telescope. Things would get very difficult for us from that point on.

We were several hours from our point of no return, when we’d either need to shut down and let Crege coast us through the empty zone disguised as a piece of flotsam, or abort and try and find another way through the system. Maxine had us close up on station and we were debating our course of action.

“We turn, we assume attack profile.” said Crege, “If
calak
following, they have no choice but to respond.”

“And if we’re not being followed we burn precious manoeuvring fuel for nothing.” I countered.

“If we are being followed and we do nothing, what do we do if they attack us in the empty zone?” mused Fel.

“How likely is the Eye to spot us if we need to manoeuvre out there?” asked Max.

“Very likely.” came my reply.

“The system is a large amount of space to monitor, surely there’s a better than likely chance they would over look us for such a short period of time.” said Fel.

“They’re fanatically thorough; they consider it a holy imperative to see and catalogue everything that happens out here. Anything can be construed as a sign from their gods.”

“But the chances of them looking in this very spot when we pass has to be low, statistically speaking.”

“The Eye is not your typical telescope. In reality, it’s an entire space station sized array, with thousands of Ghantri monitoring the sensors all the time. We studied a documentary compiled by the original explorers who first negotiated with the Ghantri before the Betrayal. The Jaani boasted that they could map the entire vista out to a light year in less than a month. If it were true, and they were looking over in our arc of the sky? They will notice our heat emissions easily.”

Max rubbed her chin. “We can’t risk exposure. Perhaps we should wait here for a few more days, see if we can spot that contact again.”

Fel brought up the aft sensor array data on his console. “There’s nothing out there. I’ve had Tac run every algorithm he knows, we’ve put the sensor data through all our filters. We get the same result each time. In all likelihood, the ghost contact is probably a malfunction in our aft array.”

“You checked it, though.”

“Yes, and I couldn’t find anything wrong. That doesn’t mean there’s no error. Perhaps it’s intermittent. That would explain the irregularity of the contact.”

“Do we have the parts to fully replace it?”

“Not entirely. We could swap it out with our forward sensor array, though.”

“How long would that take?”

“Ideally, I’d need a dry dock to do it safely. A couple of days to remove them both, a couple of days to reattach. Half a day of testing and calibration.”

“Without a dry dock?”

He spread his hands in defeat. “A week each. A lot of EV trips.”

Max sighed.

“Why don’t we just turn about,” I said, “spend a few days monitoring for the ghost contact with our forward sensors? If we don’t spot anything by then, we make the trip. If we do, we’ll know it wasn’t a malfunction of the aft sensors.”

Max smiled. “I knew there was a reason we let you up in the command module.”

“Very funny.”

“Human occasionally has good ideas.” said Crege, laughing.

“Alright, we’ll give it another three days.” said Max, while Crege groaned, “Turn us around Crege and put us on silent running. No propulsion, no external emissions. Fel, you’re on full sensor monitoring.”

“Passive sensors only, or full spectrum?”

“Give it everything you’ve got for one hour in every five. The rest of the time passive only. Don’t want to be broadcasting our location for too long if we can help it. I also want to see exactly what’s been following us if we can.”

“I have another suggestion.” offered Fel, “We can launch the Eclipse and have it patrol the area.”

Max pondered this for a while. “If we do, we won’t be able to recover it in a hurry.”

I spoke up, “I can attach a sensor beacon to it, bounce the readings back to the Dreaming. Recovery won’t be an issue.”

“It will if we run into trouble.” said Max, “That fighter isn’t the sturdiest thing in this system.”

“Still, I could use the practice.” I heard Crege make a chuffing noise, which I chose to ignore, “The simulations are getting a little monotonous.”

Max looked at Crege in askance, and after a brief pause he shrugged.

“Human could do with more hours under his wing.”

“Okay, but no fancy stuff, there’s a lot of debris out here. Our inertial field pretty much negates most of the smaller stuff out here, but that fighter doesn’t have stabilisers, remember. I don’t want you getting killed when a bolt punctures your canopy doing a thousand kilometres a second.”

“Roger that, Captain.” I agreed.

We broke up and went to work. Fel and Tac joined Cuts in Aft Cargo and started to attach the sensor beacon. It wasn’t as high powered as the ones fitted to the Dreaming, but I could move around easily enough and get multiple scans from many angles in a short amount of time. This took a few hours, but eventually they were satisfied that it would work. The next stage was trickier.

I’d been asleep when they had recovered the Eclipse, pulling it into the aft hold, but they’d told me it was difficult. The rear loading ramp had to be fully lowered, and both aft airlocks opened completely. This meant the atmosphere in the hold had to be pumped out. This meant that anyone working in the hold had to suit up into light duties space suits.

Cuts, Hergo, Denno and I got ourselves dressed and checked each other’s packs. When I was satisfied, we entered the aft hold and sealed the hatch to the forward hold. I sent Max a text when it was sealed, and they started to pump the air out of the compartment. It started as a loud hiss, as the vents reversed their pressure and sucked the oxygen out. Eventually, as the air became thinner, the sound reduced and disappeared completely.

Cutting power to the grav-plates in ten seconds,
came a text from Cuts. He stood over by the gravity controls for the compartment – a small panel in the starboard bulkhead.

We all engaged our mag-boots and gave him the thumbs up. When the gravity went offline, my stomach did a small somersault and my head swam, trying to work out the sudden shift in the environment. I shook my head and the sensation cleared, my years of experience taking over like muscle memory. We got to work.

The fighter was clamped onto the deck with magnetic plates on its landing struts, so I climbed into the cockpit and hit the release. Despite being weightless, the fighter still had mass, and that needed to be overcome if we were to move it. Fortunately, we had plenty of tools to assist us in moving heavy loads in this compartment. Hergo climbed into a loader, a small vehicle used to move cargo containers in and out of the hold. It had tracked, magnetic treads that allowed it to move heavy loads in low to zero gravity by latching onto the deck.

When they had pulled the fighter into the hold, they had the foresight to rest the forward struts on a sled, which we used to position the fighter directly in line with the airlocks. Then we opened the ‘locks and used the loader to raise the fighter slightly off the deck.

Once it was raised a metre, we signalled Crege and he applied the tiniest amount of thrust to the Dreaming. The result was the Eclipse fighter drifting aft. With all four of us guiding the ship using bursts of propellant from our suits, we slowly let the fighter exit the hold. Twice we bumped the bulkheads as it left, but since we were going slow there was no damage. We all gave a little cheer when it was free, and I sailed over the expanse to the tiny ship.

I secured myself in the flight seat, lowered the canopy and pulled out a canister of atmo I had clipped to my utility belt. These gas cylinders could hold enough atmosphere to last a few hours, in a chamber as small as the cockpit, but I’d need enough atmosphere in here to remove my helmet safely and attach the breath harness. I didn’t want to wear the full space suit helmet while flying, as it tended to cut down on my peripheral vision.

In minutes the air was breathable, and I pulled my suit off. There was more room in here than when I’d first stolen the fighter, as we’d made some adjustments to the cockpit and flight controls. Where before there was a flight console, there was only a yoke and a basic flight control rig. Most of the functions were mapped to my flight app on my overlay, making the larger console redundant. So we’d pulled it out and moved the seat forward. This gave us room to place a second seat behind me, albeit a small, uncomfortable one, but Art said she’d be fine. We also fitted a second flight mask for her. She’d need it.

I pulled my own mask over my head and opened the air valve on my seat, sending breathable air into my face. I activated my app and powered up the fighter. With a thrum the small, powerful engines barked into life and a greenish, translucent sludge started to fill the compartment. It wasn’t long before the goop completely enveloped me and I could feel the pressure of the slime as it entered the cockpit. The fluid pushed against me, making my movements sluggish, but I knew as it heated I would be able to move more freely.

The slime acted as a counter to the g-forces I knew the fighter would put me through if I engaged in combat, and it would save me from passing out while I manoeuvred. Crege called it compression buffer, but the scent of the gunk was frightfully disgusting. I never gave it such a neutral name as buffer, preferring more apt names such as ‘flight gunk’, or ‘gee poop’. My current favourite was ‘pilot paste’. It was marvellous stuff, though. Despite its greenish tinge, when the cockpit was full and electrical current was passed through it which polarised it and made it clear as glass. It even acted to magnify the view, as if peering through a lens.

The engines on this craft were not the same as the Dreaming’s. As the Eclipse was never meant to be a long range craft, it had powerful, fuel driven propulsion that were similar in concept to the Dreaming’s manoeuvring thrusters. The fuel was different, but essentially they broke down the fuel source using a catalyst that produced significant energy. This energy was released in bursts controlled by the propulsion system, or streams, depending on the required motion. The fuel was expensive, but easy to come by, and we hadn’t needed to purchase much from Eridani Station to top up our tanks.

Much larger, more powerful versions of this drive, called Linus Drives, were used in warships. Although they required large amounts of fuel, they were powerful and gave you an advantage in capital ship combat. If you could move fast, you could avoid fire.

I gave the Dreaming an okay signal, testing the tight beam communications of the fighter, and then laid on the thrust. I was immediately push back into my seat, despite the pilot paste, and could feel my smile turning into a grimace.