Ep.#8 - "Celestia: CV-02" (30 page)

He wondered if that was how the Jung would see his ship and his crew, as terrorists. Did they believe they had a rightful claim to the Earth simply because they were powerful enough to assert it? It certainly would not be the first time that such a claim was made. Nathan’s studies of Earth history had taught him countless examples of exactly such claims, both pre- and post-plague.

As Nathan continued down the corridor toward the main hangar deck, he made a mental note to himself to see to it that whoever made the trip back to the Pentaurus cluster to seek assistance should make it known that, above all else, they needed support infrastructure—specifically the kind with which they could set up a base of operations.

Nathan’s train of thought was interrupted by his comm-set.

“
Captain, medical,
” Doctor Chen’s voice called over this comm-set.

“Go ahead, Doctor,” Nathan answered.

“
You should probably come to medical, sir.
”

“What is it?”

“
It’s Josh, sir… He’s awake.
”

“On my way,” Nathan answered, smiling.

* * *

Nathan found himself looking into Josh’s open eyes. “It’s about time,” Nathan said as he approached Josh’s bed. He couldn’t stop the grin that was forming on his face, even if he had wanted to.

“Sorry, sir,” Josh said in a gravelly voice. “I guess I just needed some time off.”

“Take all the time you need, Josh. We’re still fixing your ship, so you’ve got some time still. How are you feeling?”

“Tired, a headache, I think. Leastways, I feel like there’s something going on in there that isn’t usual.”

Marcus came in and stepped up next to the captain, looking at Josh with a wide grin. He looked at the captain and jabbed him in the side with his elbow. “You see? I told you he was hard to kill…”

Nathan favored his right side slightly as the senior chief’s elbow jabbed him. “Yes, you did, Senior Chief.”

“Oh, uh… Sorry, sir,” Marcus said, realizing he was overstepping his bounds, especially under the new, stricter disciplinary guidelines being enforced by Commander Taylor. He tried for a moment to stand stoically, but he failed miserably, bursting out in a loud guffaw.

Nathan patted the senior chief on the back. “It’s quite all right, Marcus. I feel the same way.”

“Damn you, kid!” Marcus suddenly bellowed. “You scared the shit outta me!” The senior chief’s laughter returned, sweeping away his sudden anger just as quickly as it had come.

Loki was next to enter, smiling at the sight of his best friend with his eyes open and being yelled at by Marcus. For the first time in weeks, things were getting back to normal.

“I’ll talk to you later, Josh,” Nathan told him as he turned toward Doctor Chen. “Doc?” he called, gesturing for her to follow him into the next room.

Nathan and the doctor quietly exited the treatment area, going into the entry foyer as Loki and Josh began talking. “So he’s going to be okay then?” Nathan asked as soon as they were out of earshot of the others.

“Well, the fact that he is conscious is a good sign,” the doctor began, “but we won’t know if he’ll have a full recovery for some time yet.”

“When will you know for sure? I mean, he looks pretty good, considering what he went through.”

“Mentally, he’ll probably be fine,” the doctor agreed. “I’m more concerned about his motor skills. Josh is an instinctive pilot. Such people have differences in their neural pathways that contribute to their abilities. It will take time for us to know if those pathways healed without losing any of those capabilities that give him his unique piloting abilities.”

“If you had to guess…”

“Like I said, the fact that he is awake and talking normally is a good sign. Give it a few days, Captain,” the doctor urged. “By then, he’ll be stronger, and we can conduct a few tests.”

“Of course,” Nathan said. “Nice work, Doc.”

“Congratulate the Corinairans,” Doctor Chen insisted. “It was their nanites that saved him.”

* * *

Nathan entered the port repair bay at the aft end of the port-side fighter alley. There were at least a dozen men hard at work on both the Falcon and the jump shuttle that had been disassembled by Lieutenant Montgomery and his team of Takaran scientists for the purpose of testing the mini-ZPEDs with the shuttle’s jump drive.

The bay was originally designed to allow the complete tear-down of two EDF fighters simultaneously. Both the Falcon and the jump shuttle were considerably larger than a standard EDF fighter, which made for a very cramped repair bay.

Nathan ducked under the Falcon’s wing-body in order to get between the two ships as he moved toward the back of the repair bay in search of Vladimir. Once he reached the back wall and looked to the sides, he found the big Russian hunched over a workbench, a welding hood over his head and a plasma welder in his hand. Nathan shielded his eyes from the intense light as he approached, taking care to stay clear of the sparks and to not disrupt his chief engineer’s work.

“Vlad!” he called out once the plasma torch in the man’s hands died out.

The Russian looked from side to side, forgetting that he was wearing a hood with a darkened visor. He lifted the visor and saw his friend and captain. “Nathan! What are you doing here?”

Nathan held up a food box in his hand. “Lunch!”

“Excellent!” Vladimir set down his welder and took off his helmet. “Finish this weld,” he told the nearest technician, “then give it to Jalvers.” Vladimir took off his heavy gloves and placed them on the bench. “Let’s eat!” he told Nathan, gesturing for him to follow.

Vladimir led Nathan into the small office at the inboard aft corner of the bay, shutting the door after they entered to reduce the noise coming from the repair bay. “What did you bring me?” Vladimir asked.

Nathan was always amused by the amount of joy his friend took at eating. “Your favorite, dollag and keiber root.”

“Ah,” Vladimir exclaimed as he opened the box and took a seat at the desk. “Meat and potatoes!”

“I thought the shuttle was being worked on in the starboard repair bay,” Nathan said.

“We had to move it over here,” Vladimir explained as he shoveled his first bite of dollag into his mouth. “Montgomery said there was too much risk of mixing up parts or something.” Vladimir shoveled the potato-like keiber root in his mouth as well, not stopping to chew before he continued talking. “I think he just wanted more room to work.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of tight in there.”

Vladimir looked at Nathan, noticing that he had not brought a box of food for himself. “You’re not eating?”

“I already ate.”

“How did you know I was hungry?”

“When are you not hungry, Vlad?”

Vladimir nodded his agreement as he took another bite of dollag meat.

“So, how go the repairs?” Nathan asked, making small talk.

“You mean since I gave you a report four hours ago?”

“Humor me.”

“Everything is installed. We just have to put all the access panels back in place, reconnect the control conduits, and put the seats and benches back in. Then, of course, we must test everything.”

“Then it will be ready soon?”

“Two days,” Vladimir promised, taking a swig of water. “Three at the most.”

“I was kind of hoping it would be ready sooner.”

“I am good, Nathan, but I am also careful—especially with ships that can jump a light year at a time. Don’t forget; Abby has to sign off on the jump drive systems as well. That’s where the fun begins.” Vladimir rolled his eyes as he scooped up the last of his food.

Nathan looked at the empty box. After all of the meals he had shared with his friend, he was still amazed at how fast the man could eat. “Yeah, I was hoping I wouldn’t have to take the ship back into harm’s way without propellant.”

“What are you worried about?” Vladimir wondered. “You jump in, Jessica jumps off, you jump out, da?”

“Not exactly. Jessica thinks we should attack a few Jung installations on the surface, make it look like a probing raid. She thinks that if we just jump in and jump out, it will make them suspicious and make it more difficult for her to get down to the surface and disappear into the population.”

“Then we jump in, she jumps off, we fire and blow up a few things, then we jump out.”

“We have to wait until we travel far enough around the planet so that we line up with our next gravity assist target.”

“How long will that take?” Vladimir wondered.

“About fifteen minutes.”

Vladimir’s expression changed for the worse. “That is a long time, especially in orbit over an enemy-held planet.”

Nathan sighed. “It still feels weird to think of it that way. The Earth, our world, controlled by the Jung.” Nathan thought for a moment. “Do you ever wonder about your family? How they’re doing? If they’re even alive?”

“My father died more than a decade ago,” Vladimir said. “My mother moved in with her sister. They live in a small dacha in a village about three hours east of Moscow. There is nothing there that would interest the Jung. I’m sure they are fine.” Vladimir chuckled. “Besides, I pity the Jung soldier that runs into my mother.” He looked at Nathan, who still looked pensive. “You think about your family, yes? Your parents, your brothers and sisters?”

“Parents and sisters, yeah. My brother, not so much. He’s the oldest, and I’m the youngest. We never hung out much, never really got along. I mean, it’s not like I wish him dead or anything. You know what I mean.”

“I have a cousin like that. If he disappeared tomorrow, no tears of mine would be shed.”

Nathan wondered if he would cry over his brother’s death. It seemed unlikely, and that somehow made him feel guilty.

“So, you are worried that we might get into more trouble than we can handle if we stay in orbit so long,” Vladimir said. “Why? If things get too bad, you jump early and we deal with the problem after we are safe again. There are thousands of planets out there, Nathan. I’m sure we can find something we can line up with to make a turn. So we have to jump a few more times than we thought? No problem! Not every mission must go exactly as it is planned. Hey, it’s better than putting more holes in our ship!”

“You have a knack for making every problem seem simple.”

“It is a gift,” Vladimir said, shrugging his shoulders as he rose from his seat. “Now go; I have work to do. My captain wants his jump ships back.”

* * *

Commander Taylor entered the captain’s ready room, her data pad in hand as usual. “Captain?” she called from just inside the hatch. She waited for Nathan to look up from his display. “I’ve finished the mission planning and course calculations.”

“Come in. Let’s take a look,” Nathan said.

“I’m not interrupting, am I?” she asked, noticing that he had been deeply engrossed in whatever was on his view screen.

“No, please, I need the break,” he insisted, rubbing his eyes. “Battle tactics and scenarios analysis can be really tedious and boring at times—especially if that’s all you ever look at.” He took the data pad she offered and began scanning the display, leafing through the pages.

“We’ll need to do a minor course correction before we make our first jump, but the propellant use will be minimal. Once we jump into Earth orbit, it will take twelve minutes to reach our next jump point, the one that will take us to the Barnard system.”

“Twelve minutes,” Nathan mumbled. “That’s a long time in orbit. How much resistance do you think we’ll encounter?”

“There are two ships in the system that we know of,” Cameron explained, “both cruisers. However, their positions as we see them are nearly two months old. One of them appeared to be parked at the moon’s L2 point. If she is still there, she wouldn’t be able to get into firing position on us before we jumped out. The other ship was near Mars. At sub-light speeds, she wouldn’t make it back in time either. Of course, keep in mind that we now know that their FTL systems are accurate enough to perform interplanetary FTL runs, so regardless of where a ship is, they could be back to Earth in minutes. The only advantage we have is that we will be on the backside of the planet in relation to those two ships—that is, if they are still in the same locations as they were two months ago, which is doubtful.”

“So what you’re saying is, you have no idea,” Nathan said.

“What I’m saying is, we have little to go on.”

“Well,” Nathan said, handing the data pad back to Cameron and leaning back in his chair, “I’d feel better if we did know, but as Vlad said, if we run into trouble, we can always jump away and figure it out afterward.”

“Not exactly what I would call a plan,” Cameron said. “There are other points along the orbit from which we could jump, but they all added more than a week to our transit time, because the systems were so far away.”

“Assuming we manage to make it to our prime jump point, what’s our transit time to 72 Herculis?” Nathan asked.

“Just over two days. Once in the Barnard system, we’ll have two options. We can make several orbits around the sole gas giant in the system in order to adjust our angle relative to the galactic plane so we are on course directly to 72 Herculis, or we can jump out to any of three other systems and then make the adjustment there. It just depends on what we find in the Barnard system.”

“Anything in the Data Ark about it?”

“Nothing that we could find. Just the usual system and planetary survey stuff. There was never anything interesting enough in the system to warrant even a remote research outpost, let alone a colony. It’s doubtful the Jung have established anything there.”

“I don’t know. It’s only about six light years from Sol, so it’s not bad as a staging point for an attack on Earth.”

“For us, maybe, but for the Jung, it would take seven months to make the journey. Alpha Centauri is closer, has more resources, and already has an industrialized colony. I’m sure that’s why they took it first, to use as a staging point to attack us.”

“You’re probably right,” Nathan agreed. “So when do you want to get started?”

“Jessica is already down on the hangar deck suiting up.”

“That quickly, huh?” Nathan said, a bit surprised.

“To be honest, sir, I’d love to wait a week and use the shuttle, but cold-coasting through our own system while the Jung are about, and doing so with almost no propellant, makes me nervous.”

“You and me both, Commander.” Nathan looked at his watch. “I guess we’ll go as soon as Jess is ready,” he said, rising from his chair.

* * *

“Anyone care to tell me why you’re getting dressed in the hallway?” Nathan asked as he walked up to his security chief.

Jessica was standing near the port cargo hatch along with Lieutenant Montgomery and several Corinairan technicians. She was wearing something akin to the space-jump rigs they had used over Takara. This one, however, was considerably different. The torso was bigger and more complex. The entire rig seemed more like a miniature space ship, but with arms, legs, and a helmet.