Far From Home: The Complete Second Series (Far From Home 13-15) (23 page)

18.

When they returned to the bridge, Commander Greene went straight to Chang and hunkered down next to her console.

"You've heard our plan? What we're going to try?" he asked in a low voice.

"Yes," Chang said.

"Now I was wondering, could we use the arrangement with the four probes, extended out the way they are on the tethers, to boost power to our communications system?"

"Use it all as an antenna?"

Greene nodded. With the
Defiant
at its centre, and the four probes kilometres out, but connected by the thick grappling tethers, it would improve their chances of making contact with Command . . . or so he hoped.

"I guess. In theory it'd work. I could try it out. See if I get anywhere. With Olivia Rayne's help, of course," Chang said.

"Do it. Let me know if you both get anything. The thought occurred to me earlier. Hey, it won't affect our operation now, will it?"

"Shouldn't do."

He stood, then patted her on the shoulder. "Get to work."

*

"Hey old timer, ya reckon ya'll be able to handle those?" Dollar asked.

Eisenhower shot him a look that was both stern and fiery.

"You'd be surprised what an old man like me is capable of, sonny," he said.

Dollar clapped his hands together. "That's what I'm talkin' about! Listen to him!"

Eisenhower smirked. "Young whipper snapper, knee high to a goddamn grasshopper . . ."

Technically I'm older than you
, Dollar thought.

"Okay you two," Gunn said, interposing herself between them. "At this rate nothing will get done. You got the controls?" she asked Eisenhower.

He nodded. "Check. Ready for action."

The Chief lean
ed over to the nearest comm. channel. "Bridge, this is the Chief. We're ready to go down here."

*

"Okay Chief. Proceed," Jessica said.

"All four grapplers are on their way," Chang said. "Shall I put them on
screen?"

"Please," Jessica said and watched as the view cycled between the four. They were soon lost to the dense clouds of material around them.

"Data coming in already. We're getting an image of the surrounding area," Chang said. "I'm switching that over to the computer to compile while I attempt to make contact with command."

Jessica shot Greene a look. "This was your idea?"

"Yep," he said.

"A giant antenna," King said, impressed. "Clever."

"I thought so."

Chang looked up. "Rayne, patch me in will you?"

"Working on it," Ensign Rayne said. Her face lit up with a smile. "Done it. We're on."

"Captain
, I have command on the line," Chang said.

Jessica got up. "Commander Greene, you're with me. Chang you have the bridge. Well done, ladies. Well done indeed."

*

The connection was less than ideal, but they could hold a conversation and that was all that mattered. Admiral Grimshaw's face appeared as a fuzzy blur on the holodisplay in the briefing room. A shimmering swirl of glowing pixels that barely resembled a human face.

"Captain. I didn't think I'd hear from you for some time,"
he said.

"Neither did I. But thanks to the ingenuity of my crew, we've got a rough connection."

"Indeed. You'll be interested to hear I've done some digging. There's a lot I'm not comfortable discussing in this manner, Captain. It will have to wait until we can meet again in person."

"Admiral?"

"I know you must be eager to hear what I've found out, but trust me. This is all much bigger than any of us could have thought."

"Sir
. . . we have some suspicions ourselves. Just what are we involved in here?"

There was a long pause as the Admiral considered her question.
"Trust me, Captain, it's something I'd rather not have seen. In the meantime, I am assigning a task force to investigate. They will report directly to me. I'm sure you understand. My hope is that they will answer some of the many questions I have."

"Like what?"

She shared a look with Commander Greene, who stood off to the side so that Grimshaw couldn't see him. The Admiral sighed.

"Like why we boarded an alien relic and stole
its crew,"
he said.
"Why we have invaded a homeworld."

19.

"I don't follow," Jessica said.

"The Namarians were used in some kind of experiment,"
Grimshaw told her.
"Something called Project Prometheus. I'm still pretty much in the dark about it."

As Dr. Gentry said
, she thought.
Project Prometheus. What did all mean? How did the dots connect?

"For what reason?" King asked.

"Far as I can tell, given the evidence we have already, it is an attempt to create some kind of super soldier,"
the Admiral told her.
"A hybrid of some sort."

"Who's behind it?"

"That's what I want to find out. I'll be assigning a team of specialists to investigate. Meanwhile, Captain, focus on the task at hand. I will speak with you when you return to base,"
he said.
"I have two Hemingway class cruisers headed your way but they will be a while yet. At least twelve hours."

Good lot of use that'll do us,
Jessica thought.

"Thank you Admiral. Any help is appreciated."

"Don't mention it. Stay safe, Captain. Grimshaw out."
She watched his image fade.

Commander Greene stood with his arms folded. "What the hell was all that about?"

"You tell me. Sounds like a conspiracy. Doesn't it to you?"

"A bit, yeah," Greene said. "And Grimshaw's up to his neck in it."

"Hmm. I can only hope he finds something we can use. After all, we weren't the first ones there. And we only broke in because we were ordered to . . . by him," Jessica said. "But that's a different issue. Right now we have a mad woman out there trying to kill us, and this giant fishing net . . ."

"Captain to the bridge! Sensor contact, port side!"

Jessica didn't bother to respond. She hit the ground running, the Commander in tow.

*

"Report!" Greene demanded, running onto the bridge ahead of her.

"She's going slow, probably attempting to do the same as us," Chang said.

Captain King was close behind. There would have been a day she'd have beaten Greene in any race. He had more than a few pounds on her and was prone to enjoy more than his share of pancakes in the morning – but nowadays she found herself trailing behind him.

Still, I do well for a woman with MS in remission,
she told herself.

"Do we have visual?" Jessica asked as she assumed the captain's chair.

Banks flipped several switches. The Formation was unchanged, a swirling storm of muted, metallic colours. Brief yet startling discharges of energy erupted around them. Jessica waited for something to show, squinting in an attempt to make out the shape of the
Jandala
somewhere in the cloud banks.

"I'm not seeing anything
. . ." she said.

The bridge crew collectively held their breaths as then viewscreen continued to show an unchanged panorama of cosmic mist. There was complete silence, save for the chirping and whirring of the computer systems, the hum of the life support system and the reassuring
whomp whomp whomp
of the
Defiant
's reactor.

She heard Commander Greene draw a breath and hold it, his eyes focused on the screen.

"Jackson," Jessica whispered, almost as if by speaking too loud she might scare their spectral Namarian nemesis away. "Switch the batteries to manual and get ready to fire."

"Aye," he said quietly.

The
Defiant
coasted forward, into the relative unknown ahead of them, toward an invisible enemy. Jessica started to wonder if perhaps it had been a fluke, a glitch of some kind. Perhaps one of the probes had, in fact, registered a ghost image of the
Defiant
herself . . .

Then she was there. Her outline emerged from the fog, became clear and defined as they drew closer.

"Locking guns," Jackson said. "Ready to fire on your command."

"Banks, get that Jump drive ready. The minute they fire back, I want you to take us out of the Formation and Jump away."

Chang's eyes widened. "They're targeting the
Defiant
."

"Fire," Jessica ordered coolly. Jackson unleashed the
Defiant
's guns. They punctured the
Jandala
's hull, sending streams of debris and gas into the surrounding nebula.

The
Jandala
turned, fired. Their hits sent the
Defiant
reeling, everything shaking around Jessica. "Banks, get us out of here!"

"Aye!"

"Not too fast," she reminded him as he swung the old ship about, steered her out of the Mobius Formation and back to open space. "Remember we want them to follow us."

*

"Major damage to several primary systems,"
Risa said.
"I'm prioritizing those and switching to secondaries in the meantime."

"Good. Keep me updated."

Cessqa watched the
Defiant
sweep away from them. As if to illustrate the point they were leaving, the Union ship gave them a few last licks of its weapons. It sped off, into the fog.

"Pursuit," Cessqa told Gelvin. "Don't let them get away."

*

"Approaching the outer perimeter," Banks announced. "Jump drive at the ready."

Jessica strapped herself in. "Everyone, buckle up. Mister Banks, set your course for the Bos System."

"Aye."

"Rayne, tell the Chief to disengage the grapplers. They’re of no use now."

"Yes Captain," the Ensign said.

"The
Jandala
is closing in," Chang reported.

"Wait for it
. . ."

"They're targeting our engines. Preparing to fire."

"Wait . . ."

Commander Greene shot her an anxious look. "Jess."

"They’re firing weapons," Chang said, her voice strangled.

"JUMP!" Jessica yelled.

Banks threw the lever, the
Defiant
pounced toward the more familiar, starry sky, as if she were a big cat leaping from the grass.

Mere seconds later, the
Jandala
did the same.

20.

The
Defiant
rocked from an explosion close to aft.

"What was that?" Greene asked, startled.

"Direct hit to our stern," Chang said, checking her readouts. "I can't believe it. The
Jandala
is directly behind us, closing the gap."

"And able to fire when Jumping," Jessica said with a shake of her head. "Incredible."

The bridge rumbled from another hit, a system next to the weapons console blew and Jackson sprang up to deal with the resultant fire. Black smoke piled out of it, tainting the air with plastic fumes. The air filters came to life, sucking the toxins out of the atmosphere with a distinct whine.

"We're losing the Jump drive!" Banks yelled.

"What!?" King cried. Just then everything tumbled around her as the
Defiant
fell from the Jump, spinning uncontrollably at incredible speeds, end over end. Jessica clamped her eyes shut, gripped the arms of her chair hard, fingernails digging into the leather covering. Despite the best intentions of the
Defiant
's inertial dampeners, she still felt the spin. The fake gravitational effect of a centrifugal force, pinning her to her chair. She couldn't have gotten up if she wanted to. The blood rushed from her head, made her feel light. Jessica passed out, the thud of her beating heart like a drum, sending her down into the dark waters of unconsciousness.

*

Before their last moments on the station. The night before, in fact. She in his arms, their two bodies clamped together beneath the sheets. He kissed the side of her neck and though they'd just made love, she still felt herself quiver at the very touch of his lips on her skin.

"This is my favourite part," she whispered. "Just after."

"I know what you mean," he said and kissed her again.

The ship throbbed around them,
its reactor and heavy engines rumbling through every part of the ship, down to the bolts holding her bunk to the wall.

Their bunk.

"I wish you didn't have to go," she confessed.

"Me too."

"I sometimes think about giving it all up. Going somewhere with you, making a life together."

His mouth pressed against hers, they kissed, long and passionate. When he pulled away, she gazed into his eyes, her free hand at the back of his neck, still damp with sweat.

"I love you."

*

She opened her eyes.

It was slowing, the
Defiant
was slowing from her decelerating spin.

So, we're still alive
. . .

Jessica returned to the real world, her eyes refocusing. She sat upright from where she'd slumped in the chair and cleared her throat.

"Report."

"Attempting to restore control," Banks said, biting his top lip as he wrestled the
Defiant
's helm functions.

The vessel slowed down, stabilized, and Jessica could now make out what was ahead of them on the viewscreen. A comet, big as a moon at least, on a flyby of whatever planetary system they'd ended up in.

"Where are we?"

"Working on it, Captain," Chang said.

The comet dragged behind it an enormous bluish tail. The ball of ice and rock itself was in a state of degradation, boiling away into the vacuum as it made its way through whatever system they'd emerged into – certainly not the Bos system, that was for sure.

"Zoom in on the comet for me," Jessica said.

Banks did as he was told. What had seemed a spherical ball of ice, a dirty snowball, was in fact a doughnut shape with a hole in the middle. Not a big hole, but perhaps . . .

"The
Jandala
has exited the Jump," Chang said.

"Banks, take us in close to the comet, while we figure everything out," King ordered. Her eyes sparkled with relish. "Time we fight dirty."