Ep.#9 - "Resistance" (6 page)

“What the hell is going on?” Gus asked as he came stumbling out of the ready room rubbing his eyes.

“Get to your station and look awake,” Luis told him. “I’ve already summoned Kovacic.”

“What the hell for?”

“We’ve got an incoming message,” Luis explained. “It’s from Fleet Command.”

Gustav blinked, his face a mask of disbelief. “What? Are you sure?”

“It’s already passed both primary and secondary authentication,” Luis said, interrupting him. “It just passed tertiary as well. The message is definitely
from
Fleet.”

“Finally,” Gus declared.

“What’s going on?” Lieutenant Commander Kovacic asked as he entered the bridge.

“Incoming message from Fleet, sir,” Luis reported. “It just came in a minute ago.”

“Are you sure it’s from Fleet?”

“It already passed all three authentication protocols, sir.”

“Did you check the direction of the incoming signal?” Lieutenant Commander Kovacic asked.

“I was just about to do that,” Luis said, remembering his cross-training on the basic functions of the communications console.

The lieutenant commander watched impatiently as Luis repeatedly punched buttons in an attempt to determine the direction from which the signal had come. “Is there a problem?”

“Uh, the message has no source signal, sir.”

“How is that possible?”

“If I’m reading this right, the message came in via direct link when we were still docked at the OAP. It’s been in our message buffer all this time. It must have been time coded.”

“What’s that?” Ensign Schenker asked.

“A time-coded message lies dormant in a hidden message buffer until the date and time on the file matches the current date and time,” Lieutenant Commander Kovacic explained. “Fleet uses time code locks to issue classified action orders at a later time without risking intercept during transmission. It’s also used when they expect the receiving ship might not be in position to receive the message.” Luis looked at the lieutenant commander, surprised he knew so much about Fleet communication procedures.

“You’re not the only one who’s been reading manuals during watch,” the lieutenant commander said. “What’s the message say?”

Luis and Lieutenant Commander Kovacic both read the message on the screen. Luis’s eyes opened wide and his mouth dropped open. He turned and looked at the lieutenant commander. “They’re kidding, right?”

“What?” Ensign Schenker asked. “What does it say?”

“They want us to land on something called Metis,” Luis exclaimed. “What the hell is a Metis?”

“It’s one of Jupiter’s innermost moons,” the ensign told Luis. “Pretty small, too.”

“How would
you
know, Gus?”

“I’ve been staring at those moons for more than a week now, remember?”

Luis looked at the lieutenant commander. “Sir, this has got to be a mistake. This ship doesn’t even
have
landing gear.”

“They didn’t say ‘land’,” Lieutenant Commander Kovacic corrected. “The word they used was ‘settle’.”

“Same thing,” Luis argued.

“Not exactly,” Ensign Schenker said.

“They wouldn’t order us to put the ship down on Metis unless they knew it would work, Ensign,” the lieutenant commander said.

“You’re talking about setting a fifteen-hundred-meter long spacecraft down on a ball of rock that’s… what, about a hundred kilometers in diameter?” Luis declared.

“Actually, it’s more like sixty kilometers, and that’s in length. It’s shaped more like a potato than a sphere.”

“I stand corrected,” Luis said. “A
sixty
-kilometer long
potato
. That’s where they want us to ‘settle’ a ship with no landing gear.”

“If it’s only sixty kilometers long, how much gravity could it possibly have?” Lieutenant Commander Kovacic asked.

Ensign Schenker spun around and studied his displays for a moment. “Only 0.005 of Earth gravity, sir.”

“Jesus,” the lieutenant commander exclaimed. “You could reach escape velocity from that thing on a bicycle.”

“Hell, the OAP had more gravitational attraction than that,” Gus said. “It’ll be like docking. All you need to do is get us in close, Luis—say, five or six meters—then let gravity take us the rest of the way down. A little burst of counterthrust just before contact to soften the impact, and we’re down.”

“Easy as that,” Luis said.

“It’s just physics, my friend.”

“And suppose there’s not a flat spot large enough for us to park on. Suppose we’re teetering on a ridge or something.”

“There’s barely enough gravity on Metis to hold us in place,” the lieutenant commander reminded him, “let alone put any significant stress on the hull.” The lieutenant commander looked at Luis. “You just have to trust that the planners at Fleet thought this through.”

“You’re both forgetting one thing,” Luis reminded them. “I’m not a pilot. Hell, I haven’t even gotten halfway through the flight manual yet.”

“You’re the only one on deck that has been through basic spaceflight, Delaveaga,” Lieutenant Commander Kovacic said. “You really want one of us to try to land this thing?”

“Could you? Please?” Luis asked, only half joking.

“You’re our pilot, Luis,” the lieutenant commander said, “like it or not. Now get to the helm and start calculating a deceleration burn. We’re going to need to fall into orbit around Jupiter if we’re going to rendezvous with Metis.”

“Won’t the Jung see our burn?” Luis asked as he headed forward to the helm station at the front of the bridge.

“Our deceleration thrust ports face forward,” the lieutenant commander reminded him. “As long as there aren’t any ships in front of us, we’ll be fine.”

“But why have us set down on Metis?” Luis wondered. “Why not just have us orbit Jupiter, or continue on our way deeper out into the system for that matter?”

“I’ve been looking at the orbit of Metis,” Ensign Schenker said. “It’s very close to Jupiter, and its orbit is really fast, only seven hours. It’s also tidally locked, which means the same side always faces Jupiter. If we set down on the planet-facing side, it will be practically impossible to spot us. If you were looking from Earth, you’d have to be looking at just the right spot, at just the right angle, and at just the right time. Even then, you’d only have a few minutes to spot us. About the only way anyone
could
find us is if they were on the same orbit at exactly the right distance away. And even
that
is a very small line-of-sight corridor.” Ensign Schenker turned around to face the Lieutenant Commander and Luis. “It’s probably the best damn hiding place in the entire system, and it’s still close enough to Earth to allow communication
and
to allow easy rescue. It’s actually a brilliant idea when you think about.”

“You wouldn’t be saying that if you were sitting in my seat,” Luis mumbled as he began running the burn calculations.

* * *

Jessica’s eyes popped open at the sound of several thumps coming from the staircase down the hall. Still propped up in the corner of the upstairs bedroom, she glanced back and forth, searching the dark in the room where she had positioned herself for the night. She realized the thumping was the trap she had rigged with some string on the stairs. The thumps were from the rock falling down the steps. Either the string in the trap had failed to contain the precariously placed rock, or the trap had worked and someone had tripped the string on their way up.

Jessica remained perfectly still. Her pupils fully dilated in the darkness as she listened intently for additional sounds of movement. It took nearly a minute, but she finally heard a faint creak as whoever it was reached the top of the staircase.

Jessica rose to her feet quietly and moved along the wall of the room where she already knew her weight would not cause the floor to make a sound. As she crept along the bedroom wall toward the doorway, she could hear the intruder as they, too, attempted to move in silence. Either they were not very good at it, or they simply didn’t care. After all, the falling rock had already revealed their presence. If the intruder had half a brain, they already knew that Jessica was upstairs, and they already knew she would be ready for them. As she moved into position alongside the doorway, Jessica hoped the intruder’s poor attempt to conceal their own movement was due to their own lack of intelligence. Stupid people were so much easier to fight.

The wet squishing sound in the hallway told Jessica that the intruder was just outside her doorway. Jessica stayed tight against the wall, her eyes shifting to chest height as the barrel of a weapon began to slowly protrude into the room through the open doorway. The barrel was too wide to be a projectile weapon. It was an energy weapon.

Another second passed, just enough time for the intruder’s entire forearm to come through the door. Jessica drew her left arm back across her chest, then swung it across with quick, explosive force as she pivoted slightly and reached for the top of the gun body with her right hand. Having misjudged the intruder’s height, the back of Jessica’s left hand struck the intruder in the forehead as Jessica stripped the intruder’s weapon away with her right hand.

The intruder cried out in shock and tumbled back into the hallway. Jessica spun to her left, stepping into the doorway as she moved the energy pistol in her right hand and gripping it properly in order to fire.

“Yup,” she said, “stupid loses every time.” Jessica pulled her small flashlight out of her pocket and squeezed it between her thumb and forefinger of her left hand, shining the powerful beam in the intruder’s face. It was a girl, a teenager from the size of her. She was on her butt in the hall, holding her forehead with her right hand as she leaned on her left. “Who are you, and why the hell do you have this?” Jessica gestured with the weapon.

“Don’t shoot me!” the girl pleaded, her right hand going up to shield her eyes from the bright beam of light coming from Jessica’s tiny flashlight. “I’m not Jung, if that’s what you think!”

“Then what are you doing with a Jung energy weapon?”

“How do you know it’s not one of ours?” the girl said.

“I’m the one with the gun now,” Jessica reminded her, “so I’m the one asking the questions. Now, who are you, and why do you have a Jung weapon?”

“I got it off a dead Jung soldier a couple months ago,” the girl finally answered.

“I’m still waiting.” A confused expression appeared on the girl’s face. “Your name?”

“Synda,” the girl said, rubbing her forehead again. “Synda Conklin.”

“What are you doing here, Synda Conklin?” Jessica asked.

“
I
live here,” she said. “What are
you
doing here?”

“Just passing through,” Jessica told her. She shined the light down Synda’s body, noticing that her legs were wet from the knees down. “Were you hiding in the basement this whole time?”

“Nobody ever searches a flooded basement,” Synda said as she moved to get up.

“Slowly,” Jessica warned, pointing the energy pistol at the girl as she rose. “Up against the wall, hands high and apart.”

“Why?”

“I’m going to search you for weapons.”

On her feet again, Synda turned to face the wall. “You already took my only weapon.”

“You’ll pardon me if I don’t take your word for it,” Jessica said. “You were coming to shoot me, after all.”

“I wasn’t going to shoot you,” Synda insisted as she placed her hands on the wall. “I was just going to scare you away.”

“You might want to practice being scary,” Jessica told her as she patted her down. The young girl was well developed and was obviously more muscular than most girls her age, but her body felt slightly emaciated, as if she hadn’t been eating well on a regular basis.

Jessica felt something on Synda’s back in between her shoulder blades. She pushed the gun barrel up against Synda’s lower back as a warning not to move as she pushed the girl’s scraggily blond hair to one side, revealing the top end of a knife handle. Jessica pulled the girl’s collar down and saw that the knife was in a scabbard taped to the girl’s back with industrial duct tape. She grabbed the entire scabbard and gave it a yank, ripping the tape from the girl’s back and causing Synda to flinch. Jessica stepped away from Synda, pulled the knife out of its scabbard, and looked it over. It was of an unfamiliar design and had markings on it similar to those on the small plastic chips she had taken from the old man that had gotten a bit too friendly with her. “Nice,” Jessica said. “Get this off a dead Jung as well?”

“Girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do,” Synda said, sarcasm in her tone as she lowered her hands and turned around.

Jessica snickered. “I like you.”

“You still haven’t told me who you are,” Synda said.

“Jessica.”

“Well, Jessica, since I’m sure you’re going to keep my gun, can I at least have me knife back?”

“Not so fast, little girl,” Jessica told her. “I said I
liked
you. I didn’t say I
trusted
you.” She pointed the knife toward the bedroom. “In there.”

Jessica followed Synda into the bedroom where she had been sleeping. “This is where you’ve been sleeping, isn’t it?”

“How did you know?” Synda wondered.

“Not hard. Clean bathroom, water supply in the tub, mattress and blankets. A good view to see people coming before they get here as well. I’m surprised you don’t have some food stashed up here.”

“It’s under the loose floorboard in the corner,” Synda told her, pointing at the far end of the room. “It’s not much, though, just a few cans of beans and some candy bars.”

“Why are you starving out here in the sticks?” Jessica said. “The city is only a kilometer away. Surely there are food and work there. There’s got to be better accommodations as well.”

“It’s safer here.”

“How so?” Jessica wondered.

“Tiny, little gal like me, all alone. Guys think I’m easy prey… always leads to trouble.”

“What? No cops anymore?”

Synda looked at her with a puzzled expression. “Cops? Seriously? There are Jung everywhere you look, but police? Not since the invasion. Where have you been?”

“On the road, mostly,” Jessica lied. “I guess I’m out of touch with what’s been going on in the cities.”

“Right,” Synda said, rolling her eyes.

“So, you plan on just hanging out here for the rest of your life? Hope nobody finds you?”

“I was hoping to gather up some supplies and hit the road myself, maybe head north. I heard the Jung aren’t too interested in the high country.”

“You’re gonna need more than a knife, beans, and candy bars,” Jessica said.

“Well, I
had
a really nice gun.”

“You’d be better off tossing it in the river,” Jessica told her. “If the Jung caught you with this, you’d wish you were dead.”

“Want to buy it?” Synda asked, a mischievous grin on her face.

“No, but I’ll be happy to dispose of it for you,” Jessica retorted. Jessica reached into her pocket and pulled out the plastic chips she had taken off the old man. “Ever seen these before?”

Synda’s eyes widened. “Yeah. Where did
you
get them?”

“I took them off an old fart who was expecting me to pay more for a ride than I was willing. What are they?”

“Jung credit chips. Did you kill the guy?”

“Nah. Just left him stranded in the forest. How much are these worth?”