Frontiers 07 - The Expanse (32 page)

Then it happened, a sharp pain shot through his teeth. At that moment, he knew that the Aurora had jumped, and Josh and Loki had not made it back in time. He stuck out his foot and pushed his office door closed so no one could see him.

CHAPTER NINE

“Captain?” Vladimir called from the ready room hatch.

“Yes?” Nathan responded without looking.

Vladimir entered the ready room and closed the hatch behind him.

Nathan continued looking at his data pad. “If you’re going to ask me how I am, you needn’t bother.”

Vladimir moved over to the desk, taking a seat. “It’s okay to be upset, Nathan. We all are. Having to leave Josh and Loki behind, well, it sucks.”

“Yes, it does,” Nathan said. “But in four more jumps we’ll be home, and I can hand the keys to someone else. The ‘suck’ will be over.”

“Sometimes, you do not make sense to me, Nathan,” Vladimir said. “One moment you’re the captain, larger than life and full of confidence; the next moment you’re pouting like a spoiled, little boy that does not want to eat his vegetables. Do you really hate being captain that much?”

“Most of the time, yes,” Nathan admitted. He looked up from his data pad. “It’s great to have everyone look up to you, to salute you, to call all your own shots, and to be in charge of your own fate. But you see, there’s a catch. You’re in charge of everyone else’s fate as well. Sometimes, you’re even in charge of the fate of people you’ll never know. That’s the part that sucks, Vlad.”

“I was wrong; you’re not like a spoiled, little boy,” Vladimir said as he leaned back in his chair and put his feet on Nathan’s desk. “You are more like a little girl. A whiny, crying, spoiled, little girl.” A big smile appeared on Vladimir’s face, his eyebrows shooting upward as if to say, ‘What do you think of that?’

“Nice,” Nathan responded. “Is that the way you talk to your captain?”

“To Captain
Plaxa
, yes.”

“I’m not even going to ask what that means.”

“It means crybaby. To me, you are Captain Crybaby.”

“Great. Anybody ever tell you that you suck at pep talks?”

“Come on, Nathan,” Vladimir begged. “You were a great captain. You defeated an entire empire! What happened to you?”

Nathan leaned back in his chair. “The closer we get to home, the more I realize how much I hate about being captain.”

“Then hand command over to Cameron. She’d love that.”

“Yeah, that would look really good on the old resume, wouldn’t it? I can see the headlines now. Senator’s son resigns command two days from port. That’ll help my father’s political career.”

“Who cares about his political career? That’s his problem, not yours.”

“Tell him that.”

“You make everything way too complicated, my friend.” Vladimir dropped his feet to the floor. “Listen to me, Nathan, you cannot worry about what anyone thinks about you or your father. In the end, you only answer to yourself. You are a good man. Do what you think is right.”

“I don’t know, Vlad,” Nathan disagreed. “I’ve done some very bad things.”

“This is sometimes the role of men, especially leaders,” Vladimir said as he rose from his seat. “My job here is done. Now I must return to my duties.” Vladimir turned and headed for the exit, stopping and turning back around by the hatch. He rose his hand in mock salute. “Captain Plaxa.”

Nathan offered a hand gesture of his own. It wasn’t a salute.

* * *

“Jump complete!” Loki announced.

“Turbines have shut down!” Josh reported.

“That’s because there’s no air in space,” Loki remarked.

“I know, I was just saying…”

“Fuck!” Loki shouted as another warning system began to flash. “Contact!”

Josh looked at his tracking display. “What is that?”

“It’s a Jung warship! The one that was on its way out of the system!”

“Where are we?” Josh wondered.

“We’re still in the system. We only jumped a few light hours out.”

“What the hell, Loki?!”

“It’s not like I had much control over the direction we were jumping, Josh!”

“You still could have jumped us farther!”

“The farther the jump, the more chance of error…”

“We weren’t trying to hit a target, Loki!” Josh complained. “We were just trying to escape! How far out is he?” he asked as he pushed his throttles forward.

“Half a million kilometers, but I don’t think he’s seen us.”

“I got no power, no maneuvering!”

“The spaceflight systems aren’t online yet,” Loki reminded him. He began the startup sequence for the main drive.

“Why the fuck not?”

“We did a rapid launch sequence, remember? Rapid launch on the ground doesn’t include spaceflight systems. It assumes you’ll fire those systems up as you climb out!”

“Shit!” Josh yelled in frustration. “Do we have any forward momentum?”

“A few meters per minute…”

“Jump us again!”

“By the time he gets anywhere near us…”

“He doesn’t have to get near us, Loki!” Josh interrupted. “Even the Aurora’s rail guns can reach half a million klicks, and we’re barely moving!”

“How far do you want to jump?”

“The farther the better!”

“Scanning forward,” Loki reported.

“Come on!” Josh begged. They were unarmed and adrift. Once the enemy ship spotted them, it would take little effort for them to target their weapons and blast them into oblivion.

“We’ve got a clear jump line,” Loki announced as he locked in an emergency escape jump. “Jumping in three……”

Josh checked the status of the main drive. It would take another minute for it to spin up.

“Two……”

Maneuvering was ready, but Josh knew he couldn’t touch it until after the jump.

“One……jumping,” Loki announced.

Josh closed his eyes as the ship jumped. A moment later, he looked down at his tracking display. It was clear, and the threat indicator light had turned off. “Where are we now?”

“Just outside the 72 Herculis system,” Loki reported. “We’ll have mains in forty seconds.”

“How much time?”

“Fuck, I don’t know,” Loki admitted. “The systems are acting all screwy.”

“What do you mean?”

“According to this, it’s four o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“Check your watch,” Josh suggested.

“It’s busted, shattered during the crash. What about yours?”

“I gave it to Garrett, remember?”

“What about the handheld visual scanner? That displays the time, doesn’t it?”

“I left it in the cave,” Josh admitted.

“Great, so we have no way of knowing if we’re early or late.”

“We jump to the rendezvous point,” Josh said. “If they’re still there, we’re early. If not, we’re late.”

“Mains are coming online,” Loki announced. “But take it slow, Josh. The inertial dampeners are offline.”

“Got it.” Josh pushed the throttles forward a tiny amount. Even then it was enough to push them back into their flight seats with considerable force.

“I said take it easy,” Loki grunted.

“That was easy!” Josh argued. “It was only one percent.”

“At this rate, it will take hours to get up to a decent speed.”

“So we just jump our way back to the Aurora. She can slow down to match us so we can land.”

“You don’t understand,” Loki said. “At this speed, it will take ten times as many jumps to reach the Aurora.”

“Then we do ten times as many jumps.”

“We’ve only got ten minutes of oxygen left, Josh.”

“So start jumping!”

“The rendezvous point is four light years away. We’ll have to make—I don’t know—forty jumps maybe? I can’t plot and execute that many jumps in ten minutes, Josh!”

“Can’t you just set it to dump the maximum amount of energy into the jump fields and keep pushing the button to repeat the same jump over and over again?”

“The upgrades!” Loki realized.

“What?”

“The upgrades! The Takarans made a bunch of upgrades to the jump drive software, like the auto-nav!”

“Don’t remind me,” Josh complained. “I hate that thing.”

“They also added a multi-jump algorithm that allows us to perform several jumps in rapid succession. The idea was to use the ZPED to power the jumps, so the Aurora wouldn’t have to recharge between jumps. If it had worked, she could’ve made the trip back to Earth in a few hours instead of a few weeks!”

“What does that have to do with us?”

“We make short jumps without recharging!”

“No shit!”

“They tested the algorithm with this ship!”

“Where were we?”

“The day we went down to Takara to visit Tug and Deliza,” Loki explained as he began scrolling through the selections in the jump drive’s sequencing computer. “It’s in here!” Loki quickly calculated a course back to the rendezvous point and punched it into the flight computer. “I’m sending you the course for the rendezvous point! Get us on course and push the throttle as much as we can stand while I program the multi-jump algorithm.”

“That I can do,” Josh replied as he altered course. “How many jumps do you really think it will take?”

“It looks like thirty-six, give or take. We’ll stop after thirty-four and get an accurate fix on our position.”

“Will we make it in ten minutes?”

“We’ll make it in three, Josh,” Loki said confidently.

“Sounds good to me,” Josh declared. “Throttling up another one percent.” Again they felt the force of acceleration push them harder back into their seats.

“Fuck, Josh,” Loki grunted. “I can barely breathe as it is!”

“Suck it up, Loki. We need the speed.”

“I can barely punch in the numbers,” Loki grunted as his arms strained against the acceleration.

“Stop complaining. You’re wasting air.”

“That should do it,” Loki announced. “Thirty-four jumps at max power. That should put us within a jump or two of the rendezvous point.”

“Let’s do it,” Josh groaned as he struggled against the force of acceleration pressing him into his flight seat.

“Drop both your sun visor and your auto-darkening visor,” Loki said. “Close your eyes tight and keep them closed. We’re going to be doing a jump every five seconds, and we have no canopy to help protect us.”

“What are you saying?”

“I don’t know what effect all those rapid jumps will have on us,” Loki told him.

Josh swallowed hard as he dropped his visors. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he admitted. “I’m ready.”

“Starting multi-jump sequencer,” Loki announced as he closed his eyes and pushed the button. The first jump flash went off, sending a tingling sensation through his body. “Shit! Did you feel that?”

“The tingling?” Josh replied as the second jump flashed.

“Yeah!”

“Is that normal?” Josh asked as the third jump flashed.

“I don’t know. Kind of scary though.”

“Any idea if it’s working?”

“Well, if we can feel it…” Loki said as the next jump flashed.

“I meant, are we jumping forward?”

“I don’t know. I’m afraid to open my eyes and check.” Another jump flashed.

“How many jumps was that?” Josh asked as the next jump flashed.

“Six or seven, I think.”

“My head is starting to feel funny,” Josh told him as he continued keeping his eyes shut tight.

“Lightheaded?”

“Yeah,” Josh answered.

“Me, too.”

“I kind of like it,” Josh admitted.

“Not me.”

“Try not to think about it,” Josh told him. “A few more jumps and the Aurora will be hailing us on comms.”

“I hope you’re right,” Loki said. “I’m starting to get nauseated.”

“How many jumps have we done?”

“I’m not sure; I lost count. Fifteen, maybe?”

Josh squinted his eyes even tighter, shaking his head to fight the increasing dizziness he was feeling. Flash after flash, the jumps kept occurring in five second intervals. He wondered if the effects might be less if the jumps were ten seconds apart. He was sure it would, as every time the jump occurred, his symptoms got worse. Then, just as they started to subside, the next jump would come. “This pretty much sucks,” Josh said. Between the dizziness and the constant force of acceleration, he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to remain conscious.

“I’m not going to make it,” Loki called over the comms.

“Hang on, Lok!” Josh encouraged. “Just a few more jumps.” Josh felt his stomach begin to churn. A wave of cold washed over him with the next jump flash, followed by a surge of nausea that became worse with each subsequent jump. “Oh, God! I’m gonna puke!”

“Hold it in!” Loki warned. “You’ve got to hold it in!”

“Fuck, stop it! Please! I can’t take this!” Josh cried as his head began to throb. He began counting the seconds between each flash, hoping to distract himself from the discomfort, but all it did was make it worse. Then it was over.

“Oh thank God,” Loki declared.

“Is that it?”

“Yeah, that’s it,” Loki answered as he opened his eyes and checked the jump control console. “Thirty-four jumps in three minutes.”

Josh opened his eyes and raised his visors. “Everything looks the same except for the blue-white blotches in front of my eyes.”

“Yeah, I’ve got them, too. It worked though.” Loki checked his suit levels. “Could you back off on the throttles a bit, Josh? I think we’re using up our air faster than we should.”

“No problem,” Josh told him as he pulled back slightly on the throttles. He began to feel lighter as the thrust levels decreased. “I’ll leave it at one G for now.”

“That’s better,” Loki agreed. “One more jump should do it. Just give me a second.”

“Take your time,” Josh told him. “I’d like to get at least some of my color back before we land.”

Loki smiled as he plotted the last jump. “Ready to jump.”

“Let’s do it,” Josh said as he lowered his visors once more.

Loki placed his finger over the button and lowered his visors with his free hand. “Jumping.”

One last flash washed over them, bringing back that same tingling sensation as the first one.

“They’re not so bad when they’re farther apart,” Josh said. “Don’t you think, Loki?” Josh waited for a response. “Loki?”

“She’s not here,” Loki mumbled.

“What did you say?”

“The Aurora’s not here.”

“Are we in the right spot?”

“We’re only two thousand kilometers from the rendezvous point,” Loki told him. “They should be right here.”