Adventures of the Starship Satori 4: No Plan Survives Contact (2 page)

T
here was a brief
, wrenching sensation as the Satori transited the wormhole. Dan knew he ought to be used to that feeling by now, but he simply wasn't. As near as they could measure it took no time at all. The ship was one place in one moment, and the next it was somewhere else. The event horizon of the wormhole was literally in two places at the same time.

But he knew better. There was time inside that trip. It might not show up on any of the devices they were using to measure the events, but he could feel it. He could see the flash of lights as they made the transition. He could feel the uncanny sense that he was everywhere all at once... Not just in one place or even in two, but that he was everywhere, like if he wanted to he could reach out and touch anything, anywhere in the universe.

And then they were through. The ship had made transition safely for the fourth time. The first three trips had been emergencies, jumps made out of desperation. This was the first time he'd been able to carefully observe what he was feeling and thinking during the jump, so he'd tried to make a memory of it as best he could. Try as he might it was slipping away almost immediately, though. The trip was so alien, so unreal, that his mind wasn't able to hang on to more than just the barest of impressions.

"Dan, you OK?" John asked.

"Hmmm? Yeah."

"How are we doing?" John asked. Dan had the feeling he was repeating a question, and shook his head to clear it. They were out in dangerous territory now. He needed to have his head in the game.

"We're in high orbit over the planet. Cloak is still functioning, drive is good. Wormhole drive is recharging; it's down to twenty-eight percent charge," Dan said. "Nearest object is one of those satellites, about two thousand kilometers away. I'm not picking up any other ships. Just the satellites."

"OK, good. Stay clear of the satellites and the atmosphere for now. Let's do a fly-by of the area where we fought the Naga ship," John said. "If it went down, there should be some sign."

Dan wasn't so sure. They'd blasted the hell out of the Naga ship's engines right before they left. But it had been in orbit by then. Even if it had crashed, there was no guarantee that it had gone down anywhere near the site. In fact if it had simply lost power and fallen into a decaying orbit it might be just about anywhere. But he did as John asked, plotting a course to take them back to where the first battle had been fought. As he'd suspected, there was nothing.

"No sign of the ship, John. No crash site, anyway," Dan said.

"That doesn't mean it didn't go down," Beth pointed out, echoing Dan's thoughts. "It could have crashed elsewhere."

"True," John said, rubbing his chin. "How's the ruined city look?"

"More ruined," Dan said. He pulled the camera images on up on his console and swept them across the screen so they'd flow to John's panel. There had been a city on this world when they'd last been here. It had been dead for a long time, at least hundreds of years - maybe longer. They'd only begun exploring when the Naga arrived, and the aliens dropped a massive bomb on it to stop further investigation. Now a huge crater stood where most of the city had been.

"Looks like some of the buildings near the coast may have survived the blast," Charline pointed out. "If we're hunting the ratzards that might be a good place to start."

The coast was black with the goo which covered every body of water on the planet. The theory was that the goo was some sort of bio-weapon. On contact with water, it began growing exponentially, using a combination of energy from sunlight and bio-matter from whatever it came in contact with to coat the entire surface with a solid black mat. Anything underneath that couldn't survive in the darkness, died. Evaporation ceased, and the rest of the world quickly turned into a barren desert.

The result was what they had in front of them now: a dead planet, a desert world that was barely host to any life at all.

"If we're going to test out my toy, that would be as good a place as any," Beth said.

Dan hid a grin. She'd been working on that monstrosity ever since John told her about the plan. It was one hell of a giant rat trap, though. If it worked, they'd catch one of the things. Alive. Linda was back on the moon base working on something to kill the goo coating the oceans here, and if she was right, catching one of those things might make all the difference in her research. It was possible that this world might come alive again. He imagined what the world beneath them would look like with blue oceans and clouds in the sky. It would be a very different place.

"Anything showing up on scans? Any ships?" John asked.

Dan shook his head. "Still all clear." And if they were lucky, it would stay that way.

"OK then. Bring us in. That spot near the shore looks as good as anything else we're likely to see. Let's do this," John said. "Once we're on the ground and unloaded, Dan will take Charline back up into orbit. See what you can get out of one of those satellites, but stay close."

Dan winced a little, but tried not to let his disappointment show. He could get around out there on the planet, after a fashion. His wheelchair was motorized and so long as he avoided the worst rubble he ought to be OK. But no, once again he was going to be relegated to being a glorified taxi driver for the other people on the ship.

He knew that wasn't precisely fair. It was his piloting skill that had saved them all during the fights against the Naga. But damned if he wanted to stay aboard the ship every single trip they took while the others were off exploring new worlds. He wanted to get out there!

John looked around the bridge, catching every eye before going on. "I don't need to remind you all what happened last time. If anything shows up - anything at all - we drop what we are doing and leave. No questions. We can always come back another time."

Nobody questioned the order. They'd all met the Naga. None of them had any interest in starting round two of that fight today.

A
ndy stepped
off the ship with far more caution than he’d used last time he landed on this world. It had been fun then, almost a lark. Oh, they’d known there might be danger. But the risk had seemed like something far away.

Then they met the Naga, and everything changed. The reptilian race gave those ephemeral fears shape and substance. Now they were back again. He supposed that people were right about saying one had to ‘get back up on the horse again’ after a fall, but that didn’t make it any easier to actually do it.

He was scared and not ashamed to admit it, at least to himself. For everyone else he needed to at least appear strong. The team needed to know that he would have their backs if things went to hell again. In his gut, he knew that something was going to go wrong. There were too many potential problems for it
not
to.

“Checking the perimeter,” he said into his radio. “Everyone stick close to the ship until I call.”

There were a few affirmative murmurs in his ear. That was one real plus. They had much better equipment this time. He’d tested eleven different sets of body armor before he hit the dragon scale stuff that was both lightweight and resistant to the Naga weapons. Once Andy knew what worked he told John, who ordered enough sets for the entire crew and had them quietly shipped up to the base. Not only would the stuff stop the high energy pellets the Naga weapons spat out, but it seemed like it reduced the impact of their lower setting ‘stun’ blasts as well.

The rifles they carried were state of the art, firing caseless ammunition with a low-recoil stock. If they had to shoot with low or even no gravity, the guns wouldn’t blast them backward with each shot fired. Even the radio in his ear was new. John had upgraded them to a system which scrambled their communications with a private encryption code.

The Satori had set down on what amounted to a beach. The part facing the water was easy enough to check out. Nothing lived out that way. He had a hunch that not much could. There were no tracks along the sandy shore, which implied even the ratzards were avoiding the water. He wondered where the things got their own water from. Some animals on Earth could survive just on the fluids they got eating their prey, but what was there to eat on this world? They hadn’t seen anything alive here except the ratzards themselves.

Opposite the beach were a series of small buildings. Dan had set the Satori down fairly close to them. Nearer than Andy really liked. He needed to clear that area before he would be sure the landing zone was really safe. He paused for a moment before pushing in. Room clearing was something you did with a team, not alone. But the rest of the crew wasn’t really trained for this. Would it put them in more danger to grab a partner for this sweep, or less?

“Need to borrow Charline for a few minutes,” he said at last. Of the others she was probably the best shot. He also simply liked having her around watching his back.

“On my way,” her voice chimed over his radio.

She showed up next to him a short time later. Like him, she held her rifle at her shoulder. There was a wariness to her eyes that he appreciated, yet made him sad to see. She seemed older than she had been back on the moon, before they’d gone on that first mission.

“Ready,” she said crisply. “Clearing the buildings?”

“Yeah. Thanks for coming.”

“Good call asking for backup,” she said, eyeing the half broken structures suspiciously. “You go left, I’ll take right?”

“Deal.”

This wasn’t something they had drilled, which was a problem. MOUT training - Military Operations in Urban Terrain - was something that soldiers worked at extensively to get good at the skills involved. Andy had that training. The rest of the team did not. Even Charline for all her marksmanship skills wasn’t going to be as safe as he would like clearing this area. It was something he’d have to correct.

With no ships detected in the area it seemed unlikely that enemy were out there waiting for them. But the Satori had a cloaking device, after all. It wasn’t impossible to imagine that someone else might too. The Naga weren’t the only possible threat they might face, either. The unknown bit them in the tail last time they were here. He wasn’t going to let that happen again.

The first building had a closed door across the opening. It was some sort of metal, twisted and bent. It seemed loose enough that it would open quickly. He made a motion with his hand, signaling to Charline, and she nodded, training her own rifle on the door.

With a quick motion he kicked the door hard. It flew open inwards and he stepped forward into the room beyond quickly. His rifle tracked from the center of the room across to the left, looking for targets. Beside him Charline came in as well, and he knew she was checking the right side.

“Clear,” she said.

“Clear,” he answered. “Doorway.”

She came up alongside him as they crossed the threshold into the next room. This room ended in a pile of rubble where the roof had half collapsed, blocking off the rest of the building.

“One down,” Charline said. “How many others are close to the landing site? Ten?”

“I counted eleven I’d like to check,” Andy replied.

She sighed, and he understood. It was going to take time to examine every room in each of those buildings, even in the small shack-like structures that had survived near the Satori’s landing spot. It was hot, sweaty, stressful work. But it needed to be done. They weren’t going to be taken unaware again. Not if he could help it.

A
short while
later the Satori soared skyward again, blasting into space with the roar of her engines firing. Dan looked over at Charline, who was sitting at her console looking like a heatstroke victim and chugging water.

“A little hot out there, huh?” he asked.

“Like an oven,” Charline replied. “Andy and I cleared fourteen buildings. Fourteen! He kept finding another little half blasted to bits garage or outhouse he wanted to investigate.”

Dan tried to still the jealous voice inside that wished he’d been out there on the surface too. He’d managed to roll his chair down to the bottom of the ramp and actually stick his toe in the dirt. His first contact with an alien world. Everything about the place was exotic. It even smelled strange, the air filled with a tarry smell that he supposed probably came from the black goop covering the nearby ocean.

That was as far as he’d gotten, though. Even though he’d brought the Satori down in the clearest spot he could find, the whole area was still strewn with debris. His wheelchair wasn’t up to the struggle of getting over that mess. Defeated, Dan retreated back into the ship.

“Were they really garages?” Dan asked, interested. Any sort of machinery left behind by the alien civilization that had once lived here might give them clues.

“No. Not outhouses either, thankfully,” Charline said with a laugh. “Just buildings. Whatever stuff these people had seems to have been taken with them, destroyed by time, or picked clean by someone else before we got here.”

“That’s too bad,” Dan said. Right now they needed information more than just about anything else. Anything they could learn about the universe now open to them would expand the incredibly scant information they’d found so far.

“Well, if this works out, we should learn a lot,” Charline said.

“If,” he replied. He had some reservations about this mission. They were speeding toward one of the satellites surrounding the planet, targeting the one that had fired on them the first time they visited. He’d avoided the missile then by cloaking the ship, so it was a fair guess the cloak would prevent an attack this time too. But he was going to have to get a lot closer if Charline was going to try to hack its system.

“Stands to reason they’re Naga devices,” Charline said. “Since they didn’t shoot at the Naga ship. I learned a little about the Naga computer tech from Majel’s scans. I’m pretty sure I can create an interface that will work.”

Dan turned back to his console, watching the three small dots that indicated the location of their friends on the surface. They were still setting up Beth’s ratzard trap. She’d created a fairly elaborate system using a variety of baits. Whichever bait the animal took would be registered and recorded when the trap closed. Pretty cool stuff. The best part was that even if they had to beat a hasty retreat, the trap could be left behind. They could always return to see if it had worked later.

He felt nervous about John splitting the team again, even though he understood why he’d ordered Dan and Charline into orbit before the ground team was finished. Clearing the nearby buildings had taken a long time. Setting up the trap was going to require still more. The longer they remained here, the greater the risk that something would pop in and find them. Rather than risk not accomplishing both parts of the mission, John chose to split the team. Of course, splitting up was what had given them so much grief the last time they’d been here…

They were getting close to the satellite. No time for worrying about it now. Their best shot would be to get near enough that Charline could hack the thing, and then get out. All while watching for any sign the thing had detected them and was getting ready to open fire again. He punched up the magnification on his video feed, watching the object closely as he slowed the ship down to approach. It was dark, hard to spot against the black of space except an occasional faint glimmer when sunlight caught it just right. There was no sign of life from the thing. But that didn’t make him feel much better. It had seemed dormant until right before it fired, last time.

“OK, we’re almost there,” Dan said. “Are you in range to connect remotely yet?”

“I’ll check,” Charline replied, leaning forward into her console and typing some commands.

They continued to slide slowly toward it, drifting ever closer. Dan decreased their relative velocity until the Satori was holding her distance at a mile away.

“We need to get closer,” Charline said. “It’s not picking up my signals. Dan, I might have to interface with the thing directly.”

“By directly, you mean physically plug in a cord?” he asked. He tried to keep the heat from his voice, but this wasn’t part of the plan. How did she expect him to get them in that close without being blown to bits? “You want me to dock with the Naga satellite?”

“Pretty much, yeah,” she said. She held up a cable with an unusual looking adapter at the end of it. “The Naga rifles we recovered have a port that fits this. I extrapolated the connection from there. I’m hoping I can use this to plug into some system on their satellite.”

“Why can’t you just contact it remotely?” Dan asked.

“I have. I don’t have the right protocols, and I can’t break their encryption. The computer over there,” she said, pointing at the satellite, “is asking me to board and make a direct connection.”

“It’s asking you to board.”

“Safety feature,” she said. “To ensure we’re not some non-Naga race trying to hack the thing with a fly-by.”

“Which of course is precisely what we’re doing.”

“Yup. But if I can get in there with a wired link, I might be able to work some magic.”

Dan sighed. This was getting much more risky and complicated than he’d been figuring the already risky and complicated operation was going to be. He backed the Satori away from the satellite, getting them a few extra miles of clearance, and then pinged the surface crew.

“John, we’ve got a situation up here,” Dan said into the radio.

“What’s up?” John replied, immediately alert.

Dan filled him in quickly, with Charline outlining the technical end of things. It wasn’t that Dan didn’t know how computers worked, but it was going to be Charline doing the connecting and she knew what she was talking about far better than he did.

“You think you can do this?” John asked over the radio.

Charline bit her lip. “I honestly figure our odds at about fifty-fifty.”

Dan held his breath, waiting for the answer. He’d let John make the call on this, but it sounded way too risky for such a low probability of success.

“Abort, then,” John said. He sounded disappointed, but firm.

“But…” Charline started to say.

“No,” John replied. “Our main objective is to get everyone home safe. We can make return trips another time, maybe after analyzing your scan data and being better prepared. Come back down to the surface.”

A beeping noise attracted Dan’s attention back to the console. That was odd; it was a proximity alarm. He glanced at the radar and saw that the satellite was a hell of a lot closer than it had been before. It was accelerating toward them.

“Shit, I think it’s tracking our radio signal,” Dan said. “We’re going radio silent, John. Satori out.”

He shut down the radio completely, hoping it wasn’t already too late.