Frontiers Saga 12: Rise of the Alliance (22 page)

“Why are we bothering with rocks this small?” Josh wondered. “It’s not even a kilometer across.”

“Captain wants every nook and cranny of every single…”

“…planet, moon, comet, and asteroid in the inner system scanned for possible Jung surveillance devices. Yeah, I was at the briefing, remember?” Josh fired their thrusters and guided the Falcon around the small asteroid. “At least we’re not the only ones doing the shit-work this time.”

“I, for one, am more than happy doing the shit-work,” Loki proclaimed. “At least no one is shooting at us.”

“But its b-o-r-i-n-g,” Josh whined.

“So is death.”

“Got me there.”

“Uh, I’m picking up something, Josh.” Loki’s eyes squinted as he studied his sensor display. “Wait… It’s gone.”

“What was it?” Josh asked.

“Something metallic, I think.”

“You think?”

“It could have been raw metallic ore in the rock,” Loki admitted. “It wouldn’t be the first time… But…”

“But what?”

“It was very refined, and it had various elements that you wouldn’t… Josh, can you swing back around so I can try and get another look at it?”

“Sure, why not?” Josh moved his flight control stick to the right and twisted it slightly, sending the Falcon into a tight starboard turn. “We’re moving so slow, this turn will barely use any propellant at all.” Josh kept his eyes forward, paying little attention to the flight data display on his console, as the small asteroid outside gave him all the references he needed. “Want me to get a little closer this pass?”

“Just a bit, please,” Loki answered, “and try to come back on the exact opposite flight path.”

“You got it.”

Loki continued to study his sensor display as Josh guided the Falcon down closer to the asteroid’s surface, carefully skimming over its tallest ridges. His eyes suddenly widened. “There it is again.” Loki adjust his sensors. “And it’s gone again.”

“Want me to hover over that point?”

“Good idea.”

“Okay, coming back around.”

“That definitely was not naturally occurring metals. It is way too refined. I may have even detected a faint power signature, although it may only be radioactive ores.”

“Uh, you don’t think it’s a weapon, or some kind of—what do they call them—booby traps?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, if we’re gonna be hovering right over it, I’d kinda like to know, Loki.”

“I thought you liked getting shot at? The excitement and all.”

“If I’m gonna be a target, Lok, I’d prefer to be a moving target. A fast-moving target would be even better.”

“On that, I would agree,” Loki said.

Josh again brought the Falcon around, guiding it over the surface even more slowly than before. “I’m back on the original course, flying at a crawl. Keep your eyes on those sensors, Loki. If something fires at us, let me know. My hand is on the damn throttle.”

“Gotcha,” Loki answered as he continued staring at the sensor display. “Slow it down even more.”

“I’m down to a meter per second, Lok,” Josh warned. “You want me to go slower?”

“I want us down to less than a meter per minute, Josh. I think we were looking down a crack or something. That’s why the signal disappeared so quickly.”

“I know we were flying slower than usual the last two passes, but still. At that speed, that would be an awfully big crack for the signal to last a full second.”

“So slow down and we’ll get a nice long look at it,” Loki insisted.

“Slow down so we’ll be a target for a nice long time,” Josh sneered. “That beach is looking a lot better right about now.”

“There it is!” Loki exclaimed. “Full stop!”

“What?”

“Stop!”

“Why the hell are we stopping?” Josh demanded as he fired the Falcon’s braking thrusters and brought the ship to a stop directly above the crack in the surface below.

“There’s definitely something in there, and it’s not a weapon. It’s some kind of device, though. Like a comm transceiver or something. Yes, there’s the high-gain dish.”

“Is it Jung tech?”

“I don’t know,” Loki admitted. “It’s similar to the tech originally used on the Aurora, but it’s different. It’s hard to tell, ‘cause I’m getting a lot of bounce off the walls. I think there’s a cave at the bottom of that crevice, though.” Loki lifted his head up, looking forward toward Josh. “We need to report this, Josh.”

* * *

“
Entering the crevice now
,” the copilot reported over the loudspeakers on the Aurora’s bridge.

Nathan watched the images being transmitted from the shuttle’
s external cameras onto the Aurora’s main view screen.

“
It’s a lot wider than it looks from outside once you get inside,
” the copilot continued. “
I’m pretty sure it widens at the bottom.
”

“How deep is it?” Nathan wondered, looking toward Mister Navashee at his left.

“A little over three hundred meters, sir. I’m getting scans of the object Loki reported now. It definitely looks like a comm-dish of some kind.”

“Is it transmitting anything?” Nathan asked.

“No sir,” Mister Navashee reported. “I am picking up a very small power signature, however. Fusion reactor. Very small. Very low power.”

“
Bozhe moi,
” Vladimir gasped as he stood next to Jessica and Lieutenant Eckert. “Can you zoom in on that dish?”

“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Eckert answered.

The image on the main view screen wavered, then zoomed in closer on the base of the crevice. The dish was clearly visible now, the lights from the approaching shuttle illuminating the dish and the floor of the crevice on which it sat.

“You recognize that?” Nathan asked.

“It’s ours,” Vladimir told him.

“What is it?” Jessica wondered.

“It’s a portable comm transceiver.”

“
That
?” Jessica said, surprised. “Doesn’t look very portable to me.”

“It’s not like the ones you use for surface to orbit. It’s a deep space comm transceiver. Interplanetary. It runs on its own miniature fusion reactor.”

“For a fusion reactor, it’s not putting out very much power,” Mister Navashee said.

“It’s probably in standby mode,” Lieutenant Eckert commented.

“
Nearing the bottom of the crevice
,” the shuttle’s copilot reported.

“What the hell is it doing at the bottom of a crevice, in an asteroid, way out here in the belt?” Nathan wondered. “Who the hell is it trying to communicate with? It’s pointed toward open space.”

“That asteroid is rotating,” Mister Navashee told the captain. “Slowly, but at a constant rate. That crevice will point toward Earth once every fourteen days.”

“
Holy crap
,” the copilot’s voice said over the loudspeaker.

On the main view screen the image feed from the shuttle began to pitch up as the shuttle reached the bottom of the crevice. The bottom of the crevice opened up into a cave not much bigger than the Aurora’s main hangar bay. Tucked neatly inside the cave, lit only by the lights from the hovering shuttle, was a ship.

“Holy crap is right,” Jessica agreed, her mouth agape.

“
Gospadee,
” Vladimir exclaimed.

“
I’m hoping someone knows what that is,
” the copilot called out.

“That,” Nathan said, “is one of our early FTL Scout ships.”

* * *

“Hard seal confirmed,” the shuttle’s crew chief stated. “Chamber is pressurized. Opening the hatch.” The crew chief slowly opened the hatch to the breach box to avoid stirrin
g up the dust on the outside of the Scout ship’s hull.

“There will not be gravity on the Scout ship,” Vladimir said.

“Great,” Jessica said, looking back at him. “Why?”

“The ship is dormant. Running on minimum power. Why would you have gravity?” Vladimir explained. “You do not like zero gravity?”

“Had a big lunch.”

“Then I will go first,” Vladimir announced, climbing through the hatch. As soon as entered the breach box, he felt himself becoming weightless. He rotated his body in mid-air, reorienting himself so that he was standing on top of the Scout ship’s outer hull, straddling one side of the ship’s meter-wide outer hatch. He reached down and carefully brushed the dust off the control panel, then pressed on the panel. The panel slid open, revealing the controls.

“It’s gotta be locked, right?” Jessica surmised.

Vladimir held up a small chip. “Command code card.”

“From the captain’s safe?”

“
Da
.”

Vladimir inserted the chip into a slot on the edge of the interface, causing it to light up. He pressed several buttons, then turned back to Jessica who was now straddling the hatch opposite him, keeping herself from floating away using handholds on either side of the breach box.

“You sure we don’t need pressure suits for this?”

“
Nyet
.” A light on the interface turned green. “See? The control system has detected the pressure on our side, and has pressurized the airlock.” Vladimir touched another button on the interface, and the outer hatch began to slide open, sending dust floating gently upward. The dust began to swirl about, as air from inside the airlock moved into the slightly lower-pressure air inside the breach box. Both Vladimir and Jessica waved their hands back and forth to disperse the rising dust to avoid breathing it in.

The hatch finally disappeared into the outer hull, and the lights inside the Scout ship’s airlock flickered to life. The airlock was narrow, just big enough for a single person in an EVA suit.

Vladimir looked at Jessica. “Ladies first?”

“Big lunch, remember?”

Vladimir held onto the rails on either side of the breach box to steady himself, then pulled his feet in together, pushing himself downward with his arms into the airlock below. The airlock tunnel was relatively short, only four meters in length. At the bottom, he paused long enough to open the inner hatch using the control interface at the end of the tunnel.

The inner hatch slid open, and Vladimir pushed himself down through the hatch into the dark EVA room below. The system immediately sensed his presence, and the lighting switched on. “Everything appears to be in working order so far.”

Jessica floated down through the hatch, coming to a stop next to Vladimir as her feet brushed the deck below her. The first thing she noticed were the suit lockers on either side of the compartment. They were all full. “Holy crap.”

“
Shto
?” Vladimir asked.

“All the suits are still here.”

“So?”

“That means the crew is still here,” she explained as she grabbed one of the overhead handrails and pushed herself toward the aft end of the compartment.

“Maybe they were evacuated by a rescue shuttle,” Vladimir suggested as she drifted past him. “Or maybe this ship was just placed here without a crew,” he added as he turned to follow her.

Jessica drifted through the aft hatchway into the main cabin of the Scout ship. Again, the system sensed their presence and activated the lights. The room was exactly as it had appeared in the schematics she had studied before they had left the Aurora. A large room, about six meters wide and eight meters long, with a low ceiling that became higher on either side to allow additional overhead clearance for the stasis chambers along the port and starboard bulkheads.

Vladimir drifted through the hatch behind her, turning to his left to access the environmental control interface alongside the hatchway. “I am activating the artificial gravity.”

Jessica felt herself become heavy, her feet coming back down to the deck as the ship’s gravity slowly approached Earth normal. She looked at the windows in the four stasis chamber doors along the starboard side of the compartment. They were all dark. She stepped forward and touched the control panel next to one of the doors. The inside of the chamber in front of her began to glow a warm amber from the inside of the chamber door, revealing the face of a young man in a standard EDF duty uniform, his eyes closed as if sleeping.

Jessica turned and looked at Vladimir. “I told you,” she said as she tapped her comm-set. “Aurora, this is Nash. Guess what we found?”

* * *

Nathan entered main foyer of the Aurora’s medical department. Near the entrance to the quarantine bay, Jessica was putting her weapon holster back on. “How did they take it?” Nathan a
sked as he approached.

“Not too bad,” Jessica answered. “They were a little surprised to see us, though. Apparently they were expecting to be awakened by a signal from Earth or something. They were even more surprised when we told them what ship we were from.”

“Where’s Vlad?”

“He left a few minutes ago.”

“How much did you tell them?” Nathan wondered.

“Just the basics. We came back, we kicked ass… Repeatedly. The Earth is a mess, and that you and your pop are running the show now.”

“You have such a way with words.”

“It’s a gift,” she said as she checked her sidearm and placed it back in its holster.

“They tell you anything about what happened?”

“Nope. Just that they’ve been in stasis for about eight and a half months, but we could see that on the stasis clocks.”

“That’s all?”

“Yup. I figure their CO is waiting to be debriefed by a senior officer, which would be you, Skipper.”

“Are you ever going to stop calling me that?”

“Hey, at least I’m only doing it in private, now.” Jessica flashed a sarcastic smile, then pointed toward the exit. “If there’s nothing else, I’m going to go and wash the asteroid dust off my bod… Sir.”

“Dismissed,” Nathan told her.

Jessica offered a lazy half salute before turning to depart. Nathan returned the salute with similar effort then turned to enter the quarantine bay, pausing to note that the sign that prohibited entry was not lit. He made his way through the outer room, the transfer airlock, and into the main quarantine area, where all eight of the Scout ship’s crew were putting their uniforms back on.

“They’re all in good health,” Doctor Chen said as she approached the captain. “Electrolytes are a little off, and they’re all slightly dehydrated, but no more than you’d expect after eight months in stasis.”