Frontiers Saga 12: Rise of the Alliance (23 page)

“Thank you, Doctor,” Nathan replied. He looked over the crew of the Scout ship, sitting and standing about the exam tables around the perimeter of the medical quarantine bay. The men appeared somewhat shaggy, which was not unexpected after eight months of stasis. As they were all still only half dressed, Nathan had no idea which one of them was in command. “Which one of you is the CO?” he asked openly.

A man at the far end of the room raised his hand slightly. “That would be me.”

Nathan looked at the man as he moved toward him. He was older than the rest of his crew, although not as old as Nathan might have expected. “Nathan Scott,” he said as he extended his hand.

“Gil Roselle,” the man answered, accepting Nathan’s handshake. “Where’s Captain Roberts?”

“I’m afraid Captain Roberts was killed in action eleven months ago, sir. He passed command to me just before he died.”

“I see,” Captain Roselle replied, noticing the captain’s insignia on Nathan’s lapel. “No offense,
Captain
, but you seem a little
young
to be senior staff?” he asked, one eyebrow raised.

“I wasn’t,” Nathan admitted, “I was the helmsman, a lieutenant for less than a week, actually. We didn’t have a full senior staff at the time, not even a full crew. A bit of a long story,” he added, “one that you’ll probably find hard to believe.”

“One that I’m sure I’m going to
want
to read.”

Nathan noticed the concern in Captain Roselle’s voice. “Did you know Captain Roberts?”

“I knew
of
him,” Captain Roselle replied. “I never met him personally, however. Different decades, different academies, and all that.”

“French?” Nathan asked, noticing the captain’s accent and hoping to change the subject.

“It still shows?”

“A bit. I’m good with accents.”

“I guess I figured it would’ve disappeared after all this time with these guys.”

A confused look came across Nathan’s face.

“This is the most Australian crew in the EDF,” Captain Roselle explained. “They’re all Aussies, except for myself and my cheng over there.”

Nathan turned to look at the man Captain Roselle had indicated to be his chief engineer—a short, squat, muscular-looking Chinese fellow who didn’t look very happy.

“He always looks that way,” the captain said, noticing Nathan’s reaction to his cheng’s expression. “He’s actually quite jovial.”

“So, what happened, Captain?” Nathan asked, getting straight to the point. “How did you end up in an asteroid for eight months?”

“Simple enough. Buckeye. Plan B. Fleet command transmitted the code word, so I broke open the buckeye packet in my safe and followed my orders. That asteroid was already chosen for us. It took some fancy maneuvering to get there without being detected, though. Jung ships were actively searching all over the place. We had to ride a drifting chunk of the Zhang-Ti’s hull for more than twelve days before we could transition to that asteroid and slip down inside while it was pointed away from Earth.”

“What were you waiting for?”

“A signal from the EDF. They had spec-ops units and marines already lined up and ready to go underground, long before the Jung attacked. Underground storage bunkers, comm-networks, consumables, medical, you name it. They had to have been stashing supplies for some time. My guess is that they wanted us to lie in wait until they needed us, although for what exactly I have no idea.”

“So there are more of you?” Nathan wondered. “Hiding in the asteroid belt?”

“I couldn’t tell you for sure,” Captain Roselle admitted. “We would normally spend so much time going in and out of FTL, we’d have no idea what the other Scout ships were doing. Our orders included a list of hiding places, though. Not just the one. We chose that one because it was the closest. It also seemed a good idea to be closer to Earth rather than further out.”

“Further out?”

“Other than a few in the asteroid belt, the other hiding places on the list were some of the smaller moons of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus. The rest were out in the Kuiper belt.” The captain’s expression suddenly changed to one of puzzlement. “How’d you find us, anyway?”

“We’ve been searching the entire system for any signs of leftover Jung surveillance assets,” Nathan explained. “It was just dumb luck that one of our Falcons caught a glimpse of your portable comm-dish during a flyby.”

“Falcons?” Captain Roselle wondered, unfamiliar with the designation.

“Another long story,” Nathan said. “Any idea if the other Scouts were issued the same list? It would make finding them a lot easier, assuming any others survived.”

“Unknown,” the captain told him. “But it doesn’t matter. We were all issued activation codes to transmit if we needed to wake up any other hidden survivors.”

“Sounds kind of risky,” Nathan said, one eyebrow raised. “What if the Jung got hold of that code?”

“What would they get with it? A few thirty year-old, five-c Scout ships? Besides, they’d need my retina to access the codes.”

“I trust you’ll loan it to us, sir?”

“After a bit more confirmation, yes,” the captain agreed. “Scott, about the Earth. Lieutenant Commander Nash indicated it wasn’t doing well?”

“I’m afraid she’s right, Captain,” Nathan admitted. “The Jung have bombarded it twice now. Once on their way out during the battle for liberation, and then again when they tried to retake it.”

“How many ships?”

“Plenty,” Nathan told him, “including a battle platform.”

“A what?” Captain Roselle asked, obviously unfamiliar with that ship designation as well.

“Think ‘massive fort in space’. Lots of guns, lots of fighters. They can’t maneuver worth a damn, but they
can
go twenty times light. Oh, and their shields are unbelievably difficult to bring down, which makes them a bitch to kill.”

“But you killed one?” Captain Roselle asked.

“We got lucky.”

“How many ships do you have?”

“Counting the Aurora, two.”

“Two? That’s it?”

“Well, three now, counting yours.”

“Mine? We’re not a warship, Scott.”

Nathan smiled. “Not yet, sir.”

CHAPTER SIX

Cameron sat across the picnic table from Abby, picking at the pasta salad in front of her. She set her fork down and took in a deep breath, looking up at the sky. “It really is nice here,” she said. “It seems like forever since I saw the sky and breathed fresh air, even that of another world.”

“Tanna’s not too different from Earth,” Abby told her. “Far less habitable land mass, and the seasons are nothing like home, but it is nice. How did you manage to sneak in here?”

“No sneaking necessary,” Cameron explained. “Not since they lifted the separation requirements between Terrans and Tannans.”

“Why the civilian clothes?” Abby wondered.

“I figured you didn’t want to attract attention to yourself.”

“You’re probably right. It wasn’t easy explaining Josh and Loki’s visit. I told them they were family friends. I’m not sure if they believed me, but no one’s asked about them since.”

“I’ll make sure you don’t get any more surprise military visitors from now on,” Cameron promised.

“How are things going?”

“That’s why I came to see you,” Cameron said. She paused a moment, glancing about to see if anyone was paying them undue attention. Her scans stopped on a gentleman sitting at a table on the other side of the outdoor dining area. The man nodded at her.

Abby noticed the man’s nod. “A friend of yours?”

“Security detail,” Cameron answered. “Four of them. They wouldn’t let me leave the ship without them.”

“Corinari?”

“Yup.” Cameron nonchalantly pulled her data pad from her bag and placed it on the table, turned it on, and slid it across to Abby.

Abby studied the information displayed on the data pad, scrolling through the numerous pages of sensor readings and action reports.

“Telles thinks the Jung can fold space,” Cameron said under her breath.

“Based on these readings, I’d say he is correct.” Abby shook her head slightly. “My God, do you know how much energy it would require?”

“A lot?”

“
A lot
would be an understatement. Especially for a ship that size. Do you have any idea what they are using for a power source?”

“We haven’t been able to scan the core of a battle platform, yet.”

“They would need a lot of antimatter reactors,” Abby insisted, “or a few ZPEDs.”

“You think they have ZPEDs?” Cameron asked. “That would explain their more powerful shields.”

“Doubtful, based on what we’ve seen of their technology thus far,” Abby said.

“They
are
scavengers,” Cameron reminded her. “Maybe they got it from a recently conquered civilization?”

“It seems unlikely that any of the core or fringe worlds would be that advanced,” Abby said. “They all suffered the same type of setbacks that we did when the plague hit.”

“We’ve already seen a few that fared better than Earth did.”

“No, ZPEDs are
way
more advanced. The Takarans are just now implementing them, and they didn’t have the plague to set them back.”

“But they did lose time when they first settled the Pentaurus cluster.”

“A few hundred years, maybe,” Abby argued, “but their technology is still at
least
five hundred years ahead of us.”

“I knew they were more advanced,” Cameron said, “I just didn’t realize they were
that
much more advanced.” Cameron leaned back in her chair and sighed. “Maybe the Jung have been venturing further out than we originally thought? Maybe they’ve found, and conquered, a civilization that has ZPEDs?”

“Or some other method to generate massive amounts of energy. There are more than one.”

“Of course.”

“You destroyed one of these platforms already, right? In Sol?”

“Yes, but only because we got lucky. We were in retreat. The commander of the platform must have thought he had already won. If it hadn’t been for those Falcons…”

“But that didn’t work in the Alpha Centauri B system?”

“No, it didn’t. Nor did our time-on-target attack. The damned thing just swallowed up a hundred and twelve plasma charges and spit them back out. It was like they passed right through them.”

“Or in this case, around them,” Abby corrected.

“So, folding space is pretty advanced stuff.”

“Yes and no. Obviously, it is quite advanced, but the ability to fold space has been around since before the bio-digital plague. The Earth had already developed a prototype by the late twenty-first century, but the invention of artificial gravity, and then inertial dampening fields eventually led to mass-negation fields. That, combined with electrically accelerated propellant systems quickly became the status quo for faster-than-light travel, as it required far less energy.”

“Then why are the Jung not using it for their battle platforms?” Cameron wondered. “They use it for all their other ships.”

“Probably because of the size of the platform,” Abby explained. “The propulsion systems required to get that thing moving to even a tiny fraction of light would be massive.”

“And the platform doesn’t need to maneuver,” Cameron realized, “at least not in the same way that a cruiser or battleship does.”

“Why dedicate all that space to propulsion when you can use it for energy production instead?”

“Energy that can be used for both FTL and shields.”

“But probably not for both,” Abby added, “at least not at the same time.”

“Why would they need them? Everything we fire at them goes around them.”

“Another advantage to folding space,” Abby pointed out. “No one can attack you while you’re in FTL.”

“We have to find a way to knock that thing
out
of FTL before we attack it,” Cameron said.

“The kind of fields used to fold space are very sensitive and must remain in perfect balance or they will collapse.”

“We just threw over a hundred plasma shots at it, Abby,” Cameron reminded her.

“Plasma shots are just energetic mass,” Abby explained. “What you need is something that will disrupt their folding of space. Something like pure energy. The Aurora’s antimatter cores are designed to be ejected intact if the ship breaks up, correct? Are not the Jung’s as well?”

“They are. In fact, we’ve already harvested at least a dozen of them back in Sol,” Cameron said.

“Is that all? I would think a battleship would use that many alone.”

“They’re not as easy to detect as you might think. Plus, they don’t always leave them behind.”

“Yeah, I heard about Kent,” Abby said, her head hanging down.

“Would a dozen of them do the trick?” Cameron wondered.

“Possibly, but remember, the less matter around, the less the antimatter has to react with. However, I would expect that the delivery device would provide enough matter for a sizable reaction to occur. During an antimatter detonation, you’re creating specific energy levels in excess of what you might find in a supernova. When you realize that all the exotic particle creations are bound by relativity, the effects of such a powerful detonation in a small region of space may damned near create a singularity. This process might disrupt the Jung’s spatial folds enough to cause them to come out of FTL for a bit.”

“Any chance you’d be willing to come back and help us figure it out?” Cameron asked, looking at Abby with pleading eyes.

“You don’t need me for this,” Abby admitted. “Kamenetskiy is smart enough to make it work.” A smirk formed on Abby’s lips. “Just don’t tell him I said so.”

* * *

“
We’re ready to broadcast the activation codes
,” Nara
lena announced over the intercom.

“Very well,” Nathan answered. “Begin transmitting.”

“
Aye, sir.
”

“How long do you think it will take for someone to answer?” Vladimir wondered.

Nathan glanced at the time display on the forward bulkhead of his ready room, just above the big view screen. “It takes about eight hours for a signal to reach the Kuiper belt. Assuming there is anyone else hiding out there to receive the signal, we should know something by tomorrow morning, I would think.”