The Legend of Corinair (13 page)

“Makes sense,” Cameron agreed.

“Once we get there, we locate the hideout Tug spoke of and plot a jump to get as close as possible so that we can sneak in undetected.”

“That might require more than one jump, Captain,” Abby warned. Nathan looked at her quizzically, forcing her to better explain. “It would take hours—maybe even days depending on how erratic the trajectories of the objects in the asteroid belt are—to gather enough data to make a close in jump. It might be better to jump in next to a planetary body, or a moon—something with a bit more stable and predictable orbit. From there, we can get a more accurate and more up-to-date trajectory mapping of the belt before plotting a jump deeper into the belt itself.”

“Makes sense. But I want to get the ship into that hideout as soon as possible. The longer we’re sitting out in the open, the more chance there is of being spotted.”

“Captain,” Jessica interrupted, “I’m not too crazy about the idea of flying this ship into some kind of cave without checking it out first.”

“You think it might be a trap?” Cameron asked.

“The thought has crossed my mind,” Jessica said.

“Yeah, mine too,” Nathan admitted. “Suggestions?”

“We could send that hot-shot Josh in first,” Cameron suggested with a wry smile. “Put him and his copilot into the shuttle and let them recon it out first.”

“Not a bad idea, Commander. Jess, maybe you should go along with them.”

“Sounds like a hoot,” she exclaimed.

Nathan smiled. “Wear your flight restraints… Trust me.”

“Will do, skip— Sorry, Captain.”

“Okay. So they do a fly through inspection first, then we follow them in. Once the ship is secured inside the hideout, we’ll send a team over to power everything up so that we can get busy repairing the ship. I especially want to get the hull patched up so we can have access to our forward sections again. More than seventy percent of our living quarters are in there and between the wounded and the extra guests, we’re running out of space.”

“What about supplies?” Cameron asked. “If Corinair is as advanced a world as Tug says, we might be able to get some decent supplies this time.”

“Yeah, like something besides molo,” Jessica complained.

“We still have credits to spend, and a bunch of raw ore that we can sell,” Cameron added.

“I was thinking about that,” Nathan said. “As much as I know you like to gather intel in the field, Jessica, I don’t think it’s a good idea for any of us to go down to the surface on this trip. I think we’d stand out too much this time. Besides, according to Tug, you cannot get past the Port Authority without proper ident-chips.”

“I guess I can sit this one out,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Besides, I’ve been thinking. If this secret base of theirs has comm-gear, maybe we could do some signals intelligence gathering.”

“Good idea. Meanwhile, we’ll send Tug and Jalea down to the surface in the shuttle. They can sell off the rest of our ore and buy us some supplies. We’ll leave them on the surface for at least a day or two so they can also make contact with any rebels that may be hiding out on Corinair.”

“And what, bring them back here?” Jessica objected.

“Hey, we need all the help we can get at this point. I’m hoping that some of them might also help with repairs as well. So far, they all seem to be pretty good with tech.”

“Let’s just be sure we don’t end up outnumbered on our own ship,” Jessica warned.

“From Jalea’s estimates, I don’t think that many of them survived. I’d be surprised if they find more than a handful of them.”

“How long do we plan to stay in the Darvano system?” Cameron asked.

“No longer than necessary, of course. But hopefully long enough to at least get all the major repairs done. We’ll have to play it by ear.” Nathan looked around the room. “Any more questions? All right. Let’s get ready to make our first jump—in say, thirty minutes?”

Abby nodded in agreement, as did the others.

“Great, dismissed,” he announced. As they got up to leave, Nathan activated the comm-panel on his desk to hail the comm-officer on the bridge. “Can you send Josh and Loki to my ready room?”

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Josh and Loki arrived at the entrance to the bridge. Having been forewarned of their arrival, the guard at the hatchway escorted them the few meters down the short corridor that led into the aft port side of the bridge.

“Whoa,” Loki muttered as he gazed upon the bridge, and the main view screen that wrapped around the entire front half the room and up over the helm and navigation consoles.

“This is nice,” Josh whispered back to Loki. Despite the fact that most of the Aurora’s technology was less advanced than that found on even the older ships used on Haven, the layout of the bridge left him in awe. “I’d love to get my hands on the flight controls of this baby, eh, mate?” he added, jabbing Loki in his side with his elbow.

“This way, gentlemen,” the guard stated, reminding them of why they were here. Josh and Loki turned to see the guard standing behind them, his arm outstretched to point toward the door to the captain’s ready room, just inboard from the entrance they had just passed through. “The captain’s expecting you.”

Josh and Loki followed the guard, looking back over their shoulders to catch a last glimpse of the bridge on their way out. The guard swung the hatch open and they stepped inside the ready room.

“Gentlemen,” Nathan greeted them nonchalantly. “What took you so long?”

“Sorry, Captain,” Loki began, “but we had just pulled the computer core from the harvester when you called. Once pulled, you only have ten minutes to get it hooked back up to power, or you lose all its base programming.”

“That’s understandable. Have a seat,” he said, gesturing to the two chairs in front of his desk.

Josh felt a bit uncomfortable. His flying technique had gotten him and Loki into hot water on more than one occasion. And right now, it felt similar to the time they had been called into the Haven Port Authority Flight Controller’s office. They had gotten scolded for nearly an hour that day, and had just about lost their flight status. “Have we done something wrong, Captain?”

“No, not at all. I have a couple of missions I wanted to discuss with you. That’s all.

Josh started to relax a little, as did Loki.

“Missions
?” Loki asked, not quite sure what the term meant.

“You know, flights? What do you call them?”

“Flights, I guess,” Loki answered with a shrug.

“What kind of
missions
did you have in mind, Captain?” Josh asked.

“The Karuzari have a base of some type inside a hollowed out asteroid. We would like to use it as a place to hide while we conduct repairs.”

Josh’s eyes lit up. “This place must be pretty big, if you can fit your whole ship inside it.”

“Apparently, it’s an entire facility of some sort.”

“Captain?” Loki asked. “Why do you need us to fly in?”

“We need someone to recon the entrance, the main port, and the exits, before we take the ship inside.”

Josh could see that his friend was getting suspicious. “You expecting trouble?” he asked the captain.

“I wouldn’t say expecting,” Nathan said. “Let’s just say we’re being overly cautious and leave it at that.”

“Say no more, Captain,” Josh told him. “We quite understand. Never trusted the Karuzari much myself, either.”

“It’s not so much a matter of trust at this point,” Nathan corrected. “As I said before, it’s more a matter of caution. We have too much at stake to risk haphazardly.”

“Yeah,” Josh agreed, changing to a more somber tone. “The chief told us all about the Jung and such. You blokes certainly have your plates full.”

Nathan smiled at the expression. “Yes, we do at that.”

“Captain?” Loki interrupted. “You said missions,” he added, emphasizing the plural.

“Yes. Later, we’ll also need you to make a couple of runs to the planet surface. First to deliver Tug and Jalea, along with most of the ore your team collected. And then to bring them and a load of supplies back to the ship a day or two after.”

“The surface? The surface of what? We’re not going back to Haven, are we?”

“No. We’ll be going to the Darvano system.”

“Darvano? But that’s nearly ten light years away. That’ll take weeks,” Loki exclaimed.

“Not for us, remember?” Nathan reminded him.

“You’re gonna jump?” Josh asked, unable to hide his excitement.

“Yes.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t mind seeing that. I don’t mind tellin’ ya,” Josh stated. Although not as easily excited as his friend, it was obvious that Loki was also excited.

“We’re going to jump in about five minutes,” Nathan told them. “Would you like to hang around and watch?”

“Oh, you bet,” Josh stated, Loki’s head nodding rapidly up and down.

“Very well, then. Follow me,” Nathan said as he rose from his desk.

Josh and Loki followed Nathan out of the ready room and back out onto the bridge.

“You guys just stand back here,” Nathan told them, pointing to the back of the room in front of the burnt-out comm station that had been offline since they had first encountered the Ta’Akar.

Nathan moved down from the upper platform that held the tactical station in the center, the jump control console on the right, and the new temporary comm-station on the left. “Are we ready to jump?”

“Jump drive is fully charged and ready. Our first jump is plotted and verified,” Abby reported.

“Where will the first jump take us?”

“Exactly five light years from here, to a point pretty much in the middle of nowhere, sir. But definitely deep within the Pentaurus cluster.”

“Helm ready?” Nathan asked as Cameron stepped down from the upper level and moved in front of him to sit at the helm console.

“Helm is ready, sir.”

“Are we gonna feel anything?” Josh asked Jessica, who was standing at the tactical console directly in front of him.

“No,” she said, turning her head slightly to cast a disapproving look at his question.

Nathan heard Josh’s question. “Commander, you know, maybe we should always warn the crew and passengers when we are about to jump. I mean, there is no sensation involved—not like when we’re accelerating or decelerating. It might be better for the crew to be aware of any abrupt change in location.”

“It might at that,” she agreed.

“Jess? Any problems with that?”

“None that I can think of, sir.”

“All right then. From now on, procedure will be to announce a jump at least one minute before. Then give a 5 second count down. Afterward, we should announce that the jump is complete, and specify our new location.”

“Is all that really necessary?” Cameron asked.

“Too much?”

“It does seem a bit dramatic. But then again, you may be right about the psychological affect on the crew. What good is it to have served aboard a starship if you never even knew where you went?”

“Great. You might want to add that to the manual, Commander,” Nathan announced with satisfaction.

“Might I also suggest that we rig some sort of auto-adjustment of the viewer to take place just before and after a jump, instead of shutting it down and then back up. It takes a few seconds for the system to reboot when it’s shut completely off, and those few seconds could be crucial upon arrival.”

“That’s an excellent idea. Add that one to the book as well.”

“Captain,” Jessica began. “Who makes the announcement?”

“Well, as long as Abby is controlling the jump, then she can make the actual jump announcements. “Comms can make the initial ship-wide, and then announce our new location when we arrive.” Nathan turned to the comm-officer. “Ensign.”

“Attention all hands. Stand by to jump in one minute.”

Nathan took a seat in his command chair, located on the middle level between the tactical console and the flight consoles.

“Why one minute?” Cameron asked as she turned around from the helm to face him.

“I don’t know. Because it sounded good?”

“We can fine tune the procedures later,” she said with a raised eyebrow, as she turned back around to face the helm console and the main view screen.

Josh and Loki watched as the bridge staff calmly pressed buttons, checked readouts, and made adjustments to various systems as they waited for the jump to occur.

“Captain,” Abby said. “I’ve taken the liberty of adding a small subroutine to the jump sequencer that will dim the brightness and contrast of the main viewing system as soon as the jump is initiated. It will restore the original settings immediately after the jump has completed.”

“Excellent.”

“Ten seconds to jump,” Abby announced.

Nathan looked over his left shoulder toward the comm-officer, gesturing to him. “Patch the doctor ship-wide.”

Abby’s voice echoed throughout the ship as she announced the jump sequence. “Jumping in five-”

Abby turned the key to arm the jumping system.

“Four—”

She flipped open the two clear covers that protected the jump field generators from being activated accidently, and flipped both rocker switches.

“Three—”

Josh and Loki both looked nervous as they swallowed hard.

“Two—”

Abby flipped open the cover over the large red button that a technician had wired into the console to serve as the main jump initiation button.

“One—”

The main view screen suddenly dimmed.

“Jumping.”

Abby pressed the button and initiated the jump.

Josh and Loki watched through the dimmed viewer as a pale blue wave of light quickly spread out from the emitters on the hull. Within a split second, each wave of light had connected with its neighbor and their brilliance increased rapidly into a blinding flash of white light, subdued only by the lowered display settings on the main view screen. A second later, the flash subsided, revealing that the stars had shifted ever so slightly.

“Jump complete,” Abby announced calmly.

“Verify position,” Nathan ordered.

After a few seconds, Cameron responded. “Position confirmed. We are now halfway between Takara and Darvano, approximately four point five light years from the Darvano system, and about twenty light hours outside of the known shipping lanes. We are now deep in the middle of the Pentaurus cluster.”