The
Alexander
rode its braking thrusters and fell endlessly toward the planet Kukulcan. Hammett was back on the bridge. Every bridge station was still dead, but the bridge was in the heart of the ship, which made it an ideal communication hub. Every few minutes another breathless cadet would appear with a fresh sighting on the planet. Carruthers would do a quick calculation, then send another cadet to one of the maneuvering thrusters to make a correction.
It was an exhausting way to travel, veering constantly back and forth as they tried to keep the ship on target. For eight long hours they had careened through the void, but the long journey was nearly over.
"It's a good thing the station isn't armed," Carruthers said. "They must be trying to raise us on the radio by now."
Hammett nodded. There was simply no way for the
Alexander
to identify itself. They had no communications at all.
Lieutenant Yoon paced along one wall of the bridge. She had done rocket racing in her youth, which meant she had priceless experience with navigating a ship by visual data and dead reckoning. She was probably the only person on the
Alexander
who had ever put a ship into orbit without computer assistance.
"I can't promise a proper synchronous orbit," she said, not for the first time.
"Just do your best." Hammett glanced at the doorway to the bridge as another cadet appeared. It was a girl, short and solidly built, slumping with weariness. Her hair stood up in clumps, and a mix of dirt and smoke coated her face. At some point she had wiped her eyes, leaving streaks of white skin that stood out vividly against the soot. She gave him a sketchy salute and said, "I've got the final roster."
For a moment Hammett didn't know what she meant. Then he remembered. An hour or two before he'd sent her to get a casualty count. That meant making the rounds of the entire ship and counting who was left.
"Forty-seven dead or missing," she said. Her chin started to tremble. "I guess the missing ones aren't going to turn up, are they?" She looked at him with haunted eyes and said, "That's forty-seven dead. Thirty-two cadets, thirteen regular crew, and two officers." She held up a rumpled strip of paper towel, marked up in grease pencil. "I have all the names if you want, Sir."
She looked down at the list and her whole body started to shake. She looked up again, and two lines of tears made tracks through the dirt on her face. "I'm s-sorry, I-"
"Cadet," Hammett said.
The corners of her mouth drooped and she lifted a hand toward her cheek, then lowered it. She looked exhausted, traumatized, and deeply embarrassed. "I'm sorry, Captain, I-"
"Cadet," he said again. She finally met his gaze. "You did a hero's work today," he said. "I can tell by looking at you. You fell into a situation that was far beyond anything you trained for. You rose to the occasion, and you did what you had to do." He stood and moved toward her. "Every cadet on board was magnificent today. Together you saved the ship."
She put a hand to her mouth. She looked on the verge of collapse.
"And now the crisis is over for the moment," Hammett said gently. "You've held it together until now. Now, it's okay to let go."
She looked down at the deck plates, and he saw tears splashed the tops of her boots.
"Keep that list," he said. "Keep it safe. They were your friends, and my shipmates. They died giving the rest of us a fighting chance. You keep that list, and when the time comes to honor them, I'll find you."
She nodded without looking up.
"Now go wash your face and find a place where you can be alone. Take some time for yourself. Report back to the bridge when you're ready. But I don't want to see you for at least an hour. Preferably two. Understand?"
The cadet didn't look up, didn't answer. She folded the paper towel with trembling fingers and tucked it into a thigh pocket. Then she wiped her face with her sleeve, turned, and hurried out of the bridge.
Hammett returned to his seat, feeling a hundred years old.
Velasco came onto the bridge. She had washed and put on a fresh uniform, and Hammett frowned, wondering how he himself looked. "Report," he said. He had sent her on a tour of the ship to get status updates from every department.
"Still no rail guns," she said. "Lieutenant DiMarco has a couple of people working on it. He says he needs several more hours before you'll have manual control. The automatic loaders won't work, though. He says he'll need half a dozen people on hand just loading magazines."
Hammett nodded.
"The engines are good. The manual controls are actually really simple, so no problems there. We lost two of the port maneuvering thrusters. I don't know if they can be repaired. No one has even looked at them yet."
That was hardly surprising. The repair crews had far more serious priorities.
"We lost two laser batteries," she continued. "I had a look at both of them. Portside dorsal forward was completely destroyed. The gun is gone, and most of the hull plates around it. Central dorsal forward is in much better shape. We can't repair it, but we can pillage it for spare parts if we need to."
"The other batteries are good?"
She nodded. "Both missile tubes are intact as well. We still have four nukes and most of the conventional missiles." She paused, thinking. "Let me see. Every bay in Medical is full. Doctor Havisham is unpacking some spare diagnostic and monitoring equipment. She's hoping it might not be fried because none of it was turned on when … whatever it was … happened. She doesn't know yet, though."
"All right. Anything else?"
"Well, I visited the galley. No one was there. People are just going in and helping themselves to meal replacement bars. There's no hot water, but there's plenty of drinking water."
"I guess that will do for now." For the thousandth time he stared in mute frustration at the blank screens all around the bridge. How the hell was he supposed to fly blind? Yoon was a marvel, telling cadets how to estimate the distance to Kukulcan by the degrees of arc it took up in the sky. The faint vibration of the main engine died away as they stopped braking. Yoon sent cadets running to three different maneuvering thrusters as she tried to get the ship into a stable orbit.
"That's brilliant work, Lieutenant," he told her, and she gave him a tired smile. "Now we need to figure out how to get down to the surface." The
Alexander
had two more shuttles, but they were not designed for manual flying. He scratched his jaw, noting that his stubble was starting to come in. "Do we actually know that the shuttles are fried?" He looked around the bridge. When no one spoke he said, "I assume they are, but we should make sure." Five tired -looking cadets stood in a line near the bridge entrance. "Anyone have experience with Delta-level craft?"
All five cadets raised their hands.
"Okay, whoever's next, run down to the shuttle bay and see if either shuttle will start." As the cadet on the end started to move he said, "Actually, don't run. It's not urgent. Save your legs for the next crisis."
"Aye aye, Sir." The cadet plodded out.
Hammett sagged in his seat, exhaustion tugging at his limbs. "We should get some food sent in here." He thought about it. "No, what we should do is rotate some staff out. We could all use a break." He looked around. "Yoon?"
"I'm not sure if our orbit is stable yet, Sir."
"All right." He looked at Carruthers. "Jim? Ready for a break?"
"That I am. But why don't you go first, Sir?"
Hammett considered it. "You know, that's not a bad idea. I knew there was a reason they made you an officer." He stood and started for the bridge doorway.
A cadet came running in and stopped in front of Hammett, drawing himself to attention. It was the young man he'd sent to check on the shuttles. Hammett said, "I thought I said you didn't have to run."
"There's a ship, Sir. From the surface. It's landing in the shuttle bay."
The shuttle bay was a long, barn-like room with a high ceiling and one wall that was open to space. Janice wasn't sure why the force field at the end of the bay still functioned while every other complex system on the
Alexander
was dead. When she considered how many people might be killed if the field ever failed, she decided it probably had solid components and a lot of redundancy. Whatever the reason, it still worked. The little runabout from the surface had been able to sail right through and touch down on the deck.
A pilot had come up with two passengers, middle-aged men who looked almost as frazzled as the crew of the
Alexander
. One man wore reinforced coveralls with reflective stripes. The other man wore a pinstripe shirt, the equivalent of a business suit for an outpost is isolated as this one.
She watched as the two visitors filed back onto the runabout, followed by Hammett and Commander Velasco. She had no idea what sort of meeting would take place down on the surface, but it was certain to be interesting. Newsworthy, in fact. And she was going to miss it. There hadn't been any opportunity to ask permission to tag along.
Which meant, of course, that no one had told her she had to stay behind.
She stood for a moment, frozen with indecision. She hated to be pushy. Oh, she didn't mind annoying a politician or two, but she felt a sense of camaraderie with Hammett. She felt like part of the team, and she liked the feeling.
The hatch of the runabout started to close. Janice muttered, "Oh, hell," and started to run. She got a shoulder in the hatchway and the hatch beeped, then slid back open. The other passengers looked up, surprise or annoyance on their faces, as she clambered aboard.
There were only five passenger seats, and all of them were taken. Janice stood frozen for a moment, feeling a flush climb up her throat and spread across her face. Then she stepped over Velasco's feet, squeezed through a narrow opening that led to the cockpit, and wormed her way into the empty co-pilot's seat.
The hatch clicked shut behind her, and the runabout lifted off.
Kukulcan was a red-brown orb that filled the sky. She caught a brief glimpse of the hull of the
Alexander
, and winced as she saw scorched and bubbled hull plates. Fresh patches showed in a breach the size of a small boardroom table, and a burned line trailed aft and down. Her stomach twisted. The damage was bad – really bad – but it had nearly been much, much worse.
The nose of the runabout tilted down and the planet filled her view. It had the crater-pocked look of a world with little to no atmosphere. The surface was a pale brown near the equator, fading to dark rust at the pole. She could see no sign of human activity.
Down and down they went, until the large craters showed a texture of many smaller craters. There had to be some atmosphere, because she could make out the striation of honey-coloured dunes beside the sharp, un-weathered peaks of a mountain range. The pilot brought the runabout in low over the surface, and for a time all she could see was the distant horizon and a black, starry sky above it.
Then the nose of the craft swung to the right and she saw a vast black dome looming before her. Five smaller domes surrounded it, all of them connected by a complex network of girders and enclosed tunnels. Rectangular buildings littered the plain all around, and she saw a robotic truck rolling along, following a pair of ruts as it headed out across the sand.
The runabout set down on the roof of a long, low building close to the ring of domes. There was a moment of silence as the engines shut down, then a metallic clatter as automatic systems latched a retractable tunnel to the side of the little ship. A green light appeared on the dash in front of Janice's seat, and the pilot said, "That's it. Welcome to Kukulcan."
The hatch slid open and Janice waited as the other passengers climbed out, one at a time. When the passenger area was clear, the pilot gestured to her. She extricated herself from the co-pilot's seat, clambered into the back, and stepped through into an accordion-style walkway.
She followed the others through a hatch and down a staircase. She caught a glimpse of enormous ore-processing machines off to one side before walking through a connecting tunnel into one of the smaller domes. The little group wound its way through a maze of cubicles and into a boardroom where several more people waited.
"All right. Welcome to Baffin. I think our first order of business is to figure out what the hell is going on." The speaker was the man with the collared shirt. He had very dark skin, and spoke with a distinct Australian twang. "I'm Benny Wyatt. I'm the station manager here. This is Peter Breckenridge. He's my chief of operations."
The man in the reflective coveralls nodded.
Another man stood. He was white, slim and middle-aged, wearing a very nice suit. "I'm Dalton Hornbeck. I'm the station administrator for Freedom Station." He grimaced. "At least, I was. Eighty-five of us fled the station in a lifeboat. If any other lifeboats escaped, they haven't turned up. I think we're the only survivors." He sat back down.
"I'm Captain Richard Hammett of the battlecruiser
Alexander
. This is my First Officer, Commander Velasco." He looked at Janice, and a hint of a grin touched his features. "And this is Janice Ling. She, ah, represents the civilian population aboard the ship."
Janice nodded to the group and lowered herself into a chair. It was entirely too soft. After so many long hours of stress she was going to have trouble staying awake.
When everyone was seated, Wyatt spoke again. "Mr. Hornbeck and his people arrived about an hour ago. I've already heard his story. Why don't you tell us what you've seen? What happened to you?"
Hammett gave a brief summary of the trip through the Gate, the appearance of the aliens, the destruction of Gate Six, and the crippling of the
Alexander
. He described the battle, the nuclear strike on the alien craft, and what he had seen of Freedom Station as the
Alexander
retreated.
"It's not completely outside the realm of possibility that we are facing human attackers," he told them. "However, it's preposterous to think so. There is no human technology that even distantly resembles what we saw today. We are under alien attack."
The others looked at one another and comfortably. No one argued, though.
Hornbeck said, "Why in the name of all that's holy did you destroy the Gate? You've robbed us of our only escape."
Velasco shifted in her chair. She didn't say anything, and her expression was blank, but Janice was suddenly sure that she agreed with Hornbeck.
"The Naxos system will be no haven for us if the aliens get there first," Hammett said flatly. "We can still get home. The
Alexander
has a wormhole generator."
"That will take weeks!" Hornbeck protested. "With the Gates we could be back on Earth already."
"That's enough," said Wyatt. "The Gate is gone. Let's focus on what to do next."
"You'll have to evacuate this facility," Hammett said. "We'll take you on the
Alexander
." He turned to Hornbeck. "We'll take your people as well. I'm afraid you'll have to leave the lifeboat behind. The
Alexander
can't take other ships with it through wormholes."
Hornbeck nodded unhappily.
"Where will we go?" Breckenridge said. "Straight for Earth?" He frowned, thinking. "I guess Naxos is closer?"
Janice said, "New Avalon." The words were out before she could stop them. Every eye in the room turned to her, and she swallowed. "New Avalon is the closest system to us as the crow flies. Or as the crow jumps through wormholes." New Avalon connected to Earth via Gates Seven and Eight. It was only fifteen or sixteen light years from Deirdre. There was very little at New Avalon – just some abandoned mining facilities, she thought – so no one had set up a Gate to link it directly to Deirdre. New Avalon would put them only two Gates from Earth. They would be home in a few hours, once they reached the system.
No one believed her, of course, until they opened up star charts and checked for themselves. "Sixteen light years," said Hornbeck, and looked at Hammett. "How long will it take to go that far?"
"Eleven days, under ideal circumstances," Hammett answered. "The ship is damaged, though, and we've been having some trouble with the wormhole generator. Navigation won't be an issue. We can see the star and travel directly toward it." He scratched his head. "I would say, two weeks minimum. We should be ready for it to take three weeks."
The others looked at one another. Finally Wyatt said, "I guess that's the plan, then. We should leave immediately."
"Not so fast," said Hammett. "The
Alexander
is in rough shape. We need to do some repairs. And we need to rig some kind of internal communications." He described how they had used cadets running with messages to try to maneuver.
That set off a long technical conversation as Wyatt, Breckenridge, and the two officers talked about non-electronic communication systems. None of it made much sense to Janice, and she settled deeper into her seat, yawning. The low gravity on Kukulcan was really quite restful.
"Copper wire and telephone handsets," Wyatt said. "It's really simple technology. An EMP pulse, or whatever it was that hit you, won't affect it for more than a moment. It'll give you immediate communication throughout the ship, and it's totally reliable."
"That sounds great," Hammett said, "but where are we going to get telephone handsets? That's, what? Nineteenth century technology? Where would we even get copper wire?"
"We'll manufacture it here," said Wyatt. "We have a Level III replicator, and a couple of million template files. Handsets and wire will be child's play."
"Really?" Hammett sat up a bit straighter. "That changes things."
That set off a fresh discussion about all the things they could manufacture that they might need for the journey home. In the middle of it Breckenridge called someone and gave instructions to get started on the manufacture of three dozen telephone handsets and two thousand meters of copper line.
"I need non-electronic detonators of some kind," Hammett said. "Some kind of fuse. I've got a lot of perfectly good missiles that are so much scrap metal now, because the electronics are fried. If I can make them explode at a set distance from the
Alexander
…"
Janice found herself gesturing at the empty air, trying to activate the note-taking feature in her implants. Her implants were still dead, but the habit of years was hard to break. If only she had something as quaint as a pen and notebook! She thought of the cadets, running through the corridors, trying to recite reports or instructions from memory when they arrived. What if the telephones didn't work, or the wires were cut?
"Pens and paper," she blurted. "Or pencils, if that's easier to manufacture." Hammett gave her a baffled look, and she said, "It's a great replacement for half the things our implants used to do." She shrugged. "Well, an adequate replacement."
He nodded, and Wyatt said, "I'll add it to the list."
They considered everything from hand weapons to telescopes before deciding to stick with the essentials. Every extra minute they spent at Baffin increased their danger.
The meeting was breaking up when Hammett's stomach growled. He looked down, a startled expression on his face, and said, "What about food?"
Wyatt said, "I could call for a plate of sandwiches."
"No, I mean what about food for the next three weeks?" He looked at Velasco. "How much food do we have on board?"
She gave him a blank look.
"This wasn't supposed to be a long trip," he said. "We have about a week of rations. We lost a lot of people today." A momentary shadow crossed his features. "But we're taking on nineteen people from Baffin?"
Wyatt nodded.
"And eighty-five from Freedom Station?"
"Yes," said Hornbeck.
"We have about three weeks of supplies on hand here," Wyatt said. He looked at Breckenridge. "Does that sound about right, Peter?"
"Bit less than that," Breckenridge said.
"We didn't bring anything but the clothes on our backs," said Hornbeck. His fingers swiped the air as he accessed his implants, and Janice felt a pang of jealousy. Life without implants was driving her crazy.
"We could make it," Hornbeck said. "We'd be on about one-third rations." He patted his stomach. "We'll all be a bit thinner, but we'll survive."
"If all our supplies survived the hull breach," Velasco said gloomily.
"And if nothing goes wrong," said Hammett. "The wormhole generator operates on transduction coils. We have twelve of them. Each time one of them burns out, our distance per jump drops by eight or nine percent. And we're badly behind on our maintenance."
There was a long, gloomy silence. Wyatt said, "It's a problem, but I don't see what we can do about it. Where can we go to get food?"
Hornbeck looked from one face to another. Then, his voice slow with reluctance, he said, "We could go to Freedom Station."
Janice stared at him, shocked.
Freedom Station? Where the aliens are?