Aurora: CV-01 (12 page)

And so she had committed herself to a life in the fleet, hoping to make captain someday. It had required her to fore-go any romantic entanglements, not wanting to deal with the additional distractions. Not that she didn’t date on occasion. After all, a girl did have needs. But she had always been up front with anyone of interest, which probably explained why she had few second dates.

“Clear of the Platform, Sir,” Nathan announced.
So far so good.

“Very well, take us to departure altitude and prepare a course for Jupiter.”

“Climbing to departure altitude,” Nathan acknowledged. Nathan fired up the main engines at only a few percent of their overall thrust capacity, in order to increase their velocity and climb to a higher orbit. A low, almost inaudible rumble began emanating from the stern of the ship as her massive engines began their low intensity burn.

“Calculating course for Jupiter,” Cameron reported. “Velocity, Sir?” she asked the captain.

The captain thought about it for a moment before responding, a smile coming across his face. “Flight’s discretion,” he offered.

Cameron and Nathan looked at each other. Nathan’s face was like a mischievous little boy who suddenly had a great idea. But Cameron’s was a look of concern, probably due to her helmsman’s expression.

“Within reason, of course,” the captain added.

Nathan silently mouthed the question
half light
to Cameron, who nodded grudging agreement.

“Recommend half-light, Sir,” Cameron advised. “At Jupiter’s current position, that will get us there in approximately eighty-seven minutes.”

“A bit much for our first time out,” the captain speculated as he shifted nervously in his seat. “But they did want us to test our new engines, so half-light it is. But do us all a favor and take it up slowly? Remember, we’ve got untested inertial dampeners and a ship full of newbies who don’t have their space-legs yet.”

“Yes Sir,” Nathan assured him. “I’ll bring her up nice and easy.”

“Departure altitude in one minute,” Cameron reported.

Captain Roberts pressed a button on the comm panel on the arm of his command chair to address the entire ship. “All hands, this is the captain, prepare for acceleration in one minute.” Without skipping a beat, the captain switched his comm to Engineering. “Chief? We’re going to take her up to half-light. I trust you’ll let us know if there are any problems down there?”

“Yes Sir, but I don’t anticipate any,”
the Chief Engineer’s voice crackled over the comm.

Nathan could imagine the excited look on Vladimir’s face down in Engineering, as he programmed in a five minute acceleration curve that would get them to half the speed of light in just under fifteen minutes. It was a very slow rate of acceleration, considering what he knew the ship was designed to do. But the captain’s earlier point had been a valid one, which Nathan had not even considered.

“Departure altitude achieved, ready to break orbit,” Cameron announced.

“Very well, take us out of orbit, and make way for Jupiter, half-light, Lieutenant.”

Cameron pressed a button on her console that changed the ship’s condition to yellow.

Throughout the ship, the condition lights located along every corridor and every compartment suddenly changed from green to yellow as she announced the last acceleration warning to the crew. All at once, anyone standing immediately sat down and faced forward. If they weren’t able to sit, they stood leaning against a wall that faced aft. If they couldn’t do that, they grabbed onto something. The inertial dampeners were a new feature in Fleet vessels, and no one was quite sure how well they were going to work. And the last thing that new crewman wanted was to fall on their ass during their first acceleration.

“Breaking orbit,” Nathan announced as Cameron finished her ship-wide warning. He activated the acceleration sequence he had programmed moments ago, as he changed the ships heading. “On course for Jupiter, beginning acceleration sequence.”

All the bridge staff who were not facing forward suddenly stopped what they were doing and turned their seats towards the main view screen as the ship began to accelerate. The sliver of the Earth that had been decorating the bottom edge of the main view screen suddenly fell away from view as the ship pulled out of orbit and headed for Jupiter.

Nathan wasn’t sure if it was his gentle acceleration curve, or the new inertial dampeners, but the sensation was almost unnoticeable. In fact, it was even a bit disappointing, and he wondered how much the dampeners would help if he really had to punch it.

Fifteen minutes later they were traveling at half the speed of light, and Nathan had discontinued his burn. In about an hour, he would have to start a gradual deceleration burn so that they would settle into a comfortable orbit around Jupiter. Of course Cameron would let him know when and at what thrust to burn, but he was pretty sure that the rest of the crew would never feel a thing.

“Traveling at half-light, Captain. On course for Jupiter,” Nathan reported.

“Very well,” the captain answered as he rose from his chair. “XO, you’re with me,” he added as he headed for his ready room door at the aft end of the bridge. “You have the con, Lieutenant.”

Cameron rolled her eyes as she noticed the big toothy grin forming on Nathan’s face.

* * *

Deceleration on approach to Jupiter had gone as planned, thanks to Cameron’s precise navigational calculations. In only a few minutes, the Aurora would be captured by Jupiter’s gravity well and fall into a stable orbit high above her equator. The eighty-seven minute trip had been uneventful thus far, a welcome change for Nathan from the gut-wrenching simulations they had endured previously. It had made him realize that perhaps Vladimir had been correct, that all he had to do was to fly the ship wherever the captain told him. And that was fine with him.

He was just a bit surprised and more than curious when Doctor Karlsen and his daughter entered the bridge and went directly to the starboard auxiliary station. Located at the aft end of each side of the bridge just forward of the exits, these stations could be reprogrammed to act as monitoring and control stations for just about any of the ship’s systems.

“What are they doing here?” Nathan whispered to Cameron, as he tilted his head back towards the two Physicists. Cameron just shrugged her shoulders, indicating she had no idea.

Immediately, everything that Vladimir had ever said about the irritating blonde woman and the work they had been doing flashed through Nathan’s mind. If they
were
on board to test some top-secret project, then the far-side of Jupiter seemed a likely spot. He tried to hear what the two of them were talking about as they worked back in the corner, but they were speaking what Nathan assumed was Danish.

“Standby to end deceleration burn,” Cameron announced, drawing Nathan’s attention back to his job.

“Standing by.”

On Cameron’s command, he cut the main engines, ending the deceleration burn, the low rumble subsiding.

“Approach velocity and vector are perfect,” Cameron announced proudly, despite the fact that Nathan was the only one listening. “We should settle into orbit in four minutes.” Cameron switched her comm channel to hail the captain. “Navigation, Sir. Jupiter orbit in four minutes.”

“Very well, Ensign. Go ahead and pitch over. We’ll be there momentarily,”
the captain instructed over the comm.

“Yes Sir,” she said, before ending the connection. “You’re clear to pitch over,” she told Nathan.

“Pitching over.”

Nathan pushed the joystick forward slightly, holding it there for several seconds. Although a smaller ship, the Aurora still had plenty of mass and it took more than just a small puff of attitude thrusters to get her to flip over in a timely fashion. The inertial dampening systems appeared to be doing their job, which allowed him to handle the massive ship more like a large fighter-bomber than a carrier vessel.

The Aurora had been approaching Jupiter tail first, using her massive main engines to decelerate. Most interplanetary trips were made at less than ten percent of light, from which the ship’s braking thrusters were capable of slowing her down to orbital velocities. But since the purpose of their mission had been to test main propulsion, a more aggressive flight profile had seemed appropriate.

Now that the burn had completed, the ship was flipping end over, her nose coming up to point in the direction of the gas giant. Everyone on the bridge watched in amazement as the planet seemingly rose from under the deck into view. It stopped its ascent to settle in the center of the view screen as Nathan applied counter-thrust to stop their pitch-over. The planet quickly grew as they approached, until it filled the view screen’s bottom quarter from side to side. As it grew closer, they could see the bands of brown, red, and orange clouds as they rotated in opposing directions around the surface of the planet. No one on the bridge had ever seen any planet other than the Earth in this way until now, and it held them all transfixed.

Except, Nathan noticed, the two scientists still working away in the back corner. Either they had seen such things before, or their work was so all consuming that they didn’t even notice.

They did notice when Commander Montero returned to the bridge and stepped up to the tactical station. Two armed marines had followed him, taking positions on either side of the port exit. A moment later, another pair of marines took a similar post at the starboard exit.

Nathan and Cameron exchanged concerned glances at the presence of the guards, ensure of what was happening.

“Captain on the bridge!” one of the marines guarding the port exit announced as Captain Roberts exited his ready room and entered the bridge. Although no one was expected to abandon their duties to stand and salute, all casual conversations ceased and everyone instantly became more alert and focused.

The captain entered the bridge with a more serious expression than usual. “XO, lock down the bridge,” he ordered as he passed by the tactical station and made his way forward to his command chair.

Commander Montero turned and motioned to the marines on the port exit, who immediately locked their hatch, the marines on the starboard exit following suit.

“Comm,” the XO said. “Lock out all internal communications except for tactical, the command chair, and those between the starboard auxiliary station and the shield generation compartments.”

“Yes Sir,” the communications officer answered.

“And take the deep space communications array off-line until further notice.”

“Yes Sir.” The communications officer acted quickly to fulfill the commander’s orders. “Deep space array is off-line, internal communications are locked out except for those specified, Sir.”

“Jupiter orbit achieved, Captain,” Nathan announced. He didn’t know what was going on, but he was sure it had something to do with their being in orbit over Jupiter. He glanced over at Cameron, who for the first time that he could remember, looked worried.

“May I have your attention,” the captain announced.

His look was stern, his demeanor serious, and it made Nathan wonder what had happened to suddenly change his persona so drastically over the last ninety minutes.

“What I’m about to tell you is classified as top-secret, need to know only, and all of
you
need to know. The rest of the crew, however, does not. At least not yet. Before I begin, I would like you all to know that neither myself, nor Commander Montero were aware of any of this until we opened an encrypted, position-locked file given to us by Admiral Yamori during yesterday’s inspection.”

Nathan and Cameron exchanged concerned glances at the captain’s opening statement, as did many others on the bridge.

“Eighteen months ago, the Centauri system was invaded by the Jung Dynasty. Centauri forces were quickly overwhelmed, resulting in a total loss of her entire defensive force. At that point we lost our source of intelligence in Centauri space, so we must assume that the entire system is now controlled by the Jung. That leaves Sol as the last free system in the core.”

A dead silence fell across the room, punctuated only by the occasional sounds of various systems giving faint tones to alert their users. Everyone in the room understood the gravity of the information. It was, after all, the reason most of them had joined the fleet in the first place.

For Nathan, it meant something more. He had spent endless hours arguing with his father about the importance of the fleet. And he had never been able to understand how his father, a man who had once believed whole heartedly in the existence of the fleet, could’ve suddenly changed his mind. And now, with what everyone feared the most coming to be, he could finally convince his father how unequivocally wrong he had been. And while this should’ve pleased him, none of it seemed to matter now.

“Fleet intelligence assessments predict that an invasion of Sol should be expected within a year, two at the most. The invasion of the Alpha Centauri system cost the Jung more than a few ships. And intel suggests that it will take them awhile to reinforce their forces enough to be able to mount an overwhelming invasion of Earth. As you know, the Jung rule with fear more than anything else. And overwhelming victory in any campaign is of paramount importance to them.

Questions began to pop into the minds of the bridge staff. What were they going to do? What about their families? They had all heard rumors about what the Jung did to those they ruled. And why they had left port so early, before they were even fully armed?

The captain expected such concerns from his crew, and intended on answering them as best he could. “We have been sent here, to the orbit of Jupiter, to test an experimental drive system that Fleet Command hopes will give us a significant tactical advantage over the Jung. If this prototype proves successful and we are able to install it into the rest of the ships in time, we might stand a real chance of saving the Earth.”

The captain now had everyone’s undivided attention, as their hope hung on his every word. “Doctors Karlsen and Sorenson from special projects are in charge of this test, so I will let them explain further.” The captain motioned to Doctor Karlsen to take over as he stepped aside.