Empire of Bones (12 page)

“That’s good, Charlie. Get to work nailing things down about our new location.”

He killed the circuit. “Zia, what can you tell me about the flip point?”

She studied her console. “It looks like it did in the probe scans. Obviously the trip through was a lot rougher than we normally see. It’s closer in to the system primary than usual, too. About the orbit of Avalon. The star looks a little dimmer and smaller than Avalon’s, so the habitable zone is probably smaller. I don’t have any more information on possible planets, but our location seems to be clear of debris.”

“What about that distress beacon?”

“I’m picking it up loud and clear. I have a direction, but I’m unsure how far away it is. We’d need to move perpendicular to it for a little ways so I can triangulate. I can tell you that it’s outside our orbit, so it’s not a habitable world.”

“Let’s wait until everyone can move around first. Now that we’re safely here, let’s recover.”

It took about ten minutes for the worst of the dizziness to fade. Kelsey seemed to be recuperating a little more slowly, but she had far less experience with flips than his crew did.

“What happened?” she finally asked him.

“That smaller flip point must mean it’s a more difficult ride, apparently. We won’t know for sure until the science teams get here. Zia, load the drone with all our scanner data and append a warning that it’s a bad transition. We don’t want them worrying for too long. Send it once you’re done.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Bridge, this is operations.”

“Mertz here. What have you got?”

“We’re still working on the system data, but I have a rough estimate on our location relative to known space. You know how Doctor Cartwright bet it would be a pretty short range hop?”

“Is it?”

Graves chuckled. “I hope you took him up on that bet, because we’re at least five hundred light years away from where we started.”

Jared felt his eyes widen. “That’s preposterous. The longest known flip is less than two hundred.”

“Not anymore.”

They were further away from known space than the new Empire was across. That counted the previously explored, but unclaimed space.

“Thanks, Charlie. Let us know when you have anything else for us.”

“Right. Operations out.”

“Pasco, take us on a perpendicular course from the distress beacon. I want to know how far away it is.”

Ten minutes passed as they shifted position. Doctor Stone reported in that a dozen people had come with exceptionally bad nausea. It looked like Kelsey wasn’t the worst hit. Stone expected them all to recover shortly.

Once he finished talking to the doctor, Zia called out to him. “I have a rough range to the distress beacon, Captain. It’s about three hours away at moderate acceleration. I don’t see anything at that location so it’s probably small. Nothing showing on the gravitic scanners.”

“We’ll go after it once
Best Deal
arrives and is ready to travel. After all this time, a few hours more won’t matter.”

He brought them back close to the flip point and they waited.

Without warning, the empty space inside it wasn’t empty anymore.
Best Deal
popped into existence half a dozen kilometers away. Zia reported it looked good from the outside so Jared had her hail them.

Their response time was long enough to worry him, but Captain Keller finally answered. “Wow. That is the worst thing I’ve ever felt.”

Jared chuckled in sympathy. “Agreed. Get a status on your people and get back to me. We have a team standing by if you need medical assistance.”

In the end, it took almost two hours to get the freighter ready to move under her own power again. Luckily, they also had no serious issues with the crew. Everyone made the flip in one piece.

Jared was about to order them to set course for the distress beacon, but a priority call from Doctor Cartwright made him pause.

“Captain,” the scientist said, “we may have a problem.” The older man looked like he’d taken a ride in a centrifuge. His skin was almost grey.

“What kind of problem, Doctor?”

“A detailed scan of the flip point shows instability. The gravitic field almost looks like a slowly spinning vortex. A whirlpool.”

“That’s not normal?”

The older man shook his head. “Absolutely not. I’ve never seen anything like it before. The motion was too subtle for the probe to pick up. I’d have sounded the alarm if I’d had any inkling about it.”

Jared felt his gut tighten. “An alarm about what?”

Cartwright shrugged. “I’m not exactly certain, but anything this different from the norm is of worth noting. I suspect that the rotating gravitic field is what caused such intense disorientation. While concerning, that isn’t my biggest worry. The field is weak. Even the other end of this flip point has a normal strength field, though it is smaller. Not so here. This end is only half the strength I would’ve expected.”

“What might that mean, Doctor?”

“I don’t know,” he said a bit crossly. “Perhaps nothing. The flip back might be worse than the one to get here. Perhaps the flip back won’t work at all.”

Jared’s heart froze. “Not at all? The probes made it back without any issue.”

“The probes are tremendously smaller than our ships. I’m only hypothesizing and that is the worst case.”

“What would be the results of a failed flip? Would the ship go part way and break up? Be destroyed on the spot?”

“Doubtful. The most likely outcome is that the ship doesn’t go anywhere at all. The gravitic field could be too weak to open for a ship from this end at all. If so, then you’d hit the button and a lot of nothing would happen.”

That was better than blowing up. “Thank you, Doctor. We’ll figure this out shortly, so keep your scanners on the flip point. I want to know as much as possible when the time comes.”

He closed the connection and called Graves. “I want all non-essential personnel shifted over to
Best Deal
. Transfer any critical supplies as well. We’re going to make the transition back over to be sure we can go home.”

Jared turned his attention to Kelsey. “You’re going over to
Best Deal
with every single person I can do without. I’ll log your objection, but if this ship doesn’t come out the other side, I want you here with the rest finding another way home. They’ll need you a lot more than I will.”

He expected her to argue, but she nodded. “Of course, Captain. No objection.”

In the end, they shifted more than three quarters of the crew over to
Best Deal
. The skeleton crew left on board was just enough to operate the ship. The marines objected to him ordering them off the ship, but this wasn’t one of those situations where they could do much good. He manned the bridge alone.

Jared moved the ship back to the center of the flip point and signaled
Best Deal
that they were transitioning. He took a deep breath and activated the flip drive. The graphs showed the drive peaking, but nothing else happened.
Best Deal
still sat right there on his scanners.

They were trapped.

Kelsey waited on
Best Deal
until everyone else had returned to
Athena
, taking the last flight back. The loss of their way home had hit everyone hard. She still couldn’t get her head around it. Too many shocks to her system, she supposed.

She listened to the scientists hashing out theories while she waited for her departure time, but except for using bigger words, they were saying the same thing as the Fleet officers. They didn’t know what had happened. Not really.

Sure, they knew the flip point was defective, but not why. They’d be tearing apart the science behind everything for years without ever knowing what made these things tick, she suspected. The bottom line was that they were stuck until they found another flip point leading back to known space.

She pointed that out to them. The old Empire had gotten here somehow. If it didn’t use the defective flip point, then there had to be at least one more in this system.

That sent the scientists scurrying to the scanners. They shot probes in every direction, including toward the distress beacon.

The crew of
Athena
was busy when she finally got back, so she retreated to her seat on the bridge and sat quietly. After a while, they seemed to forget she was there. That was just fine by her. She had plenty to think about. Particularly Carlo Vega’s death.

She had no idea why some unnamed person had killed her mentor, but his death didn’t seem like an accident. What could motivate someone to murder him, though?

She’d asked some questions while she was on
Best Deal
, but gathered no new answers. She wasn’t exactly an investigator. Someone else would need to track down the person or persons behind the attack.

Lieutenant Anderson eventually reported the probe going toward the distress beacon had picked up a ship. Jared sat up a little straighter. “What can you tell me about it?”

“Just that it’s a ship. We’re too far away to get any more details.”

“Ramirez, confer with
Best Deal
and have her follow us at her best speed. Bump us up to full speed.”

“Aye, sir.”

When they finally had a visual, the tiny speck on the screen could’ve been a smudge for all Kelsey could tell. Light was a little dim this far from the primary. She watched it with intense interest as the probe drew closer.

To think, they were about to see a ship of the Terran Empire at its heyday. It was obviously in one piece and had some kind of power. The thought of what they could learn staggered her.

The dot slowly resolved itself into a tumbling shape. It looked a little like a toy spaceship.

Lieutenant Anderson spoke up. “We’re close enough to get some relative size data, Captain. That ship is significantly larger than
Athena is
. It’s larger than the biggest ship in our fleet, though not by a tremendous amount. Perhaps one class larger than a heavy cruiser.”

“Interesting,” Jared said. “A battlecruiser?”

The ship on the screen grew slowly larger until Kelsey could see the hull clearly. It was spinning as well as turning end over end, but it appeared intact. The value of the find was immeasurable. Even though the interior was in all likelihood wrecked, they could still learn so much just by studying what remained.

“The drone is in station-keeping mode,” Anderson reported. “I’m recording the exterior visual as it turns. I should have a complete picture in a minute.”

“Any sign of battle damage?” Jared asked.

“There’s something back in the engineering section. Not a rupture, though. I’m putting it on screen.”

The view of the spinning derelict vanished, replaced by a still of the hull. A long gash had split the hull open. It looked like something had melted the metal.

“That’s beam damage,” Jared said.

“Beam damage?” Kelsey asked.

He turned his attention to her. “The records mention them. The old Empire had missiles similar to the ones we do, but they also had beam weapons. That’s something Fleet has been experimenting with for years. Unsuccessfully, so far.”

“Surface scan complete,” Anderson said. “There are several other areas with similar damage. Nothing on the scale of the breach in engineering, though.”

Kelsey shook her head. “Something like that could’ve cut this ship into blocks. Why isn’t it worse?”

Jared tipped his head toward the screen. “That ship had energy screens, if the old stories were correct. An enemy would have to be damned close or have done a lot of damage to the screens to get to the hull. It’s possible the crew surrendered and then abandoned the ship. With that kind of damage, I’d expect something like that. They probably activated the distress beacon so it could be located later. Then they never came back.”

“Do you think it’s a renegade Fleet ship?”

He shrugged. “We may never know. It’s kind of moot at this point.”

“Captain, I have a name for the derelict,” Anderson said. The image on the screen changed to show the bow of the ship. The large white letters spelled out her name.
Courageous
.

“I bet they were,” Jared muttered. “How long until we reach the wreck? Are you picking up a power source for the distress beacon?”

The woman checked her screen. “We’re about thirty minutes out. The probe is picking up indications of an operating fusion plant in the stern of the ship. It’s running at low levels and seems to be fluctuating in output.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“I’m not certain. That’s more a question for an engineer, sir.”

He nodded and rose to his feet. “Call the department heads to the conference room. Ambassador, would you care to join me?”

*

The conference room on
Athena
was a lot smaller than the one on
Best Deal
. Kelsey took the seat next to Jared and tried to stop her brain from racing in circles. A relic of the fabled Empire of old, smashed and ruined, but still far more advanced than they were. She ached to explore its secrets.

Jared rapped the table with his knuckles, quieting the chatter. “Let’s get started. The fusion unit over there is the biggest concern. Dennis, what can you tell me?”

Lieutenant Commander Baxter looked a lot more serious than when Kelsey had seen him last. She’d never guess at his questionable sense of humor if she’d met him now.

“The fusion plant is on the verge of failure. I’m astonished it lasted so long, frankly. The technology behind it must’ve played a role, but it was probably also at a very low output setting. Otherwise it’d have crashed before now.”

Jared nodded. “What do you mean by crash? Would it explode?”

“Ordinarily, I’d say no. Ours for example would trigger a safety interlock and shut down if they became unstable. However, the fluctuations we’re seeing tell me that any safety system has already failed. We need to kill that power unit as soon as possible. I want to get a team over there without any delay. We might have weeks or months, but we might only have hours.”