Ep.#6 - "Head of the Dragon" (The Frontiers Saga) (20 page)

“But you’re okay with using KKV’s to crack the planet in half,” Cameron countered, reminding him of a statement he had made during a previous discussion.

“I never really intended to use a KKV against Takara, Commander. However, the fact that we could might be enough to convince them to surrender.”

“Of course, sir.”

“How many jumps until we complete our mission on Ancot?” Nathan asked.

“We estimate two more jumps should get everything we can use off of Ancot. After that, we will need to stand down for a while and recharge the jump drive’s energy banks.”

“Will all our people be off Ancot by then as well?”

“No, sir. Lieutenant Commander Nash has requested that we keep a small force there long enough to finish scouring the facilities for possible intelligence. They’re still working on cracking the computer core at the garrison.”

“As long as we still have people on the surface of Ancot, I don’t want to be sitting in Darvano unable to jump back if they need help.”

“We’ll still have enough to jump back,” Cameron promised. “I told the helm never to make a jump without having at least a one-light year reserve of energy in the banks.”

“Good idea.”

“We can leave a jump shuttle there as well. That way they can not only send for help if needed, but they can also use it to evacuate if necessary.”

“We need to establish diplomatic relations with the leaders of Ancot,” Nathan announced as they ascended the ramp to the command deck. “They could prove to be an extremely valuable asset if we can convince them to join us.”

“Are you suggesting they join the alliance?”

“Actually, I wasn’t, but now that you mention it, that might not be a bad idea.”

“I’m not so sure that’s going to work, Nathan,” Cameron objected. “Tug said they were content with their situation within the empire. What makes you think they’d be willing to risk all of that?”

“I’m betting that, once they learn the truth about what is really going on out in the cluster and the Darvano system, they’ll realize that it’s the right thing to do.”

“And why would they believe us?”

“They won’t,” Nathan agreed, “but they might believe their own sons. Every one of them spent the last two months locked up in a holding camp on Corinair along with the rest of the crew of the Yamaro. They know what’s really going on. Maybe they’ll listen to their own sons.”

“You might want to check the crews of both the Yamaro and the Loranoi,” Cameron suggested. “Some of them might be from Ancot as well. They would know even more about the true state of the empire.”

“That’s an excellent idea, Commander.”

* * *

“Loki?” Tug inquired from the front seat of the interceptor. They had just come out of their jump, entering the system from just beyond its outermost uninhabited gas-giant.

“Sorry,” Loki apologized as he regained his focus. “Jump seven complete.” He scanned his instruments for a moment. “Position confirmed; we are now in the Juntor system. Course and speed are good. Shutting down all systems except for recon suite and passive sensors.”

“At our current speed, it should take us about twelve hours to finish our run.”

“Twelve point six four,” Loki corrected.

“I stand corrected,” Tug stated.

“Sorry. I guess after making so many close-in jumps for Captain Scott, I’ve become a bit overly precise in my navigational plots.”

“There’s no such thing as an overly precise navigator,” Tug insisted.

“Not according to Josh.”

“Josh has a different way of flying.”

“You’ve noticed.”

“Josh flies more by instinct than by instruments,” Tug explained. “Your piloting style is much different. You fly more by the numbers and the physics than by instinct.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“Not at all.”

“Josh always says that flying is something you should feel, not something you should calculate.”

“Josh lacks formal training. Many self-trained pilots say such things.”

“He is good, though.”

“Yes, he is. However, he lacks understanding of the forces that enable his vessels to do the things they do. When you understand how your ship works, you better understand what you can do with it.”

“And that makes you a better pilot?”

“In some ways, yes. It also makes you a safer pilot, and safer pilots tend to live longer, therefore becoming more experienced pilots.”

“Oh, I’m definitely a safer pilot than Josh.”

“I would be inclined to agree with you on that point.”

“Then why is it that Josh always ends up as pilot, and I end up as copilot or navigator?”

“You do not like such positions?” Tug asked, somewhat surprised.

“No, it’s not that. I like them fine. I’d just like to get my hands on the flight controls once in a while.”

“I suspect that Josh is given the pilot’s position on most occasions for two reasons:” Tug explained, “first, because they see the two of you as a team in which Josh is the pilot, and second, because you are always willing to take second seat to him.”

“So you’re saying I should demand more stick time?”

“It would not hurt,” Tug told him. “However, in the case of Captain Scott, there is another reason he put you in the navigator’s chair. He knows, as I do, that Josh would not be as good as he is without you with him.”

“Can you tell Josh that?”

“I suspect that he already knows,” Tug insisted.

Loki thought about it for a minute before speaking again. “How do you know that? About the captain, I mean.”

“I have come to know Captain Scott quite well. He, too, is an instinctive pilot, much the same as Josh.”

“Yeah, I heard that, but he did have training.”

“Yes, but his captain put Captain Scott and Commander Taylor together as a team because he knew that each would make the other better at their jobs. He knew that together, they would make an exceptional flight crew. I suspect Captain Scott sees the same potential in you and Josh.”

Loki was silent for several minutes as he monitored the recon suite. “You know, up until we left Haven, I had never been anywhere but my homeworld and Haven. Now I’ve been to half the systems in the empire.”

“Before you know it, you will have been to every world in the empire. I suspect that by the time you are my age, you will have been more places than you can imagine.”

“If we get out of this alive, you mean,” Loki responded.

“You must have faith.”

Loki smiled. “How do you do it?”

“How do I do what?”

“You’ve been fighting the Takarans for what, thirty years?”

“Something like that.”

“How do you keep fighting when you know that the odds are astronomically against you?”

“Like I said, you must have faith.”

“Faith in what?”

“Faith in yourself, faith in those you trust, faith that your cause is just, that it is worthy of succeeding.”

“Yeah, but you guys are fighting the entire Ta’Akar empire. It will take a miracle to defeat them.”

“A miracle… like the jump drive, perhaps?”

“That’s not a miracle, Tug. That’s just science.”

“That depends on your definition of the word. Is not the jump drive a miraculous piece of technology?”

“A miracle is something that has no explanation.”

“I prefer to define it as something that we previously did not believe to be possible, given our current understanding of the world around us.”

“By your definition, once it happens, it is no longer a miracle.”

“Only if you understand how it was possible.”

“So you’re saying you understand how the jump drive works?”

Tug laughed. “I did not say that. It is enough for me that others more qualified than I understand how it works. The physics involved are far beyond my level of understanding.”

“Do you think it’s a miracle that the Aurora arrived in the middle of the battle of Taroa inside the shields of the Campaglia?”

Tug’s smile quickly faded. “I have wrestled with that one for some time now.”

“Yeah,” Loki agreed, “that one’s not easy to figure out.”

“Nor is the coincidental name of her captain.”

“You don’t really believe he’s the guy in the legend, do you?”

“At first, I did not. Lately, however, I have had my doubts. I have seen him accomplish unbelievable feats, and I have seen him inspire thousands, if not millions, of people to rise up against an empire they believed to be unstoppable.” Tug sighed. “It is difficult, when faced with such evidence, to discount the possibility that Captain Scott
is
indeed the Na-Tan of legend.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Loki agreed. He stared out the canopy at the blackness of space for several minutes. He, too, had contemplated the unbelievable timing of the Aurora’s arrival, and her captain’s uncanny similarity to the Na-Tan described in the Legend of Origins. As a child, he had read the legends. His family was not a spiritual one, but then again, although the followers weren’t spiritual in nature either, even though they behaved that way. As a child, he had found the legends fascinating. As a young man, he had found them inconsequential. They were who they were, and from which rock they had all originally spawned made little difference in their daily lives. “Tug, mind if I ask you a personal question?”

“Go ahead.”

“How old are you?”

“Older than you might think,” Tug answered coyly.

“No, really. How old are you?”

“Old enough to know that it is time for me to take a well deserved nap,” he added, dodging the question yet again. “Wake me in four hours.”

“Yes, sir.” Loki checked the recon suite once again, as well as his passive sensors. The Juntor system was quiet as expected. There was nothing more than a mining facility on one of the barren moons of the gas-giant closest to the system’s tiny red dwarf star. Imperial patrols rarely visited the system, as its population was minuscule and its strategic value was just as negligible. However, it still needed to be reconnoitered, as it would be a good place to hide a few Takaran ships.

Satisfied that there was nothing of interest on his displays, he returned his gaze to the stars outside their canopy. Out there somewhere, more than a thousand light years distant, was the Earth he had read about as a child. The legends had described it as a place of incredible beauty and diversity. All his life, he had only known a history of about one thousand years. Now, a few more millennia had been added to that, and he longed to know more about the history of humanity. It was all out there, somewhere. He only hoped Tug was right, that someday, he would travel to many places. Perhaps even to Earth.

* * *

“Captain?” Cameron said, poking her head into Nathan’s ready room. Nathan had become accustomed to leaving the hatch open. Although there was little for him to do on the bridge, especially when they were moored at the docks inside Karuzara, he felt more comfortable being able to hear the voices of his bridge staff as they went about their work. Although most of his bridge staff was new, they had taken well to their new jobs, undoubtedly due to the incessant training by Commander Taylor, who now hailed him from the hatchway.

“Come in,” he told her, gesturing from his place behind his desk for her to enter.

Cameron entered the room, noticing that Nathan’s gaze had not left his monitor. “Interesting stuff?”

“On his recon flight through Takara, Tug outlined several possible battle strategies on his data pad. I guess he needed something to kill the time that wouldn’t increase his risk of detection.”

“Any good ideas?”

“They’re all good,” Nathan said. “They’re not anything too surprising or outlandish, but they are really detailed. He even includes pros and cons of each strategy, as well as a suggested order of battle, required resources, potential outcomes, even ways that the Ta’Akar would likely counter each strategy.” Nathan leaned back in his chair, finally taking his eyes off the screen. “The man has an amazing mind for this stuff.”

“Not exactly a molo farmer, huh?”

“Yeah. I mean, I know he was a pilot in the Takaran military at some point and that his training was in the Palee system, but this… this goes far beyond the kind of training you’d expect a stick jockey to have. This is war college stuff. I mean, he’s even got expected losses and stuff in there.”

Cameron reached for the monitor on Nathan’s desk. “Do you mind?”

“Please.”

Cameron began scrolling through the data, her expression changing to one of surprise which increased as she continued to scroll. “Wow, you weren’t kidding. Attack timings, ordnance lists, routes of ingress and egress, even exit strategies and potential political and cultural ramifications.” Cameron turned the screen back toward Nathan. “He did this all himself?”

“Apparently.”

“Has Jessica seen it?”

“She’s the one who gave it to me.”

“Well, I’ve seen stuff like this before,” Cameron told him. “I remember reading similar plans back at the Academy that came out of the war college. But those were prepared by groups of people, and it took them weeks, not by one guy sitting in a cockpit for thirty hours.”

“He has been fighting the empire for three decades, Cam. It stands to reason that he might have been developing such plans over time.”

“Still,” she said, “definitely not the work of a molo farmer.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Does this have you worried?”

“More like curious, really,” Nathan said. “I see something like this, and I can’t help but wonder what we do not know about Tug.”

“Maybe he did attend war college. Aren’t most of the Ta’Akar pilots of noble families? They would have the connections to get their son into such specialized training. I mean, you earned your upper level degree in history before you enlisted. Why would this be any different?”

“I guess you’re right,” Nathan concluded. “I suppose we should be thankful that he does have such expertise. That, combined with his understanding of the socio-political structure of the empire, makes him an extremely valuable asset for us.”

“Just as our jump drive makes us an extremely valuable asset for him,” she pointed out.

“True.” Nathan lost himself in thought for a moment before he remembered that Cameron had come to him. “What did you want to see me about?”