The Pathfinder Project (33 page)

“
We’ll be right there
Captain
,” he heard the Colonel promise.

“Well,” Kaufield said, taking a
quick appraisal of Mary’s concerned expression. “This has turned out to be one
damned depressing day so far, hasn’t it?”

THE PATHFINDER PROJECT

Jack Dandridge waited
helplessly, standing next to a crowd of concerned civilians and two armed
marines. At least twenty other people were tightly crowded together with him in
a lift currently rising from passenger level four to the third level above
them. The usually quick trip seemed to take an eternity and he wasn’t exactly
dealing with the stress too well.

“
First
I find out this
ship has a Chapel built specifically for losers,” he stated snidely. “Then I’m
told there’s a Brotherhood undercover agent living next door to me… and
now
we’re being boarded by an unknown alien species. What the hell
else
can
go wrong on this ship?” He noticed the odd looks from some of the equally
scared passengers surrounding him but – as usual – he didn’t care. The door
opened and everyone hastily exited onto the third passenger level.

“Out, out,
out
!” one of
the marines shouted. “We’ve got another load of people waiting down below.
Move
your ass!
” He grabbed Dandridge by the collar and shoved him out the door.
Jack turned around angrily to give the marine a piece of his mind but suddenly
landed flat on his behind as he was unexpectedly bowled over by someone running
into
the elevator.

“
Down
!” Thomas Roh
shouted, pointing at the floor. “Go down
now!
I’ve got to get to the Lab
wing… the safety of the entire ship
depends
on it. I swear to God.” One
of the marines looked at him with dismay, so Thomas firmly held up the Council
patch that he had hastily grabbed on the way out of his quarters.

“You want to go down…
there
?”
Dandridge asked, looking up from the deck with astonishment. He picked himself
up and silently watched Thomas in disbelief until the lift doors slid closed,
separating him from the young scientist and the pair of marines.

Inside the elevator one of the
marines turned to Thomas. “We’ll take you down but we have orders to evacuate
all of the passengers from down there. So if you change your mind and want to
come back up you’re going to be out of luck. We can’t wait for you.”

“I’m
not
coming back
up,” said Thomas determinedly. “One way or another, I’m going to get to the Lab
wing.”

The instant the door snapped
open he and the marines stepped out of the elevator car. The last group of
people began moving into it and the two marines watched them carefully, weapons
held at the ready. Thomas was already gone – running full speed down the
corridor, ignoring the moving sidewalks as he pulled up next to a crowd of
marines setting up barricades and taking up concealed positions inside some of
the still-open doors to passenger quarters.

“
Hey
, you can’t go down
there!” one of the marines said, grabbing Thomas by the left shoulder. “It’s
quite possible there will be enemy troops boarding us any minute.”

“Corporal Henderson… right?”
Thomas asked, recognizing him. He watched the man nod and pointed to the
distant end of the corridor. “I have information vital to the survival of this
ship.” Again he held up his Council ID. “I don’t need any crap from anybody but
I do have to get to the Lab wing. I’ll explain everything later but for now
please
get out of the way
!”

Henderson glanced at the man
next to him. “Private, you and Jacobs escort this man to the Lab wing
immediately. Make sure he gets there safely!”

“Getting there isn’t going to
be
the problem,” the Private said nervously as he, Jacobs, and Thomas began
sprinting down the corridor at top speed. “If we get boarded, coming back
here
to you guys in one piece is going to be the tough part!”

The Corporal watched them go,
reminding himself to smack both of his men on the head later. The kid
out-sprinted them easily, leaving them quickly behind as he ran all out. It’s
true that the two marines were carrying heavy equipment and watching for signs
of armed intrusion, but still… he couldn’t pass on this opportunity to
embarrass them at least a little bit.

Thomas continued running, his
thoughts returning once more to Glen’s statement about the enemy having
‘jamming capability’ in use against their CAS system. It hadn’t made sense, so
he had continued using his Quorum clearance to monitor all critical ship’s
communications when suddenly everything had clicked. He knew exactly what to
do… all he had to do was get to the Lab wing before disaster struck.

In the Lab wing Glen and the
rest of the Laboratory staff were getting ready to reset the CAS system to see
if they could reboot and try once more to establish a viable PTP window. He
still had all available cameras trained on the sinister alien shuttle lurking
right next door, carefully studying the enemy ship as it continued winding its
grappling cables tighter and tighter, pulling closer to the
Pathfinder
with each passing minute.

Through the tiny window ports
of the enemy vessel they could see dozens of dark-uniformed troops wearing
black helmets. All of them were square-jawed and held huge rifles while waiting
patiently until the opportunity to board the starship and wreak havoc arrived.
He could see sparks dropping in several of those portholes, indicating that
they already held welding torches active. As soon as contact was made with the
Pathfinder
’s
hull, they would begin cutting through.

Glen was still working
furiously to prevent that from happening when a beep sounded on the console
behind him. Turning, he noticed a large red flash from the E-Note icon on the
work station’s screen, indicating that his terminal had just received a top-priority
message. It caught his attention because he had never received something
flagged with that
much
security clearance before. Hurriedly, he opened
the note and read:

Glen… Ship’s CAS difficulty
is NOT due to jamming by enemy. Do NOT, repeat, do NOT reset CAS system. On my
way down. Stand by… Thomas

P.S. George says hi!

Glen laughed out loud, mostly
from absolute frustration and was wondering what to do next when he heard the
hatchway behind him opening. Thomas burst through the door followed closely by
two armed marines, and he sighed with relief. The young scientist was gasping
for breath but immediately pointed at the image of the enemy ship.

“Get clearance from the
Captain…” he said, inhaling deeply. “So we can use the CAS arm as a
weapon
against them!”

Glen thought carefully about
Thomas’ statement for five seconds and then realized what the kid was talking
about. He nodded with understanding and opened a direct Comm-link to Kaufield.
In the background of the sound crackling out of the speaker, he could hear the
Captain issuing orders.

“
Yes, launch both shuttles
!”
Kaufield was saying. “
Load pilots and gun crews only. Have both ships use
their rail guns to provide covering fire for the F-175 squadron
.”

“Captain, this is Glen,”
Fredericks interrupted, grinning for the first time since the crisis began.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, but Thomas is here and has suggested that we use the
retractable CAS arm to break the grappling cables on the shuttle next to us.
It’s designed to extend a lot farther from the ship than we normally deploy it
to keep unpredictable radiation away from the hull during emergency
situations.” He shook his head at the complete simplicity of the plan as they
continued to watch the enemy drift closer. “I’m certain this will work.”

“
Then do it
,” the
Captain ordered.

“It’s not going to go well for
them,” Glen warned. “Our hull is insulated, but the arm itself is hot. Just to
let you know, there could be a
lot
of casualties on their end…”

“Take whatever action is
necessary to keep the enemy from boarding the
Pathfinder,” commanded
Kaufield decisively. “
That is an order
.”

Glen glanced over at Thomas who
was already tapping commands into one of the work stations. “I’ll handle the
CAS arm,” he said as he watched the kid type. “I would imagine you’re already
working on the instability problem with our PTP window.”

“It’s the dark matter that’s
causing the problem,” Thomas said absently as he continued furiously typing
commands into his computer. “For some reason there’s a lot
more
of it in
this area than we’ve found in previous locations. We’ve been trying to figure
out how to more quickly identify and chart it down in the Observatory without
any luck so far. Trust me; the extra mass from the dark matter in this region
of space is what’s messing up our computer model, not some sort of jamming
field from the enemy ships.”

“Dark matter,” Glen growled. “I
really
hate
that stuff, you know!”

Thomas momentarily stopped
typing and took the time to glance at his colleague, smiling widely. “You
listened to me! The CAS system is still on-line! An E-Note actually beat me
down here for once, didn’t it?”

“There’s a first time for
everything,” commented Glen as he began fully unfolding the thin metal arm
beneath the
Pathfinder
’s hangar bay. Normally they kept the arm at
minimum safe distance but it quickly extended as soon as Fredericks activated
its remote control mechanism. The long arm swiveled out to starboard and
suddenly he could see brilliant white flashes on the enemy shuttle’s hull. The
white-hot singularity at the tip of the arm continued to burn furiously. “It’s
a piece of cake from here,” Glen said, noticing idly that he was talking to
himself. He folded the outer length of the arm upward and then raised it
between the
Pathfinder
and the approaching enemy. With that done he
swept the arm from ship’s stern toward the bow, all the way along the length of
its fuselage. The flickering light from the still active singularity bathed the
alien shuttle in a sinister glow, making it appear even more intimidating.

“Surprise, suckers!” he heard
Thomas shout.

They both watched the images of
the grappling cables on the monitors in front of them snap instantly as the arm
continued to move gradually toward the front of the starship and touched them
each, one by one. Off the top of his head, Glen could think of at least ten
substances that would hold up against the hot jolt of current that currently
radiated along the CAS arm. Fortunately for them, the cables were composed of
normal metallic ores and thus also functioned as a near-perfect conductor. The
entire enemy shuttle briefly lit up with white flashes of electricity as each
cable split.

“We’re separated, Captain. You
can have Adam begin moving us away!”

“
Acknowledged
,” the
Captain replied. At almost the same instant they heard a pair of familiar
sounding thuds against the hull.

“Scratch that,” Adam said.
“There’s still somebody alive and kicking over there, and they’re not giving
up. They’ve just fired two more grapplers at us.”

“Our
hull is insulated, you
should expect that at least some of theirs would be
,” growled Kaufield. “
Get
that enemy piece of junk off my ship, Glen
!”

“Working on it,” he said,
adjusting the targeting mechanism on the arm. He swung it back down below the
enemy ship and raised it slowly up until it was within inches of touching their
hull. The powerful flickering singularity immediately melted through metal while
Glen used the control system on his work station to drag the tip of the CAS arm
backwards along the bottom of the enemy ship. They watched on their monitors as
section after section of the ship depressurized. Several internal explosions
rocked the shuttle and he noticed bodies and pieces of glowing debris flying
into space. He finished up by repeating the initial maneuver, cutting them loose
from the two newly-fired grappling cables. They watched with satisfaction as
the enemy ship dipped helplessly forward and began to drift slowly away,
completely powerless.

“There’s a very good reason we
keep that singularity extended away from our own ship,” grinned Thomas with a
nod.

“We’re free again Captain,” he
said. “Unless they transit more shuttles next to us, that is. And the next time
they’ll try and take the CAS arm out first…
that
will strand us here.”

“
You let me worry about that
,”
the Captain replied firmly. “
Just get our transit capability back and be
ready for action as soon as we recover all support craft
.”

“We’re already on it,” Thomas
promised.

*    
* * *     *

On the command deck, Dennis
continued to issue orders. “Hangar deck, this is Kaufield. Place six more
fighters on active standby and have them ready to launch through the starboard
tubes on my order.” He heard the acknowledgement and quickly reviewed the
motion sensor screen in front of him. The first shuttle was no longer a threat,
but the other two transports had moved in closer to try their own luck. One
flanked them to port this time, the other flashed out of PTP directly beneath.
Obviously the enemy to port was hoping to link up with them as the first vessel
had while its counterpart moved close enough for a shot at the CAS wand.

Adam didn’t have to be told –
he continued to maneuver the
Pathfinder
away from the initial attack
point, rolling the large starship on its side as he did so. As they moved away
with their vulnerable point temporarily protected one of the shuttles ignored
the chaotic, ill-aimed fire from its attackers and trained its rail guns on the
enemy beneath them. They quickly shot the unprepared ship full of holes… the
few lights it had went instantly dark. The other enemy troop transport quickly
began backing off as the shuttle immediately turned its attention, and blazing
guns, in their direction.