Chapter Three
The UN would prefer to deny it, but there are far more complicated issues regarding pirates and piracy than it allows its people to recognise. The pirates that appeared in the wake of the UN’s first attempt to assert its authority over the outer worlds were driven by a mixture of motivations, ranging from revenge to greed and the desire to set up new independent colonies. Despite the UN’s claims, there are hundreds of pirates known to be at large… and, owing to the difficulties of intercepting them, they may be at large for years to come.
“Ensign,” the Captain said, “prepare to take us out of the wormhole.”
I found myself tensing, again. I had practiced the manoeuvre endlessly in the simulators, under far worse conditions, but this was real. The memory of some of the more spectacular failures, where a single moment of inattention had cost me the simulated ship, lingered in my mind. I couldn’t help, but be aware that the Captain probably remembered them too. I had earned those demerits the hard way.
“Yes, sir,” I said, running my hand over the console. In theory, there’s no point in manning the bridge while the starship is in the wormhole, but the Captain insisted on having all stations manned at all times. We’d learned quickly that there was no such thing as enough practice and simulations. The First Lieutenant had drummed it into our heads often enough. “I have the Jump Drive online and ready to open the terminus.”
I didn’t understand the theory behind the Jump Drive — few people did, according to Lieutenant Hatchet — but we had practised enough so that I understood the practicalities of the wormhole it generated. It formed a link between our departure point and arrival point, but it also created a whole separate universe, containing nothing, but the starship. We had to open the wormhole terminus at the far end to escape. No one was quite sure what would happen if we didn’t, but no one felt that it was worth the risk of trying to find out.
“Excellent,” the Captain said, leaning back in his chair. I wasn’t fooled. I had respected the Captain from the start and the month since we had joined his crew hadn’t altered that opinion. He was watching me like a hawk. “Confirm arrival point.”
I winced inwardly. This was the tricky part. “Arrival point…confirmed,” I said, carefully. The Jump Drive was many things, but accurate it was not. “Terminus point confirmed as preset destination to within seven million kilometres.”
“Let’s see, shall we?” The Captain said. “Helm, take us out of Jump Drive.”
My display altered slightly as the wormhole terminus blossomed open in front of us, revealing stars for the first time in a week. The Captain’s course had given us four chances to practice egress from the wormhole, but this was the first time we had opened a wormhole in an inhabited star system. The UN safety regulations insisted that all wormholes had to be preset to locations within range of explored stars, but the stars we had used as waypoints were uninhabited. If something had gone wrong, we would have been stranded light years from any possible rescue.
“Sensors, confirm clear space,” the Captain ordered. The odds were astronomically against us coming out near another starship, or a planet, but he wanted to be sure. “Communications, transmit our IFF to System Command and inform them that we require a local space information download.”
“All sensors read clear, sir,” Muna said, from her position. “No contacts within active sensor range.”
The Captain keyed his armrest console. “All stations, stand down from emergence alert,” he ordered, calmly. There was no need, in theory, to go to emergence alert either, but the Captain ran a tight ship. The last week had included hundreds of drills, ranging from standard hull breach drills to counter-boarding drills. “Communications?”
“Signal sent, sir,” Roger said. We were several light minutes from the planet, so there wouldn’t be a reply quickly unless there was a starship or sublight spacecraft closer to our position. “No response as yet.”
“I thought not,” the Captain said, dryly. Roger flushed, slightly. The Captain didn’t shout, or lose his temper, but his tone spoke volumes. Roger had pointed out something that Captain had known for longer than Roger been alive. “Engineering?”
“Jump Drive powering down now,” Engineer Ivan Druzhkov said, his faint Russian accent echoing through the communications link. He was a gloomy fellow most of the time, except when he was working with his beloved engines. He also had a surprisingly large collection of model railway locomotives he’d built himself in his spare time. “The drive field is online and ready.”
“Good,” the Captain said. “Ensign Walker; plot us a course to Terra Nova and take us there, standard speed.”
“Aye, sir,” I said. I had already plotted out the course while Muna and Roger were going through their own motions, knowing that the Captain would ask for it. I hoped — prayed — that he was keeping a careful eye on it. I’d once accidentally rammed a planet during the simulations. Lieutenant Hatchet had been scathing. “Course laid in.”
The starship seemed to shiver slightly as she built up speed, heading towards the planet. It would take hours to reach Terra Nova in normal space, unless the Captain decided to open a wormhole to reach the planet quicker, but he didn’t seem to mind. There was no rush, apparently. The display was filling up now as passive sensors started to pick up hundreds of beacons right across the solar system, from small mining craft to massive bridge ships linking Terra Nova with the handful of colonies on the other worlds in the system. I had to remind myself that there was a time-delay in all of the reports. A spaceship could be light minutes from where the display insisted it was. The planet itself, of course, was surrounded with enough icons to form a small galaxy. Any colony world would have a growing space industry…
I frowned as some of the beacons resolved into IFF signals. There were a handful of other starships in the system, along with sublight gunboats and support craft, and most of them were hanging in orbit around Terra Nova. I couldn’t understand what I was seeing. I’d heard from Lieutenant Hatchet and the Senior Chief how desperately short of starships we were, so why were so many on station around Terra Nova? The mystery only deepened when I realised that the space stations were largely UN-built, instead of local construction…and that the Peace Force seemed to be controlling them. It was odd. Terra Nova didn’t even have a space cable, let alone an orbital tower. If was as if they didn’t want any connection with space at all.
Muna’s console bleeped an alarm. “Captain,” she said, “I’m picking up a distress signal, from the freighter Diamond’s Revenge.”
I looked up at the main display. A new icon had flashed into existence. “They’re reporting that they are under attack,” she said. “They’re requesting help.”
“Ensign Walker, bring up the Jump Drive and take us there,” the Captain ordered. I’d been caught by surprise and found myself struggling to plot out the course. The computers are supposed to assist us in working out the wormhole coordinates, but I’d already discovered that their help was strictly limited. “Open the wormhole.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, bracing for the inevitable reprimand. We’d all had a shot at being First Ensign since we’d boarded the starship, as we’d earned reprimands and demerits from the senior crew. I wasn’t going to be wearing the silver star again anytime soon. “Wormhole opening…now.”
This time, there was no point in standing down from Jump Alert. “All hands, this is the Captain,” the Captain said, as the wormhole closed behind us. It would be mere seconds before we reached my destination coordinates. I desperately hoped that they were close enough to the pirate ship to bring it to battle. If we were unlucky, they might not even be in the same star system. “All hands to battle stations, I repeat, all hands to battle stations.”