Try as he might, Nathan could not hide his shock at the man’s threat. “Those people don’t even know we are here,” Nathan argued. “You couldn’t possibly-”
“I can, and I will. Make no mistake-”
“You’re bluffing.”
“Bluffing?” the Captain asked with that same puzzled look as before. “I’m afraid I’m not familiar with that term.”
The view screen suddenly switched back to the news broadcast from Corinair being fed to him by the Sig-Int staff. Nathan immediately activated his comm-panel. “Comms! What happened to the connection to the Ta’Akar ship?”
“The signal transmission was discontinued by the Ta’Akar, sir.”
As Tug and Jalea made their way along the raised walkway from the monorail platform to the main terminal at the spaceport, they could see numerous pillars of angry, black smoke rising from the city in the distance. The fires were obviously the result of the riots and other general panic that was taking place on the streets and pathways of the city. Although she did not say as much to Tug, she knew that the panic had been set into motion by the words spoken to the priest of the Order yesterday afternoon. She did not feel guilty, despite the fact that many people may have already suffered or even died as a direct result of her actions. Things were going exactly as she had hoped.
“Jesus,” Marcus exclaimed as he wheeled the crates full of supplies on board the shuttle. “Do you think they bought enough food?”
“Stop complaining,” Josh told him. “At least we won’t be eating any more molo.”
Just as they were loading the last of the supplies, Tug and Jalea came running across the tarmac.
“We must…depart…immediately,” Tug ordered, out of breath.
“What’s going on?” Loki asked.
“Yeah, what are all those fires we saw coming in?” Josh asked.
“Religious zealots,” Tug explained between breaths. “Fools, rambling on about salvation and the end of the world.”
“Bunch of idiots,” Marcus exclaimed. “I mean, who cares where we’re from? We’re here now. That’s all that matters.”
“We must go!” Jalea urged. Josh and Loki went back into the shuttle, climbing over the mounds of supplies filling their cargo bay in order to get to the cockpit. Tug and Jalea climbed up the ramp and took their seats near the massive aft hatch that doubled as a cargo ramp.
“Hey!” Marcus called out toward the cockpit as he ascended the ramp. “Whattaya think they’d all say if they knew the ship we’re crewing on is actually from Earth?” At the top of the ramp he took his seat on the opposite side from Tug and Jalea and put on his headset. “Let’s get the hell off this rock!” he called to Josh as he hit the button and start retracting the boarding ramp to close up over the rear opening.
“Light up the mains,” Josh ordered as he dropped into his seat.
“I’m on it,” Loki answered. He reached up over his head and started flipping switches in preparation to start the engines, but nothing was happening. “What the hell?”
“What’s wrong?” Josh asked.
“The mains are cycling over. I can’t get the turbines to light up.”
“Did you prime them first?”
“Of course I primed them first!”
“Oh shit,” Josh exclaimed as he noticed the flashing red display on the center data display console. “We’re locked out.”
“What? Why would we be-”
“Attention all vessels,” the voice came over the surface traffic control frequency. “This facility is on full operational lock down, by order of the Ta’Akar warship Yamaro. All flight crews will shut down their systems, disembark, and stand beside their ships.”
Loki looked at Josh as the message repeated. “Oh, we’re in so much trouble.”
CHAPTER 9
“Get this ship in the air!” Marcus shouted over the comms from the back of the shuttle.
“We can’t,” Josh responded. “We’re locked out. The whole facility is on lock down.”
“Then bypass the auto-flight system, you idiots!”
“You can’t bypass the auto-flight system, Marcus!” Loki argued. “It’s hardwired into the ship’s flight systems.”
“Not if someone un-hardwired it! Just flip the damn bypass switch, under the starboard console, all the way to the outboard edge. It’s a lockset switch. Just pull the toggle down and then flip it forward.”
Josh felt along the underside of his console, running his hand until he felt the switch. He pulled the toggle switch down, disengaging the toggle’s locking mechanism, and then flipped the switch forward. The flashing red display stopped flashing and suddenly changed to ‘Auto-flight Disengaged’. “That’s it! It worked!”
“Of course it worked,” Marcus muttered.
“How the hell did you know about that?” Loki asked as he fired up the engines.
“Who the hell do you think un-hardwired the damn thing?” Marcus bragged. “Now get us in the air!”
Moments later, the shuttle began to roll forward on its way to the flight line.
“What are you, idiots?” Marcus hollered. “Just take off from here!”
Josh felt pretty stupid for not thinking of that himself. After all, if they were going against a lockdown order, breaking the rules by taking off from the loading area instead of the flight line was the least of their worries.
The shuttle’s engines screamed as Josh applied full thrust, causing the ship to suddenly leap into the air. The cargo shuttle wasn’t pretty, but it was made to haul several tons of heavy rock and ore, so a few dozen crates of food and a handful of passengers was no trouble at all.
Nathan stormed onto the bridge from his ready room with Jessica hot on his heels.
“Contact!” Kaylah reported as he entered. “Just came up on passive. Transferring to tactical.”
Jessica stepped up to the tactical console along with Nathan. “It’s on the outer rim of the system,” she reported. “It’s decelerating. Based on its speed I’d say it dropped out of FTL at least five or ten minutes ago.”
“Got an ID?” Nathan asked, although he already knew the answer.
“Not yet. He’s too far out to ID using passive. And if we go active, we’ll give away our location.”
“Well I’m pretty sure we know who it is.” Nathan took in a deep breath and sighed. “General quarters,” he ordered calmly. “All hands to battle stations and prepare to get underway.”
“General quarters, aye, sir.”
“I’m pretty sure we’re going to need an escape jump pretty soon, Doctor,” he said to Abby as he moved to the helm to start prepping the ship for departure.
“Captain, we just finished hooking up the shuttle’s computer core to our jump system. We haven’t even run any simulations yet.”
“How long will it take you to unhook it?” he asked as he worked the helm console.
Abby looked at Deliza, who had done most of the work installing the new, improved computer core.
“An hour? But we’d still have to recalibrate your original core after that, so maybe ninety minutes?”
Abby turned to look at Nathan as he shot her a glance.
Nathan felt his heart sink. The jump drive was the one thing they had going in their favor in this part of the galaxy. And now there was a possibility that it wouldn’t work when he needed it most. But there was nothing he could do about it now. If he had them disconnect it, he wouldn’t be able to jump for over an hour. He seriously doubted they could remain hidden that long. And even if they did, Captain de Winter might become impatient and start laying waste to the surface of Corinair. He briefly considered getting the enemy warship to chase him, possibly buying time until they could jump. But he didn’t have linear FTL capabilities, which meant he couldn’t outrun the Ta’Akar warship for more than a few minutes. Once again, their fate was left to luck.
“Guess you’re gonna have to test it on the fly again, Doc.”
Abby felt as if she were turning pale, as a cold shiver went through her body. “I’m really getting tired of this,” she mumbled to herself as she began calculating an escape plot on the new system.