Voyage to Enlil: Log 4

Landing Site, Northern Hemisphere
Planet Jaffa II
Jaffa Star System

I was practically steaming by the time I finished my dinner. I’d meant to sleep on my reaction to the massacre at the wildcatter camp, but my patience failed when I passed Hadrian on the way to my office.

“Sanon,” I said, “with me.”

The Major fell in and I detoured to the operations center. Moara was already there along with Lin, both of them poring over the survey data that Tannehill and I had brought back.

Evidently my feelings were an easy read because Moara greeted me with a wave to join him at the table and the words, “I’m guessing you’re not here to talk about options to exploit the gold deposits, Captain?”

“Very much not,” I confirmed. “I want to talk about options to give Ecliptic a black eye.”

“I thought the plan was to avoid confrontation with them and jump away,” he said.

“Plan’s changed. I’m pretty sure they wiped out those miners because they didn’t want witnesses to the ambush they set up. I’m not all right letting that go.”

Lin, to her credit, tried to be the voice of reason. “There’s no way to know that, dusty. Wildcatting is high risk, and those two knew what they were getting into.”

“Maybe,” I acknowledged, “but it doesn’t feel right just cutting and running for Delta Vulpes. Besides, who’s to say they won’t just be waiting for us there, too? We need to give them a punch in the mouth to convince them to back off.”

“It might be too late for that,” Moara said. “By now, they’re aware of our presence and likely sending reinforcements. It won’t be a cakewalk making it from here to Jaffa IV, and even if we do we’re sure to be intercepted in orbit.”

“I may have a solution to that problem,” Hadrian said.

“You’ve been stewing on this all day, haven’t you?” I asked.

She nodded slowly. “So, Ecliptic is probably expecting us to jump away as soon as we can do so safely, right? We’ll give them what we want, and they’ll chase after us to Delta Vulpes.”

“I’m not sure how this accomplishes what we want,” I prodded.

“That’s the think, we don’t jump to Delta Vulpes. We jump to Copernicus Minor, 11 light years from here. It’s a short enough jump we can respool the drive fairly quickly, then we jump back into the orbit of Jaffa IV. We make a fast orbital insertion and raid the base before Ecliptic can respond. You give them a nice bloody nose and I get a chance to wipe those data systems, then we bug out of there before they can call in help.”

“Sounds a bit… kinetic for our operating profile,” Moara said.

I checked my Chronomark. “It’s 1911 UTC. The grav drive should be safe to jump in another seven hours. You’ve got until then to come up with an alternative. In the meanwhile, plot the jump calculations for Copernicus Minor.”

Captain’s Log, June 26th, 2330. I’ve concluded that we need to take retaliatory action against Ecliptic. While I don’t believe it will end their harassment of Constellation, a show of force should serve as a deterrent against brazen confrontations of the sort we experienced on arrival in the Jaffa star system. In the absence of an alternative solution from Commander Moara, I’ve elected to go with Major Sanon’s plan for a switchback jump from Copernicus Minor.

I took a moment to take in the landscape a final time before making my way to the command module. I’d really hoped to have more time to explore Jaffa II, especially after witnessing the lush ecosystem of the northern forest belt, but even after a night’s rest the fate of the slaughtered miners was eating at me and something had to be done.

Normally I’d let Sam handle takeoff and the subsequent grav jump, but I needed to do something hands-on. So I relieved him for the moment and settled into the command chair.

“Any tracking on Ecliptic ships in orbit?” I asked.

Sam shook his head. “Nothing we can see, but the strong magnetosphere may be interfering with detection.”

“Alright. Are the jump coordinates for Copernicus Minor laid in?”

“Affirmative,” he said. “We’ll emerge at the rocky moon of the only planet. Grav drive recharge time is fixing to be five hours.”

“Perfect.” Flipping the intercom switch I said, “all hands, strap in for launch. Lift-off in five.”

Once we’d left the planet behind, reports started coming in from the ops center. “Sensors reading clear, Captain,” Moara said. “No Ecliptic ships in the vicinity.”

“Let’s not give them a chance to change that,” I said. “Jazz, report grav drive status.”

“Capacitors are fully recharged, Captain,” she said. “Course plot looks good, ready to jump on your command.”

“All hands, jump stations.” Then I turned to Sam at the copilot station and told him, “execute grav jump.”

After the momentary kaleidoscope flash of transit, Copernicus Minor I-b filled the viewscreen along with a small field of rocky debris captured in the Lagrange point.

“Grav jump complete,” Jasmine reported. “No warnings on the board, starting drive recharge procedure.”

“Nothing too exciting on the moon,” Sam reported. “0.5 G, thin methane atmosphere. Reading large deposits of iron and alkanes in the equatorial belt.”

“Sam, you have the conn,” I said as I relinquished the pilot’s seat, “plot for orbital insertion and monitor for any unexpected contacts while we recharge the drive.”

“No landing?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Not this time. I want to jump back to Jaffa as soon as the drive’s charged. No sense taking the time to land when we have such a short excursion window.”

Now with a few hours to kill, I decided to track down Tannehill and put to rest any questions she had about what she’d seen during our excursion on Jaffa II. I found her taking inventory of our medical supplies and decoded not the beat around the issue.

“So, I bet you’ve got questions.”

I think I startled her a little, but it only took her a moment to regain her composure.

“I… that’s not something you see every day. You just vanished into thin air. How did you do it?”

I’d been thinking about this since I had to use my power in front of her. It was too early for Constellation to know about the temples and their effect on people who visited them. Vladimir needed to discover the temple on Procyon III first, or else any explanation I gave to them would be as good as unraveling the whole mystery before they were ready.

But Tannehill wasn’t one of the old hands – I’d recruited her for this mission and I thought I could veer a little closer to the truth than otherwise.

“I want to start by telling you that this information is not to be shared with anyone else. Understood?”

She nodded. “Top secret, got it.”

“Alright,” I started. “Did you get a chance to visit the Lodge before we all left for Narion?”

“I did, though just for a quick tour. It’s a beautiful building.”

“And you saw the artifacts we’re collecting?”

She nodded again.

“What I can tell you about what you saw is that its linked to our research into the artifacts. We’re keeping the information very close… it’s too dangerous for this information to get out prematurely.”

“So… this is like some ‘ancient aliens’ stuff? Lost technology?”

“Something like that,” I dissembled. “I wish I could tell you more, but frankly Constellation doesn’t really understand it either. Not yet. So for now I just need you to know that we’re working on it and it needs to stay very close-hold. Are you OK with that?”

Tannehill seemed to think on it for a moment before saying, “yes, that makes a lot of sense. Does this have to do with why the mercenaries are targeting you?”

“Yes, but that’s all I can say on that.”

“Fair enough,” she conceded. “But now that I’ve been read in, I want to contribute something to this research.”

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but I appreciated where she was coming from. “No promises,” I said, “but if we need an MD on the research team, you’ll be the first person I interview.”

With the awkward conversation taken care of, I took a walk through the ship before I settled in for a few hours on the observation deck. The Lagrangian debris field didn’t offer much in the way of valuable resources, but it made for an impressive sight. Under other circumstances, I would have liked to take some samples, but organizing a spacewalk had the same problems as making a landing – there wasn’t time.

I made sure everyone got a meal in during the wait, and talk through how the mission would go down. Hadrian and I would go in to wipe any sensitive records off the computer core, while Sam, Heller, Lin, Barret, and Vasco secured the landing zone. The rest of the crew would stay onboard and warn us about any incoming threats. If necessary, they’d life for orbit to avoid getting stuck on the ground, but hopefully this would be a fast in-and-out job. The goal was to complete Hadrian’s mission and deter Ecliptic from getting too frisky with us in the future, not to wreck the whole base.

By then, the grav drive had recharged and we settled in to action stations. Sam took the helm while the ground party suited up and checked their weapons. Jaffa IV had a thin CO2 atmosphere, so we wouldn’t be bound by the same kind of restrictions we had to deal with on the system’s second planet.

“Nice jump,” Sarah said as the engine spooled down, “we’re right on target.”

“OK, Sam, begin descent on Vulture’s Roost. No reason to give them any more time to react than necessary.”

“Aye, Captain,” he said, and I felt a distinct nudge as the main engines fired up.

The base was sprawling, built into a cliff side in a way that would largely hide it from orbital scans. There was at least one observation area with a clear view of the landing zone, so we didn’t waste any time getting our landing party deployed to secure the pad.

“Any final advice?” I asked Hadrian as we checked our weapons.

“Just the usual – go in fast, don’t give them time to react. We reach the core, wipe all the storage, then bug out before they can bring in reinforcements to pin us down.”

“Good enough for me,” I admitted. “Let’s demonstrate to Ecliptic why they should be getting involved with Constellation.”

I was just about to say ‘this is too quiet’ as we pushed into the oddly empty facility when we spotted a pair of guards. I tagged one with a snap shot from my pistol, but the other one dove for cover. From that point forward, it was a running firefight for me and Hadrian.

Fortunately, we were both well armed and well protected, and the two of us managed to stay mobile and keep out of any dead ends or crossfires.

At least, that’s how it went until we found ourselves in the casino. Definitely a new addition to the base as it took Hadrian as much by surprise as it did me, but it was undoubtedly a casino. And when the shooting stopped we’d managed to make quite a mess of the place.

“I don’t think this is where we were supposed to go,” I said, wincing in pain from a lucky shot that had breached my suit. Fortunately, it seemed to be a flesh wound, but Hadrian still checked me out and administered a medpack injection.

“No,” she said, surveying the carnage, “we were definitely not supposed to go here. I think we might have just wiped out a significant portion of the Ecliptic command structure… these are pretty senior officers”

“Well, that’ll definitely take care of the ‘deter them from bothering us’ part, but we still need to find the computer core.”

“No way,” Hadrian said, “you need the doc to look at that wound. We’ve done enough already.”

I was touched by her concern, but juiced up with the medpack I’d be fine for a while. “Not yet, let’s make a final sweep of the facility. If we don’t find anything in 15 minutes we’ll pull the plug.”

We didn’t find the computer core, but we seized a truly prodigious amount of contraband. Unfortunately, that extra 15 minutes was enough time for a patrol ship to drop down practically right on our heads and disgorge reinforcements.

Very typical of my mutually cursed and blessed luck, it was running away from those reinforcements that found us stumble right into the command center. We didn’t have much time – a few minutes at most, but I covered the entrance while Hadrian did her best to purge the computer system.

“I think that’s the best we’re going to get,” Hadrian said, “let’s bug out.”

I didn’t require any further convincing – the emergency injection was starting to wear off and I was feeling highly motivated to leave. After tossing a grenade towards a cluster of fuel silos I’d noticed during our retreat, we dashed back towards Intrepid.

Ecliptic wasn’t quite done with us though – they made one last attempt to head us off right before the landing pad, and we had to blast our way through. I got winged again, but it wasn’t immediately clear to me how bad the wound was.

The rest of the shore party had held the landing pad, but as soon as they saw us they started to fall back into the ship. Once the airlock slipped closed behind me and Hadrian, she didn’t wait for me to give the order.

“Go, go, go, immediate lift!” Sanon called into the intercom, and almost immediately I could feel the ship kick as Sam started our burn for orbit.

It was at that point, as I pulled off my helmet, that I realized I was having a hard time breathing.

“Aw, shit,” Hadrian muttered. “Medic!” she called ahead as she dragged me towards the infirmary.

To be continued…