Far Space by Jason Kent

Author:Jason Kent [Kent, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2014-04-21T07:00:00+00:00

Star System 4576B

Far Space

“This is it, this is finally it!” James Monroe said. The mission diplomatic specialist turned his head from one side of his split screen display to the other. “The pulsar correlation is exact!”

Jennifer nodded as she hovered a pace back from the open table in the middle of the command room. She had run the study, knew the results.

“Looks like the squid database was useful after all,” Captain Charles Merck said. He tapped his US Naval Academy ring on the table. “It’s about time.”

Jennifer said nothing. She had come to dislike most of the crew almost as soon as they had embarked on this mission. When she had signed on to find an alien world, she had no idea the process would take nearly five weeks. After all, they had the database for the location and the wormhole indices that theoretically should have led directly here.

Kalvin Mason, the mission’s senior researcher, looked up from the display.

“Excellent job, Jennifer, excellent!”

Mason, the kind of academic you always hoped to get for an instructor or mentor but never seemed to find, was one of the few people Jennifer trusted on this trip. He was brilliant in his field of genetics but absolutely clueless on personal interactions. Jennifer loved the sweet man for his earnestness and enthusiasm anyway.

“Now maybe we can get a crack at those squid,” Tom MacGregor muttered. “Been stuck on this crate long enough.”

“That you will!” Mason said, missing the dripping tone of the comment. “That you will. And perhaps Quade will be able to tell us a little of their language.”

Jennifer glanced over at Quade Pierce, leaning back against the wall. She had not seen him do much of anything during the journey. Where did the people who put this mission together get the likes of Pierce and MacGregor anyway? They were the last two she wanted around when Monroe attempted first contact.

Jennifer had tried to pick Quade’s brain about the alien language. All they had to learn from were snippets of the ships log and some other, seemingly uncorrelated database they had recovered. He grudgingly shared what he knew. Jennifer found out rather quickly this was not much. As it turned out, Quade Pierce’s strong suit was actually computer programming. He had designed a program to collect, analyze and interpret the alien language. But he needed spoken samples to make it work properly.

When Jennifer found the complete archive of information from the alien ship had not been included in the data files, she approached Quade again. He did not know anything about any missing files. His preliminary program was based on the samples of the data he had been given and he had no reason to think her discovery would be of any help to him.

The man was worthless.

“So, when do we go down?” Rider Thuros asked. Stocky, built like a fireplug, Rider rounded out the short list of trusted friends on board. Unfortunately, the little geologist both seconded and ended the list of people Jennifer had been able to get along with during the trip.

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