The Lost Starship by Vaughn Heppner

Author:Vaughn Heppner [Heppner, Vaughn]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Published: 2014-08-27T04:00:00+00:00

-23-

Captain Maddox raised his head, realizing his chin had been resting on his chest. He must have fallen asleep as he sat in the pilot’s chair. Then, he recalled why he’d opened his eyes. Doctor Rich had spoken elatedly.

He swiveled around on his seat. Dana and he were the only ones in the control room. Why hadn’t she tried for his gun, seeing as he’d fallen asleep? There were two possibilities. The first, she didn’t think he really slept, or she feared he’d wake up before she could subdue him. The second, she had become so engrossed in her work that she hadn’t noticed him sleeping. He was more inclined toward the second view.

“What is it?” Maddox asked.

Dana didn’t respond. She sat at her station, her fingers flying over the controls. She chortled quietly, almost evilly, to herself.

Maddox stood, approaching her. Still, she didn’t notice him. He had no idea what the screen meant. Lines of code flashed before his eyes.

“Doctor!” he said.

Her shoulders stiffened. She looked up and then back at him.

“What’s happening?” he asked.

“Exactly what you asked for,” she said. “I’m inside the satellite-beacon’s master menu. I’ve just shut down its comm-links.”

Maddox checked a chronometer. In twelve hours, the beacon would have informed the monitor. Dana had worked even faster than he’d expected.

“You did it then?” he asked.

She turned back to her panel and continued to tap.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m guessing you’re going to want the beacon to fire up some drones for us,” Dana said. “We need to knock out the destroyer, right?”

Maddox stepped to Lieutenant Noonan’s station. Valerie was getting some well-deserved rest. At speed, the destroyer was accelerating toward the system’s gas giant in its Jupiter-like orbit. That was nearly eight hundred thousand kilometers away. The Class 3 Laumer-Point was near the gas giant. No doubt, the destroyer raced there to block their exit from the star system.

There were three jump points in this star system: the Class 1 near the chthonian planet, the rock core orbiting closest to the sun. There was the Class 3 by the distant gas giant. And there was an unstable Laumer-Point situated between Loki Prime and the gas giant, about where the Solar System’s asteroid belt would be.

Unstable tramlines were dangerous to use. Sliding down an unstable wormhole was like running between giant, chomping teeth. The tramline could contort, crushing the starship in it. That happened one out of every three to five times, depending on the instability of the tramline. It made using such a route a game of Venusian Roulette.

When the Saint Petersburg first accelerated away from Loki Prime toward the outer system, Maddox had finally felt the situation was safe enough to turn the fusion engines back on. They hadn’t used the regular thrust, but turned on the gravity wave generator—and began recharging the batteries. Just as before, the gravity waves had shaken Geronimo for its short duration, but each time it had given them a little more velocity.

Ensign Maker had complained about the process.

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