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AD 2505 Term 1
Mission Briefing: Investigate Star System JUC-3672 for suitability for colonization. Prepare survey results, make formal recommendation.
Ship: JSS Extrapolator, Corvette Class, Hyperdrive mkII
Pilot: Liza Kantry
Ground: Sodo Coetzee
Sensors: Corra Voors (replacing Eduardo DeLeon)
Specialist: Dr. Abbantine Leeds (Geologist)
Previously: Sodo was injured and Liza had to make a call with no time to spare.
In This Episode: A mysterious signal warrants an investigation, and the risk of danger.
INDEX | Mission 1 | <(Mission 3) Previous | Next (Mission 5)>
Interference
Liza’s first impression of the new sensors specialist was not good, and it only got worse from there.
Liza was walking back to observation after eating a meal in the mess hall, and she had to pass Corra in the sensors station.
“This ship is a dump, can you believe this is what the Jovian Union is shipping out these days? No wonder Theyst can’t make any progress.” Corra said as Liza passed by. “Did you know there’s graffiti on the lockers in the shuttle bay? Sloppy work!”
Liza took a moment to recollect herself, a little offended on behalf of what has quietly become ‘her ship’. She paused a moment, thinking how best to reply.
Corra mistook Liza’s pause as a willingness to listen. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there were rats under the floor tiles the way this thing was built. Have you ever been on a Theysian ship?”
Liza shook her head, ‘no’, now curious how long she could keep Corra talking without any input from herself.
“I saw a headline that said Theyst had started it’s own ship manufacturing. I didn’t see if that meant survey ships too—a military fleet would be pretty provocative but also—if the Union could defend everyone they wouldn’t need a fleet, right?” Corra looked expectantly at Liza.
“First of all,” Liza said, “If you are volunteering to clean the shuttle bay I would be more than happy to cover for you at sensors.”
Corra’s eyes went wide.
“Second of all, it seems a little ungrateful to be talking badly about our employer while they are paying us. If you don’t like the work you shouldn’t accept the money.”
Now Corra’s eyes narrowed, and she opened her mouth to speak. Liza held up a hand.
“Before you say anything else—I just want to remind you that as long as we are in space I am the captain of this ship. If you have any complaints you can put it in your report and see what the Corps has to say about it.”
Corra stifled her words, frowned, and turned silently back to her work.
Liza proceeded the rest of the way to observation, sat down and grabbed the radio. “Ground, this is Extrapolator, what’s your status?”
“I am all done here. Loading my equipment back on the Shuttle, I’ll be airborn in ten.”
“Copy that,” she let out a breath. She wouldn’t complain if it turned out that Corra was the worst part of this mission.
Sodo stepped out of the shuttle and looked more pensive than usual. He took his helmet off and stowed it in his locker. “Corra!” he called, stepping past Liza and out of the Shuttle bay.
A moment later Corra poked her head out of sensors. “What’s up?” she asked innocently.
“On the trip up from the surface I had some interference on my radio. Did you get that?”
Her face twitched in a funny way that piqued Liza’s interest. “Oh, uh, yeah I’m triangulating it now,” Corra replied.
“Just want to make sure something is not broken. I can repair many things but I would like to be prepared. Losing contact from the surface would be a scary thing!”
Dr. Leeds’ voice rang thinly from the geology station, “That happened once!”
Sodo shook his head. “All the more reason to avoid it!”
“Agreed,” Liza said. “I’ll go see what Corra is working with. Take a break, Sodo, great work down there.”
She left Sodo to finish his wind-down and checked on Corra. Corra’s screens looked about the same, she was zooming in and out of different frequencies looking for anomalies.
“What do you have, Corra?” she asked.
“Well I can tell you magnitude and I can tell you direction but I can’t tell you what it is. We’ve got an unidentified emitter somewhere in orbit beyond the third planet.”
“There’s an asteroid belt out that way, if I remember right. Looking at your spectrogram it looks like a regular pattern, did you notice that?”
“Yeah…weird, right?”
“Let’s see what we can find out.”
It was a surprising challenge trying to find an object you can only hear with computers. With Corra’s help and some ‘good enough’ work with the astronomy tools, Liza got them on a trajectory that would at least bring them closer. Dr. Leeds managed the screens of the observation station intently.
When the Extrapolator was on as good a course as she could find, she hovered behind Dr. Leeds to watch her work.
“I can feel you watching,” Dr. Leeds said without turning around.
“You didn’t close the door,” Liza replied. “Anyway you are better at using the equipment than I am, so I assure you I am watching in admiration. What are you looking for?”
“Well, I’ve never heard of an asteroid that could emit signals like that before, so either it’s aliens or something geologically interesting. I’m banking on the latter, I presume you’ve got a plan in case it’s the former.”
Liza did not have a plan. “Of course,” she said. “Ignoring the alien option, what could cause the signals?”
“Well, I’ve got a couple working theories.” Dr. Leeds stood and turned to face Liza, crossing her arms pensively. “Some asteroids are mostly metal—there could be some kind of interaction there that would generate strong signals on accident, though it would have to be very specific and frankly miraculous conditions. It’s a long shot but it is interesting and it’s more interesting than most of these surveys I’ve been on lately.”
“Really? How long have you been with the Corps that these last few missions haven’t been interesting?”
Dr. Leeds sighed. “Too long. This is a side-gig for me, the real work is back at the university around Hammond. Every trip to space has risks and some of those risks are stranger than you’d believe. Ever heard of Dr. Neuman and his research mission?”
“No, should I?”
Dr. Leeds turned back to her station. “Ignorance is bliss. Anyway—nothing could be worse than that, so that’s made these trips wonderfully boring.”
“I guess I can take that as a compliment.” Liza said.
“Liza? Liza! You’re going to want to see this.”
Dr. Leeds was almost never elevated—she was the calmest crew member of everyone Liza had worked with on the Extrapolator so far. Liza’s heart pounded. She launched out of navigation and was in the doorway at observation in an instant. “What is it? Aliens?”
“No—somehow, it’s much worse than that. Look.”
Liza peered over her shoulder to examine the viewscreen. There were lights moving linearly around an asteroid. “I don’t get it—they aren’t moving like moons, are you saying they are ships? What is it?”
Dr. Leeds pressed a few buttons to get a higher resolution view. These were engine flares, half a dozen of them. They were an unusual design—not at all like the alien vessel they had encountered earlier, but not like the standard boxy Jovian Union design. They were rounded, sleek— “I can just make out a symbol on the hull, what is that?”
“You haven’t guessed? This is a Theysian fleet. I’m willing to bet military. If they are scouting uncolonized systems, our job just got a lot more complicated.”
They watched in silence for a few minutes, as several of the ships visibly turned and began heading towards them.
“So,” Dr. Leeds said, “If they are doing a military operation here, how happy do you think they will be to be discovered?”
Liza’s heart fluttered in fear, she tightened her grip on the doorframe to keep her hands from shaking.
“I see…” she managed.
“About that plan of yours?”
Liza rushed to Navigation, and grabbed the intercom. “Attention everyone, get to your nearest Jump Harness, we are making an emergency exit from this system, I repeat, we are making an emergency exit. You may feel some turbulence as I maneuver. I will give you the Jump count down as soon as possible. Get to your nearest Jump Harness.”
They were traveling towards the fleet, and turning around would cost fuel and time, during which the Theysian ships could catch up and maybe intercept them—whatever that entailed. The best bet was to redirect their existing momentum so they didn’t lose anything, but that also meant they would cross over their trajectory. The safest would be to make a jump as soon as possible, but jumping blind was always dangerous. If she could do even some calculations, they would be better off. But they weren’t pointed in the right direction! Liza’s mind raced as she thought through her options, her hands starting to shake as she plotted routes in her head. They were moving away from the star, up the ladder of the system. If she moved towards the Solar North or Solar South, that gets them clear of the path of planets but facing the wrong way. If she could go clockwise or counter-clockwise at the same time, they would corkscrew around the star away from the ships and be clear of the orbital plane AND be facing back towards inner-space, towards safety. That’s a trifecta, Liza thought. She started punching in the commands, one viewscreen displaying an image of the system, another displaying the Theysian ships.
“Ahem,” A voice announced its presence behind Liza.
“I’m busy, you should be in your harness, what is it?” Liza admonished without turning around.
It was Corra: “Why are we leaving? Theysian ships aren’t so bad, maybe we could—”
Liza froze, and looked over her shoulder: “Who said they were Theysian?”
Corra’s eyes widened, again. “I-I-I recognized the code, okay?”
Liza clenched her fists—there was no time to be angry right now. “Did you talk to them?”
“No—”
“So you knew when I was in your station?”
“Y-yes, but—”
“I don’t have time for this. Get to your jump harness. If they blow us up they won’t ask if a Theysian was on board, they’ll just know a Jovian Surveyor was destroyed.”
“But if we talk to them, we can—”
“Out. Right now, or this gets worse for you.” Liza was standing, glowering at Corra who suddenly seemed small. Corra nodded, and turned. Liza let the door to navigation slide closed, and resumed her calculations.
“Jump complete, please exit your jump harnesses and meet in the mess hall.”
Liza unhooked her jump harness and marched angrily down the causeway, past the empty stations, towards the shuttle bay, past the bunks, into the mess hall. She was sure they heard her coming—she wanted them to know. She was mad.
“We need to talk about what happened,” Liza announced.
Corra and Dr. Leeds were sitting at the one square table. Sodo was leaning against the wall, stifling a smile.
“And don’t take that to mean this is a democracy. Corra, between now and getting back to Second Sol, we are all going to be writing our debrief reports. I want to know why I shouldn’t recommend you for discharge. Your job is to make sure I know everything I need to know to keep us safe. We were walking into a trap and you knew it. What did you think was going to happen?”
“I don’t know! I wasn’t thinking, okay? Theysians aren’t monsters, if they captured the ship I figured I’d be able to talk to them.”
“What makes you think they would talk to us and not just blow us up? That was a military expedition, Corra. Why wouldn’t they just shoot first so they don’t need to bother with asking questions?”
“I—I wasn’t thinking.”
“You’re damn right you weren’t thinking. Are you rolling off after this mission?”
“What? No! I—”
“Then you need to decide whether you’re comfortable working for the Union or not. If you want to work for Theyst, fine. They have their own ships, they could probably use you. But the maps starting to feel awfully crowded out there. If Theyst is charting uncolonized systems in force, then war is coming and I’ll give you three guesses about who is planning to fire the first shots.”
A charged silence filled the mess hall.
“Everyone get your debriefs done. That system is compromised, we’re going home. Get to work.”
Corra was on her feet and out of the room practically before Liza finished speaking. Dr. Leeds sighed, and walked slowly away—more annoyed than scared.
Sodo stayed behind, now smiling broadly.
“What’s so funny?” Liza asked.
“I wonder if anyone else can tell when you are acting,” he said.
Liza stuffed her shaking hands into her pockets. “It’s not important for them to know. It’s only important for me to know.”
To be continued…
Thank you very much for reading! This is Before The Maps Are Final, a science fiction adventure episodic serial set in the Sandbox Earth Universe. This will be a serial publishing every week, for a tentative total of twelve episodes. Please subscribe to be sure you don’t miss an installment sent directly to your inbox!
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Another great episode, and now some stakes are being raised! But more importantly, I'm just a girl standing in front of a boy, asking him what happened to Eduardo??
I guess I don't have to ask how the plebiscite went.
But seriously, I think this has been my favorite installment so far. Lisa's internal tension, the Corra element, Theyst with its own fleet: space politics at its best.