* * *
An unfamiliar scene appeared on the main bridge screen when the ship dropped back to normal space. We had traveled so deep within the galaxy that the core appeared like an immense, glowing whirlpool before us. The stunning vista stretched across the entire screen, completely filling it. For a while we were all struck speechless as we stared at the incredible magnificence of the scene facing us. The only thing marring the beauty of that scene was a hazy blob directly ahead.
Angela had taken over the helm post again, leaving Bobby to stand impotently to one side and watch. She looked across the board briefly, then reached for the governor which she had repositioned in the upper right corner of the console. She made a quick adjustment and sections of the helm that had been inactive for the past several days glowed to life.
“Sensors are back on-line, Captain,” Morgana reported a moment later. I glanced in her direction and saw that parts of her board had come back up as well. She reached for the console experimentally but found that her controls were still nonfunctional. “But I’m still locked out of the system,” she reported as she cast a nasty look in Angela’s direction.
Angela ignored her and tapped the throttle icon, engaging the engines and starting us forward. On the screen the blob began to grow. I watched as the unknown object continued to expand before us, growing steadily to fill more and more of the main screen. For some reason it reminded me of a storm cloud forming on the horizon—dark and ominous.
Morgana looked down at her board as one of the displays caught her attention. “We’re headed toward a dense concentration of objects,” she said. She studied the monitor briefly then looked back at the main screen as surprise registered on her features. “It looks like an asteroid field.”
Leaning forward in my chair I focused on the image on the main screen. As I watched the hazy cloud it slowly resolved into a group of individual shapes that I could now recognize as a huge field of asteroids. Angela said nothing and continued us on a course that took us directly toward the field. Soon it had expanded to the point where it was occupying the entire display. I had never seen a field this large.
Morgana stood up and took a step toward the helm. “Captain…”
I motioned her back as I got to my feet and moved to stand next to Angela’s chair.
“I assume you noticed all those big rocks in our way,” I said.
“Yes, Captain,” Angela answered. “I know what I’m doing.”
She touched the governor again and Mark jumped as a section of his board became active.
“Navigational shields just went up,” Mark said. Navigational shields were powerful force fields that swept the area ahead of the ship to ensure that any small debris was pushed aside. Even something as tiny as a grain of sand could spell disaster if a ship struck it at high speed. The navigational shields prevented such collisions, but there was a limit to the size of the objects they could handle. Most of the asteroids in the field ahead were far too massive to be shunted aside by our shields. Anything that large we would have to steer around manually.
I realized then where she was taking us and had to admit that I was impressed by the pirate’s ingenuity. No one ever went into an asteroid field.
Angela studied the field briefly, then altered our course to head toward three large asteroids on the perimeter of the field which formed a surprisingly regular triangle. As we came around the huge rocks I could see that they were held together by three metal bars. The bars had been painted black and were all but invisible until we were almost on top of them. As Angela lined the ship up with the opening between the asteroids I could see that, when viewed from this angle, there was a fairly unobstructed corridor into the field. The asteroids were a navigational marker.
As we approached the trio of asteroids I began to notice little, intermittent flashes ahead as the shields began to repel tiny fragments of rock. As we drew closer to the field the flashes increased in frequency until there was a constant fireworks show going on around us. Soon we were passing between the marker asteroids and heading into the field. For the next several minutes Angela kept her concentration focused on the panel in front of her as she guided us deeper and deeper into the field. Everyone watched anxiously as we wove our way among the slowly tumbling boulders. Even at the dead slow speed we were maintaining, one wrong move could damage or even cripple the ship. She proved to be a competent pilot however and kept us at a safe distance from the larger bodies while our shields pushed aside the smaller debris.
As we moved deeper into the field I noticed that the asteroids were growing in size. After a while we found ourselves skirting around huge floating mountains, many of which were several kilometers across. The bridge was silent as Angela continued to pilot us through the hazardous environment, displaying a skill that rivaled Bobby’s piloting abilities. Finally, as we nosed our way around a large, potato shaped asteroid, one that was several times larger than anything we had seen so far came into view. Once it was in sight Angela put us on a direct heading for it.
“Chris, go down to Ian and tell him to check the environmental system,” I said as I sniffed at the air. “I’m catching a whiff of something unpleasant. I don’t want another batch of sick lichen fouling the air purifiers.”
Chris stared at me for a moment before he nodded and left the bridge.
Andrea was studying the immense asteroid closely as she slowed the ship and began circling it. Eventually a deep depression came into view and she steered us toward it. I could just make out what appeared to be a large crater hidden in the shadowy center of the depression. From our trajectory it soon became obvious that she was going to take us directly into it, confirming my suspicion.
“Captain Pell,” Angela said suddenly, “I’m getting a warning light on an exterior hatch.”
“Let me guess, starboard cargo bay three? You can ignore it.” The warning light meant that Chris had delivered my message. Ian and Barney were getting ready to launch the modified torpedo.
“Another glitch, Captain?” she asked.
I shrugged. “We’ve got a few systems that need a little tweaking.”
Angela gave me a probing look for a moment then turned her attention back to the controls. Soon she was slowing us to a halt as she lined us up with the crater opening. From our position I could see that the crater was actually the entrance to a deep tunnel. As she went about preparing to pilot us into the asteroid I wondered briefly about the modified torpedo my people were preparing to launch. We hadn’t anticipated being in the middle of an asteroid field when we came up with our plan. All of this floating rubble was going to make it difficult for the sensor suite to take accurate star sightings. And, assuming that it was able to complete its survey and calculate our position, our makeshift drone still had to find its way safely out of the field so that it could send a clear transmission back to Fleet headquarters. While its on-board guidance unit should be up to the task, assuming that it didn’t have to avoid too many asteroids at the same time, I wasn’t sure if the torpedo carried enough fuel to get completely clear of the field. What had seemed like a straight forward plan at first now seemed like a long shot. But we had no alternative so I decided to trust the fates.
“Captain!” Mark called as he gawked at a new reading that had popped up on his board. “I think you should take a look at this!”
I stepped over to his station and saw that someone had acquired a targeting lock on us from inside the crater. What had drawn Mark’s attention however wasn’t the targeting scan itself but the power signature of the weapon source. There seemed to be only two guns tracking us, but the power fields they were emitting made the guns we had encountered on Toula seem like toys in comparison.
“As you can see, Captain, they’re quite capable of defending themselves,” Angela said as she reached for the governor once more. This time the comm system came on-line. “This is Angela piloting the Prometheus. Stand b
y to receive my clearance code.” She tapped at the governor briefly then sat back and waited.
Several moments later a voice answered from the bridge speaker. “Clearance code confirmed. Defense systems are standing down.”
Angela closed the comm system and started us forward again. The crater ballooned before us and quickly grew to fill the entire screen. Soon we were being swallowed by the immense opening.
As we entered the tunnel, Angela switched on the ship’s search lights. In the wash of the lights we could see a pair of enormous guns that were slowly retracting toward recesses on either side. Each of the cannons was longer than our ship. Unless we could come up with a way to neutralize them, the Fleet would be walking into a trap when it tried to attack the pirate base.
As we progressed deeper into the tunnel the darkness became all consuming in spite of our search lights. Navigational sensors showed a confusion of twisting and branching passages ahead. We were flying into a labyrinth. Now I understood what Angela had meant by the channel being too tricky to navigate. Although navigating through the asteroid field was dangerous it could be managed by a skillful pilot. But trying to find your way through the twisting confines of this tunnel would be impossible if you didn’t know where you were going. I watched as time and again she not only chose the correct branching passage, but negotiated hairpin turns and avoided unexpected rock outcroppings which were hidden around blind corners. Only someone who was intimately familiar with these tunnels would be able to find their way safely.
We had been corkscrewing through the twisting tunnels for some time when I began to notice a dim glow ahead. By then I estimated that we had penetrated several kilometers deep into the body of the asteroid. The light grew steadily until I could see that it was coming from a side tunnel just ahead. Soon we were negotiating that final turn to where the passage opened into an immense chamber. We were entering an underground installation.
I couldn’t tell the actual size of the chamber, but it was easily several kilometers across. Habitat modules and other structures projected inward from all sides. A large part of the chamber was taken up by docking slips, many of which were occupied. Those ships that were here appeared to be completely powered down, as if they were being warehoused. I was stunned when I realized that there was enough room here for a fair sized fleet. Off our starboard bow I could see numerous heavy duty machines at work in an area where nothing had yet been built. At this distance they looked like a swarm of insects greedily chewing at the rocky walls. That was when I realized what the mining equipment we were carrying was for. The pirates were excavating further into the asteroid to expand their base.
As soon as we were clear of the tunnel Angela turned us to port, angling us toward a dense cluster of habitat modules. She continued to keep our speed down since there were numerous smaller craft crisscrossing the area. At one point we passed two of the occupied docking berths. A pair of ships was moored there and I was surprised when I recognized them as missile cruisers. Although we weren’t able to scan their engine signatures, there was no doubt that these were the same missile cruisers that had gone missing from the Gnosis scrap yard six months ago. Unlike other ships that had been stolen by the pirates, these ships still bore the names and registry markings that identified them as Gilead Fleet vessels. As we passed the docks I could see that the cargo hatch was open on one of the ships. Above it I watched as a loading arm swung into position and begin lowering a cradle of missiles into the ship. Even at this distance I could tell that they were rapiers.
A supply tug crossed in front of us a moment later, cutting off my view. I went back to my command chair and dropped into the seat as I thought about the implications of what I had just seen. The pirates were on a war footing. But who they were preparing to go to war with remained a mystery.
A few moments later Angela slowed us and began angling toward a cluster of habitat modules. As she brought us in close and cut our forward momentum, a mooring claw reached out and attached itself to our hull. We wouldn’t be going anywhere until they released us. She switched the main screen to a port side view and we watched as a docking sleeve extended toward the ship. Moments later it sealed itself against the gangway hatch.
Once we were docked Angela shut down our systems and removed the governor from the helm console.
“The Commandant is going to be waiting for us,” she said as she stood up.
As I got up from my seat Chris was just returning to the bridge. “Captain, Ian wanted me to tell you that he checked over the air system and everything’s fine.” In other words the drone launch had gone according to plan.
“Excellent,” I said. “Oh, after we’re gone let him know that he can get started on that maintenance job he’s been wanting to do. I have a feeling we’re going to be here for a little while.”
I turned and followed Angela from the bridge as Morgana fell into step beside us. When we reached the gangway hatch Doc was waiting for us.
“All set?” I asked him.
“We’re good to go,” he said as he patted the portable medkit hanging at his side.
Angela gave me a puzzled look.
“Doc’s still a little worried about your headaches,” I said. “He wanted to go with us to be sure that you were okay.”
“I appreciate your concern, Doctor, but I’m fine,” Angela said as she reached out and placed her hand on his. “My head hasn’t bothered me since your last treatment.”
Doc smiled at her in a fatherly manner and casually removed her hand. “It’s no problem, dear. I was a little concerned by the fact that the first treatment didn’t do the trick. I just want to be sure I’m around if you have another relapse.”
She looked from Doc to me then shrugged. “As you like, Doctor, although I assure you I’m fine.”
Just then a green light lit on the control panel beside the gangway entrance. Morgana touched the hatch control and the doors hissed open.
The pirates had sent someone to meet us. As I looked up at the imposing figure waiting just inside the docking sleeve my breath caught in my throat. Standing on the other side of the gangway hatch was the giant!