6
Liam maneuvered the small mining ship along the long edge of Vesta Corporation’s craft, cutting his hull lights and flying in the shadows between the vessel and the asteroid. In a moment they’d passed the edge, cruising over the dark asteroid. Away from the mine the artificial gravity was only sufficient enough to let them know which way was up and down, relative to the field generator. It was an odd feeling after the relative normal gravity on the mine.
He opened an audio channel to the engine room, the roar of the ionizers piercing through the speakers. “Ju-Long, what’s your status?”
“The last burst has us holding steady at two hundred thousand.”
“Can we go any faster?”
“I wouldn’t advise it, we took some superficial damage in the cargo bay, we could break up.”
Liam cut the link and looked up at the unclassified ship. Upon closer inspection, the alien craft was easily a few kilometers long. On the control panel he looked at the rear camera feeds. The mining vessel’s sparse lighting revealed countless punctures from the laser attacks. The other ship was able to pierce clean through.
He looked to Saturn, who was getting her bearings on the control panel. It was obvious that she was used to being the one flying. It was dark in the cockpit, save for the faint glow of their computer screens. Saturn pulled down her jumpsuit’s zipper and freed her arms from its embrace. The faint blue glow bounced off her toned arms. The mine had that effect on people. Though Liam didn’t often look in the mirror, he was sure he’d gotten a bit more muscular. Another jet of green flashed in front of them, piercing the hull of the Asteroid mine.
“This ship will never make it back to Earth,” Liam said. “It’s only meant for scout missions, a few days, tops.”
“Well we can’t go up against whatever that thing is,” Saturn said, pointing to the unknown ship above them.
Liam thought for a moment. He’d seen a swirl of stars behind the other ship. He’d heard about those kinds of occurrences before, but never in his own solar system and only from theories. It was a wormhole, though. He was sure of it. Where it led was the big question. If they were to make it through to the other side, would there be more of those ships waiting for them? Would they even be in the same part of the galaxy?
Liam tilted the joystick back and a burst of air from under the nose of the scout ship forced them away from the asteroid, on course for the enemy spacecraft.
“What are you doing?” Saturn asked.
“Trust me,” Liam said with a smirk. “Take the laser controls. Lock onto them and wait for my mark.”
Saturn cursed and swiped her hand over the control panel. The menu changed and a new set of commands were at her fingertips. She charged the mining lasers and held her finger over the trigger. Green lasers emanated from the other ship and glanced their bow. They were approaching the alien ship fast. Too fast.
Liam turned the joystick to the left and missed the jagged outer hull by what seemed like meters, coming about and maneuvering his vessel toward the rear of the enemy ship. A stray laser pierced their wing, the force spinning them around in a circle and veering them off course.
“Stabilizing jets!” Saturn yelled.
With great effort, Liam reached the button on the console to self-stabilize and they leveled out relative to the enemy ship. He turned to Saturn, determined. “Take aim and fire.”
Saturn pressed the trigger and two blue lasers shot out from their nose, pointed down at the enemy vessel. After a few seconds, Saturn cut the lasers. She examined the readout on the control panel.
“The sensors say we hardly made a scratch. Whatever it’s made of, the computer doesn’t recognize it. Some unknown alloy.”
“We can’t take another blast like that, I’m punching it.”
Liam used his left hand to slide along the control panel, increasing the output of the engines. Their seats began to rattle as they picked up speed. They wouldn’t be able to maintain their acceleration for long before they fell apart.
“What are you doing?” Saturn asked. “Ju-Long said—”
“I know what he said.”
Liam accelerated past three hundred thousand KPH, increasing in speed faster than he would have liked. Saturn tightened the straps around her shoulders and asked, “Where are we going?”
Liam pointed up ahead to the swirl of stars behind the enemy vessel. “There. Three thousand kilometers.”
“What is that?”
“If it’s what I think it is, we’re in for a bumpy ride.”
Ju-Long came in over the speakers.
“Are you crazy, Kidd? We’re accelerating too fast, do you want to die?”
Green lasers shot up, missing the cockpit by a meter as Liam shifted out of the way. Liam cut the audio feed and noted that the enemy lasers were far more powerful than their own, but they were hardly crack shots. If they were aliens, maybe they’d never seen another species’ spacecraft before. If that were the case, Liam wondered, why did they have such powerful weapons? Saturn examined the computer readouts on her panel and pointed to the screen.
“The computer is picking up life forms in the thousands. Whatever they are, they aren’t human.”
“Fifteen hundred kilometers,” Liam said.
“Did you hear me, Liam? Aliens.”
“Hey, if you want to get probed let’s slow down and chat about it, otherwise target their laser arrays and try to make a dent.”
Saturn clenched her jaw and slammed her finger down on the trigger, sending the dual lasers at the vessel below them. Liam cautioned a glance in her direction. Her brow was glistening with sweat, but her tan cheekbones picked up most of the light from the console, making her appear gaunt despite her normally athletic form. She turned, her dark ponytail lightly touching her shoulder as she examined Liam.
“If you want to get us out of this you’d better focus,” she said.
Liam’s gaze returned to the readings on his console. He turned the joystick sharply to avoid another laser blast. He read off the distance on his screen, “Five hundred kilometers.”
As they approached the vortex Saturn’s eyes grew. The closer they approached the more clearly they could make out the space distortions. Time seemed to slow down, as though Liam was hyper-aware of the things around him. The wormhole was massive, large enough for two of the alien spaceships abreast of each other. Saturn fumbled with the console and brought up the camera in the engine room. Ju-Long was making adjustments to the engine with a wrench, holding onto a stabilizing pole in the slight gravity field with his injured hand. She opened an audio link.
“Ju-Long, you might want to strap in.”
Ju-Long looked up at the camera and gave her the finger. “Yeah, yeah.”
“Three hundred,” Liam said.
The cabin began to rock more violently than before, making it difficult for Liam to keep the scout ship’s course true. Saturn wiped her forehead and pressed a button on the panel, projecting her image into the engine room. “Strap in, Ju-Long. Now!”
Ju-Long cursed and started toward the seat near the engine when a blast shook the room. He dropped the wrench and was pressed against the grates below.
“What was that?” Saturn asked.
“We’re hit!”
“How much farther?”
“One hundred. Fifty. Now.”
They were sucked in by the wormhole, spinning off their axis violently through what amounted to a corridor through space. There were flashes of multi-colored light as they appeared to pass countless stars and spatial phenomena. The corridor turned to a cloud of vibrant gasses, reminding Liam of the nebulas he’d seen in school. He remembered being a lot less nauseated in class.
“Can the computer tell how far it is to the other side?” Saturn asked.
“The sensors have gone haywire, we’re flying blind.”
The scout ship spun slightly off-kilter and Liam tried to correct the problem. They were losing hull integrity the farther they traveled. Up
ahead he saw what looked like normal space approaching; a spot where the stars appeared to stand still. Liam’s stomach yearned for a level flight path.
It took three more minutes for them to reach the threshold. When they crossed, Liam eased off the controls and slowed the ship to two hundred thousand KPH. The cabin stopped shaking and Liam let go of the control stick.
“We made it,” Saturn said. “We’re alive.”
“You know what I say, always deliver more than expected.”
“For you that can’t be too hard.”
Liam smiled. This was the Saturn he’d missed for so long. Even in the face of danger she was cracking jokes and having a good time.
A heads-up display on the cockpit window materialized showing Ju-Long hanging onto a control panel in the engine room, bloodied from the ride and sporting a few new black and blues.
“In case anyone was wondering, I’m okay.”
He collapsed to his back on the grated engine room floor, groaning in agony. Liam smirked. Ju-Long was a tough guy, he would be all right. He tended to exaggerate to get attention anyway.
“Should we help him?” she asked.
“In a minute. I need to check something first.”
Liam brought up an orange hologram of a star map over the control panel. He put his hand out and manipulated the image, zooming out until most of the Milky Way Galaxy was in view. He pointed to one section and said, “That’s our solar system.”
“Where are we now?”
Liam fiddled with the controls and the computer examined the stars around them, searching for a point of reference. It took more than a minute for it to discern their location. The computer spun the image around and flashed their position in yellow.
“That’s impossible,” Liam said looking at Saturn in disbelief.
“What? How far?”
“If this is accurate, we’ve traveled more than ten thousand light years.”