Chapter 7

Vin Xohn looked stunned. Jackson’s expression turned more unsettled.

“That means, the prototype is somewhere here! I have to find it!” Xohn said, his eyes widening.

Lee turned to Xohn while keeping hold of the side console in the Para Bellum’s flight deck alcove. “You said she was supposed to send you an encoded message.”

“Yes, at Shinrarta Dezhra, when she made it.”

“What if she sent it with this message?” Lee gestured at the datapad.

“How could that be?” Xohn replied with skepticism.

“If you listen to the static at the beginning, it’s not normal white-noise static. It sounds more garbled. Play it again—just the beginning.”

He tapped on the datapad, and the audio began again with the garbled static noise.

“Jamming interference, right?” Xohn asked.

“I don’t think so. Jackson, can I use your ship’s terminal?” Lee asked him. He looked lost in thought. “Jackson?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Go ahead,” he said with a vague gesture.

Lee walked over to the terminal. “Can you give me access?”

“Yeah, right. Of course.” Jackson walked over and tapped at the terminal to unlock it.

Lee worked on interfacing his datapad with the terminal. “Okay, send me the audio.”

Xohn made a swipe gesture from his datapad in the direction of Lee’s. After the transfer was finished, Lee got to work.

“There’s two types of jamming: broad spectrum noise or tuned signal suppression. Spectrum noise would corrupt the signal to the point you can’t make anything out. That takes an enormous amount of power. I’m guessing signal suppression here since some of it got through. It means they had to lock on to the signal to negate the carrier wave. If she was smart enough to do the message encoding, it would be at the beginning of the message, when it had the most chance to get through.”

He began running some custom analysis programs. It had been a long time since he’d done any audio processing—not since his street days as an orphan. His datapad had some handy pattern matching algorithms that he thought might work. He trimmed the garbled static and fed it into the algorithm.

“Yeah, there’s definitely something here.” Lee said, feeling triumphant. After several analysis iterations, he found it. The garbled noise was a pattern of pulses at amplitudes that corresponded to the number values of text standard codes. “I found it! There’s a message encoded over the static.”

“What’s it say?” Xohn’s excited voice came from over his right shoulder.

“Give me a few to decode it,” Lee said, working his fingers faster over the projected keys.

“Okay, here we are.” He pulled up the message and Xohn leaned in. Jackson continued to stare off in his own world. The terminal displayed the message:

Vin, this is a prewritten message. I’m in trouble. I can’t make the rendezvous. I’ll always love you. See you on the other side. - - - Gliese 170.1 6 A-ring

“Looks like she appended her location to the end of the message. She must have added it right before she sent the message—clever.” Lee looked at Xohn, who had tears stuck to the corners of his eyes—eyes filled with pain. The zero-G environment caused his tears to form beads. “Oh man. I’m– I’m sorry.”

Xohn could only give a stiff nod.

Lee turned around to Jackson. His eyes were wide, but still somewhat distant. He looked a little pale too. “Hey, what’s going on with you, pal?”

Jackson shook his head like he was shaking out of a trance or something. “I’m– I’m okay.” He said still holding an uncertain look. “I’m just– I’m thinking how crazy it is she made it to the rings we’re floating in right now.”

“That’s what the message says. Sixth planet, A-ring.” He turned back toward Xohn, “Now wait just a light-second. This was– Xohn, when did she send this message?”

Xohn wiped tears from his eyes and sniffled a bit. “Uhm, A few years ago, in ’02.”

“What was the exact date?!” Lee had a feeling he couldn’t shake.

“January 15th, 3302. Why?”

“You said she was a pilot. Right?”

“Yea…yes. Contract work for the most part.”

“What ship? What kind did she fly?” It was beginning to line up in Lee’s mind.

“A Cobra. A Mark IV if I recall correctly. Why?” Xohn asked, his face now full of curiosity.

Lee’s memory took him back again—tethered outside the Nightcrawler. Vic was inside the ship trying to maneuver. Streaks of white missile trails covered his visor. Something caught his attention in the corner of his vision, and he turned his head. The delta shape. Definitely larger than a Sidewinder. He could see it with more clarity than ever before—a red Cobra with the modern styling of the Mark IV. Everything blew up around him—massive hunks of asteroids smashing into others in a runaway process of impacts. The haze of dust and debris grew thicker. He wanted to escape the memory here and now, but he couldn’t shake out of it.

The tether jerked him, ripping him from his handholds. A giant fragment slammed into the asteroid above them. Bullet-like projectiles shot out from the impact. The shields of the Nightcrawler took a beating. More secondary collisions surrounded them. A cascade of debris bombarding the shields. The shields failed.

He was unprotected. His adrenaline pumped, heightening every sense.He pulled himself to the hull and gripped back onto the handholds facing towards the bow.

Then it happened.

A silent hunk of rock, five times larger than the Nightcrawler, came from overhead and slammed into an asteroid ahead of their flight path. Uncountable projectiles shot out of the nearby collision.

He heard a crackle in his comms. Then Vic’s voice broke through the static, “Lee…it’s bad…always proud…resist…others…get ahead…love you…son…”

With no shields remaining, the Nightcrawler took the onslaught full on. The brunt of the damage was from above at the front of the ship. He felt a shudder through the handholds. It was something explosive. His heart skipped a beat, and there was a pressure in his throat. Over the edge of the hull, Lee saw a cloud of diamond-like glints ahead of the ship.

It was a moment frozen in time, forever burned into his mind. In the moment, his mind’s eye could see everything…

The Cobra banked evasively in the distance.

Asteroids collided all around them.

Ice and rock sprayed in every direction.

They were trapped in a chain reaction of destruction.

“No!” Lee whimpered in desperation. He pulled tighter on the grips hoping to avoid the deadly debris.

Time returned to normal.

The cloud of sparkling glints flew up the sides of the ship’s hull. Sharp transparent fragments from the canopy flew overhead. The Nightcrawler continued it’s heading, perpendicular to the plane of the rings.

“Vic!” Lee heard himself shout. “Vic! Come in old man! Vic!” He began to climb forward across the hull to the canopy. The Nightcrawler emerged from the cloud of debris.

“Vic!” He continued to shout into the comms.

Nothing.

He fought his own mind, unable to bear reliving what came next. The memory released him—reality rushed back.

The Cobra!

Lee turned to Xohn. “I saw her– the Cobra. I was there. It was red, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said in a soft, melancholy voice.

“So she was here. She must not have made it.”

“We already know that.” Xohn replied with an edge to his voice.

“Hey, look, I lost someone there too. I mean me and my– my friend, Vic. We were there mining. This squadron of ships showed up and fired a bunch of seismic charge missiles into the area we were in. They blew up the asteroids while we were in there. I remember I saw her Cobra just a few klicks out from us.”

“Flush her out…” Jackson said with a distant, hollow look.

“What?” Xohn and Lee turned back to look at Jackson.

“The tactic they used to get her out of the rings so they could capture her. I mean, that’s what it sounds like.” There was something behind the way Jackson said it—a knowing sort of way.

“Right…” Lee turned back to Xohn. “So your prototype was likely destroyed. I barely survived it, I can’t imagine both ships got that lucky.”

Xohn frowned while he considered it. “It’s the proof I need that it won’t fall into wrong hands. And for closure I need to know where she rests. This is not what either of you planned, I know. But I must try. Can you– will you help me find her? Or– or what’s left of her ship?”

Lee leaned back against the wall and rubbed at the stubble along his jawline while thinking it through. Doing favors for people was not his style, especially not with tagalongs. Up to this point he had been anxious to get rid of them, not work with them. Still, the mere possibility of finding anything new about what happened nagged at him. It might be his only chance to give him and his old friend some peace. He also admitted, at least to himself, that he might need their help.

“After three years, the rings have completely stabilized again. There’s going to be almost no evidence anything ever happened there. I’m not promising anything, but I think I can get us pretty close. Vic and I mapped that area out. At this point I may be the only one who can find it anymore,” Lee said.

“And you Mister Jackson?” Xohn asked.

“Commander Dekker,” he corrected. “Sure, why not. I can run escort for you. I mean, they’re after me now too, anyways.”

“Thank you. Thank you, both,” Xohn gave a grateful bow of his head.

“So, what’s the plan?” Jackson asked and walked down to stand beside his flight chair. Xohn looked over to Lee.

“We’re going to need to wake back into system cruise to find the right area of the rings.”

Xohn looked concerned. “But does that mean they will be able to find us? The ships that were following?”

“They could,” Lee acknowledged. “But, they dropped into the rings after we arrived. It’s probably safe to assume they’re looking for us here. We just wake out, pull a large loop, then circle back to drop in the vicinity of where it all went down. Short and sweet. No longer than we’ll be cruising, we’ll disappear again before they go looking for us in system.”

“Eh, alright, let’s have a go at it,” Jackson shrugged as if the plan barely lived up to his standards. He sat down in his flight chair and began to strap in, tapping controls in the process to bring the Para Bellum back to full power.

“You have a better idea?” Lee said, trying to keep his patience.

“Oh, I had one, but yours will probably work, and if they do find us, I get more combat rank.”

“Fine. Xohn and I will head back to the Nightcrawler. Xohn, you can help run scanners once we drop into the right area.”

“Luhttoo honah! You won’t regret it. For you I won’t be in the way. For you I’ll make it worth your while.”

All Lee really heard was ‘regret it’ and thought, yup, I probably will.

On the bridge of the Decimator, Reeves was burning with anger. It was intolerable for her to get so close to finding this guy only for him to slip away twice. This so-called ‘Resistance’ was now officially on her hate list. “Anything?” She asked in a grumpy mood.

“Nothing, sir,” Sloane reported.

“Not good enough people!” Her husky voice shouted back enough for it to echoe about the flight deck. Huxley stood in stunned silence by his console. The pilot, Asher, kept her head down.

Reeves heard Sloane mutter under his breath, “We just started scanning.”

“I want them found and I want them found now. No excuses.”

“Sir, the Scorpio finished its sweep of grid one. There’s no sign of anything.” Huxley reported.

“Thank you, Mr. Huxley. Keep at it.” She paced around, more anxious and irate. This time, not for appearances’ sake. “I need some coffee. Asher, you have the conn, I’ll be in my quarters.”

She walked out of the bridge slamming her magboots all the way through the corridors. Various other crew members steered clear of her warpath stomping. She put her thumb on the button to open the door to her quarters and almost walked into the door when it didn’t open immediately. She slammed her palm onto the door panel, the force of which knocked her backward off balance. After she recovered, she carefully placed her thumb on the access panel, and the door gave way.

After walking in, she went to the coffee dispenser, switched it on, and waited.

She was seething. She found herself back in the position she hated the most: knowing what needed to be done, in no position to do anything about it. It was just like the day she lost her family. Helpless to do anything at the moment. Just sitting—waiting for it to be over.

She heard their screams in her ears again. The daydream pulled her back to the nightmare, and she was a young girl again, hiding in the locker. The look on her father’s face was forever frozen in that look of panic, terror, and hopelessness. Her family ran with the other colonists to find a shelter to hide in. The raid came out of nowhere. There was no warning. No alarms. None of the military defenses mobilized in time.

Everyone ran.

Her family made it to the locker room of a fitness facility. They had nothing to defend themselves with. Before she could argue, her father pushed her into a locker and secured it from the outside. She banged on the door to get out, but her father shushed her with a deadly seriousness she heard on rare occasions.

She looked out through ventilation slits, watching her father trying to get her little brother into the locker next to her. Before he could get the door closed, there was a blood-curdling scream from behind a row of lockers at the entrance to the room. She put her hand to her mouth to hold back any sounds that might escape her mouth.

Then she saw it—the figure. A yellow-brown creature covered with a crustacean-like exoskeletal armor entered the room. She saw her mother recoil and stumbled back into the center of the locker room. Her mother stood defensively in front of her twin sisters, huddled on the floor crying. The armored creature seemed to slide across the floor on its six or so plated lower limbs. Then a second creature entered the room behind it. The new arrival snatched her mother up and held her a full meter off the floor. Its claw-like fingers dug at her arms. Her mother screamed again, and blood flowed.

Her father spun around in front of the half-open door of the locker with her brother. When the second creature picked up her mother, her father hesitated at first, then lunged. The first creature raised one of its limbs from the floor and drove it with such force it went straight through her father’s skull. The limb burst out of his neck, pushing his trachea out, then continued through into his torso. Her father’s body was eviscerated into an unrecognizable pile of bloody flesh.

Unstoppable tears welled up in her eyes, sparing her from seeing the rest of her family torn apart. By the end of it, scattered limbs and body parts lay all over the room. Blood continued to flow into the locker room drains. The creatures left the room in no particular hurry, as if on a casual stroll.

She waited inside that locker for what seemed an eternity. She slammed her hand against it…

Back in reality, Reeves swung backward, tethered by her magboots in zero-G. She actually hit the wall in her quarters.

The memory made her die inside all over again. But, she wouldn’t cry; instead, she focused on the anger and hatred she had for the Thargoids.

She walked to the foreword windows to look out at the stars. This engineer—they had to find him and force him to make his invention work. And then she could wipe the Thargoids out. That was her personal mission. The mission she would see through at any cost. At any cost, she told herself. She’d go through any Resistance that stood in her way.

She grabbed the coffee from the dispenser and took a sip. If they couldn’t find them in these blasted rings, she’d need a backup plan. She had another option, but using it would mean admitting failure at some level. At any cost, she reminded herself.

The commlink beeped. “Do you have something?”

“Yes, Colonel. The Scythe picked up some signals in grid six-two.”

“Converge on those signals. All ships. I’m on my way.”

She walked with purpose on the trip back up to the bridge. The excitement gave her energy. Best not to show it, though. Appearances, after all. She put her command face back on before stepping through the doorway.

“Sir, we’re in range of the signals. They’re on the sensors now,” Sloane reported.

She crossed the flight deck to look at the sensors. Dancing signals still too distant to resolve into definitive targets bounced about the edge of the display.

Reeves turned to her pilot, “Asher, let’s punch it.”

A smile crept across Asher’s face. “Yes, sir!”

Reeves grabbed the edge of the console to steady herself. There was loud whining build up before the explosive jolt of the engine boost knocked them all backward.

They crossed the distance in no time. The signals settled and turned into white dots on the displays next to an asteroid. The sensors resolved them into fragments of Alexandrite.

“Decoys!” Reeves screamed and smashed her fists on the console in front of her. Time for plan B, she thought to herself. She spun about to her comm officer. “Huxley!” She snapped. “Time for the big guns. Raise the Vilant. We need their long-range sensors. Now!”

“There!” Lee shouted. “Follow us in.”

“Right behind you,” Jackson’s voice came back over the comms.

Their two ships stayed close in the low supercruise velocity enforced by the nearby gas giant’s enormous gravity-well. Their loop maneuver almost completed, the edge of the planetary rings descended into view in front of them.

“Hey Xohn, see that hotspot on the right there?” The HUD projected a yellowish-orange spot onto the ring surface.

“Yes, I see it.”

“We need to keep it on to our starboard at a distance of twenty-five megameters. Then we can find the right ring band. I think it’s about ten to fifteen in.”

“And you remember it?”

“Ehh, roughly, yeah.”

“Roughly?”

“I’ll know it when I see it! Marking asteroids is an art form. If you do it right, things look and feel right. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

“That sounds of biowaste.”

Lee laughed. “I think that’s the first time I’ve heard you anywhere close to cursing. You’re always so proper.”

“You are kidding me? This trip has me cursing more than ever in my life!”

“I have a feeling this trip is just getting started. Almost there now.”

As they closed in, the individual bands of the ring became discernible.

“Twenty-five megameters and…” They were close enough that Lee made out the subtle pattern shift in the rocks. At this distance, it was the only evidence left of what happened. “There it is! Alright Jackson, lock on to my signal.”

“I’ve been locked, pal.”

Lee shook off the snark. Instead he focused on counting down the distance, throttling back for more control. There was a knack to being able to drop from frameshift cruising into real-space at the right place and angle. Vic gave him tireless drills on it to make sure he learned to pull it off.

Lee disengaged the frame shift drive. His weight shifted forward in the deceleration as their frame folding field dissipated.

Countless powdery-grey tumbling boulder fragments surrounded them, blanketed by a thick haze. They weren’t the typical potato shapes from the other segment of the ring. The asteroids here were deeply fractured. There were whole chunks that looked missing—as if blasted out.

*”*Yeah,” Lee looked around. “This is the right place.” He said in a quiet, solemn respect. But how do we find any sign of a destroyed Cobra? He thought to himself.

“Vack!” Xohn cursed from below. “What happened here?” He asked in awe.

“They blew everything up. You can see the missing chunks, not just craters.”

The commlink stayed silent, but the Para Bellum flew nearby. They tracked together through the asteroid field for awhile.

Lee switched on the Pulse Wave Scanner and sent out some test pulses. There were no tell-tale ‘glows’ on the HUD.

“Xohn, I don’t have any ideas about how we’re gonna find evidence of your girl’s ship here.”

“That is the Pulse Wave Analyzer, yeah?”

“That’s right. It looks for compositional anomalies in asteroids.”

“Right, that is perfect. The analyzer can be modified to pick up the high density composites used in the hull. If the ship or any fragments of it are around, it will pick them up. The analyzer must be recalibrated to scan for the wave signal dampening caused by the EM absorption properties in the composites.”

“Oh no, I’m not about to let you mess with the Nightcrawler.”

“So we are to be stumbling around until we get lucky?” Xohn said, his voice dubious.

“Well, I have no idea how to do anything like that.”

He heard a sigh from below. “You have tools?”

“Sure. In the back, by the airlock, but–“

“I can handle it.”

He relented, “Eh, I guess I haven’t really used it in forever anyways. Look in the overhead compartments.” He could hear his companion stirring in the deck below. “Still, You better know what you’re doing. Don’t screw up my scanner!”

Lee switched on the commlink. “Hey Jackson, hang tight for a bit. Xohn is messing with the sensors over here. He’s gonna try to set them up to detect hull composites.”

“Oh yeah, that‘s a good idea. He should make sure its precise enough at a high-band frequency—up to like eighteen gigahertz or so.”

Lee got the distinct impression Jackson was full of biowaste. “You’ve got mining expertise too?”

“I just know a little bit about a bunch of random stuff.”

“Right.”

“I’ll be patrolling. I’ll let you know if there are any guests that need scared away.”

“Right. Thanks,” Lee said, trying to keep the irritation out of his tone.

“Sure pal. Just remember the bonus when payday comes.”

Lee closed the commlink scoffing at the ‘payday’ comment. Fat chance I’m paying that arrogant little chyt. I just want to know who killed Vic.

He brought the Nightcrawler to a stop, holding station between the asteroids, to wait for Xohn’s modifications. The scene outside the canopy made him uneasy. It was eerie to be back where he died, in the very same seat even. He really missed that old man.

The ship creaked around him. “Yeah, girl. I know. I feel it too.”

“Payday, boy!” He heard Vic’s voice in his head from their first delivery together. “This is what it looks like to earn an honest living. Oh, sure—it probably looks quiet and boring to you. But it has a special charm all its own. There’s a– a certain thrill to scoring the best profit on a haul. You’ll see.”

“You know, the old man would have been here in a heartbeat to clean up after all this happened. He always had a nose for a good opportunity.” The Nightcrawler kept quiet aside from normal indicator notes. It didn’t matter, Lee fell into habit, talking to his ship like a familiar companion.

“I could barely break a couple hundred credits a day datapad-skimming back on Cooper City. The best I got was maybe a couple thousand doing pranks for street gangs. Once, I hacked an apartment building’s environmental controls. Filled the whole building with biowaste.”

“The gangs loved that one.” He chuckled at the memory leaving a wistful smile on his face.

“That first haul with Vic though—over a million credits. I mean, that guy was my hero. You know? He took care of me more than my own mother. Did I ever tell you about her?”

The Nightcrawler responded with a chirp, catching him by surprise. Lee sat forward in his seat. A glance at the systems panel showed the Pulse Wave Analyzer going offline. He eased back and went back to his reminiscing out loud.

“Well, let’s just say she was a piece of work. I–”, he stopped to think back to her. “I barely remember how beautiful and nice she used to be. She struggled on her own—my father was gone before I was even born. No idea where in the galaxy he is.”

“It all went screb-side-up when that guy came around. What was his name? I can’t remember. I can remember his long face and ponytail—oh, and all the pockmarks. That guy was nasty. He was some super rich bloke, I guess; bought her fancy clothes, took her to lots of nice dinners, and jewelry… I remember this one color-shifting pendant he gave her. It was mesmerizing, really. And the parties–“ He shifted uncomfortably.

“Every night they’d be out at some party, and I was left at the apartment by myself. Just a kid! He got her hooked on drugs and she was gone all the time until she just didn’t come back–”

The intercom startled him out of his reverie, and Vin Xohn’s voice echoed in the cockpit, “Okay, Lee, it’s ready!”

“Great, uh, anything special I need to do?”

“No. It works the same. It is set up for the hull composite signals. I am heading back up.”

“Okay then. Let’s see what we see.” Lee switched power back to the Pulse Wave Analyzer, and it booted back up. He stared at the rocks in the haze beyond the canopy and pulled the trigger to send a pulse. Most of the boulders showed nothing but weak signals. Lee switched on the narrow-band commlink. “Hey Jackson, we’ve got the scanner online. I’m going to try a pass through the field.”

“I’ll circle back toward you now.”

Lee eased the throttle forward and began triggering wave after wave. He could hear his ship companion coming through the lower deck and getting settled in his seat. “Nothing so far. Are you sure this is working?”

“Absolutely. I checked and re-checked.”

“It just seems like there’s nothing—no hotspots whatsoever.”

“It is working, it has to be wide spectrum, so it is just short range. We are not close enough yet.”

“Alright, I’ll keep heading along this ring band.” Lee hit the engine boost to cover more distance and continued to send out the pulses. The haze thickened, and there were smaller chunks locked into the orbit of the larger ones.

A few kilometers off their port side, a sliver of a faint glow appeared in the distance. Lee banked the Nightcrawler to investigate. With another pulse, the golden highlight became brighter.

“Think we got something, Xohn?”

“Yeah, that looks promising!” His energetic voice replied.

The haze became thicker still—another pulse. The signal strengthened, turning from golden to a fire red, still partially blocked by another rock in front of it. The Nightcrawler moved into position, and the full rock came into view. It was a mountain-sized asteroid. Lee switched on the forward lights. Stark shadows appeared in the cone of light emanating from the ship. The pitted rock, scarred with deep crags, was otherwise unremarkable.

“This has to be the right one,” Xohn remarked.

Lee used the lateral thrusters to slide the ship around it. The Nightcrawler made a graceful arc, its light beams moving across the rocky surface. The lights revealed new features as they tracked the surface—more craggy valleys deeper, and then… an enormous gash.

“Well now, that’s something you don’t see everyday,” Lee commented. With the dorsal thrusters he pushed the ship down to follow the gash.

The light traced along the gash, and it opened to a deep crevice that seemed to go inside the asteroid.

Then they saw it.