The Capella was taking heavy damage from the enemy warships, and was the only thing standing between their ship and the Wasatti invaders. Twice, his dad sent the Capella to a protecting position to keep the enemy cruisers at bay. How long could that last? Peter wondered.
His dad’s ship was still trying to come about, and would not arrive for another fifteen minutes. The remaining ship in the human fleet was on the other side of the star system, and might as well be light-years away. It would likely not have a chance to participate in the local battle at all. To cap off the day, they were in a ship failing to respond, and on top of that, they were beginning to drift. He already detected the slow rotation of background stars in the distance, as if the ship were already dead. His dad promised to guide them through the jump process, but so far he was too busy coordinating the outer defenses, just keeping them alive. Peter doubted his dad could give them any useful advice anyway.
Ali and Stiles barged back onto the bridge, having taken care of the dead body. “Any progress?” Ali asked.
“Nothing,” Peter replied. “It sounds real bad out there.”
“I knew it,” Stiles retorted. “I gotta do everything around here myself.” He stormed back to the nav station and shoved himself into the chair.
The situation looked terrible, and as if matters could not be worse, Peter and his friends were arguing over the smallest details rather than trying to work together as a team. He could hardly hear himself think over the constant bickering. Peter was at his wits’ end and had no idea what to do. He felt helpless and alone. Dad, he silently pleaded.
“Peter, any progress there?” Stephen asked.
Peter tried to respond, but could not get a word in edgewise. “Guys … guys …! Will you all shut up? I’m trying to talk to my dad here!”
The kids quieted down.
“No, Dad. Nothing’s changed. I think we’re slowing down, too.”
“You are.” His dad’s voice was very soft and calm. “Peter, listen very carefully: there’s a Wasatti boarding party heading your way; three dart ships. It won’t take long for them to get there. You need to jump, and you need to jump now.”
“We can’t, Sir,” Ali replied. “We only have access to the yellow systems.”
Stiles gave up on the weapons station and ran back to the yellow navigation panel. He manipulated the screens, trying anything he could think of to help them out of this predicament.
Stephen answered in an obviously over-calming voice. That made Peter even more alarmed.
“All right, we wanted a green system, but it’s still okay, Ali. The system had an override protocol for a pre-jump location. Lieutenant Wilkins had the parameters pre-loaded, and was simply finalizing the other referents. It’s chancy, but you can still initiate jump. Just spin up the drive, hit it, and let the ship take care of the rest. You should come out alone at uninhabited Alpha Bootis—that’s near Beta Comae Berenices—but don’t worry; we can send help out there for you afterwards.”
“Sir, without referents, we stand a large chance of a mis-jump,” Ali protested.
“Ali, that’s the least of your worries right now. If those boarding ships arrive, they will take control of that ship. You’ll never stand a chance against them, believe me. Jack-in and jump with what you got while you still have the chance.”
Peter took a deep breath, finally deciding what to do. “Okay, Ali. Set it up. Spin the jump engines.”
Ali looked dubious, but relented. “Okay, give me five minutes to get down there.” He rushed out of the bridge and down to engineering. He would need to manually initiate the engines. With only the yellow system in operation, not only was navigation seriously impaired, but major commands, weapons fire, and almost all other actions were impossible without the help of the unconscious ship. Even manual overrides might end up being tricky.
Five minutes and we can get out of here, Peter thought. He continued to issue orders, “Everyone, find a station and jack your CT-suits in. Let’s be ready when Ali calls back.”
The kids scrambled to get ready, listening to the battle chatter over the com while they waited. Things seemed to be even worse, if that were possible. Peter cringed at every word he heard from the fleet.
“Capella is taking heavy damage, Captain. We may lose her.”
“Are we in position yet?”
“Almost, Sir … missile firing range … now.”
“Fire all forward batteries!”
“Away, Sir. Multiple enemy missiles incoming in response. Impact in six minutes.”
“Set all wild weasels and chaff.”
Everyone seemed so calm out there. Peter could not imagine how they could function like that, staring at the brink of destruction. He was so proud of his dad, but scared for him beyond belief. He realized with a start he hadn’t even worried about his own predicament while he listened in on his father. He wondered where the enemy boarders were and what they would do if they got in. He wished those security Marines were at their station, guarding the access hatches.
“Peter, are you ready?”
Peter snapped back. “Almost, Dad. We couldn’t set the engines from here, so Ali is doing a manual start-up in engineering. Another minute or two.”
“Are you all jacked?”
“Yes, Sir,” Peter replied.
“Good. We might just pull this off. The moment you hear from Ali, be sure he is jacked-in and hit it.”
“Okay, Dad.”
Peter waited another long minute. He noticed some numbers increasing in a long string at the engineering screen, and had no idea what they represented. The best he could figure was that bigger numbers were better than smaller. Impatiently, he called to engineering. “Ali, c’mon; are we ready yet?”
“Almost; wait just a second … okay, it’s up.”
Peter could feel the FTL drive units begin to rumble. He breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, it felt like they were in a functioning ship. “You jacked-in?” Peter asked over the com.
“Of course!” Ali replied.
Peter wiped perspiration from his brow. He glanced at Henrietta and noticed her nod encouragement. “Dad, we’re ready now,” Peter called out. “Stiles, you’re closest. Hit it.”
Stiles passed his hands through the navigation screens at the yellow station.
The engines kept spinning, but nothing changed. They were still at Vega in the middle of a space battle. Peter looked at Stiles, willing him to hurry. “Stiles ….”
“It’s not working!” Stiles shouted. Off to the side, Jimmy began sobbing.
“What do you mean, it’s not working?” Peter exclaimed.
“It’s dead. This ship is crap,” Stiles said. He threw his arms up in surrender like he had nothing more to say.
“Come on, Peter,” Stephen called. His voice was getting tense now. “Those boarding ships are almost on you. Another minute or two and they’ll make contact! The yellow system was ready for jump.”
Peter heard a whine in his father’s voice. He never heard such anguish coming from his father. Peter also heard some woman talking to his dad in the background.
“Twenty missiles have penetrated through our defenses, Captain. Close-defense systems are now firing. Two minutes to impact.”
Peter ripped the connections from his CT-suit and ran to the navigation consoles. “Stiles, what did you do?”
“Nothing—”
“Did too,” Henrietta replied. “Peter, I saw him messing with the controls earlier. He was throwing switches all over the place. I tried to stop him.”
“What?” Peter cried. What did Stiles do now? The system was so complex; anything could throw it off line. It took years to learn how to operate a starship, and just one setting out of whack could be fatal.
“I was trying to fix the ship,” Stiles said defensively. “No one else was doing anything. You were standing there, peeing down your pants, when I walked in.”
Peter threw himself into the chair next to Stiles. “Show me what you did—q
uick!”
Stiles began to deny doing anything, but then relented. “I reset some of these screens. I was trying to switch them from yellow to green. I turned this key a couple times.”
“You turned the yellow key off?” Peter asked.
“Yeah, it was the only way to reset the screens. But I input the drive for New Capital. It took me a few minutes, but I learned how to do it while you were off shivering over there in your little command chair. Didn’t look that hard to me.”
Stiles had reset the jump parameters. Not only were they out of yellow status, but now they had no destination properly input into the navigation computer. Peter punched the external com, “Dad, we are off-line for navigation.”
“No ….” Stephen moaned.
“Dad, we can’t let the Wasatti get control of our systems. How do we self-destruct?”
Ali came on-line before he could reply, “Guys, punch out. The engines are spinning. Go now or shut down. If not, they’ll blow up!”
Well, that’s one way to self-destruct, Peter realized. He heard the engines whining at a high pitch, getting progressively worse. Peter felt a vibration that did not feel right, like the engines were going out of sync. A screen to Peter’s left blinked red, warning of engine overload. Peter reached for the yellow key, but Stiles stopped him.
“We can’t jump now. We might end up inside some star! It’s attracted to gravity wells, stupid. Look, it took me five minutes to set it for a known point. We have to reinitialize a new location!”
“You idiot!” Peter screamed. “We can’t jump anywhere now. This ship won’t answer anything we ask, and there’s no time left before we’re boarded!”
“Peter,” Stephen warned, “our sensors are showing the Wasatti Marines are out of their ships.”
“Missile impact in one minute, Captain. Point defenses will not stop them all.”
“Maybe we can negotiate with the Wasatti,” Stiles offered. “That’s what my dad would do.” He opened a com channel to full external broadcast. “Hello, Wasatti. This is the governor’s son, Stiles Essen. We wish to negotiate terms.”
“Humans, this is Commander Roan of the Wasatti Empire. Surrender that ship to us immediately. We agree not to disassemble your bodies. We will allow your bodies to pass over in one piece.”
The engine vibrations were getting extreme by now and Peter felt his teeth chatter. “Not on my watch!” Peter shouted. He shoved Stiles aside, grabbed the yellow key and turned it in desperation.
“Captain Campbell, welcome aboard.”
Peter looked around in utter astonishment. The ship spoke! Somehow, it woke up. As Peter watched, several screens were turning from red to orange. Others were fading from yellow to green. The outside background of stars filling the view port began to stabilize.
“It must be your DNA!” Henrietta shouted. “It thinks you are your dad!”
Peter had no time to think. He suddenly heard banging from the outer hull; the Wasatti were trying to get in. It was now or never. He glanced one last time at his father’s image on his communication screen. “Jump!” Peter commanded.
CHAPTER 6
K-T-SPACE
Peter felt time slow to a crawl. Every motion—every thought—took eons to complete. It felt like he was falling into a thick gel. He felt the sudden acceleration on his body, and then, bam: he hit a barrier that felt like he was suspended in mid air. His body was slapped from all sides at once, pushing him into the center-point of his core. It was as if his entire corporeal being was shoved into his soul.
He knew he had to connect to a jump chair, or he would starve long before they came out. His eyes slipped shut of their own accord, and nothing he could do would open them. He reached for his chest and felt the connector slide into his hand. He raised it up to the console and thought he felt it faintly click into his CT-suit, but he could not be sure.
“Son, I love you ….” The voice came through a fog, far in the distance.
Peter fought against the growing fatigue and pried open his eyes for a moment. His father had talked to him, but from where? He felt the beat of his heart slow until it stopped. His head slipped down to his chest and he watched a small teardrop well up in one eye. He was crying for his father’s memory. Twenty missiles were about to slam into his father’s ship, and there was nothing Peter could do to help.
The teardrop released from his face, but before it could hit the deck it stopped, suspended in mid-air and caught by the mysterious forces of K-T-space. Then he felt nothing more as he slipped painlessly away into the darkness.
CHAPTER 7
THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE
The teardrop hit the deck as Peter was torn from the confining gel. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. His body was paralyzed as well, fused to whatever instrument of torture he was sitting in. He tried to free his tongue several times but realized he forgot how to work his jaw. He was like a new-born baby, needing to connect unused muscles to neurons in his brain. He concentrated on subconsciously mapping a path to his face along the ridgeline of his jaw, and the milliseconds it took for the electrons to travel the new-found route felt like a year-long journey. Perhaps it was, Peter realized. When his mouth finally moved, he heard a crack, like old bones crumbling. A searing pain shot through his right ear. That’ll teach me for trying to get comfortable.
Eclipsing his new-found pain, Peter felt his chest thrust forward. His torso shot to the front of the ship, leaving his spine still motionless in the chair far behind. In one instant, Peter became infinitely long, like putty stretched to a fine thread. A blinding gray-purple light surrounded him, spinning madly like the rifle barrel around a corkscrewing bullet. An eternity later, his head emerged from the barrel, joining the jumbled ball of thread on the other side as he was pulled through the eye of the universe’s perverse and sadistic needle. His head coalesced first, painful ear and all. Suddenly, he felt the rest of his body reassemble as the ship slammed out of K-T-space.
Peter was startled to feel his heart beat once again. Air filled empty lungs and his chest rose and fell to the familiar rhythm of human breathing. He lifted his right arm, but only his index finger obeyed. He lifted again, more forcefully, and managed to get his hand to his head. Loose hair caught between his fingers, pulling away in clumps. He felt flakes of skin peel off as he wiped his forehead, feeling like a fine layer of desiccated tissue paper. He pried opened his eyes and saw an old man’s hand, all dry and wrinkly.
Who was there, in front of me?
Peter was startled a second time. He turned his hand to defend himself and was surprised when the old man’s hand reflected his motion. Was he mocking my helplessness?
He saw the hand obey further commands and realized it must be his own. His 14-year old hand transformed into the withered and arthritic hand of Grandfather Morningstar. Are you my Spirit Guide now, Grandfather? Peter wondered.
The answer startled him for the third time in as many seconds. He realized he could not take many more surprises this day. “No, Rising Sun, I cannot track that far. You are beyond where eagles have ever flown.”
Only his grandfather had called him Rising Sun, the one that came after the Morningstar set. At first Peter did not like the name, but the more he heard it the more he liked it. He eventually grew into it and always looked forward to Grandfather using it whenever they met.
Where are we? Peter asked.
“I cannot tell you, for I do not know. Long ago I have lost the path you took.”
Peter wondered what he meant. Grandfather was the best tracker Peter ever knew. Once, they patiently followed a deer on the plains of Stagecoach for three days before finally reaching it. “We are bonded to that animal now, you and I,” Grandfather told him during the hunt. “We would insult him if we let him go now. He would feel unworthy.”
But aren’t you bonded to me too, Grandfather? Peter asked.
Grandfather did not answer. Now, if Grandfather had truly lost the way …. Grandfather, help me—
??
?You are on your own now, Grandson. It is only you that can help yourself. Your destiny awaits.”
My destiny? For what, Grandfather?
He did not reply. The winds carried him away like dust.
Peter cleared his throat. His hoarse voice sounded odd to him as he called out. It sounded so much like Grandfather. “I will try not to disappoint you, Grandfather.”
* * *
Peter’s body twitched uncontrollably as he fully awakened. For a moment, he feared he was having a seizure. It was the worst reaction he ever had coming out of a jump or a deep-teach session.
“Oh, God,” he groaned as the shaking slowly subsided. Well, at least I’m not dead, he thought. This hurts too much for death. He swallowed, but there was not enough moisture in his mouth to satisfy the urge. It felt like half the hair on his head was shoved into his mouth, and a family of mice took residence in the nest.
As his senses returned, he felt an itch on every square inch of his skin. He spent blessed minutes scratching from head to toe. Dead skin cells always accumulated when the body was semi-suspended in a jump, but this time was ridiculous. I might as well be a snake coming out of hibernation.
Gentle beeps and chirps from the bridge greeted Peter. That was when he remembered where he was. “Uh, ship?” Peter asked.
There was no response. I’ll worry about him later, Peter concluded.
He unplugged his CT-suit and slowly got to his feet. Every bone and muscle ached. He stretched his back and looked around. Peter limped to the water dispenser and dialed in a cool water bulb. A moment later it appeared. Peter took the palm-sized bulb and irrigated his mouth with the blessed liquid. He swished it around before swallowing, resisting the urge to down it all in one large gulp. He took another cautious sip, making sure it stayed down.
Henrietta, Jimmy, and Stiles were still plugged into their CT systems and Peter was careful not to disturb them. He tried to activate the main view screen but it remained black. Growing more concerned by the second, he next activated the tac screen. It also failed to function.
“Great,” Peter said dryly. The ship suddenly felt very large and lonely. He felt like a visiting spirit passing through a dead world. He shivered as a cold wave passed through him. Spirits ….