Chapter 12

As the forward lights got closer to the blackness of the massive hole in Aeneas, I became aware that the light was not penetrating it. I was about to point it out, but then Erika did.

“I was about to say the same thing,” Celina said.

I nodded.

We continued to move forward at close to minimum thrust and something else occurred to me but again I was beaten to the punch, this time by Celina. “Why isn’t the moon’s gravity pulling us in faster? Shouldn’t it speed us up or pull us off course or something?”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Erika said.

I glanced at each of them. “You two need to get out of my brain.”

Then the nose of the shuttle crossed the plane of blackness and we watched in horror as it disappeared. The shuttle continued to vanish into the void seeming to be annihilated as it pushed forward. The curtain of annihilation washed over us, even penetrating inside the cabin, passing over us in seconds. In a knee jerk reaction before it hit me, I reached up and pulled Celina down onto my lap, foolishly thinking I could protect her from it.

When we blinked our eyes open everything was fine. Celina and I both exhaled together and the feeling of her breath caressed my face was a comforting one. I would have liked to have kept her there to see what might happen next, but instead I snapped her back up to her feet and looked out the windows and then down to the sensors.

We were in a huge spherical cavern. The inside walls of which were covered by DaMFEs and it looked like banks and banks of docking ports, barracks, and anything else a military port would need. Erika swore to my left and a display popped up in front of me. “What the Sol is that?” I asked in amazement, and Celina’s face was instantly right next to mine.

The display showed a Black-Sky class battleship. Unlike any other Black-Sky, it protruded more at its center, giving it a hexagonal shape when viewed from the front or back. There was a large whole in the front that was easily the size of our shuttle and scarily similar to the barrel of plasma cannon. It was also not painted the usual drab gray of military craft, instead having and off-white hue. The transmitter must not have been activated, because it didn’t register a name on our screens. I said this aloud, my voice sounding more surprised than I intended.

“How is that possible?” Celina asked. “Terran law dictates transmitters must be tied directly into the power.” She gestured at my screen. “The power is obviously on, so where’s the designation transmitter?”

Erika and I both opened our mouths to reply, but Celina had already raised her hands up to stop both of us. “Never mind,” she said. “Stupid question.”

“This is stupid,” Erika breathed, gesturing at the Celina. Her hands flew over her controls and a third station opened up between us: a flight seat from the floor and full panel from the console. She reached across it, grabbed Celina and pulled her into the chair. “Sit,” she commanded. “Do something useful.”

Celina, after quickly straightening herself and taking the couple seconds to attach her harness, immediately went to work with the scanners. I watched my displays as she accessed areas of the scanners we rarely had reason to use. Display after display popped up in front of me, then dropped, only to be replaced by another. I hadn’t seen anyone do anything like this since the academy when an instructor showed the class what it looked like to be proficient. If it hadn’t been for the situation we were in, I’m sure I would have been embarrassed by her extreme skill. I did check our flight path to make sure we were exactly on course.

The banks of docking ports of the base were all full, every single one of them. The largest ship was the Black-Sky class battleship, which Celina had zeroed in on the name at its nose: SP Protostar. There were three Breaker class destroyers, the second two appeared complete and in a shakedown phase: The SP Bok, The SP T Tauri, and The SP James Lacy. Breaker class destroyers were very cylindrical vessels roughly three hundred meters wide in diameter. Their length was close to the same as a battleship, but ended in a hemisphere of engines at the back, more than doubling their normal space thrust. They were also covered in weapons. All three of the ones here had the same strange hole in the front as the Protostar did and also had fighter bays in different positions than just at their center like Terran craft.

In other places, the building blocks of half a dozen cruisers were present. Then there were hundreds and hundreds of Razor class fighters. A building platform was constructing over twenty at one time. Finally, defensive weapon platform after defensive weapon platform appeared in front of me. Plasma cannons were present on each of them, but missiles batteries, massive railguns, and odd looking machines accompanied them in a seemingly random pattern. The odd machines reminded me best of trebuchets. I checked the sensors again and discovered that every single one was trained on us.

It looked like all but two of the ten barracks were dark but they were huge and spread out over the entire base, not anywhere near each other. Transfer tubes ran everywhere and I suddenly felt like I was inside an insect hive of some kind. I didn’t want to see anymore, but I just couldn’t pull my eyes away from my displays. It was terrifying. No wonder they told us to keep to the line they sent us. If we took any other, we had a great chance of smashing into anything from a flight of fighters to one of the tugs moving ship parts around. There were even fighters flying from the banks to the Battleship and one of the destroyers. One fighter even rolled around us as we passed its squadron’s path.

And then Erika brought something up that hadn’t even begun to form in my brain in all its wonder. “If they have all of these ships, how come you and I have been the only people killing pirates?”

I looked over at her and could see the rage building in her eyes. “You have a great point,” I said calmly. “But somehow I think the answer is obvious enough.”

Erika nodded, understanding. “The same reason they don’t have active designation transmitters.”

Celina waved her hand between us and we both looked at her. Tears were streaming down her face and looked like she was trying to fight them back. She couldn’t speak because of it. Erika and I looked at our displays. We were headed between two tugs headed in opposite directions, completely ignoring us. I doubled check the computer again, which was already rotating us to miss them both. Everything was fine, but I put my hands on the manual controls to sate her.

The docking port we had been directed to was right in front of us and was actually inside the Black-Sky. I triggered all the docking procedures, including handing the shuttle’s controls to the hanger and made sure everything double-checked before I leaned back again. That’s when I realized I was shaking. I decided to ignore it because as soon as the scanners crossed the threshold of the ship, they all went dark. I looked over at Celina who held both hands up just off the controls and looked confused.

Erika grabbed one of her hands and held it comfortingly. “It’s fine,” she said. “You didn’t do anything. They’re blocking the readings.”

“They can’t,” Celina croaked. “It’s impossible.”

“It was just timing,” I said, taking her other hand. “They realized what we were doing and since they have access to the ships computers, they shut them off.” Still holding her hand I looked out the front again. “Our computers will be wiped before we finish docking procedures.”

Erika let out a mocking breath. “Hope you have all your contacts backed up somewhere.”

The ships thrusters cut out and a long umbilical arm attached to our port docking hatch, pulling us to stop. Erika took off her harness and said, “We need to be there when those doors open.”

I started out on her heels but had to stop and turn around. “Come on, Celina,” I began. “Jim needs us.”

“He knew,” she whispered.

I shook my head, though she couldn’t see it with her back to me. “Now’s not the time.”

“How could he be a part of all this without me knowing about it?” It was rhetorical so I didn’t answer. “Why wouldn’t he tell me?”

I looked down at my boots and then back to her. She had turned her chair and was slowly rising. I cleared my throat. “I think he just told all three of us.”

She forced a smile at me. “This is ridiculous.” She wiped her hands over her eyes, pulled out a handkerchief and ran it over her face and nose. She chuckled, “How do I look?”

I did my best to give her a reassuring smile. “You look great,” I lied, looking at her tear streaked face, bloodshot eyes, and reddened nose.

Celina started forward with a scoff and said, “Don’t you start lying to me too.”

Next Chapter: Chapter 13