make our first jump-in say, thirty minutes?”
Abby nodded in agreement, as did the others.
“Great, dismissed,” he announced. As they got up to leave, Nathan activated the comm-panel on his desk to hail the comm-officer on the bridge. “Can you send Josh and Loki to my ready room?”
Twenty minutes later, Josh and Loki arrived at the entrance to the bridge. Having been forewarned of their arrival, the guard at the hatchway escorted them the few meters down the short corridor that led into the aft port side of the bridge.
“Whoa,” Loki muttered as he gazed upon the bridge, and the main view screen that wrapped around the entire front half the room and up over the helm and navigation consoles.
“This is nice,” Josh whispered back to Loki. Despite the fact that most of the Aurora’s technology was less advanced than that found on even the older ships used on Haven, the layout of the bridge left him in awe. “I’d love to get my hands on the flight controls of this baby, eh, mate?” he added, jabbing Loki in his side with his elbow.
“This way, gentlemen,” the guard stated, reminding them of why they were here. Josh and Loki turned to see the guard standing behind them, his arm outstretched to point toward the door to the captain’s ready room, just inboard from the entrance they had just passed through. “The captain’s expecting you.”
Josh and Loki followed the guard, looking back over their shoulders to catch a last glimpse of the bridge on their way out. The guard swung the hatch open and they stepped inside the ready room.
“Gentlemen,” Nathan greeted them nonchalantly. “What took you so long?”
“Sorry, Captain,” Loki began, “but we had just pulled the computer core from the harvester when you called. Once pulled, you only have ten minutes to get it hooked back up to power, or you lose all its base programming.”
“That’s understandable. Have a seat,” he said, gesturing to the two chairs in front of his desk.
Josh felt a bit uncomfortable. His flying technique had gotten him and Loki into hot water on more than one occasion. And right now, it felt similar to the time they had been called into the Haven Port Authority Flight Controller’s office. They had gotten scolded for nearly an hour that day, and had just about lost their flight status. “Have we done something wrong, Captain?”
“No, not at all. I have a couple of missions I wanted to discuss with you. That’s all.
Josh started to relax a little, as did Loki.
“Missions?” Loki asked, not quite sure what the term meant.
“You know, flights? What do you call them?”
“Flights, I guess,” Loki answered with a shrug.
“What kind of missions did you have in mind, Captain?” Josh asked.
“The Karuzari have a base of some type inside a hollowed out asteroid. We would like to use it as a place to hide while we conduct repairs.”
Josh’s eyes lit up. “This place must be pretty big, if you can fit your whole ship inside it.”
“Apparently, it’s an entire facility of some sort.”
“Captain?” Loki asked. “Why do you need us to fly in?”
“We need someone to recon the entrance, the main port, and the exits, before we take the ship inside.”
Josh could see that his friend was getting suspicious. “You expecting trouble?” he asked the captain.
“I wouldn’t say expecting,” Nathan said. “Let’s just say we’re being overly cautious and leave it at that.”
“Say no more, Captain,” Josh told him. “We quite understand. Never trusted the Karuzari much myself, either.”
“It’s not so much a matter of trust at this point,” Nathan corrected. “As I said before, it’s more a matter of caution. We have too much at stake to risk haphazardly.”
“Yeah,” Josh agreed, changing to a more somber tone. “The chief told us all about the Jung and such. You blokes certainly have your plates full.”
Nathan smiled at the expression. “Yes, we do at that.”
“Captain?” Loki interrupted. “You said missions,” he added, emphasizing the plural.
“Yes. Later, we’ll also need you to make a couple of runs to the planet surface. First to deliver Tug and Jalea, along with most of the ore your team collected. And then to bring them and a load of supplies back to the ship a day or two after.”
“The surface? The surface of what? We’re not going back to Haven, are we?”
“No. We’ll be going to the Darvano system.”
“Darvano? But that’s nearly ten light years away. That’ll take weeks,” Loki exclaimed.
“Not for us, remember?” Nathan reminded him.
“You’re gonna jump?” Josh asked, unable to hide his excitement.
“Yes.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t mind seeing that. I don’t mind tellin’ ya,” Josh stated. Although not as easily excited as his friend, it was obvious that Loki was also excited.
“We’re going to jump in about five minutes,” Nathan told them. “Would you like to hang around and watch?”
“Oh, you bet,” Josh stated, Loki’s head nodding rapidly up and down.
“Very well, then. Follow me,” Nathan said as he rose from his desk.
Josh and Loki followed Nathan out of the ready room and back out onto the bridge.
“You guys just stand back here,” Nathan told them, pointing to the back of the room in front of the burnt-out comm station that had been offline since they had first encountered the Ta’Akar.
Nathan moved down from the upper platform that held the tactical station in the center, the jump control console on the right, and the new temporary comm-station on the left. “Are we ready to jump?”
“Jump drive is fully charged and ready. Our first jump is plotted and verified,” Abby reported.
“Where will the first jump take us?”
“Exactly five light years from here, to a point pretty much in the middle of nowhere, sir. But definitely deep within the Pentaurus cluster.”
“Helm ready?” Nathan asked as Cameron stepped down from the upper level and moved in front of him to sit at the helm console.
“Helm is ready, sir.”
“Are we gonna feel anything?” Josh asked Jessica, who was standing at the tactical console directly in front of him.
“No,” she said, turning her head slightly to cast a disapproving look at his question.
Nathan heard Josh’s question. “Commander, you know, maybe we should always warn the crew and passengers when we are about to jump. I mean, there is no sensation involved-not like when we’re accelerating or decelerating. It might be better for the crew to be aware of any abrupt change in location.”
“It might at that,” she agreed.
“Jess? Any problems with that?”
“None that I can think of, sir.”
“All right then. From now on, procedure will be to announce a jump at least one minute before. Then give a 5 second count down. Afterward, we should announce that the jump is complete, and specify our new location.”
“Is all that really necessary?” Cameron asked.
“Too much?”
“It does seem a bit dramatic. But then again, you may be right about the psychological affect on the crew. What good is it to have served aboard a starship if you never even knew where you went?”
“Great. You might want to add that to the manual, Commander,” Nathan announced with satisfaction.
“Might I also suggest that we rig some sort of auto-adjustment of the viewer to take place just before and after a jump, instead of shutting it down and then back up. It takes a few seconds for the system to reboot when it’s shut completely off, and those few seconds could be crucial upon arrival.”
“That’s an excellent idea. Add that one to the book as well.”
“Captain,” Jessica began. “Who makes the announcement?”
“Well, as long as Abby is controlling the jump, then she can make the actual jump announcements. “Comms
