nose slightly to port. But the ship continued to slide to starboard, still traveling along the same path it had been prior to the yaw maneuver. She simultaneously applied forward thrust as well as even bow and stern starboard thrust, thus changing the ship’s flight path to match the direction that its bow now pointed, which was directly into the massive tunnel veering off to the left of the crevice.
Nathan looked up as he watched the overhang of the tunnel entrance pass over them. The sight sent shivers down his spine. He remembered piloting the ship out of the assembly platform in orbit of Earth, watching the trusses pass overhead. But had he collided with them, the resulting damage to the ship would have been minimal. He was quite sure that any collision with this asteroid, even at their minimal velocity, would be far more serious.
“Coming up on primary waypoint,” Cameron announced as her fingers danced across her input keys. A few moments later, she tapped the final key, left her hands floating above the console for a moment, and checked that the auto-flight systems had taken over properly.
“We’re locked in,” she announced proudly. “The auto-flight system will take us the rest of the way into the main cavern. Once inside, all I have to do is slide us into position in order to make hard dock.”
“If their system will mate with ours,” Nathan reminded her.
“I’m sure if it doesn’t, Vladimir will figure out something,” Cameron assured him.
CHAPTER 6
“Any idea what we’re waiting for?” Loki asked. They had been sitting at the entrance to the transfer airlock for several minutes, waiting for clearance to depart.
“No clue, mate,” Josh answered. “Maybe the door’s stuck,” he joked.
Loki looked out the port window and saw Jessica approaching, wearing a pair of heavy, padded headsets that ground crew might normally wear in the noisy operating environment of the hangar bay. “I think we’re about to find out,” he said, pointing to Jessica as she approached.
Jessica walked up to the nose of the ship, opened a small access panel and plugged in her headset.
“What the hell is she doing?” Josh asked, sitting up as tall in his seat as possible to try and see her.
Jessica pointed to her headset, then held up three fingers.
“I think she wants to talk to us on channel three,” Loki said, switching their headsets to the appropriate channel on the side console. “We’re here,” Loki stated over the comms.
“Anyone on the line other than you two?” Jessica asked over the comms from outside the shuttle.
“Nope, just us two. You want everyone on?”
“No. Are your passengers within earshot?”
“Uh, no,” Loki answered. “They’re at the back, with all the ore between us and them. Marcus is back there with them.”
“Can you put Marcus on the same line without them?”
“Yeah. Stand by.”
Josh switched Marcus’s headset to the same channel, making sure that Tug and Jalea remained on the primary channel. “Don’t say anything, Marcus,” Josh told him in a hushed tone. “We don’t want them to know we’re talking to you.”
“Cough once if you understand,” Jessica told him. A moment later they heard Marcus cough.
“What’s goin’ on?” Josh asked. “Why all the cloak and dagger?”
“I don’t much like the idea of sending those two down to Corinair unescorted. There’s no telling what they’re up to. So you guys keep your eyes open. Got it?”
“No worries, love,” Josh promised.
“And one more thing. We already got jumped once by a shuttle full of bad guys. We don’t want it to happen again. So if you’re coming in under duress, you need to give us some kind of signal.”
“Like what? You want me to flash my running lights or something?”
“No, something vocal. Something you wouldn’t normally say, yet still seems appropriate.”
“How about if Josh talks like a real pilot?” Loki teased.
“Yeah, and Loki doesn’t. Oh, I know, he can start talkin’ like me.”
“Oh, using love, and mate every other word?”
“And let’s not forget, no worries, eh?”
“Yeah, that’ll work fine. What about for Marcus?”
“Oh, how about if he just stops swearing?” Loki suggested.
“I don’t think he can,” Josh joked.
Suddenly, several loud, hacking coughs came from Marcus.
“I think he just did,” Loki laughed.
“I know,” Josh interrupted. “He can just use the word please. That’ll make you do a double take, eh?”
“Fine,” Jessica said, just wanting to shut the two clowns up. “Please it is. Does that work for you Marcus?” A single cough confirmed his understanding. “Have a good flight, guys,” she said as she unplugged her headset.
“I believe we’re both going to get our heads firmly thumped later,” Josh declared.
As Loki reached down to change their comms back to the primary channel, a single cough came across the comms to confirm Josh’s declaration.
Nathan poked his head into the auxiliary systems support room just down the corridor from the bridge. The room had been converted into a makeshift signals intelligence office. Naralena, Enrique, and a few of the other refugees from the harvesting crew were busy poring over audio and video recordings that had been gathered over the last few hours.
As he entered the room, he noticed stacks of a few dozen data cores on one of the tables. There were at least four separate workstations setup, as well as a large, wall-mounted view screen on the wall.
“What are you watching?” Nathan asked as he entered the room.
“Nothing too interesting, sir,” Enrique explained as he kept skipping ahead in the video as if looking for something. “Just skimming through news broadcasts and marking anything that looks promising for translation.”
“Is this stuff live?”
“Naw, this is all the stuff we collected before we jumped into the system. So it’s all at least a day old. We picked up stuff that was just a few hours old while we were orbiting the gas-giant though. But for now we’re dark.”
“Why is that?”
“We can’t pick anything up while we’re inside this rock. At least not until they patch us into the facilities external comm-array. Vlad’s people are working on it with Allet, but until he gets the boarding ramp to secure properly to the ship, the only way over there is by EVA, so it’s slow going.”
“When does he expect to be finished?”
“Vlad’s working on the boarding ramp while Allet works on the comm-array. Last I heard, a few hours at least.”
“What’s with the data modules?” Nathan asked, pointing at the stacks of the black and silver components.
“Vlad pulled them from the damaged mainframe cores. Since they’re not being used, we’ve been swapping them out when one of ours gets full. Gives us a bit more storage capacity.”
Nathan nodded. “Good idea. If you want, I can scan through some of this stuff as well…if you could use the help, that is.”
“Sure. Take as many as you want. Just mark the file and location of anything that looks promising.”
“Okay. Carry on,” he ordered as he picked up a few data modules on his way out.
Josh and Loki gazed out the windows at the city below. It stretched out in all directions as far as they could see. Tall buildings, most of which came to points up high in the sky, surrounded by lush green parks and crystal
