straps crisscrossed her torso, highlighting her breasts. Her magnetic-soled boots were attached to the deckplates. She worried a ragged fingernail, having already chewed it down. Her scrubbed features were clean, if still too pale. Sometimes, she managed a tremulous smile. The others had to call her name occasionally to snap her out of a thousand-meter stare.
Nadia chewed her fingernail, aware that a Highborn warship circled Jupiter. Thinking about that, her stomach had become queasy again. The Highborn were here. Worse, the Praetor commanded the vessel. She knew about him. Everyone in the Sun-Works Factory had traded gossip concerning his evil temper. She’d told the Jovian crew about the Praetor and couldn’t understand their shrugs and disinterest. They worried about cyborgs. Nadia couldn’t conceive of anything more deadly than the nine-foot supermen from the gene labs.
The patrol-boat’s main chamber was larger than her escape pod and longer than it was wide. The pilot and weapons officer sat in front before a small, polarized window. Behind them to the left was the sensor-and- communications operator. She was the woman Nadia had spoken to several weeks ago, Officer Mara. The last two crewmembers were asleep in their quarters. Those living quarters, the boat’s galley, gym and engine rooms made up the rest of the patrol vessel. The boat was rakish in appearance, had anti-missile pods and what amounted to point-defense canons. Because of the extreme distances in the Jupiter System, each patrol boat had larger engines than an Inner Planets vessel of this type would possess and a longer-range capacity. Its crews were also conditioned for yearlong stints.
The various Aquinas Wing Patrol Boats had separated some time ago as they investigated the distant moons of the Carme group. Each ‘moon’ was asteroid-sized, and was mainly comprised of retrograde orbiting bodies. In other words, the moons orbited in the opposite direction as Jupiter spun. The average inclination of these moons was 165 degrees. In this system, an inclination of zero degrees meant that an asteroid or moon orbited Jupiter in its equatorial plane. An inclination of exactly ninety degrees would be a polar orbit, where a moon passed over Jupiter’s north and south poles, while an inclination of exactly 270 degrees would be a polar orbit in the opposite direction.
The three patrols boats decelerated as they approached the main moon of this group, the one it was named after: Carme. Carme was the largest of these asteroid-sized moons, 46 kilometers in diameter. It was roughly twenty-three million kilometers from Jupiter. A comparative distance would be a quarter of the way the Doom Stars had journeyed a year ago between Earth and Mars when the two planets had been 100,000,000 kilometers apart.
An observatory at Aquinas Base had noticed strange occurrences here. The base operators had also noticed peculiar activity at several other asteroid-moons of the Carme group. The orders sending the patrol boats had originated months ago.
“Anything?” asked the boat’s Force-Leader, who also acted as the weapons officer.
“I’m getting fusion reactor readings,” Mara said.
“Do they comply with the outpost’s norms?” the Force-Leader asked.
“I’m checking that now.”
Nadia watched Mara’s thin fingers fly across a monitor-board. According to what the crew had told her, there was a scientific outpost here and a laser-lightguide way-station linked to the Saturn net. Mara read something off the board as she began shaking her head. Mara had a buzz-cut and wore a black quartz hook in her earlobe. Usually, Officer Mara smiled a lot, and often talked with Nadia for hours as they drank coffee. Mara wasn’t smiling now.
“This is strange,” she said.
“Explain,” said the Force-Leader.
“There must be heavy shielding in place. It must be why I failed to detect these readings earlier.”
“Explain,” repeated the Force-Leader.
Nadia’s stomach churned. She didn’t like words like ‘strange’, not when referring to something so close. She removed the finger from her mouth and craned her neck to look.
A dark, irregular blot appeared through the window. There was a single bright mote on the blot, and stars shined on either side of it. Something about that darkness frightened Nadia. She put her finger back near her teeth as she searched her gnawed-down nail for something to nibble. Being here felt wrong—bad. She wanted to beg the others to go elsewhere, but she knew her words wouldn’t matter. Besides, the belief that her words had power had died… maybe halfway to Jupiter.
Nadia switched fingers, and she winced as she bit down on a cuticle. She’d become too passive, and she knew it. She had to learn to live again. Was it truly dangerous out here, or had she become a mouse, jumping at shadows?
The weapons officer swiveled back. He had a round Jovian face and a whisper of a mustache. It made him seem too young, even though the mustache was gray. He blinked watery eyes at Mara.
“The outpost’s normative energy levels shouldn’t have changed,” he said.
“I know that,” Mara whispered.
“What are the readings?”
Mara shook her head.
“The scientific outpost—” the weapons officer began to say.
“Missile!” the pilot shouted.
The weapons officer swiveled back. Mara yelped as she slapped buttons. Then several things happened at once. A sleek missile burned hotly as it streaked around Carme and sped at the lead patrol boat. What appeared as tracer-rounds shot from that patrol boat’s canons. The projectiles smashed into the missile, and the missile exploded silently, an orange ball of energy. Unfortunately for the patrol boat, a second missile had already appeared.
“Brace yourselves!” shouted the pilot, slapping a button that threw them into computer-automated evasive action.
Whimpering, Nadia gripped her restraining straps.
A third missile appeared, zooming around the curvature of Carme. More tracer-like rounds sped at the second missile. The missile jinked as the tracers shot past it. Then the missile hit, and the lead patrol boat exploded.
The
“Who’s firing at us?” the weapons officer shouted. He shoved his left hand into a twitch-glove as he jammed purple-lensed goggles over his eyes.
“By Plato’s Bones,” Mara whispered.
Nadia’s hands hurt as she gripped her restraining straps.
“There!” the weapons officer shouted. His gloved fingers fluttered, and the patrol boat shuttered as ripping sounds came from the front of their vessel, the sound of shells entering the cannons.
“A dreadnaught,” Mara whispered. “It was hiding behind Carme.”
“What? What?” shouted the weapons officer.
“A dreadnaught is here,” Mara said, pointing at her screen, at the vast, spherical shape on it.
The radio crackled with life as the other patrol boat exploded at the corner of the polarized window.
“I don’t understand this,” Mara said.
“Speak to me,” the weapons officer said in a strained voice.
“You have to get us out of here!” Mara shouted. “I have to radio my information to the authorities!”
“What are you talking about?” the weapons officer shouted.
“There’s something on the surface!” Mara shouted back. “It’s big. The fusion readings—they’re coming from there. I don’t understand these readings. They’re off the scale for what should be here.”
“Another missile!” the weapons officer shouted. His fingers fluttered wildly and the ripping sounds of loading shells increased.
Tears flowed from Nadia’s eyes. She wanted to live. She knew there was only one way now. She’d fought her way out of doom once before and maybe could do it again. That had been a lifetime ago, however, and with a different Nadia Pravda. Still, the old stubborn Nadia of the past still lived somewhere inside her.
As the patrol-boat veered one way and then another Nadia unhooked her straps. With her magnetized boots at full power, she clanked across the deckplates and for the hatch.
