He turned to Nash, his eyes piercing his friend’s. “Go get the bastard.”
It’d been over an hour since Nash left the Raptor and entered Nebula TPA-338. With the command station a wreck, Jason transferred all command functions to the navigation station. He paced the upper level, occasionally eyeing the scanners. He wasn’t looking at anything in particular. With Nash’s pod inside the nebula, the scanners were useless. But it somehow felt like he was doing something.
While Captain Pizzeri had discussed Jason’s willingness for a pathway to command after the war, it was now the furthest thing from his mind. He just wished he could be in that pod, in his best friend’s place.
“Lieutenant,” Kennebeck said, “I’m getting a commlink from inside the nebula.”
“Nash?”
She nodded.
“Let’s hear it.”
“Nash… Raptor… in.”
Jason breathed a sigh of relief along with everyone else on the command deck, even if the commlink was riddled with interference. “Can you clean that up?”
Kennebeck nodded and ran her hands over her console.
“Can you read us, Nash?”
“Loud and clear. Mostly,” echoed his voice. The transmission was stronger, but there was still a lot of static.
“Report.”
“I’ve been able to follow the Bombay’s wake; the farther I go in, the less it’s dispersing.”
“You must be getting close.”
“Agreed.” The static crackled again. “I…”
There was silence. Jason turned to Kennebeck. “What now?”
Her eyes narrowed at the readings before her. “I don’t know. It’s as if something else is interfering with the commlink.”
Lin came up behind her and studied her monitor shrugging his shoulders in befuddlement.
Jason turned to Ortega. “Can you trace it?”
The combat officer looked at his station and shook his head.
“Nash, have you found the Bombay?” Jason asked, attempting to get a response.
More silence followed. Then a crackle. “I’ve found—”
A loud boom cut off Nash’s voice.
Then silence.
Everyone turned to the viewport at the light and gas blasting outward from inside the nebula. Ortega prodded at his console and magnified an image of a large chunk of twisted debris.
On its side, it read: POD-3.
The wreckage of Nash’s craft danced against the gaseous backdrop and Jason’s mind seemed to leave his body. His mouth quivered and his legs gave way, throwing him to the deck.
You son of a bitch, Nash.
Three Years Later
One
Decium Ore Mining Facility - Orion V
Erik Koeman peered out of the large viewport over the mysterious landscape of Orion V. With its dim singular celestial satellite, the majority of light that reached the surface was that of the Orion sun. The lengthy shadows of the rocky mountain ranges created an eerie but spectacular vista. At the edge of the horizon, a massive front of wind pushed up the fine dark dirt on the almost tarmac-like surface. He’d been on Orion V long enough to know a storm was brewing. Whenever the lightning struck and the tornadoes twisted, he couldn’t help but think of home. When was the last time I was in Kansas?
He shivered as if he were on the other side of the glass. He hated the cold, hence why he was happy to do his job in a facility where the majority of the mining operations took place underground with the help of an extensive network of climate-control systems. Pulling up his collar, he picked up a data tablet from the top of the pile sitting on his desk and signed off the next day’s duty roster with his thumbprint.
“Don’t you get sick of these late nights?” Aaron Bloch asked, from the communications station. “What time did you start? Like five o’clock this morning?”
Erik’s younger assistant had his feet up on the console beside him, all the while throwing a small blue rubber ball in the air. Bloch had got lucky drawing the night shift for the next two weeks. It was a popular job. One that required little manual labor.
”What I get sick of is listening to you whine every time I come up here.” Erik glowered at him with the most deadly expression he could muster.
“You wouldn’t have it any other way.” A wide grin filled Bloch’s face.
Erik signed off on his final report and placed it on the outgoing pile. “Well, if you’re not getting worked hard enough up here, I can give you a change of scenery. Bishara’s been screaming for more staff down in Worksite Eight. I’ll send you down there if you like?” He walked over to Bloch and grabbed the rubber ball out of midair.
Bloch’s smile faded. “I’ll be good.”
Erik shook his head. “I’m going to get some shuteye. I’ll see you in the morning.” Just before he reached the exit, Bloch’s console alerted him to an incoming commlink.
Erik stopped in his tracks. “What is it?”
“It’s Worksite Fifteen.”
“I thought Bowers had packed up for the night.”
“Apparently not.”
Erik returned to Bloch’s side. “Chris, it’s Koeman. What’s going on down there?”
“Hey, Chief, we’ve got something you might want to take a look at,” Bowers said over the commlink.
Worksite Fifteen was west of the main complex and had been fast-tracked due to the discovery of a magnetic disturbance below the surface. Erik had hoped it was another meteor fragment similar to that found at Worksite Ten, which was rich in decium ore.
“What is it, Chris?”
“We were able to cut through the upper layer this afternoon and found the same issue the guys were having down in Twelve and Thirteen.”
“The bedrock?”
“Yeah. We’ve broken three drill heads and gone through a few tonnes of explosives.”
“Did you make a dent?”
“We did better than that. We found a weak point and punched our way through.”
“I feel a but coming on.”
“You’re not going to believe it.”
Erik’s fatigue was setting in. “Chris, it’s late, please get to the point.”
“Well, we found what seems to be a tunnel.”
“A tunnel?” Bloch sat up in his chair.
Erik’s eyes narrowed. “Are you sure it’s not a dried-up underground reservoir? There’s a frozen sea only thirty kilometers from your position.”
“That’s what I thought at first,” Bowers replied. “But we sent
