Ryk Brown - Aurora CV-01

“Captain?” Jalea interrupted. “You need to move ship?”

“Uh, yes. Why?”

“We can do this, I think.”

“How?” Cameron inquired.

“With our ships. This we do, many times. When we capture ships. Or to bring broken ships home.”

“A tow?” Nathan wondered aloud. “But your ships are not that big.”

“But they are very strong,” she assured him. “Marak agrees, this can be done.”

“Have you ever towed a ship this big before?”

“No,” she admitted. “But a first time, there must be for everything.”

“I don’t know about this, Nathan,” Cameron warned.

“Would you rather I blow up the stern docking thruster pods?”

Within minutes of receiving their orders from Marak, the four rebel ships had made their way out of the hangar bay and back into space. The Aurora, like any other ship in the fleet, had numerous hard points located on her hull. Normally used for mooring purposes, these points had direct attachment to the underlying frame of the ship, and would be more than strong enough for the tow operation.

The rebel ships were equipped with powerful grappling claws designed to grab a ship and punch through her hull if necessary. In this case, the rebel ships simply grabbed hold of a mooring point, and then started standing off from the ship, reeling out their tow lines as they moved away.

Nathan stood behind his previous station at the helm, gazing out the view screen that surrounded the front third of the bridge. By now, they could see the approaching asteroid. It had started out as no more than a speck against the blackness, but within minutes had grown to fill half the screen. Three of the rebel ships were in position with their tow lines running from their top side down to the ship. Each ship was at least a few hundred meters away, angling out at about forty-five degrees from the Aurora, and were keeping their tow lines taught with weak but steady thrust while they waited for the last ship to get into position.

“The last ship is moving into position now, sir,” Ensign Yosef reported.

“How much time,” he asked.

“We’ve got five minutes to get up to speed before we’re too close to escape its gravity well, sir.”

Nathan turned to Jalea. “You know, they all have to burn in unison for this to work.”

“Controls for one ship, will control all ships,” she explained.

Nathan understood what she meant. Fleet tugs used a similar method, slaving the flight controls for all tugs into the bridge of the ship being pulled, thereby using the tugs like they were external propulsion pods. It had been one of the simulations he had been required to pass during his flight training, and it had been a difficult one to master. Luckily, in this case, someone else would be doing the piloting.

“Prepare yourself,” Jalea warned as the voice on her communicator completed what sounded like a countdown, albeit in another language. Nathan could hear the voices of the rebel pilots as they chattered back and forth over Jalea’s communicator. The countdown ended with the last word being spoken louder and more urgently than the ones proceeding it.

On the view screen, The main engines of the two visible rebel ships began to glow a faint amber. As he heard the voice of the lead rebel pilot over Jalea’s communicator, he could tell that he was announcing his increases in thrust. They watched as the rebel engines thrust ports faded from amber to yellow as their levels increased. As the thrust levels increased, so did the stress level in the lead pilot’s voice.

“Three minutes,” Ensign Yosef announced.

The main thrust ports on the rebel ships again changed, going from yellow to a brilliant bluish white. The lead pilot’s voice was now yelling.

“They are at full power,” Jalea announced.

“Jesus,” Cameron exclaimed. “She wasn’t kidding about those little buggers being strong. Look at the amount of thrust they’re putting out.”

“Two minutes to impact,” Ensign Yosef updated.

The asteroid was now filling more than half the upper side of the main view screen, its horizon sinking farther and farther down the screen on its way to the floor. The lead pilot’s voice yelled another announcement, and the rebels engines became pure white, expanding their radius somewhat and taking on a blinding brilliance.

“What are they doing?” Nathan yelled.

“Their engines are burning much more than normal,” Jalea exclaimed. There was more yelling over the communicator, but this time from some of the other pilots.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Engines very hot now,” Jalea explained.

“They can’t keep that burn rate up for long,” Cameron warned.

“Sir!” Ensign Yosef interrupted. “Our velocity is climbing! It’s working!”

Nathan could hear more excited voices over Jalea’s communicator, as the rebel pilots realized they were starting to move.

“Impact in…,” Ensign Yosef suddenly stopped mid sentence, watching her sensor display as it updated. “We’re going to miss it, Sir!” she announced, obvious relief in her voice.

“Tell them to reduce their engines before they rip themselves apart!” Nathan ordered.

Jalea began yelling instructions into her communicator. An inquiry came back from the lead pilot.

“Captain, the pilot wants to know if you would like them to go a little longer, maybe help you away from rocks?”

“What do you think, Cam?” Nathan asked.

“This field is pretty big sir. They’d have to get us a lot of velocity to clear it in anything less than a few days.”

“That’s okay, Jalea,” Nathan apologized. “Please ask them to turn off their engines.”

“As you wish.”

Having avoided yet another catastrophe, Nathan hoped they might finally have a chance to regroup. It was the first time since they left the orbit of Jupiter that there wasn’t some immediate calamity about to befall them.

He had watched the entire towing operation standing behind the helm station. And now with the immediate threat averted, he dropped into the captain’s command chair without even realizing the significance of where he sat.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” Cameron warned, turning her chair to face him. “We still have a lot of work to do.”

Nathan leaned forward in the command chair, his elbows resting on his knees. He couldn’t help but feel that he should know what she was talking about, but at the moment, all he could think about was that he was incredibly thirsty.

“We’re going to need to put together some sort of a damage report, at least of the most critical stuff,” she explained. She paused for a moment, her tone becoming more serious. “And we need to get an idea of how many people we lost today,” she added. “Or more importantly, who we’ve got left to run the ship.”

Nathan thought about what she was saying. How many people we lost today. He wasn’t sure he really wanted to know. Most of the crew had only been on board for a few weeks, himself included. He had only known a handful of them by name. The idea that now he never would know them just didn’t seem possible. Every one of them knew that a life in the fleet came with risks. But he was quite sure that none of them, himself included, had expected this much risk, this soon.

“Yeah,” he sighed. “I was in medical earlier.” The memory of it was still fresh in his mind. “I was there, you know, when he died.” It bothered Nathan to speak of it. He hadn’t known Captain Roberts for very long. And what little interaction had occurred had been strictly professional. But Nathan couldn’t help but feel that he had lost someone that would’ve been very important to him, had he survived.

“I kind of figured,” she admitted.