Captain Elijah "Ace" Rothstein always liked to be in space. When he was a child traveling in a DropShip for the first time he noticed just how vast the eternal black void was. It was like being surrounded by nothingness; a gaping abyss where you couldn't tell right from left, up from down. The feelings that one gets when one experiences it for the first time is that the general feeling that one should avoid it; it was as if man was not meant to be in space, it wasn't their natural environment. But not Rothstein, he loved it.
Perhaps it was the wine because soon after he returned from the party over at the Amerigo, the captain of the Space Beagle absentmindedly returned to the empty bridge and strapped himself onto the command chair instead of retiring back to his quarters. Such was his nature.
A sudden lurch brought Rothstein back to his senses as he noticed a change in the ship's micro-gravity. It was almost as if the JumpShip's thrusters had started up. As his mind returned to a certain degree of functionality, his past experience told him that the JumpShip that they were attached to had probably began to fire her maneuvering thrusters in anticipation of a jump. As his alcohol-infused cerebral cortex tried to assimilate everything that he was sensing with that of his past experiences, he snapped back into a cold, lucid reality.
Rothstein looked around the empty bridge and began to wonder. Why was the Znutar preparing for a jump now? Didn't protocol specifically state that the jump would be postponed until the ship's morning time period so as to make sure everyone was prepared for it? As those thoughts began to plague his mind, he instantly hit the comm. switch to see if he could try to patch in to the crew of the JumpShip. Rothstein then began to get even more apprehensive as he got nothing but static and his heart nearly leaped out of his chest as he noticed the stars flicker for a brief millisecond before disappearing in a brief flash of white light. As his mind raced to tell him that his body had just experienced a spatial warp field that entailed a jump, Rothstein quickly realized that they were no longer in the same star system anymore.
"Znutar, this is Space Beagle. Come in, over." Rothstein spoke using the ship's radio, hoping he would get a response as he punched the ship's alert button. "You just made an unauthorized jump. Acknowledge."
The reply on the speaker made him quiver in apprehension.
"This is the JumpShip Znutar. There is a group of armed men who have taken command of the ship. They have a fusion bomb on board and threaten to instantly detonate it if their demands are not met. The device was attached to the fusion plant of the Znutar the day before we left New Avalon. Please do not attempt to detach your DropShips nor communicate between each other and neither should you attempt to board the Znutar. We are in an uninhabited system and there will be no one to help you. Please be calm, we do not wish to hurt anyone but if provoked we will kill everyone. Do not do anything rash; negotiations will begin in a few hours. That is all." The line quickly returned back to static as soon as the last sentence was read out.
Captain Rothstein sat back in his command chair, stunned. As his crew began to enter the Beagle's bridge, he told them the news. The duty watch officer on the Amerigo heard it too and was able to relay the message to Captain Janice De Llandes just as she got to her command chair after experiencing the same jump sensation in her cabin like everyone else did in theirs.
Within fifteen minutes, there was an impromptu meeting on the bridge of the Amerigo. In addition to Captain De Llandes, Major Dominic Durant, Sergeant Eddie Pryce and Carlos Sanz were present as well. After spending a few minutes replaying the message, everyone became quiet as they desperately searched for a solution within themselves.
It was Sanz who broke the silence first. "A bomb? Could that be possible?" He asked.
Dominic looked down. "We searched everything on the ground but we overlooked the Znutar. Sorry."
"What exactly is it that they want?" Sanz said.
"We don't know that yet." Sergeant Pryce answered. "My guess is that there is only a small contingent of terrorists onboard the JumpShip."
Sanz shook his head; it was as if he still couldn't believe it. "What about the bomb? Could it kill us all?"
"Possibly," Pryce answered, "he said it was tied in with the JumpShip's fusion reactor and since our DropShip is attached to the JumpShip, we are in a deep mess."
"His voice sound familiar to you?" Dominic asked Pryce.
"It was Captain Pym, no doubt about it." Pryce answered. "Frakhead traitor."
"Is he in with them, then?" Sanz said.
"I would assume so." Dominic said as he faced Sanz. "We need to know what our options are."
"We should talk to the Beagle so we could coordinate." Pryce added.
"How?" Sanz said. "They said that if we use the radios, we get blown up!"
"We need to think of something." Dominic said as a matter of fact.
"First of all," Sanz added, "we don't know what they want. Are they wishing to disrupt the Conference on Tharkad? They will be disappointed because all we are carrying are second-stringers here. What could they possibly want from us?"
"That's the big question." Dominic said. "Do we wait to find out or do we do something?"
"What can we do?" De Llandes lamented.
"First of all," Dominic turned to De Llandes, "where are we? Pym mentioned that we are in an uninhabited system."
"I'm working on it, sir." The ship's Navigator answered. "So far from what I see in the constellations, it's not on any standard trade routes."
"Just from what I can see, the star is a yellow dwarf and there seems to be a gas giant off our port bow." De Llandes explained as she observed the system from the ship's viewport. "Looks like there's a moon orbiting the gas giant."
"I got it!" The Navigator's excited voice startled everyone. "Polyphemos. We are in the Polyphemos system."
"Polyphemos? Never heard of it." Sanz added.
"That's because it's technically uninhabited." De Llandes said. "We're a few dozen light years coreward in Free Worlds League space, just in between Marik and Avellaneda."
"Wonderful. So if the ships get blown to atoms, our escape-pods can't get anywhere?" Dominic asked.
"There is a possibility." The Navigator retorted as all eyes focused on him. "I once remembered in my astronomical survey classes back in the academy that Polyphemos' gas giant has a moon with a breathable atmosphere."
"So the fall back would be the gas giant's moon then?" Pryce asked.
"Guess so." Dominic said, and then looked Pryce in the eye. "Is your unit equipped to disarm a bomb, Sergeant?"
"Absolutely not." Pryce said. "We have no specialists and no equipment to deal with this threat. We just never prepared for it. Even if we did, the terrorists would detonate it if we tried to pass through the airlock."
"So what you're all saying is that we're screwed." Sanz concluded.
"If I could just get my men inside, we could have a chance." Pryce growled.
"What makes you so sure, Sergeant?" De Llandes asked.
"I bet my hat that there's maybe two or three terrorists at the most. We were able to screen most of the crew and if they were hidden onboard then we might have noticed them since I did do a routine check on their cargo hold just a few days ago." Pryce explained.
"But how do we get in there without arousing suspicion?" Dominic argued. He felt very unlucky that Natasha Kerensky was stuck in the Space Beagle; he could have used her insight on all of this.
"Dammit!" De Llandes exclaimed. "The IFF-transponder beacon; it has a radio frequency as well."
"What are you talking about?" Sanz asked the DropShip Captain.
"Of course," Dominic explained as De Llandes began ordering the ship's Communications Officer to modify the Amerigo's comm. gear, "the terrorists will probably be monitoring our radio frequencies if we try to talk to the Space Beagle using normal comm. channels but if we use the frequency of the IFF beacon, there is a chance they might not be monitoring or jamming that."
"But what if the crew of the Beagle doesn't know about it?" Pryce asked.
"That's a chance we'll have to take." De Llandes said as the ship's radio frequencies tuned over to the IFF field.
A steady voice immediately came over the entire bridge as it echoed through the speakers. "It's about time you people figured it out." The voice belonged to Captain Rothstein of the Space Beagle.
"Sorry, Captain." De Llandes smiled in relief as she acknowledged. "But we had a number of other problems that we were trying to sort out as well."
"Captain Rothstein, is Captain Kerensky with you?" Dominic asked.
"Right here, Major." The Black Widow answered through the speakers.
Dominic smiled. Now they had a fighting chance. "I suppose you did hear of what happened?"
"Yes I did, Major."
"Any suggestions?" Pryce asked her.
"A few." The Black Widow said. "but they would have a very slim chance of succeeding."
"Let's hear them. Beats sitting around waiting for the axe to fall." Dominic said.
"Is everyone sure that this would be the course of action? Once we start on this path, there is no turning back." Natasha's voice stated as a matter of fact.
"I'm for it." Pryce said. "We are in the middle of nowhere and no one will ever know of our fates if they decide to kill us."
"Me too," Dominic agreed, "these terrorists will probably kill us all anyway even if they get what they want."
"What makes you so sure?" Sanz asked. It was apparent that he was still wavering between cooperation and resistance.
"Think about it," Dominic explained, "why strand us out here in the middle of nowhere? They can chop us up at their leisure, no one will ever know. Also, it seems they are waiting for reinforcements, otherwise they would have made their demands by now, that means there is only a few terrorists on the Znutar; we have the numbers, we can overwhelm them before their back-up comes."
"Sound analysis, Major." De Llandes added. "I'm for it too."
"Okay then." Sanz reluctantly agreed. He felt it could end up with everybody killed but he had no arguments with which to debate them. "What's the next step?"
As the Black Widow began to explain their options over the comm. unit, each listener realized that there was no longer any chance of turning back; they had made their decision.
They would fight.
