The Navigator 2: We the People Read online

  "Roughly eighty percent of the people we knew about, Admiral," Shana replied. "I'm still compiling a list for you. I would also mention that nine civilians were also taken from the station detention area. There has not been enough time to speak to any of them, so we do not know how many others might still be there."

  "Do we know where Jared is taking the station?" Hawklings asked.

  "No Sir, but based on his personality and actions to date, we believe he has jumped for Earth. We feel he would think he could take control of the Council from that position, as well as the remaining world leaders," Symms added. "Sir, we believe Jared has deified himself. He feels the rest of the human race should worship him. We feel he would do what was needed to make this come true."

  "Do you think this is what he had planned for after you developed that shield device?" Hawklings asked.

  Symms nodded. "It would protect The Citadel from external attack by other gifted people. However, he was forced to act before we had a chance to install it. Also, Major Anderson and one of his men are still on the station. Unless something else changes, I don't see how Jared Smalls will survive the trip to Earth."

  Hawklings looked thoughtful. "That doesn’t make much sense. We could just retake the station with regular troops once he arrived here. I can see him jumping the station here, but there has to be something else we’re missing." He paused in thought. "Wait, how could he jump to hyperspace? I thought the positioning of The Citadel was to prevent it from jumping?"

  "No Sir, the position would prevent it from accidentally jumping, not from an intentional jump. The part that has me worried was that he did not move the station away from the solar gravity wells before jumping. What effect will this have on the stars?" Symms replied. "For that matter, what effect will it have on the station itself? It had to be damaged to some degree by the heavy gravity."

  "Could that be the cause of the wild gravity fluctuations we were getting closer to the star?" Shana asked.

  "Probably, but I would think they would calm down after a bit; stars are very powerful and nothing we could do to them should be able to destabilize them for very long," Symms replied.

  "I think you should probably rethink that, Doctor, these readings are getting stronger," Shana replied.

  "Doctor, please return to your lab as soon as possible and try to figure this out," Hawklings said. "Becka, could you speak to the rest of the Navigators and try to determine who is loyal to Jared and who is trustworthy. Also if he has need of it, try to assist Dr. Symms in his research. Captain, you've done very well, if possible, could you remain available to Dr. Symms? We need to figure out what the star is doing and if we need to begin evacuating the planet."

  They all nodded agreement and understanding of his orders. "You've all done very well, and I am proud of you. Good work; all of you. Becka, Joe will be alright, he's a very resourceful man. Captain, once you've handed off the pods, make for the medical center in New Hedron. I'll make sure they're expecting you." Hawklings replied and ended the call.

  "Is it just me, or did it sound like he knows more about what's going on than we do?" Shana asked.

  Symms snorted. "Knowing the Admiral, he probably does."

  After the call ended, one of the first things Symms did was open the door again. He sighed. "Sorry, I'm a little claustrophobic. I'm okay on ships and shuttles, but really tight places tend to get to me."

  Becka gave him a half smile. "It's also the hyperspace distortion effect. We're all nervous, and some of us are leaking. Joe taught me how to feel it, I admit, it could just be my anxiety, but I think I'm feeling distortion as well."

  Symms nodded. "That wouldn't surprise me in the least. This has been a stressful event for all of us."

  'Becka? Are you speaking to Doctor Lenard Symms?' a woman's voice said in Becka's mind.

  Becka held her hand up to Symms and spoke out loud. "Yes I am, who are you?"

  'Uh, my name is Cassie. Please I really need to speak to both you and the Doctor; it's very important,' Cassie replied. 'But no one can overhear you.'

  "Cassie?" Becka said and her eyes grew large. She pulled Symms back into her chamber and closed the door from the console. "Doctor, Cassandra is speaking to me telepathically. She said she needed to speak to both of us in private and that's it's really important."

  "What? She's still alive? Wonderful! We've been so worried when she didn't come back; is she alright?" Symms asked happily.

  'Please tell Lenard that I am well, and have been living on Earth. After escaping the federal government, I began seeking out others like me and doing research into our abilities as well as hyperspace. That's why I need to speak to both of you,' Cassie replied, and Becka relayed to the doctor.

  Cassie continued. 'First off, let me tell you that Joe is still alive, but he's trapped with the rest of the people on The Citadel. Before it jumped, Joe deleted the destination data from the equation. The Citadel itself hasn't moved. I need you both to do some calculations on a navigation computer; I think this event might be destabilizing the star.'

  Becka quickly relayed the information to Symms, who looked confused, "Cassie, the equation won't work with null values in the destination section. The station would have jumped out then immediately back in."

  With Becka acting as translator, Cassie replied to Symms. "He was rushed and the event was already in progress. He deleted the temporal equation as well. They are stuck in place and in hyperspace. The main navigation computer may have been tampered with as well."

  "Oh shit." Symms replied. "Becka, can you give me a particle image of the area where the station was? Extrapolate the inclusion of tachyons as well please."

  'While we're waiting for that, Joe asked me to find out if the hostages were rescued from the station,' Cassie said to Becka. 'I think he is going to try to get back on the station and somehow try to rescue them.'

  "Back on the station? What do you mean, Cassie?" Becka asked.

  'He made it to an escape pod, but didn't get far enough away from the station before it jumped. He was trapped in the event horizon of the warp field. Personally, I don't know how he thinks he can get back on the station; he would have to cross open space from the pod to the station,' Cassie explained.

  "Uh, no, he can do it. Joe has the ability to jump short distances without a ship," Becka admitted. "But I think he has to see where he's going in order to do it."

  "What? Why didn't you tell me about that?" Symms replied, overhearing Becka speaking to Cassie.

  "Because Joe made me promise, Doc. I think he was going to talk to you about all of this later, after Jared was dealt with," Becka replied.

  Symms nodded. "That makes sense I guess. We're going to have to be careful about the information though; after what happened to Cassie, we don't want to put any more lives in jeopardy."

  "I appreciate that, Lenard," Cassie replied though Becka.

  A live video image came up on the monitor for the nav console. Symms looked at the video closely and shook his head. "Oh, this is not good. Not good at all."

  "What do you see, Lenard?" Cassie asked.

  Before he could answer, Becka did. "Neutrino emissions are off the scale. This looks like a hole in space."

  "That's exactly what it will be soon enough. For lack of a better description, the hole in space the station went through is still open. It has to be because the warp field from the station is keeping it that way. One way or another, that warp field has be removed or we're looking at the extinction of the human race," Symms said.

  "If Joe jumped out of there on his own, that should pierce the warp bubble forcing it to collapse. What I don't know is what will happen to the station and all those on it?" Cassie replied. "This is one of those unforeseen, worst-case scenarios we could never dream up."

  "Well, it's here now, so we better figure out a way to fix it or none of us will survive," Symms said.

  "With no relative velocity, returning to real space should have little to no effect on the station or those inside
it, right?" Becka asked.

  "If it were in open space, quite possibly, but that's not what we have here. Look at those particle emissions; the station would drop out right in the middle of that. Even without the solar flare increase that will be starting up soon, they'd be fried by the radiation storm," Symms replied.

  "So if Joe gets the hostages and can use his ability to get them out of there, it should collapse the warp field, but it will kill them because of the radiation. What if he jumps them someplace else, like to the planet?" Cassie asked.

  "He would have to be able to see it, and that's a hell of a long jump without a ship," Becka replied. "The only other time he's made a jump like that was a distance of a few hundred yards. He also did it alone, he might be able to carry one person, but we know there are at least four or five left to rescue."

  "He'll have to jump the whole station out of there," Symms said. "He'll have to reprogram the nav computer to make a jump from inside hyperspace."

  "No," Cassie replied. "He'll only need to jump the pod out. The station is not going anywhere."

  Joe was getting impatient and was just about to try to 'jump' across to the bay when Cassie spoke to him again.

  'Joe, I was right, there isn't much time. The station has created a rupture in hyperspace and it's starting to destabilize the stars. You are going to need to collapse the warp field somehow or we're going to end up with a quantum singularity where the Centauri system used to be.'

  Joe answered her, speaking out loud this time. "I'm not an astrophysicist by any stretch, but I know that wouldn't be a good thing. What did you find out about the hostages?"

  'There are still four or five people left to rescue on the station. Becka didn't say, but I could see in her mind that one of your men and a couple of other Navigators had returned for the wounded when time ran out. That's too many for you to carry out. Doctor Symms suggested that you would have to reprogram the computers to make a jump from inside there.' She paused. 'You need to know, that if you only collapse the warp field and drop the station back into real space you'll be killed almost immediately by radiation and the increased gravity. That rupture is really raising hell with the stars.'

  "Damn, I need to get them out of there. I'm pretty sure Jared is still alive in there as well. If I can reprogram the computer to jump the station out of here, I'll still have to finish the mission." Joe sighed. "Okay, I may have to call on you for assistance getting the computer to accept the plot. I'm going to get the hostages to safety first, then worry about the station and Jared."

  'Just remember, if you 'send' them, it might puncture the warp field and none of you will survive.' She paused again. 'You know Becka is in love with you, right?'

  Joe smiled. "Yeah, she's made no attempt at all to hide her feelings. I just hope I don't hurt her, she is a really sweet girl." He changed the subject. "Okay boys and girls, don't try this at home!"

  He shifted his vision over to 'hyperspace mode' and pictured the whole pod moving into the cargo hold. In his mind, he was vaguely aware of the control computer interfacing the pods control systems and 'flying' the pod into the hold. When he shifted his vision back to normal, the pod slowly tilted to one side as the artificial gravity in the bay affected it. Joe put a hand out to the bulkhead to steady himself; the jump had made him a little dizzy. He was going to need a really good night's sleep when all this was over.

  "I got the pod in the bay, but trying to move; walk around and stuff in here is like walking in mud," Joe told Cassie.

  'I would think so, I'm surprised you can move at all. Just a theory, but either time or space had to have gotten a random value in the equation; if they were both zero I don't think you would be able to move at all,' Cassie replied. 'Did you happen to notice what it was like when you did the site to site jump?'

  "No, I didn't," Joe said as he tried to manually open the hatch on the pod. "Give me a second or two and we'll test the theory. When I tried to rotate the pod outside, it wouldn't move even though the computer said the thrusters fired. When I jumped into the bay, I used the thrusters to move the pod and it moved, so your theory is promising."

  He got the door open, stepped outside and looked around. "Doc Symms is going to be mad at me, I think I might have crushed some of his equipment." The pod had come to rest on the one of the short stacks of boxes they had unloaded, crushing them. One of the inner bulkheads was also dented from the impact with the pod.

  'He'll get over it, I'm sure,' Cassie replied.

  "Okay, now to test your theory…" Joe said, shifted his vision again and stepped to the hatch leading into the station. There was no resistance to his movement at all. "Good call, if I use short jumps, I can move around without the struggle."

  'Yeah, well, be careful, we have no idea what kind of toll it's taking on you, nor what it's doing to the warp field of the station,' Cassie warned.

  Opening the hatch, Joe stepped through it and stopped. "I don't suppose anyone told you where the hostages were being held did they?"

  'Not actually, no. Becka did picture an older part of the station. I think it was one of the original residence sections,' Cassie replied. 'Head to your right.'

  Joe followed Cassie’s instructions and kept track of where he was on the map he had memorized. However, before he arrived in the section they believed the hostages were in, Joe found them by the escape pod bay.

  "Major! What the hell's going on?" Luke asked.

  He had six people with him, another male and four females. Two of them were very young and looked like they had been beaten very badly. The man was in pretty bad shape and did not look very happy at all.

  "Jared tried to make the station jump back to Earth, Tokyo to be precise. I stopped him, but in doing so got the station caught in hyperspace. Now we're going to get these folks back to my escape pod, then figure out how to undo what I did," Joe replied. "Oh, Jared is still alive in here somewhere too."

  Luke indicated the man sitting on the floor. "He's one of Jared's. He objected to my freeing the hostages." He nodded to the two tired looking women. "They are two Navigators that we freed when we found the girls. Gillian and Heather this is my commander, Major Joseph Anderson."

  Joe smiled and nodded at the two women. Luke indicated the two badly beaten girls. "These two are Carne and Jessica. Two normal girls that Jared was holding against the behaviors of their brothers on BC IV. That fucking animal has been... Well, I think you can tell what he's been doing to them. There were others, but we got them out in Gary's pod."

  Joe knelt next to the two girls. "Your brothers are safe; we made sure they were protected before we came out here. Now it's your turn, let's get you folks out of here."

  "Fuck you!" the man said. "The Prime is going to kill you; all of you!"

  "Really?" Joe replied. He shifted his vision and opened a jump point under man. He immediately fell through it and disappeared. "You first."

  "What the…" Luke said and the women tried to jump back.

  "Luke, I'm sure you've heard the whole lecture on how Navigators can do what it is we do right?" Joe asked.

  "Yeah, but…" Luke began.

  Joe interrupted him. "It isn't the only thing some of us can do. We've been hiding it because we don't want people to fear us and we really don't want to be dissected to see how it works. This is a really big secret, Luke. One I am trusting you with. All of the Navigators lives depend on you keeping it for the time being. Do you understand?"

  Luke was thoughtful for a few moments and slowly nodded. "Yeah, I understand. I swear I'll keep your secret."

  Joe nodded to him. "Well, with luck, it won't be secret for long; I have a plan to take care of the issue once and for all. First we need to get out of this mess."

  "How, exactly, did we get trapped in hyperspace, Major?" The woman introduced as Heather asked.

  "When Jared set the station to jump, he did so from its position between the two stars. He had the destination set for the surface of Earth; specifically, Tokyo Japan. I have no idea
how he got the computer to accept the plot, but he did. When I opened it, the course was already locked in and I didn't have time to recalculate anything. I deleted the destination portion of the equation thinking it would simply keep the station traveling through hyperspace indefinitely. It looks like what happened was that we made the jump, but haven't moved. This has caused a rupture in hyperspace between the stars, which is in turn causing them to become unstable. It's creating a quantum singularity. If we drop back to real space here we'll be killed almost instantly by the radiation and gravity from the two stars.

  "So, we have to figure out a way to move the station and complete the jump. That will let the rupture close and the stars should return to normal," Joe replied.

  "That fucking animal!" Heather said angrily. "He took my research and turned it into a fucking weapon!"

  "Come on, let's get you folks back to my pod. You can tell me about it while we move," Joe said.

  "Major, we can't," Luke said stopping him. "We can't move the girls like this. Whatever is resisting our movement hurts them if we try to move them."

  "I was afraid of that," Joe said, looking down at the two girls. "You three start for the shuttle bay, I'll jump the girls to my pod."

  "Why can't you just jump all of us?" Luke asked.

  "Because we have no idea what it will do to him to try, Lieutenant," Gillian replied. "Even plotting regular navs takes a toll on us. Most of us don't really feel it for the first few, but eventually we wear down. The only other Navigator that had the ability to jump herself was Cassandra; the original Navigator. We only know that because she used it to escape the US government. No one has seen her since, and we have no idea if she even survived the attempt. Considering the mass of the pod, the Major has to be feeling fatigued already. If he pushes it too far, it'll put him into a coma like sleep for days."

  Joe chuckled. "Here I thought it was just the fact that I haven't slept in two days!"

  Gillian winced. "Major; be careful. You are in real danger here. The pod has a medical kit that contains a stimulant shot. I'd never recommend it under any other circumstances, but you might want to think about using it. When it wears off, it'll pretty much shut you down, but it'll keep you going for a couple of hours anyway."