The Epherium Chronicles: Echoes Read Free Page A

he rose from his command station’s chair. “Give me a SITREP!” he bellowed.
    “What the hell just happened, Mr. Turnbow?”
    Still trying to gain access to his disabled panel, Turnbow just shook his head. “Massive power feedback from the jump, sir, but I can’t access our status. Everything’s dead.” He checked another panel on his terminal. “Intraship comms are still functional.”
    Styles scanned the bridge to account for all the command crew, several of whom were spraying fire suppressants on the overloaded panels. Satisfied that there were no casualties, he spun his terminal to face him and opened a comm channel to Engineering. “Watkins! What happened with our power? Did we jump?”
    Static over the comm channel nearly drowned out the voice of Lieutenant Jerome Watkins, the
Cestus’s
chief engineer. “Sir, the reactor spiked just before the space-fold drive activated. The drive reverted, and the built-up energy overloaded the safeties.”
    “Can you restore power?” Styles asked, tone full of his concern for the safety of the ship.
    “I should have auxiliary power in a few moments, but main power is going to be a problem,” Watkins explained. “The spike came out of nowhere and the reactor scrammed. It’s still not stable. I’m afraid main power and the space-fold drive are out indefinitely.”
    Styles sighed. “Very well. Keep working on it. I want regular reports every thirty minutes. Styles out.” He closed the channel just as power returned to the undamaged consoles on the bridge. He’d seen jump failures in the past, but never so close to activation of the jump. Loss of main power and the space-fold drive were bad enough. Now he needed to know what other systems were damaged from the overload. “Helm, can you confirm our position?”
    The
Cestus’s
helmsman completed the checkout of this station and checked his terminal. “Sir, all our star patterns match. Spatial Navigation confirms that the near jump didn’t move us.”
    Styles took the news as a positive. At least the malfunction hadn’t slingshot them in a random direction. If they needed help, the fleet would know right where to look. He looked over at his XO, who was finally able to review the status of the
Cestus’s
systems. “Mr. Turnbow, what do we have that’s still functional?”
    The grim look on the man’s face told Styles it wasn’t good. “Sir, life support and auxiliary power are the only guarantees at the time. Primary propulsion is out, along with the jump drive. With main power gone, we’re left with point defense weapons only, but many of those are still off-line. Tactical and launch bay controls for the fighters are a mess, but I’ve assigned teams to work on them.”
    “What about sensors and communications?”
    Turnbow shook his head. “All long-range sensors and comms are down. We still have the short-range sensor array, but it’s not stable. Communications reports they have a lock on the nearest hyper beacon. The team believes they can get a message to Cygni, but they can’t guarantee the link for long.”
    “Alright,” Styles stated with a definitive nod. “Work with Communications and get a distress call to Cygni. Keep repeating until you get a response or we lose that link.”
    “Aye, sir,” Turnbow replied. “I’m on it.”
    Styles stopped his XO before he turned away. “Keep it short, and don’t give any details on our status. We don’t know who might pick it up. Report our position only as last verified. Our other escorts can pinpoint us from that.” The last thing Styles needed was a Cilik’ti warship to come calling. Even if there were friendlies now among the aliens, there were plenty of them who still wanted to kick Earth’s forces in the teeth for good measure. There was no point giving them a free pass to do so. If a Cilik’ti ship did pick up the signal, it would take them time to track them down. Time for help to arrive, or at least he hoped.
    Turnbow headed to the