Alarms sounded suddenly, all around the flight deck. Nicraan turned back to the command console, scanning the displays. A three-dimensional rear-view representation was up for inspection. Behind the Pioneer 4 in Space, the collapsing solar group was bright and pulsing. As he watched, the swirling patch of cosmic scrap swelled like an angry blister and burst open, spewing a blast of fleeting pent-up energy and vaporized debris in a death throe that would echo through the reaches of this sector for all eternity.
Nicraan rechecked the displays one more time, just to be sure that at its present speed the Pioneer 4 was safe from the plasma shockwave. Onscreen the cores of the imploding stars and worlds were shrinking, growing smaller by the moment, as if they were trying to suck themselves completely out of existence. A gravitational aberration had been born.
The incredible gravitational strength of the indiscernible monster that was the newborn singularity reached out in all directions. It licked at the fleeing Pioneer 4, but the range of its all-consuming grasp extended only to a zone from which the podship had already fled, so far.
Matasire swore in disbelief as half the readings on the panel suddenly went off the scale. “The solar group’s gravity field is collapsing!”
“We’ll be pulled in,” Dara gasped, looking toward the others while leaning over the quarterdeck’s guardrail.
Capel caught his consort’s gaze and said, “There’s only one way to get clear in time.”
Nicraan nodded as his hands ascended to his controls. “Prepare to engage hyperdrive,” the pilot called out, working as he spoke.
Capel took his position as he ordered, “Everyone take your positions!”
“And, hang on…” Dara murmured as she ran to her station.
Without a word, Moela assumed blast position at the engineering console.
Retho rolled his eyes as he grasped a hold of the astrogator. “Here we go again.”
"Get us out of here now," Capel said, sweat running down the sides of his face. "Any vector!"
Nicraan swallowed the terror rising within him and rapidly adjusted the controls, bringing the ship back on an even keel. The nacelles powered up, warping Space as the Pod lumbered away from the center of the erupting star group, picking up speed.
The Pioneer Pod 4’s ion-plasma engines re-ignited, its nacelles glowed violaceous. The podship’s jump generators ripped a hole in normal Space by brute force, causing the Void to begin to fold in upon itself, bending and twisting as if forming a bubble around the ship's reality. Matter and energy danced and swirled within the sphere, jumping back and forth from one state to another.
Hyperplasmic sensors came online, and the astrogator’s plinth rippled with the interlacing web of quantum filaments that surrounded the podship. The Spacecorps technology could pick a path through the subatomic dimensions; a gentle push from the Pioneer’s generators enlarged the fields just enough to allow the podship to pass seamlessly into the alternate Space with minimal energy. This was how Spacecorps spaceships could make jumps with such accuracy. They could plot a course with an error no larger than an atom’s diameter.
Terran resolution of the reality of space-time was infinitely more powerful than saurian technology. Out the bowport, it was if the crew had been blind, had never seen the universe around; the corrugated distortion was beautiful.
“Status?” Perezsire asked.
"Plasma coil interlocks are in place; deflector grid is charged and standing-by. Hypospace magneton matrix forming, energized tensor pulse initialized from focal array," Nicraan called out, fingers tabbing contact points across the helm command board.
The resolution on the astrogator allowed the helm officer to discern every ripple in Space caused by the dying star’s gravity, the other planets in neighboring solar group, their suns, and even the warping of Space caused by the mass of the podship. The navcomp immediately began to compensate for their distortions; it concentrated on interpolating the fluctuating Space. It generated mathematical algorithms to anticipate and smooth the gravitational distortions.
Then the disk of the red giant star shattered, expanded, exploding to millions of times its previous volume until it was nothing but a tenuous, vaguely luminescent, spiral of plasma. It went supernova spectacularly, going up in silent splendor. Becoming a glowing shell of superheated plasma expanding outward from the explosion, roaring toward the podship at a fraction of the speed of light.
Nicraan looked at his displays. “The shock wave is coming really fast …” he said inputting emergency command sequences.
Simultaneously, Retho brought up the astrogator’s system online. A holograph of the Pioneer 4 appeared above its surface. Touching locator controls caused the holo display to shimmer and then clear to fill the pedestal with a 3-D representation of the collapsing solar group. “Computer, search for recognizable stellar configurations,” he ordered.
As the navcomp did its calculations, the starfield expanded. The image of the Pioneer shrank until it was no longer identifiable within the swarming mass of artificial construct stars in the endless reaches of uncharted Space.
Dara clutched at the edge of her console, helpless to do anything but watch, staring at the medical-life support station's readings without understanding them. She didn't even have the time to become terrified.
Energy surged from the reactor into the hyperspace jump generator matrices. A path parted directly before the Pioneer 4 – a pinhole that became a gyrating wormhole, fluxing and spinning. The hyperdrive effect was beginning to swirl around the Pioneer, its nacelles glowed a vibrant purple and the ship elongating in a red-shift of mottled light. It was suddenly surrounded in an aura of radiant light.
Navcomp dedicated all its runtime to monitoring the space around the podship and risked making negligible course corrections to maneuver into the fluctuating path. A split moment later, the pinprick expanded into a glowing sphere, then exploded outward into a gaping maw of a tunnel that bored its way through light-cycles of Space: hyperspace flared open before the podship. Sparks danced along the length of the curved hull as the prow of the podship departed normal Space – sucked into the vacuum of the alternate dimension. The saucer began to move faster ---
Abruptly the whole ship was pushed from behind -- everyone, everything, was yanked forward. Dara was catapulted over the quarterdeck railing and Moela and she hit the same wall at the same time, and Retho turned, saw something flying at him -- dislodged portable equipment from the doorless damage control/supply closets glanced off his chest and knocked him sideways.
Though Nicraan was pressed against the command panel before him by artificial gravity and by shock, he had the advantage of knowing what was happening to their ship. He thrust himself against the whining new gravity and got his hands on the helm controls and pressed his fingers with purpose across the flickering interface.
As the Pioneer accelerated ahead of the spatial tsunami’s shock front, Retho found himself lengthwise on the littered deck, pressed against the astrogator's base. Grabbing for leverage, he hoisted himself upright and studied readouts.
As predicted, the Thilen solar group imploded, blinding the night of Space, as the Pioneer Pod 4’s hyperplasmic engines engaged. For one moment the saucer-ship became a second sudden star against the flaring pitch. The next, like the stars and planets it left behind, it was warped in Space. Within the time span of a heartbeat, there was a dazzling burst of light as the Pod boosted its speed and then seemed to slingshot off through Space, racing toward another vector.
On the astrogator's holodish, the supernova appeared as a spidery sketch, transparent against the stars, quickly solidifying. Then the celestial phenomenon rapidly shrunk to a point of dim light as the Pioneer Pod Four continued to speed into hyperspace. Soon that supernova seemed nothing more than one of the billions of light specks scattered throughout the black void; an extremely bright, short-lived object that would emit vast amounts of energy.
As the spatial debris faded away, all they saw outside the bowpor
t was a peaceful hyperspace ocean of rushing stars. Capel clenched his fist and hit his knee in triumph.
Dara shook her head after regaining her bearings from having the wind knocked out of her. After checking Moela to be sure she was equally well, she grinned shyly as she approached the command section and gave Capel a quick kiss. "Good shooting, my hero," she said impressed, patting him on the head.
A temporary post-traumatic silence fell over the flight deck. For each crewmember it was a moment for quick reflection. For Dara the sudden realization that all their history on the foreign planet had been wiped clean: from the caldera where the podship had served as refuge to the bluffs where Retho had phased through ka-tela to the grotto where a crivit had taken the life of her youngest son Lunon to the hillock where his memorial had resided. All gone. Forever.
Perezsire, Moela, and Retho shared a silent assessment. Matasire gave them a smile. Capel almost returned the smile, but that was when the background noise of the flight deck seemed to assert itself.
Retho spoke, breaking the uneasy tension between the crew. "We're clear and free to navigate," he said.
"Scan for vessels in pursuit," Capel said.
"Scanning," Moela reported from her station. "Indications negative at this time."
Satisfied, Nicraan faced Perezsire. "Well, now that we have the time to make a choice, let's pick a spot and find a safe port."
The Pioneer 4's angle began to flatten, and it sped free through hyperspace.
"Got any ideas?" Capel asked of his spouse.
"That depends. Where are we?"
Several macronodes passed before a steady beeping began to sound from a telltale above the astronavigator's station.
"The computer's got something," Retho informed his commanding officers, studying a configuration of small light points in the astrogator's holodish.
"Explain," Capel requested.
Slipping away from her spouse, Dara moved next to Retho for a better look at the hologram. “Analysis, Retho?”
“Ship sensors are registering a nebula some seven AU’s in diameter. Sensors are also picking up intermittent gamma and thermal emissions. Nothing our shields can’t handle.”
“Any problems for navigation?” Perezsire asked of the ship’s pilot.
Matasire did a quick survey of his boards before reporting, “I’m showing mostly hydrogen, helium, and hydroxyl radicals. Some local dust nodules. I don’t see any of it giving us trouble.”
"Seems we're just off the rim of the Dycoon Nova, Out-System just beyond the Outer Rim Barrier,” Retho clarified as the astrogator’s display swirled. “Astral coordinates bearing from ORB 954 mark 704. The Pioneer fell through the breach in the Outer Rim Barrier; I'm detecting the same chondrite meteoroid swarm. We're at the furthermost point between Tauron and Aidennia. That star we were orbiting, grounded on that dust-ball planet is cataloged as Thilen Nine."
Dara looked at one of the computer holoscreens and read the data. "No planet was ever confirmed there," she noted.
"No wonder with that planetary shield," Nicraan reasoned.
"Logical," Moela agreed, looking still at the nav station's relay holoset at the engineering station. "That system was cataloged and briefly surveyed by the SSS Carey, captained by Ballatin Jonthom of Naulhoc. His reports confirm detecting an exogenic hydrogen-plasma anomaly around the star. It was hypothesized at that time that it could have been generated from the collapse of unstable elements of a planet's core."
"Why didn't they investigate further?" Capel asked, an eyebrow arching in genuine curiosity.
"The planetary barrier was not only composed of hydrogen-plasma," Moela said from her station, reviewing library files she had called up. "It was also composed of metrion radiation."
Nicraan nodded in full understanding. "If any Systemite ship got near that barrier, the hyperplasmic matrix in their ship's core would collapse and the vessel would be pulled down on to the planet's surface as we were."
The Commander looked incredulously at the pilot, saying, "Could there have been a better time to have this kind of information? Like before we entered orbit over a cycle ago."
Surprisingly, Matasire chuckled. "Well, if you will remember, Commander, over a cycle ago, this ship was in the throes of systems failures and the sensor readings at that time were dubious."
Capel shrugged and pulled-a-face, rolling his eyes to soften the mood, he said, "Oh, how could I ever forget that?" Clearing his throat, he pressed, "Anything else?"
Retho tabbed a few input contact points on the computer touch-tone keyboard and verbally relayed the response, "Nearest System solar group in relation to the Dycoon Nova is..."
Before he could finish, Nicraan's sudden realization of the answer overlapped Retho's. "...Sheey!"
Moela looked startled and said sarcastically as she moved to her quarterdeck console. "Very good, Nicraan. I see that you haven't gotten rusty on astrotopography."
"Scan for Tauron influence in the Sheeyan sector," Nicraan ordered, he was getting used to the science officer's left-handed compliments, and he couldn't say that he really minded them. More and more he was enjoying the fact that she shared his own sarcastic sense of humor. And he was glad that they were once again reaching each other, and enjoying it, too.
"Clear. Nearest staging area is Calliope. Computer reports evidence of extremely high levels of detonations," Moela reported, her attitude quickly converting back into its professional mode. "Seems the planet is under attack."
Capel looked at Nicraan. "Is the ORB still activated?"
"I'm getting no readings at all from any of the ORB projection spheres," Moela offered from her science console. "Gravimetric fluctuations and interference patterns are nil. Gravitational constant of Barrier is zero. Readings indicate all projectors are intact, just not operative."
"What of the space station at ORB 954? Any signals from Malernee?" Nicraan queried.
"Nothing. Sensors and scanners report the space station is a derelict hulk. Looks like the station was left to drift. No occupation, in fact there isn't much left of the infrastructure. Spectroscopic scans show residual radiation signatures are relatively high, indicating magna-explosions," Moela's voice was somber as her own private, bitter memories of that moment in her life flashed before her mind's eye -- the ambush, the destruction of the Saarien, and the end of life as she knew it.
Capel returned his attention to Matasire. "Can you plot a safe passage to Sheey?"
"Yes, Commander, but I..."
"Please, Nicraan, line us up and bring us in."
Nodding, the pilot relented and looked toward his helm control and thumbed icons. Instrumentation hummed as the saucer adjusted its attitude with respect to the supernova at its aft and the vista before. Nicraan tabbed a control, and the saucer locked itself in position.
"Aligned," he said.
"Take us in," said Capel. Reaching over the aisle that separated the two piloting chairs, he laid his hand on Nicraan's shoulder. "Best speed to Sheey, Major."
Nicraan hit a contact point and focused his attention on two holosets at once. "Course adjustments confirmed. Soliton field established. Negative particle field projectors and quantum antigrav generators active and functioning properly. Hyper deep drive engaged at Factor Six."
Out the bowport, the rearrangement of space-time’s geometry could be seen. Distant stars continued to blur and be elongated points of illumination against the pin-spotted background of the remote starmap. The not to distance Dycoon Nova withered into a shapeless amber patch for an instant and then vanished somewhere aft as the Pioneer 4 propelled itself toward the pinpoint of light known to the crew to house a satellite called Sheey.
"ETT now at 19:30 standard star-rotate time, present speed," Retho reported from the astronav panel, centered conveniently mid-console on the astrogator.
Nicraan unharnessed himself and headed away from the command-apse, saying, “Well, we’ve got a little over two weeks before we reach Sheey. I’m going to take a well-n
eeded nap."
Capel smiled. "Go ahead. I'll take the first watch."
Waving his associates a good-bye, Nicraan entered the lift and hit the descent button.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX:
"Track them," Ba’al Sirdar Araujo-le ordered, a trace of nervousness in his reptilian voice. The Tauron stood on the bridge's command dais overlooking the operations pit onboard the sleekly long and narrow Battlecruiser he commanded. Even though his wedge-nosed vessel was considerably smaller than the two ominous snub-nosed Strikecruisers to its far port and even farther starboard, its prominence was still quite supremely felt along the Outer Rim.
A sense of emergency settled heavily in the heart of every crewmember in this Imperial convoy, especially among the personnel on Araujo-le's cruiser. The three Strikecruisers sent to the Thilen Nine system had just gone silent.
Araujo-le's massive ship was one of six in the armada that patrolled the Outer Rim. Before the three Strikecruisers were deployed to the Thilen Sector, all six cruisers were the most dreaded and devastating warships securing the furthermost reaches of the Quadrant, capable of reducing to cosmic scrap anything that strayed too close to their weapons.
Flanking the Battlecruiser were several smaller Pterosoar, or as known by Systemites, Starhound fighter ships, they could be seen darting about the remainder of the armada out Araujo-le's ship's bridge's mammoth viewport. The two remaining sister cruisers were distant points of light that stood out amongst the background specks of Space.
The tracking officer attempted to find the missing Strikecruisers on his scopes. But there was nothing to find.
"That's strange," he muttered.
"What is it?" Araujo-le asked, walking down into the pit and over to look at the tracking holomonitors for himself.
"The ships don't appear on any of our scopes."
The lord sirdar was perplexed. "They couldn't have been destroyed; three Strikecruisers against one small science Podship. The thought of it is impossible."
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