“Jack.” Rogan’s eyes were wide with panic. “We have to go.”
“Why? What’s happened?”
“It’s Charon. He’s done something terrible.”
2
Proxima Delta
Everybody crowded around the Adeona’s hologram table and listened to the distress call. Tuner’s absence was felt more than ever.
“…if anybody hears this, please assist. We need every ship we can get.”
“That’s being broadcast from a Ministry cruiser,” said Brackitt. “It’s going out across all channels. Things must be really bad if they’re calling on private ships for help.”
Jack’s brow furrowed. He’d missed the beginning of the message. Taking off a scalding spacesuit was either a slow or a painful business, and he’d opted for the former.
“How do we know Everett – sorry, Charon – was involved?”
Rogan rewound the message.
“…the sudden extinguishing of Proxima Delta’s star…”
She reduced the volume and let the message continue playing on a loop in the background.
“Stars don’t just vanish. The way I see it, there are two explanations. Either the Mansa have started harvesting from unsanctioned systems, or Charon just filled that empty Solar Core we gave him.”
Jack’s blood ran cold. The core he gave Charon, more like.
“How populated is the Proxima Delta system?” asked Klik. It was a good question. Jack had never heard of it either.
Rogan quickly brought up a map.
“About three-point-five billion,” she replied, “spread across two worlds. Could be a lot worse, but…”
“But that’s still three and a half billion people whose lives are at risk,” said Jack. “Jesus Christ, Everett. What did you do?”
A guilty silence fell around the hologram table, one broken only by the crackle of the Adeona’s speakers.
“So… what are we going to do?”
“You’re not suggesting we actually go there, are you?” Brackitt crossed his arms. “I know we’re technically obligated to answer any distress calls under Ministry law, but nobody ever actually bothers with that stuff…”
“Tuner did,” said Jack.
Everybody turned to look at him.
“What do you mean?” asked Brackitt.
Jack shrugged uneasily.
“Tuner stopped this ship to save me when I needed help. I think… I think if Tuner was here, that’s what he’d want us to do.”
Rogan nodded.
“Not just what he’d want – it’s what he’d expect from us. It’s the right thing to do.”
“Okay, fine.” Brackitt bowed his head sheepishly. “You’re probably right.”
“So it’s decided,” said the Adeona. Her launch systems hummed into life before anyone could say otherwise. “Setting a course for Proxima Delta now. Are you ready to leave, Jack?”
He looked past the crew to the barren, yellow-brown wasteland outside the cockpit windows and deflated with a sigh.
“Yeah. There’s nothing left for me here, anyway.”
The flight to Proxima Delta took only a few hours. Had they been much further out, they never would have caught the distress call in the first place.
Jack spent most of that time sitting on his bunk with his hands clasped in his lap, wishing he could feel something. Grief, rage, anxiety – hell, he would have even settled for joy. Anything which wasn’t the numb nothingness that seemed to permanently reside in every fibre of his being.
It felt like he was floating at the bottom of a cold, dark lake. He could see the surface shimmering above him, but he didn’t yet know how to swim up and break it.
It also felt a little like waiting… but he didn’t know for what, or for whom.
The Washington DC license plate Jack found back on Earth now stood upright on top of the small dresser by his bunk beside a small bag of credits, a ticket stub and an alien wood carving he once bought on a whim at the Kapamentis market. None of the keepsakes meant anything to him personally, but he had hoped his random memento from Earth might trigger some sort of emotional response.
Because he wanted to mourn Amber. He wanted to break down and cry.
But so far, nothing.
Humanity’s extinction; Amber’s death.
His brain knew it was all true. He guessed his heart hadn’t quite caught up yet.
Subspace ended and Proxima Delta began. What remained of it, at any rate. Without a sun, there arguably wasn’t a star system left.
“Where is everything?” asked Jack, back at the cockpit windows.
Planetary systems were usually spread too far apart to see one planet from another, at least not as anything more than a particularly bright star in the night sky. But there was usually something with which a starship crew could manually orient themselves, even if it was only the dim glow of a system’s sun.
Here, everything was plunged into darkness.
“No star, no light,” said Rogan, hurrying to the hologram table. “Adi, can you…?”
“Already on it,” said the Adeona. She beamed an old holomap of Proxima Delta from the table and used her various scans and wave-filters to gradually improve the view outside the windows.
“Well, evidently we don’t need that anymore.” Rogan flicked the star out of the system’s holographic diorama. “But none of the planets are where they ought to be, either. Bolts. This is as bad as we thought.”
“Down there,” said Klik, waving at them from the windows on the other side. “I think I see something.”
“I think you’re right.” If he squinted, Jack could just about differentiate the sparkling lights of cities and ships from the starry backdrop behind them. “Let’s go take a look.”
“The Ministry are still broadcasting that same message,” said Brackitt, monitoring the comms, “so unless something catastrophic has happened to them too, they probably still need our help.”
“Can we reply to them?” asked Jack. The Adeona turned and began her approach to a planet they couldn’t yet see. “Can we let them know we’re coming?”
“I’ve been trying to get through since we arrived.” Brackitt sounded even more testy than usual. “I’m guessing all the channels are busy. Must mean we’re not the only ones here.”
Klik pressed the palms of her hands against the Adeona’s glass and stared open mouthed in the direction they were headed.
“You can say that again…”
There was a planet – enough light pollution leaked out from its sporadic spattering of cities for the Adeona’s sensors to highlight an outline for her to crew to see. Fleets of shuttles and cruisers filled its orbit. Some of them may have been part of the rescue effort, but Jack couldn’t help thinking they looked like tiny metal flies buzzing around a fresh carcass.
“I don’t even know which planet that is.” Rogan shook her head as she compared the old map to the view outside the windows. “Doesn’t matter. Without the gravitational pull of Proxima Delta’s star, it’s going to plummet off-course either way.”
It didn’t look off-course to Jack. It looked like it was just floating there in space, same as any other planet. But he supposed it was all relative. Every planet travelled at speeds upward of a hundred thousand kilometres per hour – this one just happened to be going the wrong way.
“Can anyone stop it?”
Rogan scoffed. “I’m not—”
“This is Minister Keeto trying to reach the Adeona – do you read me?”
Everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at the transmission playing from the cockpit’s dashboard. Brackitt spun around in his chair and replied.
“We read you, Minister Keeto. This is the Adeona. We got your message but we were a few hours out. We’re here to assist in any way we can.”
An unnaturally long pause followed.
“You’re an automata, correct?” came the reply.
“I am, yes. But—”
“Put me through to
your master, please.”
Brackitt turned to face Jack. Even without eyes, the robot looked livid. Jack put his fist to his mouth and winced.
Rogan gestured sarcastically to the captain’s chair.
“Oh, please. Go on, sir.”
Jack sagged into his plush seat and spoke into the comms microphone jutting out from the dashboard.
“My name’s Jack Bishop. I’m the, erm, captain of the Adeona.”
“Oh, thank goodness,” said Minister Keeto. “We’ve had our fair share of pirates and raiders come by this way thinking this system’s prime for the picking. Vultures, the lot of them. We’re grateful for the assistance, but we’ll need to brief you first. I’ll send you clearance to dock in one of our cruisers.”
Jack glanced across at Brackitt, who nodded.
“Received. We’ll be right there.”
The Adeona raced to her new coordinates.
A massive cruiser orbited the dark, wayward planet. They cruised inside one of its many hangars. Its budget didn’t match its bulk – its interior and exterior were both built from ageing iron and steel. The only thing present more flashy than a socket wrench was the flickering hangar forcefield.
The Adeona landed in the bay designated for her. Everybody hurried out. Jack wore his spacesuit. Klik threw on the shredded remains of her hooded cloak, just in case there was anyone around who might recognise her species. Krettelian slaves weren’t ever seen outside of Mansa colonies. The Mansa forbid it.
Similar vehicles filled the other bays – small commercial craft with enough cargo space for forty or fifty passengers, provided they didn’t mind getting a bit cosy. There were some single and double-seater ships dotted around, but none of them seemed to hang around for very long.
A large, mechanical crane creaked as it rotated overhead. From its end hung a metal crate like a reinforced shipping container. It lowered the box on an oily chain until it rested just behind one of the other mining vessels in the hangar. A pair of gangly automata expertly linked the two together before the ship rocketed back out through the forcefield with the transport crate in tow.
Somebody barged into Jack’s shoulder as they rushed past. Jack turned to watch a five-foot amphibian in a boiler suit hurry over to an inter-ship transport shuttle in need of fixing. It was full of tall, slender aliens in civilian clothing. One of the children was still dressed in her nightgown. She was crying.
The more he looked around the hangar, the more he saw them. Families being unloaded from rescue ships; families huddled together against the cold metal walls, looking lost; families being shepherded from one part of the cruiser to another like squares in a Rubik’s Cube. The same expression on all of their faces.
Terror.
“There’s one of the Ministry representatives,” said Rogan, pointing at a black-cloaked administrator standing on the other side of the hangar. He was buried in his data pad. “Let’s go get ourselves registered.”
They were a little over halfway there when the minister looked up from his data pad and marched over to meet them. He was an Oortilian – Jack had seen plenty of his noseless, humanoid species mingling around the nicer districts of Kapamentis.
“Excuse me,” he said, “who—”
“I’m Jack. Jack Bishop. We spoke over comms about twenty minutes ago.”
The minister’s face twitched.
“We most certainly did not.”
Rogan stepped forward to stand beside Jack.
“Are you not Minister Keeto?” she asked.
“Minister Keeto?” The black-robed alien rolled his wide-set eyes and relaxed. “Huh. That explains it. She’s been up on the bridge trying to reach other ships all day. Or night, or whatever it is now. I’m Minister Glessant.”
“Good to meet you,” said Jack, holding out his hand. “Are you in charge of the rescue operation?”
“Apparently.” Glessant ignored Jack’s hand and went back to his administrative duties. “Are you here to assist?”
“In whatever way we can,” Rogan replied, as Jack awkwardly let his arm fall back to his side.
“Good. We’ve got a research team in need of collecting and nobody to go get them.” The minister scratched an item off his agenda. “Did Minister Keeto inform you of the current situation?”
Jack went to say that they knew all about Charon, the stolen Solar Core and the illegally harvested star, but Rogan elbowed him sharply in the ribs before he could get a word out. It was a good thing she did. The Mansa had promised to kill them if they ever spoke to anyone about the theft.
“A star has gone missing,” said Rogan. “That’s about all we know.”
“‘A star has gone missing.’” Minister Glessant let out a tired but not humourless grunt. “Yes, that’s about it. Straight up vanished about nineteen hours ago. The evacuation process is going to take weeks, maybe months. I doubt half the people down on the planet will live that long.”
“What’s going to happen?” asked Jack.
“To the people, or the planets?” The minister shook his head. “The planets are a lost cause. Without Proxima Delta’s star, they’ll—”
“They’ll get flung off-course,” said Jack.
“Getting flung off-course is the least of their worries,” continued the minister. “Space is a big, empty place – they won’t hit anything. But without the star’s gravity, they’ll be besieged by earthquakes that’ll tear their mantle apart. And the planets will freeze over without the star’s heat. The temperature has already started dropping to dangerous levels outside the cities. Give it a month and there’ll be nothing alive down there except the microbes.”
Minister Glessant stopped, gave the matter some deep thought, then shrugged and went back to his data pad.
“And maybe some of the jellyfish,” he added.
“We’ve got to get everyone off there,” said Jack, appalled.
“That’s the plan,” sighed Minister Glessant, swiping an alien finger across his data pad. “Or as many as we can, anyway. I just sent you the research team’s coordinates, plus some additional information regarding the local geography. Is that your ship over there?”
He squinted at the Adeona. Jack looked over his shoulder and nodded.
“Good. That should be big enough to carry them all.” He went back to his checklist. “Now get moving. I’ve got another hundred thousand things to get through in the next half hour.”
Jack, Klik, Rogan and Brackitt started jogging back to their ship. Glessant looked up from his data pad and half-heartedly called after them.
“Oh, and thank you. We look busy, but we don’t have anywhere near as many ships as we need for something like this. The Ministry appreciates your help.”
Whatever we can do to put things right, thought Jack.
3
Scyphozoan Rescue
The Adeona plunged through the atmosphere of PD-1160 with nothing more than Minister Glessant’s coordinates to guide her. The lights of the city-islands below twinkled like finely cut diamonds scattered across a black velvet cloth. The dark oceans churned and writhed around them.
Legions of ships fled the other way. Some private vessels lurked inside the planet’s orbit as if reluctant to leave their home behind. Others – commercial liners, for the most part – skipped off into subspace without hesitation.
Jack had never seen a bigger exodus of ships before.
PD-1160 wasn’t a home world, but it was a colony – hence its rather clinical designation for a name – and its thousands of city-islands were home to almost a billion permanent residents. Many families descended from the scientists who pioneered the original outposts.
Some, if the Adeona’s rescue mission was anything to go by, had continued the tradition of Scyphozoan taxonomic research set out by their ancestors countless generations ago.
That is to say, they studied the planet’s unique breed of jellyfish.
“So where are these fish geeks,” asked Klik, spinning around on her chair, “and how
will we know when we find them?”
“They were attending a conference when the sun went out, according to the intel the minister gave Jack.” Rogan brought up a map of the city. “They’ve been told that we’re coming. They should be waiting for us on the rooftop.”
“Imagine how pissed off they must be,” said Jack. He was sat in his captain’s chair with his arms crossed. “They dedicated their whole lives to studying a single species and now it’s about to go extinct.”
“I’m sure they’d be more pissed off if they went extinct along with it,” replied Rogan. “Though I hope none of them have families here. We’re not scheduled for a second trip…”
“I’m sure the Ministry has thought of that,” Jack said without the slightest bit of conviction. He suddenly realised how unpleasant this whole situation might get.
“Jeez.” Klik leaned forwards to peer out the windows. “It looks like a war zone down there.”
As many fires lit the Adeona’s path as lights in windows. Some had been started by rioters and looters seizing their chance to steal what they could before fleeing for a new life off-world. Others were the direct result of the catastrophic earthquakes that had torn through the crust as the sun suddenly relinquished its tight grip on the planet.
The mantle had burst through the city, uprooting streets and swallowing skyscrapers whole. Buildings toppled and crushed one another into clouds of rubble and dust. The vast network of monorail transport systems that once connected each of the ocean-locked islands now lay in disarray, their trains launched into the earth and seas below, their metal rails buckled and spitting out electrical showers. The seawalls crumbled and titanic waves spilled hungrily over their once idyllic coasts.
And already the frost was setting in. Despite the spreading flames, icicles dripped from the rooftops and the rain turned to sleet as it fell from the clouds above. The temperature would only inch closer to absolute zero as the days, weeks and months went on.
A Dark Horizon (Final Dawn, Book 3) Page 2