The Hyperspace Trap

by Christopher Nuttall

  Professionally Published Books by Christopher G. Nuttall

  Angel in the Whirlwind

  The Oncoming Storm

  Falcone Strike

  Cursed Command

  Desperate Fire

  ELSEWHEN PRESS

  The Royal Sorceress

  The Royal Sorceress (Book I)

  The Great Game (Book II)

  Necropolis (Book III)

  Sons of Liberty (Book IV)

  Bookworm

  Bookworm

  Bookworm II: The Very Ugly Duckling

  Bookworm III: The Best Laid Plans

  Bookworm IV: Full Circle

  Inverse Shadows

  Sufficiently Advanced Technology

  Stand-Alone

  A Life Less Ordinary

  The Mind’s Eye

  TWILIGHT TIMES BOOKS

  Schooled in Magic

  Schooled in Magic (Book I)

  Lessons in Etiquette (Book II)

  Study in Slaughter (Book III)

  Work Experience (Book IV)

  The School of Hard Knocks (Book V)

  Love’s Labor’s Won (Book VI)

  Trial By Fire (Book VII)

  Wedding Hells (Book VIII)

  Infinite Regress (Book IX)

  Past Tense (Book X)

  The Sergeant’s Apprentice (Book XI)

  Fists of Justice (Book XII)

  The Decline and Fall of the Galactic Empire

  Barbarians at the Gates (Book I)

  The Shadow of Cincinnatus (Book II)

  The Barbarian Bride (Book III)

  HENCHMEN PRESS

  First Strike

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2018 by Christopher G. Nuttall

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by 47North, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47North are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503949096

  ISBN-10: 1503949095

  Cover design by Mike Heath | Magnus Creative

  CONTENTS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The Hyperspace Trap is set in the Angel in the Whirlwind universe—and takes place after Desperate Fire—but is designed to be completely stand-alone. Kat Falcone and her comrades will return in the next story arc.

  PROLOGUE

  It was hard, so hard, to think.

  The drain was all-consuming, tearing at his mind as if they wanted to pluck his thoughts from his brain-sac. Tash could barely extend his eyes, let alone rise and crawl forward on his tentacles. The deck felt odd beneath him, as if on the verge of coming apart. His eyesight was flickering and flaring, fading in and out of existence. He had to focus on each motion just to move . . . his body was betraying him. They were draining him too.

  Focus, he told himself. His claws and tentacles lashed the deck, frantically, as he struggled to get to his feet. It should have hurt, but it didn’t. His tentacles were numb. Get to Engineering.

  His mind blurred, just for a second. Or was it longer? He didn’t know. Perhaps he was dead and in the seven hells, or perhaps he’d died . . . perhaps they’d all died. Maybe the others had suffered enough to be released from their sins, to go onwards . . . he wanted to believe it, even though he knew it was nonsense. He was a rationalist. The seven hells didn’t exist. They existed. He knew they existed, but they were not demons. They were . . .

  He stumbled over a body and nearly fell. For a moment, he thought the body had reached out to grab him before realizing that his tentacles were spasming. Shame gripped him as he stumbled backward, an embarrassment that tore at his soul. He hadn’t lost control of himself like that since he’d been a child, dozens of solar cycles ago. Oddly, the shame gave him an opportunity to focus his mind.

  He had to go on.

  The body lay there, mocking him. An egg-layer, drained of life. Her tentacles were splayed out, suggesting utter hopelessness. Tash forced himself to look away and crawl onwards despite the looming sense that it was futile. The ship had been trapped long enough for him to lose all hope that they would escape. They were watching. He could hear them mocking him as he crawled . . .

  . . . or was it his imagination? It was hard to be sure.

  Time blurred as he moved down the long corridor. The ship was silent, the emergency alarms gone. He’d darted along the corridors until he knew them as well as he knew his own nest, but now they’d taken on a nightmarish aspect, as if he were walking through a dream. The lights rose to blinding levels, then faded until they were so dim he could barely see. Bodies were everywhere, lying where they’d fallen. The entire crew could be dead.

  It felt like years before he finally made it to the engineering compartment, decades before he forced the hatch open and crawled inside. Other bodies lay on the deck, unmoving. Tash flinched, despite himself, as his eyes found the engineer. The egg-bearer had been strong in life, respected and feared by the crew. Now his body seemed shrunken, his tentacles spread out in silent supplication. It hadn’t saved him from them.

  Tash’s mind ached. He thought he heard someone howling. The sound tore at him as he moved over to the nearest console and pressed his tentacles against the reader. There was a long pause, just long enough for him to start fearing that the power was too far gone for the neural link to engage, and then the system opened up to him. A status report blinked into his mind, confirming his worst fears. There were no other survivors. He was alone.

  The howling grew louder, mocking him. His thoughts threatened to fragment, either into their domain or utter madness. Or both . . . he couldn’t tell if they were real or nothing more than a figment of his imagination. Others had heard them, hadn’t they? He couldn’t swear to it. The madness that had gripped the crew, as soon as they found themselves in this cursed place, made it impossible to trust his own mind. He had no idea why he’d survived.

  He forced his mi
nd into the computers. They opened, recognizing his authority as the last surviving crewman. It would have been a heady thought—command at his age—if the situation hadn’t been so serious. Tash knew it would not be long before he too was dead.

  The computers felt sluggish, the neural link popping up constant warnings. A power glitch while his mind was within the computers might kill him, or worse. Tash ignored his fears as he surveyed the command network, tracking the power drain. It was growing worse. The computers, thrown back on their own resources, were trying to compensate, but the maneuver wasn’t helping. They were draining the ship dry.

  That’s what they wanted, he told himself. His thoughts were starting to fade. He blanked out, then awoke. They wanted the power.

  He probed the network, locating the antimatter storage pods. They glimmered in his mind like poisonous jewels, a harsh reminder that their power came with a price. If the containment fields failed, the entire ship would be vaporized. They would be pleased. He forced his mind onwards, isolating the storage pods from the rest of the power grid. It might just be enough to safeguard their cargo from them. There was certainly no evidence that they could just reach out and take the antimatter.

  The howling grew even louder. Tash flicked his tentacles in satisfaction, disengaging his mind from the computers and slumping to the deck. They were angry. His vision was starting to blur again, the world fading to darkness . . . this time, he doubted he’d recover. His entire body felt sluggish, unable to move. He would join the rest of his comrades in death, but . . . but at least he’d spited them. His mind remained his own. They couldn’t touch him. Whatever they were, they couldn’t touch him . . .

  . . . and then the darkness reached out and swallowed him.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Well,” Captain Paul VanGundy said, “that was a good dinner.”

  “The cooks are practicing,” Commander Jeanette Haverford said. “They’ll be passing anything that’s less than perfect to us, once we get under way.”

  “Compared to marine rations,” Security Chief Raymond Slater offered dryly, “this is heaven.”

  Paul smiled in genuine amusement. The three of them sat together in his stateroom, finishing a dinner that had been put together by Supreme’s cooks. Paul couldn’t have named half the dishes at the table before he’d left the Royal Tyre Navy and signed up with the Cavendish Corporation, but he had to admit they were very good. The dinner hadn’t been something he could have afforded off duty. Going to a ten-star restaurant cost as much as he made in a month.

  They made an odd trio, he thought as he surveyed his two subordinates. Jeanette radiated calm authority, her short brown hair framing a dark face that betrayed no hint of vulnerability. Her clothes were designed to diminish her form, hiding the shape of her body behind a tailored blue uniform. Beside her, Raymond Slater looked very much like the spark plug he’d been before leaving the Marine Corps. His rugged face had a certain unkempt charm—he’d been ordered to have his scars removed when he’d signed up with the corporation—but he’d never win any beauty awards. Instead, he looked like a man no one would want to mess with. That, Paul knew, was a very good thing.

  Paul himself looked older than his sixty years. Older men commonly had themselves rejuvenated until they looked to be in their midtwenties, but the corporation’s image experts had insisted that Paul had to look wise and dignified. They’d designed him a look—graying hair, gray beard, blue eyes, strong jaw—and convinced his superiors that he should wear it. Paul had a feeling he’d been lucky to keep his muscle tone. The captain of a cruise liner couldn’t go around looking like a bodybuilder, let alone someone who had their muscles touched up every month in a bodyshop.

  Blasted image experts, he thought sourly. It wasn’t something he’d had to endure in the military. They’d been far more concerned with beating back the Theocracy and carrying the war to Ahura Mazda. They’ll put style over substance any day.

  He cleared his throat. “We’ll probably be glad to get ration bars when we’re under way,” he said. “Right now, we have different problems.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jeanette said.

  Paul tapped a switch. A holographic image of Supreme materialized in front of them, hovering over the table. As always, the giant cruise liner, a kilometer from prow to stern, took his breath away. The vessel had none of the crude bluntness that characterized military starships, none of the brutal efficiency he recalled from the navy. Instead, there was an understated elegance that made him smile. Supreme was no warship. She was practically a work of art.

  He leaned forward, drinking in her lines. The starship was a flattened cylinder, studded with giant portholes . . . practically windows. Two green blisters, each one easily larger than a naval destroyer, marked the upper gardens; a third blister, blue instead of green, marked the swimming pool. The bridge, a blister on top of the massive starship, made him smile. It looked good, but he knew it was horrendously vulnerable. A military starship could not have such a vital installation in an exposed position.

  “We’ve all written our final reports,” he said slowly. He felt nervous, even though he was damned if he’d admit it to anyone. “Is there anything you didn’t bother to mention?”

  “I believe I listed all of my concerns,” Jeanette said. “The crew is well trained, but far too many of them are inexperienced. I’d prefer to swap some of them out with more experienced crewers.”

  “HQ says there aren’t many experienced personnel to spare,” Paul said. He ground his teeth in frustration. The military drawdown was well under way, despite the chaos pervading the Ahura Mazda Sector. There was no reason the corporation couldn’t hire a few hundred experienced spacers. “We’re getting some newcomers, but . . .”

  He shrugged expressively. A cruise liner was not a military starship. He had to keep reminding himself of that. There were just too many differences in everything from purpose to training for him to rest comfortably. The months he’d spent learning the ropes had convinced him that all newcomers required training before they could take up posts on a cruise liner. Perversely, someone who hadn’t been in the military had less to unlearn.

  And most of the hosting staff don’t need military experience, he thought. They’re civilians through and through.

  Jeanette pointed at the hologram. “I’ve got the crew working their way through a series of drills with all the usual actors, sir,” she said. “However . . . there’s a difference between training and reality. Most of our junior crewers will still be on probation until the end of the voyage.”

  “Some of them didn’t quite take the training seriously,” Slater rumbled. “It wasn’t real.”

  Paul nodded. He’d graduated from the naval academy at Piker’s Peak—and Slater had passed through boot camp—but Jeanette and the other crewmen had gone through their own intensive training course. The operations crew were as well trained as many of their naval counterparts, while the host crews had gone through a whole series of simulations and exercises. Indeed, they had endured a surprising amount of cross-training. He could put half the host crew to work on operations if necessary.

  He’d been astonished, upon being given access to the corporation’s files, to discover just how much trouble civilian crews had to handle. Passengers—some of whom were extremely wealthy and powerful—just didn’t know how to behave. The crew had to cope with everything from drunken fights to outright misbehavior, behavior that would have earned a military officer a spell in the brig followed by a dishonorable discharge. He’d watched some of the exercises and come away with a new sense of appreciation for his crew. It took a strong person to remain calm in the face of massive provocation.

  “They’ll lose that attitude soon enough,” Paul predicted. The trainers might not have been able to chew out recruits—he’d never met anyone who could outshout a drill instructor—but they had other ways to deal with wayward students. “Real life will see to that.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jeanette said. She held out a datachi
p. “Overall, our reaction times to everything from medical emergency to shipboard crisis are well within acceptable parameters. I’ve ensured that all cross-trained personnel are ready to switch jobs at a moment’s notice, just in case we need them.”

  “Quite right,” Paul said. The Royal Navy had taught him that disaster could strike at any moment. Supreme might not have had to worry about going into battle, but she did have her own challenges. “Are there any staffing problems I should keep in mind?”

  “I don’t believe there’s anything significant,” Jeanette said. Her lips twisted. “Some of our guests will be bringing their own bodyguards and servants, of course. They may need some additional training of their own.”

  Paul kept his face expressionless. “Make sure they get it,” he said. “And make sure we have a record of their training. We may need to put them to use somewhere else.”

  Slater snorted. “Their employers will hate that, sir.”

  “If we need to borrow their servants, we’ll be past caring,” Paul countered. Supreme had over two hundred crewmen with medical training. A crisis they couldn’t handle would pose a severe threat to the entire ship. “Check their firearms licenses too, just in case.”

  “Yes, sir,” Slater said.

  Paul looked up at the display for a long moment. “Do you see any security threats?”

  Slater took a moment to gather his thoughts. “Internally, no. The basic vetting process didn’t turn up any red flags. A handful of yellow flags—a few passengers were marked down for bad behavior on earlier cruises—but nothing else. I don’t see any reason to worry about our passengers.”

  “One of them could be an impostor,” Jeanette commented.

  “Perhaps.” Slater snorted again. “We’ll be running basic security checks, of course.”

  “Of course,” Paul agreed.

  He kept his thoughts to himself. The corporation ran security checks on everyone, from its senior officers and starship crews to third-class passengers. He’d glimpsed enough of the vetting process when he was being hired to know that it was almost as comprehensive as anything demanded by the government’s intelligence services. Passengers who might be a problem would be required to spend the trip in a stasis pod, if they were allowed to board at all. Far more likely, they would simply be denied passage. Lower-grade passenger starships were plying the spacelanes, after all.