Quantum Dark: The Classic Sci-fi Adventure (The Star Rim Empire Adventures Book 1)

by R. A. Nargi

  Ana-Zhi sensed where this conversation was going and tried to distract me. “So, Windsing Stables, huh? I bet you and your fiancée have been to the Almingham Derby a lot. I’ve always wanted to go.”

  But I wasn’t having any of it. I felt my jaw tighten as I turned to the Sean bot. “You want to know about commitment, Sean? When everyone thought you were dead, Uncle Wallace begged me to join the company. And I did.”

  “That was a smart move,” the Sean bot said. “I’m glad he was able to talk some sense into you.”

  “You don’t get it, do you? I had to be you. For seven years!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your brother made me impersonate you so the company wouldn’t go under.”

  “That doesn’t make any—”

  “It’s the truth,” Ana-Zhi said. “He’d take meetings with Beck Salvage clients all the time. He was the face of the company. Your face. But this was the first actual mission he’s been on.”

  The Sean bot hesitated and took a step back. “Why?”

  “Because the Shima demanded it,” I said.

  “No, why did you agree? To impersonate me?”

  “I told you. The company was going to go under without Sean Beck. Uncle Wallace told me that I didn’t have a choice.”

  “Jannigan…”

  “I did it for seven years. I gave up my own life, my own identity for seven years. And you know what? It was all bullshit!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Uncle Wallace told me about Dessidia. The investments. All the money you lost.”

  He shook his said. “You have to remember, I’ve been out of it for seven years…”

  “Your investment tanked. Wallace lost everything. Worse than that, Dessidia was going to take Beck Salvage down. That’s why this job was so important. The Shima would pay enough so that Wallace could get out of Dessidia. I couldn’t say no.”

  “Oh, Jannigan. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Yeah, whatever. You’re welcome.”

  We continued towards the shuttle in silence. Even Ana-Zhi was quiet. I don’t know what I was feeling. Relief maybe. Something.

  The next time the Sean bot disappeared to fetch an artifact, Ana-Zhi asked if I was okay.

  “I’m fine. It’s no big deal.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “What you did—what you’ve been doing—it took a lot of guts. And coming here now? Finding him. Rescuing him…” She trailed off.

  “I didn’t find him. Chiraine did.”

  “You saved him, Jannigan.”

  “Whatever. It doesn’t really matter if the Mayir get here and kill us all, does it?”

  “Yeah, that’s not going to happen.”

  “Really? What makes you so sure?”

  “The Beck Boys are on the job.” She laughed.

  And I smiled too. Despite the gnawing feeling in my gut that things were about to get a lot worse.

  One stroke of good luck was the fact that the shuttle was exactly where we had hoped it would be—and so was my dad’s unconscious body. We checked the power supply on his exosuit and loaded him on the sled from the Freya, which was still where we left it—in the shuttle bay—and still loaded with our gear.

  “Is it weird seeing your body from the outside?” I asked the Sean bot.

  “Of course it’s weird. Why would you even ask that? It’s very weird.”

  Ana-Zhi laughed, and then so did I. It felt like some of the tension had been broken.

  I drove the sled, while Ana-Zhi drove the hover-cart, which was laden with artifacts. The Sean bot navigated back to where the Vostok was parked. It took even longer to return than it did to get to the shuttle because the Sean bot took frequent detours to gather more treasures from the various galleries.

  “What about Chiraine’s biklode resonator?” I asked.

  “I haven’t forgotten about it,” the Sean bot said. “It should be fairly simple to hack one together using the parts in the repair bay near the ship.”

  Once we got back, that was exactly what he did. By the time Ana-Zhi, Chiraine, and I had finished unloading the hover-cart and the sled, the Sean bot had built something that looked remarkably similar to the resonator Chiraine used on board the Freya.

  “Try it out,” I said.

  “But not using the ship’s computer,” Ana-Zhi warned.

  “Z’s right,” the Sean bot said. “We don’t have time to make sure it’s secure. I’m sure there’s some sort of comprehensive data collection and logging module running.”

  “What do you guys take me for? I was planning on working off the LVX. Really!”

  “Well, keep it isolated,” Ana-Zhi said.

  We helped her set up the LVX in the hold of the Vostok. The Sean bot had to tweak some of the data cables, but we got the resonator working.

  Chiraine peered at her display. “Yeah, it looks intact. Thank you, Mr. Beck.”

  “Don’t you mean Mr. Bot?” I quipped.

  “Ha ha, JJ. Very funny. I’m going out for one more salvage run and then we’ll take off. You and Z need to do a proper preflight check—and especially check the inertial dampeners. Even if the calibration is off by a little bit it could be trouble. And then walk the ship from bow to stern. I want you both extremely familiar with it.”

  “Aye aye, Captain,” Ana-Zhi said. She had found a leptic stick somewhere and was contentedly sucking on it.

  The Sean bot took the hover-cart and set off, while Ana-Zhi and I returned to the bridge. She ran through the standard pre-flight diagnostics and showed me how to check the calibration of the inertial dampeners, as well as the thrusters, repulsors, z-field generator, and interval power plant.

  “A little different than the Freya, huh?”

  She nodded. “Faster, more maneuverable, better armed, but…”

  “But what?”

  “I don’t trust her.”

  What was not to trust? It was a ship. A collection of parts and circuits. But I didn’t question Ana-Zhi. I was too busy trying to get the lay of the land on board.

  Walking around with Ana-Zhi, I really got a chance to take in the Vostok. Everything looked new and shiny and nice. It was obviously well-maintained as well. The Mayir didn’t scrimp at all. Too bad they were such fucked-up fascist assholes.

  The ship had four levels, which was actually pretty rare for a vessel this size. The bottom held the infirmary and the crew cabins and the main hold (which actually spanned two stories). The upper story of the hold and the landing bay and hangar made up level 2. Above it was a common area with a galley and a life support machine room. On the top level was the bridge, a science station, a security station (with a weapons locker and brig), and a ready room. Everything was connected by a network of corridors and lifts.

  There was actually a lot of room on board. It got me thinking.

  “What’s the normal crew size for a Lamprey?” I asked Ana-Zhi.

  “Damned if I know. Ten maybe? Why don’t you go back downstairs and count the bunks?”

  “I’m just thinking about the stores of food and water,” I said.

  “What about them?”

  “I just wonder if the ship was supplied for seven.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “If the normal crew count is ten, they might have supplied for ten.”

  Ana-Zhi shook her head. “Nice try, but everyone working on this expedition would know that the Rhya limited the crew to seven.”

  I was about to ask how she knew that for sure, when we were interrupted by Chiraine, who was wandering around near the bridge.

  “There you guys are!”

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “Any luck?”

  “No. Not even close. The LVX is way underpowered for what I am trying to do. At this rate, the semantic analysis trees would take weeks to run through. Is your dad back?”

  “Technically, he’s not really my dad.”

  “Why do you need Sean?” Ana-Zhi asked Chir
aine.

  “Well, I either need to hook up to the ship’s systems or he has to scavenge me something with a little more computing power.”

  “He’s not back yet,” I said.

  “We don’t have anyone who’s qualified to run data security diagnostics on the ship’s computer,” Ana-Zhi said.

  “But—”

  “Using the ship’s computer is not an option. Beck’s security protocols strictly forbid it. End of story.”

  “Well, then we are out of luck,” Chiraine said.

  I didn’t know what to tell her, except to keep at it. We really didn’t have any other choice.

  The Sean bot returned a few hours later with the hover-cart piled high with cases and crates. There was so much stuff, we had to use a gantry crane to get it up to the main hold.

  “What is all this junk?” Ana-Zhi asked.

  “Junk?” The Sean bot shook his head. “These are all priceless treasures. We need to bring them back to civilization.”

  “What kind of treasures?” I asked.

  “If you had been paying attention, JJ, you would know what kind of treasures.”

  “Are these the artifacts you were telling us about, Mr. Beck?” Chiraine asked.

  “Yes.” He pointed to a footlocker-sized box. “That’s Wimalla’s Shroud.”

  “It is not!” Chiraine’s eyes widened.

  “Over here is the Lyding Mechanism. And that’s the Nightmare Mask of Aethia. All the stuff I’ve collected over the past seven years. Well, most of it, anyway.”

  “This is unbelievable,” Chiraine said. “What are you going to do with it all?”

  “Step one is to get it away from the Mayir,” I said. “Were you able to make any more progress?”

  “I told you, the LVX is too slow.”

  For the Sean bot’s benefit, Chiraine explained the problem. He agreed that it was too dangerous to allow the Vostok’s computers to have access to Chiraine’s data, but he did have another idea.

  “I’ll work in parallel with the LVX.” He thumped his robot chest. “The quantum array in here is similar to a Kane lattice, so we can run inverted function Grover II algos on your dataset.”

  I didn’t follow exactly what he was talking about, but remembered a phrase from one of my briefing sessions on computer technology. With enough time and qubits, nothing is out of our reach. Something like that.

  Chiraine obviously understood what the Sean bot was saying. She nodded excitedly. “Grover IIs would definitely speed things up. Let’s do it.”

  “Z, you think you can fly this thing out of here?” the Sean bot asked.

  “Sure. It’s just the landings that are iffy for me.”

  “Good. Jannigan, you’re her co-pilot. Get going guys, and take us to where the Fountain was.”

  With that, we were dismissed. As we left the hold, I glanced back. The Sean bot and Chiraine were chattering at each other while he plugged himself into the LVX.

  23

  Ana-Zhi was true to her word. She expertly guided the Vostok off the landing deck and slipped out into the void of space.

  “Check the lower monitors, will you? Make sure the landing gear is up. This damn thing is so quiet I can’t even feel any vibrations.”

  “They’re up.”

  “Good.”

  Once we were clear of Bandala, Ana-Zhi turned to the nav computer and browsed through the list of coordinates to find the location of the Fountain.

  “Well, here’s the complete list of where those beacons were placed,” she said, glancing at the display. “Qualt or whoever didn’t bother to encrypt anything. Sloppy.”

  “Or lazy,” I said. “Does that mean we could find them?”

  “Yeah, they’re all around the system, but like your father said, it wouldn’t make any difference. What’s done is done.”

  She was right. He was right. I got it. But it didn’t make me feel any better. I had a sudden urge to go over to the brig, wake Qualt up, and kick his ass until he told me exactly when the Mayir would arrive in this system.

  But I didn’t.

  We had a job to do and Ana-Zhi needed me on the scanner. According to the nav computer, the Fountain was about 200,000 kilometers away. It would take us nearly three hours to get there.

  Because we were trying to scan basically the whole system, I needed to go into centaur mode, working in tandem with the scanner’s AI module, looking for any signs of the Rhya, the Mayir armada, or even the renegade Faiurae commando who stole my starhopper.

  It didn’t take long for me to pinpoint the Fountain’s location on the scanner. I didn’t know what to expect, but Qualt hadn’t lied to us. The jump gate was dead.

  “Anything?”

  The graphs and readouts danced on my display. “Nothing. No ships. No movement. Power levels barely registering.”

  “Son of a bitch.” Ana-Zhi, too, had realized that Qualt wasn’t bullshitting us. “I just don’t get how he could have knocked out the Rhya. I mean, they’re the damn Rhya, for Dynark’s sake!”

  “I need to let my dad know.”

  We both stabbed at various controls for the comm system, but couldn’t figure out how to access the intercom for the hold.

  I got up out of my chair. “Screw it, I’ll go down there and tell him in person.”

  The Sean bot and Chiraine were both still hard at work sifting through the volumes of data on her biklode. I filled them in on the state of the Fountain.

  “They probably infected its energy system with a new kind of scidatium,” the Sean bot said. “Something that the Rhya weren’t protected against.”

  “Yeah, but why isn’t the place crawling with Rhya trying to fix it?” I asked.

  “Qualt got to them too,” Chiraine said. “Somehow took them out.”

  That thought shot a chill through my heart. It meant that the Mayir already had a pretty powerful technology.

  “When the Mayir get here, they’ll make sure the Fountain is secure,” the Sean bot said. “They can’t risk the Rhya—or even the rest of the Empire—coming back here. At least not until they’ve picked Bandala clean.”

  I nodded. We couldn’t be anywhere near the Fountain when the Mayir arrived. But where would we go?

  “We have to get back to work,” the Sean bot said. “Tell Z to change course.”

  “To where?”

  “Anywhere away from the Fountain.”

  I returned to the bridge and got back on the scanner. Reluctantly, Ana-Zhi turned the Vostok around and headed towards Yueld.

  “At least there are places to hide there,” she said.

  That was true, but for how long?

  “What if we just run?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Leave the system. Before the Mayir even get here.”

  Ana-Zhi shook her head. “Dumb idea, kid. This isn’t a long-range cruiser. How far do you think we’d get? Besides, we don’t know what’s out there. No one’s ever explored the Hodierna galaxy. At least no one I know of.”

  I slumped back into my seat. She was right.

  “Much as I hate to admit it, I think that asshole Qualt was right. Our best move might be to convince the Mayir to let us join them.”

  “Screw that!”

  “Listen, Jannigan. This is going to quickly turn into a shitshow. You’re going to have to be smart in order to survive.”

  “Yeah, there’s nothing smart about selling my soul.”

  “I’m serious. You need to get in line so you can wait this out. And you need to get your girlfriend in line too—”

  “She’s not my girlfriend!”

  “Whatever. She listens to you. Keep an eye on her. And both of you have to keep your heads down.”

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ve been through shit like this before and I know how to ride it out. Worry about yourself.”

  Just then, the scanner beeped for my attention. I looked down at the display. Crap.

  �
��I’ve got something,” I said.

  The AI had isolated a fast-moving mass cluster at least a million kilometers out.

  “Could be an asteroid field,” I said. “A small one.”

  Ana-Zhi glanced over at the display. “That’s no asteroid field.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The density is all wrong. That’s a bunch of ships. I’d bet my left tit it’s the Mayir.”

  “That’s impossible. How could they get here so quickly?”

  “A jump tug. That’s the only way they could get here period. It doesn’t matter. Go tell your father.”

  I thought to myself that the Sean bot probably knew already since he was jacked into the scanner, but I set off towards the hold. Before I took two steps, another alarm went off. This one was a lot louder and more urgent-sounding.

  “What the hell?”

  Ana-Zhi flicked through the unfamiliar displays trying to figure out what was going on.

  “Are we under attack?” I asked.

  “No, the landing bay doors are opening.”

  “What?”

  “The launch just ejected.”

  I didn’t know what was happening and neither did Ana-Zhi.

  “Was it a malfunction?” I asked.

  “I have no idea, Jannigan,” she huffed. “Why don’t you get your ass down to the hold and find out?”

  I raced through the top level of the ship, then into the galley, and practically slid down the access ladder into the hold.

  Chiraine stood there watching me.

  “What the hell is going on?” I said frantically.

  “Calm down, Jannigan.”

  “The launch—”

  “Yeah, your dad is taking it back to Bandala.”

  “What?”

  “We did it.” She had a weird look on her face. Half triumph, half dread. “We figured out how to activate the Kryrk. At least we think we did. There’s no way to test it.”

  “Hold on, you actually know how to use the Kryrk?” This was incredible. I knew it was a long shot, but—

  Then it hit me.

  “Wait a minute, my dad is going back to Bandala to activate the Kryrk?”

  “Yes. It’s just like what you said. We have to prevent the Mayir from accessing what’s in Bandala. At all costs.”