by Evan Currie
The Infinity Affliction
Evan Currie
ALSO BY EVAN CURRIE
Atlantis Rising Series
Knighthood
The Demon City
Odyssey One Series
Into the Black
The Heart of Matter
Homeworld
Out of the Black
Odysseus One : Warrior King
Odysseus Awakening
Odysseus Ascendant
Archangel Series (Odyssey Universe)
Archangel One
Archangel Rising
Odyssey One: Star Rogue Series
King of Thieves
Heirs of Empire
Heirs of Empire
An Empire Asunder
Warrior’s Wings Series
On Silver Wings
Valkyrie Rising
Valkyrie Burning
The Valhalla Call
By Other Means
De Oppresso Liber
Open Arms
Border Wars
Other Works
SEAL Team 13
Steam Legion
Thermals
Copyright Info
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.
Text copyright © 2016 Evan Currie
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.
Author’s Foreword :
Welcome to another release in the endless cavalcade of weird stuff that goes through my mind. Hopefully you’ll find it entertaining, if not thought provoking in places.
I’ve had this one sitting for a while, one of my nigh on endless ideas that started well and then petered out for various reasons. Every few books I dig one of these ideas out and finish them, both for you dear readers (ha!) and also to sooth the itch in the brain they leave me with if I don’t. Hopefully you’ll find some satisfaction in here as well. :)
In other news, I’ve been doing some youtube videos on different writing topics, answering questions, that sort of thing. If you’d like to check them out, go here : Evan Currie’s Channel
Ask questions if you’ve got them, or just play along with the game I’ve been calling “Let’s write a novel”… or, you know, come and laugh at my thumbnails… cause I have some goofy ass ones there. Lol
Ok, enough of this. On to the story, and I hope you enjoy The Infinity Affliction… I don’t know if I’m glad this is just a story or not in some ways, after all… Who wants to live forever?
Prologue
It was a violation of the universe, a place in space time that knew all the rules of an ordered, regular, sane universe… and then promptly ignored them.
The ball of entropic destabilized space-time exploded into existence from nothing, coring a hole into the universe the size of a quanta and then ballooning into a sphere a thousand kilometers across in very nearly the same instant.
An asteroid drifting too close was torn apart quanta by quanta in the extrusion of the hole, leaving only empty space down to the atomic level. For a long moment in time, nothing more happened. The universe seemed content to look away from the violation of every holy rule that existed, and the sphere of pure chaos seemed content to allow it.
The truce between the universe and chaos exploded as a mass of steel and composite blasted out of the sphere, exploding in the emptiness of space a moment later. Chunks of heavy metals followed in rapid fire, spiraling out into the black to be lost forever, and then for another brief sliver of time… peace reigned.
The starship erupted from the sphere, spiraling wildly as it spewed superheated atoms from the rear and thick oxygen-nitrogen from multiple other places.
More chunks of heavy metals followed, and then another two missiles.
The ship expended flares and countermeasures, decoying the missiles away, but unguided slugs of metal couldn’t be out thought, and more holes were shortly venting atmosphere from the ship.
****
Vacuum Eagle
“More damage reports, every light on my board is lit up,” The man standing toward the front of the cramped command deck yelled over the noise that filled the room, “I don’t know how much more we can take!”
“Just kill the noise!” Another man, this one standing in the command station with a body between his feet ordered, “Ignore it all. If we live, we’ll fix it then!”
The alarms died, cutting off sharply as only digital systems could, and suddenly they could hear the whistle of atmosphere being pulled away into space.
Maybe the alarms weren’t so bad.
“The portal is surging! They’re coming through!”
“Bring us about! If we don’t destabilize that thing, we’re all dead!” The man at the command station snapped out, trying not to think about the body he was standing over. As opposed to just some of us.
The Eagle twisted in space, her turn ragged and wide as her thrusters burped and flared with irregular response.
The tactical displays on the command deck were, perhaps miraculously, intact and functioning as the powerful forward scanners were brought to bear on the sphere the ship had flown from.
“Portal is stable, Lieutenant. L1 Minor Junction,” The man at the forward station reported.
“Well, let’s make it unstable,” Lieutenant Corvan said grimly “Charge our transit generators.”
Corporal Gavin, at the forward station, blanched white and half turned. “Sir, that will…”
“I know what it’ll do!” Corvan snapped, “Do you see any choice?”
Gavin hesitated a second longer, then turned back to his station. “Right. Charging transit generators.”
The Eagle’s transit generators began powering up, a broken hum rattling the ship and making the men wince.
“Something must have been blasted loose in the Engine Compartment, Lieutenant.” Gavin grimaced as the console, chair, and entire deck around them began to shake. “We could shake her apart like this.”
“Then shake her apart!”
“Yes Sir.”
Corvan’s eyes lifted to the tactical display that was showing the details of the portal they were turning to face, noting the power increase was still going up.
That has to be a carrier coming through. Damn it.
“Generators charged!”
The corporal’s call came just as the first hard signal returns came back, showing the bow of the big ship beginning to transit the portal.
“Initiate transit charge.” Corvan ordered.
Corporal Gavin swallowed, but hit the command. “Transit charge initiated.”
The small generators of the Eagle were in no way capable of generating even an L-1 Portal, but they were more than enough to destabilize one.
The energy from the Eagle’s generators lanced out into the Quanta Field of the portal, throwing order into the chaos, and pitching the entire balance into disarray. The numbers on the tactical station spiked, and Corvan leaned forward as his hands twisted into fists.
Then the energy levels began to plummet.
“What’s going on!?” He demanded.
“They’re trying to stabilize the portal in mid-transit…” Gavin sounded shocked, and Corvan didn’t blame him.
Transit portals were not things you messed with in mid transit, though he supposed that if he were about to have his Quanta converted into energy and scattered across the universes then he too would try just about anything.
“Can they do that?”
Corvan asked, uncertain.
“You’re asking me like I would know,” Gavin countered, “The Captain might have known, or the Chief…”
“They’re dead, Corporal!”
“THAT, I know!”
The numbers on the repeater showed the emergence of the big ship was continuing as the power levels returned to the normal variance expected of a portal.
Corvan glowered at the screens, “Fire everything we have left, and put more power to the Generators. We have to stop that thing!”
The guns of the Eagle roared, adding to the violent shaking that was rattling them about the command deck like loose peas in a pod. They had long since expended their missiles, and the remaining magazines took only seconds to empty, but while it lasted the heavy metal slugs tore into the bow of the advancing carrier as it was now half clear of the portal.
“The generators are going to blow!”
“I told you before, I don’t care.” Corvan snarled at the corporal’s warning, “Let them blow!”
When Gavin hesitated, Corvan stepped away from the command station and reached past the corporal, sending the command himself. As the whine and shaking built, he looked at the other man.
“We’re dead already, Corporal.” He said simply, “We just transited an enemy portal two steps ahead of their flagship. If they don’t kill us, the deep certainly will. Let’s take some company with us when we go.”
Gavin nodded hesitantly, not that he had much choice at that point as the command was already being executed. Alarms could be heard, penetrating from the rest of the ship though they’d been cut off on the command level.
It was possible someone would survive - if they were in a survival tube.
Of course, there was no way home and the deep black would soon end any survivors just as finally as what was coming. Perhaps ending now, and here, was the best way to go.
“I think,” He said after a second, as the whine built, “The Captain would have approved.”
Corvan laughed bitterly. “He’d either shoot us for criminal stupidity, or ask what took us so long.”
As the whining built, and the Eagle continued to shake more and more violently, Gavin stared at the Lieutenant in something akin to shock for a brief moment before he let out a sound that was suspiciously like strangled laughter.
Corvan looked at him, unbelieving for a moment, as the enlisted man struggled and failed to keep from breaking down in laughter. Then, as the generators spiked and the portal blew to hell beyond them, he started to laugh as well.
The shockwave blew open the command deck of the vacuum Eagle, but right up until the air sucked all sound away, a pair of voices laughing hysterically echoed off the armored hull.
*****
The energy wave from the Vacuum Eagle built in the chaotic quanta field of the L1 Portal Terminus as a counter wave attempted to maintain stability from within. In the chaos of the field, however, destabilizing a portal was far simpler than maintaining it.
The Quanta field blew apart suddenly, only a third of the big carrier having transited. The ship was sliced clean as everything still within the field was consigned to the universes, exploding across multi-dimensional space at whatever speed they could in whichever dimension they were thrown.
The shockwave exploded out, tearing the forward third of the carrier to shards and throwing those shards into the battered Vacuum Eagle like shrapnel from a mine.
The hardened steel tore apart the smaller ship like sand stripping flesh from bone in a tornado, leaving nothing in its passing but the broken skeletal frame of the small ship and a growing conical field of debris.
The portal sphere vanished in the flash of power, leaving almost no trace of the battle that had just passed as a distant gas giant lumbered along its orbit toward the field.
Hours passed in the silence that can only exist in the vacuum of the black. Then, as the approaching Gas Giant’s moons crossed the first edge of the field, lights began to flicker to life.
*****
Life Pod
Well, I have food, air, and water. That’s the good news, the solitary inhabitant of the pod thought to himself as he took stock of the situation.
Of course, the bad news is that I’ll freeze to death long before I run out of those.
The pod was still in stealth mode, powered down to avoid detection by the enemy, and would remain that way for some time unless it entered a gravity field. Freezing to death was a preferable option to capture, not that capture was a likely outcome of being detected.
So, it was a surprise when the red lights came on a moment later, and display screens returned to life.
“What the…” The occupant was a muscled man in a smoke and shadow grey mix color uniform, his expression confused as he leaned forward in his harness.
“Huh. Gravity field. Big one too.” He mumbled, checking the readings. “Damn. I’ll be pulverized by one of those moons if I don’t change course. Ok, guess I’ll have to risk it.”
He powered up the pod’s scanner, looking for any navigational beacons in the area first, to no avail. He didn’t know where the enemy was trying to portal too, but it wasn’t on any of the known routes.
The computer was star matching, looking for known constellations, pulsars, anything that would give him a decent lock on his location while he ran a signal sweep up and down the EM spectrum.
An odd hit in the VHF range gave him pause.
“Computer, run decryption on that.”
It only took a few seconds, which told him it wasn’t military, or even halfway sophisticated merchant traffic.
The sudden blast of sound and light that came from the computer as it played the signal for him set him back in his harness for a moment as he grimaced.
“Oh god, it’s reality tv reruns.” He swore, recognizing the intro sequence from the habits of a particularly annoying girlfriend he’d had in University. “Great. It’s official. I died in the explosion and went to hell.”
“You’re fired!”
He rolled his eyes, killing the audio immediately, focusing on the telemetry, “Who the hell is broadcasting this shit?”
With little effort, he managed to lock in on the signal and track it to its source.
“Oh.”
It was Earth.
An Earth, at least, and now that he had a confirmed point of reference the computer came back with a location… Great timing on that, you piece of junk… and, more useful, a time frame.
“Twenty first century Earth, non-contact dimension obviously,” He mumbled just as the computer chimed a warning for his attention, “And I’m about to be pulverized by Ganymede. Perfect. Just freaking perfect.”
He fired up the micro drive on the pod and directed it toward Earth.
ETA, three days. I hope they’re broadcasting something better than reality tv or this is going to be one long flight in.
****
The first Ion drive lit off just a few minutes ahead of the next, and slowly a string of Ion wakes began to form, all moving in the same direction.
Destination, Earth.
****
Chapter 1
USSTRATCOM, AFB OFFUT, Nevada
Admiral Zachary Quinn strode through the doors into the primary Op Center for the United States Strategic Command, moving with a purpose. It was three a.m., so whoever woke him up had best have a good reason for it or else his purpose wouldn’t end well for them.
“Admiral,” Colonel Pierce met him just inside the guarded doors, handing him a tablet. “You need to look at this.”
Quinn glanced at the data on the computer briefly, “Break it down for me. It’s three a.m. and I haven’t decided if I need coffee yet.”
Pierce wordlessly handed him a large steaming cup.
Quinn grimaced, but took it and drew a sip. He noted that it was good, extremely strong, and had to have come from a shop off base.
“That bad?” He asked dryly.
“We don’t know how bad it is, but we’re pret
ty damn sure that it’s not going away anytime tonight,” Pierce answered.
“Great,” Quinn took another long drink, looking over the monitors with a critical eye. “Ok, I’m seeing ballistic trajectory calculations, and… I don’t even have a clue what this is.”
“Well you’re not far behind anyone here,” Pierce told him. “We pegged it as an extreme energy release out in the leading Jovian Trojan belt.”
Quinn silently mulled those words over for a time before he replied to that. “Colonel, I’ve tried translating what you just said five times now, and no matter how I parse it, it still sounds like you just told me there was an explosion out near Jupiter.”
“Yeah, that was our response too, so we dropped it in NASA’s lap when it came in two nights ago.”
“Two nights… Why am I hearing about it now?”
“Deck officer’s call,” The Colonel shrugged, “It was just an anomaly and had nothing to do with our operations so he shunted it to NASA, made a note about an unknown astro phenomenon, and forgot about it.”
Quinn sighed, but nodded. He could see the train of logic in that, though he would have at least liked for it to show up in his daily briefing. Or, rather, show up as something more than a minor footnote that he was certain to skim over, which is likely what happened.
“NASA have an answer?” He asked.
“Nothing anyone is going to put in official reports,” Pierce chuckled, “And nothing that really warrants even unofficial attention just yet. They’re still spit balling theories - and shooting them down just as fast. What made them throw it back to us is when they directed some active radio telemetry pulses out that way and got hits back way ahead of schedule.”
Quinn looked down, “The ballistic inbounds?”
“That’s right, Sir. We have seven of them that we can detect, all large enough to survive reentry, and all coming our way. The lead chunk of whatever it was just crossed into Cislunar space and is going to enter the atmosphere in fifteen minutes.”