I wasn’t convinced. It seemed too straight forward for LeRoy the liar. And what about the Valhalla Group? Were they just pawns, too? No wonder they were pissed. LeRoy had played them in order to fund the mission. But what kind of mission was it exactly? LeRoy didn’t strike me as a politician, but there were elements of diplomacy hidden beneath the barrage of rockets slamming into the shield.
“The lead ship is pulling away,” I said.
“To let the weapons cool,” Gacheru said. “The second ship is moving into position.”
The brittle sides of the splinter glowed a fiery orange in the reprieve. Walburga stared at it, and then hurried to the pilot’s chair, focusing H3RMES’ scanners on the splinter with a furious tap of keys.
“It’s grown,” she said. “It’s wide enough for us to slip through now.” She leaned back in the chair and ran her fingers through her hair, tugging at the base of her ponytail. “Is that what he wants? Do we go through?”
“He didn’t tell you?” I asked.
“LeRoy paid me to get the H3RMES to the splinter. He said you would lead the way.” She glanced at Gacheru. “He might have said something about pissed-off Valhallans, but he said nothing about the kid, or the fleet of crazy Martians with enough firepower to destroy Earth.”
“Then we have to go in,” I said.
“Explain.”
“You said we can fit through the splinter, but the Martian’s can’t.”
“Not yet. But they seem determined to make that hole big enough.”
“And if they do, and if they get into the vault, then they have the leverage to pay off Earth’s corporations, bring down the Martian shield…”
“And pulverise Earth,” Gacheru said. “That’s what they will do, once the shield is down.” She shrugged, and said, “It’s what I would do.”
“Nice,” Walburga said. She let go of her hair and looked up at the tangle of cables, pipes and circuit packs above her. “What do you think H3RMES? Can we do it?”
H3RMES burst a series of pipes in quick succession. The hiss of steam was followed by a rattle of self-sealing clamps. They patched the holes and separated in anticipation of the next outburst.
“I asked if we could not if we should, but, I hear what you’re saying.”
The pipes rattled and the auto clamps expanded.
Gas plumes streaked across space as the second Martian ship started to pummel the shield around the splinter with the next salvo of rockets.
Walburga nodded at the explosive impacts on the shield, and said, “We’ll have to slip in between salvos and follow the rockets through the splinter.”
“That would mean flying in front of another salvo,” I said. “Perhaps we should wait? There are only three ships, so only one left.”
“The weapons are cooling down,” Gacheru said. “They are not depleted.”
“Even if we get through,” Walburga said, “it’s only a matter of time before the Martians follow us. We still have to find the vault.”
“I wouldn’t know where to begin,” I said.
“Worry about that if we get through.” Walburga worked at the pilot’s console, superimposing the plotting screen onto the view port. The course of the H3RMES shifted, and the ship’s marker slipped across the screen as we moved closer to the stream of rockets.
“We’re doing this then,” Walburga said, as H3RMES released another bout of steam. “Any objections?” She looked at Gacheru first, nodded at the grin on the girl’s face, and then looked at me. “Joe?”
“I thought this was a lifeboat,” I said.
“It still could be.”
“But it doesn’t make sense. Even if we find the vault, are we just going to break in and steal the knowledge? What if there isn’t any? What if there is? Do we just race across the galaxy with a fleet of angry Martians and Valhallan agents in pursuit? Or do we destroy the knowledge so no-one can use it, for good or bad?”
“That’s a lot of questions, but I need an answer.”
I tracked the course of the H3RMES on the view port. The second Martian ship had stopped firing, and was moving out of position.
“Now would be a good time, Joe.”
Walburga made a few course corrections, and then, with a few soft words, she encouraged H3RMES to make any adjustments he saw fit before punching a course through the stars to the splinter.
“Joe?”
A single star caught my eye, and I focused on it. Synthea was there, her electron-blue toes curling the folds of black space. The rational part of my mind tried to hard to remind me that she was an algorithm, nothing more than a clever manipulation of my own self. It was the same part of my mind that suggested we would never survive the salvo of Martian rockets, and I agreed. Death was more and more certain with every second that I delayed. I looked at Synthea, and she tilted her head to one side, a suggestive smile played across her lips, and she beckoned with a tiny lift of her chin, beckoned towards the Shroud.
“Do it,” I said, and grabbed the rail as H3RMES turned into the path of extinguished rockets, and burned ahead of the next.
The ship shook with a rattle of pipes, a creaking buckle of bulkheads, and a vibration that rumbled through my hands, feet, jarred my teeth, and trembled through my augmented muscles that had no memory of this.
This was new.
Charging through space towards a splinter through a shield to a Shrouded society was new.
The wail of proximity warnings, hundreds of them, was new.
H3RMES burst a pipe, Walburga shouted something like not now, and the kid, Gacheru, shouted something that could have been wabonga.
Old Australian, meaning trouble.
The ship was in trouble.
We weren’t going to make it.
“We’re not going to make it,” Walburga shouted, as the wail of alarms intensified.
I stared at the splinter in the Shroud, saw the edges creasing and folding from the damage of the second salvo. It was decaying, widening. The third salvo might not damage it enough for a Martian ship to pass through, but the fourth or fifth salvo would.
“What happens if we pull out?”
“And get clipped by a sphere-busting rocket? Nothing good, I guarantee that,” Walburga said. “Better to ride the bow wave, and hope for the best.”
Gacheru pushed herself out of her seat, grabbed a rail in the bulkhead, and clawed her way to the view port.
“The splinter is closing,” she said. “Look.”
Walburga tapped a command into the console and magnified the image of the splinter on the view port. It did look as though it was sealing itself, knitting the sides together, but the new proximity alarm that blared louder than the rest, came from the bow of the ship. H3RMES shaved a fraction of power from the ion engines to boost the forward shields.
The splinter appeared to be closing, but appearances could be deceiving.
Just like LeRoy, I thought, as I stared at the boxy bow of a massive ship breaching the shield of the Shroud, and emerging into known space.
I had not anticipated this, none of us had. Neither were we prepared for the blinding flash of energy that burst from the ship and tossed H3RMES out of the path of the Martian salvo, away from the splinter in the Shroud, and into dead space, spinning as the engines failed, and the bulkheads wrenched forty-five degrees one way, and then another ninety the other. H3RMES twisted as our bodies slammed into the forward bulkhead, only to slide down onto the deck, as H3RMES decelerated to a slow drift, as the hull recovered its shape, and the breach sirens blared. One proximity alarm continued to wail as the strange ship drew alongside the H3RMES, opened a lifeboat-sized hatch on the starboard side of its massive hull and tractored us inside. Once the hatch shut with a dead thud, the ship lurched as it jumped away from the splinter in the shield.
Blood streamed from my nose, my ears. I tasted it in my mouth. I watched as Walburga smeared blood across her cheeks with the back of her hand. Gacheru was the first onto her feet, cursing her body into a fight
ing stance as she reached out to grab the handrail. She buckled at the knees, lifted herself up, and clenched her fist as a man climbed up the ladder and onto the bridge. Gacheru relaxed as soon as she saw his face.
“LeRoy?” I said, and pulled myself to my feet.
“Not quite,” the man said. “My name is LeBarge, the man you know as LeRoy is a projection of mine, quite real, and thus missed.”
“He’s dead?” Walburga asked, as she stood up.
“It’s possible that he is. But,” LeBarge said, and smiled, “he succeeded. You are here, and you are most welcome.”
“Welcome where?” I said.
“You are onboard The Vault, a knowledge repository. An arsenal if you will. “This,” the man said, and gestured at the space around him, “is all that is left of my people, my culture, my society.”
LeBarge smoothed the creases in his jacket, straightened his back, and smiled at each of us in turn.
“Welcome to the Shroud.”
About the Author
Bran means “raven” in the Welsh language. Nicholls was the name of my grandfather – a cricket-loving, pipe-smoking, World War II plane mechanic posted in the North African desert. Bran Nicholls’ stories are a tribute to him, my grandmother, and the Welsh side of my family. Ravens, on the other hand, are just cool, intelligent, and more than a little cheeky.
Find out more here: Bran Nicholls
By the same Author
THE SHROUD DISCORD
Introductory Novella
ENTER THE SHROUD
Book 1
THE VAULT (coming soon)
Enter the Shroud: In the Pursuit of Knowledge (The Shroud Discord Book 0) Page 8