by Mark Wandrey
He was known among his fellow elSha who worked on Slost as a repeat (and creative) offender in the department of complaining. “This job never ceases to bore me.” Like most of his fellow elSha on Slost, Afasha worked on maintaining the station’s many complicated pumping, storage, and purification plants. The planet had a marginally breathable atmosphere, even if it did smell like rotten fruit. Afasha crawled a little further into the valve complex and ran his instrument over them, searching for the link.
“You never cease your complaining,” his coworker joked. The rest of the team all chittered their agreement.
“I tell you,” Afasha said, “when I get my bonus I’m going to get a lease on a small free trader and...”
“And get rich!” the others all chanted, then chirped their laughter.
A passing Zuul supervisor stopped, turned its pointed ears and growled. “Get to work. This pump has been down for an entire day.” The elSha all sounded their assent, and the supervisor moved on.
“Why do they concern themselves so much?” Asasha resumed his complaining once the Zuul was out of range. “This pump is ninety-nine percent efficient already.”
“Rumors,” one of his work mates said. “Riches to be arriving soon.”
“It has to do with the Athal joining the Wathayat,” another said.
“Only one element could be so valuable that ninety-nine is not efficient enough,” Asasha said. “It must be F11.”
“You are an idiot,” another one said, setting up a robot to trace a pipe’s length. “This tank complex can hold millions of gallons. That much F11 would be enough fortune to buy our entire home world!”
“Have you not considered?” Asasha asked.
“What?” one of the others demanded.
“Why the Athal were suddenly invited to join us in the Wathayat?” The others all fell silent. “All our species brought something to the table.”
The team worked for some time until the results exceeded ninety-nine percent, as they’d been ordered, then headed back to the station’s control room to get another assignment. As they crossed the huge field of interconnecting transfer pipes toward the central control, the group of elSha noticed a transport slowly descending from the sky. It was a huge one, a bulk freighter of the kind that transported massive machinery or mineral ore between the stars.
“The transport has finally arrived,” one of them said and pointed a claw toward it.
“A week late,” Asasha agreed. “Typical. Now we’ll have to work twice as hard to finish off-loading before the next one arrives in two days!”
The transport didn’t finish the landing sequence; instead, it stopped ten miles up and hovered. Asasha stopped and stared. That meant something to him, and it triggered a thought. The distance was significant.
The ship was suddenly covered in flashes, and he wondered if they were experiencing a malfunction. Dozens of little darts raced away from the ship in all directions, lancing toward the ground. He thought for a second they almost looked like missiles, a second before the first of them hit their targets, and thunderous roars shuddered through the thick Slost afternoon air.
The first explosions were still echoing as alarms began to sound. More missiles were launched from the freighter, and they streaked toward the ground.
“We must flee to shelter!” one of his assistants screamed, pulling at Asasha’s work harness. A missile landed only a few hundred yards away on a defensive station where anti-aircraft beam weapons sat. It blew up with a brilliant flash of light and a cataclysmic explosion. Asasha was knocked from all four feet by the blast wave, even though a reinforcing beam directed most of the blast around him. The same blast wave turned his workmate into a reddish smear on the concrete.
Asasha looked in horror at what had once been his longtime friend as the missile bombardment continued to systematically destroy the installation’s air defense. Asasha lurched away from the carnage of his dead and dying team members as he finally remembered why ten miles was significant. It was the maximum altitude a space ship was allowed to be above a planet when using weapons against the surface. One of the Union’s most inviolate rules.
He managed to make it to a relatively safe area, an armored observation post above the starport as the transport finished its bombardment and descended toward a landing pad. He had a perfect spot from which to watch as the planet’s defenses finally came to life. Unable to stop the landing and caught completely off guard, all the defenders had left were their ground units; however, almost all of the heavily armored bunkers had survived the attack. Dozens of tanks, armored transports, and troops in combat armor were pouring out toward the starport even as the ship fired its massive jets, extended its landing legs, and thundered ponderously to the ground.
“You will pay for those deaths now,” Asasha hissed as the defenders, mercs of several species, began to fire heavy cannon at the grounded ship. It was armored to some extent, but its lift engines were quickly disabled, and several rockets reached out to all but obliterate the visible and vulnerable bridge. Whoever these fools were, they’d done damage to the installation, but they would never be leaving.
No dropships were plummeting from the sky to carry more attackers. Something must have gone wrong. While the transport could surely carry hundreds of combat-armored troopers and many tanks, the ship was now surrounded, and enemy casualties would be high for any attempt to break out. The friendly fire fell off, and Asasha guessed the attackers were being offered quarter. Then something strange happened. The side of the massive transport suddenly bowed outward, as if something powerful had crashed against it. Even inside and more than a mile away, Asasha heard and felt the impact. An internal explosion, perhaps? It was repeated, the side of the transport bulging outward precipitously.
The nearest troopers bounced back a few dozen yards on their jumpjets, as the bulkhead was struck yet again, and this time a massive rent appeared in the incredibly thick armor. A hideous scream came from inside the ship, a scream born of hate, rage, and nightmares.
“No,” Asasha said and shook his long snout. His tongue slipped out and tasted the air for threats. An arm crashed through the already torn hull of the transport, shattering the superstructure and sending parts of it careening into the waiting defenders. Hundred-ton pieces of shattered alloy obliterated a dozen troopers, crushing them in their armor. One chunk of hull plating landed on a tank and smashed it like a child’s toy. “NO!” Asasha cried as a nightmare come to life tore itself free from the hull of the ship that had brought it down to Slost, unfolding the incredible mass that had been carefully tucked into a space that seemed much too small to hold it.
In only moments it came erect. Asasha turned his head up, up, up to watch the terror stretch and scream a feral battle cry to the forces arrayed against it.
Defenders fired their weapons. Cannon, lasers, and missiles tore at the unspeakable horror, lighting explosions across the armored sides and limbs. It responded instantly, bending slightly and sweeping a hundred-yard-long limb with impossible speed to destroy a quarter of the arrayed defenders in one titanic orgy of death and destruction. Huge rents were torn in the concrete and steel of the landing structure. Combat-armored troopers were ripped to pieces. Armored transports were torn apart, spilling their occupants like bearings pouring from a broken machine. Tanks were thrown through the air like they were made of paper.
The defenders began to fall back in panic as they realized the ancient terror they were facing. They fired their weapons and drew death to themselves. Asasha knew he needed to tell the galaxy about what had suddenly appeared in their midst. He grabbed his communicator and looked back to the battle, just as a forty-ton tank, casually flicked from the ground by a backwards glancing blow, hit the observation area like a bomb.
* * * * *
Chapter 8
ESS Pale Rider transitioned back into normal space exactly as planned. Jim had been through transition several times, though it had been quite a few years since the last time. Long enough for him to
forget the disorientation at reemergence.
“How are we, Captain?” he asked.
“Position and velocity ideal, sir,” the pilot replied in his crisp English accent. Captain Reginald Winslow had come with the ship, it seemed. He’d immigrated to the US from Southern England as a young adult and quickly found his way into space. Jim wasn’t sure when he’d risen to the level of ship’s captain. “We should make orbit in a quarter of an hour.” When Jim had gone to Hargrave and announced he wanted to take a trip, the old grease monkey had changed into an almost clean coverall and taken him to the only new hangar on the field. Inside was the Pale Rider. One hundred-twenty feet of sleek alien curves, bought by his ancestors on the cheap and worked over several times. It had once been a Crucible-class escort frigate, used to help get dropships through orbital defenses. That was many centuries ago. When that generation’s Cartwrights had found it, the Pale Rider had been floating around an alien boneyard waiting to have its guts ripped out for salvage.
The ship’s captain and sole crewman, Reginald Winslow had been sitting in the hangar office looking over technical journals and sipping Earl Grey tea. Jim had met the captain during earlier flights, but only in passing. He usually limited himself to an occasional meal with passengers and then returned to the flight deck and his adjoining cabin. He’d been glad to see Jim and more than happy to take “the old warhorse,” as he called Pale Rider, up to space and to go wherever Jim wished.
Hargrave had surprised Jim by announcing he was going along as well.
“Been a while since I got myself into the black,” he admitted, bringing a tiny carry-on bag that couldn’t hold more than a couple pairs of underwear and a toothbrush. “Besides, someone needs to watch your ass.”
“That would take at least five people,” Jim admitted. While he’d stopped putting on weight after moving to the museum grounds, he’d also not lost any. The stairs in the apartment had helped, as had the fact that he couldn’t order delivery pizza. The drivers refused to brave the industrial roads without armed escort. Hargrave had arranged for an industrial delivery service that handled other companies within the zone to make regular deliveries of precooked and frozen meals. Jim had gotten used to them and found most quite tasty. Somehow the older man knew when the fridge was getting empty and a delivery would arrive.
The week in transition from Earth to Piquaw had been mostly in freefall, as thrust was a waste of fuel during the 170 hours it took to transit between transition points and stargates. Jim hadn’t forgotten how wonderful it was to be in null gravity. It didn’t matter that he was so fat anymore. The only issue was, if he moved too quickly, he tended to create a wave of fat that created unusual and difficult to control movements, so he’d learned to be careful. After that, he soared through the ship like a manatee, as Hargrave had joked. For some reason, when Hargrave chided him about his weight, it didn’t feel like the pointless hurting other kids had done at school. And, he often called Jim “Boss,” which made him feel good.
They spent a few days in Piquaw seeing the sights. It was a binary system where the secondary had an eccentric orbit and a rare double-gas-giant sub-system. It seemed to Jim that navigating inside the star system would be incredibly difficult, but Winslow took it in stride.
Primarily a trading point between more populous regions and Earth, there wasn’t a lot to see. Jim went over to the sprawling trading station that the Pale Rider docked at to refuel, located in a deep space Lagrange point. He floated around the zero-gravity docks, saw a few of the passenger transfer areas, and explored the few human-oriented businesses he found. Afterward, he returned to his ship and watched the myriad alien ships coming and going from the station as well as the thousands of transfer shuttles racing back and forth.
“How much is the refueling?” he asked Captain Winslow as they docked, and fuel was transferred aboard.
“Rates for L-hyd are pretty standard at approximately 100 credits a ton,” the captain explained. “A ship like Pale Rider takes about eight tons for a standard transition. She’s a fine girl, and lean on her consumption, so we usually use less.” Jim was now fairly conversant in the funds the trust had available. He could fly around the galaxy for the rest of his life at those rates and never burn through ten percent of it. “But we’ll need more F11 after about 12,000 hours in transition.” Jim quickly estimated this meant the Pale Rider needed F11 every seventy transitions.
“How much?” Jim asked.
“Quantity? Well the F11 isotope is degraded by that point. They reprocess it, but you don’t get credit because of handling. They siphon it all out and replace it. The Pale Rider’s core needs sixty-two gallons of F11. Going rate is 22,000 credits per gallon.”
“Holy shit,” Jim hissed. “Why so much?”
“It’s bloody rare, son,” the captain explained. “Very bloody rare. They’ve only ever found it near black holes, or in star systems that have had a supernova. A species finds a cache of F11, they’ve likely hit the big league.”
“The Cavaliers have fought in two wars over F11 finds,” Hargrave chimed in from across the bridge. He’d been engaged in a game of chess with the ship’s computer. “Both were bloody affairs. The stakes are too high. No F11, no interstellar trade.” The captain nodded.
“The Union is always concerned they’ll run out,” Winslow said.
“Has it, in the past?”
“Not that I know of. It’s a queer twist of quantum physics – the bigger the ship, the less the F11 tends to be degraded from transition, and the less power to keep it in hyperspace. See that huge bulk-ore transport over there?” he asked and pointed. Jim looked and nodded. It was hard to miss a roughly spherical ship almost a half mile across, even in near space. “That great bloke likely gets more than 20,000 hours before needing a flush. And they come much bigger than that. I remember closer to the core worlds, I once saw a bulk transport more than a mile at the beam! They took a bloody hour to get it lined up with the stargate. But the biggest consumers are warships. Deflectors and beam weapons use frightening amounts of power, and that means F11 to keep the power plants running. War fleets usually have tankers with L-hyd and F11 with them.”
Eventually the fueling was completed, and Captain Winslow wanted to know where to go next.
“If you wanted to see a black hole, there’s one only two transitions away. The Union has a research station there, and we can refuel for not too much.”
“I actually had another idea,” Jim said. The captain waited patiently while Hargrave didn’t look up from his game, but did stop making moves. “How about making course for Karma, please.”
“Oh-ho!” the captain said with a knowing nod. “Curiosity? Or enterprise?” Hargrave had half-turned and was regarding the exchange.
“We’ll figure that out when we get there,” Jim said. Hargrave gave a little nod and went back to his game, though a half-smile played across his face.
The Pale Rider shot out of orbit and away from the trading center of Piquaw toward the stargate located at a stable Lagrange point a few light minutes out. Because the stargate operated on a schedule, they accelerated out at almost 3Gs for a day. Jim spent that time in a waterbed under mild sedation, to reduce the strain on his rather large body. After that, the captain reduced them to one gravity. Flipping at mid-point they slowed for three more days at one gravity as the ship approached the gate.
The ring of twenty-seven asteroids, each with a hyperspace shunt, was powered by mile after mile of solar arrays. Even from hundreds of thousands of miles away, it looked like a huge snowflake glittering in the sun. It took vast amounts of power to run the shunts, and operating them on fusion generators would take equally vast amounts of F11 and L-hyd, but solar power was all but free. It did, however, act like a flow restrictor, as only so many ships could enter at a time. Punching a hole into hyperspace was tricky.
As they approached to within a few hundred miles, the sheer size of the gate became apparent. Jim whistled from where he paused to take it all in.
The gate in Piquaw was easily several times the size of the one at Earth’s Lagrange point. There were already seven other ships waiting for their window to transit out of Piquaw. The gate was non-directional in the sense that it only provided a way to enter hyperspace, but didn’t send a ship in any particular direction; the ships went wherever they wanted to from that point. Even with his pinplants, Jim found the calculations dizzying.
The captain guided them into formation with the other seven ships. On one of the Tri-V screens, a countdown marked the time until they would make transition. As it began to approach zero, all seven ships moved in perfect synchronization toward the array of asteroids. When they were less than a mile away, the space ahead...changed. Jim always thought it was like looking at a warped mirror in a funhouse. Only, no matter how hard you tried to focus on it, your eyes and brain couldn’t put it into perspective. Staring into hyperspace was mind-bending.
“Stand by for transition,” the captain said. The ship thrummed with power as the fusion drive spun up to maximum output and the ship’s hyperspace nodes were powered up. Without both the fusion drive and the nodes, the ship couldn’t remain in hyperspace for more than a few seconds. “Five...four...power steady...ready...one...” and they touched the event horizon.
For a split second Jim felt like he’d been obliterated. Every nerve in his body fired at once, then it was over. It wasn’t pain, it wasn’t pleasure. It was both being, and not being. Poets described it as a transcendent moment of un-creation creation. Pale Rider was in a dimension completely unlike our three-dimensional world. Scientists said the common hyperspace where ships moved was actually a fifth dimension. Looking out the window, it was not at all interesting. In fact, there was nothing at all. Computers recorded something, but not what that something was. Human eyes saw just pure white. Not a bright white, like from a light source, just a white as pure as the depths of space were black. Hyperspace was everything and nothing, all at the same time.