Means of Escape (Spinward Book 1)

by Rupert Segar

  “Yelena, quick! This way.” It was the young pilot, Art, beckoning from the open airlock. Huge flashes of lightning arced over the ship from the direction of the flux generators and electrical power batteries. She sprinted the short distance to the airlock and hurled herself in, the iris shutters flexed closing behind her.

  +

  Outside, standing on the apron of the landing zone, Colonel Garth felt more reassured. At his orders, a flotilla of warships was moving into a geostationary orbit above the spaceport. Five destroyers were in low orbit just fifty kilometres up, expending considerable power to maintain their position. The alien ship had been in the hanger for ten minutes and all the while the erratic flashes of electrical discharge continued to light the interior of the building.

  +

  Yelena strapped herself into the seat with Art. Although the solitary pilots chair was broader than normal, it was still a tight fit for two. Art was looking at the control panel. Yelena thought she was familiar with the console and knew what various dial and gauges did but the entire desk seemed to have been reconfigured. As she looked, parts of the instrument panel morphed into different shapes, colours changed and whole ranks of contact buttons shifted to allow new pads to emerge.

  “Haven’t you got enough power yet, ship?” asked Art. “We’ve got to go before they bring up the big guns.”

  “Too late,” said the ship and a hologram flicked on hanging above the console showing the spaceport with the warships circling above. “Electrical power absorption complete. Flux capacitors 91 percent full.

  “Yelena, I hope you do not mind if I address you as such,” said the mechanical voice. “There was a small generator in the storage area. What was it used for?”

  Although Yelena was slightly flustered to be addressed by the ship, she answered directly. “It is our back-up fusion generator. Ten gigawatts.”

  “Thank you, it is mine now, safely stored,” said the AI smugly.

  “I didn’t know this ship had a personality,” Yelena whispered to Art.

  “Not a personality, an entity,” said the ship. “Now, where do you want to go, pilot?”

  +

  From the control room of Hercules, the lead cruiser holding station just 50 kilometres above the spaceport, Captain Tom Bartz had a perfect view of the engineering hanger. His ship and the other four cruisers were in the classic quintuple attack formation. The wide vid-screen display hardly wavered at all and Bartz, a steady unexcitable man, was only slightly surprised when the roof of the hanger exploded into small pieces and a tiny spaceship flew off at a shallow angle towards the west. Bartz ordered the officer at the helm to keep pace. His second officer was at weapons control. Firing an ion beam at the craft was, for the moment, ruled out. The high energy beam would create havoc ripping through the atmosphere and devastating any area of the planetary surface it touched. Instead, Bartz ordered the other four cruisers to fire one missile each. Accepted military theory said escape from four converging high speed missiles was a near impossibility.

  A display showed the missiles streaking towards the small ship. They were nearly half way to their target, when the rogue craft abruptly changed course and headed back and upwards at a huge speed toward the Hercules. Bartz noted the rate of acceleration was greater than he had ever seen in any ship. Still, he was grimly unworried; whoever was piloting the vessel had opted for certain suicide.

  +

  On board the small craft, Art was far from unworried; he was on the point of hysterical breakdown. He had been piloting the ship away from the attack force, when the ship itself ignored his control and veered sharply backwards and upwards straight into the path of the four incoming missiles.

  Art felt as if he was a fish or a bird flying through some clear thin liquid. Within the sensorium, he could see everything in detail, especially the incoming missiles. The four armed rockets were picked out with glowing lights and accompanied by screes of data on their trajectories, acceleration, vectors and explosive payloads. Art was surprised that he seemed to understand all the figures at a glance. Then he was completely astonished when the missiles suddenly lost power and dropped out of the sky.

  +

  Captain Bartz almost lost his composure when the telemetry from all four missiles ceased and the rockets disappeared from his vid-screen. He was jolted by the blaring of his own ship’s alarm. The tiny rogue craft was on a direct collision course with the Hercules. Bartz could not believe it; the tiny ship was still accelerating furiously, towards him and his ship. The officer at the helm, lost his nerve and, with seconds to spare, changed course. Then, as the small craft passed through the middle of the quintuple attack formation, all five cruisers lost power.

  +

  High above, in geosynchronous orbit, some 20 000 kilometres away there was concern and some confusion as the information stream relayed from below was abruptly cut off. Nevertheless the orders from Colonel Garth were clear. They opened fire with all their ion cannon at once.

  Below, the now powerless and shield less attack cruisers were momentarily wreathed in blue and white scintillating arcs of energy before each burst open and exploded. Further below, an area of five hundred square kilometres of forest and farmland was incinerated. The super-heated air caused a shock wave that engulfed three small towns nearby, killing or injuring all the inhabitants.

  Still the small spaceship continued accelerating towards the naval taskforce. The 15 metre long craft was enveloped by a glassy ovoid that appeared to reflect away the intense ion beams focused on it. The ship was seconds away from the task force. The Admiral in charge of the flotilla was beginning to panic when the rogue craft jumped into hyper-flight and disappeared.

  Chapter 2: Expansion and Contraction

  No-one knows how many of the estimated 10 billion habitable planets in the galaxy are occupied by humans. In the early centuries of human expansion, more than one thousand home worlds were settled by colonists from earth. In turn, these new societies sent out their own waves of emigrants, ever pushing back the frontiers. Hyper-flight allowed journeys between neighbouring stars to be cut from decades to hours. Still the vast distances involved meant human history had to wait more than five thousand years before the galaxy was encircled by two long chains of descendants from those early explorers.

  The circumnavigation was completed in the Perseus Spiral Arm on the other side of the galaxy from Old Earth. Two very different space ships discovered each other in orbit about a barren world circling an altogether unremarkable star. They were representatives of two dissimilar tribes of humanity: one had travelled spinward round the galaxy’s impassable centre; the other had come clockwise; both had traversed more than one hundred thousand light years to meet there but they were poles apart.

  The spinward civilisation had evolved into a split society. There were those who lived on the planets, which formed a vast regional empire stretching up to one quarter of the way round the galaxy. These worlds were heavily taxed to support the ruling military elite. The Junta lived high above the planets in orbit or in space armadas. At first, the navy was there to protect the empire. By the time the ground-bound civilians found out the galaxy was empty of human or alien threats, the military chiefs had seized power and would not willingly give it up.

  The other explorers, who had travelled anti-spinward about the galactic core, were technologically more advanced but far less organised. They were a loose Federation of planets and cultures which shared two radical beliefs: the first was in the benefits of technology; the second was a strict adherence to free market economics. They were zealots and had an almost mystical faith in both dogmas.

  The inevitable war that followed lasted for only one hundred and ten years but almost completely destroyed both empires and left humanity stranded throughout the galaxy. The climax of the war saw virtually every artificial intelligence driven mad. The clash of the two civilisations resulted in the complete collapse of all interstellar travel and trade. The busy highways of the galaxy were empti
ed and the chattering network which connected the myriad of worlds populated by humans was silenced.

  At the beginning of the war, the loose Federation of free market planets suddenly found itself having to find vast resources to defend itself. In the short term, there was a boost to the Federation’s economies as demand for warships and munitions stimulated industries. Over the long term, the economic stress caused a recession which spiralled into a depression. Many of the Federation’s societies began to break down. After just over a century of fighting, the Junta was on the verge of victory. The war had been bloody and relentless with the military overlords never giving any quarter or showing any mercy. The Federation had become a disorganised rabble of planets, many of which could barely launch an armed spaceship into orbit.

  The Junta had tried taking over a few individual worlds but the result was always the same. The civilians adamantly opposed their rule. The occupying forces would be attacked by crowds of zealots using any weapons they could find, and if they had no weapons they would use stones. Worst of all, the peoples of the Federation refused to pay a levy to their conquerors. The cost of the protracted campaign had seen taxes rise throughout the Empire and there were increasing complaints, even rumblings of rebellion. The newly conquered worlds were ungovernable and, worst still, produced no revenue.

  Finally, the Junta admitted the war could not be won and formulated instead a drastic final solution. The few still powerful Federation planets were cleansed. Fifty four entire worlds had been blasted by ion cannon from the combined fleet. They were left lifeless orbs.

  The news of genocide spread causing dismay and panic throughout what was left of the vast Federation. The techno-zealots struck back. Scientists had developed a doomsday weapon to match the cold hearted cruelty of the Junta’s final solution. There were no warnings, negotiations or threats. The Federation’s secret retaliation was a computer virus, a lethal worm which destroyed the artificial intelligence computers essential for controlling hyper-flight. The initial symptoms of infection were only slight: there would be a few failures in navigation; ships might jump back into normal space but in the wrong place or not jump back at all. The virus was cunning. The worms spread using ship to ship comm channels. The infection was virtually undetectable. The sneaky design of the virus was that it remained hidden almost dormant until the ship had infected at least five other craft. Once infected every ship was doomed. Either it would race off uncontrollably in hyperspace or the AI would die and the ship would just stop, dead in space.

  The war which had lasted a century and a decade was over within months. The Junta’s fleet was rendered useless. The naval overlords who survived were forced off their warships and down onto the planets they had ruled so mercilessly from above. The downtrodden people promptly revolted and put most of their military masters to death.

  The virus, however, did not limit itself to the Junta’s warships. Every spaceship using hyper flight fell victim to the programme. A wave of plague washed exponentially, right back around the galaxy and, behind the crest of destruction, millions of inhabited planets were left in silent isolation.

  Chapter 3: A Big Personality

  “I knew this ship was strange,” said Yelena Kolowski. “But, I promise you, I had no idea it had a personality. OK it could talk but so does my fridge at home, what used to be my home. So, what is it, an AI or something else?”

  “You heard,” said Art, the exasperation showing in his voice. “It’s an entity, whatever that means. It’s definitely got a mind of its own. I’ve not been the pilot; I’ve been sitting in the passenger seat! The ship made all the decisions during our escape. I told it to fly away from those cruisers and the ship turned right round and did something I don’t even understand. You know, I am really frightened by this.”

  “You’re not the only one,” said Yelena as she reached for Art’s hand to reassure him. “We’re going to have to talk to it.”

  The two humans were sitting side by side on the narrow bed in the ship’s cabin. The ship had told them they were able to move about safely, as they were in hyper-flight. Yelena and Art had retreated to the cabin feeling only there could they escape the ship’s presence. They stood up together, still hand in hand. Yelena gave Art a determined grin and led the way.

  Emerging into the main cabin, they were both staggered to see how the compact room had been enlarged and redesigned. At the main control panel there were now two seats side by side. One side wall had moved back and what looked like a semi-circular sofa with a matching table in front that seemed to have sprouted from the floor.

  “I didn’t know ships could grow furniture,” whispered Art to Yelena.

  “They can’t,” replied Yelena just as quietly.

  A row of three more seats slid out from behind the wall opposite, the floor rippling like a thick liquid as the seats moved over it.

  “Just in case we have company,” commented the mechanical voice. “Yelena, I hope you do not mind the informality of me using your first name, I have created a cabin for you, too. So you don’t have to cram yourself in with Art.”

  They both turned round to see three cabin doors where previously there had been only one.

  “All right, ship. A cabin for Yelena is great but who’s the third cabin for?” asked Art sharply. He wasn’t quite sure he liked all this change.

  “As I said,” replied the ship. “We may have company.”

  +

  In orbit above Terra Nova, Colonel Garth was far from happy. He had just despatched a grovelling message to the Emperor explaining how he had lost the only working alien artefact ever discovered.

  Garth remembered how the ship had been found dead and drifting in an asteroid belt on the Spinward edge of the Empire. At first, it was thought to be an early victim of the thousand year old Great Plague which had brought the galaxy to a standstill. The normal procedure was followed by the crew of the Fist of God.

  The chief engineering officer went aboard the wreck with a small power pack and plague patch. She found what looked like a power point in the tiny main cabin but she did not recognise the design. There was just one seat and it was in front of what must have been the instrument panel but it was wider than usual and too far away for her to comfortably reach the controls. She got out her screwdriver, which was attached to her space suit arm by a bit of flex to stop it floating away, when she realised there was not a single screw head to be seen in the surface of the instrument board. It was completely smooth.

  Ten minutes later, after a thorough inspection, the chief engineer conceded defeat and called her captain. Within hours, the chief engineer was alone on the mystery ship once more. This time she had a space tent and a month’s supply of ration packs while her cruiser went off at high speed to get aid.

  Terra Nova had been the closest world with a reasonably big spaceport. The lumbering cargo freighter, the Vim, the biggest in the fleet able to make planet-fall, had been commandeered to deliver the young engineering officer and her prize cargo to Proteus Spaceport.

  “Yelena Kolowski, where have you taken my prize?” muttered Garth to himself. “You and Art King are definitely not on my Winter-Solstice card list.”

  +

  Sitting on the semi-circular sofa, the Chief Engineer, Yelena Kolowski, and the freelance pilot, Art King were in conversation with the mystery alien ship. The ship’s personality was projecting a hologram of a turning sphere, the size of a football, floating above the circular coffee table. The sphere’s surface seemed to vibrate and wobble, resonating with the disembodied voice which seemed to emanate from the sphere. Neither Yelena nor Art thought the effect was reassuring.

  “I made the changes to make you happy,” said the machine as the spinning sphere momentarily became striped yellow and orange before fading back to a matt blue. “I am not complete. I need your judgement and knowledge. I need your perception and views.”

  “But how can you do all these things?” asked Art.

  “No ship can just alter its d
esign and layout,” added Yelena.

  “And no ship can take control the way you have,” said Art angrily. “No world has allowed personalities to run ships since the Plague. No-one’s that stupid!”

  “As I told you, I am not a personality. I am an entity,” chimed the mechanical voice. “I can do all these things because I was designed to do them. I have a purpose and it something I need to share with you both.”

  “What is it you are supposed to do?” asked Art haltingly

  “Well, ship?” added Yelena more firmly.

  There was a quiet hum then both the humans involved in the unusual three-way conversation could have sworn they heard a soft chuckle before the mechanical voice answered.

  “I am here to save the galaxy.”

  Chapter 4: Absent Aliens

  On Ancient Earth it had been called the Fermi Paradox. The question was “Where is everyone?” In short, given an extremely high probability that intelligent life had evolved elsewhere in the galaxy, why had there been no sign extra-terrestrial visitors? Some, pre-interstellar age earthlings insisted that humans were the descendants of a long forgotten alien colony. However, the lack of any other little green men, or large orange ones for that matter, was a puzzle that remained unsolved until the Great Expansion.

  One of the first stopping off points for the human race was Alpha Centauri C, the closest star to Earth. Centuries before, a planet had been detected circling that sun. The planet was only slightly smaller than Earth and was within the Goldilocks Zone. Centauri C was neither too hot nor too cold for water to be liquid, one the essentials thought to be necessary for life. The first explorers arrived to find the planet littered from pole to pole with the remains of an ancient civilisation, which had apparently died out more than a million years before. The alien society had evidently been very advanced, there were many artefacts still intact but not one of them worked. Worse still, no-one could even see how they worked or what the artefacts were for.