Means of Escape (Spinward Book 1)

by Rupert Segar

  The five humans and even the pod had remained frozen to the spot during the display but what happened next sent them reeling back in surprise. The doorway yawned open, its lower lip dropping to the ground. A tall black woman emerged from the grey nothingness helping a hobbling older oriental woman, followed by a stocky middle aged white man. Captain Isoko, Dylan the Devoted and explorer, Suxie Wong, stood before the astonished assembly. Captain Isoko turned her regal head, her hair now flecked with grey, and looked first at Yelena, Becky and Lea but then addressed Anton.

  “Voyageur, how long have we been away?”

  “Nine hundred and thirty one years, Captain,” said Anton. “Did you find them, the aliens?”

  “No, we could only get so far into the future before we ran out of doorways,” said Dylan “And then we came back and found the doorway here blocked.”

  “We kept moving through a small cycle of gateways,” said Captain Isoko. “The way was arduous between portals but we jumped ahead roughly one hundred years every circuit. Each time the doorway was still broken.”

  “The Captain and I may have remained stuck forever,” said Dylan taking the explorer’s hand, “were it not for Suxie Wong.”

  Beaming, the elderly explorer held up a small hand sized, egg shaped device. “Getting unstuck is simplicity itself if you have one of these,” said Suxie. “It controls the anomalies.”

  The hologram sphere stopped rotating and started turning the other way. It made an announcement: “An ancient Earth shuttle has just emerged from the portal and is now in orbit. I am receiving a message from two people who say they are Pierre and Yvette Blanc.”

  The pod, hovering one metre above the ground, drifted slowly toward Suxie who still held out the egg shaped device covered in buttons and displays. “Would you mind, Miss Wong, telling us where you got that?”

  “From the aliens, of course,” said the Explorer smiling.

  Chapter 30: David and Goliath

  On the bridge of Orion, the Emperor’s flag ship, Art sat rigidly upright in the seat, his neck and wrists confined by force fields. Despite the restrictions, he had a commanding view of most of the circular chamber, more than 20 metres in diameter. Three vast curved vid screens covered the walls ahead. A 10 metre wide holotable projected a 3D image of the fleet and nearby space. The majority of the fleet was like a mini galaxy; hundreds of vessels looking like a lumpy pancake in space. In reality, the fleet consisting of several hundred warships and thousands of auxiliary vessels were spread across a circle billions of kilometres in diameter. Some way off, between the flat disc of the fleet and the single planet in the system, hung the flag ship, Orion. Between Orion and the planet there was the mysterious object that Art had seen before. Scores of officers sat at consoles, some were coordinating information, and others were communicating with vessels of the fleet. Turning his head to the left, Art saw Colonel Garth, who took a couple of steps towards him.

  “You caused quite a stir, former pilot King,” said the Emperor’s enforcer, grinning. “Wang, the librarian, was hysterical. He was looking for spare clothes when Dr Izal’s body fell out of a locker, complete with a scalpel in the eye.” Garth was laughing. “Wang had a new pair of trousers on, and crapped himself again.”

  Art stared at the Emperor’s enforcer unwilling to share in his attempt at humour. Garth suddenly became serious. “The question is: how did you manage to escape the interrogation cell? Once you’re plumbed in, no-one gets out. Did you have inside help?”

  More than you realise, thought Art, and ‘inside’ is the word for it.

  “I have a strong inner will.”

  “Hmm, my technicians say the records show you were fully drugged, incapable of voluntary movement, yet you escaped, murdering Dr Izal en route.”

  “Hardly murder,” said Art feeling smug having bamboozled the Emperor’s security chief, “it was more like self-defence. He was going to cut off my …”

  A trumpet alarum sounded over the tannoy speakers making Art’s final words inaudible. The Emperor walked onto the bridge flanked by five armed marines. The navy soldiers took point position and the King of a thousand worlds strolled nonchalantly up to Art.

  “Ah, the medical marvel and murderer of my medic,” said the Emperor inspecting the immobilised Art, while two of the marine pointed their laser carbines at his head. “So glad you could be here to see your troublesome little ship caught in our trap.”

  A rotund, grey haired, officer wearing more braid than a camp nightclub pianist approached the Emperor. “Sire, the vessel is still heading directly for the fleet.”

  “Standard engagement, Admiral,” said the Kargol king, taking his throne like seat. “Let us see the enemy.”

  Art watched as the hologram turned and moved sideways, with most of the fleet disappearing, until all that remained in view were a dozen or so cruisers and destroyers and, far away, on the other side of the table, a small silver ship.

  “Magnify,” said the Admiral.

  The hologram cut to a much closer and much bigger image of the egg shaped vessel.

  Art whistled in surprise. Garth gave him a hard stare. Before Art was kidnapped, the ship had said it was going to ‘augment its capacity.’ Now it was huge. Looking at the relative size of the iris locks and cargo bay doors, the vessel was five stories tall. Art read the holo tag presented beside the image. The ship was over 400 metres long. He whistled again.

  “Estimated time of contact 550 seconds,” said one of the Admiral’s aides.

  “Sire, should we not move Orion to a safer position?” said the Admiral. “We know the ship is capable of major disruption.”

  “Admiral, we have the entire fleet between us and this one single craft,” said the Emperor. “If the fleet cannot protect us, there’s little point in you being an admiral. Besides, the engagement hasn’t begun yet. Colonel Garth and I are still studying our newly discovered anomaly. We have a couple of minutes before engagement, briefly show us the object and bring us up to speed.”

  The hologram winked out and was replaced with a picture of a grey oval hanging above part of a planet. That’s what I saw before, said Art to himself. A large holotag beside the image scrolled with countless figures.

  “Don’t give me numbers,” growled the monarch, “I want interpretation. Astrophysics!”

  The image of a white coated, scientist appeared next to the object. Her tag identified her as Dr Caroline White. She was clearly nervous.

  “Sire, the anomaly remains, er, unaffected by any mechanical or remote device,” said Dr White prefacing her statement with a low bow. “However, it seems it is activated by consciousness. If a shuttle or small ship is manned it will go through what appears to be a doorway. As long as the humans on board are, er, conscious, the ship disappears.”

  “Good idea of yours, Garth, to trial a cargo of corpses and drugged dupes” said the Emperor. “It’s a bit like life, if you’re dead or unconscious, nothing happens. So, Doctor, if the anomaly is a doorway, where does it lead?”

  “Difficult to say, Sire,” replied Dr White. “Of the forty seven ship and shuttles to have gone through, only five have come back. They were so surprised to have reached another solar system that they failed to record exactly where they were.”

  “Surprised?” said the monarch. “You mean they panicked. All returned crews to be put on a charge.”

  “Sire,” said the Admiral of the fleet, barely daring to interrupt, “the enemy is now in range.”

  +

  On board the ship, Yelena sat at the pilot’s console; Art’s seat beside her remained vacant along with the third chair. Becky and Lea were strapped into seats around the circular table. They were looking at a smaller version of the hologram being played on the Orion.

  “In range now,” said Yelena. “Ship, are you ready?”

  “Certainly, Yelena,” said the voice emanating from the holographic sphere hovering beside the console. “I anticipate a standard conical formation followed by ion canon.”


  As the ship spoke, the vessels making up the closest edge of the fleet began repositioning themselves. The warships on the leading edge were backing away creating a hole. The indentation became conical. The hologram above the circular table showed the silver egg shaped vessel getting near the entrance to the tunnel. Scores of cruisers and destroyers ignited their ion canon. The silvered ship flared white as a cocoon of mirror formed around it.

  “Show them what we’ve got, ship,” said Yelena with some satisfaction.

  +

  The holographic image of the battle on the bridge of Orion was five times wider than that on board the ship, and now it was more like a three tier wedding cake. This was the standard display for military engagement. The bottom layer showed the entire fleet and the surrounding space; the next layer portrayed the edge of the fleet attacking the ship with ion cannon; and, the top tier showed a large close up of the ship itself, wrapped in a mirrored cocoon and sheathed in a storm of lightning.

  The Admiral’s aides began shouting with excitement as the apparently impervious mirror surrounding the ship began to ripple. It looked as if the force field might break down at any moment. The cheers were quickly replaced with anxious looks as a series of dimples formed at the front of the shield. These newly formed concave mirrors were reflecting and refocusing the ion beams; sending them straight back to the cannons firing at them. Ship after ship reported explosions in their ion chambers. The mirrored dimples changed and reformed, refocusing on the remaining ships.

  “Cease fire,” shouted the Admiral, “All ships, turn off your ion cannon, now!”

  The majority complied immediately but a few continued firing for a few seconds too long. Within that short interval, all the slowcoach warships received reflected bolts of ionised energy, straight back down the barrels of their cannon. The remaining ion beams were extinguished. One of the vessels exploded, dramatically breaking in two and battering neighbouring warships of the fleet with debris and hard radiation.

  The alien ship had entered the conical tunnel formed by the fleet. As one, every cruiser and destroyer facing the interloper fired five missiles each. Though programmed to avoid each other, the sheer mass of armaments meant some of the weapons collided. They detonated causing a cascade of explosions. Still, scores of the deadly projectiles converged on the ship. On the upper tier of the hologram wedding cake, the missiles could be seen accelerating toward the cocooned ship. Each projectile was tagged with its trajectory and velocity. Each weapon was on course to obliterate the ship.

  Although helpless himself, Art was not too worried by the ship’s predicament. He had seen what the alien craft could do. Art looked over at the Admiral and his aides. Some were shouting “Go, go, go!” but others were looking on anxiously.

  Abruptly, the hologram flicked off and back on. The picture looked the same but the data tags had disappeared. “All missile telemetry down!” shouted one of the aides from her console at the edge of the table. “External calibration says zero acceleration,” said another. Art knew the missiles had been rendered impotent by the ship which now brushed aside the first wave of projectiles as if they were a bunch of twigs.

  “Frontline vessels extend shields and harmonise,” ordered the Admiral. The cruisers and destroyers forming the end of the conical tunnel were now packed close together, only hundreds of meters apart. Each vessel’s defensive shield overlapped its neighbour’s. The effect was to quadruple or even quintuple every ship’s defensive barrier. This classic military manoeuvre known as ‘The Cap’ was, according to accepted theory, guaranteed to stop dead any rogue vessel. Let’s see, thought Art.

  “Two thousand kilometres and closing,” said an aide not looking up from his console, “collision in 6 seconds and counting. Five, four, three …”

  “Comms down with frontline vessels …” “Telemetry gone …” “Shields down …” The aides reported the complete failure of the cap manoeuvre. Art looked at the second layer of the hologram; the interloping ship penetrated the fleet, its own force field pushing apart five cruisers clustered together. Each vessel was tagged with a large black dot, indicating a loss of power. The contagion spread as the ship pressed on towards the centre of the fleet. The invading ship left a cylindrical trail of black dots. Go, Yelena, go, said Art to himself.

  “I must say, your traitorous pilot looks very smug,” said the Emperor, who was standing only a metre away with his right hand man, Colonel Garth. “Very pleased with himself, indeed.”

  “You think we didn’t anticipate this?” said the enforcer to Art. “Sire, should we commence phase two?”

  The Emperor waved a hand nonchalantly at the Admiral who, in turn, punched an index finger in the general direction of a group of aides.

  “Operation Scabbard. Bring the first quintuple forward,” said the man with more braid on his jacket than a curtain at the opera house.

  Art watched with growing unease as five cruisers converged ahead of the ship. The alien craft got closer but no tell-tale black dots appeared beside the cruisers.

  “Comms steady …” “Quantum interference field generators holding …” “Weapons operational …” The small group of aides were clearly delighted.

  The five cruisers, which appeared immune to the ships power draining field, were right in the path of the silver ship. Tractor beams reached out for the interloper. The alien vessel squeezed through the middle of the quintuple formation, slowed slightly but drove on.

  “First quintuple, pursue,” ordered the Admiral. “Quintuples two, three, four and five, converge. All sheathed ships, collision course.”

  On the lower tier of the hologram, Art could see a swarm of vessels all marked with bright yellow tags aiming to encircle the ship. Go, Yelena, go, Art urged.

  +

  “What’s happening, ship?” asked Yelena in the small control cabin.

  The spinning holographic sphere stopped turning and then reversed its spin. “The Emperor’s scientists seem to have found a way to counteract my power draining field,” said the voice coming from the striped ball.

  “Yeah, and they’ve almost completely surrounded the ship,” said Lea looking at the projection floating above the circular table. Destroyers and cruisers were heading directly for the ship from every direction.

  “Classic englobing,” said Yelena still sitting in the pilot’s seat.

  “Why can’t we just jump out?” Asked Becky

  “Nope, they’ve laid down a flux dampening field,” said Yelena. “Can’t jump in a fight, first rule of interstellar conflict. Looks like that’s us, stuck.”

  As the encircling globe of vessels tightened around the silver ship, Lea explained the aim of the manoeuvre to Becky

  “You seem so calm, but is there nothing to be done?” said the reporter and court recorder.

  “The only option is self-destruction,” said the mechanical voice. “That is what we planned as a contingency. A flux cascade overload would cripple the attacking ships and most of the fleet but cause a minimal number of fatalities.”

  “Just minimal fatalities, then” said Lea, looking at Becky.

  +

  Art felt a growing sense of paralysis as the globe of warships tightened around the alien craft. On the middle tier of the hologram, he could barely see the silver, egg shaped ship. On the top tier of the wedding cake, the biggest close up offered by the triptych 3D projection, Art could see between the attacking vessels but only part of the ship. The encircling vessels were laying down an intricate web of tractor beams. No one beam on its own could stop the ship. However, hundreds now crisscrossed the prow and bow of the alien craft holding it firm at the centre of the globe.

  “It looks like your little ship is all mine,” said the Emperor. “Garth, as soon as you have the vessel, put this traitor out of the nearest airlock. He bores me.”

  “Sire, we’re detecting a power surge on board the ship, flux levels off the scale,” said the Admiral. “Reserve power to shields, move us away,” he shouted to his ai
des.

  “No, hold position,” said the Emperor.

  “Yes, Sire. It’s a trick,” added Colonel Garth. “They wouldn’t destroy themselves!”

  The brightness of the blast was muted in the holographic representation. Safety protocols prevented the generation of literally blinding light. Nevertheless, it looked as if a super nova had flared up in the middle of the fleet. The warships encircling the exploded ship were black silhouetted dots being expelled outwards. No, No, Yelena, Becky, Lea, why? Art felt as if his own life had been extinguished.

  A blast wave represented by the foaming orange surface of a sphere was expanding rapidly and had already engulfed the fleet. Only Orion and a score of cruisers, postal ships and shuttles were outside the zone of devastation. The smaller vessels tried to outrun the shock wave but they were too slow. The Orion stood firm, its reinforced shield flaring into the vacuum of space as the wall of cascading flux particles roared towards the fleet ship.

  Art braced himself in his chair and found himself worrying what the force field around his neck might do to him in a collision. Having just seen his lover die, he felt a little guilty worrying about his own neck but he really did not want to have his head ripped off by a sudden impact. OK, so there is life after Yelena, but I need to survive if I want to make it count, he thought. All the officers on the bridge, even the Emperor, were in their seats, crash fields glowing.

  “Releasing the security bonds,” said a familiar voice in his head, “and attempting to generate an inertia dampening field.”

  Art felt the force fields at his neck and wrist dissolve. His hands gripped the arms of the chair. The floor jolted and he was thrust sideways, the metal arm pressing painfully into his ribcage. Suddenly, all movement stopped. He was enveloped in a coruscating field of yellow. Curled wisps of what looked like gold danced in front of his eyes and the world became silent. He could see chairs crashing across the room; one of the three giant vid screen opposite cracked and the two halves swung by their hinges down to the floor; officers were thrown about inside their crash fields. Art, by comparison, felt as if he was wrapped up in a giant mattress, cocooned by balls of cotton wool. He was comfortable and safe.