The Rylerran Gateway

by Mark Ian Kendrick

  Sleeping was better than Naylon anticipated, too. When adjusted to the sleeping position, the acceleration chairs immediately conformed to their body position. After they turned in Naylon was surprised to find he had fallen asleep within minutes.

  There were advantages and disadvantages to the method of FTL travel the Consortium had control over. One of the advantages was that as long as one was inside a wrinkled wedge they were perfectly protected from normal space. Thus, the entire night passed without so much as an alarm. The main disadvantage was that it wasn’t an instantaneous process. ‘Normal’ time passed on board the ship while traversing the distance. It’s just that the amount of time was considerably less than if spacetime wrinkling hadn’t been discovered.

  At 0500, Darreth hit the head then checked the control station readouts. It wasn’t at all necessary since the shuttle’s computer would have instantly transmitted warnings of any kind audibly. Nonetheless, it was habit. Darreth went back to sleep shortly thereafter.

  An hour later, the interior lights slowly brightened, mimicking a sunrise. Naylon rose and made his way to the facilities, too. Tann was asleep on his back. Right away Naylon noticed the boy’s morning swella under the light blanket. He looked away with a slight grin on his face. Darreth’s was the only one he had any interest in. Tann was far too young for his taste and straight as far as he knew. He immediately set himself to making a pot of coffee. By the time it finished brewing, everyone else had woken up.

  The entire day was spent talking, eating, periodically doing some light isometric exercises, which Darreth led, watching a couple of vids, then it was free time for everyone. Naylon went over his copious notes with Merek. Darreth explained every one of the shuttle systems to his brother, who patiently listened to every word. Naylon glanced up every once in a while to note Tann’s reactions. He was completely different now than when he first came on board.

  Breakout from FTL in the Kaskalon system was only moments away. Everyone was wearing a heads up display so they could watch the transition back to normal space. No satellites, buoys or other ships were allowed in the sector where breakouts occurred because they were hazards. A ship that hit one would be instantly destroyed. Thus, when a ship appeared inside the nav field not more than 100,000 kilometers off the port bow Darreth was duly concerned. He saw the visual warning a split second before the nav’s voice expressed its displeasure at the object.

  “What the…?” Darreth said with noticeable unease.

  Tann’s gaze shifted left as he saw the speck in the display. All other eyes went there as well. The data on the display associated with the object was only understandable to Darreth.

  “What is it?” Naylon asked.

  “A frucking ship. They’re not supposed to be in this part of space. It’s off-limits,” Darreth told him.

  Darreth immediately told the nav computer to identify it. A half-second passed, then a full second. “No transponder code present,” the computer responded, after it completed a sensor sweep. The sweep was only able to log the vessel’s type and class but nothing more.

  The hair on the back of Darreth’s neck went up. This couldn’t be happening. Only pirates didn’t transmit identification codes. But in Kaskalon space? If it had happened before, he was unaware of it.

  “Everyone strapped in?” Darreth asked.

  Everyone responded in the affirmative.

  “Good. Because I have to make an emergency maneuver.”

  Although the inertial dampeners were good, they couldn’t keep up with the emergency turn to starboard. That put them on a heading directly in line with Rylerra.

  Naylon whispered it. “Pirates?”

  Darreth knew his nod would be seen, although he couldn’t see Naylon.

  “Why are we running?” Tann asked.

  Darreth took a moment to answer. He wanted to make sure what he was reading was accurate: the pirate ship was vectoring toward them. “They’re in pursuit,” he announced.

  “But we’re a shuttle!” Tann said with noticeable apprehension. “We don’t have any pharmas, do we?”

  “No,” Darreth quickly replied.

  The other ship was making an extremely high velocity trajectory straight for them. Darreth accelerated the shuttle. A call for help would have been fruitless. He knew it wasn’t going to be possible for defensive support to reach them in time. What was a pirate ship doing going after a transport shuttle anyway? It wasn’t like they had anything of value a pirate might want.

  Or maybe this particular shuttle did. Him.

  Darreth had participated in five sorties which had resulted in a total of nine pirate deaths. No, it wasn’t murder, just like he had stated back at the dig weeks ago. They were purely because of the defensive actions he had undertaken. The deaths were something he’d carefully kept from everyone except his superiors. It was all logged and part of the job. No one outside the Space Navy needed to know about it.

  Darreth knew that him being the pilot of this shuttle was known to only a small group of people on a need-to-know basis. Records could be culled from flight plan databases, but not that easily. Perhaps someone had gotten hold of that bit of information and was waiting for them to go sublight from the FTL wedge. That was the only satisfactory answer he could come up with right now. The thought that this might happen one day had been in the back of his mind for months. Now it looked like a terrible reality.

  Darreth spoke to the computer. “Track incoming ship continuously. Audible readout.”

  The computer started reading off data in a pleasant voice, quite unlike the tension building in the cabin. Both Tann and Merek were squeezing the armrests, watching the red blip and the distance counter showing the ship closing in. Darreth told the computer to tell him when they were within the two-second delay communications range of the nearest Rylerran comm buoy. But he already knew that at their current velocity, and the subsequent slowdown they needed to achieve once they were close enough, would gain them nothing. Even with a mayday, they would still be on their own.

  Darreth told them his plan. “Okay everyone, listen up. I’m going to make an emergency landing. Unfortunately, because of our velocity we’re going to end up somewhere other than the Nona Ice Station spaceport.”

  “Then… where?” Merek asked.

  “It doesn’t matter. I’ve just got to elude that pirate ship long enough to get into the atmosphere. There are lots of clouds in the higher climes. We can easily lose them once we’re at fifteen kilometers altitude. Don’t agit. All systems are working. Once we land, we’ll call for help or just lay low for a while. We have maneuvering thrusters for low atmosphere travel, so we’re okay.”

  “Shit,” Tann said just loud enough to be heard.

  “Hold on little brother. This is what I do best.”

  As soon as Darreth got the last syllable out the shuttle was rattled by a strong shutter. The nav field sensors told Darreth the outer envelope of a particle beam weapon had grazed the side of the shuttle. The pirates weren’t playing around. The Siaron Viper was still several tens of millions of kilometers from Rylerra. They had to make it to the atmosphere. It was their only real chance to elude the pursuing ship.

  “Raise shields,” Darreth told the computer. Immediately several console lights lit, indicating that the energy deflection shield had been activated. “Hold on. This isn’t going to be fun.” Darreth had made a show of raising shields for his passengers. He was well aware the ship pursuing them was heavily armed. The sensor sweep had told him that. He had deliberately not let his passengers know that. A direct hit to his shuttle’s shield generator would leave them nearly defenseless. This was no fighter craft. It was a standard interstellar shuttle lacking the advanced weaponry he was used to controlling. He was sure though that they’d be able to hold out for quite a while. If only he could get them into the atmosphere. Otherwise, they risked being blasted to smithereens in the cold of space and never found.

  Darreth initiated an emergency procedure that was not in the
best interest of power savings. He altered course slightly. The maneuver would put them on a trajectory where they would eventually skim the atmosphere at Rylerra’s North Pole. The magnetic field lines, which stronger at the pole and closer together, were a perfect shield for most targeting sensors. Once Darreth guided them in, they’d be less vulnerable and perhaps force the pirates to use manual targeting for their weapons. They would be significantly less accurate if he could manage to pull it off. At least, that was the theory.

  The computer indicated a nav satellite was close enough to relay a message to the Nona Ice Station’s landing authority. The delay at this distance would be fifty-six seconds. Not enough time to scramble any sort of defense. Yet, he had to try.

  “Nona Station Authority,” he began. “This is Lieutenant Commander Darreth James-Po piloting the military shuttle Siaron Viper. We are under attack. I say again, we are under attack by an unknown ship. Attacking ship is Helios class. We’ve been fired upon. Request track… ing.”

  The blue flash was all the evidence he needed to know his comm would most likely never be replied to. The pirates had targeted the satellite. They were more than serious now. The nav sat, which also served telemetry and comm, was the main one used for nearly all traffic making the run between Rylerra and Andakar.

  “Okay everyone,” he told his passengers. “They blasted the nav sat. We’re on our own until we reach surface communications range.” Darreth knew he would have to shed velocity and shed it fast. At the rate he needed to slow down it would take twenty-five minutes before they would be close enough for direct communications with the surface. Darreth nudged another two-hundredths out of the engines for several seconds. That might shed another eight or nine minutes before he definitely had to slow down.

  “Why haven’t you fired back?” Naylon asked, quite confused that they were just fleeing and making no attempt to defend themselves.

  That statement tore at Darreth. Standing orders were that no one had the authority to fire on anyone in Eratil-Kaskalon space. Corporate mandate had made that very clear.

  But no one expected this to happen.

  It was absurd to think he couldn’t or wouldn’t fire back. After all, he had his partner, his brother and another researcher with him. Yet he had no real authority to make a command decision like firing back, an action that might ultimately get them injured or killed. The dilemma was staring him in the face, yet he couldn’t just do nothing. “Orders,” was all Darreth said back.

  “Orders?” Naylon replied, quite distressed. “You mean you can’t fire back?”

  Darreth nodded.

  Naylon’s mouth gaped open. “Fruck your orders! They’re trying to kill us! You have to shoot back.” He bit his lip. Without Darreth at the helm they would have been dead already. Naylon suddenly realized the absolute necessity of having a Space Navy and highly skilled pilots. He certainly hoped Merek realized it as well, he thought with chagrin. Real world issues were nothing like theoretical ones his discussion group usually dealt with.

  Darreth was rapidly concluding that the standing order was ridiculous. Indeed, to his knowledge no one had ever had to confront this situation. He had to fire back. But he still had a couple of ideas up his sleeve before he ignored the directive. Besides, he already knew he was outgunned. Luckily, only a few seconds had passed. He was already planning his course of action.

  Naylon yanked off his virtual display glasses and glanced back at Tann. The boy’s face had gone white. The back of Naylon’s acceleration chair was too wide. He couldn’t see Merek directly behind him. Naylon’s stomach was tied in knots. He quickly put the glasses back over his eyes. He could do nothing more than watch the drama play out and wonder when Darreth was going to start using their weapons.

  Rylerra was coming up impossibly fast. It was a ball of mostly white, reflecting light off the huge amount of ice permanently locked in glaciers and the profusion of clouds at the higher latitudes. A wide band of dark ice-free land was rapidly becoming visible along the equator, which was turning at a wild angle as they made their approach.

  “Nona Ice Station, this is Lieutenant Commander James-Po of the Siaron Viper. We’re under attack by an unidentified pirate ship. I say again. We’re under attack. Attempting to ditch them. Lock on to our transponder signal.”

  To Naylon’s unskilled eyes, their approach was far too fast to be manageable. He found himself gripping his armrests even tighter, sure that at any second they would end up diving right into the surface and be smashed to dust.

  “Calculate fastest safe approach to landmass below and execute,” Darreth told the computer. Immediately, their pitch changed. They went into a steep downward dive. The computer was pushing the shuttle’s engines and attitude controls to their limit. They weren’t designed to try to fly at this speed in the atmosphere, but the pursuing ship was closing in fast. The sky outside the front shield was rapidly changing from black, to blue, then to white. Atmosphere and clouds. Wisps of plasma were starting to lick the edges of their visual field through the transparent front shield. Tann could see its pinkish glow outside the window to his left.

  Naylon was having a very difficult time assuring himself that the ship’s computer and Darreth’s expert piloting skills would bring them down safely. And his main concern was that all around them was white. Was that atmosphere or was it snow? He felt so scared it was if every molecule of moisture in his mouth had evaporated. While in another situation their descent might have been thrilling, even beautiful, Naylon could only wonder where they could possibly touch down. Everywhere below were huge mountain ranges covered with snow. Rivers of ice kilometers wide and dozens of kilometers long, with long dirty channels of dark earth flowing along with them told him that a forbidding landscape awaited them everywhere he looked.

  Tann was sure his brother would get them down alive. But the oddest thought arose in his mind. He didn’t want to die a virgin. If he got out of this unscathed the first thing he was going to do was have sex with Havest. He’d been pining for her from afar for way too long. But more important than that was trying to hold down the intense sensation of needing to vomit. He had thought he had better nerves, but the situation was totally out of control.

  Merek had been quiet this whole time. He didn’t want to distract Darreth. His life was somewhat passing before his eyes. He suddenly realized he’d been sequestering himself way too much lately. His desire to get ahead academically, to get the recognition he knew he deserved, suddenly seemed ridiculous. Indeed, recently he’d been living like a recluse. His routine had been going to work and coming home only. He couldn’t die. All of it was for the sake of making a name for himself. Strange how it all mattered greatly just this morning and now none of it did.

  The lurch to starboard caught everyone by surprise. Not Darreth. He saw the beam reach out from within the nav field. It targeted their port sublight engine. It failed almost instantly, slicing through the deflection shield like it wasn’t even there. The computer compensated for the missing thrust almost as fast, but not before everyone had been yanked around quite a bit. Something shifted in one of the overhead bins above Merek. It slammed against the interior latch and popped it open. The container fell edge on directly down on top of Merek’s head. The container clattered to the floor.

  “Shit!” he yelped. Blood immediately began oozing from a scalp wound.

  Something else must have failed, too, since almost as fast, the stench of a shorted photronic component started filling the cabin.

  That did it for Tann. As much as he enjoyed speed, the fear of the situation was overwhelming. The stench pushed him over the edge. He had little slack in his harness, which was holding him firmly in place. He puked what little he had in his stomach all over the front of his shirt and lap. The smell instantly pervaded the cabin, combining with the stench of the burned out circuit. The environmental controls immediately attempted to compensate.

  “Still pursuing us,” Darreth announced. “Naylon.”

  �
��What?”

  “See that red icon on the display?”

  Naylon quickly scanned the panel in front of him. “The square one marked ‘Buoy’?”

  “Press it!”

  Naylon reached out and pressed. Hard, although it was totally unnecessary to do so.

  “What did I do?”

  “Released a record buoy of everything that’s taken place for the last twelve hours. It should contain enough information for someone to find out what happened to us once it gets picked up.”

  “But it’ll be destroyed.”

  “They’re pursuing us. You may have just saved us all, buddy.”

  Right. Me. I think it’s more like you’re saving all of our butts, Naylon thought.

  Darreth spoke to the nav computer. “Calculate safe pull up velocity, engage weapons control, standby for my mark.”

  “Weapons engaged. Standing by for pull up,” the nav computer responded.

  “Mark,” Darreth said.

  The shuttle pulled upward. Their downward descent immediately halted. At the same time three beams of light emitted from the shuttle’s stern. The shuttle turned to port slightly. Another beam, then another. They were going too fast for them to hear the result of the weapons discharge. But the sensors told Darreth what he needed to know. Their pursuers had been hit at least once and were already pulling away to a safe distance. Darreth figured that might only buy them a few minutes. They would simply recalculate a safer pursuit vector if they hadn’t sustained too much damage. He was sure that without a direct hit to one of their nacelles they would be back on the hunt.

  “Continue descent,” Darreth told the computer.

  The shuttle turned nose down again. That maneuver brought them underneath two layers of thick clouds, then another thinner layer of scattered ones. Darreth had long since switched to LADAR imaging to get them through the clouds without slamming into a hidden peak. The nav computer was winding them through a sinewy course along a deep glacial valley. The glacier, which fed the valley was tapering off and started to disappear into a river. They flew high over a cirque, another one, then came to a wide ice-free valley filled with the unique greenish-yellow of Rylerra’s vegetation. For many minutes now there had been no sign of the pirate ship. Darreth took note of their longitude and latitude as they continued along the length of the valley.