by Dan Worth
The deafening howl of escaping atmosphere was quickly cut short by the emergency shutters as they slammed down to reseal the bridge. Sprawled on the floor with the bridge now in chaos Chen raised a hand cautiously to the blood flowing from a gash to her temple. Otherwise she seemed unharmed. She dragged herself back to her feet and looked around
Some her crew had not been so lucky. The spinning piece of shrapnel that had grazed Chen had sped on and decapitated her second in command. The blast itself had disintegrated three of her officers who had been standing near the point of impact, scattering their bloody remains across the bridge. Ensign Richards at the comms station gaped incredulously at the stump of his arm before screaming in shock and agony.
The emergency blast shutter at the impact point had slammed down to prevent depressurisation, but it had sliced through one crew member who had been dragged across the bridge by the venting gases and was caught half in half out of the ship. Another two floated in space outside the bridge, contorting grotesquely in the vacuum as their lungs filled with blood.
Chen scrambled to her feet as she panicked momentarily. She had to defend her ship, and she began issuing orders at the dazed survivors on the bridge.
‘This is the Captain, all stations red alert! Shields to full! Helm, bring the ship about to engage the target.’ Chen barked into the comm. ‘All hands to battle stations. We are under attack from heavily armed forces occupying Highpoint Station. This is not a drill.’ She switched the channel to speak to fire control. ‘Gunnery, pinpoint the source of the attack and return fire.’
Confused into believing that the station itself was the target, the gunnery crews of the Mark Antony reacted to Chen’s panicked and vague orders by turning the full force of the warship’s armaments against Highpoint. Power from the main reactor was re-routed to the capacitors of the massive keel mounted cutting laser as the huge weapon tracked to engage the orbital facility.
Steven watched events unfold with horror. He saw the missile impact the Mark Antony’s bridge, he saw the huge vessel turn slowly and aim the cutting beam slung below its belly at the station and then saw it open fire on the facility. A blinding blue white beam crossed the distance between the warship and the station almost instantaneously as Steven howled with shock and helpless frustration.
Mittu was caught by the full force of the beam and was killed instantly. His disintegration was so rapid that the pain signals from his nerves never reached his brain before it was boiled away into space.
The energies of the weapon bored into the station hub, melting through deck after deck in a matter of seconds before emerging through the far side. Highpoint shuddered from explosive decompression as it was skewered through the heart. The beam then began to move in a tracking motion, slicing the hub horizontally. It pierced the pressurised fuel storage tanks in the docking bay and ignited the volatile chemicals contained within. There was a titanic explosion.
The hub was torn apart completely. Chunks of debris thrown out by the blast pierced the skin of the habitation ring, breaching the hull in numerous places. Many of the hapless occupants inside were exposed to the vacuum and an agonising death.
The hub now destroyed, the station began to rotate eccentrically and its own momentum caused it to tear itself apart. Under intense strain, the habitation ring shattered into sections which spun lazily away from the blast. In some, the emergency decompression doors within had activated, saving the occupants. Many others were less fortunate. An expanding cloud of spinning wreckage and dead, freezing bodies now hung where Highpoint Station had existed moments before. Steven’s vessel shuddered as it was rocked by the expanding blast wave of superheated gases. He rushed to the head and threw up.
Chapter 2
Agent Rochenko peered over his newspaper and eyed the striking red haired woman with relish as she strode purposefully across the departure lounge carrying her luggage. He was rather enjoying this assignment, the good Doctor was rather an attractive woman in his estimation, though he disapproved of the scuffed chunky boots she wore; he thought that they spoiled the shape of her long denim clad legs. No matter. For him, following her around was positively a pleasure rather than chore. He sub-vocalised into the pin sized directional microphone concealed within his shirt collar, reporting her location to his counterparts elsewhere in the port.
Rochenko’s lecherous gaze had not gone unnoticed. Katherine made a mental note of the presence of the stocky man in the ill-fitting suit. She had seen him whilst waiting for the space elevator down on the planet and she had previously noticed him peering at her whilst she waited for the train in London. His rumpled form had lurked in the corners of the underground maglev station, watching her every move.
She had expected this level of attention from the security services. Though they hadn’t stopped or searched her yet, they appeared to be taking an intense interest in her movements. She wondered how many other agents there were in the port that she hadn’t spotted. No matter, she had been allowed to check in and pass through customs without any trouble, though no doubt the scans made of her baggage would be intensely scrutinised. She now had twenty uneasy minutes to kill before boarding the liner.
Batavia Port was one of four huge spaceports that orbited at equidistant points about the Earth’s equator, forming the focal points for trade and travel within the Solar System and beyond. Unlike most space stations they did not rotate to produce their gravity, instead they used artificial gravity fields as spaceships did: an expensive solution on structures of their size. The port consisted of a disk five kilometres in radius in a geostationary orbit above the Earth. The side that faced the planet was covered by a clear, segmented dome which gave its corporate occupants spectacular views of the Earth from the prestigious inverted city in the sky. Within it they had housed their offices and executive residences inside the inverted skyscrapers that hung from the main structure amid tiered hanging gardens. The side of the port that faced away from the planet was covered with tier upon tier of docks and was capable of housing hundreds of vessels. The whole structure was linked to the island of Sumatra below via a space elevator which pierced the station through the middle and carried a constant flow of people and goods between the surface and orbit.
The departure lounges in the port were all virtually identical: sparse waiting areas filled with rows of hard seats and banks of screens displaying flight schedules and advertising. However, each also contained a viewing gallery whose outer wall and ceiling were completely transparent and non-reflective, thus providing a spectacular view of the ships and stars outside.
Katherine stood there now and remembered coming here as a child, when she and her siblings would lie on their back on the floor staring upwards into the infinite darkness. For a brief moment you felt as if you were pinned to the ceiling, staring down into the inky depths filled with moving lights.
The view still impressed: thousands of ships could be seen in space around the station, gigantic freighters and liners moving in carefully ordered lines to and from the port or hanging in parking orbits some distance away. Clouds of shuttles, maintenance vessels and other smaller crafts swarmed among them. It always put Katherine in mind of a gigantic aquarium filled with strange metallic marine life. The whale-like bulk of the liners attended by the remoras of small shuttles, tugs and maintenance vessels, the predatory forms of military vessels, bright shimmering schools of alien craft, a sinister behemoth, a carrier, lurking in the depths. All were moving silently in a carefully orchestrated ballet. An Arkari courier vessel was docking at the adjacent berth, its shimmering wings beating lazily forwards as it reduced its velocity. In the background, thousands of stars shone brightly and steadily in the darkness.
The view outwards was partially obscured by the curving hull of a Stork class interstellar liner, the Pegasus. It was a shining white lozenge shape a third of a kilometre long emblazoned with the Star Line logo at its midriff and with the image of the mythical winged horse on its nose underneath the bridge windows. It
was to be her home for the next few days.
It was a relief to be leaving Earth for a while, as the last six months had been unbearable. Rekkid had vanished on extended leave and the truth was that even she didn’t know where he was, even though no-one believed her. Shortly after they had returned from the expedition to the derelict, he had taken the log that they had found and disappeared, leaving her a note promising her that he would ‘return with some answers.’
Matters had deteriorated when the press got hold of the story about the mysterious Arkari ship and the alleged cover-up from Captain McKinley of the Mary Lou, apparently for a large sum of money. Katherine had then been approached by a variety of news agencies and had, naively, told them about the find and had announced that she and Rekkid would publish their findings about the records they had recovered once they had been deciphered.
This turned out to be a grave mistake. Since then she had been harassed almost constantly by the security services. Her office and home had been broken into and searched, she had been followed on numerous occasions and she was certain that someone was intercepting her email. Even her friends and colleagues had been approached at various times by strangers asking questions about her and her work. They were also particularly interested in the whereabouts of Rekkid.
In addition, she began to be attacked in academic circles. A number of scathing letters and articles appeared in archaeological and historical journals accusing her of unprofessional practices and sensationalism in pursuit of fame and money. None were from names that she or Rekkid recognised. A particularly snide one had asked if she believed that the Arkari had built the Pyramids and had likened her to a number of practitioners of pseudo-history. Without a doubt there was a concerted effort to tarnish her credibility and ruin her career.
When the opportunity came to participate in a dig far away from Earth Katherine jumped at the chance. Her colleagues at Cambridge had rallied around her and decided that she should go, for her own sake. She was to travel to a planet christened Maranos by its inhabitants, the only habitable planet in the Fulan system two hundred and thirty-five light years northwards of Earth along the galactic plane. There, she was to conduct a preliminary survey of a major religious site and liaise with the locals who had requested the expertise of archaeologists from the Commonwealth in helping them to excavate one of their most valued cultural locations. A survey vessel would be arriving shortly afterward to survey the system anyway and this would be an ideal time to make use of its resources. The rest of the team would be dispatched once the initial assessment of the site had been made.
It would be an ideal chance for her to get away from Earth and to restore her professional reputation. In addition, Rekkid would be joining her on the planet. He had contacted the department discreetly the previous week, though he had not disclosed his whereabouts. They had told him of her destination and he had volunteered to take part in the dig. Katherine wondered what else he wished to see her about - apparently he had been quite insistent that he should go.
She did have her reservations. Maranos was situated right in the middle of the Demilitarised Zone between the Commonwealth and the K’Soth Empire. There was both a small Commonwealth and K’Soth presence on the planet to oversee the sensor arrays that had been built within the system to enable both governments to monitor the area equally, however relations between the two powers had deteriorated of late. Several recent disputes over the construction of new forward naval bases and violations of arms treaties had been badly handled by both sides. The language that both governments were using with regard to one another had become ever more bellicose and there appeared to be a real possibility of this particular cold war becoming rather hotter. Certainly, sabres were being rattled. Any hostilities that broke out would likely be centred on or around the region where Katherine was headed. She fervently hoped that it wouldn’t come to that. Common sense would surely prevent anyone from wanting to recreate the devastation of the last war.
She also wondered how she’d cope with staying on such an unusual world for an extended period of time. Maranos was unique in explored space as being the only known world to lie at the inner Lagrange point between the two stars of a binary system. Fulan A and B were two G Type yellow dwarf stars, similar to Earth’s sun, separated by a distance of around ten astronomical units. Maranos lay between them at the point where their gravities cancelled one another out and it was tidally locked, rotating at exactly the same rate as the two suns orbited it, each star shining constantly on a separate hemisphere of the planet. Consequently, there was no day-night cycle as such, and much of the planet’s environment was harsh, though it did possess a breathable atmosphere. The surface of the planet was largely covered with one enormous desert, save for two circles of jungle about the poles where conditions were slightly cooler and much wetter. Each of these in turn, contained a shallow, almost circular, sea at their centre about whose shores were built most of the planet’s larger population centres.
Quite how Maranos had formed was a mystery. Conventional wisdom deemed that the formation of planets between such closely orbiting binary stars was impossible: the tidal stresses caused by the stars would prevent matter from coalescing. It had been theorised that perhaps the planet had formed elsewhere and had somehow been moved out of its original orbit by some cataclysm or other, but it was unknown why the planet had not been captured by the gravity of one or other of the two stars. The survey mission that would be arriving shortly after Katherine was the first step in a long planned project to study the system and solve the mystery.
Katherine was stirred from her thoughts by the boarding announcement for her flight. She shouldered her luggage and strode towards the boarding tunnel. Showing her ticket to the bored looking woman at the barrier, she then walked down the brightly-lit boarding umbilical that carried her into the interior of the Pegasus.
Once inside she found that the interior of the vessel was sumptuously decorated. Many Star Line vessels boasted the gimmick of being furnished according to a particular theme, usually a historical period. The inside of this one had been fitted out in the style of an early twentieth century ocean liner, with sweeping elegant staircases, extravagant chandeliers, dark wood panelling covering the walls and richly pattered carpets that softened Katherine’s footfalls. The initial impression was rather over-awing and Katherine found herself gawping at this naked display of opulence. She found she had caught the attention of a young period-costumed steward who took her bags in his white gloved hands and led her through the ship’s labyrinthine corridors to her cabin.
The cabin’s décor was in keeping with the rest of the vessel, was of ample size for one person and had full en-suite facilities. A printed card propped up under a brass table lamp reminded passengers that the maid would come round after 12:30pm every day to change the beds. Automation had been sacrificed in the name of authenticity, and no doubt added to the ticket price.
The one concession to period detail was the large screen affixed to the wall opposite the bed, allowing access to the ship’s entertainment and information facilities and a choice of external views, simulated if the ship’s jump engines were in operation. Currently it was showing a view of Batavia Port from a camera mounted on a dorsal position on the ship’s exterior. The station appeared as a vast continent of metal, with bright dots of various sizes moving to, from and around it.
Once the steward had left, Katherine flopped gratefully down on the bed with a sigh and considered the possibility of having a shower.
Two hours later and Katherine found herself in unusual company in one of the ship’s restaurants. The eatery was situated on the top deck of the ships fore section and was oval in shape. It was lit by two large elaborate chandeliers and was ornately decorated throughout with wood panelling and carved decoration. Smartly dressed diners of several species sat at dark wooden tables eating from a bewildering array of dishes, filling the room with scents of unusual foods and the susurration of conversations in multiple languages.<
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The forward facing side of the restaurant included large windows of toughened glass. Strangely, due to some unknown optical property, they did not reflect the brightly lit interior of the ship and provided a spectacular view of space outside. Currently the view was dominated by the banded red-orange bulk of Jupiter. The ship was making a stop there at Galileo Station before heading out of the Solar System in the direction of Eta Cassiopeia.
The restaurant was full, largely due to the spectacular view on offer, and Katherine had been joined by her unusual dining partner due to the lack of vacant tables. He was a Vreeth, a race of beings that inhabited several systems that traded with the Commonwealth who had the appearance of small armoured airships fitted with many articulated arms about their midriffs. They moved through the air via the use of flotation bladders, gas jets and fins. However, their mouth parts were incapable of forming human speech. This one was using a translator device affixed to his head and was quite talkative as he nibbled on what appeared to be some form of vegetable stew. He gestured at an Arkari transport as it sculled past outside.
‘How do you think they do that?’
‘Mmm?’
‘How do the Arkari make their ships do that? I mean look at it, it’s like a living thing and they don’t use fusion drives or anything like that.’
‘Oh, apparently the wings push against space-time or something. I saw it on a documentary once, it’s a refinement of jump drive technology: like a fish swimming through water but in more dimensions’
‘Fish?’
‘Earth sea creatures. One of these,’ she held up a forkful of monkfish.