Border Worlds (United Star Systems Book 1)

by J Malcolm Patrick

  “Commander Rayne, thank you for coming to our aid. Our ship sustained damage in the attack and we’ve only just repaired the comms. Our engines are still a bit ah—wonky. Stand by. Will update you on progress of our repairs and contact you as soon as possible. Serenity Light out.”

  It was an audio message only. What was the freighter captain hiding? With relays setup throughout the small system, light-lag wouldn’t be a problem for visual communication.

  Fleet Research had adapted a method to detect objects and communicate by using gravity waves as conduits for data telemetry, and gravity waves travelled faster than light. The drawback was they didn’t travel at great multiples beyond light speed and so while ideal for intra-system use, communications between star systems were still not instantaneous. The calm reply was in stark contrast to the desperate distress call. He’d almost overloaded his engines responding to the distress call, only to be told stand by . . . well isn’t that cheeky.

  The drum in his chest increased its rhythm. “XO, full scan again. Probe as deep as you can. Run the full suite of sensors. Is there any sign of battle damage or any damage at all?”

  Several minutes passed while the XO, with assistance from the computer analyzed the readings gathered by the extensive suite of sensors at Trident’s disposal.

  “There’s nothing to suggest even a hint of damage, Commander,” Alvarez said. “I’m so sure of it that if I were wrong, I’d resign my commission and try my hand at something far easier, like shooting railguns.”

  Aaron had to gulp down a laugh. A clear jab at Lee. Avery Alvarez was a somewhat rigid man at times, but he did have a sense of humor. And both Vee and Lee clearly enjoyed the barbs they traded from time to time. The crew had grown close on the year-long border patrol.

  Before Lee could respond, Aaron spoke again. “Then this is ridiculous, he must know we can tell he’s lying. Yet . . . still he is lying. Why would he do that? What does he have to gain?”

  Miroslav answered the open question. “I don’t know, Commander, but he sure is wasting our time. Let’s get over there and see what he’s up to.”

  Aaron grinned. The young helmsman wasn’t battle-tested, but he was certainly a far cry from the timid officer who’d joined the crew six months ago. “Indeed, Ensign, in time. Let’s not be reckless in our approach, right, XO? Something isn’t right with this freighter.”

  Vee laughed a little. “All or nothing, remember?”

  Aaron shrugged. “It has a time and place.” But something Miroslav said stood out—time. What about time? The freighter couldn’t outrun Trident, so if her captain thought it could escape by wasting time, he was beyond delusional. And Aaron wouldn’t let it depart, without boarding it. The freighter captain would know that too.

  Time. The word stuck in his head.

  Damn.

  He jumped from the command seat and stood behind Miroslav. “Forget the freighter! Engineering, are we good for max speed?”

  “Aye, Commander,” Sanderson responded. “Structural integrity wasn’t compromised that badly!”

  “Miroslav,” Aaron said. “Maximum burn for the heliopause. Engage immediately. People, we’re leaving. The mystery of that freighter will wait another day.”

  Alvarez stared open mouthed. “What’s got into you? Shouldn’t we board them and investigate the deception?”

  “No, XO. Miroslav nailed it. The freighter captain is wasting our time. He can’t get away by doing so, and he must know we know he’s lying. Something else is happening. Whatever that is, he is a hundred percent confident we’ll never find out—or survive to report his unusual activity.”

  “We’re burning full speed for the heliopause, Commander,” Miroslav reported. “Time to interstellar medium (ISM), one hour.” The heliopause was a once theoretical term for a star system’s boundary. Early Earth scientists believed the interstellar medium stopped the solar winds from the sun at that particular point. A theory proven a reality by early solar system explorers, and verified during exploration of nearby star systems. This means star systems had different “sizes” based on the size of its star and the corresponding gravitational forces.

  Trident couldn’t make the jump to light speed within that boundary due to the system’s tidal forces. They had to reach interstellar space.

  “Contact!” Lee shouted. “Appeared from behind the gas giant. It’s accelerating hard and beyond the freighter. Direct intercept vector to us!”

  The new contact was over two light-hours away. Trident could exit the system and transition to warp before then.

  Aaron looked back. “XO, analysis?”

  “Unknown configuration again. Same power signature as the ones who attacked us. Length, two hundred and thirty meters. Cruiser sized, but on the smaller scale. Nothing else. Wait—reading a massive power build up!”

  Miroslav swung around to face Aaron. “They can’t be firing from that distance!”

  Aaron swung around to Alvarez. “XO?”

  “I don’t know,” Alvarez said. “Nothing else is happening. Just a spike in power. Similar to a surge caused by a ship going to warp. But they can’t be going to warp inside the system!”

  No one had any theories on that either.

  “They’re gone!” Lee shouted.

  Half a second later, the interloper reappeared. “Commander! They’re back, right on top of us one million kilometers and closing . . . incoming ordnance! Fast movers in the black!”

  A hasty withdrawal was no longer an option. Aaron returned to the command seat and re-engaged his harness. “PDCs full coverage astern. Deploy railguns. Maintain speed and course for heliopause.”

  The PDCs ripped into approaching high-speed missiles. The explosions radiated heat, gasses and kinetic energy, which washed over Trident, carrying its occupants for a wild ride.

  “Point defense screen is holding the missiles for now, sir, no more incoming. But target is closing the distance fast,” Lee said.

  Aaron focused on the tactical readout on his monitor. “Helm, cut power to engines. Adjust our bow ninety degrees port. Lieutenant Lee, commence firing, .25 firing rate. We just want to hold them back and give us time to get out of this system. XO, dump the logs, everything into a data packet. Relay it to Orion Prime. Send a comm burst to Fleet Command as well just in case.”

  Alvarez nodded. It was probably clear only to the XO where this encounter might be going. Trident’s port railguns once again volleyed more rounds at a hounding attacker, scoring direct hits.

  “No effect,” Alvarez reported. “They’ve slowed slightly, but the impacts didn’t have any appreciable effect on its armor.”

  “Increase to .5 firing rate, Lee,” Aaron said.

  “Aye, sir. Increasing to .5 and maintaining.”

  The XO sounded a little brighter now. “Now we’re getting somewhere, beginning to shred the armor plating. Concentrate fire on . . . wait—”

  He fell silent.

  “Vee!”

  “Never seen anything like this,” the XO said. “Gravitic distortions forming outside and ahead of the pursuing vessel. The distortions . . . are slapping our salvos aside now!”

  “Increase firing rate, empty the port magazines. Reload port and stand by starboard batteries,” Aaron ordered.

  Aaron watched the tactical monitor wide-eyed as the railgun salvos just veered off from their target. The computer interlaced a graphical representation for the gravitic effect which appeared as tiny ripples in space.

  Trident was still on her original vector out of the system, but she had veered her bow to port and now drifted along on momentum with the port side positioned to the enemy ship’s bow.

  “Helm,” Aaron said. “Full lateral roll one eighty. Bring the starboard guns over. Lieutenant, commence firing as soon as you’ve locked.”

  Trident rolled, still oriented sideways relative to her relentless pursuer and blasted another railgun salvo toward its bow. They never reached.

  “Same as before. The rounds are being pu
shed aside, they’re ineffective,” Alvarez said. “The gravitic distortions are altering the trajectory of our munitions!”

  “Deploy forward torpedo launchers and ready missile salvo,” Aaron said. “Helm, bring our bow another ninety degrees to port. Put it right on them.” The ship’s most potent weapon—unguided fusion torpedoes—were located in her bow. The primary reason Aaron ordered the ship to fly “backwards”. They could still run—and fight.

  Trident now looked her pursuer in the eye while still moving away at the full speed they’d accelerated to before cutting engines.

  “Fire hornets. Two-second intervals. Lieutenant, time the railgun salvos to provide a wall of protection for our torpedoes and missiles. Fire when ready.”

  Trident rattled, as she spat a hail of rounds preceding the unguided torpedoes, and the guided missiles. Lee could loop the missiles around from different directions and attempt to negate point defense from the enemy ship. The torpedoes were unguided weapons. The virtual wall of tungsten steel—courtesy of their railguns—might mitigate any enemy point defense.

  The target didn’t engage point defense. The torpedo ordnance continued towards the target trailing a hail of railgun rounds. The mass of tungsten rounds shrouded the missiles and accelerated almost in a perfectly lined convoy. When the gravitic distortions again slapped the rounds and torpedoes away, the missiles although knocked off their flight paths, re-aligned and struck the target.

  That’s the good thing about missiles—they have their own propulsion.

  “Direct hit!” Alvarez said. “Definite and serious damage to the target’s armor. Odd, Commander, no appreciable armor penetration but I’m reading a power falloff, and major power fluctuations throughout the target.”

  Aaron felt a rush, he’d pulled everything out of the hat and it paid off. The short-lived euphoria vanished in a puff as the belligerent fired its own railguns.

  “Incoming!” Lee yelled.

  “Lieutenant, another volley of torpedoes—fire!” Aaron ordered. “Helm, hard to port, full thrust, bring us around! Engage engines to full as we angle away.”

  “Hard to port, coming around relative to target. Punching it, Commander!” Miroslav replied.

  “Firing!” Lee acknowledged.

  It would be an odd spectacle to any exterior observer unfamiliar with the dynamics of space travel. The thrusters would reorient the ship, but it would still be vectoring in the same direction until the engines reengaged and pushed the ship along its new vector.

  Trident reoriented her bow to point in the direction she was traveling, but the engines engaged before doing so, pushing her off vector from most of the incoming projectiles. But all good tactical officers programmed a target’s possible avenues of evasion into their railgun bursts. Primarily based on known capabilities of the targeted ship.

  Now the deck itself seemed oriented the wrong way and a searing heat burned the back of Aaron’s head. He found himself staring at the deck. An inch closer and it would have rearranged his nose for the worst. He pushed himself up, waving his hands at the rising smoke now burning his eyes and stinging his lungs. Alarms, he couldn’t recall hearing for many years, now pierced his ears.

  “Massive damage, rear and dorsal sections, Commander,” Alvarez reported. “Plasma leak on deck three, main power’s offline, containment is compromised. It won’t hold for long, sir, we took a nasty hit.”

  The hostile ship’s volley had knocked them out in one punch. But why hadn’t the aggressor fired at them before? And why is someone beating my head with a hammer?

  “Sorry, Commander?” Alvarez asked.

  “I was saying why didn’t they fire their railgun volley before we bruised them?”

  Alvarez helped him off the deck and returned to his station. “No idea.”

  “Status of the target?” Aaron asked as he struggled into the command chair.

  During the mayhem, Trident’s second volley of torpedoes struck the belligerent’s forward section. For some reason they hadn’t fired the exotic defense weapon or used conventional point defense.

  “Reading heavy outer-hull damage to target. Continued power fall off. They—they’re turning about, Commander, and accelerating away!

  A subdued but triumphant cheer went up around the bridge.

  “And us?” Aaron asked.

  The XO looked sullen. “We’re adrift, engines are offline. We’re holding on auxiliary power and emergency backups.” He gulped. “Aaron . . . a quarter of the rear section is shredded and open to space, we’ve near been chopped into two pieces. The damage back there is catastrophic, there’s no power flow, reactor containment won’t hold.”

  Aaron blinked. This was it . . . he knew it. That order no ship’s captain ever wanted to give. An order he never imagined he’d ever have to give.

  “Abandon ship,” he wheezed.

  No one moved. Apparently, no one seemed to think they’d ever have to abandon ship either! He took a deep breath. “Abandon ship! Everyone to the escape pods now!” This time his stubborn men and women reacted. “Vee, tell me you launched the beacons?”

  “Aye, Aaron, I did,” Alvarez replied, as he hooked Aaron’s arm and called across the bridge. “I’ve got the Commander,” he said. “Get to your pods!”

  Aaron strained around to see Miroslav, Lee and other bridge crew heading for designated pods. The smoke burned his eyes and lungs. An intense heat was filling the bridge.

  The XO propped him up and moved one small step at a time as he guided him to one of the escape pods reserved for bridge crew. The remainder of Trident’s crew would get to shuttles. The immediacy of the situation didn’t grant bridge crew the luxury of running through the ship to board any. They had to use the more vulnerable escape pods.

  Alvarez almost threw Aaron into the seat. He helped Aaron with the restraints and then he strapped himself in. He slapped the button to seal the pod from the ship and blast it away.

  Minutes later Aaron’s head lolled to the side. His last glimpse was of a single final explosion, which scattered Trident—his home­—across the void into a million pieces.

  Chapter 2 – Patrick Rayne

  Passenger Ship—Santiago

  Orbiting Atlas Prime

  25 years earlier (2450)

  The announcement boomed overhead again, somehow sounding more impatient.

  “All crew and families should by now be firmly strapped into maneuvering couches. The Santiago has been cleared for maneuvers and will shortly be under way to interstellar space. XO, report to the bridge.”

  Patrick Rayne stepped quicker, stopping short of breaking out into a full run. He laughed at himself. He was walking as fast as a man could walk without running. It must be a funny thing to see. Nevertheless, the captain needed him on the bridge, and he couldn’t delay much longer.

  He rounded the aft section of the corridor and into the cargo bay where a group of children no younger than eight years, but no older than sixteen stood encircling another two. The two in the center grappled with each other.

  Patrick pushed through the encircling mob and spotted the belligerents. He wasn’t surprised. On the ground, an older boy hammered a younger one. He’d arrived just in time to see the younger one flip his opponent with an expert jiujutsu move and poise to take the advantage. But there was no time to allow the younger boy—his son—the satisfaction.

  “Aaron!” Patrick stepped into the center.

  He glared at his son who froze mid-punch and looked up. The older boy seemed about to take advantage of the sudden lull and reached to strike Aaron. Patrick yanked Aaron off the boy while swatting away the incoming punch.

  He turned and yelled at the rest. “Get to your designated spaces now! We’re about to break orbit and you have to be strapped in.”

  The young mob seemed disappointed they didn’t witness a full round and they stared wildly at each other.

  “Move!”

  This time the little delinquents shoved off in so many directions some of them c
ollided with each other and he almost laughed.

  He turned to Aaron. “Come—now.”

  Patrick exited the cargo bay with Aaron in step beside him breathing hard. A trickle of blood running out the side of the boy’s mouth.

  “Dad, are you mad at me?”

  Patrick sighed. “Yes, son, but not about the fight. We’re about to accelerate and break orbit. You and the others could be killed when we do a hard acceleration towards the outer system.” The Fleet might have the latest greatest inertia compensators, but civilian liners had no choice to augment their compensators with acceleration couches. They also could not accelerate like warships.

  “Well . . . I’m glad you’re not, but he started it,” Aaron said.

  Patrick raised both eyebrows. “I see. Did you somehow miss he is twice your size? Tell me what happened.”

  “He was making fun and picking on Josh and began shoving him around. I told him to stop, but he wouldn’t, and then he started shoving me.”

  They reached their private quarters and he lifted Aaron onto the maneuvering couch and began strapping him in. He leaned in close to bring the straps around and paused.

  “I am proud of you, you know that right,” he tussled the little miscreant’s scruffy dark-blond hair. “My only son. You did the right thing, defending someone or something else, even though you could get hurt.”

  Patrick rubbed his son’s cheek with the back of his four fingers. A tear welled in his eye.

  “You know how much I love you right, son?”

  “Yes, daddy! And I love you too!”

  “Sometimes, people do the wrong thing for the right reasons. That’s a little complicated for you now, so don’t worry about it. But you’ll understand someday. And remember, you can’t save everyone all the time, not even your friends. There might be some battles you just can’t win—no matter what you’ve given up to win them. When we’re finished accelerating, I want you to familiarize yourself with the concept of honor above loyalty. It’s a good code to live by.”

  “Honor above loyalty.” Aaron repeated the phrase, as if to ensure he wouldn’t forget it.