Jack Sloane woke up. Many years ago, after a night of heavy drinking at a Kayleigh in a small Scottish village, he’d awoken in a similar way. He was still tired. He should still have been dog tired. But still he awoke. Like some kind of alarm clock had gone off deep inside him.
His room on the Spirit of the Future was the cheapest room there was. It was smaller than the main room in his first studio apartment. There was a bed, an entertainment centre, a mini kitchen. There was everything he needed – just like his first apartment. And just as depressing.
He missed his son so much. The pain of loss was almost physical, like a toothache. The more he focussed on it the more he wanted to run around the room smashing himself off the walls. It was an unbearable inconsolable pain. It was something he couldn’t deal with or hope to deal with. He couldn’t even think about it. The pain was just there even when his son hovered on the periphery of his thoughts, and when he started to focus on little Paul he felt like his head might explode.
His thoughts about his wife were even worse. The pain was equally intense, but the thoughts in his head were so jumbled and confused that he could not even tell whether or not he missed her. When he thought about Belinda he wanted to just scream out in rage or frustration or both. He’d experience five different emotions in each instant that he thought about her. Anger, jealousy, remorse, sadness, fear. And some feelings he could not even articulate, almost as if his writhing mind had desperately tried to create new emotions to go along with the deranged, apocalyptic sensations he felt in his soul.
Then there was a rumble. And, just like that, he was in a different place and time within his mind. The terrible thoughts and the terrible pain were ended – for now.
It was five a.m.
Strangely, he felt reasonably sober. He was covered in a cold sheen of sweat. He ran his hand through
his thinning flame coloured hair and felt the sweat there too on his temples. He looked at his watch
again to be sure. Then he felt the second rumble.
He had a fear of flying. It was a fear that had crept up on him in his late twenties when he’d started work as a consultant and a fear that he couldn’t rationalise or justify. But, like most phobias, that didn’t matter. All that mattered was the fear itself.
The rumble could have meant any of several things. Sloane wasn’t qualified or experienced to guess what the rumble might have meant, but it was a rumble and he had decided early into this trip that he didn’t like rumbles. Rumbles meant that something unusual was happening.
Rumbles were actually a normal occurrence on board the ship. They happened when the ship entered into or exited out of an Ethernet corridor. They happened when the normal space manoeuvring thrusters were working. They were a normal part of everyday life on board the ship. Since this was his first trip, the rumbles were significant. Had he worked on the ship longer, he’d have realised or asked around and found out that the rumbles were normal. But he wasn’t going to get the chance.
There was another rumble, but this time Sloane knew that something was very definitely wrong.
He didn’t realise that the second rumble wasn’t a rumble at all. It was a shockwave rippling backwards through the ship. There had been an accident. A crash. The Captain and his lieutenants were dead. Over half the crew and a third of the passengers were already dead. As he took a breath fifty more people had died. Half of the ship was missing and more of it was disintegrating by the moment as it drastically slowed from just below the speed of light to a mere five hundred thousand miles per hour.
The Enrilean space probe had eluded the ageing Spirit of the Future’s sensors. But even the most state of the art sensors would have been hard pushed to detect the stealthy little probe. After exiting the wormhole, or wormhole, the Spirit of the Future slammed straight into it. Travelling at practically immeasurable speeds, the massive starliner struck the probe. It exploded. So did the Spirit of the Future. Fifty thousand tonnes of the ship and eight hundred people suddenly ceased to exist in a blinding white flash of energy.
The third rumble was much, much more than the one that preceded it. And Sloane wasn’t thinking in terms of rumbles anymore. He wasn’t thinking at all.
Suddenly he was on the ceiling. Then he was on the floor. Or the wall. Then he was floating. But only for a moment. Then he was on the ceiling again. And there was time to think – to be terrified – and to breathe. But it was hard to breathe. He was winded. Or was he having a heart attack? His room on the ship was now a mess of his scattered belongings and broken furnishings.
The destruction of the Spirit of the Future continued. The accident had happened eight seconds ago. Now half of the ship remained and eleven hundred people were dead. The ship had slowed to two hundred thousand miles per hour. Its disintegration continued, but had slowed with the decrease in speed. The remaining bulk of the ship began to slowly tumble as it hurtled through space.
The aft section of the great ship started to break into two pieces. The passengers in one of the sections were all destined to die whist some of the passengers in the other would live for a while longer.
Matt Silverman woke up as the ship’s bulkheads in his section started to crumple. The massive crack that slightly preceded the buckling of his room door and the smashing of the eggshell blue decorative wall panels was the sound of the Spirit of the Future’s keel snapping in yet another place before being torn completely from the ship. Silverman’s section of the ship – and the eighteen passengers in rooms 340 to 389 were sealed off from the rest of the dying ship.
He felt an ice cold running all the way up his back to the base of his neck and he shivered with it. His mind was like treacle. Everything was slowed down, like he was frozen in time. It was hard to think; impossible to focus. A few seconds passed and he was fully and shockingly awake; his vision clearing and the ringing in his ears transforming into the distressing sounds of the Spirit of the Future being destroyed around him.
He heard shouts outside. A scream. His buckled door barely fit the frame anymore. He jumped out of bed and skinned into his jeans, trainers and t shirt. He glanced around for his PA, but he couldn’t see it anywhere. He called out for it, but if she answered he didn’t hear her quiet electronic voice.
He kicked the ruined door out of the way on the third attempt and stepped over its twisted mess into the corridor. Metal was groaning all around. Voices were calling out to him. He smelled smoke. The lights were flickering. He stumbled forward.
“Over here!” the male voice was calm and commanding “Quick now, mind! Quick now.”
Matt ran towards the white haired, white moustached man. The groaning was becoming a screech. Glass rained on him as an overhead light shattered. A hand was outstretched towards him. “Hurry up son,” The man was saying. His voice sounded amazingly calm. His attire was that of a businessman about to start 18 holes of golf.
“Name’s Jim Quinn. There’s a shuttle waiting. Holds about fifteen. Come now. This section doesn’t sound too healthy, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” Silverman said, momentarily astonished “What’s… happening?”
“Some kind of accident, I’ll expect,” Said Quinn, “The ship’s tearing itself apart as I’m sure you can see. Dear me. Now, we’ve got to get into the shuttle,” He paused to think then added, “Was there anyone with you?”
“No,” said Matt, following the well-groomed Quinn, “Just me.”
Quinn led him along the twisted corridor. As he’d promised, there was indeed a shuttle waiting. Less than ten meters from Silverman’s room, which surprised him.
“They have these all around the passenger section,” Quinn said matter of factly, “They’re hidden from view, of course, until there’s..,” he interrupted himself, “Anyway, here we are. Step inside here, now will you?”
Silverman stepped into the doorway. Jim Quinn stood on the outside, touching Matt’s shoulder as she entered the oval hatchway.
“That’s it, that’s it,” Quinn said, “No
w, we’ll see who else turns up. Dear me, this is a bloody mess and a half. Doesn’t look like this will all hold together much longer.”
Matt looked around the shuttle. There were three women and six men. They were strapped into the grey emergency chairs and facing forward, away from him. In front of the chairs a view screen dominated by a fluorescent pink rabbit with a smiling face. Japanese lettering flashed on one side of the rabbit. The English words “Relax and Stay Calm!” flashed on the other side. The pink rabbit seemed to be quite pleased with itself.
Matt Silverman stared incredulously at the pink rabbit for about three seconds. One part of his personality started to take a seat next to the rest of the passengers, but he was already turning toward Jim Quinn.
But Jim Quinn was already back out the door of the shuttle.
“Jesus Christ! I’ve got alarms all over the place,” The pink rabbit was suddenly a sweating, angry round ball of a face. It was the pilot, speaking from behind the Plexiglas panel. “We have to get the fuck out of here! I’m closing the door, goddamn it!” Bizarrely, the pink rabbit appeared again and seemed to be having the time of its life.
Quinn was in the corridor, struggling to stay on his feet. Silverman ran to the Plexiglas and hammered his fist against the big face, “Wait! I’ll get Quinn.”
But the door was closing.
Silverman rushed to it and almost hesitated before putting his body in the frame. The door pressed against his back as he pushed his palms against the frame. His eyes widened as he fantasised being crushed or split down the middle by the door. But he was stronger than the motor and although his back and wrists pained, he was able to hold it open.
“Jim Quinn! You need to get back in here right now!”
There was a crunch somewhere further down the corridor. Quinn stumbled and half fell onto Matt, who fell backwards inside the shuttle.
“A good thing too, I think,” Quinn smiled faintly, “There’s not much left of that corridor now, unfortunately. I’m quite sure that there couldn’t be anyone left…”
The pink rabbit was crying blue tears. The door was fully closed. None of the other passengers had moved or spoken. They were frozen like statues in the chairs.
The shuttle was moving, Matt realised. He guessed absently that Mr Quinn was in his late seventies, but Jim was actually 82 years old.
The other passengers seemed to finally have substance. They were real people, not statues, as Matt had first seen them. It was clear that they were all shocked. None of them said a word. Some of them looked injured. One woman’s head was red with blood. Jim Quinn was moving to help her. Matt went with him.
The pink rabbit face was bouncing up and down. The Japanese writing was changed and the English read “Hold on tight and be pleased!”
Something banged against the shuttle so hard that Jim Quinn fell. Matt moved quick to catch him.
“We’d better get into one of the seats,” Matt stated, helping Quinn straighten up.
“Yes,” Said Quinn, adjusting his tie “That would be wise.”
Again, something hard hit the outside of the shuttle pod. One of the women screamed. Silverman and Quinn looked at each other for a long moment. The lights flickered. The pink rabbit was suddenly blue and crying again. Behind the rabbit the pilot was shouting something.
Quinn had locked himself into a sear. Matt followed suit, sitting next to the older gentleman. Quinn adjusted his collars and then smoothed the right edge of his handlebar moustache.
“Now listen to this now,” Quinn said, almost to himself, “This really does sound like a complete disaster, doesn’t it?” and he added, bizarrely, “I could really do with a good cup of coffee right about now. How about you?”
The shuttle felt like it was tearing its way through ragged sheets of damaged hull. The sound was phenomenal. Screeching. Groaning. Rumbling.
“Maybe,” Silverman spoke loudly, over the noise of what might suddenly become imminent death, “But I think I’d prefer a Southern Comfort.”
The shuttle lurched to the left. The screeching seemed to be reducing. There were still loud bumps and groans, but not quite so many.
“Spirits?” Quinn laughed quietly and shook his head slightly, “It’s a bit early in the day for that kind of business, isn’t it?”
If Cass Linn had been counting the stars she would not have seen the accident in space. It was too far away from her world to be seen and, besides, in cosmic terms the explosions caused by the Spirit of the Future were quite insignificant.
She had reached the outside of the city. For a mile she’d followed an old abandoned transport road – maybe a hundred years old or more – and it had led her to the skeleton of an old abandoned ore storage building and then, finally, some of the lights she’d yearned for so many times before from her quiet lonely mountain retreat.
There was a fire burning in a large tin box. Men were standing round the box. They were cold, getting warmth from the flames. She smiled. She wanted to go across to the men. She wanted to say hello. She wanted to introduce herself. She was afraid. The men were speaking like Commander Zinn. They did not sound like Jann Linn at all. She didn’t understand what the men were talking about.
She stayed in the darkness and moved silently with her back to the wall of the storage building. Then she paused and looked back at the mountain. She couldn’t see her home in the darkness anymore, but she knew it was there somewhere.
The angry arguing voices faded into the background and she moved deeper into the city. It was very early in the morning still and most of the people in the city were asleep. Cass didn’t realise that the people who were around at this time of day were those who had nowhere else to go.
Jann Linn city was a poor city. It was located on the east coast of the largest continent on the planet of Relathon. The shallow sea led eight thousand miles to the now uninhabitable continent of Harlapp – destroyed hundreds of years ago by the conquering Enrilean empire. The city had previously been known as Fillabar city, but had been unnecessarily renamed Jann Linn City by the Enrileans when Jann Linn had supposedly died. Its population had dropped by eighty thousand in the past ten years. People were leaving the city. People were leaving the continent. The resources around the mountain had been sucked dry by the Enrileans a hundred years ago and the ravaged land had nothing left to give. The city was a tiny living bubble on a dead landscape. And the bubble was growing smaller every year.
The unhappy people were left far behind now. She felt happy again. She felt excited and elated. She felt like she was at the beginning of something. It was the adventure she’d dreamed of for almost her whole life. It was coming true.
She’d decided to forget about the angry people and it had been easy to do it. She’d acquired that skill a week ago. Jann Linn didn’t know she could do it. She did not think that he would approve. She’d used the same skill to forget his instructions not to travel down the mountain. She had decided she did not like being told what to do.
The light cruiser “Hard Edge” had watched Cass Linn using various devices – most either invented or enhanced by her father – for the past four hours. The ship was now hovering about eighteen thousand metres above the west edge of the city.
Commander Ziin had been awakened from a deep sleep. He’d been dreaming of his wife, Alynntha, and it had been a good dream. She had been alive again. They’d kissed in her quarters and he’d caressed her smooth, shiny body as he’d generously inhaled her scent. Even as his consciousness flashed images of her broken body and the burning, tangled wreckage of her ship he continued to enjoy the sensation of holding her again. Her eyes sparkled. Her mouth was so inviting. He kissed it, hard and aggressively, and she growled like a tigress.
He had known that it was a dream, but he had been tired enough not to waken.
Then… duty had called. The subtle triple beep of the intercom had jerked him awake. In seconds he was completely alert, and he’d quickly learned of the activities on the planet below.
The orbiting Hard Edge’s keen sensors had detected movement on the mountainside. It seemed that
after years of humble servitude, Jann Linn was leaving his mountain retreat to travel to the city. Or he had been visited by someone or something clever enough or stealthy enough to evade the watch ship’s sensors on the way to Jann Linn’s retreat. Now, halfway down the mountain, something had appeared. Something vague and elusive on the ship’s sensors, but something that couldn’t be ignored.
“What are you doing, Jann Linn?” Zinn whispered to himself. He eyed the display and the mysterious readings. He’d been watching the sensor display for an hour now.
“I want a closer look,” He considered, “Take the shuttle and secure the area. I want to know what’s going on. Secure the target,” He thought for a moment. He thought about telling his men to take things easy, but he didn’t. He paused for too long a moment and he realised that he was angry. Emotional affectations were never useful. Jann Linn was betraying him. After all the kindness he’d shown. It enraged him.
“I want you to approach with caution,” He said finally, “Stay back until I see what’s going on.”
He looked at the quartermaster pistol and then back to the intercom.
“This is an old man,” He reminded the shuttle crew, “He may be confused or sick. Take it easy.”
“Yes sir,” The response came quick, “We’re on our way down.”
The shuttle exited the Hard Edge and started towards Jann Linn city.
Cass Linn heard the shuttle approach. She did not recognise the sound even though it was very similar to the sound of Zinn’s shuttle. But not similar enough, though she did register it in the back of her mind. She was too concerned with the bright lights she was seeing ahead of her. Not fire this time. Electric lights. A house. Many houses. There would be people there. Happy people.
The shuttle started to land about fifty metres from Cass Linn. It was only when she felt the tremor of the three landing skids digging into the hard earth that she decided it was something she should investigate. When she turned to look at the shuttle she immediately realised that this had something to do with the Enrileans and Commander Ziin.
Beyond the Starport Adventure (Bullet Book 1) Page 15