by Ralph Kern
“The Sagi race was different. It colonized much of the galaxy thousands if not millions of years ago. They mastered FTL gateways, seeding them, like the ones on Io, Iwa, and dozens of other places in the territory now claimed by humanity. They expanded prodigiously like we did with our gate network. Then, like every race, they simply evolved. Their empire shriveled and contracted to one place—Sagi.
“There their race went in a new direction, becoming introspective, creating their own reality within the vast supercomputer that orbited the black hole. They thought big, you see. Those black holes are rents in the universe. Properly manipulated, black holes could eventually be used to colonize the very substructure of space-time itself. They wouldn’t just live to the end of the universe…they’d live beyond.
“But the Sagi race may have made a mistake. Or perhaps it was intentional; we simply don’t know. They left a Watcher—something to protect Sagi. This Watcher was activated when we first tested the Iwa FTL gateway. Unfortunately, that’s a fixed point now. It happened before the Oracle project was activated. If I could, I would simply tell you not to succumb to the temptation to use the FTL gateway. But that is not an option anymore. By the time you watch this, it would have already happened.”
“The Watcher attacked human space in 2320. We tried reasoning with it, fighting it, retreating from it. Nothing worked. Your first thought may be, ‘We will simply build a fleet and kick its ass.’” The other Paskett gave a sorrowful smile. “It won’t work. The Watcher is as far beyond us as we are beyond Neanderthals. It simply smashed everything we could throw at it.”
Vance and Cheng were paying rapt attention, their eyes riveted on the image, their pupils large and dark, just like Paskett had done the first time. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes as he listened. He’d watched it enough that he could have given the speech himself…and perhaps he would in the future—his future.
“And so we find ourselves here.” Paskett mouthed the words with the other Paskett. Yes, he, too, found himself here at his own crossroads, just as the other Paskett had once upon a time. Paskett pursed his lips as the image droned on. “It’s your turn to try something new. You can change the future. We know that much.” The other Paskett leaned forward in the view. “How do we know that? Because my time-line is at least the twentieth time we’ve been round this loop. Oh, I don’t know whether the first Paskett who bothered to count the loops and leave a time capsule was actually the first; he was merely the first to start the count. You are Paskett number twenty-one.
“Attached is a file that shows everything we have tried to stop the Watcher. It’s your turn to try something different. It’s up to you. I’d start by destroying the FTL gateways. One of them is on Io; another is on Iwa in Sirius. Or maybe you could try taking the fight to the enemy.”
The image paused again, and Paskett looked at those in the room. Vance, ashen-faced, Cheng, leaning forward, thinking, processing what he was seeing.
“So,” said Paskett, “you know I took that advice. We attacked the Watcher before it was ready to strike us.”
“And we tried to stop you,” Vance murmured. “Why didn’t you tell us? We could have helped.”
“No, you wouldn’t have. That was tried on several…previous loops. We saw that on the attachment. It was comprehensively fucked up every time we tried to get someone else involved,” Paskett said as firmly as he could, perhaps a little too much so. He sounded angry, and he couldn’t afford to be angry—this was too important. With a determined effort, he put on his most professional voice. “We had to try a different take, striking them in secret before a dozen nations got involved, tugging things one way or another. In one version, sharing the information paralyzed the world into indecision. I couldn’t tell you how many times the file says I’ve been arrested for breaching the OST and the problem was simply ignored. I assure you, spreading the word was my first instinct, but the file proves that wasn’t the way. This time, we went the other way. No grand fleet would be constructed, no diplomatic overtures. A quick, clean surgical strike. Destroy the Watcher with an A-drive assault or, failing that, an antimatter bombardment.”
“So what now?” Cheng asked, turning from the screen at last. “Have you stopped them? Or just fired the first shots in a war?”
“You misunderstand, Mr. Cheng. It won’t be a war. The word war implies we are going to be able fight them. No, it will be an extinction event as inevitable as when an asteroid struck the Earth during the time of the dinosaurs.”
“The question still stands,” Cheng said.
“Honestly? No, Colonel, I don’t think we’ve stopped them. That final EM pulse Gagarin registered suggests the Watcher is still…alive. I just think we’ve brought ourselves some time while it repairs the damage Talbot inflicted.”
“And what do we do with that time?” Vance asked.
That was the question, wasn’t it? Each Paskett had tried something different, and now he was running out of ideas. They needed to know more. “We need to build up our capabilities, learn more about the Watcher. Learn to stop it.”
“And you are going to do that on your own?” Cheng looked at Paskett.
“I will have to.” Paskett waved at the Oracle screen. “The attachme—”
“Told you what would happen at the start if you sought help. Things are different this time. You have shown the Watcher humanity can strike it,” Cheng said earnestly. “Let me be clear, Paskett. You’ve played us for decades. I don’t like that, but I understand your reticence, based on the intelligence you had. But now you need allies.”
Paskett went up to the man. The surgeries had been good. Only a faint line or two showed at Cheng’s hairline. His nose was different from the images Paskett had watched, but other than that, he looked the same. Paskett looked straight into Cheng’s brown eyes. “Why do you think I’m speaking to you?” Paskett looked over to Vance. “To both of you?”
Vance shook her head. “We’re middle-ranking officers from two different nations. You need true power players to guarantee humanity’s survival.”
Paskett lowered himself onto a bench at the side of the room. He felt very weary again. His face was that of a man in his midforties, yet the weight of responsibility aged his features. This was too much for one man. He gave a deep sigh. “It’s been a relief to tell someone after all these years.”
“Yes.” Vance leaned on the railing surrounding the Oracle block. “But if we are going to do something about this mess, we will need players on the team.”
“And those players need resources,” Cheng added.
Paskett closed his eyes briefly before opening them and looking at Vance. “Yes, I guess we do.”
CHAPTER 63
EARTH, SAN DIEGO
“You—you’re responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people, for the Two Great Cacophonies,” Patrice said. There was no venom; it was a statement of fact.
“Yes.” The host, Paskett, looked again at Vance and Cheng, who had been seated quietly in the corner while the others were watching Trent’s testimony.
“It is…unforgivable,” Patrice said. “You must answer for it.”
“Yes, it is.” Paskett looked around the table. “And yes, I will. I promise that once we confirm that this situation is dealt with—that we are safe, that humanity is no longer under threat by this Watcher–then I will turn myself in.”
Paskett stood, walked to the window, and gazed out. “I have called you here because I have done what I can. I have given us time. Time to come out with a longer-term solution.” Paskett turned and looked at them. “I need your help for that. From all of you.”
The people in the room looked at each other. Some were the heads of nations, others were the chief officers of the vast corporations that, if anything, held even more power, both in-system and out. Yes, it was a testament to Curt Paskett’s standing that he could get them all together.
But now? They were being asked to ensure humanity’s continued survival against a threa
t that was millions of years old—and millions of years more advanced.
EPILOGUE
2334 CE
The dark world circling Sagi balanced precariously on the cusp of a black hole. This was not by accident or misfortune, but by design. Over long years, the craters left by Talbot’s bombardment flattened and faded.
That was when the work started. Slowly, the dust and metal that covered the shattered surface of the world began to reform. In the wake of the world that circled Sagi endlessly, a black cloud formed, a black contrail following in its orbit, stretching to millions of kilometers. The diameter of the planet shrank as a significant portion of its mass spewed away, unveiling a glowing sphere of crystal, lightning coursing through it.
Defying the intense gravity of the black hole, the tail of the cloud twisted and turned to stream toward the distant planet where the FTL gateway lay waiting. As the cloud approached, a beam of light shot from the top of the tower, striking the front of the mass. When light met dark, a pulsing flash flared, swallowing the darkness.
***
Something strange.
But what?
Consensus unclear.
The Linked explorer ship Unity was far from home in the AD Leonis star system. The crew felt no need for any of the pretensions of normal communication that their peers on Concorde subscribed to. Instead, they spoke as one single voice, all together, all the time.
The world they were orbiting, Sheehan’s Hope, had a small colony of Enhanced on it, and it was their last stop before pressing out to explore the stars of the gateway network beyond.
The bridge crew were reclined on their seats, eyes closed, the information from the ship’s sensors fed directly into their minds. It was a sedate environment; not even the strangeness of what they were seeing caused a physical reaction in them.
Receiving communication from Sheehan’s Hope.
“Unity, are you seeing this as well?” The communication from the fledgling colony went directly into the Linked crew’s collective mind.
Yes, we are observing the anomaly. Is this a phenomenon sighted before? the Unity answered, quite literally. None of the Linked had to speak; the ship processed the crew’s thoughts and spoke in a single voice for them all.
“Negative, Unity,” the worried voice said. “I mean, we see some pretty weird stuff, but that’s to be expected from AD Leonis. It flares constantly. But this is definitely new.”
Whatever it was occluded the stars across a sweeping expanse of space. The source of it seemed to be the gas giant Renoir, fifth planet out from the star.
In a fashion typical of the Linked, Unity’s consensus decided what they would do quickly.
Sheehan’s Hope. We are going to investigate. Going to A-drive.
“Roger that, Unity. Be careful.”
Unity’s A-drive activated and the ship shot toward Renoir at half the speed of light. Minutes later, it crashed out of the Alcubierre bubble back into normal space.
The cloud eclipsing Renoir was vast, taking up half of the sky. Unity was a large ship, but suddenly it seemed small and insignificant compared to what lay ahead.
LAT activated. Resolving images.
Even the Linked crew were shocked by what they saw from the large aperture telescope. The cloud wasn’t composed of gas or particles—it was made up of ships…thousands, even millions, of ships. The vast majority were insect-like craft smaller than work pods, but interspersed through the cloud were much bigger craft, the largest of them dark, spherical behemoths that would dwarf any human vessel.
Sheehan’s Hope, Unity. First Contact Situation. Standby but monitor.
Something’s jamming the signal.
Go to laser link.
With deceptive speed, the cloud front surged, enshrouding Unity and blocking out the light of AD Leonis, the stars, and the ship’s laser link.
Laser link blocked. No response to First Contact Protocol greeting. Retreat? Yes, retreat.
Ponderously, the ship began to turn. Dumping heat frantically, Unity strived to get her A-drive back to operational temperature.
The ships, drones, or robots—whatever they were—had paused briefly, completely surrounding Unity in a bubble, leaving a small void around the vulnerable ship within. The pause was brief—then the cloud swarmed Unity.
Within seconds, the huge explorer ship and her crew were pulled to pieces by innumerable drones. The parts, both hull and human, were efficiently conveyed back to the larger lumbering vessels. Hungrily, they absorbed the material, and moments later, they excreted even more drones.
As one, the dark cloud descended next on Sheehan’s Hope, a world a mere sixteen light-years from Sol, so very far—and yet much too close—to Earth.
The Watcher was coming.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I hope you enjoyed reading Erebus, a sidequel to Endeavour, as much as I enjoyed writing it. This has been a different take for me, wanting to explore people who aren’t necessarily the top-of-their-game operators that the crew of Endeavour were yet are nevertheless thrust into the Sleeping Gods universe.
One of the things I’ve tried to do is incorporate elements of my day job as a police officer into the story. There are long tracts of procedural stuff that has to be done and frustrations with bureaucracy. I’ve tried not to bog things down too much with all that, but I did want to give an impression of what future police might face.
It’s been enjoyable combining my two passions: policing and sci-fi. I’ve wanted to throw a few tropes out of the window; for example, cops don’t go around growling at each other melodramatically all day like the TV would have you believe. We have a slightly warped sense of humor (which I have definitely had to reign in a touch!), but most of all, we have a certain idealistic nature tempered by a touch of cynicism, which seems to be common across the board—and is something I doubt will change in the next twenty years or, indeed, the next two hundred. Sure, we can be grumpy, prompted by the occasional bad guy wanting to do bad things to us. And yes, we can seem arrogant at times. Because we don’t have all day to make a decision, sometimes we just have to quickly weigh up facts, hope for the best, and say, “Things are going to happen this way, and I don’t have time to explain why.” These are some of the characteristics that I have instilled in the main character, and I hope any colleagues reading this will feel I have done our profession justice.
Once again, I have tried to use existing or potential technologies and apply them to what I consider a fast-paced thriller. I firmly believe that one day soon, humanity will start to augment themselves—and not just the simple contact lenses, prosthetics and medical devices we have now, but elective enhancements. For example, it seems logical that rather than carrying around a cumbersome mobile phone, we will simply implant them in our bodies along with countless other apps.
There are countless stories about space combat, from WW2 in space such as Star Wars to the massive Dreadnaughts of David Weber’s Honorverse. All of them are great to read or watch, but I wanted to try something a little different. Even in modern fighter-plane combat, the winner of an encounter tends to be the person who “sees” the other first. I figure that the vast distances and the “geography” of space would give lots of opportunities for competing ships to jockey for that first-look position—slingshotting around planets, coming at an opponent from an unexpected direction. So in Erebus, I’ve played with this to offer something a little bit different than the norm.
Sadly, sometimes the pace of research outstrips the pace of writing a novel. An error in the book is that the black hole, Sagi, is actually now believed to be much farther away than the 1600 light-years originally thought. While I could have made up a new black hole, Sagi originally filled my requirements for the overall story arc. It was about the right distance away and was a devourer (which means it would provide a beautiful back drop for the final scenes). As much as it galls me to say as someone who prides himself on being as accurate as he can be with speculative fiction, sometimes one has to
shrug and accept that dramatic license has to prevail.
Anyway, once again, I hope you enjoyed this book, and I’m setting to work on the third in the Sleeping Gods universe: working title—Endings.
I also have another project on the go, which is more of a contemporary thriller/mystery. Fear not. It will still entail a lot of sci-fi elements—I think you’ll all like it. And don’t worry; I won’t let it delay Endings!
Please leave a review (positive and constructive negative ones are always welcome) and feel free to add me on Facebook for updates or email me with any questions.
Email: [email protected]
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Prologue
PART ONE 2183 CE
Chapter 1 2183 CE—Sahelia, the Karen Cole Hospital
Chapter 2 Er Rahad
Chapter 3 Er Rahad
Chapter 4 Sahelia, West of Er Rahad
Chapter 5 The Hague
Chapter 6 The Hague
Chapter 7 Mediterranean Anchorage
Chapter 8 The Space Elevator
Chapter 9 Io