The Epherium Chronicles: Crucible
Page 30
Major McGregor’s troops are still conducting sweeps for any Cilik’ti survivors. They did find a pile of bodies in a valley to the northeast near some caves. There were bite and claw marks all over them, but the carcasses were just left in the open. I guess the Night Cats didn’t think Cilik’ti flesh was to their liking.
Our sensors did pick up two small craft leaving the surface long after the battle. McGregor believes the three remaining Chi’tan elite warriors managed to make it off world. The N’lan weren’t able to pursue them, and we haven’t seen them since. I’m certain the loss of a mother ship and their best troops will make the Chi’tan think twice before they ever try something like this again.
As for my ship, the ARMSTRONG sustained heavy damage to our primary rail gun emplacements on the forward port and starboard quarters. The last few rounds with that mother ship hammered us, but the good news is that many of our new systems, including the particle cannon and defensive shield Mr. Whitaker installed, worked beyond their call. The shield went off-line late in the battle, but Mr. Whitaker assured me the system can be put back into operation once our space-fold drive power feeds and reactor are repaired.
Despite the loss of several of our fighters, pilot losses were minimal. All pilots who managed to reach EVA were recovered, and I count that as a blessing in itself. The fighters were able to provide ample support to our gunships, and it showed in the number of enemy drone kills recorded. Even with the vast number of drones laid against us, damage to the gunships was light.
We did lose several good crewmen, most due to rapid decompression during the final stages of the battle. I have the full list of those killed in action, including Marines, my crewmen and colonists. It needs your final review, and I’ll send it along with this report. I’ve already started working with Major McGregor on letters to their families. It’s going to be difficult for some of them. Many never had the chance to say goodbye, and no one back home knew they would be headed into this kind of action. Despite the large number of letters for the fallen, there’s a long list of accommodations. I’m sure you will want to add your own comments, as well.
Admiral, I need to speak freely on this next topic and I know you won’t like hearing it. If the N’lan hadn’t intervened, I probably wouldn’t be sending this to you now. I was just as amazed as everyone else at the sacrifice Kree made to bring his people into the fight. Even if we’d prevailed, the Chi’tan were going to scorch the planet. We owe him a debt I’m sure I can’t put a value on. But there’s an opportunity here we can’t afford to ignore. The N’lan intervention symbolizes their recognition of humans and, from what little I’ve learned of their culture, it’s a pretty serious step. The move holds power not just for the N’lan, but for all the other Cilik’ti Shi. Open and peaceful negotiations are possible and I’d like to be a part of them. I know I’m not a diplomat and the chancellor will want to send his best people, but I’m here now. Despite my history with the Cilik’ti, there seems to be some measure of respect toward me. The N’lan have already augmented defense screens throughout the system, should the Chi’tan or their allies return, but I don’t suspect there will be any repercussions. The Cilik’ti culture is bound in honor and this entire scenario—from initial communication of intentions to the final outcome—was a contest of honor. The Chi’tan will abide by the result or it will cost them their standing among the other Shi.
But there is another issue I was to raise, Admiral. It seems one of the colonists, Harvey Kingston, was never reprogrammed by the Embrace and maintained his identity of Frank Descherra. I’m sending his file to you, as well. Both Commander Sanchez and Lieutenant Greywalker are still recuperating in Medical after their encounter with Descherra following the battle. From what I’ve read about Lieutenant Greywalker and seen with my own eyes, I didn’t think anything other than a raging bull coming down a closed and narrow alley could harm her. Even then I would’ve still bet against the bull, but Descherra worked both of them over pretty well.
According to Commander Sanchez’s report, they found a treasure trove of encrypted information in Descherra’s quarters. Once my people decrypted the files, the documents shed more light on his activities. It seems Descherra was buying off key personnel on Epherium’s colony ship program to get him on board and keep him from being reprogrammed. He also managed to have additional augmentations added to him while in stasis. There’s nothing so far that leads me to believe he might have tampered with the other colonists’ profiles or that they’re at risk for reverting, but I’ve ordered a more in-depth review of all their profiles just to be sure.
In several of his entries, he claimed to be monitoring all the colonists, but one entry was different. He encountered a man he didn’t recognize from the MAGELLAN’S personnel records. The man claimed to be a technician working on the colony’s comm gear. Descherra secretly killed him and found his bag full of the comm-jamming devices we later discovered in the canyon team’s gear. Descherra still carried some of the man’s belongings, and we were able to get a match from DNA on the items. The man’s name was Reuben Cordova, Technician Second Class on board the ESSEX, a reinforced supply vessel. The ESSEX was en route to Proxima almost ten years ago before the end of the Cilik’ti conflict and was reported lost with all hands. I had Lieutenant Aldridge run one more check and sure enough, he’s one of the people on the list in Epherium’s secret files. So how can a man who’s been declared dead manage to show up here, and why now? Better yet, why would he need to reroute this colony’s communication grid?
I assume this has something to do with our missing stealth frigate. It’s the only non-Cilik’ti vessel we’ve encountered thus far. Ever since the asteroids, we haven’t detected any sign of it, not even another scanner shadow. It’s possible that shadow was bait for the trap and their ship can truly disappear from our sensors, but I don’t have all the facts yet, just my gut. I don’t know how all these things are tied together, but gut hunches aside, I’ll bet you my next paycheck that someone in the Epherium hierarchy knows. The glaring fact is we need answers. If we keep stumbling around in the dark, we’ll miss it when these guys try to make their move for whatever they’re after. If these people know about this colony, odds are they’re aware of the other two and possibly have arrived at both of them. That puts them several steps ahead of us, and for me, I don’t like to play catch-up. For now, we’re just going to continue to lick our wounds and wait.
Hope to hear from you soon, sir. Hood out.
* * *
Lieutenant Wells sat down on one of the leftover chairs in the canyon where Jillian had discovered Kree and examined the raised carving in the reddish stone wall. She’d spent the past two days going over every image taken of the carving and she was stumped. Wells had decided she needed time with the actual carving to uncover any clue to its origin, and Hood agreed.
She turned to her left and smiled at the handsome Marine who set the two boxes of equipment next to her chair. Wells opened the first box and removed the signal scanner. Unlike the one she’d left in place earlier, this one held a special configuration she designed to analyze the low-level radiation emanating from the carving.
The radiation has to have some significance. She needed some clue to the markings, some hidden and masterful cipher that could point her in the right direction. Wells picked up the scanner and turned it on. She calibrated the settings and soon she had a strong reading on the radiation. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The radiation intensity seemed to be constant. Her equipment didn’t detect different levels, but there were gaps. The radiation field itself wasn’t uniform.
Over the next several minutes she adjusted her scanner to detect the gaps and display them on her data pad. The results were astounding. The radiation field was changing. She expanded her time window for the results, desperate to uncover more. She smiled in triumph. The gaps weren’t random, but held a clear pattern.
Each gap pattern varied in l
ength and as she expected, the entire process repeated. She recorded all the patterns and took them back to one of the tarp-covered areas to analyze further. She found several repeated sets of patterns in the long process and mapped out potential references to a cipher, but nothing fit. Wells spent another hour cross-referencing the markings to the patterns in the radiation signal. She examined every possible connection again and again, but she could find no correlation.
Frustrated, she put her forehead down on the table in front of her and tried to think it through in her head without watching the patterns. She was sure the signal began with a clear Prologue and ended with an Epilogue before it restarted.
Determined, Wells went back to the carving and opened the second box. It was a multiphase frequency transmitter, the same one she’d kept since her early academy days. She used the transmitter to mimic the pattern, creating a series of pulses along the same wavelength of the radiation, and directing them back at the carving. She attempted the entire process and several smaller pieces, even out of order, but there was nothing. No response and no more clues.
Undaunted, she reassembled the pulses again, but it was no use. She was so close. She knew it. Now her mind was too cluttered, and she couldn’t think straight. She cleared her mind and focused on potential options for assistance. Wells’s thoughts led her back to her new alien ally, Kree. Perhaps he could help, but he was off world visiting his people. The other viable option was to send all her information back to Earth and let them take a crack at it, but that was too easy. Once she started a puzzle, she needed to finish it, even if it meant staying up late to put the last piece into place.
Then a new idea appeared in her head. It was crazy, but it was the best thing that came to mind. At the academy, the other students played a game with special encryption of signals. The encryption would use music as a key at the start and end of each message. Like the combination of a harmony and melody, the Prologue and Epilogue would be merged together as the proper response to unlock the message. The trick was to unravel the song and figure out how they intertwined.
She changed her transmitter to send the patterns with the information from both parts of the signal and resent her broadcast. Nothing happened and it was already getting late. Once it got dark, those Night Cats would be out and she felt much safer aboard the Armstrong. She tried one more sequence. This time reversing the pattern of the Epilogue and then inserting it into the Prologue pattern.
When she clicked the transmission button, she heard a soft hum coming from the carving and it increased in intensity. The sound grew more powerful. Soon, Wells had to hold her hands over her ears to protect them.
As abruptly as it began, the hum ceased, and the carving started to change. The raised area’s background color altered from the reddish stone to near pitch-black, and lines on the carving turned bright silver. The markings shifted to form long lines with several junctions on the face of the carving, and new symbols appeared on the near the base. These symbols were familiar. They were reminiscent of markings seen on some of the Cilik’ti vessels in the past.
She still didn’t know what they meant, but it didn’t matter. Wells knew what she’d unlocked. The lines and junctions showed purpose now, and the symbols along the bottom were a legend of some sort. Wells saved a new image of her find to her data pad. She stared at the carving with eyes of wonder and couldn’t hold in her excitement. The carving had become some sort of map. But a map to what?
* * * * *
About the Author
T.D. Wilson was born in 1968 in Troy, Ohio, and has been an avid fan of science fiction and fantasy from a very young age. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and has supported the systems and networks in several of the largest Supercomputing data centers in the world. His early thirst for adventure in reading began as he explored many of the great stories of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. As his reading scope expanded, Mr. Wilson was fascinated by strange new worlds from the magic of Middle Earth and Narnia to the far reaches of space in Star Trek and Babylon 5. As a science fiction author, he strives to integrate a realistic flavor to his worlds by providing his readers a feel for the real science in science fiction, a topic he loves to discuss with his friends and readers. Mr. Wilson still lives in Ohio with his wife and their two sons.
See how The Epherium Chronicles began with Embrace–available now!
The Epherium Chronicles: Embrace
Book one of The Epherium Chronicles
Hope. Captain James Hood of the Earth Defense Forces remembers what it felt like. Twenty-five years ago, it surged through him as a young boy watching the colony ships launched by mega-corporation Epherium rocket away. He, like so many others, dreamed of following in the colonists’ footsteps. He wanted to help settle a new world—to be something greater.
Then came the war...
Hope. During years of vicious conflict with an insectoid alien race, it was nearly lost. Though Earth has slowly rebuilt in the six years since the war, overcrowding and an unstable sun have made life increasingly inhospitable. When mysterious signals from the nearly forgotten colony ships are received, Hood is ordered to embark on a dangerous reconnaissance mission. Could humanity’s future sit among the stars?
Connect with us for info on our new releases, access to exclusive offers and much more!
Visit CarinaPress.com
We like you—why not like us on Facebook: Facebook.com/CarinaPress
Follow us on Twitter: Twitter.com/CarinaPress
Where no great story goes untold.
The variety you want to read, the stories authors have always wanted to write.
With new releases every week, your next great read is just a download away!
Keep in touch with Carina Press:
Read our blog: www.CarinaPress.com/blog
Follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/CarinaPress
Become a fan on Facebook: www.facebook.com/CarinaPress
ISBN-13: 9781426898396
THE EPHERIUM CHRONICLES: CRUCIBLE
Copyright © 2014 by Tracey D. Wilson
Edited by Rhonda Helms
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and in other countries.
www.CarinaPress.com