by E. R. Torre
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EPILOGUE ONE
EPILOGUE TWO
GHOST OF
THE ARGUS
By
E. R. Torre
The novel contained within this volume is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, events, or locals is entirely coincidental.
Ghost of the Argus, Nox, B’taav, Becky Waters, Inquisitor Cer, Paul Spradlin, Corrosive Knights, and all characters within this novel were created and are Copyright © 2014 E. R. Torre
All Rights Reserved
Cover and Interior Artwork by E. R. Torre
Please visit my website:
www.ertorre.com
Comments or questions? Email me at:
[email protected]
ISBN: 0-9729115-8-8
ISBN-13: 978-0-9729115-8-0
1
THE SIGNAL – Year 4330, After Exodus
At the dawn of the era of space exploration, automated vessels carrying primitive Displacer units were sent to distant solar systems. When they arrived at their destinations following many years of travel, the Displacers were activated. It took only a few days for their signals to reach the Displacer web and, once they did, vessels carrying human crews were sent through the newly activated devices to explore those distant solar systems. Many of those automated vessels were lost…
She drifted past the gravitational pull of Eventho 3 and slipped through the solar rays of the Pegasus sun, her body luminous in the shimmering red ion energy field. Particles from a dust cloud beyond Eventho 3’s lonely moon altered her path by a few inches, causing the automated ship’s internal processors to awaken for the first time in two hundred years. The computers checked the Displacer she was carrying to make sure she was intact before focusing on flight corrections. Though the deviation in her course was minimal, when her destination lay so many light years distant, even the mildest of deviations could result in missing her target by hundreds of thousands –if not millions– of miles.
The internal processors calculated the thrust needed to adjust the ship’s path. A miniscule sprinkle of accelerant, no more than a puff of smoke, was ejected from the craft’s lee side. To outside eyes, there was no noticeable difference in the ship’s movement, yet this small change ensured she was back on her proper course.
The craft’s internal processors followed the course correction with a routine check of all remaining equipment before preparing to return to its dormant state. It was during that check the ship’s sensors detected a very faint radio transmission. It was an electronic squeal that lasted only a few seconds yet the ship’s processors recognized it as something other than ambient static.
The signal was a very old code and one universal to both Empires.
Distress.
The ship’s processors, cold and logical, did not question the how or why of an emergency signal so very far away from any known civilization. They began the task of determining the general direction from which the distress signal originated and found it came from a solar system in the Elicia quadrant of the Phaecian Empire. The system had three planets revolving around a massive red sun. The ship’s processors sent out a series of sensor waves while precision cameras took magnified images of the distant worlds.
It would take months for the sensor waves to bounce back to the ship and provide a fuller picture of that distant system.
While the computers waited for the response, obscure code hidden within the ship’s processors was activated and the ship released a distress signal. It stated the robotic vessel was hit by a meteorite and was experiencing catastrophic failure.
This lie would be the very last signal the ship would send its distant masters.
The vessel then released another burst of accelerant, this one more than just a mild puff, and the ship’s forward momentum slowed to a near stop.
Eventually, every one of the information rich sensor waves returned.
The distress signal’s origin was the planet farthest from the red sun. It was a cold world, one covered in ice and snow. The distress signal originated from that planet’s equatorial region.
This information was saved and, afterwards, the ship’s internal processors returned to their long sleep. The vessel and its Displacer waited in place to be activated.
It would do so for well over a thousand years.
2
“My name is…” the man said and paused.
A confused frown appeared on his forehead. Though he awoke the day before, he still fought a deep mental fog. It was only now he tried to remember his full name and was very surprised to find he could not.
He sat on a metal bench and spoke into the small recorder he found earlier that day in one of the seemingly countless rooms on this enormous space craft. Behind him was a large window and beyond that absolute darkness punctuated by starlight.
“I was sleeping,” he said after a while. “A very heavy sleep. It was almost… it was like death.”
He pressed a button and the recorder stopped. He replayed the events of the recent past in his mind, of awakening on some kind of stasis bed. The mattress he lay on was very firm, with the consistency of a rock, yet he felt no discomfort. There were no sheets covering his body nor a pillow under his head. He lay on his back, staring at a gray ceiling. Flickering lights illuminated a section of that ceiling, revealing rivets and heavy metal panels.
The man reactivated his recorder.
“When I awoke, it took a while for my eyes to adjust to the lights. As confused as I was –and still am– I knew I wasn’t home.” He laughed. “Damned if I can remember what home was like. I know it wasn’t like this. The walls in the room were metal. My bed was encased in glass. I was trapped inside that glass like a bug in a bottle. It took a while to get my bearings and be able to… be able to think. I lay there for a while, looking around. There was one door leading into the room. Otherwise, it was a perfect metal cube. I panicked. I tried screaming for help but barely had a voice. It took a while before I could really call out.”
“When I did, no one answered. I kept screaming and banging on that glass cage, hoping to get someone’s attention. I screamed until I lost whatever voice I had. I banged that glass until my fists were bloody.”
He held his injured right hand before him.
“The lid held. Ju
st like I knew it would. Even though I couldn’t remember much, I knew that glass was made to withstand impacts far greater than those from my fists. I thought that was it for me. I was going to die a slow, painful death in a small glass coffin.”
He put his hand down.
“It was only after I was completely exhausted that I noticed a computer panel behind and just above my head. It flashed lines of information but because of the way I lay I couldn’t see them all that well. I spun around and got on my stomach to get a better look. The information on the panel passed too quickly to read, but I did catch one line. The ‘final scrubbing,’ the computer said, was almost complete.”
“Then there were some noises. Machinery under the bed came to life and the glass panel slid away. I was free.”
The man suppressed a shiver.
“I sat up. Too quickly. My stomach heaved and I tried to throw up but there was nothing to throw up. The room spun and I fought to keep conscious. Some random memories came back. I recognized the glass covered bed.”
The man looked out the window and at the stars shining in the darkness.
“It was a stasis chamber. Back in the old days, when it took years for a starship to reach its destination, stasis chambers were used to keep a crew sleeping for those very long journeys. That was before the Displacer network was set up.”
The man rose from the bench and walked down the hallway. It stretched in a straight line for what seemed like miles before disappearing into the far distance. Doors lined the right side of the hall, while windows appeared every twenty feet to his left.
“Even as I realized all these things, my body went numb and I blacked out. When I came to, I was on the floor. I was still very weak and felt something new. Hunger. In fact, I was starving. I sat back for a while and let my body regain its strength. Soon, I felt strong enough to put weight on my feet. I did so, carefully. After a few minutes I took my first steps. I walked from my coffin to the door leading out of the room. As I figured, it was solid metal and just as impossible to break through as the stasis chamber’s glass. This time, I was smart enough to use my head rather than my fists.”
“Beside the door was a dull green screen. There were no buttons or keypads. Just that screen. I placed my hand over it and pressed down. A green light came on and it mirrored my hand. A few words appeared and disappeared. It was some kind of security protocol. I must have passed the test because the metal door slid open nice and easy and I had my first look outside.”
The man stopped walking. He faced the window beside him and the emptiness of outer space.
“Beyond the door was what looked like a medical lab. There were no instruments in it, only empty cabinets and two automated medical emergency machines. I left the med lab and found a hallway not unlike the one I’m in right now, only much, much bigger. I walked through several such corridors, each just as big as the last. This place was built to house thousands of people yet the only one here is me.”
“After a while I found what looked like crew quarters and, at their end, windows looking out into space. Though I suspected as much, I now knew for certain I was on a spacecraft. But not any ordinary spacecraft. This one is much larger than any I’ve ever seen before… and I somehow knew I had seen many. The crew quarters, like the rest of this ship, were enormous. They could easily house an entire army… maybe even a couple of armies. And like the med lab, they showed no signs of habitation. There were spaces for beds but there were no beds. The bathrooms didn’t have faucets or running water. What kind of madman created all this… and for what purpose? Why was no one here? Surely this incredible ship wasn’t made just for me? Or was it? And if so, why?”
The man shook his head.
“I found an elevator. Once inside, a computerized voice asked me for my destination. I told it to take me to the ship’s bridge. The doors closed. The elevator moved smoothly, up and sideways, passing many, many miles before reaching its destination. When the doors opened, I was there.”
“That’s when most of my memories returned.”
3
The Planet Pomos – Year 5029 A. E.
His name was Alex. He was eight years old and an only child. His parents did their best to spoil him with a wealth of gifts while also enrolling him in the best schools available. He rewarded their attention by scoring in the top twentieth percentile in the Kirkas Achievement Exams. These tests indicated he had a high aptitude for the sciences, should he choose to pursue that field into adulthood.
Outside of class, he was extroverted and friendly. His laughter was infectious and he had many friends. Classmates and faculty were certain his future was very bright.
They were wrong.
Alex stood beside the small stream in his back yard. His parents and he lived in an apartment in Petersburg, the capital city and central star port of Pomos. At this very young age he wasn’t entirely sure what his parents did, but he knew their job was important enough to allow them this lavish lifestyle which included an apartment with a beautiful back yard and a fully functional recycling stream.
Birds flew in daily and bathed in that stream and drank from its precious liquid. Day after day Alex watched them and, whenever he could, feed them leftover bread. At first the birds were weary of his presence, but in time they grew comfortable and, Alex thought, friendly with him.
In the early morning and before he went off to school Alex usually saw between twenty to fifty birds massing around his stream.
On this particular morning, there was only one.
Alex carried his bag of bread and was disappointed by his sole visitor. The bird sat by the edge of the stream, its body huddled up against a rock. The bird’s bright yellow feathers looked dull in the early morning light. Rather than offering a pleasant whistle, the bird was strangely quiet.
Alex knew something was wrong even before he stepped out of his apartment’s back door.
The air outside, fresh and pure thanks to the filtration machines located throughout the mega-city, today had a bitter metallic smell. Perhaps, the boy thought, the machines were offline. In a city this industrialized, any problem with them meant smog would quickly settle in.
But the bitter smell wasn’t the result of smog, Alex realized. He never smelled this particular stench before.
Alex quietly approached the bird and laid down the bag of bread. He was only a couple of feet away from her when he stopped and bent down.
“You’re sick,” Alex said.
At the sound of his voice, the bird tried to fly away. She spread her wings and flapped them vigorously. Her motion was clumsy and all she managed to do was spin on the ground in an uneven circle. She gave up after a few pathetic flaps.
In that moment, Alex had his first clear view of her. He let out a scream and fell back.
The bird’s eyes were gone.
Dried blood filled the hallow craters that once held the bird’s eyes. Her right wing remained spread out, offering her some balance. She let out a pathetic shriek. It was all she had left to defend herself.
Alex got to his feet. He stepped away from the bird and, his mind filled with concern, walked to the heavy plexi-glass that made up the edge of the balcony. He looked around to see where the other birds were, fearful they too might be in trouble. As he walked, his mind filled with strange images and electric impulses. He couldn’t quite understand them. He looked past the plexi-glass and at the city.
The bitter metallic smell was gone, replaced by the unmistakable scent of fire. Thick black smoke rose from several buildings around his. Tiny shapes, other dwellers of this concrete canyon, moved about on their balconies. Some ran back and forth like ants scurrying around their nest. Many were perilously close to the balcony edges. Some even climbed over the rails.
They dropped…
Alex heard a bloody scream and a body fell right past him. In the split second she passed, he recognized the jumper as Mrs. Kane. She was a rich elderly woman who lived five floors above his apartment and on the one hundred an
d twentieth floor of the building. There was no chance she’d survive the fall.
More thoughts and impulses filled Alex’s mind. Impulses that were like voices screaming for him to act. He felt like slamming his body against the balcony glass, only to then want to run away from it. He felt like shouting, he felt like whimpering. He wanted to cry… he wanted to hit. No, not just hit, kill—
Abruptly, the voices were stilled.
Alex knew what he had to do.
He reached down and picked up one of the rocks by the stream.
He stared at it, his mind filled with a blood lust the young boy had never, ever felt before.
He held the rock tight in his hand and approached the injured bird.
This is what he needed to do.
Afterwards, he’d follow Mrs. Kane.
4
THE PLANET ONIA
The warship Andora exited the Displacer at a little past 0600 hours and approached Onian orbit.
She was a large ship, one of fifty owned and operated by the Saint Vulcan Corporation. Though a warship, her most recent missions almost exclusively involved cargo hauls. Her last port of call before arriving at Onia was the Vera Epsillon Displacer within the Phaecian Empire. While the relationship between the corporate Epsillon Empire and the religious Phaecians was cooling by the day, it wasn’t frigid enough to hurt the robust trade markets.
Captain David Desjardins stood on the bridge of the ship staring at the enormous view screen before him. It had been many years –approaching ten– since he last gazed at his home world and he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of nostalgia and regret, especially since his visit would be so very brief. The green planet below him was a shining gem, easily one of the most beautiful in the Epsillon Empire and destined, he hoped, to stay that way forever.
“Sir?” the first officer said.