by JE Gurley
As he stood there trying to figure out their next move, the ground trembled violently. He staggered trying to remain on his feet. He caught Cici as she fell and held her until the quaking stopped.
“The planet’s tearing itself apart,” he said. “The power core is getting ready to explode.”
“Is there anything we can do?” she asked. He looked at her. She read his answer on his face. “It seems so senseless to die now after all we’ve been through. I don’t want to die.”
“We’re not dead yet,” he replied. It sounded trite, even to him, but it was the best he could do.
The Ravers pounded on the door. Ivers stood facing it with his laser rifle. Dax doubted the rifle had enough charge left for more than two or three shots. After that … well, he preferred not to dwell on it.
Another, stronger quake struck. It knocked all of them to the ground. Several meters of the cliff broke away and crashed into the canyon.
“If we just stand here, we’ll soon right back where we started, down in the canyon.”
Ivers glanced at him. “We can run, but it won’t do much good. If they break out, they’ll swarm us.” He paused. “I’m hoping the damn planet explodes and gets rid of these hell spawn.”
The ground trembled in waves, each lasting several seconds, but growing successively stronger. It looked as if Ivers was getting his wish.
“This is the UNN cruiser Diligent,” burst over his suit com so loud it hurt his ears.
“Yes!” Ivers shouted. He hit his com link. “This is Sergeant Charles Jackson Ivers of the Abraxas. Where are you, Diligent?”
Dax felt like breaking down in tears at hearing the Diligent. They might still die, but the odds were turning in their favor again.
“Currently in orbit around Loki. We are responding to your message. What is your situation, Sergeant?”
“Critical. We are under attack and a power core is about to explode. It may destroy the moon.”
“Read you, Sergeant. A shuttle should be at your location within minutes.”
He looked at the others. “Tell them to hurry. We might not have minutes.”
“I don’t think they’re going to make it in time,” Cici said.
She clung to Dax to keep from falling. The tremors were now almost continuous. A few hundred meters away, a geyser of dust propelled by hot air erupted from a crack in the dirt. A constant low rumble presaged a major tremor.
“There it is!” Romeo shouted.
Dax followed Romeo’s pointing arm and saw a shuttle two clicks away heading toward them. He did not allow himself to relax. Even if they boarded the shuttle before the Ravers escaped, the entire moon could explode beneath them. In that case, being in the shuttle offered little protection. Even the Diligent could be destroyed.
“How did you get here so fast?” Ivers asked the Diligent’s commander.
“We received your message and broke a few Skip records getting here. We might have gotten here too late. If we detect a planetary-size explosion, I’ll have to break orbit.”
“Roger, Diligent. Understood.”
“Do try though,” Dax added.
The outer airlock door shuddered and bent outward. The Ravers were coming. Dax shoved Cici behind him. When the door flew open, Ivers fired. The Raver fell dead in the doorway blocking it, but the creatures behind it began ripping it to shreds to clear the way. Another head appeared. Ivers killed that creature as well, but his laser was running out of power. He glanced back and saw the shuttle landing twenty meters away.
“Run for it!” he shouted. He fired one last shot and flung down the useless laser.
The four of them ran toward the shuttle. Dax’s injured leg slowed him down. Ivers came up behind him, grabbed him, and threw him over his back. Dax had a good view of two Ravers shooting through the doorway in pursuit. Dax knew they would never make it.
“Put me down, fool,” he shouted at Ivers. “You’ll kill both of us.”
“Shut up,” Ivers yelled back.
Dax felt the heat of laser fire from the shuttle. The powerful laser battery struck both Ravers. They screamed in pain but did not slow their pursuit. Dax turned his head toward the shuttle and saw Cici and Romeo leap inside the open door. A Marine stood just inside the door manning the laser battery. The Marine aimed directly at them. His heart climbed his throat until Ivers jogged to the side. The laser bolt passed them and struck the closest Raver, killing it.
Dust spilled around the shuttle as it began lifting. When they reached the door, Ivers tossed him inside and scrambled aboard after him. Dax hit with a thud that rang his head. The Marine gunner took out the second Raver from ten meters.
“Good shot, Marine,” Ivers said.
As the shuttle lifted, Dax watched more Ravers exit the airlock. They raced around the mesa top searching for their vanished prey. The ground around them cracked and splintered. The planet was shaking itself apart.
“Can’t this thing go any faster?” Dax asked the pilot, a young female Marine.
She grinned and shoved the throttle forward. The shuttle stood on its tail and leaped skyward, throwing Dax against the rear wall. As the hatch closed, he watched the area around the elevator crumble and collapse down the shaft. All but a couple of the Ravers went with it. The two sensed what was happening and raced away from the canyon, quickly disappearing into the dust haze.
Cici reached over and grasped his hand. “We made it,” she whispered.
He nodded. They were safe, but he felt no joy at surviving. Too many people, too many of his friends were still down there on Loki. They and Fortune’s Luck had made their last voyage.
18
Dax lay back on the hospital bed, listening to a blues song. One of the crew was also an aficionado and loaned his player. His leg was elevated and swathed in bandages from where the medic had removed the shrapnel. His face and hands, most of his body, was covered with a thick layer of burn gel. His swollen, slick fingers had a difficult time changing tracks on the player. Until recently, Ivers had been his roommate covered with his own gel, but the indomitable sergeant had sneaked out of sickbay to join his comrades.
He had not been able to watch the power core explode, but Cici had described it to him.
“The ground in a ten-kilometer diameter circle exploded like a nuclear blast. Magma and ash shot skyward for forty kilometers. The shock wave disintegrated KB seconds later and blasted the sandstorm out like a snuffed candle. Lightning danced in the ash cloud for hours. It still hasn’t dissipated. Beneath it, a lake of molten lava is sitting on the surface, glowing like a giant’s red-orange eye.
“The Lokian temple, or whatever it was, is gone with all traces of their technology. The scientists on board are hoping to find another treasure trove, but I made them aware of the Ravers. As long as there is a chance some of them survived, the U.N. General Council is placing Loki under quarantine.”
Dax was fine with that. In the end, the Lokians had won their won by losing it. Cici would return to Earth, the Navy would reassign Ivers. Romeo asked about shipping out with Dax, but Dax had no answer for him. Fortune’s Luck was gone. He had neither ship nor prospects of getting a new one. He was too old to start over. Maybe he would sign on a research vessel as a mate, a ship searching for the original home of the Huresh. Humanity had encountered two alien races, both too late. If more aliens were out there, he would like to be among those that found them.
He had a couple of questions he would like to ask them, like why they had wiped out the Lokians and then abandoned their colony. Who knows? With luck, he might single-handedly start an interplanetary war. Wouldn’t Ivers love that?
He lay back with his eyes closed listening to a Twentieth Century bluesman named B.B. King sing a tune called The Thrill is Gone.
Not yet, it isn’t, B.B., he thought. He dared someone to come in and disturb him while he was in his zone.
The End
Read on for a free sample of The Tau Ceti Diversion
CHAPTER 1
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br /> Karic’s mind reeled. He looked again at the image of the Starburst that rotated slowly above the interface projectors and gripped the chill metal of the console to steady himself. His mind groped through the data as he tried to understand how their meticulously planned voyage, his state-of-the-art spaceship had found themselves in danger. The high-resolution digital image of Starburst, assembled only moments ago from pictures taken by a small probe as it wove around the ship, was splashed with red, orange and yellow highlights. All those bright colors — superimposed on the dark grey and black images of the metal hull — were visual aids showing estimates of structural damage.
Translucent interface icons floated above the console, bobbing slowly out of the way then drifting back to position as the virtual Starburst continued to rotate. Beyond them, the big screens that lined the room were filled with diagnostic data. Over sixteen percent of their systems were on backup, their primary processes having failed outright. The failures were ship-wide. On account of the immense timescales of interstellar travel, the Starburst had been designed with multiple levels of redundancy, but this failure rate was way too high. A power unit on a hatchway and two remote systems had failed to respond to the AI at all. Taken in conjunction with the deterioration of the outer structure, it was all damning. The skin crawled on the back of his skull.
Karic, the sub-commander of the Starburst and Lieutenant Ryal, the officer responsible for the fusion systems, were the only members of the Starburst’s crew out of suspension. The Shipcom had roused them seven months early to investigate the damage. The other officers and crew remained in long-term stasis. They might as well be blocks of stone for all the help they could offer. He had to rouse them all. He needed every scientist, engineer and tech he had to save the ship, the mission … and their lives.
Karic took a deep breath and tried to quell the rushing flow of his thoughts. The air of the command deck was cold, sharp with trapped odors of plastic and ozone. He leaned back in the command chair, conscious of the quiet stillness, the empty workstations and darkened consoles. The flexible smart-metal of the chair molded around his back. Its chill had faded now, internal sensors heating it to match his body temperature. The silvered gleam of the fixtures was stark against the matte grey of the polymer-coated floor, and the curve of the hull beneath him was hardly noticeable here, on the outer level of the habitat ring.
The low hum of the interface projectors seemed loud in the silence, a rising counterpoint to the soft whisper of circulation fans.
Communication with Earth had failed.
They were alone.
The familiar solidity of the command center, its high-tech alloy and smooth, functional design, seemed a brittle thing now, like a polished facade concealing the unseen tension of stressed metal before its rupture.
“Shipcom. Begin the emergency revival process,” said Karic. That would revive the thirty crew and six other officers in suspension, including Commander Janzen Davis.
“Unable to comply,” responded the Shipcom in its flat, feminine voice.
His mouth went dry.
“Give reason for inability to initiate emergency revival sequence?”
“Radiation levels are currently above the upper limit for programmed revival risk factors.”
Karic’s heart leapt into a sprint, a flood of adrenalin threatening to swamp his brain.
The revival process was tricky. The suspension fields had to be reduced precisely, otherwise severe damage could occur at the cellular level. Ambient radiation could cause the fields to surge. He must have completed his own revival sequence before the radiation levels exceeded the preset danger levels.
That meant those levels were climbing!
“Idiot!” shouted Karic, slamming his hand onto the console.
“Please repeat the command,” replied the Shipcom, unable to interpret the context. Despite the advances in AI, in the 22nd century when Starburst was launched, they still remained only expert systems responding from a vast array of human-input decision trees. Syntax was crucial, and instructions had to be precise.
“Display the sensor feeds. Trend the radiation levels.”
A multi-colored graphic appeared on one of the screens. The radiation levels had been rising fast over the last few hours, primarily X-rays.
“Oh my God.”
Neither the officers’ nor crew’s stasis decks would be safe in a radiation surge. The protocol was clear. All personnel had to be moved into the central hold. The big storage space was on the ship’s axis, inside the habitat ring. There they would be shielded by the habitat ring’s whole rotating mass as well as by the forward deflectors. But locked in suspension, none of the officers or crew could be moved. A surge would kill them all.
A vein in his temple throbbed.
It could take hours to bring someone out of suspension. If he waited — and the levels started to peak — there would not be enough time to move them. But if he brought them out of suspension now — overriding the presets — then he could be putting all of them at risk, since they were more vulnerable to the radiation in the revival process. His thoughts flew to Mara, then guiltily included his ex-wife, Evelle. The thought of Mara lying dead tore at him.
Karic had never felt about anyone the way he had felt about Mara. Their affair during the heady days of commissioning had been a whirlwind of excitement, technical triumphs, and snatched moments of passion. Only when it was over … when it was too late, did he understand how he felt. He never would have believed in those early days that a twist of fate would put his ex-lover and ex-wife on the same voyage.
Karic viewed the radiation levels critically. No one knew the suspension system better than he did. At the current levels, he was confident the revival would be safe. But how quickly could those levels change?
He scrolled through the system icons and isolated the computer controlling the crew’s suspension equipment. He flicked the icon toward the main screens. Data flared to life. It was all functioning normally.
“What is the crew revival time?”
“Two hours,” replied the Shipcom.
His hands clawed at the floating icons, drilling down to the systems controlling the officer’s suspension equipment, completely separate from the crew’s. Not for the first time, he cursed the lack of computing power in the dedicated systems. It would take three hours for the six officers. Anything could happen in that time.
He reached for a glowing red icon and dragged it into the center of the field. With a touch, it blossomed into a virtual keyboard. A message hovered over the input field in swollen red letters.
INPUT CODE TO DISABLE PRESETS
He grew lightheaded as the implications of the moment weighed on him. His decision now would change everything. Karic’s fingers teased open the smart seam of his flight fatigue to find the St. Christopher medal on his chest. Gripping it between his thumb and forefinger, his thumb circled the smooth, ancient metal of the backing in anxious circles. The superstitious affectation helped him to relax. Karic tried to broaden his thinking, letting his mind fall into a free-associative state, searching for any other way out of this. Starburst was en route to Tau Ceti. Less than a year out. They had completed their original mission to Epsilon Eridani, then diverted to the small G-class star system, twelve lightyears from Earth. As the moments stretched out, no flash of inspiration came to save him. The evidence was clear, and reviving the whole crew was the prudent solution. Eventually, the pressure to do something became unbearable. He let go of the medal. The seam of his fatigues slithered closed, the two halves writhing against each other until the collar tightened against his neck.
Something danced at the corner of his vision.
“No. Not now!” Relaxing his mind had been a mistake.
Karic felt the fugue coming. In the fugue state, his mind would slide into a dream, while externally he presented as catatonic — immobile and unresponsive for up to hours. It was a legacy of altered genetics inherited from his grandfather. No one knew abo
ut the flaw, and it was vital it stayed that way. Each time he roused from suspension it seemed to be getting worse. Increasingly, he was using drugs to control it.
He reached for his pocket, his fingers clutching for one of the stim-stabs he always kept there, but he was too slow.
The unstoppable wave of the rising fugue state engulfed him.
Karic’s mind expanded into space, stretching molecule-thin as it sought to fill the immensity. A distant sound, like a rushing river, roared through him. The stars boiled and the fabric of space hummed with energy as it shifted and stretched. He sensed awareness — a vast darkness, like a hand searching blindly, groping toward them. The fingers stretched like stilettos, each a razored knife seeking a fatal point of entry …
“Awaiting Code,” said the Shipcom.
Karic snapped out of his mental fugue.
He looked at his wrist. Twenty-six minutes! A trickle of cold sweat ran down the inside of his uniform. He put the stim-tab into his mouth and crunched it to powder, wincing at the bitterness. His heart began to thump faster, a new clarity flooding through him. He smoothed down his short, wavy light brown hair and tried to focus.
Karic expanded the 3-D graphic of the Starburst, zooming into the micro-structure of the ship. The external surface of the main habitat ring had perished, particularly at the rear of the ship, which was not shielded by the forward deflectors. A cold feeling settled into the pit of Karic’s stomach. The stasis chamber for the main crew — thirty men and women — and the biodome were back there. His original design had included additional radiation shielding for the crew’s chamber, but the expensive shielding had been removed by the ExploreCorp Executive in a cost-cutting exercise.
It was a testament to her designers that the electronics, particularly the Shipcom, were holding up so well. Only the protection afforded by the forward deflectors had prevented wholesale systems failure.
Swallowing down the sick feeling in his stomach, Karic typed out the memorized code.