by Martin HC
“The last system in which the ship was seen, it's close to the centre of the other sightings, so would make the best place to camp up while we wait for any further reports.”
“Very well Mr Brice, I will inform you when we arrive in system.”
A Nasty Introduction
“Which system was this in?” Fleet Commander Ado Babaidou demanded to know.
“The Borei system sir,” his aide answered. “There is nothing there of strategic value, a mining outpost and a fleet resupply station.”
“Then why infiltrate a server point in that system?” he asked himself aloud. “We can conclude from this news that it is not a Mergence ship, but if the Mergence were not aware of its presence, they will be now.”
“Which means we are now against the clock sir,” the aide put forth.
Babaidou of the Ferren Republic commanded a hunter fleet which had tracked the stealth vessel now for over a year, following it deep into Mergence space. When the spies reports made there way back to him telling of the facility's infiltration and sabotage, the news was very welcoming, it confirmed the ship was not of Mergence origin.
It did however reopen the question, if not a Mergence ship then that would only leave the Sciesin Protectorate, which was not the answer he knew as they did not have the technology base for this level of stealth.
So if not any of those, then who? Was there another major player in the background, with technology beyond their own. This line of thought concerned Babaidou and it was an unknown he didn't want to have to contemplate, the ghost ship eluded the Ferren man's attempts to capture it repeatedly and eventually disappeared, only for their agents to report its presence again in Mergence space.
“Inform the fleet, we will be making our way to the region immediately,” his aide nodded her understanding.
“Anything else, sir?”
“Yes, speak with our syndicate contacts in the area and triple the reward for information, they must resupply somewhere, I want to know where,” he commanded. Typically, he didn't like to use sources from the criminal underworld, they were often unreliable and completely without honour but there was no more time to waste.
“At once sir,” she confirmed before turning and leaving the flag deck.
He watched her as she left, she was very pleasing to his eye, of average height for a female and toned, he would have her sent to his suite later he decided, it'd been a few days after all, his favourite hadn't proven very robust the last time and was still recovering in the medical bay, she'd forgotten her place and tried to stop him from continuing, which only angered him.
Babaidou had to calm himself now, remembering the woman's disobedience only served to compound his tension, maybe this new one would prove more resilient, at least until his favourite was fit enough again to re-attend his needs.
The pains they would endure was worth the honour he knew.
New Beginnings
Haydn and Tiralyn followed Damon through the doorway and into the Ophelia's conference room. After Damon's coughing and convulsing subsided he stood up straight, and turned with a fury towards Haydn, although a little lacking in depth given how long he'd spent twitching on the floor.
“What the he...ll was that?” he coughed out, just loud enough to be considered shouting.
“That was a jump bridge,” Tiralyn answered. “We're back on the Ophelia and in your conference room.”
The answer staggered him, and he had to think for a second before answering, with the occasional chest spasm.
“This looks like my conferenhhgrf room but it's different, the walls are all wrongggg and the colour's not the same, what's a jump bridggggge?”
“A jump bridge is a trans-dimensional hyper accelerated rupture betwe...”
“It's a transporter,” Haydn spoke loudly, interrupting Tiralyn's answer.
“It's not a transporter,” she came back. “A transporter destroys matter and rebuilds it somewhere else using similar but different building blocks, effectively killing and then cloning a person elsewhere.”
Damon's expression was a mix between disbelief, confusion and recovering pain, so he didn't interrupt as Haydn then explained further, ignoring the girl.
“The jump bridge connects two points in different places to each other, opening a doorway allowing you to step through, transporting you from point A to point B.”
“Well why didn't you tell me that before and trick me into stepping through?”
“It's best if I show you,” Haydn answered the man before looking at and instructing the girl. “Tiralyn, open a door back to the med room we came from, then close it after five seconds.”
She did as asked, slowly a disc of light at chest height formed from nowhere and began to expand in all directions. After reaching a half metre in diameter, a hole in its centre began to form with it, expanding with the boundary of light. As it hit the floor it smoothed out, forming a seamless line and continued until the hole in the centre caught up, it turned a ghostly white and became a doorway into the room they came from. The doorway wavered in the air and the room beyond seemed to hold no solid shape, it sent a chill through Damon's spine.
“Would you have stepped through that?” Haydn asked
“No.”
“And that's why.”
“That's not to say I'm happy about anything, why does this place look different to mine.”
“We had to repair a lot,” Tiralyn told him. “So I believed it best to tear down and rebuild the Ophelia internally, the alloys are slightly different which is why the walls now have a bluish tinge to them.”
“You rebuilt my ship, how?” he asked quietly.
“We have pretty advanced repair systems,” Haydn answered.
“Your ship's internal structure is now forty seven percent stronger, and the crew space has also been increased,” the girl chirped away happily.
“And where are my crew?”
“Your crew are in the bridge,” Haydn said as he stepped into the corridor towards the bridge door, Damon made to follow then stopped, examining the boundaries of the doorway.
“It's just a standard doorway, you won't get transported somewhere random if you step through, I promise.”
Damon composed himself, then stepped through into the corridor, it had the same bluish tinge to it and there was also one more door in the command deck's corridor than there was before, a door he would be sure to investigate later, if all was as explained.
Relief washed over him after he entered his bridge. Serena, Jill and Brenn were all there beginning to stand as one, both the AI and the woman talking at the same time, the talking ceased immediately though, a result of Haydn and Tiralyn following slowly through behind him.
“Are you all alright?” he asked.
“We're fine,” Serena answered, “just relieved to have you back with us.”
“Were you hurt?”
“No, Jill is fine and Brenn's feeling sorry for himself, other than that we're all good.”
Brenn gave a pained grunt and Jill smiled tauntingly at Haydn, who stared back with irritation, remembering her previous attempt to jump him.
“They're also repairing the damage to the ship and I'm tied into it now, I can see what's happening.”
Damon recognised the general shape of his bridge, it was his bridge he could see and yet so much had changed beginning with he noticed, the blue tinge in the walls. The room was also larger and there were fewer terminals, none where they were before.
“Tied into what?”
“All of it Damon, they're networking everything and giving me control of it all.”
“Hold on, is that a good idea, is that safe? You know why it was never networked in the first place.”
“Yes, but they've done something, I feel different now, stronger.”
“Why are you networking my ship? If we get hacked, they could gain control of any system.”
“Not with the firewalls we've built, the networking improves efficiency all round, and ar
e secure against anything you'll ever face, except me of course. Serena's systems have also been significantly strengthened, she will act as a countermeasure against any digital attack,” the girl told the older captain. “She can also access and use any ship system, multiple simultaneously actually. Serena had also already moved passed her base limitations and begun to move into the region of AI awareness, so I've expanded her programming.”
“Yes, I've noticed some odd behaviour from her in the last few years, I didn't know what to think of it.”
“I'm not sure if you knew this Damon, but she has been alive now for some time, so I've added some programming and processing upgrades which will help her learn.”
“That's unreal,” he stated.
“It's real, and there's more,” Haydn told him.
“More?”
“The ship's engine core is in the process of being rebuilt, we're constructing an antimatter generator which will power the new star drive, the Ophelia will be capable of achieving faster speeds than before and your defensive weapons will reach further with a harder punch,” Tiralyn finished.
“Why would you do this for us? We fired on you.”
“It was an accident, and we felt terrible after seeing the child, we needed to make it up somehow and figured this would work best,” Haydn told him, shrugging his shoulders as he finished.
Damon was in a state of genuine shock. They were rebuilding everything, making the Ophelia better than before in every way, the antimatter core itself was worth more than several modern industrial freighters, it was also highly classified.
“How did you get the technology to build an antimatter core, it's Mergence tech, how did you get it?”
“Mergence?” Haydn queried.
“The Exelseon Mergence,” Serena added.
“Ah, right, the Exelseon guys, well we're building one inside your ship in deep space, so you can take it from me when I say what we have makes the antimatter core look like a caveman's fire.”
Damon didn't doubt that, so far these two had proven they were in control of technologies far in advance of anything ever developed by any known government.
“I don't know what to say, what could I even hope to give back in return.”
“Don't need anything, like we said, just wanted to make it right,” Haydn stopped in thought. “Actually, a map would be nice.”
“A map?”
“Yes, a map.”
“You have all this and no maps?”
“We have maps, but nothing to reference, where to go for this, where to go for that, and every time I go to a space station or colony somewhere I get arrested or chased, the Mergence as you call them even arrested me for nothing the other week.”
“I would say they're after your ship, if they keep chasing you,” Serena told him.
“We figured as much, but it's really annoying all the same.”
“We can give you the places to go for the things you might need, if it helps,” Damon added.
“That would be great, really need some help in that area.”
“What are you needing?”
“The usual, books, soap, entertainment, information on the Darkspace.”
This stopped the conversation dead, the silence chilled the room and a tension filled the lack of sound, a tension that no-one broke to answer.
“Why does everyone always freeze up, run away or start ranting when we bring this up?” Haydn asked aloud. “No-one, and I mean no-one, has ever bothered to explain anything to us about that place.”
“Why would you want to go there? What could you possibly be looking for that would take you there?” Damon asked them.
He sighed. “We don't know yet, we've picked up a signal from the region which Tiralyn recognises but doesn't really understand, and we have to check it out. Everyone seems scared of the place, so obviously we don't want to go in there blind. We're just trying to find out what we can.”
“Again, why would you even want to? What good could come of it?” Damon repeated.
“We're not from here. We're trying to find our way back home, and all we have so far is this signal. Why is that so bad, why would it be so wrong to go look?”
“Have you ever heard of the Fall?” Jill asked sarcastically, up until this point she hadn't spoken a word.
“Yes, it's been shouted at me, but never explained.”
“The Fall refers to the Desian empire's collapse, they fell apart after fighting whoever was in there,” Damon told him.
“Well, we're not looking for a fight, just a conversation. Is there anyone you know who I can talk to?” there was almost an element of desperation in the way he asked.
Damon did know someone, a collector of sorts but he didn't like to deal with those types, it would mean travelling to the Grinder, a place he would typically avoid unless absolutely necessary. He could say no, but after looking around his bridge and thinking of his new upgrades, his conscience wouldn't allow it.
“I do know a place and of a person within that place, it would mean however being very careful, she's not a particularly nice person and would kill you if she could gain anything from it,” Damon stopped to think. “Serena will update your maps with the information you need before we leave, I'll ask around once we're there but I don't want to be involved in this past that.”
“We understand, that's already more than we could have asked for.”
The Grinder
In deep space and on the outskirts of the fringe territories, they approached a space station with more traffic around it than you would expect from any standard trading system. The station was a dark steel grey and immense, no station Haydn had been to yet was as large as this one.
“Who built this? It's huge.”
“Its a relic from the Desian era, they built everything huge, back then size meant victory, bigger stations, bigger ships, bigger guns, bigger everything,” Damon always thought the constructs of the Desians were big, colourless and monstrously ugly things. “It's controlled by cartels now and called the Grinder.”
“Why don't they build like that anymore?”
“Everything used nuclear fusion cores, rocket propulsion, inefficient laser and kinetic weapons, so the ships and structures built around these weapons, engines and reactors had to be big,” Damon answered.
“Newer technology took away the necessity for large-scale construction,” Serena continued the explanation. “We developed nuclear plasma power and weaponised that, a plasma lance will burn through standard steel armour like paper, so even the armour of ships was a contributing factor to the shrinking effect, new alloys meant more exotic materials and then we discovered the star drive, a hybrid faster than light gravity drive which could be built at a fraction of the size, which of course jumps us into the blaze.”
“The Blaze?”
“When we use a star drive, the entire surface of the ship and anything else exposed to space looks like it's burning, like flying through a fire storm. Hurts the eyes and causes dizzy sickness after a few minutes of watching it.” Serena told him suggestively, as if it was something he'd always seen but never really put together. Getting nothing from him she continued. “The Ferrens actually call blaze space the firestorm, the Mergence and Sciesin call it slip space though, they're not very imaginative. How can you have never seen the blaze?”
“Everything's a cool blue and purple with us, it doesn't touch the ship and nothing's on fire. I watch it for hours sometimes,” Haydn answered her non committally, seemingly more interested in the space station they approached. “How big is that place?”
“Seven hundred kilometres long, and fifty in diameter.”
As they approached, he could see its eerie grey hull, artificial light in the darkness of deep space lit up areas here and there. Scars, blemishes and a patchwork of sectioned steel brought a certain character to it all. Back home this would be undreamed of, and the very concept of constructing something this large would be laughed at.
There were lots of docki
ng entrances for ships of all sizes, but most obvious was the massive hole at the end of the giant cylinder. It was at least three quarters the diameter of the station and seemed to run from end to end, giving Haydn the impression of a giant pipe.
“That's a big tunnel,” Haydn said to himself.
“The warships of the past like I said were huge, twenty kilometres in length, some even as big as thirty and this was a resupply station for them, they would also build ships here,” Serena explained.