Nearspace Trilogy

by Sherry D. Ramsey

  The scouts she’d sent out to attempt a trace on the drive signatures of the Chron ships came back with little helpful information. They’d followed signature traces that led to the vicinity of the Split, but that didn’t make sense. The Split, a malformed wormhole that few pilots would even attempt to traverse, opened into an uninhabited system, GI182. This system had been well-explored for years, since the Split didn’t afford an easily traversable connection, and every wormhole explorer out there would have loved to be the one to find a viable alternative. It seemed unlikely that GI182 held an undiscovered wormhole from Chron space.

  I’d never traversed the Split myself, but I knew Luta had made the skip at least three times—possibly more, during the shadowy years when I wasn’t always entirely sure what my sister was up to.

  I hit my implant and called the bridge.

  “Commander Drake,” Linna answered. “What can I do for you, Admiral?”

  “Would you find out where Viss and Yuskeya are now?” I asked her. When I’d left the Cheswick to go and meet Regina, they’d gone to book temporary accommodations until Luta and the Tane Ikai returned. They’d both experienced the Split firsthand, so they might have valuable input for me. If they weren’t sick of me by now. They deserved a break, but I needed them.

  “I’ll ping them,” Linna promised. “What’s the message?”

  I considered. “Ask if they’ll join me for dinner in my quarters,” I said. “Something’s come up and I really need to speak with them.”

  “Direct reply to you?”

  “Yes, thanks, Linna.”

  I spent a little more time perusing the reports, but Yuskeya messaged me promptly. “Thanks for the invitation, Admiral,” she said. “I’m assuming this is more than just social.”

  “I’m sorry, Commander, I know you thought you were rid of me for a while.”

  Yuskeya smiled. “Admiral, please.”

  “Well, I could use your opinions. I promise I won’t keep you long this evening.”

  “No need to apologize. We’ll see you then.”

  I made sure the dinner would be worth their while, ordering an Italian pasta and sausage dish I knew Yuskeya liked, salad, fresh-baked pano, and cheesecake for dessert from one of the station restaurants. It arrived, hot and delicious, at the same time as Viss and Yuskeya, so we sat down to eat right away. We talked through the meal.

  “You’ve both been through the Split with Luta,” I began once we’d loaded our plates.

  They nodded. Viss said, “And I have a bit of previous experience as well.”

  Yuskeya raised her eyebrows at him over a bite of pasta, but said nothing.

  “All right. Here’s the thing,” I said, forking salad. “Fleet Commander Holles put a trace on the drive signatures of some of the Chron ships, to try and figure out how they’re arriving in Nearspace. The attack on FarView didn’t originate through the wormholes we know about. Not the one in Tau Ceti, and not the one the Tane Ikai has traversed.”

  “We’ve found another entry point?” Yuskeya asked, pausing with her hand on her wineglass.

  I shook my head. “Unfortunately, no. The sigs seem to lead to the Split, but they haven’t been able to find anything corresponding in GI182.”

  “Probably just dissipated,” Viss said. “I’m assuming the Protectorate ships didn’t go through the Split themselves? So, by the time they got someone to go in from Eridani—”

  I shook my head. “One of the scouts actually did go through,” I said. Viss looked surprised. I nodded. “I know. No-one does it lightly. But they got the go-ahead from Regina. He came right out in GI182, and there was no trail there to pick up.”

  Yuskeya frowned. “There can’t be an operant moon or an activator in GI182. There probably isn’t a better-mapped system in Nearspace. Everyone would love to find a hidden wormhole there. Surely any Chron artifact in that system would have been discovered.”

  “I know. What do you think is going on there?” I asked. “That’s why you’re here. I need ideas, and I thought getting them from someone with actual experience of the Split would make sense.”

  Viss frowned as he chewed thoughtfully. “We have readings that put them around this end of the Split, but not the other. Only two possibilities come to mind.”

  “They exit through the bad side?” Yuskeya asked. “There’s nowhere else to go inside the wormhole.”

  Viss pointed his fork at her. “That’s one. The other is that they’re ‘ghosting’ a wormhole with an operant device and an activator drive. Making a second wormhole that mirrors it but comes out elsewhere. In this case, near the Split.”

  “But like Yuskeya said, there’s no operant moon in GI182. Or here, at this end of the Split. Unless it’s invisible, and in that case, we might as well give up now,” I said.

  “They’re not ghosting the Split,” Viss said, tapping the tines of his fork on his plate. “They’re ghosting a wormhole on the other end, and making it open near the Split. Or maybe even sharing the terminal point.”

  “Is that even possible?” I’d read the reports on the Corvid’s ghosting technology, but I had to admit I hadn’t absorbed every detail.

  Viss shrugged. “Have to ask a Corvid that.”

  Yuskeya looked thoughtful. “Didn’t the Corvids say that using that ghosting technology caused wormholes to have problems, become unstable or changed in different ways? Time effects and other things? Maybe that’s why the Split is the way it is. Maybe the Chron ruined it long ago.”

  Viss nodded. “And we already avoid the Split because it’s an unknown, and anyone who’s gone through the bad side has never returned. Nothing scares us like the unknown. They could be pretty certain of not running into anyone around either end of the Split in Nearspace.”

  “Or maybe Yuskeya’s right, and it is the bad side,” I said. “There could be a Chron base in some system you might reach by sliding off that side of the Split, and we’d never know it.”

  “I think it’s entirely possible,” Viss said. “It might not even be hard to do—just let the ship slide off the safe side and you’re through, right? But it’s a damn hard thing to investigate or verify.”

  “Because who’s going to take the chance?” Yuskeya finished his thought. “The Protectorate wouldn’t order someone to try it. It could be a suicide move.”

  I nodded. “I don’t think Regina would approve such a mission, even if someone volunteered. Not without a lot more evidence that it would be survivable.”

  “Well, I’ve got skip data from at least two runs through the Split in the Tane Ikai’s computer,” Viss volunteered. “I’ve never really had the chance to study it, but it’s there. Could be something in it that would help.”

  “But that’s not accessible until Luta gets back,” Yuskeya said. “Any point in going out there and just seeing if there’s anything new to see?”

  “I’m not taking the Cheswick into the Split,” I said automatically, then laughed ruefully at myself. “See, it’s a knee-jerk reaction.”

  “Well, I didn’t mean we had to go into it,” Viss said. “But maybe go out there and look at it with different eyes, see if there’s something we haven’t noticed up until now. Send a data-collector probe through.”

  I set down my fork. “An excellent idea. And since you say ‘we,’ I assume you mean you’ll come along for the ride?”

  Viss and Yuskeya shared a glance. “I don’t really have a choice, Admiral, do I?” Yuskeya asked with a half-smile. “I’m still a Protectorate officer.”

  “I’ll go where she goes,” Viss said, “but yes, I’d actually like to come along. We could take readings that I could compare with the data on the Tane Ikai when we get it.”

  “Except that we’re not going into the wormhole,” I reminded him.

  Viss laughed. “Not yet.”

  I TOLD REGINA our plan the next day and filed a survey route to the Split. We’d stay only a day. Earlier that morning word had arrived of a Chron incursion into Beta Hydri and an att
ack on Damyadi Station there. There was no explanation for how the Chron had managed to get to that system, although it gave credence to Viss’s theory about the use of the Corvid ghosting technology.

  “I don’t know how we stop them if that’s the case,” Regina said over a secure connection. I was in my office, alone, and she in her hospital room on FarView. “You didn’t hear that from me, Lanar, but I don’t know what else to do. It’s the Chron war all over again, and even if we had the same technology, how do you stop an enemy who can appear anywhere, anytime?”

  “We could find out more about that technology from the Corvids,” I suggested. “Maybe there’s a way to block it, and we just don’t know.”

  “It would be worth asking.” She tugged at the silver lock of hair agitatedly, pulling it down from its loose coil and winding it around her finger. “I’ll see to that. We need to stop the Chron getting into Nearspace. They’ve got us on the defensive, and you and I both know that’s not the way to win a war. But we can’t risk making an offensive move, either, no matter what Mauronet would like to see.”

  “We don’t even know enough about their space to know where to go,” I agreed. “But maybe with the communications relay set up to the Relidae and Professor Brindlepaw we could remedy that. If we pool our knowledge it could benefit everyone.”

  She nodded. “I’m working on that. We need all the information we can get.”

  “Okej. And maybe we’ll get some answers at the wormhole.” For once, I wanted to end this conversation with Regina as quickly as possible. It was difficult to look at the despair in her eyes and know that she might see the same thing mirrored in mine.

  Viss and Yuskeya met me on the bridge, eager to go and glad to have something constructive to do.

  From FarView, it was only a matter of hours to reach the Split. Despite the brief transit, the crew seemed on edge; perhaps they thought I was planning a secret foray into the dangerous wormhole.

  From the outside, the Split looks like any other wormhole—a darker splotch against space’s ebony backdrop. Despite all my years in the Protectorate, I’d never skipped through the Split. It wasn’t forbidden—it was simply so dangerous that no-one attempted it without a very good reason. It was almost always a better idea to go around the long way. I knew that Luta had traversed it three times in her life, and there was a tiny, deeply-buried seed of envy in me for that.

  Not that I had any desire to take the Cheswick into that dark eye at the moment.

  We arrived and took up a stationary hold a little distance from the wormhole, and Viss and Yuskeya joined me on the bridge. If we initiated the Ford-Roman drive the wormhole would become stable and open in front of us like a doorway. Instead it was simply a dark blot in space. If you looked closely enough with the screen magnified, you might see a swirl of darker tendrils of matter within it, but that was all.

  Viss and Yuskeya had a conference with my chief science officer at her station, setting up scans. Although Viss had said he hadn’t had a chance to study the readings from the Tane Ikai’s skips through the Split in any detail, he’d obviously reviewed them to some extent. He was detailing to Lieutenant-Commander Alice Payette the data he wanted to collect, and I caught myself marveling again at the sheer range of the man’s knowledge. It was a shame he’d never become a full member of the Protectorate. Or maybe it wasn’t, I mused. It might be better for us to have the benefit of his expertise when we needed it, and be able to call on him to work outside the lines when the necessity arose.

  After the scans were started, things got . . . boring, fast. Waiting while data is collected isn’t the most stimulating part of being in the Protectorate.

  It didn’t stay boring for long.

  “Ship on the long range,” Linna Drake reported. “Coming from the direction of FarView.”

  I swung around to face her. “Can we identify them?”

  After a pause, she said, “I have a drive signature. It’s a Protectorate vessel.”

  I felt some of the tension drain out of my shoulders. “Particulars?”

  “Working.”

  I flicked the display on my screen to show the blip of the approaching ship.

  “It’s the NPV Dorland,” Drake said. “Admiral Antar Mauronet, commanding.”

  I frowned. Unlikely that Regina would send Mauronet, of all people, out here to join me. So, what was he doing here? I didn’t have to wait long to find out. As soon as the Dorland drew close enough, he messaged me.

  “Admiral,” I acknowledged when I opened the connection. Mauronet’s face filled my screen, looking smug. “What can I do for you?”

  “Just here to assist, Admiral,” he said with an insincere smile.

  “The Cheswick is collecting wormhole data,” I told him. “Not really a lot we need assistance with.”

  Admiral Mauronet cocked his head and regarded me. “Whatever you say, Admiral. I suspect you’re here for a lot more than that. And the Dorland stands ready to help.”

  “You still think I’m heading off on some secret mission to attack the Chron, don’t you? This obsession is going to hurt your career, Mauronet.”

  “I’m not concerned about my career, Admiral Mahane. I’m concerned with the safety and security of Nearspace.”

  “So you’re following me around? Not the most productive use of your time.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that.”

  I shrugged. This was going nowhere. “All right, Admiral. Stay and observe as long as you like. Just don’t interfere with the wormhole.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, and I signalled to the comm officer to close the channel.

  “Is he as crazy as I think he is?” Linna Drake asked me.

  “I don’t know how good your imagination is, Commander,” I told her. “But I’m guessing the answer is yes.”

  MAURONET BACKED THE Dorland off to the opposite side of the wormhole and sat in silence. Every time I glanced out the viewscreen and saw him sitting there I grew more annoyed, but I kept it to myself. If he wanted to sit there and waste time, that was his call. I updated my logs with our activity and his message, and tried to find something else to do.

  After a couple of hours, Viss messaged me. I’d gone down to engineering for a chat about wormholes and ghosting technology with my chief engineer.

  “Scans are finished,” Viss said. “Payette and I would like to do some comparisons with the readings the scouts collected. Then later, maybe we can fire up the Ford-Roman drive and—”

  “We’re not going through there.”

  He laughed. “No. I was going to say collect some more data with the mouth open, that’s all. Then when your sister’s back, we can get the comparison data.”

  Yuskeya said in the background, “We should try to get one of the Corvids to come and look at this. They know more about wormholes than any of us, right? And ghosting, and operant moons, and all the rest of it.”

  “I already spoke to Regina about that. She’s going to see if we can pry one of them away from the repairs on their station. I’m coming back to the bridge now.”

  Once there, I told Linna we’d be running the skip drive but on no account skipping.

  She nodded to the viewscreen where the Dorland hung, presumably watching us. “Are we going to tell our friend our plan?” she asked me with a straight face.

  I shook my head and gave her an evil grin. “Let’s let him freak out a little first, and then—” I broke off. Something out the front viewscreen had grabbed my attention.

  Without warning, the wormhole’s dark eye grew a bright, flickering edge, a thin glow that quickly brightened to white-hot. Glowing plasma streamed in arcing tendrils from the edges toward the centre.

  “Did someone start the Ford-Roman drive?” I asked. I hadn’t given any such order.

  “No, sir,” Linna Drake said sharply. “It’s not us.”

  “Is it the Dorland?”

  “Negative. Something’s coming through the wormhole. No tracer ping.”
<
br />   I was on my feet. “Back us off, Commander. I want distance between us and that wormhole.” If no tracer had come through, that meant it wasn’t a Nearspace ship on the other side. We had strict protocols to ensure that ships never entered opposite ends of a wormhole at the same time, or would exit and collide with someone else about to enter.

  The Cheswick veered off and I clutched at my chair to keep my balance. I glimpsed the other ship moving as well and wondered if Mauronet realized what was happening. “Engage shields. Open a channel to the Dorland,” I barked at comms. Damn Mauronet for making me look out for his azeno when he wasn’t even supposed to be here.

  When the channel opened, I said shortly, “No tracer ping, Admiral.”

  “Were you expecting this?” he demanded.

  “Don’t be an ass. Close the channel,” I ordered comms in disgust, and left him without another word. If he couldn’t let go of his absurd conspiracy obsession for one minute—

  A Chron ship, spidery and black and utterly deadly looking, emerged from the wormhole at speed. It banked left when it saw the Cheswick, swerved right and saw the Dorland, and turned nose up ninety degrees away from us. Mauronet’s ship darted after it in pursuit.

  “Go after it,” I ordered, but Linna Drake said, “Wormhole’s not closing, Admiral.”

  “Belay that order.” If the wormhole hadn’t closed when the Chron ship came through, then something else was transiting. Another Chron ship? “Back us off from the wormhole another fifty klicks.”

  While we moved, the centre of the wormhole continued to arc and writhe, and then the second Chron ship came through. This one reacted more quickly to our presence, launching an energy weapon even as it bore down on us. The shields flared as it impacted, but it was a weak hit. The Chron ship careened off after its partner and the Dorland.