Starship to Demeter (Starship Portals Book 1)

by K. D. Lovgren

  Starship to Demeter

  Starship Portals Book One

  K.D. Lovgren

  Grey Kestrel Press

  Copyright © 2019 by K.D. Lovgren

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover design: Jeff Brown Graphics

  Editors: Emmie Mears of Chimera Editing, Keith Morrill of Little City Editing

  To be notified of new releases and future books in the Starship Portals series, sign up here: www.kdlovgren.com

  For adventurers all

  Contents

  1. Dark Phase

  2. Sextant

  3. Dyads

  4. Rai

  5. Fallout

  6. Interregnum

  7. Restraint

  8. Circuitry

  9. Triad

  10. Echoes

  11. Protocol

  12. Endymion

  13. Bleedthrough

  14. Hunkakaga

  15. The Ocean

  Note to Readers

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by K.D. Lovgren

  1

  Dark Phase

  The trick with the portal was, it wasn’t always visible. To be more precise, it wasn’t always there.

  Kal maneuvered the ship in the shadow of Saturn, facing the locus of space where the portal should be.

  It needed to be now, or they had wasted months of travel and close to a trillion dollars.

  She knew she’d find it. It lurked there, a presence, waiting to be seen. She had been better at getting through the first portal, Freya, than any other pilot. The second portal had never been her mission, luckily, as it turned out. Maybe if she’d been there, it wouldn’t have gone wrong. The less said about that disaster, the better.

  Her gift for bringing a ship to and through a portal was the real reason she was here, piloting the Ocean, years before her time.

  This was the furthest mission to inhabit a planet ever conceived.

  The crew wouldn’t be able to see the swirl of infrared color, the aura around the portal, until they were so close there was no going back.

  “Activate helical search pattern,” she said. “Lock on infrared signature.”

  Because of their proximity to the portal, they were already in dark phase. No transmission possible, to Mars or to home, which made communications quiet. It was easier to concentrate.

  “Rai, angle of approach?” Kal said.

  “Two degrees short to starboard.”

  Kal made an adjustment.

  The ships’ AIs no longer attempted to pilot through the portals, since the starship Carys. Feel had something to do with it, and feel was something even a sophisticated iteration like their AI, Rai, didn’t have.

  Captain Sasha Sarno sat in her chair, center of bridge, strapped in, as they all the crew were, for the jump. Seven passengers; seven crew. The passengers were strapped into one of the escape pods with one crew member, just in case. One pod had made it back to Earth when the starship Carys disappeared in the second portal.

  That job, being the sole crew member strapped in with the passengers, separated from the rest of the team, was not a coveted one. It implied a lack of faith, a lack of commitment, that no crew member wanted to appear to embrace. The volunteer was consequently viewed as heroic.

  Noor, mission specialist and analyst, had offered. Kal wished Noor were here on the bridge with Sasha and herself. They had become a triumvirate of sorts, in the months it had taken them to make the loop de loop past Venus, Venus again, then Earth and Jupiter, taking the gravity assist needed off the planets for the best shot to Saturn. After their long winter’s nap in hypersleep, post slingshot, it didn’t feel like time had passed, despite the months spent under. Even so, they hadn’t quite recaptured the banter and ease from before. Maybe after the portal. After the hairiest moment in a trip full of dangers.

  The infrared layer was on, covering the whole of the curving window at the front of the bridge. Infrared lit the space around them with strange lights and colors and threw Saturn into brilliant relief, layers of color reflecting the heat signature of each part of the ringed planet, like a slice of an archeological dig into strata of rocks from different eras. The view became magical, touched with fantasy, another way to see space they weren’t usually privy to.

  Of the three portals discovered, Wóhpe was the most recent. The Aldortok Consortium had sole rights to it so far, and this would be the second jump through.

  Thanks to entangled quantum particles on the Land and the Ocean, they knew they were a go. That was all they knew.

  Though little was yet known or understood about the portals, they were believed to have been created millennia before, by an unknown intelligence. One that liked to jump around through systems with habitable planets, and had the advanced knowledge to make it possible. That was the theory.

  The seven passengers had been in hypersleep since Earth, unaware of any of the tension of slotting the ship into the mere four hundred kilometer window near Venus to grab the correct trajectory. It was best for them to leave Earth in good shape and have none of the stress, and not get in the way, until it was time to jump the portal on the dark side of Saturn.

  In anticipation of the jump, the passengers were now awake. Everyone would rather be conscious, when it came right down to it, if they were about to blink out in the portal. By unspoken consent, they would all rather know the end, if it was to be so, and not sleep their way into another kind of unknown.

  Most of the crew had jumped before, through Freya, as part of the ongoing exploration and establishment of infrastructure on the Earth-like planet in that system.

  The second portal, Physis, the one no one liked to mention, hadn’t been so trustworthy. The story of what happened to the Carys haunted everyone, and no one could be said to approach this jump with anything other than an equal mixture of excitement and dread, except for the captain, Sasha, who didn’t get rattled by much of anything.

  Kal felt her heart rate bump up. She couldn’t see it yet, the spray of light radiating out from a center of deep black, but she could feel it. She could feel they were close, as if the cells in her body shifted their contents toward a source of attraction, a gravity created from inside the portal itself, just ahead, drawing her to it.

  The inevitability of it—waiting for her eyes to tell her all choice was over—gave her whole being a charge, as if sparks could shoot from her fingertips, rays from her eyes, waves of heat from her brain, all visible in the same infrared that allowed the portal to be seen.

  Their ship, the Ocean, the twin of the Land already on Demeter with the skeleton crew of biohab builders, was large enough to transport many more passengers. Although on this jump the total count, including passengers and crew, was small, the ships would transport vaster numbers in future, if all went well.

  The ships’ elegant design, practical and imaginative, made these two sisters the finest in any fleet, in Kal’s opinion, experimental or not.

  Kal thought the ships deserved a voyage this far, this uncertain, to prove themselves. She deserved it too. Whether her mettle would be as worthy as the Ocean’s remained to be seen.

  “Power down inessential systems,” Sasha said.

  Kal wondered if Sasha could feel the proximity, too.

  “Power down inessential systems, confirm,” Gunn, systems engineer, repeated.

  “Employ stabilization boost, thirty perce
nt. When portal lights become visible, up to seventy-five.” Sasha’s voice was calm and even. She spoke clearly, with enough volume for all those on the bridge to hear her. In the occupied pod, they had transmission of all that was spoken on the bridge, in case a last minute order to eject was necessary.

  Gunn echoed her.

  Sasha said, “Pod one: Noor, all set?”

  “Aye, Captain.” Noor’s voice was confident. Strong for the passengers.

  As if a veil had been lifted from another reality, the swirl of lights from the portal splayed into view. Radiant, enticing, forbidding: a small gasp from the six on the bridge couldn’t be disguised by their cloak of professionalism. It was too beautiful.

  No more time to turn back, even had they wanted to. They belonged to the portal, now.

  “Stabilization boost, seventy-five percent,” Gunn said.

  Sasha spoke. “Rai, cede all control to Kal barring mission critical failure or loss of consciousness by Kal and myself. Kal has the helm.”

  “Yes, Captain. Ceding all control to Kal, barring mission critical failure or loss of consciousness by Kal and Captain Sarno. Kal has the helm.”

  This directive had a somewhat dampening effect on the bridge, as Kal was sure it did in the pod. She imagined Noor’s wry smile. If Noor were here, they would have exchanged glances.

  “Take a breath, everyone,” Sasha said, her voice now light. “We made it this far. Keep breathing and we’ll celebrate on the other side.”

  The smile in her voice lifted the lull, and Kal felt herself smile, facing this deepest, darkest, most enchanting circle of blackness, the heart of the portal, and now she felt with her whole being that, yes, she wanted to dive into it, with all of her mind and body. She had never jumped this portal.

  Her hands rested lightly on the console, eyes automatically sweeping the mechanical dials, switches, and buttons, a system backup this ship designer always included in case of a shift into low power mode, as well as the latest screened and holographic image processes. Redundancy, a back door in case the front door shut, was such a key part of their survival prospects this far out that the analog was never completely dismissed in favor of the digital or biomorg.

  Now Kal was on her own version of autopilot. Her mind was in the trance it went to when she had to be the ship, to navigate it as herself from one difficult spot to another.

  “Deploy oxygen,” Kal said. They all put their masks on.

  “Estimated thirty seconds to entry,” Kal said. Her voice was a monotone.

  Her heart beat slow. The lights gave the illusion of rushing towards them, reaching out to enfold them, spatters of gold embracing the ship in forgiving splendor, welcoming them to whatever their fate would be.

  “Captain?” Gunn said.

  The captain was behind Kal, so Kal couldn’t see her face.

  “It’s all right, Gunn,” Sasha said.

  A brilliant, blinding flash of light.

  The light was gone.

  The flash an imprint on Kal’s retinas.

  The only light the remnants in her eyes.

  Darkness, incomprehensible.

  A compression, emptiness—where time should be.

  Kal felt the months in hypersleep stretch inside her.

  Her mind hadn’t known the passing of time, but something had recorded it.

  This place.

  Now she knew, the lost time was still there, inside her.

  It was here, inside the outside, within the portal.

  Here she met time and its absence.

  They were lost here, forever.

  There was nothing to fly. Her hands were empty.

  Smooth and powerless.

  A heart-tearing leap, guts on the floor.

  The pinpoint, themselves, a universe bursting out of Kal’s chest.

  A blink, elsewhere, a hand the size of a galaxy.

  Light like a resurrection.

  Spatter of unfamiliar stars, a planet with rings like Saturn, not Saturn.

  They were on the other side.

  Had she left those months in the portal?

  2

  Sextant

  After the jump, silence.

  Kal hoped she hadn’t actually left part of her insides in the portal, because it felt that way. Her scooped-out solar plexus made it hard to speak, as well as the curious sensation of having passed through high Gs within, not without. There had been no force driving her back into her seat. It was an internal miscalibration, something essential flipped or removed. She opened her mouth to speak to Rai. No sound came out.

  Her mask was still on. She took it off and stared, dazzled by the sights out the window. She heard Sasha’s voice.

  “Congratulations, everyone. Rai, full systems and hull check. Pod one: You all right?”

  Noor’s voice came through, “Yes, Captain. Some nausea here. Lost one for a minute there, but he’s coming back around. All well.”

  The crew began to clap, for a brief but enthusiastic smattering of sound, before returning their full attention to their jobs.

  System checks and re-check. Rai’s rundown and report of impact. Oscillation at some undetermined phase of the jump had thrown off the secondary landing sensors, which required Rai to recalibrate and test them.

  The Ocean appeared to have sailed through beautifully.

  The passengers were loosed from the pod by captain’s orders. Ship’s doctor Inger and ship’s neuropsychologist Chyron left the bridge to give each one a once-over. For the crew’s checkups, Inger would wait until things calmed down, here in another part of the galaxy.

  As soon as they were through, Gunn started attempting to retrieve information left for them on a mini-satellite supposed to be orbiting whatever planet was nearest. When she gave the sign she had it, another cheer went up.

  Noor, now back in her usual place, opened the information in holo form. A three-dimensional map of this part of the system, all the Land had been able to glean, displayed before them.

  Planetary objects were labeled. The Land’s crew had named things. The close ringed planet, a sister of Saturn, Kal thought, was labeled Sextant. The sun, Mythos.

  Noor analyzed the coordinates and announced, “We’re not that far from the center of the Milky Way.”

  Kal was transfixed by the new view from the bridge, while noting the ship’s velocity vector relative to Sextant, still on her version of autopilot. Sextant had rings like Saturn and a similar majestic presence, but there was no mistaking it for Saturn.

  Sextant was much smaller, with tighter rings. Its opalescence was a shock to Kal, as was the far-dappled light of strange constellations. A sprinkle of stars in a curve, with a brighter line behind them, looked like an archer with bow. Sextant was warmer, less forbidding than Saturn, the pale green and blue swirl eclipsed by a glittery veiled glow of cloud, like the layers of shifting color on an opal ring held to the light. Her rings were wide and airy, a dust storm radiating in ordered plumes around her.

  They couldn’t see Demeter from where they were, or Mythos, the star at the center of this system. Demeter was the next planet over, but they had emerged on the far side of Sextant. Like the earlier portal, this one was probably fixed to its home planet, Sextant, by some gravitational force scientists back home were still arguing over. The portals in Earth’s solar system orbited to remain on the dark side, the side unviewable from the habitable planet it was presumably created to access.

  Kal took a deep, shuddering breath that felt like it could crack ribs. She snuck a look over her shoulder at Sasha. Sasha was looking at the holo of their new system but must have felt Kal’s eyes on her.

  Sasha turned her head. “Good work, Kal.” Then she gave a nod with a slow blink, which was even better.

  With a sketch of a salute Kal turned back to the controls.

  Noor glided in at a brisk pace, her face alight in contrast to her usual scientist’s calm. Her mind might be full of calculations and ideas for a future paper, Kal knew, but she registered both
the scientific and emotional aspects of a milestone when they achieved one.

  Noor briefed the captain in an undertone. When she was done she joined Kal at the console.

  “How was that?” Kal asked Noor, her eyes sharing the light in Noor’s.

  Noor pursed her lips. “You didn’t have vomit duty.” Her grin broke through.

  “You took one for the team, sister,” Kal said, one eye on her holo.

  Noor swung into a seat next to Kal, not her usual one, but her usual chatting-to-Kal one.

  “Who was the worst?” Kal asked, occupied with the holo imaging on the landing system but able to talk at the same time.

  “Yarick threw up. He was my old thesis advisor, so that was satisfying. Tafari passed out. They’ll both get an extra scan and fluids.”

  “The rest okay?” Kal asked.

  “Terrified, but they hid it well. Troupers. Struggled with the suits a bit.”

  “That was something, huh?” Kal couldn’t believe she’d done it. She’d been the one. Even though it felt like control had shifted at some point, as if she were guiding the ship with her thoughts and not her body, which she didn’t quite want to talk about. Whatever had happened, she’d piloted them through.

  “You crushed it,” Noor said, her voice unemphatic but her rare smile making it special. Her dark eyes were luminous, like Sextant. Her black hair was tied back in a high ponytail, as Kal’s was in her usual braid. Everyone’s hair had been scraped back for the portal.

  “Thanks,” Kal said, feeling the quiet satisfaction of her friend’s appreciation.

  They surveyed the vast planet near them, its wide dusty rings, the infinite space surrounding it, for a long time. Neither had to speak.