by Maksim Malik
En Route
Book 2 of The Astromancer Chronicles
by
Maksim Malik
Published by Maksim Malik
Kindle Edition
Copyright 2019 Maksim Malik
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions, contact:
[email protected]
Kindle Edition, License Notes
Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.
Cover art by Fiona Jayde Media
http://fionajaydemedia.com/
Author’s Note
This book contains adult content and is intended for mature readers.
Dedication
To family, friends, readers, and the writers at Milk Wood and nanoRDU.
CONTENTS
En Route
Author’s Note
Dedication
Prologue
To Ithaca
Spaghetti
Meeting
Sulai Station
Storm
Annabella
Rudderless
Jehlengen Border Station
A Short Walk
Awake
Redirect
Data
Diversion
Septiva IX
Just Desserts
Lady Shirui Higu
Central Command Headquarters
Birth
Homecoming
Engineer
The Lab
Tysgan and Park
Humanity’s Grace
Requiem for Annabella
Zarzycki
If These Walls Could Talk
For Trisha
Foldspace
Breakfast at Nadani’s
Message Received
Franklin
To the Ship
Alarm
Hive-mind
Through Chaos
Fengwa
Going Up
Footsteps
Away
Astromancer
Epilogue
About the Author
Connect
Prologue
“Admiral, we have a small contact ahead,” the ensign said, pulling Admiral Adalric Bryer out of his reverie. The mindless patrolling of border sectors drove him to new heights of boredom. Why the Joined Union Systems had him patrolling in Gershan space was beyond him—didn’t they have ships of their own? The Gershani sectors of space fell within JUS jurisdiction, but he thought JUS ships were better suited to smaller sectors which didn’t have the massive resources like Gershan and Dier, the two largest sector states of the Joined Union Systems.
“Put it on viewscreen,” he said. “Is it a ship?”
“I’m not sure, Admiral,” she replied. “It doesn’t match any of our known signatures and it would be too small a ship to get out this far. On screen.”
The largest viewscreen in the bridge switched to a live camera zoomed in on a strange object. The spherical object had to be designed by an intelligent species.
“I’m picking up a signal from it,” the ensign at communications, a bright young man, said. “It’s either encoded or in an unrecognized alien language, Admiral.”
“Interesting,” Adalric said. “Let’s get a little closer and see if it reacts. Shield status.”
“One hundred percent, sir,” someone said.
“Good,” Adalric said. “Take it nice and easy.”
“I’m detecting a foldspace system spooling.”
“What?” That shocked Adalric. “That’s too small to have an FSS.” The FSS allowed them to travel from point to point faster than the speed of light. It folded two points of space-time together—one point being the location of the ship, and the other point being a spot quite a distance away—to make it appear as though the ship moved through space. It did this repeatedly so fast the ship appeared to travel faster than light, but in reality, it merely sat in space with no thrust enabled as it threaded through hole after hole. A foldspace system fit medium ships and larger, not something as small as the sphere. And to have it spooling—charging up and getting ready to fold—meant only one thing: it had to be alien. Adalric would have heard about any new military FSS being put into use especially if his superiors knew he would be in contact with a device with such technology.
Not much time to decide, he thought, weighing his options with haste.
“Fire an EPM. Disable it,” he said.
The electroplasmatic missile fired and struck the sphere a moment later, sending bolts of electricity arcing around the entire sphere. High tech or not, the EPM ought to do its job.
“Spooling has stopped. The FSS is likely shut down or shorted out,” came the report.
“Take the Koyanagi in. Send out drones. I want the object on board before any of its systems come back online,” he said.
“Is that wise?” Paul Klart, his number one, asked.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Klart,” he said. “I want a system rigged to short it out in case it starts spooling again. I think our engineers are capable enough.”
“Orders are sent to engineering,” Klart said.
“Now, send a message with vids and readouts to high command to see what I need to do with this thing.”
Bryer watched as the drones brought the sphere toward Koyanagi. He didn’t like this. He didn’t like this at all.
To Ithaca
After undocking, reaching the assigned waypoint, and enabling the FSS, Nadani got ready for bed. The first leg of the journey she and Trisha would spend sleeping, for the ship undocked at around 21:00 Galactic Standard Time. It would take until 18:00 GST the next sol to arrive on Ithaca. Half an hour after they landed the trade would take place.
Nadani’s ship, Astromancer, had a top-of-the-line FSS installed, replacing her old mid-grade FSS. The new one shaved off forty seconds from the spool-up process, which was what it was called when the FSS started spinning faster and faster, as well as allowed the actual folds themselves to cover farther distances, increasing the speed at which the ship could reach endpoint. The only systems better than hers were military or research systems.
That didn’t mean she could outrace every ship. She could only outrace those in her general ship class. Larger ships had more space for a much larger FSS design capable of even longer and faster folds per second.
After sleep, Nadani and Trisha spent a quiet morning and afternoon together. Nadani read a novel from her media library while Trisha worked on her new model ship. The ship impressed Nadani with all its tiny pieces—Trisha had to build everything from the engine to the shield generator and in between.
Nadani looked forward to visiting Ithaca again, namely because of truf meat. The last time she spent time there she went to a small diner serving burgers made of the stuff—real meat—and found it to be delicious. She hoped to find a good pasta place to try truf meatballs after the trade—if Trisha agreed to it of course. It seemed odd to be going there once again, but Ithaca was one of the more populous planets in this area of Gershan space.
Nadani switched back to her plugsuit a few minutes before they reached endpoint.
Are you wearing that to the trade too? Adan asked while she settled into the pilot’s pit. The pit sealed itself around her, looking more like a pod from the outside. She ignored the plugs to connect into her plugsuit; Adan’s connection to the ship and her connection to Adan made a similar but more responsive connection to the ship. Adan spoke
to her into her thoughts because it lived in her brain—as an implanted AI. She had it with her since college and now couldn’t imagine a sol without it.
“Yeah,” Nadani said aloud. “I figured the armor ought to be useful for something on it. It better not be just for show.”
No, it isn’t for show, Adan said. It had ordered the armored plugsuits the last time they were on Ithaca.
“Sounds good to me. Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that,” Nadani said.
Adan agreed with her wordlessly.
“Endpoint reached in twenty seconds,” Nadani said. This time she opened the ship’s com and spoke through the speakers for Trisha’s benefit.
Twenty seconds later the FSS shut down and they were exactly where they needed to be: in high orbit around the planet Ithaca. Although she had seen the planet before, it still stunned her with its vibrant greens, blues, and yellows. Nadani had yet to visit many planets—most of her trading and freelancing in the past landed her on stations. She had seen some ugly planets and touched down on some, finding them to be worse on the ground than from space, yet people still lived there.
“Endpoint reached. I know you haven’t traveled much at all, Trish, but check out the viewscreen. This planet is beautiful,” Nadani said.
“Oh, it really is,” Trisha replied. Nadani peeked through a camera to see Trisha watching the large viewscreen in the lounge. “It looks busy too.”
“Yeah, this is one of the busiest planets in the sector,” Nadani said. “Let’s see how long we get to wait,” she added. “Astromancer M522-16A to ground station Cao. Requesting landing pad for around four hours.” This she said to the ground station rather than over the com to Trisha.
“Cao replying to Astromancer. Docking intervals are now in three-hour chunks. Setting to six-hour chunk. Sending course to landing port Q32. Do not deviate from course,” came the immediate response.
“Wilco,” Nadani said, surprised she did not have to queue like last time. “We’re on our way in,” Nadani said over the ship com to Trisha.
“I’ve never been on a planet,” Trisha said.
“It’ll be okay,” Nadani said, noting the hint of nervousness in Trisha’s voice.
“We’ll be close by,” Adan said through the coms. “Just send a message and we’ll come running.”
“Yeah,” Trisha said. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
Nadani turned her focus to flying the ship. She could have asked Adan to do it for her, but she wanted to this time. Sometimes she found a sort of mental balance, a Zen state, when she piloted. True, she had a simple flight plan: follow the plotted course. Perhaps in simplicity she found peace, quelling all her worries.
Adan watched her, she felt. She could always feel it watching, but it didn’t bother her. Adan didn’t breach the Zen state she found herself in.
All too soon Nadani brought the ship down onto the landing pad. She blinked her eyes and came back to reality.
“We’ve landed,” Adan announced over the ship’s com.
That is always interesting, Adan said to Nadani alone. I think I can reproduce the chemical state your brain was in during that but don’t know why it comes about anyway.
It’s just—sometimes I really get focused on flying and it happens, Nadani replied, unsure how to describe it better than that. She opened and climbed out of the pilot’s pit to find Trisha waiting for her. Trisha wore an entirely holographic outfit which projected different styles of clothing every few minutes. Nadani saw she wore the hologrambler already, but she left it turned off. A hologrambler covered a person’s face with holograms, making it impossible to see their face at all. Nadani found those to be disorienting and oftentimes disturbing.
“I’m dressed and ready to go,” she said.
“Do you have the voice scrambler too?” Nadani asked to make certain. She didn’t see it.
“Oh! I forgot!” Trisha’s cheeks turned pink and she hastily turned and left the bridge.
Nadani walked into the lounge but before she could sit, Trisha came back with the voice scrambler in hand.
“Okay, good,” Nadani said. “I think we should get going. It’ll take a few minutes to get there.”
“Can we go over it again?” Trisha asked. The setup they used this time differed from the setups in the past. Previously they remote-controlled a robot to do the deals but with CAAI—Citizens Against Artificial Intelligence—becoming more prevalent and more aggressive, they didn’t want any chance of having Adan detected.
She looks nervous, Adan said.
Yeah, she is, Nadani replied.
“Sure, it’s pretty simple,” Nadani said. “I arrive at the buvette ten minutes beforehand and get a good spot to sit. Then you show up. Then the client shows up and we do the deal. Piece of cake.” From Nadani’s past involvement in missing government data, she acquired a copy of the data for herself. The information turned out to be a massive amount of explorer data cataloguing solar system, planetary, moon, asteroid details and more. The three of them had been trading bits of information to corporations and even some colony-starters regularly since then.
“And what’s a buvette?” Trisha asked.
“It’s a small bar essentially,” Nadani said. “They only sell drinks.”
“Okay, got it,” Trisha said and took a deep breath before blowing it out through her mouth.
“You’ll do fine,” Nadani smiled at her. “Now we need to get going since it’s going to take a bit to get there.”
“All right, let’s go,” Trisha said.
They left the ship and walked side-by-side through the docks toward the spaceport itself.
“Will you just look at all the high tech laying around?” Trisha said. Her nerves seemed to have vanished, replaced by astonishment.
“Is it good stuff?” Nadani asked, for she knew barely anything about actual pieces and parts of spaceships.
“Oh, yeah, I see some high-end parts,” Trisha said. “I wish I could tinker with some of them.”
“Why not open your own building and repair shop? You’ll have a good nest egg to get started with all the trades we’ve done lately,” Nadani said. She knew Trisha always wanted her own shop.
“Maybe some time, but right now that would keep me from you,” Trisha said.
Nadani’s heart melted. The fact Trisha wanted to be near her more than pursuing a lifelong dream made her heart soar to the stars. Nadani’s thoughts stumbled over with what to reply but their arrival at the ident scanners forestalled the action.
The ident scanners at the port made it impossible to go completely undetected, but they did the best they could. Only after the ident scanner could Trisha and Nadani set their idents to private. The crowd bottlenecked at the scanner as it took a few seconds to scan and verify each person. Sometimes the scanner would go off and the security staff would perform a body search. Weapons were strictly prohibited for visitors on Ithaca—even small pocket knives were taken away until the person came through the scanner again from the other direction.
“Name,” the security man, standing two heads taller than Nadani to her left said to her as they scanned her.
“Nadani Jagi,” she replied.
“Freelancer, eh? We don’t get many of those,” he said.
“I imagine not,” Nadani said.
“She’s clean,” another security personnel, a woman, said.
“You may continue,” he said and waved her through. Nadani waited on the other side for Trisha.
“Name,” he said.
“Trisha Nakamara,” Trisha said.
“Sulai station. Never been there,” the ident handler said.
“Clean,” said the woman a few seconds later, and Trisha walked through toward Nadani.
They walked through the port building at a fast pace. It felt more like a mall than a port. Vendors and shops lined the hallways and although it wasn’t packed with people, they still had to weave through clumps of people several times. So far, she hadn’t seen any CAAI demons
trators—though those could be outside and not allowed into the starport itself.
The large gatherings of CAAI are at laboratories rumored to be experimenting with AI, Adan said. I see them in local media sources. They’re certainly turning some heads.
That’s not good, Nadani said.
Let’s just hope the heads are turning out of curiosity rather than support, Adan said.
Hopefully, she replied.
When they exited the starport, Trisha paused for a few seconds.
“It’s so—open,” she said, looking up to the sky.
“Yeah,” Nadani said. “Honestly I try not to look up or I end up disoriented.”
“And the city is huge!” Trisha exclaimed.
Nadani caught one of Trisha’s hands and tugged with gentle affection to get her to walk again. If they didn’t move, they would have to set up faster which could arouse suspicion.
“Yeah, I know we have to go,” Trisha said somberly.
“I’m sorry,” Nadani said and wished they had more time. “We are walking to a park. That should be nice.”
“Oh, yeah,” Trisha said, happiness creeping back into her tone. “I can keep gawking as we go too.”
“True,” Nadani said. “It’s about ten minutes to get to the garden. The buvette is really close to it.”
They walked down the sidewalk next to the street for a short distance before the sidewalk forked. Taking the fork to the right, they headed toward the public park.
It’s called Shanti Park, Adan said. Established about two hundred years ago, the park existed before the spaceport did.
I like the name, Nadani said.
As they neared the park Nadani saw short trees she didn’t recognize—she hardly saw trees on space stations—and beautiful multi-colored flowers almost half as tall as the trees.
“This looks gorgeous,” Trisha said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Neither have I,” Nadani admitted.
The scents of the flowers tickled her nose as she entered the park, Trisha still in hand. The park was quiet, and it seemed like they were the only ones there.