Injection Burn E-Book

Jason M. Hough

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Seitenzahl: 452

Beschreibung

Part one of a thrilling action-adventure sci-fi duology featuring indomitable characters, incredible worlds, and plenty of rip-roaring action and thrills! Rescue operation - or suicide mission? Skyler Luiken and his ragtag crew of scavengers, scientists, and brawlers have a new mission: a long journey to a distant planet where a race of benevolent aliens are held captive behind a cloud of destructive ships known as the Swarm Blockade. No human ships have ever made it past this impenetrable wall, and Skyler knows not what to anticipate when they reach their destination. Safe to say that the last thing he expects to find there is a second human ship led by the tough-as-nails Captain Gloria Tsandi. These two crews - and their respective captains - initially clash, but they will have to learn to work together when their mutual foe closes in around them and begins the outright destruction of their vessels - along with any hope of a return to Earth.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Praise for the works of Jason M. Hough

Also Available from Jason M. Hough and Titan Books

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue: Darwin, Australia

1: Staging Area Sigma

2: The Wildflower

3: The Wildflower

4: The Wildflower

5: The Wildflower

6: Kepler-186F

7: Kepler-186F

8: Kepler-186F

9: The Chameleon

10: Place Unknown

11: The Chameleon

12: The Chameleon

13: Place Unknown

14: The Chameleon

15: Place Unknown

16: The Wildflower

17: The Chameleon

18: Place Unknown

19: The Chameleon

20: Place Unknown

21: The Chameleon

22: The Chameleon

23: The Chameleon

24: The Chameleon

25: The Wildflower

26: The Chameleon

27: The Chameleon

28: The Wildflower

29: The Chameleon

30: The Chameleon

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Escape Velocity

PRAISE FOR THE WORKS OF JASON M. HOUGH

ZERO WORLD

“A science fiction [novel that] smashes The Bourne Identity together with The End of Eternity to create a thrilling action rampage that confirms [Jason] Hough as an important new voice in genre fiction.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“An enjoyable read . . . expect minor whiplash from the frenetic pace.” —Entertainment Weekly

“Hough has combined all the ingredients of a first-rate sci-fi thriller.” —Kirkus Reviews

“One hell of an entertaining read. Hough continues to deliver white-knuckle books anchored by unusual and fascinating characters. Zero World is a giant cup of pure badassery that secures his place among the finest sci-fi action writers today.”—Kevin Hearne, New York Timesbestselling author of The Iron Druid Chronicles

“A high-octane blend of science fiction and mystery, Zero World is a thrill ride that shoots you out of a cannon and doesn’t let up until the very last page.”—Wesley Chu, author of the Tao series

“Warning: Do not pick up this book if there is anything else you need to do. There is no safe place to rest inside these pages, no lag in the full-throttle action, no moment when you will think, ‘Okay, this is a good spot to take a break.’ Once you realize how much you don’t know—about this world, these characters, this inexplicable mission—the only way out is forward.”—Brian Staveley, author ofThe Emperor’s Blades

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM JASON M. HOUGH AND TITAN BOOKS

ZERO WORLD

THE DIRE EARTH CYCLE

The Darwin ElevatorThe Exodus TowersThe Plague ForgeEscape Velocity (June 2017)

Injection Burn

Print edition ISBN: 9781783295289

E-book edition ISBN: 9781783295296

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd.

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition May 2017

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Jason M. Hough asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Copyright © 2017 by Jason M. Hough.

Excerpt from Escape Velocity copyright © 2017 by Jason M. Hough.

All rights reserved.

This edition published by arrangement with Del Rey, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For all those who venture into the unknown

I couldn’t go. Couldn’t be boxed in a ship like that knowing Earth is free again. Everyone’s an immune now!That’s a party I couldn’t miss.—Skadz, 2285, overheard at Woon’s Tavern

PROLOGUE

DARWIN, AUSTRALIA

11.FEB.2331

To: <fleet>

From: [unintelligible, known in situ as Eve]

Classification URGENT, full-spectrum broadcast, maximum encryption

I believe our search is finally over.

AT A PLANET KNOWN LOCALLY AS EARTH (RELEVANT DETAILS ATTACHED), A SPECIES CALLING ITSELF “HUMAN” HAS SUFFICIENTLY OVERCOME THE TESTS WE DEFINED (WITH REVISIONS BY MYSELF EN ROUTE, BASED ON LATEST GATHERED INTELLIGENCE AS OF 005505.332.14A AND SUBSEQUENT ADJUSTMENTS AGREED TO AND IMPLEMENTED BY FLEET MAJORITY).

SOME OF YOU MAY BE ALLOWING A SMALL AMOUNT OF CAUTIOUS OPTIMISM AT THIS POINT. AFTER ALL, WE’VE COME THIS FAR THREE TIMES BEFORE AND YET MADE NO REAL PROGRESS IN FREEING OUR CREATORS.

BUT THERE IS SOMETHING NEW HERE THAT CANNOT BE UNDERSTATED. AN UNEXPECTED DISCOVERY THAT I BELIEVE MERITS NOT JUST OPTIMISM BUT ALSO A DRASTIC CHANGE TO OUR PLAN.

A SMALL PERCENTAGE OF THESE HUMANS ARE UNAFFECTED BY THE VIRAL ANALOG WE DEVISED.

COMPLETELY IMMUNE, FOR REASONS I HAVE YET TO COMPREHEND (TESTS ARE UNDER WAY, DETAILS FORTHCOMING, ANALYSIS APPRECIATED). IN ALL THEIR NUMBER, ONLY A FEW APPEAR TO FEATURE THIS CHARACTERISTIC, AND YET THEY WERE LARGELY RESPONSIBLE FOR OVERCOMING OUR TEST REGIMEN.MOREOVER, MOST OF THEM HAVE AGREED TO HELP US, DESPITE RESERVATIONS ABOUT OUR METHODOLOGY IN DETERMINING THEIR SUITABILITY.

THEY ARE WITHIN MY HULL EVEN NOW, DEVISING A COURSE OF ACTION THAT I FEEL IS PROMISING.

HENCE MY OPTIMISM—NO, MY CERTAINTY—THAT IT IS TIME TO ALTER OUR OWN APPROACH TO ENDING THIS SIEGE. MY PLAN REQUIRES THE ASSISTANCE OF A MAJORITY OF YOU IF IT IS TO SUCCEED.

I AM CURRENTLY EN ROUTE TO [UNINTELLIGIBLE, KNOWN AS KEPLER-22] AT MAXIMUM VELOCITY. I HOPE YOU WILL CONSIDER MY REQUEST AND LEND SUPPORT TO THIS EFFORT.

EVE

(VIA ARTIFICIAL LOW MIND TRANSFERENCE VESSEL, WHICH SENDS GREETINGS TO ITS KIN)

1

STAGING AREA SIGMA

3.AUG.3911

The two spacecraft came to rest in a vast swath of nothingness deep in interstellar space. They were identical, perfect twins, spaced with nanometer precision exactly ten thousand kilometers apart. Both were pointed in the same direction: toward a star some three hundred light-years distant.

Captain Gloria Tsandi let out a long breath. Her ship, the Wildflower, stood poised on the edge of history, and she found herself profoundly uncomfortable with that. The whole endeavor had been a series of small compromises and allowances that now, here at the brink, amounted to the sort of thing she’d never have agreed to if presented all at once. Dangerous, reckless, and hastily planned.

Which were the exact same reasons the Lonesome had been lost in the first place. The reason this search and rescue mission, maybe the most critical in human history, was even necessary.

She glanced to her right, where her co-pilot should be. No one sat there. There wasn’t even a chair anymore. The Wildflower had been stripped of all nonessential equipment, and then quite a lot of essential equipment, in order to make her ready for this scheme.

“We’re in position,” came the voice of her counterpart. The mission lead, Captain Sutter of the Zephyr. He had the benefit of more experience with this sort of thing, not to mention a reputation for a crew that worshipped his every action. Perhaps that was why he seemed to have no real concern for what was about to happen: no one to question his orders.

“Want me to answer him, boss?” Xavi asked.

Her navigator, one deck below. Very much the sort who questioned orders. The only bit of normalcy on this entire mission. He’d been with her for going on six years, and she thought of him as her own little brother—a rebellious, often embarrassing little brother—despite the fact they looked nothing alike. He was a squat, wide, bulldog of a man who’d embraced his Australian heritage with absolute zeal, a persona that paired perfectly with his longish sandy-blond hair and perpetually sun-narrowed ice-blue eyes. Gloria was lithe, very dark, and kept her afro cut close to the scalp. When he stood beside her, it was as if someone had tried and succeeded at finding the two human beings most unlike each other.

What they had in common was their age, twenty-seven, and this ship.

The rest of her usual crew, six others, had been left behind, another compromise to reach the goal mass. Instead of a total of eight, she had a three-person crew now, and the third was a stranger. A wild card. Gloria shifted, uncomfortable in the extreme. “I’ll handle it, thank you. Just keep an eye on the position and let the computer do its thing.”

“Sure thing, boss,” Xavi said.

Gloria puffed out her cheeks, let out the breath, and sent her reply to Sutter. “We’re in the green here, too. Ready when you are.”

With that, she reached for the part of her interface that would signal her intent to proceed. Her finger hovered for an instant before she forced it down. The icon shifted from yellow to an all-too-pleasant green.

“Prepare for fold maneuver,” a faintly accented calming voice said over the comm. “Synchro-protocol in effect. Initial burn will commence at the pleasure of . . . Sutter, Zephyr . . . stand by.”

A minute passed before Sutter replied. “We have your helm.Ten minutes to burn.”

“Understood,” Gloria sent back, glad for the additional time to prepare herself mentally. On the local comm she said, “Both of you meet me in the mess for one final review.”

“Mmm,” Xavi acknowledged, followed by the sounds of his harness unbuckling. His couch was on the deck just below her own, the ship’s main body being oriented in a vertical stack of eight decks.

The newcomer’s reply came next. “Okay,” was all she said, and Gloria had to remind herself that Beth Lee was unaccustomed to hierarchy, protocol. For that matter, unaccustomed to flying aboard the ships that utilized the technology she helped invent.The mousy engineer had flown before, sure, but according to her file it had always been as an observer, nothing more. A “subject matter expert.” Bringing her along for this mission had been the biggest and most difficult of the concessions Gloria had made, for it meant leaving her own trusted engineer behind. Not to mention her mechanic, her medic, both science officers, and her co-pilot. “Humans are heavy, and so is the food and water they require,” the OEA logistics officer had said with almost total indifference. And that was that.

Out of her couch, Gloria rolled and oriented herself down, drifting along behind Xavi, using blue rungs that protruded from every available surface to guide herself down to the mess hall.The Wildflower had a hollow spine running from one end to the other, her decks stacked like a pile of donuts, only open toward the interior. The mess hall was one above the middle floor, which served as central airlock. It consisted of a small kitchen, food storage, and two booth-style tables and benches for use while under thrust or attached to a space elevator. Adrift as they were, Gloria shunned the seats in favor of simply floating within the hollow spine of the ship, both feet tucked under blue stabilization rungs to keep her in place. Xavi rummaged through one of the food bins, joining her a few seconds later with a fistful of nutrient bulbs. He floated one across to her, and she caught it deftly.

Their companion drifted up from below. Beth Lee may not have many flight hours logged, but she knew her way around a zero-g environment, Gloria noted. The tiny woman had come up feetfirst, rotated, and positioned herself between her two crewmates with precise, economic movements. No grace to it, but the results were all that mattered.

Gloria examined the label of the nutrient bulb, shrugged at what she saw there, and used two fingers to pinch some of the contents into her mouth, one “bite” at a time. She glanced at the selected dish—cherry smoothie—and suppressed a grin. Her favorite, as any of her regulars would know. Xavi winked when she glanced up at him before crushing his bulb with a meaty fist, inhaling the entire meal in one fell swoop.

Gloria returned his thoughtfulness with a stern glare. To get too comfortable with her crew led to sloppiness, and worse, the intrusion of feelings when it came to making hard decisions. It hurt her to distance herself at a moment like this, but in the long run she knew it was for the best.

The silent meal ended and Gloria waited while Xavi stowed the empty bulbs for future reuse. Finished, he returned to his chosen spot on the circle and waited.

“A recap and status,” Gloria said, “so we’re all on the same page.” Neither companion said anything, so the captain went on. “Thanks to the modified imploder, we’re about to do something unprecedented. I know we’re running with the barest of bare-bones configurations here, and all three of us will be wearing multiple hats, but I still expect calm, levelheaded professionalism. Beth, you don’t know me that well, but my crew is and has always been my family. I won’t hesitate to cuff an unruly child. Am I clear?”

“Of course, Gloria,” Beth said, in a way that made the captain wonder if she’d just reminded the poor girl of her actual mother.

“It’s Captain Tsandi.”

The woman gave a meek nod. “Sorry.”

Xavi answered with a little half-salute, having heard this speech, or something like it, half a hundred times. His fingers tapped against the bulkhead with impatience, and probably a fair amount of nerves at the prospect of being a passive observer to the fold, something he usually ran himself.

Gloria put on her most reassuring smile, and went on, keenly aware that this next part would strain the long-standing trust relationship she’d cultivated with her navigator. “We’re aligned with Zephyr, and our ships will fold in tandem. What I’ve kept from you until now,” she said, her gaze on Xavi’s sudden, dubious expression, “is our destination.”

“Ah, shit, boss,” Xavi started.

“I’ll have none of that,” she said quickly. “It wasn’t my choice to keep this part secret, believe me. But I understand why, and I think you will, too.”

She had their undivided attention now. Beth’s gaze narrowed. Xavi’s fingers went still.

“This is not a test run of the Mark 5 imploder. The Alliance is done with tests. In fact, this technically isn’t even the first field use.”

Xavi hung his head, shaking it back and forth in disbelief. Beth just stared, expressionless, and Gloria wondered how much of this she already knew. The Mark 5 was, after all, partly her creation. Surely she’d been in the loop during the test process, and the declaration of all clear.

Seeing no alternative, Gloria soldiered on. “That honor went to Captain Dawson, and her ship, the Lonesome, two weeks ago.”

“I thought Daw was pushing rock out at—”

“That’s what everyone thought,” Gloria said.

Xavi hissed through clenched teeth. “I’m liking this mission less and less, boss.”

“I’m not exactly thrilled myself. But it’s a critically important one, Xavi.”

“Sounds like a fucking yak shaving expedition,” he said, his Australian drawl coming through strong.

“Noted. Now let me finish. We’re on a tight schedule that is out of our hands.”

Xavi made a little “go on” gesture with his free hand. His frown hurt, but there was nothing she could do about it.

“Dawson . . . well, Dawson screwed up. In the worst possible way. Some misguided desire to make history. It doesn’t matter. The point is, instead of conducting a trial run of the Mark 5 as directed, she altered the Lonesome’s course at the last minute and put us all at terrible risk.”

“Kepler-22,” Beth Lee said. Not a question.

“Kepler-22,” Gloria confirmed.

“So what?” Xavi asked. “It’s restricted space, sure, but there have been plenty of other visits. And it’s not like anyone’s ever been past the blockade. Poked around a bit, granted. Been chased off every time, too. Nothing new about it.”

“Which brings me,” Gloria said, “to the other classified part of all this. Xavi, this new Mark 5 imploder is . . . well, Beth here, and her team, optimized it. Increased its tolerance for space-time curvature.”

“Oh, now I really don’t like where this is going.”

“Dawson took her ship to Kepler-22, yes, but inside the restricted zone. Way, way inside.”

“Impossible.”

Gloria turned her gaze to Beth. “You explain.”

If the engineer felt any remorse or responsibility for what her invention had now potentially caused, she showed no sign. Her Asian features were clipped and focused. All business. “The Mark 5 is a dramatic improvement to the field cavitation device—the ‘imploder,’ as you call it. It allows for perturbations in the exit curvature as much as nine times what the—”

“How about in English?”

“It enables exit much closer to the gravitational body—planet, star, et cetera—than was previously possible. Provided the vessel’s mass is quite low.”

Xavi’s frown deepened. “So that’s why we stripped the Wildflower bare, and left the rest of the crew behind.”

“Yes,” Gloria said to him. “I’m sorry to keep this from you, Xavi.”

Her navigator nodded absently, but the frown remained. After a moment he shook his head as if to clear it. “What’s done is done. Let me see if I can guess the rest, yeah?”

“Sure.”

“So Daw is meant to test this new imploder, but gets it in her head to lay in a new course because she wants to be the first ship to get in close to Kepler-22. So off she goes, folds space, boom she’s off to make history. The first captain to get a close look at Carthage, find out what’s so damn important about the place. Find out why an entire solar system has been barricaded off, and why our ancient ancestors were almost wiped out.”

“So far so good.”

Xavi grunted a sardonic laugh, swallowed, went on. “And I’m guessing something went wrong. They got in close and then the Scipio fleet caught up with them. Or are about to. And of course, other than protecting their precious world of Carthage, there’s two things the Scipios desire more than anything else in the entire fucking universe: our imploder tech, or barring that, the location of Earth. And Daw’s just given them both.”

“May have given them both,” Gloria corrected. “It’s all as you say, I’m afraid, except that there’s been no sign of Dawson’s ship other than an initial beacon ping about six hours after they arrived.”

“And now . . . what? We’re throwing good after bad? Sending us in to . . . to what, exactly?”

Gloria glanced at both of them in turn. “It’s Sutter’s ship that has the task. Discover the fate of the Lonesome, recover or destroy it, as necessary. We cannot, above all else, let the Scipios get their hands on a functional imploder.”

Neither of her crew spoke, so Gloria went on. “Any problems, we bug out. Your safety is in my hands, and I take that seriously, but know that even more important than our objective is the primary mission of the OEA: Do not let the enemy acquire our technology. Under any circumstances. Understood?”

“Of course,” Beth said.

Xavi nodded. He knew the code as well as anyone. “If it’s Sutter’s mission to find Daw, what’s ours?”

“We’re the fail-safe. If something happens to Sutter, if he’s in danger of being captured, we make sure that doesn’t happen.”

A chime sounded. Two minutes to fold-maneuver initiation. Gloria gripped Xavi’s shoulder. “I know it’s a mess.”

“It’s a clusterfuck.”

“Hence the need to clean it up. If the Scipios gain the ability to fold space . . . if they come to Earth, it could become another prison, just like Carthage.”

Xavi considered this, and she took his prolonged silence as tacit agreement. Gloria gave him the most reassuring smile she could muster. “Both of you return to your stations. We’re going to fold in there and watch Sutter like a hawk. If all goes as planned, he docks with Daw, takes her crew aboard, scuttles her ship, and we all fold home safely.”

Drifting back to her captain’s couch, Gloria could already see the ruse in that plan. Her ship, and the twin that was Sutter’s, had been stripped to the bare minimum to meet the mass requirements of the Mark 5.

Sutter wouldn’t be taking on any rescued crew. He’d be making sure there was nothing left for the Scipios to study.

2

THE WILDFLOWER

4.AUG.3911 (EARTH ACTUAL)

Gloria Tsandi strapped herself into the captain’s couch, set it to full recline, and tried to soak in the last few moments of weightlessness, an environment she’d come to feel utterly at home in. Gravity, as the saying went, sucks. She called up feeds from around the ship.

On a normal flight she’d check in with her medical officer first. A last-minute precaution that everyone was mentally and physically ready to ride an implosion—to fold—before actually doing it. But the medical berth was empty, so Gloria scanned the biofeedback displays with an unpracticed eye. Nothing of note stood out, other than Beth’s obvious nerves.

Gloria decided to start with her. “Engineering?”

On the screen, Beth Lee stared back at her with the determined face of someone trying to mask a profound fear. “All systems go, Captain,” she said.

Gloria gave her a reassuring nod and shifted her focus to Xavi. “Navigation?”

“All clear, Captain!” Xavi barked with exaggerated military bluster. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Stand by,” Gloria said, and waited. The countdown timer stood frozen in place at thirty seconds, ready to move once the diversionary fleet had made their folds. That group of ships was much farther away, and not equipped with the new imploder. They had a different task today.

Captain Sutter’s voice came over the comm. “Should be any second now,” he said, “then we go.”

There were twelve other ships, several light-hours distant, in a formation that spaced them apart by ten million kilometers each. All were under heavy thrust as they worked up the speed needed to use their Mark 4 imploders. Then, in near-perfect unison, their blips vanished from Gloria’s screen as they dove headfirst into holes punched through the very fabric of the universe. This had all actually happened two hours ago, the light of it only now reaching the Wildflower’s sensors.

Gloria’s outside-view screens blossomed with brilliant white explosions, brighter than the Sun itself if only for an instant. She swallowed, her eyes scanning the readouts all around her. Everything looked good. Everything according to plan.

“Diversion fleet is away,” Sutter said for the benefit of both ships. “Launching imploders.”

From a nacelle protruding from the Wildflower’s belly, one of her two Mark 5 field cavitation imploders detached and propelled itself forward on a growing white flame.

“Prepare for injection burn,” Gloria said. She knew full well that Xavi would be ready, a veteran of folding, but she couldn’t be sure about Beth.

“Accelerating to impact velocity,” Gloria said, as if she were the one giving the command. In truth she had no such option, even if she’d not given control of her ship to Sutter. All Gloria could do in this situation was simply not cancel the preprogrammed fold sequence. The timing involved had to be precise to impossibly small fractions of seconds. A human had no hope to pull off such a thing. As captain she was just there to put a stop to things if the situation called for it, and even that option waited behind hundreds of layers of safeguards.

The Wildflower shuddered as her engines powered up, and Gloria felt the weight of an impossibly heavy blanket drape over her, pressing her back into the couch, smartfoam cushioning her as best it could.

From somewhere below came a deep thud that vibrated up through the hull and made Gloria’s teeth rattle. “Status, Beth!”

“Clear to fold!” the engineer replied.

On Gloria’s forward view, the imploder’s engine stage winked off and then detached. It fired again to move rapidly away, leaving only the imploder device itself—an orange resin sphere— dead ahead.

The Wildflower raced to catch up to the projectile. Gloria studied readouts as her ship’s engines roared to maximum power. The force of it pushed her so hard into her seat that she thought she might pop through the back of it.

“Ramming speed!” Xavi shouted from below, as the Wildflower chased the imploder, which had now begun to glow. Proximity alarms began to wail. Gloria’s forward screen began to shimmer as the imploder built the required energy for its task. Within seconds it glowed like a star, washing everything out.

Gloria watched that eerie fireball grow as the Wildflower closed the final few meters.

She shut her eyes. Nothing to do now but hope.

A billionth of a second before the nose of the ship touched it, the sphere imploded. The force of the anti-blast was carefully and expertly shaped to plunge a massive flood of energy inward in a very specific geometry. Physics far beyond Gloria’s understanding took place. A pocket of space, turned inside out for the briefest instant, calculated with exhaustive precision. Had the Wildflower arrived a split second earlier it would have collided with the sphere in catastrophic fashion. A split second too late and the blast would have stretched the vessel and its occupants across the hole punched in space. Spaghettification, the scientists called it, with absolute seriousness.

But Beth, and all those she worked with, had done their jobs. The Wildflower, going at just the right speed, arriving at exactly the right time, found its way into a small pocket of safe space amid all that violence. A bubble that would be pulled across the sudden bridge between two incomprehensibly distant points.

Almost a thousand light-years away, in the vicinity of the star known as Kepler-22, two white-hot flares of energy erupted from nothing, and spat out a pair of identical ships exactly ten thousand kilometers apart from each other.

One, the Zephyr, emerged in what should have been empty space only to slam broadside into a massive alien vessel.

And the other, the Wildflower, was tumbling out of control.

3

THE WILDFLOWER

4.AUG.3911 (EARTH ACTUAL)

Every fold made Gloria sick with nerves. Not because of any knowledge of the extraordinary physics involved, but the sheer violence of how it worked.

Fire the implosion device out ahead of the ship, then race toward it at incredible speed. Be within a fraction of a millimeter before it implodes to ensure being sucked in, and yet be moving fast enough that, when you come out the other side, you outrun the inverse effect at the destination. The timing and velocity had to be so precise that it had taken a dozen years before a ship capable of carrying passengers could attempt the transit. Space-time had to be almost perfectly flat, too. Attempt this anywhere near a star, planet, moon, or other significant body and the results were catastrophic.

Until the Mark 5, at least.

In the solar system dominated by the star known as Kepler-22, somewhere between the worlds humanity had named Palmyra and Skara Brae, there were for a brief instant two objects as bright as suns. Dual explosions that looked, on edge, like spheres of energy cleaved in half. And from that brilliance, two ships emerged.

More or less.

The Mark 5 had just allowed the twin craft, Zephyr and Wildflower, to arrive closer to Kepler-22 than any previous expedition save one—the one they’d come to rescue. In all other attempts to explore here, Earth’s vessels had emerged from warp just beyond the system’s outermost planet, Hatra. The closest they could get.

It wasn’t long until the alien race known as the Scipios had put up a vast fleet of seek-and-destroy ships in this region. Known as the Swarm Blockade, the enemy ships numbered in the millions, forming a sphere around Kepler-22 and all of her planets, ready to move to and intercept anything that approached. A prison the size of a solar system, and a graveyard to hundreds of ships that had attempted to enter.

To emerge here, though, so close to the star, was uncharted territory, for no one knew what waited inside the blockade. No one knew what was so important about the world of Carthage that the entire system had been made off-limits.

Gloria’s body was tugged and shoved a dozen times as shock waves buffeted the ship. The sound of rending metal and electrical fires assaulted her ears. Before her, the Wildflower’s control displays winked and died, the whole cockpit plunged into darkness save for the bits of glowing tape used to label bins and exits. Below someone shouted in pain. Xavi, she thought, gritting against her own agony as the ship rocked and swayed in the violence of space-time being pinched hard and then abruptly released. Shudders spread through the area as the universe evened itself back out, the Wildflower riding it all like a boat dropped onto a stormy sea.

Finally, the ripples abated. All sensation of movement ceased, all sound vanished.

“Status!” Gloria shouted.

From far below, Beth coughed. The air reeked of smoke and ozone.

“Fire,” Xavi said. He sounded close by. She heard him clambering about. Then a light winked on and began to sweep across the interior of the ship, creating lurching shadows that made Gloria’s stomach flutter.

Gloria remembered her own flashlight, then, tucked somewhere under her seat. She couldn’t remember ever needing it, and hoped the ultracap inside it still held a charge. It took several seconds of groping under there before her fingers brushed the small metallic tube. She pressed the button and sighed with relief when blue-white light splashed into the cockpit. “Status!” she shouted again, floating over to the hole in the floor that led aft. “Xavi?”

“Here,” he said. The air had become quite hazy, and stung her nose. Below she heard the hiss as he unleashed a fire extinguisher on some unseen flame. “It’s bad, Captain.”

“Let’s have some specifics,” she said. “Beth? Talk to me.”

No reply.

Hell. Gloria took mental stock. Total power loss, that much was obvious. Circuitry fried, but the extent of that damage would be impossible to ascertain until they could get a power source back online. That had to come first, then . . . after that she’d figure out where the hell they were, and if the new imploder had performed as advertised. If it had worked, then right now they were adrift somewhere well within the Scipios’ blockade. Close enough, perhaps, to finally get a clear look at Carthage, the planet that mythical Dutch pilot Skyler Luiken and his cohorts had set off for almost two thousand years earlier. The explorers had never been heard from again, their mission to save Carthage still unfulfilled.

Time was Gloria’s enemy now. Residual effects of their punch through space were spreading outward at the speed of light like an inflating balloon. In minutes—maybe hours if she was really lucky—the Swarm would detect what was now a familiar phenomenon to them, and rush to deal with the threat. With any luck, the diversionary fleet, arriving earlier and much farther out in interplanetary space, might draw off the Scipios and buy a bit of time.

“Power first!” she shouted aft even as she drifted in that direction. Xavi flashed her a thumbs-up as she passed through the navigation bay. She pointed at him. “After that, find out where we are.”

“Got it,” he said, and let out another blast from the extinguisher.

The white plume merged with already hazy air, and Gloria found herself all but blind as she floated on toward the tail of the ship. She hauled on the lip of a bulkhead and flew downward, through the empty science station, then crew quarters, the mess. Storage and medical drifted by, all empty, their crew and most of their contents left behind to reduce the Wildflower’s mass. Gloria’s overwhelming sense of concern began to twist and coalesce toward something dangerously close to dread. Part of that weight-saving effort had been leaving behind most of the spare parts they typically carried.

Gloria continued down. “Beth?!”

A second of silence followed, turning the dread in Gloria’s gut into abject fear. Then a voice in the darkness. “Down here!”

“Where? I don’t—” The question died on her lips as a splash of light played across one of the spokelike access passages that led outward from the tiny control room a few meters to one of the nacelles. The Wildflower had long ago been converted to a dual-engine, dual-imploder design, with a powerful mini-thor reactor at her heart. All of it now lay dormant, all the usual hums and shudders eerily gone from the sonic landscape. Gloria followed the voice, and found Beth at the end of the short maintenance tunnel, around a corner. She’d taken off several access panels that surrounded feed lines from the reactor, and stared at them with deep concern.

“Tell me truthfully,” Gloria urged. “Do we need to evacuate?”

Beth glanced at her, the beam of her helmet light momentarily blinding. She looked away when Gloria winced. “Sorry. No. I don’t think so. The reactor is stable. However, both conduits sheared when the ripple hit us.”

“Please tell me we didn’t leave the spares behind.”

“I . . . I can’t remember. Checking the inventory.” Tiny lines and shapes of light appeared in front of her as she accessed the ship’s computer via a p-comm worn over her right ear.

“Any idea what happened?” Gloria asked.

Beth turned and pushed herself toward the control room, then up the central shaft toward storage. Gloria followed. In an even tone the engineer said, “Misshapen curvature in the local field. Probably.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning there is some object nearby that our models didn’t account for. Something massive enough to cause a nonflat exit landscape.”

“Does this mean we’re off course?”

Beth considered that, then shook her head. “We’re where we should be, the real question is what else is around.”

“Something big?”

“Either big and distant or small and close . . . no way to know yet.”

Beth rummaged through one of the wall cabinets and found what she was looking for. Her hands emerged holding a silvery bag with two thick cables coiled inside. Spare parts. Without a word she turned and began to push back toward the tail of the ship.

“Keep me posted,” Gloria said at her back. “We need power, then engines, then the other imploder. In that order. Understood?”

“Yes.”

“And suit up, just in case. It’s going to get cold in here.”

Beth nodded almost absently, utterly focused on the task.

Caps, Gloria thought, pushing back toward the central spine. The small thorium reactor provided power and propulsion, but the ship had a bank of ultracapacitors to handle electricity needs during maintenance or failure. Why were they still offline, too?

“Any damage?” she called ahead of herself, drifting through the darkness toward the navigator’s bay.

“Smacked my head pretty good,” Xavi answered. “No worse than a rugby match.”

“I meant the ultracaps.”

As if in answer the whole ship reverberated as power flowed back into its veins. Lights winked on up and down the spine, and with them came the familiar whir of the air processors. Almost immediately the haze began to dissipate. A split second later came a chorus of alarms sounded from every section.

“Was that you or Beth?” Gloria asked.

“Me,” Xavi said. “Can’t get to the primary due to the fire, it’s totally shot. Had to manually crank over to secondary.”

“Thrusters?”

“Not yet. Gyros will take a minute, but they’re not good for much.”

“Well, we may not be able to move, but at least we can see. Remember, no active sensors until I okay it. We emit nothing, right? Sutter’s orders. The longer it takes the Swarm to spot us, the better.”

“After that exit we already stick out like the dog’s balls.”

“Even so, no sensor sweeps.”

“I hear you loud and clear, boss.”

She flew on up to the bridge and settled into her chair, eyes scanning the banks of screens before her.

The Wildflower tumbled through space, though she only knew this from the instrument readouts before her. Exterior views were still powering up.

“Maneuvering thrusters are up,” Xavi said in her ear a minute later.

“Copy. I’m righting us.” Gloria commanded the ship to settle itself relative to the local star. Gently, so as not to throw everyone inside against a wall. She felt a slight tug as the tiny engines ignited, pulling her to one side.

“Stellar navigation coming online,” Xavi said.

She had the same display, though typically with less detail to minimize distraction. Given the circumstances, she ordered it to give her the full breadth of information.

They’d made it, that much was immediately obvious. Kepler-22 had eleven planets, and they were just inside the orbit of the second farthest, a tiny ball of ice dubbed Skara Brae. Each world in the system had been named after a fabled lost city of Earth. Gloria had no idea why.

She ran a hand over her face. She needed to focus. Skara Brae was good. They were exactly where they were supposed to be.

No sign of the Zephyr, but they’d be running dark as well, so unless Sutter made contact she’d have to assume they’d made it through. In better shape, with any luck.

But there was something unexpected in their wake, more or less where the Zephyr should be. An unidentifiable mass roughly ten thousand kilometers from the fold exit, a distance growing rapidly due to the speed at which the Wildflower had emerged. Exiting a fold meant emerging in a poorly understood situation at high velocity. Usually so far away from anything else that it didn’t matter. That was all going to change with the Mark 5, she realized.

Her eyes found and focused on the large object that hadn’t factored into Beth’s calculations. The mystery ended almost before it began, as Gloria recognized the massive oblong shape immediately.

A Scipio supply ship, and it was turning toward them. The term supply was an Earth-given affectation. In truth no one knew what purpose the behemoths served, but they were common in the vast swath of space between the world of Carthage and the distant, ever-vigilant fleet that was the Swarm Blockade. Sometimes these massive ships would fly out to that orbital distance and make a circuit of the Swarm, the little scout vessels connecting with and then detaching from the much larger supplier. Gloria subscribed to the theory the big ships were delivering fuel, or food, or something like it.

A debris cloud was pushing out from one side of the massive ship. Fire and explosions lit up the infrared from a gash at the center.

“You seeing that, boss?” Xavi asked.

“I am.”

“Think Sutter did that?”

“It’s likely. The question is whether it was on purpose or a collision.”

“Of all the damn luck.”

“Beth?” Gloria called.

The reply came instantly. “Almost done, Captain.”

“You’d better be, dear, because we’ve got company.”

“Understood.” A quiver in her voice. “Thank you. Xavi?”

“God, they’re close,” he said, distracted.

“And they’ve already seen us. So light up the active sensors. Focus on the Zephyr. Where are they, and in what condition. Remember our role here.”

He grunted. “Good. I hate hiding. Full sweep initiated.”

The plan had been to emerge well inside the Swarm, and sit absolutely quiet as long as possible while Sutter and his crew searched for the missing ship. Just in case, Gloria brought up the sensor interface and added her own commands to the queue, commands designed to listen for the transponder of the original lost ship, the Lonesome, and any distress call or message Captain Dawson might have left. It would be a while yet before signals from the diversionary fleet arrived, so distant were they. With any luck they were already pulling a big chunk of the Swarm away, giving the Zephyr and the Wildflower a nice cushion of time to perform their mission.

She was about to close the interface when she noticed another command in the scanner queue. An odd one, quite complex. It had been entered seconds before by Beth Lee.

Gloria’s eyes narrowed. “Beth?”

“Finishing up now. The reactor should be—”

“Never mind that. What’s this sensor request you added?”

Silence.

Xavi’s portrait, on the side of the screen, looked directly at Gloria, eyebrows raised.

“Answer me, please,” Gloria added.

“I . . . ,” Beth said. “It’s a passive—”

“What are you looking for?”

More silence. Then, meekly, she said, “Skyler Luiken’s Key Ship.”

Gloria blinked.

Xavi let out a little laugh.

“On whose orders?”

Beth glanced down, embarrassed. When she replied she sounded like a child. “No one’s. I just wanted to know—”

“Miss Lee,” Gloria said, “we’ve had ships exploring the edges of this system for more than a decade. Ever since we could fold space. Nothing’s ever been found. No signals, no signatures. Nothing.”

The Key Ship had left Earth almost two thousand years earlier, the culmination of a bizarre “first contact” with an alien race known as the Builders. After subjecting Earth to a series of events that almost wiped out humanity, the Builders finally showed themselves and explained their actions. It had all been a test, of sorts, and humanity had passed. Despite all the death and destruction, a small group of humans led by Skyler Luiken had agreed to stay on the Builder vessel, dubbed the Key Ship because of the strange objects that had activated it. The tests Earth had been subjected to implied that humans could help the Builders break the siege of their home world.

No one had ever heard from them again, though, and the siege remained in full force.

“I understand your point of view, Captain Tsandi, but it is possible that part of the Swarm’s purpose is to dampen or distort any such signals from leaving the system.”

“It’s been, what, seventeen hundred years, Beth? Face it, they failed.” Gloria studied the woman’s face, wondering why it was that brilliant people so often believed things so obviously not true. The Builders, and their human helpers, had failed. Everyone agreed on that. If they’d ever reached their destination or not, no one knew, but the fact was Carthage was still under siege, the Swarm Blockade an impenetrable barrier. Of the fate of the human crew no message had ever been received. It had all been a long time ago, the deeds and actions mostly the stuff of legend despite a decent media record.

Gloria counted herself among those who couldn’t care less. It was ancient history. Earth had moved on. Bounced back from that calamity with surprising force. Resettled and rebuilt. Explored and exploited the solar system. And then had come the ability to fold space.

Beth started to argue again, but Gloria cut her off. “The Lonesome, Beth, that’s what we’re here for, understand? They made it. That we know for sure. And we know what happens if the Scipios find them before we do. That craft, or the Zephyr or us, could lead the Scipios to Earth. This isn’t some archeological expedition. We’ve got to locate and either retrieve or destroy the Lonesome, and then get out of here ourselves. I want to know you understand. I want to hear you say it.”

A silence stretched, and Gloria felt an anger she’d not expected begin to fade. She’d always made it a point of pride not to raise her voice with her crew. She saw those who flew with her as her family, and if her parents had taught her one thing it was that warmth and compassion were a courtesy you should afford your own.

“The Key Ship could lead them to Earth, too,” Beth Lee said in her flat, factual way. “By that logic, I mean. Captain.”

The words were like a splash of cold water. “You . . . We’ll debate that later. Focus on the task at hand, Miss Lee,” Gloria said, because she couldn’t really disagree. “We’re adrift in perhaps the most dangerous place in the galaxy. This is not the time for distractions.”

The other woman nodded, and went back to work.

Gloria stewed, her finger hovering over an icon. After a few seconds she pulled back. She did not remove the sensor request.

“Boss!” Xavi shouted, despite the comm in her ear being online.

Gloria winced. “Go ahead.”

“The long range!”

She shifted focus to it. Out near the edge of the system, an evenly spaced grid of dots formed a gigantic sphere around the solar system. The Wildflower hadn’t been here long enough to get a true fix on any but the closest, and she saw immediately what had Xavi so excited. The dots were pushing out, not in toward her. The ruse of the diversionary fleet had worked, at least for now. If only this damn supply ship wasn’t right on top of us.

“Well, that’s something,” she said. “What about this behemoth? Any escort?”

“Not that I can see, but she’s coming about.”

“And the Zephyr?”

“Crickets, nothing but crickets.”

Gloria’s heart sank even as it beat faster. “Keep me apprised. Beth, I need an update.”

The engineer replied a second later, the rebuke of moments earlier evidently forgotten. “Engines should be back online in one minute, maybe less.”

“What about the imploder?” Gloria asked, already dreading the reply. Beth would have mentioned it first if the news were good.

“That’s going to take a bit more time.”

“How much more?”

“I don’t like to guess.”

“I’m ordering you to guess, Miss Lee.”

A hesitation. Studying raw data, probably.

“Twenty minutes, maybe.”

Gloria considered that. The time made little difference, in truth. Without engines the imploder would be useless.

“Xavi?”

“Yeah, boss.”

“Calculate us an escape trajectory, just in case. I want it ready at the touch of an icon.” The Mark 5 imploder may be able to exit a fold in slightly curved space, but it still had to enter at a point of near-zero curvature or face serious risk. When the time came to leave, they’d have to be well away from this ship, these planets, this Sun. Every second of head start they could get would make a difference.

And what’s more, Gloria thought with growing worry, they only had the one imploder left. Part of the mass-shedding diet the Wildflower had been on in preparation for this mission. One imploder meant just getting out to a safe distance wasn’t enough. To perform a hasty fold without the usual careful calculations would be pointless. A big object like this supply ship curved space only minutely, but that was enough to drop you trillions of kilometers from the intended destination, reliant on distress calls that worked only at the poky speed of light. Normally not a problem, she’d just recalculate and try again. No such luxury here. Gloria would just have to hope, if the time came to do an emergency fold, that they’d have time to aim at Earth, or a colony, or some distant supply cache. “We need to be ready to leave if Sutter orders us to.” If he’s still alive, she left unsaid.

“You got it.”

Minutes later a bright red INCOMING TRANSMISSION event popped up on the comm screen, and for the first time since arriving Gloria felt a pang of hope.

Sutter’s face appeared a second later. Blood ran from a gash on his forehead, the cockpit behind him a mixture of darkness, showers of white-hot sparks, and the urgent cries and shouts of a crew in dire straits.

4

THE WILDFLOWER

4.AUG.3911 (EARTH ACTUAL)

“WILDFLOWER,” Sutter said, “get the hell out of here!”

The image suddenly stretched to the left, smeared by interference, and the audio garbled.

“Where are you? We’ll come—”

“No,” Sutter said through the static. “Get away. That’s an order. We’re badly damaged. Collided with that heap of shit. Reactor leak. Imploder damaged. Not—”

A sharp bang preceded the link being dropped.

Gloria tapped a button and her wraparound display instantly shifted to a tactical configuration. She whirled, spinning her couch to face aft, and saw the nearby Scipio behemoth looming, almost finished with its slow turn that would put it on the Wildflower’s trajectory.

“Xavi!”

“I heard him.”

“Find them, now. I don’t . . . I can’t see—”

“Already on it. Working on that link, too.”

Gloria skimmed the intel on the giant hauler. It was almost a kilometer long and looked as if built from a hundred skyscrapers lashed together. One element did stick out: the word UNARMED right there at the top of the screen. That seemed to be the consensus, at least, according to distant observation. It seemed a safe assumption they would have some kind of ability to at least investigate a hostile presence like the Wildflower. Gloria did not intend to wait around and find out.

“The link’s coming back,” Xavi said.

Sutter’s face appeared, like a ghost in digital noise. He was saying something but no sound came through.

“Where are you?” Gloria pleaded.

His reply came through in fractured syllables. “Forget us. We’re in . . . —wake. Rejoin fleet and try—”

A wash of signal corruption. “Dammit, dammit . . . ,” Gloria said. The enemy vessel completed its turn. Somewhere in the vast plume of its gigantic engines, the Zephyr was being melted. “Its mass must have shifted your exit right on top of it, and ours near enough.”

Sutter’s voice came back, though the visual had died. “Buy you time,” was all Gloria could make out.

The implications chilled her. The Zephyr was done for, and Sutter would not allow her secrets to fall into Scipio hands. The same decision would face Gloria if she could not get away. “Beth? I need good news.”

“Engines in ten seconds,” she replied.

“Thank you. Xavi?”

“Say the word, boss.”

“Do it!”

“Full burn, coming up.”

And he meant it. The instant Beth’s countdown hit zero, Gloria’s seat spun of its own accord, facing her along the acceleration vector. An instant of silence followed, then she slammed back into her chair as if propelled on the edge of an explosion. A pressure that kept piling on. The corners of her vision blurred and tinted dark red. Bits of the ship began to rattle, then the entire hull shuddered. Gloria’s own teeth clattered together. In her haste she’d forgotten her mouthpiece, which hung from her collar, but with her arm now pinned by the force of the engines she could do nothing about it.

Something clanged from somewhere midship. A terrible thought went through her mind: Could the ship handle it, so soon after that rocky arrival?

Too late to worry about that. Gloria gripped the arms of her chair and ground her trembling teeth. She felt the knife of unconsciousness begin to twist from the corners of her vision and slammed her eyes shut, but the sensation did not go away, it only grew. Then her compression suit squeezed so hard she’d have screamed if she could. The pain all along her chest and thighs was savage and bright, but the suit didn’t care, the suit performed its function by keeping her conscious.

“Xavi, you’re tearing us apart!” she growled, the words tumbling out like spit gravel.

“All systems green!” he shot back. “All systems green!”

Unable to see, Gloria could only trust him. She didn’t like Xavi much. Not as a friend. He was heartless and brash, the kind of man she avoided in her personal life. But damned if he wasn’t reliable as a mountain when things went wrong. Friend or not, he was family to her. The renegade little brother, loved despite the flaws.

Through the constant shuddering roar of the engines, Gloria found she could open her eyes after a minute of acclimation. She scanned the readouts and imagery in front of her.

The Scipio supply ship now pointed right at the Wildflower, its engines forming a glowing yellow haze around the profile. Somewhere in that fiery exhaust was the Zephyr, if it hadn’t already been vaporized. Gloria studied her pursuer, both in visual and on the other frequencies, but as of yet could see no smaller craft or missiles in flight. Beam weapons would of course impact at the same time as any indication of their use, but as of yet the Wildflower had suffered only the usual Scipio sensor sweeps. Nothing to be done about that. Scipios rarely fired on ships from Earth. They wanted a working example of an imploder too badly. The question was, how would they react when presented with two such ships in such close proximity? If the Zephyr was salvageable . . .

Gloria swallowed hard, eyes darting briefly to the section of her control screen where she could override all safety measures in the fusion core, and turn this ship into a fireball that would briefly shine brighter than the Sun. How many before her had resorted to that? Plenty. Dozens. A graveyard of wreckage adrift in the cold vacuum well beyond Skara Brae and even tiny Hatra at the system’s edge. Is that what Sutter would do now? What Dawson had done, before?

She’d spent many evenings in half-drunken conversations with Xavi about the suicide pact. The handshake agreement every captain of a fold-capable ship made with the OEA. Gloria felt it the most important promise in the universe, and rebuffed every unlikely scenario Xavi tried to concoct where she’d have to ignore it. Easy enough to say such things when you weren’t in command, but for her part Gloria appreciated the point of view. The contrast in perspective was one of the things she loved about his place in the crew. Not that she’d ever tell him.

On her long-range screen the diversion fleet continued to race away from the Swarm at top speed, though the gap had already started to shrink noticeably. The Swarm Blockade had visibly bowed outward, like a bubble forming. But the pattern had changed. Some had started to move in, on trajectories that would bring them to intercept the Wildflower. Still hours away, sure, but the little bastards were fast.