Mapped Space 1: The Antaran Codex Read online

  The Antaran Codex

  By

  Stephen Renneberg

  Copyright

  Copyright © Stephen Renneberg 2014

  ISBN: 978-0-9874347-8-4

  All Rights Reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  License Notes

  This eBook is licensed for your personal use only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should purchase your own copy from a licensed eBook distributor. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Cover design by Damonza

  Author's Web Page

  http://www.stephenrenneberg.com/

  ALSO BY STEPHEN RENNEBERG

  The Mothership

  The Siren Project

  The Kremlin Phoenix

  DEDICATION

  For Elenor, with love.

  Mapped Space Chronology

  15000 BC - 2130 AD

  Rise of Planetary Civilization on Earth.

  2130 - 2643

  Rise of Inter-planetary Civilization throughout the Solar System

  2644

  First human ship reaches Proxima Centauri and is met by a Tau Cetin Observer.

  Dawn of human interstellar civilization.

  2645

  Earth Council signs the Access Treaty with the Galactic Forum.

  First Probationary Period begins.

  Tau Cetins provide astrographic data out to 1,200 light years from Earth (Mapped Space) and 100 kilograms of novarium (Nv, Element 147) to power human starships.

  2646 - 3154

  Human Civilization expands rapidly through Mapped Space.

  Continual Access Treaty infringements delays mankind’s acceptance into the Galactic Forum.

  3154

  Human religious fanatics attack the Mataron Homeworld.

  Tau Cetin Observers prevent Mataron Fleet from destroying Earth.

  3155 - 3158

  Tau Cetin ships convert human supplies of novarium held in Earth stockpiles and within ship energy plants to inert material.

  3155 - 4155

  Galactic Forum suspends human interstellar access rights and imposes 1,000 year Embargo.

  Contact with other civilizations ends.

  Many human outposts beyond the Solar System collapse.

  4126

  Earth Navy (EN) established by the Democratic Union to police mankind when Embargo is lifted.

  Earth Council assumes control of the EN.

  4138

  Earth Intelligence Service (EIS) established by the Earth Council.

  4155

  The Embargo ends. Access Treaty reactivated.

  Second 500 year Probationary Period begins.

  Human interstellar travel resumes.

  4155 - 4267

  Earth re-establishes contact with surviving human outposts.

  4605

  The Antaran Codex.

  Contents

  Author’s Web Page

  Chronology

  Chapter One: Vulpecula NP-28697

  Chapter Two: Hades City

  Chapter Three: Icetop

  Chapter Four: Axon Way Station

  Chapter Five: Deadwood

  Chapter Six: Vintari System

  Chapter Seven: Hevelius Base

  Chapter One : Vulpecula NP-28697

  Navigation Point

  Non System Space

  Outer Vulpecula Region

  1,068 light years from Sol

  Autonomous Beacons

  "Silver Lining, power down your engines and prepare to be boarded!" A stern Democratic Union voice ordered the moment we unbubbled and began maneuvering for the final run to Macaulay Station. “Do not attempt to re-engage your star drive, or you will be fired upon!”

  It was the one thing every freighter pilot dreaded, being jumped after stopping for a course correction. While we were bubbled and travelling faster than the speed of light, we were blind, but safe. Once we dropped to flat space however, with sensors retracted and the autonav crunching numbers for the next leg, we were a sitting duck. Sensors were always stowed inside the hull during superluminal flight to protect them from bubble heat, giving a well positioned raider the opportunity for a knockout blow while their victim was still blind.

  “Are they showing a transponder?” I asked, knowing we only had seconds to decide whether to run or fight.

  Jase Logan, my twenty six year old copilot, watched the curved display in front of his acceleration couch anxiously, waiting for our sensors to deploy through the Lining’s windowless hull. At times like these, Jase was all business. He was blonde, brash, quick to anger, yet he had the makings of a fine pilot in spite of an oversized reckless streak. He’d been born on Oresund and, like most Ories, had been well on his way to becoming a mercenary before I knocked some sense into him a few years back and put him to work. When the automated transponder signal appeared on his display, he relaxed. “It’s the Nassau!”

  This was Raven space and transponders could be faked, although I’d never heard of the local Pirate Brotherhood pretending to be Earth Navy. That would have elevated them up the navy’s kill-on-sight list, something most Raven commanders wouldn’t risk.

  “Does the energy signature match?”

  Jase watched his display intently as we scanned the approaching ship. Ravens had many tricks, but faking E-plant emissions wasn’t one of them. “It’s definitely her. She’s eight thousand clicks out and closing, weapons hot.”

  Our optical sensors locked into place and began feeding real time imagery to the flight deck’s wrap around view screen. A dull gray frigate appeared, dead ahead and coming in fast. Her hull bristled with sensors and shield emitters, while spaced along her topside were four heavy guns in armored turrets. The ENS Nassau was the long, unforgiving arm of Earth law with enough firepower to blast any human ship or outpost that threatened to violate the galaxy spanning Access Treaty – ensuring none did.

  “What’s she doing out here?” I wondered aloud.

  The navy regularly inspected ships for contraband, although the trek to Macaulay Station was no prime trade route. Human ships passed this way once every three or four weeks, hardly justifying sending such an expensive piece of hardware out snooping around boonies space. If they knew we were smuggling, it would take an inspection team equipped with nanometric scanners to find our shielded compartment, equipment frigates didn’t carry. Even so, we were only carrying pleasure-grams for the miners on Macaulay. Nothing too kinky or weird, just enough to help lonely isolated men relieve their boredom. The p-grams were borderline illegal, not enough to get the Lining impounded, just slapped with a hefty fine that would make this run a loss maker.

  I flicked on the ship-to-ship communicator. “Hi Nassau. Glad to see you’re out here keeping the space lanes safe. Silver Lining standing to.” The spit-and-polish navy types would be irritated by my sloppy comms discipline, but I wanted them thinking I had nothing to hide and no understanding of navy protocols.

  The frigate rolled crisply, bow over stern, aimed its four maneuvering engines towards us and began decelerating. The navy weren’t
exactly a welcome sight, but they were better than Ravens who would have stolen our cargo and left us dead in space without a second thought. Nevertheless, the navy made all traders nervous, mostly because every one of us smuggled a little, just to make ends meet.

  “She’s heading for the port lock,” Jase said as he tracked the Nassau’s trajectory. “You want me to meet them, Skipper?”

  “No, I’ll do it.”

  “You better warn Izin.”

  Izin was my engineer and a tamph – a terrestrial amphibian. Physically incapable of human speech, he relied on a vocalizer to produce human sounds. A small number of his kind had been marooned on Earth in the twenty first century – over two and a half thousand years ago – shipwrecked survivors of the Intruder War, a conflict that had raged across a third of the galaxy long before mankind was ever aware of such things. Izin’s ancestors had started the war, but fortunately for us – and everyone else – they’d been defeated. The cluster of stars they called home had been under close blockade ever since by a fleet millions of years more advanced than any Earth Navy ship. Quite simply, the Galactic Forum – the nearest thing the Milky Way had to a governing body – considered the Intruder Civilization too dangerous ever to be let loose on the universe again.

  The only tamphs not under blockade lived on Earth, now uncomfortably a part of Human Civilization where – limited to mankind’s relatively rudimentary level of technology – they posed no risk to the rest of the galaxy. They stood far ahead of us on the evolutionary ladder and could have become the apex species on Earth if they’d arrived a century earlier. Instead, the descendants of the shipwrecked survivors had formed a small, remote enclave north of Australia known as Tamph City, technically an autonomous region within the Democratic Union. Tamphs were tolerated, but viewed with suspicion due to their reputation for a kind of mild mannered violence few humans understood. They could slit your throat before you even knew they were there, but if they gave you their word, they’d honor it to the grave. At least, the males would. The females were treacherous to a degree impossible for humans to understand.

  Most humans didn’t realize that in the highly matriarchical tamph culture it was the females who wielded the power and started the wars, not the males. That’s why the females lived secluded, powerless lives in Tamph City, doing little more than breeding within agreed population limits, and why they were never allowed to leave Earth – at the polite insistence of the Tau Cetins. The TCs were the leading Orion Arm civilization and the only Forum Observer species in our part of the galaxy. Observers weren’t exactly the law, but over millions of years they’d earned the respect and trust of other Forum members and now held a privileged position interpreting Galactic Law and advising the Forum membership. Observer species also possessed the most advanced technology and wielded the greatest military power in the galaxy, which for humanity meant we ignored their counsel at our peril.

  Fortunately, Izin was male and we had an understanding. He served aboard my ship with complete freedom, providing he carried out his duty diligently and didn’t kill anyone without my permission. So far, he’d never given me cause to doubt him.

  I tapped the intercom. “Izin, you there?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “The navy’s coming aboard. Stay out of sight until they’re gone.”

  “As you wish, Captain,” he replied. Because his voice was synthesized, it was always difficult to tell how he felt, although sometimes his choice of words hinted at his emotional state.

  “Plot the course to Macaulay,” I said to Jase as I slipped off my acceleration couch. “I want to get out of here as soon as the navy lets us go.”

  “You got it, Skipper.”

  By the time I reached the port hatch, the Nassau had mated airlocks and was equalizing pressure. Presently, the inner hatch swung open and a hulking Union Regular Army Colonel wearing a dress dark blue uniform with an abundance of gold braid stepped through, ducking his square head under the hatch rim.

  “Are you Kade?” he asked brusquely. “Sirius Kade?”

  “Yeah,” I replied, glancing into the airlock, looking for the scanning team. “Are you doing this alone?”

  “This is no inspection. You’re to come aboard the Nassau.”

  “Says who?” Inspections were one thing – I was bound to submit to those by law or the Nassau could legitimately blast us into our constituent atoms – but being taken aboard a navy ship without charge was illegal, not that legal niceties counted for much out here.

  “I’m not at liberty to say.” He motioned towards the airlock and waited. “I’m authorized to use force if you resist.”

  He was physically larger than me, obviously modded for strength. I knew from experience the genetic engineering they subjected URA troopers too included an unhealthy dose of brute courage, but I was ultra-reflexed, not that he would have any idea what that meant. My enhanced speed could turn this mountain of muscle into an unconscious lump of meat faster than he could blink, but then I’d soon have ten assault troopers pounding me into the bulkheads in retaliation. After I regained consciousness, I’d have to explain how I took out a URA Colonel unarmed – not something I could do.

  “Seeing as you asked so nicely,” I said, stepping into the airlock, followed by the Colonel. “You want to tell me what this is about?”

  “Nope,” The Colonel replied, staring straight ahead.

  “Have I got a docking ticket outstanding? Owe some back taxes?” I persisted, but the demeanor of the URA officer remained impenetrable.

  A pair of dark blue uniformed troopers saluted the Colonel as we stepped out of the airlock, then subjected me to the usual probing and scanning civilians endured before being allowed to enter a navy ship. I expected the standard retinal, alpha wave and DNA scans, but they made me strip, then subjected me to a full biomap – something I hadn’t had to endure in eight years.

  That’s when I knew something serious was up.

  There were ways of faking identities, of modifying appearances, even of tricking all the common signature scans, but there was no known way to fabricate a perfect copy of a human, although we could never rule out the possibility alien-tech could do it. A biomap was the only truly, incorruptible means of verifying an identify, which is why b-maps were so carefully guarded and so rarely used. Before I’d stepped aboard the Nassau, I’d have sworn the only validated version of my b-map was locked away in a high security facility over a thousand light years away on Earth.

  So how did these muscle bound storm troopers get a copy?

  The troopers finished their body scan and motioned for me to dress while they ran a full pattern check. By the time I was pulling on my dark brown flight jacket, my face appeared on a display beside their equipment: unkempt brown hair, green eyes, sharp cheek bones and a slightly bent nose. The nose used to be straight, but some lab rat on Earth had decided more than twenty years ago that giving it a slight twist would help disguise the radical genetic engineering I’d been subjected to. By the time I no longer needed a disguise, I’d grown used to the crooked nose and decided to keep it.

  “It’s him,” one of the troopers said.

  The Colonel nodded for me to follow him through cramped metal corridors to a briefing room which I knew from experience adjoined the ship’s Tactical Warfare Center. Without a word, the Colonel left me alone listening to the hum of the ship. Presently, a hatch opened giving me a glimpse of the crowded TWC beyond. It was just as I remembered, filled with screens displaying every detectable object within reach of the ship’s sophisticated sensors and manned by officers wearing interactive suits that networked them into the ship’s real time data stream.

  The view of the TWC was suddenly blocked by a statuesque woman with dark brown skin, finely sculpted features and penetrating eyes. Lena Voss wore a dark, well tailored civilian suit with a colorful scarf around her neck and small diamond earrings, although no wedding ring. I hadn’t seen her in a long time, not since I’d left the service. Not surprisingly
, she’d hardly aged a day, but then neither had I. My chronological age was forty six, while she was closer to seventy, yet neither of us looked a day over thirty. Longevity was a side effect of the genetic reengineering we’d both been subjected to, and though the EIS would never admit it, keeping us alive longer gave them a better return on their investment.

  “You’re late,” Lena said, motioning me to a seat at the metallic conference table.

  “I didn’t know we had an appointment.”

  “Your flight plan out of Indrax said you’d be hopping this navpoint two days ago.”

  “If you’d told me we were meeting, I’d have got here sooner.”

  “If I’d told you, you wouldn’t have come.”

  “Now you’ll never know.”

  I’d lodged that flight plan before Jase had ended up in jail after a drunken bar fight. It was an unfortunate case of a gas miner’s wife not being completely truthful about her marital status with my oversexed copilot. Jase had spent two days on ice while I bribed various officials to get him released. The bribe was coming out of his cut, of course, as were the miner’s medical bills. For Lena to have known my intentions, her people must have been watching me and used a fast ship to report my flight plan.

  She slipped into a chair while I remained defiantly standing. “Sit down, Sirius.”

  Whatever she was after was important enough to commandeer a navy frigate to meet me where no one would know I’d had contact with her or the navy. Giving me a choice was clearly not part of her plan, so I took my seat. She leaned forward slowly, giving me her spooky psionic-prober look and reached into the depths of my mind, assessing if I was still up to it. It wasn’t a natural ability, it was engineered, but you needed genuine aptitude for the modding – something very few humans had.