In Earth's Service (Mapped Space Book 2) Read online

  “It doesn’t have to be that way with us.”

  “You serve our enemy,” the Intruder Matriarch said with chilling finality, then threw herself onto the deck and rolled beneath the stasis field into the siphon’s energy stream. She was vaporized in a brilliant white flash, eliminating all trace of her existence. For a moment, I stared in disbelief at the energy stream, then turned back to the others. Izin was holding his head, eyes closed, while Vrate was struggling to his feet, using his gun as a crutch.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “We’re not their enemy.”

  “You are, if they say you are,” Vrate said, staring darkly at the blood splattered lid on the cryochamber where one of his people had just been murdered. “Especially now.”

  “Why now?”

  He turned to me, hunched over in pain. “They’re coming again, this time, not alone.”

  It took a moment for his words to sink in. My eyes fell on the dead Mataron, slumped on the deck with his brain shredded, then the pieces came together in a flash of realization. The Intruder Matriarch was gone and soon a massive dark energy explosion would rend space where we stood, annihilating the Mavia and her secrets, especially one secret the Intruder Matriarch had taken to her death.

  “The Intruders and the Matarons are allies!” I exclaimed, shocked by the implications.

  The Matriarch was here buying Mataron loyalty by helping the snakeheads destroy mankind, something they couldn’t do by themselves, not with the Tau Cetins watching. They needed a partner, an ally with the power to match the might of the Tau Cetins. In return, the Matarons had betrayed the Alliance. It was how the Intruders had been able to sabotage the Alliance’s sensor fields in the Minacious Cluster and how they’d known the location of the Forum Fleet prior to the attack. The five Mataron ships lost in the battle had been sacrificed to keep the snakehead treachery hidden from the Allies, and it had worked! Five ships was a small price to pay for our destruction and for the defeat of the Tau Cetins.

  “The Matarons and the Intruders are very different,” Vrate said. “The only thing they have in common are their enemies and that makes them natural allies.”

  “The Tau Cetins will crush the Matarons when they find out!”

  “They can’t. No proof. The Matriarch saw to that.”

  “When the siphon explodes, the wormhole collapse will create a black hole. That’s proof!”

  “Only of human stupidity. The Forum will believe you used technology you didn’t understand and paid a heavy price for it. No one will care.”

  “Their fear of the Intruders will make them care.”

  Vrate coughed blood and phosphorescence, then said, “The Alliance is weary. Every year, its fleet grows weaker. The Intruders know this. Last time, they destroyed all in their path, forcing many civilizations to unite against them. This time will be different. They will have allies and knowledge of their enemy. They will not give the Tau Cetins reason to convince other Observer races to fight. This time, the Intruders will win.”

  The dark energy siphon was beginning to emit high frequency sounds as lightning flecks flashed erratically through the transmission beam, while the other two siphons continued undisturbed.

  “What about Earth?”

  “It’s too late.”

  “Captain,” Izin said, slowly regaining his senses, “We don’t … have to shut it off.”

  Vrate glanced at him confused. “Nothing can stop the siphon’s destruction now.”

  I ran to Izin, holstering my gun, grabbing him by the shoulders. “How do we stop it?”

  He blinked slowly, clearing his mind. “Retract it.”

  “Retract what?” I demanded. “What are you talking about?”

  He pointed to the consoles on the far wall. “The singularity guidance system.”

  I lifted him off the deck and carried him to the console. “Tell me what to do!”

  “Pull the singularity back into hyperspace … Break contact with the Solar System.”

  “Will that stop the black hole forming?”

  “No,” Izin said, “but it will be a one sided wormhole. Here only, not in the Solar System.”

  The control interface was a broad interactive panel, filled with touch sliders and colored control points, none of which meant anything to me. “Which one?”

  Izin turned to the panel uncertainly. “I’m not sure, Captain.”

  “Guess!”

  He reached toward an image of a three dimensional geodesic and dragged his finger across the curved surface. On the screen above, the image of a spherical wormhole mouth filled with a dead black sphere began to shrink. Closely bunched concentric rings around the wormhole mouth slowly began to expand as spacetime curvature in the Solar System began decreasing.

  Behind us, Gern Vrate limped on his weapon-crutch to the second cryochamber and released the transparent cover with a hiss of misty air. He didn’t wait to see the occupant revive, but continued on to the third chamber to free its frozen prisoner.

  “How long?” I asked as the self destructing siphon’s energy took on a dark red hue.

  “I don’t know, Captain.”

  Vrate opened the third cryochamber, yelling, “Kade, if you help me get my people out, you can come with me.”

  “Izin?” I said, following his gaze to the screen above the console. The tightly bunched concentric rings suddenly flowed like ripples on a pond after a stone had been dropped into it and began to fade away.

  “The mouth has withdrawn, Captain. The singularity is back in hyperspace.” Izin pointed to another screen showing an elongated shape resembling a sock with a heavy weight in it, slowly shrinking. “It’s coming back this way.”

  I turned to Vrate. “We’re coming!”

  The Kesarn in the second chamber had his eyes open. He was cold and disoriented, but he didn’t resist as I dragged him out of the chamber. He was heavier than a man, but I managed to sling him across my shoulders. Vrate was too weak to get the other one out, so Izin jumped onto the cryochamber and pulled the frozen Kesarn to a sitting position, then rolled him over the side, letting him fall onto the deck.

  Vrate grunted unhappily at the roughness.

  “Better bruised than dead,” I said.

  “Can your tamph carry him?” Vrate asked, ignoring Izin completely.

  “I can drag him, Captain.”

  “I’ll take his other hand,” I said, turning to Vrate. “Where’s your ship?”

  “Near where you boarded,” he said, limping on his weapon-crutch toward the vehicle entry.

  I followed him, struggling under the weight of the half frozen Kesarn on my shoulders while helping Izin drag the other one by the arms. We struggled through dark corridors as the wail of the deteriorating dark energy siphon rose to a scream behind us and the lightning flashes grew brighter.

  “You Kesarn need to slim down,” I said.

  “Harden up, human,” Vrate growled, pressing his hand against the side of his chest, careful not to touch the fluorescence that was now lighting our path. Incredibly, it was healing him before my eyes.

  The thunder of the Vigilant’s bombardment continued unabated, almost drowned out by the shriek of the dying siphon. There was no sign of the crew, who may have been trapped in another part of the ship, but we couldn’t help them.

  “What’s the siphon’s blast radius?” I asked, feeling my shoulders turning to ice under the cold radiating from the Kesarn hulk I was carrying.

  “Equivalent to a small nova.”

  “Will it reach the Aphrodite?”

  “They have shields,” Vrate said. “At that distance, they will survive.”

  We passed through an armored hatch, out of the Mavia’s fortified citadel. In the corridor were a dozen dead Orie mercs, some were on fire, lighting our way.

  “Your handiwork?” I asked.

  “I took no pleasure in it. I am a tracer, not a killer. Survival is our burden.”

  “Your burden?”

  “I find the lost
that they may live,” he said in a way that sounded almost ritualistic. “Failure means death.”

  “You couldn’t stop the Matriarch,” I said, thinking he was grieving the loss of the Kesarn the Intruder had killed in the siphon room.

  “One life, one world, they are all our burden.”

  I glanced at his hard face, realizing he was talking as much about the dead Kesarn as the destruction of his homeworld. Having spied for the Tau Cetins during the Intruder War, his people had risked the ire of one galactic super power by helping another and it had cost them everything. No wonder he was bitter! More than that, I realized his entire race suffered survivor’s guilt, making the loss of even one more Kesarn almost unbearable. It was why he was a survivor, why his people had invented healsuits and why he would scour the galaxy to save one life.

  We moved on in silence to an open airlock, then Vrate helped Izin drag his Kesarn through while I struggled alone with mine. Once aboard, I released my Kesarn and followed Vrate as he hobbled to his flight deck.

  “I need to warn the human ships!” I declared.

  He limped up the ramp to his piloting position, dropped his weapon-crutch and placed his hands on the two command spheres, using them for support. Almost immediately, his ship moved away from the Mavia sending the navigational guides sliding across the inside of the spherical chamber.

  The Vigilant was barely twenty clicks away, a rectangular armored slab with squat round turrets either side of a central superstructure. Her big guns were firing steady, controlled blasts, vainly trying to batter down the Mavia’s shield, while her secondary weapons poured rapid fire streams at the same point. Sheets of energy rolled across the Mavia’s shield, illuminating its curved surface before fading away, showing no sign of buckling under the onslaught.

  Far beyond the battlecruiser were three smaller Earth Navy ships exchanging fire with the Super Saracen fleet bearing down on them. None of the Separatist ships were heading for the wormhole mouth now. Either the arrival of the Earth Navy squadron had forced them to abandon their attack, or they’d detected the singularity blocking the exit mouth and had aborted the raid. Whatever the reason, the small Earth Navy force was suffering at the hands of its more powerful adversary.

  The heavy destroyer Kirishima was adrift. Glowing plasma fires lit up her hull in a dozen places as her last surviving heavy gun continued to fire sporadically. With no shield or propulsion and the full weight of the Separatist fleet bearing down on her, she didn’t have long to live, yet not a single escape pod had launched.

  Retreating from the wreck of the Kirishima were the Delhi and the Nassau, firing as they fell back. The leading Super Saracens were already maneuvering to pass the Kirishima and refocus their attention on the surviving escorts. Their shields were still up, but a plasma fire had erupted from Delhi’s starboard side and one of Nassau’s turrets was already a jagged ruin.

  Only the Vigilant was undamaged, having come in to destroy the Mavia while her escorts kept the Super Saracens away. Coming up from below the Mavia were the two converted cruisers that had detached to intercept the Silver Lining. They were still outside weapons range, but were decelerating on an intercept course with the Vigilant. Sheltering behind the Vigilant was the Silver Lining, carefully positioned not to obstruct the warship’s guns, but close enough to swoop in and pick us up if we jumped clear in the battle suits.

  “Speak,” Vrate said as we passed outside the Mavia’s defense shield.

  I took a step up the ramp. “This is Sirius Kade to all Earth Navy ships and to the Silver Lining. The Mavia is about to become a nova. Evacuate the system immediately!”

  Lena Voss’s face appeared inside the sphere surrounding Vrate’s flight deck. “ENS Vigilant to Sirius Kade, is Earth in danger?”

  “No, but we are!”

  Relief washed over her face. “Good work, Sirius. Vigilant out.”

  Lena’s face vanished, then Vrate said. “Another message incoming.”

  Jase’s face appeared. “Skipper, where are you?’

  “On Vrate’s ship. Get moving. Pick a direction, don’t stop for a light year. We’ll find you.” I glanced at Gern Vrate. “Right?”

  “If he goes now,” he agreed, sending his ship hurtling past the Vigilant. In the blink of an eye, we were behind the Silver Lining, velocities perfectly matched.

  “I’m out of here,” Jase said, then bubbled away in a streak of light.

  I looked at Vrate quizzically.

  “Got it,” he said, confirming how easily he could read our autonav.

  A short distance away, the Vigilant’s big guns fell silent. She turned slowly, thirty degrees, then bubbled, followed immediately by the two surviving navy frigates. Only the glowing wreck of the Kirishima remained of the Earth Navy ships, still being battered by the Super Saracens.

  “Can you save her?” I asked, nodding toward the beleaguered Kirishima.

  “There isn’t time.”

  “Do the Separatist ships know what’s coming?”

  “I didn’t include them,” Vrate said, turning curiously. “Would you have preferred I did?”

  “No, let them burn.” At that range, even with their shields up, the Separatist fleet would not survive the explosion of the Mavia. “Are there any other ships in-system?” I asked, wondering if the Cyclops was still here.

  “No.”

  “OK, let’s go.”

  Vrate’s ship turned after the Silver Lining, then his spear-like superluminal bubble formed, carrying us to safety. Several minutes later, a small nova bloomed at the edge of the Duranis-B system, consuming the Mavia, thirty two Super Saracen merchant cruisers and vaporizing the wreck of the Kirishima.

  Fifteen hours later, the blast was captured by every major news service in Mapped Space, watched from the decadent comfort of the Aphrodite and dozens of smaller ships. The Separatist leaders were shocked to see their fleet repel an Earth Navy squadron only to vanish in a single annihilating flash. To most, it was a disaster, the ruin of years of planning and the expenditure of vast fortunes, made worse by the terrible retribution that would inevitably be inflicted upon them by Earth Navy.

  To Manning Thurlow Ransford III, cradled in one of his colorful exoskeletons, the bright light in the sky marked a huge increase in demand for ships and weapons of all kinds, from both sides. The loss of this fleet was a setback to the Separatist cause, but he knew there were other squadrons that were even now launching surprise attacks upon isolated Earth Navy outposts across Mapped Space. Considering the distances involved, it would be many months before news of the Duranis-B disaster reached them, by which time Human Civilization would be ablaze.

  In the secluded comfort of his super yacht in its private berth alongside the Aphrodite, he watched the distant nova slowly fade, not with trepidation but with delight, certain that business would be booming for years to come.

  Vrate’s ship unbubbled a light year from the Duranis binary after a few seconds of flight. By the time the Silver Lining arrived seven hours later, the two kidnapped Kesarn had recovered their strength enough to eat and drink, but do little else.

  Vrate locked onto the Lining’s port side airlock, eager to get rid of us and take his two companions home – wherever that was. The Kesarn were an obstinately solitary people, suggesting much about their origins. I could imagine lone hunters prowling the plains of a long lost world during a time predating technology. Now they prowled the galaxy, alone and remorseful, tortured by survivor’s guilt, longing for a world that no longer existed.

  At the airlock, Vrate gave me an appraising look. Incredibly, his chest wound was showing remarkable progress while his suit was already beginning to repair itself. For loners wandering the galaxy, isolated from mainstream civilization, the Kesarn healsuit was the ultimate achievement in self reliance. I wanted one.

  “You kept your word,” Vrate said. “You found my people.”

  “You kept yours. Thanks for trusting me.”

  “Are you typical of humans?” />
  “Some of them.”

  He fell silent, deep in thought. Finally he said, “The Kesarn have few friends.”

  “I find that hard to believe, you’re such a bundle of laughs.”

  The Kesarn’s granite face didn’t budge. He was as tough as a Gesion razorback, and about as affable.

  “I will recommend we establish contact with Earth.”

  That was a surprise. “I thought we were primitive barbarians?”

  “You are, but so were we – once. Even more than you.” He hesitated. “In time, we may come to an understanding.”

  “Any Kesarn ambassador will be welcome on Earth.”

  In fact, Earth Council would fall over themselves to build a friendship – perhaps even an alliance – with the Kesarn, a people hundreds of thousands of years ahead of us who were beholding to no one, who feared nothing and now had a reason to hate the Matarons.

  Vrate held out both hands palms up and nodded his head slightly forward. I wasn’t quite sure of the meaning of the gesture, but I guessed it had something to do with trusting me enough to show he held no weapons. I mirrored the gesture back to him. His dark stony face gave no hint as to whether it was the right response, but he didn’t insult me so I figured he’d taken it as a good attempt at respecting his customs.

  I followed Izin into the airlock and turned back to the Kesarn tracer. “If you’re ever back this way –” Vrate touched the wall panel, sealing the airlock shut. “– look me up,” I said to the dull metallic hatch.

  “I don’t think he likes me,” Izin said.

  “He doesn’t know you like I do.”

  Izin turned toward the outer hatch as it opened into the Lining’s airlock. “I’m sorry the Intruder Matriarch overpowered me, Captain.”

  I patted him on the shoulder reassuringly. “Don’t worry, Izin, we all have women trouble. It almost makes you human.”

  “No need to insult me, Captain,” he said as the Lining’s airlock sealed shut behind us.

  Chapter Nine : Uralo IV

  Earth Navy Supply Base

  Uralo System, Outer Ursa Minor