The rim of each halo tinged blue where it faced the colony ships. The far side tinged red.
The central drive core on each ship ignited at last, kicking the colony ships forward on a vector to intercept the centre of their respective disks.
Far Horizon reached her portal first.
There was no flash. No bright light. No spectacle. The ship simply glided through the ring cleanly and calmly, like a knife into water, and vanished.
The portal collapsed into itself. Translucent silver-blue petals spiralled back into the nothingness of an infinite point and blinked out of existence with a flash of impossible colour.
Cheers and shouts erupted around the bridge of the Rising Star as pent-up emotion breached their dam of professionalism.
Excited crew leaped from their seats throughout the bridge. The first ship was away. Now to their left the New Dawn begin its own portal approach.
The New Dawn's portal burst open in the space before it, but this time something was different. Where the portal for the Rising Star had been strong and steady this one twisted and writhed as if two different solar systems fought to occupy the same space. Fierce lightning raced around the rim of the halo and streamers a thousand miles long flashed out into space.
On the Rising Star a priority alert flashed across the screen of the first officer.
"Captain!" he called out, "I'm getting reports of an unstable reading from their portal."
Dozens of alarms and sirens sprang to life across the bridge. Crew who moments before were dancing with excitement dived back into seats, checking status updates, running sensor sweeps and trying to find something, anything, to explain what was happening.
The captain leaned over her command console, knuckles white where they gripped the rail. "What's happening? Report!"
"Ma'am! New Dawn is experiencing a pilot wave collapse."
"Will the Bohr's-field hold?"
The answer came in a blinding flash. The New Dawn was only partway through portal when the integrity of the event horizon failed.
The halo collapsed in on itself in fits and starts and the ring of lightning turned inward. It stabbed at the colony ship from every point of the circumference in a dizzying pulse of light.
The portal shrank to a point of nothing and exploded. The shock wave blasted out in a sphere of devastation, spitting out the remains of the New Dawn.
The portal collapse tore the spacecraft in two and wrenched the superstructure in and through itself into an impossible, sickening knot.
Proximity alarms blared on the Rising Star's bridge, each new alert more urgent and more desperate than the one before. The Jump Point failure had thrown the New Dawn into the path of the Rising Star.
The devastation sent a rapid series of explosions rippling beneath the metal skin of the ships energy systems overloaded, and power conduits, ripped in half by the collapsed portal, sparked life into combusted violently with the explosive gasses and liquids stored within.
A second explosion blasted a gaping hole from one side of the ship to the other, engulfing it in flames which died as quickly as they sprang to life, their fuel dissipating rapidly in the vacuum.
The shock wave slammed into the hull of the Rising Star and forced it off course with a sickening lurch. Seconds later the fragmented remains of the New Dawn pulverised the Rising Star. Sections of hull crumpled under the impact. Sensor arrays ripped from their hard points and spun away into space or vanished beneath the destructive hail.
In the observation dome the screams had already begun.
Children and adults alike cried out in hopeless terror. Their former elation turned to horror as they saw the burning remains of their sister ship heading toward them.
On the bridge the captain shouted orders. "Abort! Evasive manoeuvres!"
Technicians and mission specialists hammered at their controls in desperation, as if mere effort could defy the inevitable. One of them looked at the captain and shook his head.
And with a sad finality the captain realised they would not make it. "Impact!" she shouted, "Brace!"
Alarms sounded throughout the ship. Bulkheads designed to protect against collision or explosive decompression slammed shut all around the bridge, metal jaws snapping closed in rapid succession to protect the precious cargo within. The last seal closed with a crash and wrapped up the command centre in a barricade of steel.
The Jump engines, no longer able to maintain their bridge between the stars, flared one last time, bright and hot. The portal flickered and died.
New Dawn, now stricken and helpless, tumbled toward the Rising Star. It traced a slow cartwheel through space, leaving a spiral of smoke and debris in its wake. Fires flared and died in the lifeless vacuum as pockets of oxygen aboard the ship ignited in a brief and sudden fury and died as quickly as they were born.
A trail of lights sparked along the superstructure of the New Dawn. They glowed and burst one by one. They raced toward the engines and the primary power core finally exploded, casting a million glittering stars into the velvet night. Then they too were consumed by a fiery white bloom which for one deadly instant formed a new star in the heavens as bright as a nova.
Shrieks and screams surrounded Tila as the observation dome's protective shell slowly closed. The blinding flash of the explosion outside dazzled the room. The white light of a thousand suns blasted away all colour and shadow and hope.
People, young and old, were flung around the room as one ship impaled the other. The stars above, so far away, so peaceful, lurched violently. The impact threw Tila and her cushions across the room. They fell around her, on top of her, burying her. She squealed in fright. It was hot and hard to breathe and the yielding mass of fabric made it impossible to find her feet.
She struggled in panic, found her footing at last, and shoved heavy cushions aside to look up one final time.
The sky was on fire.
The burning, broken command module of the Rising Star, no longer attached to the rest of the ship, drifted across the scene. She saw the holes that had been rent through the side of the bridge as she watched the debris, equipment and bodies spill out into space.
A final explosion shook the room and the lights failed.
Now the only illumination was the serene silver glow of a cloudless night sky. Around her the room descended into a nightmare of movement and shadow, screams and cries and prayers, while overhead the dome finally closed, extinguishing the light of the stars and the flames.
One
Twelve years later, Captain Hughes, of the trading ship Orion, retained his professional composure despite his full understanding of the report in his lap.
Hughes prided himself on his ability to present to his command crew, and the world at large, a quiet and dignified reserve. He imagined himself to be an adventurer, or an explorer, travelling from world to world, star to star, while single-handedly maintaining the civilisation of the Commonwealth states.
It was a mask maintained no matter what troubles arrived on his bridge. Early in his career he had faced down raiders and terrorists. He had negotiated safe harbour for refugee ships during border conflicts between Peleg and Itzo, two systems still squabbling over past glories. They were no longer the supremely important systems they believed themselves to be. No longer the way back to earth. The route to earth was lost, and their glory days had faded. Now they were nothing more than unimportant border systems on the far edge of the Commonwealth.
But the situation before him now was enough to crack the mask.
"How long until main engine failure, Natalie?" said Hughes.
"Impossible to be certain, sir," said Natalie Simms, his chief engineer. "Power readings are highly unstable and the rate of deterioration impossible to predict."
"Dangerous?"
"That's the good news. The failure is non-catastrophic. The engines will stop working. We'll lose guidance and propulsion soon but the main power core is unaffected."
"And you are certain it is not somethi
ng we can repair?"
"I'm sorry, sir, but no. The upgrade was pushed upon us by the higher-ups. They insisted the tech was so reliable there would be no need for extensive training. It wasn't cost effective to maintain. They just swap out the units in dock."
"More cost effective, my ass," said Hughes. He pointed at the local star chart on the main screen. "Do you see any docks in this system, Natalie?"
"No sir, I do not," she said.
The captain clenched and relaxed his jaw, giving his chief engineer a marvellous view of the changing topography of his temple.
Hughes looked around his bridge. It was a small and unimpressive command, but at the end of a long career it was just the kind of thing he wanted. Easy trade routes. No drama. No fuss. So why did his ship have to break down here, of all places?
"Are there any other ships in range able to assist?" he asked the bridge. He already suspected that with his luck so far today the answer would be no.
"Negative, sir," replied Nicholas Rhine, his first officer, "The rest of the fleet has insisted they can't wait for us or they risk losing money on their own cargo."
"Can't or won't? Never mind, it's a rhetorical question."
"No other ships within range have the technical knowledge we need," added Simms.
"I would very much like to be wrong in my assessment, but I believe that leaves us only one option if we are to have any hope of getting out of this system quickly," said Hughes. Help would come, once word finally reached head office, or if he was willing to pay exorbitant fees for someone to recover his ship, but those fees reflected on him as a captain, and he was not about to throw away his long-earned reputation now. Besides, there was his bonus to consider.
"Our options are...limited, sir," said Rhine sourly. He keyed commands into the armrest panel of his chair. The image on the main display changed. The graceful, curving vectors of their intended route through the Celato system to the Kinebar Beacon were replaced by an ugly mass of metal. From this far out it looked like a misshapen potato, a lonely dark grey rock at the bottom of a pond.
And probably covered in scum, too, thought Hughes.
The Juggernaut orbited Celato alone. With no frame of reference and no atmospheric haze to give context to the surface details of the city it was impossible to discern the size and scale of the city itself, or any of the component spacecraft from which it was formed.
The shapes had been mashed together to form the Juggernaut could be shuttles or freighters, pleasure craft or deep space miners. From here Hughes couldn't tell the difference.
The captain touched a control and the image magnified. Now he could see smaller details that betrayed the scale of the monstrosity before him. He could even make out some of the surface features, like cooling towers, engines, and docking bays.
In his years travelling the stars Hughes had seen many examples of beautiful craftsmanship and sleek designs. The Juggernaut was none of those things.
"It's just a mess, isn't it?" the captain said to his first officer. As unattractive as it was he couldn't help but stare. Somehow, despite all appearances to the contrary and their most earnest wishes it was their best hope. "It's like child just crushed every toy ship he could find into one big lump."
"It certainly is, sir," said Rhine.
"What is the population of that thing now, anyway? A hundred thousand?"
"More than that now, Captain," said Simms. "The last I heard it was over three hundred thousand people, although that was some time ago."
"Three hundred...? That many, are you sure, Natalie? When did that happen?"
"I don't know sir, and I'm not sure. No one keeps records. It's just an estimate."
The three senior officers gazed at the display. The image shifted in response to the last offering of their manoeuvring thrusters which slowed the Orion in anticipation of her new heading.
Between them they could identify dozens of different ship types; civilian, commercial, industrial and even decommissioned military craft. The chief even spotted parts of a space-station jutting out of the city.
"What a wreck!" exclaimed a crew-member, "Who would want to live there? It looks like a spaceship graveyard!"
"Nobody wants to live there, Ensign," replied Rhine, "That's why the inhabitants are called the dispossessed. They have nowhere else to go."
Fantastic, thought the Captain morosely. I'm stuck with the serious failure of untested equipment, in a system no one wants to travel to but everyone has to travel through. And somewhere in a city in space which looks like the carcass of a giant metal whale, a place where star ships go to die, I have to find someone with the knowledge to fix my ship.
But a captain had responsibilities, even here. Hughes cleared his throat and resigned himself to his only option. "Very well, let's get this over with. Set course for the Juggernaut."
Two
Deep inside the Juggernaut a young woman raced along a dark corridor. The few light panels which still worked cast their weak glow along the tunnel before her. Darkness crouched in the recesses untouched by the light, and ahead of her the shadows pooled together like black mercury.
It was warm here in the depths of the city, warm and dank. The woman was dressed lightly in loose clothing and she carried only a small bag, strapped close to her body to prevent it leaping about as she ran.
Tucked securely into the straps on her back was what looked like a short pipe, about fifteen inches long. Her dark hair, secured in a tight braid, whipped around her as she pounded the deep and dangerous corridors of the Juggernaut.
Tila was twenty now but she had stopped counting the years since the colony disaster twelve years ago.
She had survived that day, and every day since. Now she was older, leaner, harder.
The little girl was gone.
She was desperately quick. She dodged pipes and ducked low ceilings without slowing her pace or breaking her stride. She stopped at a junction and breathed easy despite the run. A sheen of sweat on her dark olive skin sparkled as it reflected what little light there was in the tunnels.
This was not the first time she had run.
She made her decision and turned left into a new corridor. Yet another monotonous passageway lined with endless doors. She kept running. Under her breath, she began to count.
Seconds later two men burst into the same junction, following the same path, hunting the same quarry. They looked right, then left and saw Tila. They renewed their chase, calling threats and warnings, but they panted with the effort of the pursuit. They overcame the same obstacles as Tila but with far less grace. One ducked too low under a crossbeam and lost his balance. He stumbled into his companion, bringing them both to the ground.
Glancing over her shoulder, Tila watched them clamber to their feet before she rounded another corner and her lips twitched into a rare smile.
She found an open doorway and hopped through, and then she stopped.
Wrong door.
Dead end.
She poked her head back out into the corridor, silently counting off the doorways she had passed. She heard the footsteps of her pursuers pounding along the corridor and stepped back to hide among the deep shadows.
They ran past Tila and she shook her head as they charged past, then she sprang through the doorway and sprinted back the way she had come.
They heard her, tried to turn too quickly and crashed against a wall. They exchanged angry glances. One of them shoved himself away from the wall and gave chase. The other narrowed his eyes, swore, and followed, ignoring the bright new pain in his knee.
This time after Tila passed the junction she slapped each door as she ran by, counting again, looking for where she had made her mistake. Then she saw what she had missed. In the dim lighting was another hidden doorway. It was different to the others.
Most internal doors were constructed in the same way. An uninspired industrial design concerned only with utility and cost and nothing else; the sort of thing you would find on any starship. Yes, this w
as the door she was looking for. It was square and heavy with thick seals designed to withstand the vacuum of space.
She couldn't see any controls to the left or right of the door. That was unusual but not unheard of. Not every ship that had been absorbed by the Juggernaut was properly aligned, assuming you subscribed to any ideal about what the 'proper' way was to fuse one star ship to another. Some scalpers just weren't fussy about the finished job. Others even preferred the odd layouts which resulted from disoriented ships.
Tila never understood the appeal. Who would want a floor to become a ceiling because one ship had been attached upside down? And at times like this it just made her life harder.
She looked above the door. There it was. She jumped up, slapped the single button with her palm and waited.
Nothing.
She tried again, one quick hammer stroke with the heel of her palm. A weak light flickered in the centre of the button and the door gave out a horrible shriek as if angry to be disturbed after all these years.
It opened eight inches and stopped.
Too small.
How close were the others? Tila cocked her head to listen for the oncoming footsteps.
Too close.
She pulled the metal bar from her back, and inserted it through the small gap. She tested it to make sure it was secure and then grabbed it with both hands. She pulled as hard has she could to lever the door open and hoped she was strong enough.
The door moved another inch.
Not enough.
This wasn't working, and the footsteps were coming closer.
She pulled the bar free and held it away from her body. Fingers squeezed it in just the right way and it sprung open to four times its original length with a sudden snap. Give me a lever long enough, she thought.
She tried again, the longer staff multiplying her efforts and the door opened a few more inches, but it still wasn't enough.
The two breathless men staggered around the corner at the end of the corridor. Too tired to shout anymore they stumbled toward her as fast as they could.
The Juggernaut (Tales from the Juggernaut: Act 1) Page 2
