The Memnon Incident: Part 1 of 4 (A Serial Novel)

by Marc DeSantis

  Julius knit his eyebrows, and cocked his head to one side in puzzlement. "Won't I be briefed first on the mission?"

  "That will wait until we are on-site. Until then any classified, mission-specific information will be distributed on a need-to-know basis." She waved her arm, indicating that he must follow. "This way, Mr. Howell."

  Julius followed as the ensign led him down a series of tight passageways to the cryovault in the crew compartment of the destroyer. The Cormorant had a crew of 200 officers and enlisted, but only a fraction of those needed to be awake at any one time. On long voyages of weeks or months duration the matter of provisions - food, water, personal items, medical supplies - could become critical if the crew exhausted them on the journey. Cryosleep was an efficient and safe way to transport humans over long distances without overwhelming the logistics of the spacefaring navy. There was often nowhere to stop to pick up more supplies on deep space forays, and the darker history of space travel was filled with stories of starving explorers and mining crews cannibalizing their weaker fellows in a desperate effort to survive until help could be found. Such unattractive fates were best avoided if at all possible. An individual cryostation was a combination of armored cocoon, refrigeration unit, and blast couch. There were 250 stations in the main chamber, with rows of units lining the walls, separated from each other by about one-quarter of a meter.

  Ensign Thorpe pointed to one such station to her left. The clear blastglass door was open. "This is for you," she said. "You will need to take off your - "

  " - shoes," Julius finished for her. "I have been in cryo before. I know the drill." He stepped inside.

  The ensign smiled, again without warmth. "Very well then." She tapped the unit, and the blastglass door slid shut.

  Julius had been on long trips in space previously, and cryosleep was standard practice even on passenger liners and bulk freighters. Shoes were usually removed not because of any scientific or engineering reason, but out of a desire for hygiene. Cryochambers were often used again and again before they were cleaned. No need to get them any messier than necessary.

  If there was any benefit to cryosleep to Julius, it wasn't that he would not have to eat or drink or dress himself for the next fourteen days. It was that he would be spared the monotony of being aboard a ship with nothing to do. He could read, he loved to read, but even that would get old after a few days, whereas in cryo, it would seem as if he had taken a nap, and then awoke to . . .

  Chapter Five

  RHS Golden Lion, Memnon system

  While Steadfast and Kongo held station above the lifeless hull of the Golden Lion, still wedged inside the minecloud, three assault boats latched onto its blue and gold hull. A handful of its survivors had contacted the Steadfast, asking for a rescue. Most of the crew had been killed, but, they thought, there still might be an estimated two dozen additional survivors trapped inside the relatively untouched engineering spaces aft.

  High intensity plasma cutters burned their way through the thick hide of the destroyer, allowing entry within. A tall, drab-green figure jumped down from one of the boats, his thick titanium boots striking the deck with a muted thud. He was a Halifaxian marine, a power-armored, heavily-armed giant with firepower equal to that carried by four ordinary infantrymen. Lieutenant Darius Jenkins raised his M22 gauss rifle to his shoulder, his in-built helmet computer projecting combat information onto his visor. Readings were nominal, with a breathable atmosphere maintained inside the passageway. He motioned for the rest of his squad to follow behind. Seven other marines leaped down from the assault boat, one after another. They formed into a moving strike team, weapons raised to their shoulders, sweeping open corridors and passageways as they went. The Golden Lion had been out of communication since its surviving crew had been contacted, and until the identities of all onboard could be confirmed, standard Navy procedure was to treat this operation as a hostile boarding action.

  Jenkins raised his fist to signal the marines behind him. They halted immediately, and took up a defensive stance around the main bulkhead leading into the drive spaces. "This is it,' Jenkins said.

  "Sergeant Cone, you have the honor."

  Sergeant Thomas Cone stepped forward, and inserted a handheld computer into the port in the codelock beside the blast door. The computer screen came to life, followed by that of the lock.

  "Atmosphere integrity maintained beyond the door," Cone said. "If they are in there, they could be alive."

  "Open it," Jenkins said.

  "Yes, sir."

  Cone punched in a series of keystrokes onto his handheld, but each time he was greeted by a high-pitched whine, followed by an unhappy tone indicating a failure of the electromagnetic sliding mechanism. He shook his head. "Deadbolts won't release, Captain."

  Jenkins nodded. "We are going to have to do this the hard way. He waved to another marine. "Wilkes, it's your turn."

  Corporal Jacques Wilkes replaced Cone in front of the door. His tools were much less sophisticated than the handheld. He placed three smalls cups onto the blast door, each at points where tungsten bolts would be found holding it shut. Each cup was filled with a shaped charge of high explosive, ten grams of magnapex, that could burn holes through a full meter of armored steel. "Fire in the hole!"

  The marines turned away, as was their standard operational procedure whenever explosives were employed. They need not have. The shaped charges channeled their energy in only one direction, towards the door, and they burned straight through the titanium and tungsten in a series of loud bangs. The door slid easily now, no longer held in place by the deadbolts.

  Inside Jenkins saw that the corridor had been shattered by battle damage, but life support had been maintained. "Further in," he said across the squad's commchannel. They moved on, and there was a faint tapping noise coming from the sealed blast door at the end of the passageway. Tap, tap, tap. Silence. Then the tapping began again. Tap, tap, tap. Jenkins stepped up to the door. He raised an armored fist and rapped a group of staccato knocks on it. There was a pause. Then came a reply in a series of taps in simple battlecode. Chief Engineer, Lieutenant Commander Marlon Hogue, Golden Lion. Repeat. Chief Engineer, Lieutenant Commander Marlon Hogue, Golden Lion. Twenty living, six wounded. Request evac. Repeat. Request evac.

  Can you open the door? Jenkins tapped back.

  Door inoperable. No power, came the reply.

  Not a surprise, but Jenkins had to check first before okaying the use of explosives.

  Stand well back, he signaled in battlecode.

  "Wilkes, we need you again. Open the door," Jenkins ordered.

  Wilkes nodded and set three cups of magnapex at the locations of the deadbolts holding the door in place. "Fire in the hole!"

  The shaped charges burned through, and Jenkins pulled it aside with one power-assisted arm.

  Emerging from the smoky gloom were several engineering officers and ratings in full duty gear. There were looks of stark relief on all their faces. They had been adrift in the Golden Lion without power for two days, and would have been worried that they might never be rescued. They wasted no time, but immediately began to bring forward their wounded.

  "Any word of other survivors," said the man who identified himself as Chief Engineer Hogue. "We have not had any contact since we displaced."

  Jenkins shook his head. "Six from the medical bay messaged us an hour ago. They said you might be in here. Two teams are searching for others as we speak. Forward the ship looks bad. I have my doubts."

  "We had no warning," Hogue said. "It was all so sudden, we barely had time to seal off the engineering spaces. What happened?"

  "We displaced inside a minecloud," Jenkins answered. "Steadfast, Kestrel, and Kongo got their shields up in time. You, Starfire, Rose, and Amethyst, were not so lucky. You were knocked out, the others are gone entirely."

  Hogue's face was ashen. "I had not realized it was so bad."

  "It is going to get much worse if we are found by the enemy. We've been hiding f
or now, but they are prowling. Captain More is certain of that. Let's get you and your men off of this ship."

  "Is the captain going to try and save her?"

  Jenkins shook his head. "Not now. I don't know what he has planned for it, except he is going to tractor it out of the cloud."

  Hogue frowned. 'That is going to be trouble, if we are still surrounded by atomic mines.'

  "Yes, it will be,' Jenkins said. "But don't put anything beyond the captain. If he thinks it can be done, it will be done.'

  Chapter Six

  Derelict Ship, Designated Atlantis Class, Memnon system

  Lieutenant Stefan Chandler sneezed. He had removed his helmet against the stern advice Steadfast's chief medical officer, Lieutenant Anastasia Venn, who had warned him of potential airborne pathogens of 'unknown origin and virulence."

  "I told you not take off your helmet," she said with a hint of satisfaction.

  Chandler stifled another sneeze, his nose crinkling as he struggled to hold it back. "It's just some dust."

  "Dust aboard a ship that was abandoned by its crew and has been adrift for thousands of years, lieutenant," Venn scolded. Around the two vacc-suited figures loomed the gloomy vastness of the drive section of a starship hailing from ancient times. Everything about the chamber bespoke arcane technologies far in advance of those found on the ship they had come from. The strangeness of the spacecraft made Venn all the more fearful. "What if this ship succumbed to a bioweapon, and the pathogen is still active, or to some kind of nanotech we haven't seen in centuries? Maybe its eating away at your brain right now, though on second thought, I can't see how, since there wouldn't be anything for it to feast on."

  "You have a point, Doc," Chandler admitted. The antique ship was dusty, and parts of it had been left open to space for what must have been ages, leaving many of its surfaces ice cold. There was no telling what might have survived, but there had been no signs yet of anything dangerous. Chandler tapped his suit's wristcomp. "The readings are all nominal, life support's okay, and it didn't seem too bad in here, so . . ." Chandler's voice trailed away as Venn's face darkened like a stormcloud.

  "I will never understand how you made it through the Academy, earned a commission, and then a promotion! And now you are serving aboard Steadfast, no less, a ship captained by Andrew More, the finest officer in the fleet!" Venn looked away from Chandler as if he were an unpleasant insect not worthy of her consideration. "If the brass didn't keep medicals like me out of command track I'd strap a fool like you to the outside of the hull and ferry you home that way."

  Chandler shrugged. "Okay, okay, Stacy, I will put my helmet back on." He replaced his helmet about his head and adjusted the seals to ensure they were airtight. "Happy now?"

  Venn's eyes narrowed. "Happy? You understand nothing! It is not about making me happy! It is about following proper protocol as we explore an ancient warship. You don't seem appropriately serious about a once in a lifetime opportunity."

  "We already have to go through decontamination procedures that would kill a bacterium from the distance of a light year. Whether I have my helmet on won't matter."

  Venn sighed, and continued to look about. Five giant maneuver drives arrayed in a checkerboard pattern towered above them. Damage to four of the drives was plainly visible, with the fifth and last appearing to be untouched by whatever had roughly handled the ship.

  Chandler craned his neck and pointed up to the ceiling, which loomed about seventy meters above their heads. "Looks like they took several hits to starboard, some sort of beam weapon that cut open the hull and the drives. Then, I am guessing, some sort of emergency system took over, closed up the hull where it had been torn open, and restored life support."

  Venn inclined her head too. He was right. Chandler was frustrating, and barely more mature than a grade-schooler, but he was not an imbecile when it came to naval technology. Space technical intelligence was his specialty. He had all kinds of information, just no sense of any kind.

  "So the ship was habitable," Venn said, "with one drive still functional by the looks of it, but the crew got off anyway. Why would they do that? After they left, why didn't they come back for the ship?"

  Chandler shook his head. "I can only tell you what I see." Reports from the teams from Steadfast and Kongo combing other parts of the warship had been filtering in over the comm. They had seen similar things to what Chandler and Venn saw. Serious damage to multiple sections, but most areas remained viable and under sustained life support. "They must have gotten off in a hurry," Chandler said, nodding to a small bucket on a table in the corner of the vast engineering section. "Someone left tools behind when the evac order was given. Engineering types are very fond of those. This wasn't something planned. It was done in a hurry."

  There was other evidence of a hasty departure. A few books had been left behind by the crew, some computers too, clothes, boots, and other personal effects. These were the kinds of things that would have been taken if there had been time. Instead, it looked like all aboard had grabbed whatever they could and run, fast.

  "Know what I don't see?" Venn asked. "Bodies."

  Chandler looked over the chamber. "You're right," he said. "Someone must have been killed in this - attack, let's call it - but there was enough time to retrieve their bodies. They were either disposed of or taken off the ship."

  "I would bet that there was quite some time between the wounding of this ship and the evac." Venn looked about the dark gray cavern that was the engineering section. "Grav is still functional, there isn't much of a mess in here, now that I think of it. They had time to clean up. Then they had to ditch in a hurry."

  "There's a real mystery here," Chandler said, "but we're not the ones to unravel it." The lieutenant checked his suit's chronometer. "We've been here long enough, Doc. Two hours. This is just a reconnaissance." He pointed. "That drive unit is going to be top priority for the engine specialists, but it's time for us to go." He winked at Venn. "Besides, I wouldn't want to keep you away from Captain More any longer than necessary. I know how you get when you are separated from him for too long."

  Venn's face flushed a rosy crimson. "There is nothing between the captain and me," she fumed. "I admire him, that's all."

  "Nothing between you, of course not," Chandler smirked. "But I think you wish there was something between you."

  Venn shook her head slowly. "Just when I thought there might be some hope for you, you astound me with your foolishness." Her flush had yet to recede.

  Chapter Seven

  RHS Cormorant, Memnon system

  . . . the cryochamber opened, and Julius awoke. The light was dim, but it still felt harsh to eyes that had not opened for fourteen days. He stepped out, his still-cold feet drawing in warmth from the deckplates. He looked about. He was alone, except for a young ensign who smiled happily at him. "I hope that cryo was pleasant," he said eagerly. "I am Ensign Alejandro Kearse." Julius nodded. Kearse seemed so enthusiastic that he just had to be straight out of the Academy.

  "When you have dressed and collected yourself, I will escort you to Captain More. He has been expecting you."

  "Captain More is aboard Cormorant?" Julius was suddenly seized with worry. "What happened to his own ship, the Steadfast?"

  "Nothing, Mr. Howell," Kearse assured. "Steadfast is fine. Captain More came aboard as soon as Cormorant displaced because he wants to discuss the find with you as soon as possible."

  Julius was again seized with the importance of the ship that he had been called out to inspect. His cousin had not wanted to waste any time before putting him to work. He pulled on his pants, and then threw a shirt over his torso. 'Then let's not keep the captain waiting."

  Andrew More looked older than Julius remembered. He had last seen him when he had been named to command the Steadfast. That must have been three years ago. He seemed worn with care, and stress was evident in his face. That was not unexpected. His command had been smashed, and he had spent the last four weeks hiding from who k
nows what.

  More looked up from the holotable on the bridge where he and the captain of Cormorant, William Calder, huddled together over a holographic image of the strange ship. Beside them was another officer, a captain whom Julius could not identify.

  "Julius, it is good to see you again," More smiled. "I just wish it could be under better circumstances."

  Julius waved his apology away. "It is good to see you too, cousin. How could I resist a summons like this?"

  More grinned. "I can imagine the look on your face when you got the order to ship out. They told you very little, I gather. I gave orders to Captain Carey to give only enough to you to get you out of your office and into the void."

  "I never spoke with Captain Carey. I was told only that you had found an Atlantis class, and that I had to leave immediately." Julius pointed at the holoimage. "Is that it?"

  "It is indeed." More inclined his head to indicate the man next to him. "Captain Heyward found it as his ship, Kongo, went deeper into Memnon's Oort cloud to hide from enemy ships." Heyward was a youngish-looking man, slightly taller and paler than More.

  "It appears to have been drifting in the cloud for a very long time," he said.

  "The news I received back on Halifax says that it is fifty-thousand years old." He nodded at the hologram. "I can believe that. It is like nothing I have ever seen before."

  "Fifty-one thousand, two hundred-three years old," Heyward interjected. "One of Kongo's exploration teams found a shipboard chronometer, still running after all this time."

  Julius had difficulty coming to grips with the immense age of the vessel projected above the table.

  "That's Second Empire, maybe the best period ever for humanity," said Julius. "This ship - it looks like it is in one piece - could be a time capsule of all sorts of wonderful technologies from ancient times."