Casimir Bridge: A Science Fiction Thriller (Anghazi Series Book 1)

by Darren Beyer

  Grae’s mouth turned up in a light smile. The seconds ticked by, and his expression didn’t change.

  “What?” Mandi turned her head to glance back from the corner of her eye.

  “You’re really something.” His face softened.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing.” Grae turned abruptly and deactivated the controls for the grav pods on the skimmer. The hum wound down, and the craft fell slowly until it engaged the docking clamps with a loud clang. He locked it in manually, gathered his tools, and began to make his way to the door.

  It would be easy to let him go, to pretend that nothing had happened, but she had sought him out to clear the air. If she let him walk away now, he’d only continue avoiding her. It would just get harder. Mandi cleared her throat. The direct approach was best.

  “Grae—”

  He stopped and turned to face her.

  “I didn’t come down here to make small talk or even persuade you to let me in on things. It’s about the jump, in our quarters afterward, that drink—”

  “The roboso.”

  “The roboso.” Mandi frowned. “I don’t know what got into me.”

  Grae let out a chuckle.

  “What?”

  “You know its nickname on Eridani?”

  Mandi shook her head.

  “Truth serum.” Grae smiled. “It’s like alcohol, except that your senses stay and your inhibitions go.”

  “That may be.” Mandi flushed. “However, ever since, you’ve been avoiding me. I know I made you uncomfortable, but I’m the one who acted like a fool. If anyone should be avoiding anyone, it should be me.”

  Grae finished stowing his tools and began walking to the bay’s exit.

  “This whole time on Earth and on Dauntless,” Mandi continued, following. “I know you feel as though you owe it to my mother, but even by the strictest standards, you never did anything wrong.”

  “I didn’t.” Grae paused, half-turning back to her. “But I was tempted to.”

  Chapter 37

  Eridani

  “Erik Hallerson.” Dagan burst into Jans’ office, breathing heavily.

  “Doesn’t anyone announce themselves anymore?”

  “I am sorry, Jans, but I just received confirmation from my contacts on Earth.” Dagan set his portable holovid on the desk and powered it up. When the warm-up indicator disappeared, he opened a secured file, and a hologram of the blond man appeared.

  “That’s him. What do we know?”

  “He was recruited by Coalition intelligence right out of university and trained as—” Dagan scrolled through Erik’s information. “Here it is. As a Data Access Specialist, beginning in 2077.”

  “In other words, a hacker. That would explain how he got past security.” Jans mused.

  “There is much more. Evidently, he found the work not to his liking and transferred after only four years. In 2081, he joined the Field Service Branch as an agent. He remained with them until he left the service in 2092. Since then, he has been a freelancer, working primarily for corporate entities, with occasional jobs from petty dictators.”

  “He knows where the money is.”

  “And how to stay hidden. The record has nothing on him for the last eight years. We can only assume that he has been in the employ of Mr. Andrews.”

  “Any mention of the type of work he performs?”

  “None. He keeps a very low profile. My contacts speculate that he is adept at all manner of covert ops. He has been present in specific cities and countries when certain—shall we say— unfortunate events have occurred: high-value theft, assassination, even a coup, although never any evidence linking them to him.”

  “So he’s good.” Jans looked at the data on the screen. “This must be classified. How did you get ahold of it?”

  “I have my sources.” Dagan shrugged. “Those who owe me a favor or two.”

  “I’ll bet. What do we do with him?”

  “I have my personnel on it. New Reykjavik is not yet such a big city. We will find him. When we do, we will keep him under surveillance to ensure that he makes no more unauthorized entries.”

  “Please do. The next episode could be the death of me.” Jans glanced up at Dagan with a glimmer of a smile.

  Chapter 38

  Rho Indi System

  Mandi took quick, shallow breaths, straining the muscles of her upper chest. They felt as though they were tearing apart. She could do nothing to ease the pain, nothing to turn down the dial. Ten minutes into the burn, she had been ready for it to end. Twenty minutes in, and she’d been convinced that the human body was never meant to withstand three g’s. At thirty minutes she would have done anything to end the misery. Now she strained her neck toward the comm screen in her bunk. Just forty-five seconds to go.

  She counted her shallow breaths as g forces pinned her to the rear of her bunk. Forty seconds, twenty seconds, ten seconds. Eventually, the forces began to subside. Her bunk rotated to its normal attitude, the accelerometer dropping to a nominal one g.

  Mandi groaned as she reached for the controls. When her door opened, she rolled out and fell to the floor of the berth. Every movement was a trial. Glancing sideways, she saw Grae stretching as though he’d woken from a restful nap.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Mandi pressed her head between her hands. “I feel like I drove off a bridge.”

  “Sorry.” Grae grimaced. “Extended high-g burns are tough the first few times. Muscles you’ve never known about get a pretty intense workout.” He stepped over to her and with a gentle hand under her arm, helped her to her feet. “If you feel up to it, Captain Stanton wants to see you in engineering. I’ll take you.”

  Mandi was surprised to find that she had little trouble walking. Her legs didn’t seem to mind the high g’s. Turning, though, was another matter. Even the slightest twist of her upper body was an exercise in pain. She’d really be feeling it later.

  Grae guided her through areas of the ship with which she was unfamiliar, until they came to a heavy metallic hatch labeled Engineering. It looked like a blast door, as though it could take a direct hit from a missile. Grae looked into the retina scanner and keyed in a code. With a pneumatic hiss, the hatch opened like a large iris, interlocking plates retracting multiple directions.

  Beyond it, the passageway differed significantly from the rest of the ship. Gone were the clean, Spartan walls and stark floors and ceilings, replaced by subdued lighting on access panels, fluid lines, conduit and—Mandi found interesting—handholds and attach points. Her excitement grew as she followed Grae down the wide hall. She strained to see into the larger area at the end of the hall, but the lighting was low.

  Suddenly, a blue light zipped diagonally across the opening.

  “What was that?” Mandi stopped.

  Grae looked at her and smiled. “Come on.” He motioned with his head. “You’re going to like this.”

  The passageway opened onto a walkway overlooking a huge chamber easily twenty meters across. Grae stepped to a railing at the edge and motioned to her. A massive reactor dominated the center, suspended from a distant ceiling and fed by two large tubes on either side. Shallow domes radiating energy glowed blue atop and below. Another blue streak shot up from below and stopped to hover just beyond the railing. It took Mandi a moment to realize that the blue light came from a series of thin lines running along the arms, legs, and torso of a jumpsuit worn by a woman with short brown hair and an all-business expression. She was flying and gave Mandi the faintest smile.

  “Ms. Nkosi, may I introduce Lieutenant Ivey?” Captain Stanton’s voice startled her. “Our Chief of Engineering.”

  Dumbstruck, Mandi turned to see Captain Stanton standing off to the side. She snapped her head back to the floating woman.

  “So you’re Gisela’s daughter.” Ivey held out her hand across the railing.

  Mandi took it absently. “Is this the same technology that makes the skimmer hover?” She shook hands ligh
tly, looking to Grae.

  “In miniature,” Ivey answered. “With a few enhancements.” Ivey shot away from the railing, up to the ceiling, across the chamber, and back again, the blue light flickering from the patches on her suit.

  “How?”

  “The power comes from this backpack.” Ivey turned partially to give Mandi a view. “The control comes from a combination of this—” She pointed to a narrow headband around her short, jet-black hair. “—and body motion.”

  “The headset detects concentrated electrical impulses in the brain,” Grae said.

  “It reads your mind?”

  “Not really.” Ivey gave her a faint smile. “It reads the electrical currents in your brain. Different areas of your brain react to your thoughts, and EPIC reads the signals.”

  “EPIC?”

  “External Propulsion Independent of Controller. The name’s a little mundane. We just like the acronym.”

  “But everyone’s mind is different. If it keys off movement—”

  “EPIC has to learn each person with whom it interacts.” Ivey grinned. “Let’s just say that you can get a few bruises until it does. But once you learn it and it learns you, you can move all over the compartment, even during high-g maneuvers.”

  “Imagine everything that this could be used for—”

  “We’ve already applied it.” Grae’s face was shining.

  “To?”

  “That will have to wait.”

  “But this is genius. Who’d think up such an idea?”

  “Your mother,” Ivey said. “My suit, the grav pods on the skimmer, the artificial gravity on Dauntless—they’re all hers.”

  Mandi’s forehead contracted.

  “Let’s save the rest of show and tell for another time,” Grae said hastily. “Captain?”

  “Thank you for the display, Ms. Ivey.”

  Lieutenant Ivey nodded, gave a brief salute, and in a flash of blue light fell out of view.

  “Ms. Nkosi, Grae brought me your request to become—shall we say—part of our team. I was most emphatically not receptive. However, Grae told me some of your exploits, and he has convinced me of the merits of your idea.” Captain Stanton reached into his pocket and handed a small box to Mandi. “This is your comm and display lens. You will find that you have limited access to our network and can contact anyone on board or externally within comm range. If you’ll follow me to the bridge, I will brief you on our mission and get Grae up to speed.”

  Mandi hadn’t been allowed on the bridge until now. With every step as they passed back through the ship, her anticipation grew.

  The door slid open, and Mandi was bombarded with sights and sounds. Captain Stanton’s chair sat high in the middle above and behind two duty stations, with small holo screens on the walls and surrounding each station. A large main screen covering an entire wall displayed a heavily damaged ship rotating rapidly end over end.

  “The Gaussian?” Grae eagerly moved toward the screen.

  “I didn’t expect to find this much structure left.” Captain Stanton smiled as Grae stepped close to the screen, studying the wreck.

  “Most of the forward structure is reasonably intact.” Grae glanced back at the captain. “Engineering is a mess, though. There are whole sections missing.”

  “Scans show the structure aft of C-Deck severely depleted and all the systems dead. We’re picking up isolated trace energy sources in some forward compartments.”

  He had Grae’s attention. .

  “It’s of the magnitude associated with emergency lighting.” Captain Stanton frowned and shook his head. “Or perhaps a backup power system. But it does show that something of the Gaussian survived.”

  “We’ve got to get aboard.” Grae turned toward Captain Stanton. “If there’s power, there could be data.”

  “All in good time.”

  “What ship is that?” Mandi was mesmerized by the rotating wreck.

  “Our mission: the Gaussian Surveyor.” Captain Stanton pointed to the name nearly obliterated from the hull. “There will be time later to go into the details. For now we need to stabilize it so we can board.”

  “Don’t we have stabilizing packs?” Grae asked.

  “Not a full complement—we weren’t exactly fully operational when we were tasked with this mission—and what we do have won’t be enough. There’s too much ship, too much spin, simply not enough fuel.”

  The bridge fell quiet as everyone stood transfixed by the damaged Gaussian rotating in space.

  “What about a skimmer?” Grae broke the silence. “We could align it so that its grav pods fired each time one end of the ship rotated around. That would push against it and slow it.”

  “Each time we did, the skimmer would push itself away. The grav pods are on the bottom of the skimmer, and the thrusters point aft. Each time it fired, the skimmer would have to shift its orientation, fire, then reorient for another shot. We could do the calculations, but my sense is that the skimmer would quickly run out of reaction thruster propellant.”

  “We have two skimmers—”

  “We can’t drain both skimmers of propellant.”

  “It’s a shame you can’t throw a few of those EPIC suits onto one end,” Mandi said, “with Dauntless for them to push against.”

  “The suits don’t have the necessary power.” Captain Stanton shook his head. “Even if they did, controlling them would be problematic. And for the life of me I couldn’t imagine attaching EPIC suits to the ship.”

  “If not a suit—” Mandi stared at the rotating wreck. “—what about just the grav pods off a skimmer?”

  Grae jerked his head toward her.

  “I know it’s silly—”

  “No,” Grae interrupted her. “It’s genius.”

  Captain Stanton opened his mouth to protest.

  “Wait.” Grae staved off the rebuttal. “We’d need power and a control unit. A portable APU would work. We’d align Dauntless as the target of the grav pods, and each time a pod aligned we’d provide it with power. Dauntless would fire its mains to maintain position as we worked. Each individual rotation wouldn’t do much, but it would certainly slow the Gaussian down.”

  “How would we attach the grav pods? The APU?”

  “We’ve got breach charges, don’t we? We normally fire them at a ship’s hull and attach with grappling claws so that the charge can fire. What if we replace the breach charges with grav pods?”

  “And the APU?”

  “You can’t exactly put an APU on a breach charge.” Grae rubbed his chin. “Could we do the reverse? Mount the grav pods on Dauntless?”

  “I should think not!” Captain Stanton stared intently at the rotating ship. “Let’s assume that we come up with a way to get an APU onto the Gaussian. How do we attach power to the grav pods?”

  “There’s only one way,” Grae said. “I’ve got to climb on the outside of that wreck.”

  Chapter 39

  Eridani

  The three rotors of the AIC helo began winding up as Jans walked with Dagan through the roof garden to the helipad atop one of the columns of AIC Tower. They could see the pilot working the controls and testing the systems. A guard stood outside, prepared for Jans’ arrival.

  Jans and Dagan stopped at the edge of the pad.

  “I would say enjoy your trip,” Dagan said, “but I have made this trip many times. It is not enjoyable.”

  “You have a way of cheering me up, Danny.” Jans glanced at Dagan as he motioned toward the guard. “One of yours?”

  “I must insist. After Hallerson bypassed my security so easily—” Dagan looked down, embarrassed. “—I consider it imperative. I would ask that you restrict your movements to AIC Tower, but you would not listen.”

  The grand Tower had become almost a prison to Jans. He so seldom had time to leave it, and now that he did have it, he’d also have Dagan’s guard tagging along, a constant reminder of his troubles. Still, he saw the wisdom.

  “Find Hallerson and
pay him a visit. I’d like to meet with him when I return.”

  “Jans, you can’t be serious. Andrews’ proposal is an insult to everything that we have achieved.”

  “Talking does no harm. We might learn something. I don’t want a spy roaming around here digging into our business. Hallerson got through our physical security. He’ll get through digital.”

  Dagan tightened his lips and nodded begrudgingly.

  “We’ll talk more when I return.” Jans turned and ducked under the whirring blades of the helo. The guard opened the door and followed Jans onboard.

  The cabin was small, a bit cramped for the journey of fifteen hundred kilometers to the Eridani uranium mining and processing facility. The distance would test the aircraft’s range as the one high-speed model in AIC’s fleet.

  The pilot glanced over his shoulder.

  Jans and the guard were strapped in.

  “New Reyk Tower, AIC helo four, seven, three, six, Mike. Tower Four, ready for direct departure westbound.”

  The noise of the engine drowned out the response, but within seconds the engines wound to full rpm, lifting the helo off the pad.

  In less than a minute, they were at the coast. Once over water, the pilot turned north to follow the line of the shore. Waves crashed on the beaches in the early morning light, and from this altitude, it could have been any unnamed shoreline on Earth. Without a moon to move them, the tides of Eridani were less powerful, but the proximity of Ascension, with its mass twice that of Jupiter, provided enough pull to create expanses of wide sand beaches. They were quite spectacular from the air.