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

by Darren Beyer

  “The Aurora.” Mandi blushed. “That’s the transport ship destroyed by the meteoroid collision near Saturn. That was ages ago, before there was even interstellar travel. By all accounts, the Aurora disaster is what catapulted AIC to the forefront of space tech.”

  “Yes and no. The Aurora wasn’t just a transport ship. It was filled with AIC surveying and prospecting personnel and equipment. Publicly, hyperium wouldn’t be announced for years yet. Privately, Jans already knew that there was something out of the ordinary on Hyperion. Evidently someone else did too. The destruction of the Aurora wasn’t the result of some random impact, as reported. It was intercepted and destroyed by a rival company fighting for Hyperion.”

  “Jesus—” Mandi was shocked. “How did none of this make the news?”

  “There was only one piece of evidence: a remote sensing post picked up a distress call from the Aurora. The call was sent more than twenty minutes after the ship was supposedly destroyed. Jans got his hands on the recording, but the people who gave it to him—who could corroborate it—disappeared. So nothing could be proven. The loss of his little sister almost destroyed him. That’s why he doesn’t want Sophia bounding around the galaxy.”

  “But if the Aurora was destroyed, how did AIC get to Hyperion first?”

  “Yeah—that. That story might have to wait for another time. I’ve told you too much, as it is.” Grae seemed to study the med-bay door. “We should see our patient.”

  Mandi entered the med-bay to see a slender woman with a soft, pale face floating in the clear recovery tube. Her dark hair was tied back, exposing her serene expression. Dozens of wires were connected to her, and muscles twitched all over her body. Slowly she turned her head, opened her eyes, and smiled at Grae.

  “I was wondering when I’d get a visit,” she said. “And you—” she studied Mandi. “I have you to thank. You found me. I must have looked a fright.”

  “I’m sorry about that.” Mandi flushed. “I was just startled.”

  “No more startled than I was. Months alone in a life pod will take their toll. I had made my peace with the probability that those months would turn into forever. When I felt the small amount of gravity induced by the ship’s spin subside, I was sure whoever attacked came back to make sure no one was left alive.”

  “We’re all very relieved they didn’t,” Grae said. “I wish we could get word to Jans.”

  “Captain Stanton told me we are under a strict communication blackout.”

  “For now. We’ve seen the bridge footage of the attack, but we need to understand what happened from your perspective.”

  “I’ll do my best.” Sophia signaled for them to become comfortable even as the electrical current working to get her muscles back in shape made her anything but.

  From the clear tube in which she floated, Sophia replayed the attack in vivid detail: how she’d followed the NMO, detecting the attacker early. How, when they’d turned to flee, the NMO had lit up and attacked. She described their flight and, finally, the detonation and blast wave. It all matched the video that had escaped on the jump pod.

  “The blast ripped me from my station and slammed me into a panel. It’s the last thing I remember. Then I was waking up in the life pod—the captain must have gotten me into it, but the damage wouldn’t allow it to launch. He must have been working on that when he was—” Sophia pressed her eyes closed for a moment. “What would cause such destruction?”

  “A nuke.”

  “But nukes don’t do that in space.”

  “Normally, no. But this was a nuclear mass weapon, a huge tank of gas—in this case, helium—inside a reinforced tube with the nuke at the end. When a mass weapon goes off it fires a concentrated, high-speed cloud of superheated gas toward its target.”

  “That would do it.” Sophia raised a knowing eyebrow.

  “Anything else you can think of?”

  “I must have woken a few hours after the attack. There were—I don’t know—two explosions, I think. The first was smaller. It shook the ship. But the second—that one was big. The whole ship lurched and groaned as though it were breaking apart. That’s when the rotation began.”

  “Could you tell where the explosions came from?”

  “It’s hard to say, but I’d guess the aft end of the ship.”

  “That makes sense. In Engineering, there was evidence of an explosion around the fission reactor. It was as though it had been cut out. The oxidizer storage was punctured, and the hydrazine tank melted away. Flash burns everywhere.”

  “It’s beginning to add up. I’ve had a lot of time to think. It felt as though someone had boarded the ship. There were slight bumps, vibrations. Now you’re saying the reactor’s gone, fuel’s gone.”

  “Holy shit—” Mandi said under her breath. “Would that be called fresh fuel?”

  “Not the stuff in the reactor, but there’s fresh fuel stored in the same housing. Why?”

  “My anonymous source, the engineer, said he’d receive deliveries of ‘fresh fuel’ discs for re-enrichment.”

  “You’re certain he said discs?” Grae turned.

  Mandi nodded.

  “Oh, lord.”

  “Is that important?”

  “Most reactors use rods. We have some of the very few that use discs.” Grae let out a breath. “It’s been right in front of me the whole time.”

  Sophia watched him with heightened interest.

  “It’s where they got the uranium,” Mandi said as she turned to her.

  “Uranium?”

  “We’ve got a lot to bring you in on,” Grae said. “Some of our uranium was re-enriched. It made its way to an Outer Sphere terror cell.”

  “No—”

  “Yeah,” Grae nodded. “They were only hours from triggering an enriched bomb near Washington, DC. Now we’re on the hot seat for it. Mandi here—” Grae motioned with his head. “—uncovered key pieces of the puzzle. It looks as though you did too. You know that we’ve lost a few ships—”

  Sophia gave a slight nod.

  “The Gaussian, the others—they were attacked for their uranium. They must have all been disabled, cut open, and their reactors cut out. Only this operation went wrong. While they were doing it, they must have punctured the hydrazine or oxidizer tank. The two mixed, and—boom! You got your second explosion.”

  “Who would do this? Why?”

  “The why? I can say with some certainty that was to frame us for supplying uranium to terrorists. The who? That’s the other reason for this mission. You fired off a jump pod. You got us the message that brought us to you.” Grae let slip a smile.

  Sophia’s eyes glistened.

  “Unfortunately, this part of the mission looks like a bust. None of the primary data stores survived. We have no clues as to who they are or where they went.”

  “I don’t suppose the ship’s sensors were operational.” Sophia perked up. “They have backup data packs. Those are pretty well shielded.”

  “No,” Grae said with a sardonic smile. “Everything is fried. Even if it weren’t, we wouldn’t have anything to tell us where they jumped to.”

  “That’s not necessarily true,” Sophia said. “You know that when a wormhole is formed, concentrations of neutrinos with special properties are formed.”

  “Special?” Mandi asked.

  “Artificial wormholes create neutrinos with slightly higher mass, and thus slower speeds. I’ve been testing these neutrinos and wormhole formations, and found that they are more highly concentrated along the axis of travel and the weakest perpendicular to it. With the mass of the ship and a single reading, I could probably have narrowed down the direction.”

  “It’s all gone now.” Grae shook his head.

  “Is it?” Mandi paused to think. “Gone, I mean.”

  “This happened months ago, Mandi—”

  “I know when it happened.” Mandi looked at Grae, her head tilted. “I aced my science classes in college, and I’m not an idiot.” She turned back
to Sophia. “But those neutrinos didn’t just disappear. They’re still shooting around in space, right?”

  “Yes.” A knowing grin grew on Sophia’s face. “Yes, they are.”

  “If we can make a good guess as to when and where our culprit jumped out, couldn’t we ourselves jump out to wherever the neutrinos have gone? Couldn’t we detect them there?”

  “That’s not a bad idea.” Grae turned to Sophia. “But you said that we need the mass of the ship.”

  “Can’t we take neutrino readings from different angles and triangulate?” Mandi stood her ground.

  Sophia’s smile grew.

  “How many readings would we need?” Grae asked.

  “Three should do it,” Sophia replied.

  “So three jumps,” Grae mused. “Short ones. The coils are going to take a beating. How certain are you?”

  “If we get an accurate estimate of the jump location, then I’m very sure.”

  “I’ve got to talk to the captain.” Grae abruptly turned. “I’ll let you know what he says.” He gently placed his hand on Sophia’s shoulder, nodded to Mandi, and was suddenly gone out the med-bay door.

  Sophia watched him go, then glanced at Mandi, catching her lingering gaze. “Are you two—?”

  “It’s complicated.” Mandi blushed, looked down. “Grae is—”

  “Grae is Grae,” Sophia interrupted with a chuckle. “His emotional armor is thicker than a battleship’s. He needs a strong woman, someone with the will to break through it. You seem like you could take on the challenge. And you’re quick. You connected the dots when we couldn’t. I see a lot of your mother in you.”

  Mandi straightened subconsciously.

  “I’m sorry.” Sophia raised her dark eyes. “I didn’t mean to hit a nerve.”

  “It’s just that everyone keeps saying that.” Mandi let out a frustrated breath. “I’m nothing like her. If I had a daughter, I would never leave her.” Her voice came out harsher than she’d intended.

  Sophia remained silent, focusing her gaze a moment before softening her face. “I can’t tell you how you should feel about her, Mandi. I can only tell you that leaving you was the hardest thing she’s ever done. Not a day goes by that she doesn’t regret it. I can also tell you that she had a very good reason. In her shoes, I think you would have done the same thing. I would have.”

  “I got almost no vids.” Tears began to well, even as Mandi flattened her lips in anger. “Hardly ever a message.”

  “She did what she could.” Sophia paused. “I shouldn’t do this,” she continued. “What do you know about your father?”

  “My father?” Mandi wiped her eyes. “Nothing. I was told that he left us before I was born. I did some looking once, but I didn’t find anything. You see? I’ve got two stellar parents.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “There’s something you’re not telling me.” Mandi recalled her conversation with Grae.

  “I’ve told you too much already.” Sophia’s face grew somber and she became pensive. “There is so much that you don’t understand.” Sophia’s dark, knowing eyes met Mandi’s from within the clear recovery tube.

  Chapter 49

  Eridani System

  “I’ve got something to show you.” Erik approached Andrews at his makeshift desk in the nuclear delegation temporary offices in the inner ring of New Reykjavik. “The facility Jans Mikel is hiding.”

  “Let’s see it.” Andrews tapped his cane.

  Erik placed a portable holoscreen on the desk in front of Andrews as a series of files popped into view.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “These files are from a hypercripted archive labeled ‘Food Production Complex.’ ”

  Andrews cast a dubious look.

  “Doesn’t sound very interesting, does it? That’s agency-level encryption. Why use it to encrypt files about a farming complex? So I did some deciphering. These—” Erik pointed to a group of files. “—are personnel records. There are more than three hundred. Every single person is assigned to a facility labeled AH.”

  “A few hundred people? That doesn’t sound odd for a large farming complex.”

  “That’s what I thought too, until I researched some of the ‘farmers.’ These first eleven have backgrounds in spacecraft engineering and assembly. These next are researchers and engineers. The rest are a mix of technical disciplines, medical, maintenance. Do you know how many food-related disciplines are at this ‘farm?’ ”

  Andrews shook his head and grunted.

  “Exactly three.”

  “Out of three hundred.”

  “Correct. Whatever AH does, producing food in large quantities is not it.”

  “So we know what it isn’t. We need to know what it is.”

  “I don’t have an answer to that. I can’t find even a hint as to what happens there.”

  “I need something to force Mikel’s hand.” Andrews pressed his mouth.

  “I found one thin reference, but I think I have a name.”

  “A name?”

  “You’re going to like it.” Erik smiled.

  Chapter 50

  Rho Indi System

  Mandi stood outside the door to the bridge. “Are you ready?” She glanced at Sophia.

  “I’m getting it.” Sophia looked down at her body, now without the electrodes that had gotten her through the first stages of atrophy treatment. “Everything is sore.”

  “Let’s go in.” Mandi activated her comm. “Captain, Mandi here, permission to enter the bridge.”

  “Please come in, Ms. Nkosi.”

  The door opened to reveal the three-person bridge crew busily working. They were preparing for the first micro-jump to intercept the neutrino trace of the unknown outbound ship.

  There had been hope that some of the ship’s tracking systems had survived the attack to provide clues as to the exact time of the attackers’ departure. Data from prior to the attack had been extracted, but after an exhaustive search, it was proven that nothing else had made it. Only an obscure system log on Sophia’s trapped life pod indicated precisely when the ship began spinning. Through extrapolation and educated guesses, Sophia had narrowed down the exit jump point. Now they would jump light weeks away in an attempt to intercept the neutrino emissions from that jump.

  Captain Stanton turned. “Sophia?” His eyes shot open in surprise.

  “Hello, Captain,” Sophia said, a delicate smile on her face. Carefully and slowly, she stepped onto the bridge.

  “Should you be up and around? The bridge isn’t the place for someone in your condition—”

  “Sophia needs to be at a sensor station,” Mandi interrupted. “She can’t do this through a video feed down in the med-bay.”

  “I can only assume, Captain—” Sophia put a calming hand on Mandi’s shoulder. “—that no one else on this ship has performed experimentation on wormhole neutrino characteristics.”

  “No.”

  “Then don’t you think someone who has should be present?”

  The captain nodded.

  “Then you need me on the bridge.” Sophia jutted out her chin. Her tone was commanding yet respectful. Mandi got the impression that Sophia seldom fell short of what she wanted.

  “Certainly your expertise is welcome,” Captain Stanton said. “But this is my bridge, and if I feel your medical condition is interfering with operations at any time you will be asked to leave.” His voice took on its own tone of command.

  “Noted and agreed. Now I’d like to start analyzing what’s left of the Gaussian’s sensor logs for anything I missed while tracking that first NMO.”

  “Take one of the auxiliary stations. We’ll patch in the sensor feed. But first, we’re ready for the first micro-jump. Please strap yourself in.”

  “Aye-aye, Captain.” Sophia maneuvered herself awkwardly into place at the auxiliary station.

  “Excuse me, Captain.” Mandi looked to the other auxiliary station. “May I remain on the bridge?”


  “Ms. Nkosi—” He breathed out heavily. “A micro-jump is fundamentally no different than a normal one. Do you remember the last time?”

  “This sounds like a story I need to hear.” Sophia gave Mandi a wry smile.

  Mandi looked from Captain Stanton to Sophia and back again. A look of resolve solidified on her face.

  “Very well.” The captain rescued Mandi. “Take the other auxiliary station. Jump sickness bags are in the first-aid station by the door. Perhaps you should have one handy, just in case.”

  Sophia raised a curious eyebrow as Mandi strapped herself in and returned Sophia’s glance with one of indignation.

  “Engineering, bridge. Prepare for jump. Validate jump parameters.”

  “Bridge, engineering,” Ivey responded through the comm. “Verifying jump coordinates as one, eight, seven, mark zero, five. Distance six, zero, zero, four, eight decimal one seven light-minutes.”

  The captain looked to the navigation officer.

  “Sir, navigation concurs.”

  “Very well. Pre-jump readiness. Navigation?”

  “Navigation is a go.”

  “Sensors?”

  “Sensors are a go.”

  “Engineering?”

  “Engineering is a go, but I would like to emphasize the stress that these micro-jumps will put on my jump drive.”

  “Noted, Ms. Ivey. Med-bay?”

  “Med-bay is a go. All personnel secured or on-station.”

  “All stations are verified go for jump,” the captain continued. “Dauntless, go for jump sequence start.”

  “Aye, sir. Go for jump sequence start,” The artificial voice responded through the comm. “All personnel prepare for zero gravity in ten, nine—”

  When the count hit zero, Mandi felt the gravity slowly subside. She’d grown used to zero g. Her body acclimated to it now much more quickly. It almost felt natural.

  “All personnel prepare jump in thirty, twenty-nine—”

  Mandi braced herself, taking deep breaths to steady her stomach. When the count hit zero, she felt the pull of the wormhole forming. It became stronger, disorienting, so that every molecule in her body felt pulled in different directions. Outside the forward windows, blue-white lightning licked the edges of the view ports. Mandi looked up to the same illuminating the upper windows. Suddenly the lighting turned a uniform bright white, bathing the bridge. Mandi shaded her eyes.