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

by Darren Beyer

  “Permission to enter the bridge,” Grae announced when they arrived outside the barred door.

  “Permission granted,” Captain Stanton’s voice came through the comm, and the door opened.

  The bridge was alive with activity. Officers worked their stations, as Captain Stanton studied the tactical map now updating on his screen.

  “Welcome back,” Captain Stanton said, glancing toward Mandi and Grae. His eyes narrowed at the sight of Grae’s blood-soaked uniform.

  “I’ll be alright.” Grae winced. “What’s the situation?”

  “Everything we’re seeing is forty-three minutes old.” Captain Stanton nodded and turned back to the tactical screen. “We’re eight hundred miks from Eridani.”

  “Where could the exit end of the Casimir Bridge be?” Grae turned to Sophia.

  “All I have is theory.” She shook her head. “You’re the soldier. What do your instincts tell you?”

  “If this was a conventional interstellar force, it would be on the edge of the system and burning its way in, as we speak. Could the exit be further into the system, closer to Eridani?”

  “Gravitational force makes the bridge random and unstable. Without anchoring it, you’d have to terminate your jump far outside the gravity well of any planetary mass. The theory is that the entry creates a small wormhole, and the exit anchors it—the entry sends a carrier signal, and the exit responds with precise position and environmental data allowing the wormhole to stabilize and grow. Theoretically, if you stabilize the Casimir Bridge and lock down the exit, then you’re free of the instability of gravity. It just takes more power and hyperium.”

  “For all we know, there could be a Coalition fleet arriving at Eridani right now.”

  Sophia nodded.

  “We’ve got to get word to Jans,” Grae said. “Waiting forty-three minutes for transmissions to reach Eridani isn’t an option.”

  “I know,” Sophia responded. “I can reconfigure a jump pod to micro-jump close to Eridani and transmit a message.”

  “But pods aren’t designed for micro-jumps.”

  “How do you think I performed the jump experiments testing my theory?” Sophia’s face betrayed no emotion as she diligently worked her console. “I couldn’t follow every outbound ship to the edge of the system. Jump pods were a cheap and an easy way to keep the experiments in-system and collect data quickly.”

  Grae nodded in approval. “You know that once it transmits, anyone can get the message.” He turned to Captain Stanton.

  “I’m working out the phrasing now. We’ll encrypt, of course, but we must use cryptic language as well.”

  “Speed is of the essence,” Grae agreed. “And I have a way to format the message.”

  Chapter 58

  Eridani

  Gregory Andrews watched his holo screen intently, as the delicate process took place thousands of kilometers away in space. He sat with his cane between his feet in the temporary office in the New Reykjavik hab, alongside Erik and other members of his team. After countless tests and dress rehearsals, this was the Deliverance team’s first remote deployment of a bridge in an operational setting. They had limited time and ability to rectify any mistakes.

  The initial deployment had gone off without a hitch, with a successful handshake between entry and exit. Now the first ships were en route. Andrews cursed under his breath. Unlike travel through a standard wormhole, bridge travel wasn’t instantaneous. It took time due to some sort of temporal shift, and that time represented the greatest risk. Anxiety threatened to bubble to his implacable surface.

  “We might have a problem.” Erik, uncharacteristic concern in his face, wrenched Andrews’ attention from his screen. “An unscheduled jump pod arrived in close proximity to Eridani. Its message was encrypted. I broke it, of course, but the message itself is a cryptogram.”

  “Send it to me,” Andrews said curtly.

  Erik sent it via comm, and Andrews retrieved the file.

  Your birthday is next week. Danny bakes good cakes. Chocolate is your favorite. Your dog will arrive in time for the party. The party is at your favorite place: the beach. The sun—

  The series of seemingly inane sentences continued at long length down the page. There must have been hundreds of them.

  “It appears to be binary,” Erik said, “each sentence representing either true or false, a one or a zero. Every eight sentences forms a letter. The problem is that most of the sentences are personal in nature, so we have no way to determine the answer. I ran it through my best decryption routines, and there is simply not enough information. Chances are that there are extra characters interspersed throughout as well, maybe even a secondary coding, making standard algorithms useless.”

  “I don’t like the timing.” Andrews glanced back at his screen. “Couldn’t this be anything from any of Mikel’s operations?”

  “At another time, maybe. At another place, assuredly. But every time a pod sends a message, it includes basic telemetry information, including the system of origin. This message indicates the system of origin as Eridani.”

  “Jump pods aren’t designed for system use.” Andrews’ eyes narrowed. “The actual origin can’t be Eridani—maybe a system glitch.”

  “Unlikely. It is a very basic function.”

  “Then someone deliberately tampered with the pod in order to hide its origin.”

  “Possibly, but why not simply empty the field? I’m wondering if the origin is indeed Eridani. Pods are not designed for system travel. However, they could theoretically be configured for such use. What if someone needed a message to reach Eridani quickly from an outer area of the system?”

  “Then the message must be something that couldn’t wait an hour. Something like—”

  “I’m thinking the same.” Erik’s consternation clear.

  “Contingency plan. Get your team ready.”

  Chapter 59

  Eridani

  “We have a problem.” The normally mild-mannered Dagan burst into Jans’ office.

  “Add it to the list,” Jans replied with a sardonic half-smile.

  “I am serious.” Dagan leaned on both hands on the desk in front of Jans. “I’ve received a message from Dauntless.”

  Jans’ heart leapt.

  “It arrived less than an hour ago. It looks as though Grae reconfigured a jump pod to fire in-system.”

  “Does he know how?” Jans’ ears perked. “Sophia was working on that.”

  “Perhaps.” Dagan’s eyes narrowed at the far wall.

  Jans’ heart beat faster. For months, he’d been beaten down by one setback after another. Anything that could go wrong had. Anyone who could make trouble had made it. And through all of it, compatriots, friends, family—loved ones had been lost. Now they might finally have good news.

  Dagan reached into his pocket and produced a folded piece of paper. He gave it a quick glance before handing it to Jans.

  “Paper?”

  “I have a code that I use with my top agents in case we need to communicate outside secure channels. It is a simple one and all but unbreakable, because it relies on personal knowledge and a level of supposition.”

  Jans unfolded the paper and read the message. Coalition attack imminent.

  He read it again, letting it sink in. All along, the specter of losing AIC to a takeover had loomed, an intangible shadow. Now that specter had taken shape in the form of the Euramerican Coalition government. The shock of knowing—of realizing that his own government would take him down—felt like a plug pulled from his heart. At the same time, a weight was lifted. The anxiety of anticipating the worst was gone, the sleepless nights ended. Anticipation was replaced with surety. A clear path lay before of him.

  “An attack where? When?”

  “There is something else. Jans. We have been tracking an inbound high-g tug with three cargo pods from Centric Corporation. It has entered an extended orbit seven hundred thousand kilometers out. We are picking up a massive hyperium signatur
e at its location.”

  “Hyperium? So close?”

  “Now may not be the best time to tell you.” Dagan sounded apologetic, “One of my dispatchers received a report that Bastion picked up anomalous mass and hyperium readings on certain cargo arrivals when they entered the system.”

  “Let me guess.” Jans sighed. “The Centric pods?”

  “I am sorry, Jans. It was not sent to my office. It went to Ops, and the technician who reviewed it considered it a glitch in Bastion sensors and filed a work order for a full diagnostic at its next refit. It wasn’t until the captain followed up that it was escalated and sent to me. I do not believe they carry merely cargo. I’ve ordered Rampart and Ravelin to burn to intercept. In the meantime, I would like you to join me in the security bunker.”

  Jans held Dagan’s gaze for a long moment and then nodded.

  “There is one final thing, Jans. The message from Dauntless came with an encryption key.”

  “I would have expected as much.”

  “But this one—”

  “What, Danny?”

  “The key is Sophia’s.”

  Chapter 60

  Eridani System

  Alarms sounded as Mandi was thrown violently across Dauntless’ bridge in a blur of lights. She reached for the seat of the sensor station and swung herself around it. Sophia yelled, as Grae was tossed after Mandi, his wounded back slamming into the side of the captain’s chair. Fresh blood soaked through his bandage.

  Anomalous hyperium readings taken from inbound cargo pods, had read the message they’d received from Jans, sent via another modified jump pod. Why Sophia’s encryption key? Dauntless ordered within real-time comm distance NOW.

  Over Lieutenant Ivey’s protestations, Captain Stanton had ordered Dauntless into a micro-jump as close as possible to Eridani. Ivey had been right about their chances of completing such a micro-jump intact.

  “Engineering, bridge!” A dazed Captain Stanton shook his head to clear it. “Report!”

  “The coils couldn’t take it, Captain. The wormhole threw us out a mik short. The drive is fried. We’re not going anywhere without a full refit.”

  “Damn.” Captain Stanton gripped the arms of his command chair. “Damn! Just a little more hyperium—” His mouth dropped open at Grae’s bloodstained back as he hoisted himself off the floor. “Grae, you’re bleeding all over my bridge. Get your arse to the med-bay.”

  “I’ll be okay—”

  “I don’t make requests, Mister Raymus.”

  “Aye aye, Captain.” Grae put a hand to his back and sighed.

  Mandi reached out to help him.

  “You’re going to want to be here to see this.” Grae held up a hand. “No need to play nursemaid in the med-bay.” He let out a grim smile. “I’ve seen worse.”

  Grae made his way to the door of the bridge, holding his back.

  “Sensors, report,” the captain commanded.

  “We’re one point four miks from the cargo pods. I’ve got two contacts, one point six miks and closing. IFF indicates system defense boats Rampart and Ravelin.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Indications of craft orbiting Eridani, but the gravity well is prohibiting mass identification. We have no inbounds detected.”

  “Get me a secure laser comm channel with AIC Security.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “If this is the exit end of the Casimir Bridge that we saw at Alnair,” the captain said, turning to Sophia, “where the bloody hell are the ships we saw going in?”

  “Maybe it takes time to traverse a bridge. Maybe this isn’t the direct exit for Alnair, and they went somewhere in between.”

  “So this looks like a bridge exit, it smells like a bridge exit, but we have no idea whether or not it is a bridge exit?”

  Sophia shrugged.

  “Shouldn’t we warn the ships out there?” Mandi asked.

  “We don’t have the proper communication codes. They won’t know who we are, and we can’t send a warning in the clear. We have to go through AIC to get them word.” Captain Stanton paused. “Navigation, put us on a one-g burn to intercept.”

  “Broadcast IFF?” asked the sensor operator.

  “Negative. Except for laser comms to Eridani, we stay dark.” Captain Stanton glanced at Sophia, who nodded her head.

  Chapter 61

  Eridani

  Barely able to keep still, Jans sat anxiously on the edge of the chair that he had pulled up behind Dagan’s desk. Deep in the heart of AIC Tower, the walls of Dagan’s windowless command center sported dozens of holo screens, showing everything from New Reykjavik security cameras to data streams from power reactors. Although two-dozen workstations were spread throughout the large room, less than a quarter of them were manned here in the newly operational nerve center of Dagan’s world. At the station nearest Jans sat the engineering analyst with clumpy black hair and thick-rimmed glasses. Peter had become a rising star at AIC, and Jans needed his expertise. Today, though, he seemed nervous, uneasy.

  Jans and Dagan were awaiting a response to their last message to Dauntless.

  The last time Jans had seen this facility had been during construction before he’d left for Earth. None of the equipment or security measures had been installed then. Now it was a fortress and nearly fully operational. If they could make it through the next few days, Jans had no doubt that the seats at the empty workstations would fill quickly.

  Jans didn’t like the idea of closeting himself away during troubling times. His people needed to see him. But the enigmatic message with Sophia’s signature drew him.

  “Danny,” Jans said, nodding to him. “So this is where you disappear to.”

  “It feels like home.” Dagan shrugged, his eyes glued to his screen. His head jerked up, eyes leaping to a screen above his desk. “We’ve got a visual feed from Rampart.”

  A wide-angle shot from the rear of the security ship bridge dominated a large portion of the screen. The captain and four-person bridge crew stared intently at the ship’s main holo screen, which contained the same static-filled image on a similar screen in front of Dagan and Jans. The data feed showed three partial arcs forming portions of a perfect circle one hundred and forty meters in diameter.

  “What is that?” Jans asked aloud.

  “What the hell?” Rampart’s captain echoed through the feed. “Comms, are we feeding this to New Reyk?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Sound general quarters. Alert Ravelin.”

  Jans studied the video feed of the three arcs, tension flowing through his body.

  “Do you have any idea what those things are?” Dagan asked.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Mr. Dagan,” one of the security personnel called out. “I’ve got an incoming message on tight beam-laser comms. The security codes check out, but there is no signature.”

  “Dauntless,” Dagan muttered under his breath. “They must be close.” He turned to the tech. “Please route it to the main screen.”

  Jans spun his chair around and almost fell out of it.

  A close-up showed Sophia obviously on Dauntless’ bridge staring out at him. She blinked, moved her head, and cleared a dark strand of hair from her worn face.

  He stood up. His breath left him, and his heart pounded until it nearly exploded. He’d never seen Sophia like this: tired, haggard.

  “Jans, darling—” A tear left each of her dark, familiar eyes. “I am alive.”

  Jans stumbled on his weak leg and fell back into his chair.

  “Do you remember the trip to Patagonia? We stopped in the middle of nowhere at a roadside store that had pet guanacos. I wish I had a picture of what happened when you tried to pet one.”

  “She is telling you something only the two of you would know,” Dagan whispered.

  “It spit on me.” Jans let out a single sob.

  “You must listen to me carefully now, darling. No doubt you are receiving a feed from Ramp
art and Ravelin. We are close enough to detect them and what they’ve intercepted. I don’t have time to explain, but we believe it to be the exit of a Casimir Bridge. In the Alnair system, we just detected ships belonging to the Coalition Home Fleet traversing the entry to the bridge. We aren’t sure why they haven’t arrived yet, but we believe the fleet traversing the bridge will arrive here in the near future. It seems farfetched, I know. But you must order Rampart and Ravelin to fire on the exit to the bridge and destroy it before it is too late.” Sophia’s face softened, as the camera panned back, showing a nervous and oddly-familiar African woman next to her. “Jans, my dear, we have a lot to catch up on. We have a Nkosi on board with her own story to tell. We will see each other soon.” Sophia touched her fingers to her lips. “I love you.”

  The screen went dark, and Jans breathed deeply and loudly, attempting to compose himself. He had never before felt this alien combination of joy and dread so closely coupled.

  “Give the order, Danny.” Gathering his wits, he clenched his fists and turned to Dagan. “Blow it out of existence.”

  “Computer.” Dagan nodded. “Order to—”

  “I can’t allow that,” Peter’s voice announced.

  Jans spun to find himself facing the barrel of a small pistol.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Dagan made a move forward.

  “Please don’t make me kill you, Mr. Dagan.” The analyst raised the weapon to shoulder height. “I honestly like you, and I respect your work. But if you make one move, I will put you down.” He flipped his eyes to activate his comm. “Security systems deactivated. You’re clear to come in.”

  From behind Jans, the Rampart call to general quarters carried through its transmission to the security control center. He caught the minutest shake of Peter’s hand holding the gun.

  “Why?” Jans took a calm step forward. “You’re part of our team. You helped build all of this. Surely you can’t want to bring it down for what—money?”