by Darren Beyer
“Mandi, it’s time.”
Mandi sniffled one last time, and together she and Jans lifted Sophia into the pilot’s seat of the skimmer. Jans settled behind the co-pilot controls, and Mandi clambered into the cramped cargo area. As soon as Jans strapped in, he turned to Sophia. She looked at him.
“I never thought I’d touch you again.” He put his hand to her face.
She laid her hand over his, leaning into it, turning and kissing it, as she gazed into his eyes. “You might lose me again if we don’t get out of here.”
His look lingered a moment longer before he tore himself away. For a few long moments he stared at the instrument panel.
“Would you get us started?” Jans looked back to Sophia.
“Skimmer, begin startup sequence,” she said, concentrating on the panel. She gave a slight smile as, with a flick of her finger, she engaged main power and the cockpit screens illuminated. "What would you do without me?”
“I tried that. It didn’t work out so well.”
With difficulty, Sophia went through the preflight checklist and tested key systems, reaching in pain for switches and controls. Jans glanced briefly at her awkward legs, and she caught him.
“I’m a bit rusty flying skimmers,” he said, “but why don’t I take us out of here?”
“You’ve got the stick.” Sophia nodded and slid back in her seat with tangible relief.
Jans took the controls nervously, eyeing gauges and meters, as Sophia reached to squeeze his forearm. The skimmer could fly itself, but automated flight wasn’t wise in a combat situation. He applied power to the grav pods and lifted the skimmer off the ground, rocking a bit. He was clearing the surrounding trees when an explosion erupted from the direction of the spaceport.
“It looks like Grae handled the other skimmer.”
Jans steadied their own skimmer and turned it away from the destruction behind them.
“So far so good.” Sophia took Jans’ hand.
Jans laced his fingers through hers as he steered the skimmer toward open sea.
“I’m picking up sporadic mass sensor signals.” She pulled back her hand to tend the sensor panel.
“Any radar?”
“Not yet.”
“Skimmer, mass dampener full power,” Jans called out. “I never thought I’d be dodging my own inventions.” The sun was a disc on the horizon as he tilted the skimmer toward it and shot out low over the ocean.
The sky was already a mix of orange, red, and purple, accentuated by contrails of Coalition drop pods descending from above. Jans buzzed the skimmer low over the wave tops that burned red in the light of sunset. Once free of New Reykjavik airspace, he set the controls for automatic flight.
Jans twisted in his seat toward the cargo area, where Mandi crouched with her knees to her chest and her head in her hands. He laid a hand on her shoulder, and she looked up with tears in her eyes.
Chapter 74
Eridani System
Gregory Andrews worked his way slowly through the rotating low-gravity ward of the hospital ship Dieppe. The rubber end of his aluminum cane made no sound against the padded floor.
Andrews was an old man. Despite regen therapy, his wounds had not yet fully healed. His broken ribs still pained him, but the wooden shard of his broken cane had missed his vital organs. He would recover. He was a survivor.
The virus Jans had unleashed in the AIC network had wreaked havoc on databases, computer systems, everything digital. Andrews was grudgingly impressed. He hadn’t known that Mikel had it in him. Decades of work had gone into building what Jans pulled down with the push of a button. Andrews’ face broke into a begrudging smile.
Communications were down, primary power stations offline. New Reykjavik was a mess, the monorail stalled, robotic construction halted, offices and administration centers useless. The virus had even made its way to the orbiting space station and neighboring space docks, where it had spared only life-support systems. Everything else had suffered. Andrews’ engineers were confident that the complexes could be brought back online, but entire sub-systems would need to be swapped out, prefabricated, and shipped from Earth.
In the meantime, Coalition tenders served as temporary space stations, and hospital ships like the Dieppe provided the only healthcare. Andrews would have to remain sequestered in orbit until the doctors saw fit to release him.
Andrews passed casualties from the Augusta. At a bed marked C-34, he stopped and looked down at a severely wounded man: bandages covered the face and body, tubes protruded from his arms, a ventilator forced air into his chest. The prognosis was grim. The man had suffered a collapsed lung and multiple broken ribs. Most of his face had been peeled off by flying debris, and one of his eyes had been punctured by a shard of aluminum.
Regen therapy couldn’t begin until his body was capable of handling the stress of accelerated healing. Regen concentrated the body’s healing power, but it was indiscriminate in its application. A patient with serious injuries might heal superfluous laceration at the expense of a critical organ. Completely regenerating a wound would, ultimately, kill the patient.
Andrews slid a chair across to the bunk and sat down with difficulty. Even in the low-g environment, some movements were still painful. Instinctively he brought his cane in front of him and set both hands on its head. He drummed his fingers as he sighed deeply.
“I know you can hear me,” Andrews said. “Mikel escaped. However, the rest of our operation is a success. We control AIC and New Reykjavik—all of Eridani. Public perception on Earth is positive, and even our failure at the spaceport has helped us. The people of Euramerica like the image of an old assembly member putting himself in harm’s way on their behalf. I’m a hero. But it’s not enough. You have a job to finish, Erik. We have a lot of work to do.” Andrews gently patted Erik’s shoulder. “A lot of work.”
Chapter 75
Eridani System
The cloud surrounding Ascension cast a pink glow through the shuttle view ports, as Mandi stared out at the seemingly never-ending expanse of color in swirling shades of pink and purple.
The gas giant scattered sensor signals, making their position inside its outer atmosphere effectively invisible. According to Jans, Dauntless and the other ships that had escaped the Coalition fleet should be safe here.
The small shuttle had no artificial gravity, but Mandi found the zero g welcome. It seemed to pull the stress out of her. She glanced across the passenger compartment to where Jans and Sophia floated holding hands. Her legs were motionless. The med lab on Dauntless could heal simple injuries like broken bones, but Sophia’s spinal damage would require something more sophisticated. Still, Jans’ eyes were full of joy as he gazed at Sophia’s soft features and dark floating hair.
Mandi’s thoughts went to Grae on Eridani, and she turned to look out the view port. There had been no word from him, and likely there would be none for some time. Whatever he did would require utmost stealth and secrecy. She caught her breath and flattened her lips.
“How are you doing?”
“I’m okay.” Mandi turned her head to Jans floating toward her. “I can’t stop thinking—”
“I know.” Jans looked back at Sophia, who floated in position at another view port, backlit by the swirling pink and purple gasses. “I can’t tell you not to worry, Mandi. But I can tell you that Grae is the most capable man I know. We have hidden assets on Eridani, and Grae is making his way toward them. He won’t be alone there. He won’t be without support.”
“Is it all worth it?” Mandi’s eyes were damp. “People have died. New Reykjavik is crippled. You’re a criminal now in the eyes of the Coalition, maybe to all of Earth.”
“Look.” Jans pointed out the window at a small, irregular-shaped moon that loomed into view. “In thirty minutes, you will have your answer.”
The misshapen moon grew in the view port. At a thousand kilometers out, large craters became visible and the moon transformed from solid gray to a mottled patchwor
k. The shuttle drew closer, and craters of all sizes became evident, some of the gray turning to white fields of ice. At one hundred kilometers out, the shuttle fired its thrusters to enter a low orbit.
The moonscape flowed across Mandi’s vision, transfixing her. One massive crater caught her attention. She should have seen it before. Along its slope lay a dark spot, a mote of black strikingly out of place against the otherwise gray surface. She strained her neck to watch until it passed out of sight. Fifteen minutes later, the shuttle’s lower orbit crossed the crater again. The blemish took shape as a perfectly circular disc with lights dotting its surface. The shuttle fired its thrusters and dropped toward it. Its enormity became clear as Mandi made out some details. Massive spires towered above the surface, and tubular structures extended along the surface like spokes from a large central core. A speck of movement caught her eye: another shuttle close to the surface, dwarfed by the spires and tubes.
Mandi’s jaw dropped.
“It’s something, isn’t it?” Jans smiled gently as she stared.
“What is this place, Jans? How did you do this?”
“Have you ever wondered how our engineers discovered jump drive so quickly?”
“I thought you—”
“You thought I was a genius? I know my sensors, and I can run a hell of a company. But quantum field theory? Not my forte. That part I, well, sort of plagiarized.”
Mandi shot him a confused look.
“Hyperium was discovered on Hyperion, a moon like this. Very much like this, as a matter of fact. It has the same size and shape. It had a complex very much like this, or at least the remnants of one.”
Mandi turned back to the window, where they were descending past the tip of a spire so tall that it seemed to have no base.
“The complex—what little was left of it—was already there when we arrived on Hyperion. Much older and half-buried by time, it looked like this one here at Helios.”
“Helios.” Mandi watched the spire rise past the window. “You didn’t build this?” She paused. “It was built by something…else?”
“Someone. Yes. Wormhole technologies, anti-gravity, advances in anti-matter—we’ve garnered all of these advances from Hyperion and Helios.”
“But I’ve seen the documentaries on Hyperion. There was nothing like this.”
“There wouldn’t be. The station on Hyperion was ancient. She was all but dead when we discovered her. And after she was gone, we made sure there remained no trace.”
“Her?”
“The Helios station—everything you see here—is a living, sentient being. We’ve given it a female persona. She seems to like it. The one on Hyperion was the same. We call them the Anghazi.”
“Anghazi?” Mandi remembered singing the word at the Zulu Reed Dance, in what seemed like another life.
“Your mother was with me when we discovered Hyperion. I asked her what she thought it was. The first word out of her mouth was ‘anghazi.’ It means—”
“I’m familiar with the term—” Mandi stared blankly at the spire that had taken over the view out the view port. The material was non-reflective—possibly a carbon—shaped in round organic patterns. Sub-spires sprouted off at irregular intervals, and movement around a white patch caught Mandi’s eye, where figures in pressure suits floated above different material. The lighter color looked distinctly human-made against the darker, organic-looking structure. Then it dawned on her that even this small moon must have a gravitational field that should be pulling the suited figures toward its surface.
“The Hyperion Anghazi should have died long ago, but her mission wasn’t fulfilled.”
“Mission?” Mandi’s mind spun.
“What we’ve been able to figure out is that the Anghazi are tasked with advancing humanity. The one on Hyperion had been alive since before humans walked the Earth. Her mission was finally complete when she guided us to—”
“Interstellar travel.”
“And the location of another Anghazi.” Jans nodded. “Once she was certain that we had what we needed, she turned off, died. She was so intensely tired. Her existence had exhausted her. It was a profoundly sad moment.”
As the shuttle approached the base of the spire, lights wheeled across Mandi’s sight.
“There’s still a lot we don’t know.” Jans followed her gaze. “But one thing we do is that we can’t let the Anghazi fall into the wrong hands. Gregory Andrews will do anything for power. Can you imagine what he’d do with control of Helios?”
The lights outside the view port swelled and multiplied into thousands.
“We first discovered something unusual on Hyperion. Sophia told you how the Aurora was attacked. She didn’t tell you that the Euramerican Coalition government was involved. Now I have to believe Andrews was behind it. The attacks on AIC ships, the enrichment of the uranium that your source showed you, the dirty bombs in Washington, DC, and on Mars—all engineered by Andrews through the Coalition to bring AIC within his reach, and with it the most valuable resource in human history. Until he revealed himself here, we didn’t know who’d been dogging us all these years. We still don’t know the extent to which his control extends in the Coalition government. So, we keep this Anghazi a secret—not to hoard knowledge—but to protect her from people like Andrews and, with her, all of humanity.”
Mandi floated silently, watching the shuttle drop into its approach. They fell below the spires as they crossed the outer threshold of the tubular disc and followed a clear path between towers directly toward the large central structure. A slightly lighter shade was inset in the side of the hub of the tubular wheel.
Mandi was turning again to Jans when she was stopped short by a bright light emanating from the core. The lighter disc on the structure illuminated and became vibrant blue. Lines radiated from its center to the edges and began rotating to open a hole in the center like an iris. A dull yellow light bored through, like an eye staring at them. The hole grew as the shuttle flew toward it until she saw the details inside: spacecraft seeming to levitate above the floor of the chamber beyond.
The shuttle crossed through the iris, and a view of the interior opened around them. It was a landing pad and space dock in one. The spaceships loomed in full view, and Mandi pushed herself to the side view port as the shuttle floated past. One ship was a sibling to the system defense boats she’d seen on tactical. The other was a half-finished twin of Dauntless, with figures in EPIC suits swarming in the air around it, others walking the floor below.
Mandi noted with a start that no one wore space suits. Something at the iris kept the atmosphere in and the vacuum of space out. She turned her head. Something also kept the shuttle and its occupants floating, while people and objects were held to the floor. On the landing pad in the path of the shuttle stood a group of people apparently waiting to greet them.
“Your mother was here for all of it, right from the beginning. She was the lynchpin. She knew what was at stake and made the most difficult choice that a parent can make: between being a mother to you or a mother to all humanity. Every day since then she has thought of you. And now our real work is beginning.”
“My mother is here?” Mandi snapped her head to Jans.
Jans nodded.
Mandi looked back to the waiting crowd, where a tall African woman raised her hand. Mandi gasped and brought her hand to the window, touching it gently.
She had come home.
To be continued…
Acknowledgements
It’s taken me more than ten years to develop a back story, write a draft, go through multiple edits and proofs, and finally publish Casimir Bridge. I couldn’t have gotten here without the help and support of many people. Here they are in roughly chronological order.
When I wrote my first half dozen chapters, I sent them to my brother. As my first words of fiction, they were lacking, but Sean gave me great feedback and encouraged me to continue.
During the following years, my wife, Terri, put up with all m
y late nights and supported me when I began to waver.
My friend, Jack, gave me valuable critical insight after I had finished my first draft. He gave me great feedback that changed key components of the story.
I love working with smart, talented people. Cover artist Stephen Youll fits that description to a T and is a joy to work with. Seeing an amazing visual depiction of the scene where Mandi and Grae board a stricken ship helped spur me on when I needed it most.
Victoria Mixon is a wonderful developmental editor, but did much more for me than just work on my manuscript. She transformed me from an amateur author to one able to publish. I likely would have published without her help, but the final product would have been far from exceptional.
I’ve always looked up to my cousin Tanis. My admiration is only strengthened by the lengths she went to in helping me with everything from character names to proofreading.
Finally, there is my mother, Jinny. A talented and accomplished author herself, she provided invaluable feedback as I neared publication.
To all these people and many others who helped along the way, thank you. I could not have done it without you.
Lastly, I’d like to thank you, the readers. Without you, there would be no hyperium, no Eridani, no Jans or Mandi. As an indie author I rely on you to help me get the word out. Please leave a review on Amazon, Goodreads, Smashwords, or wherever you frequent to let others know about my work.
About the Author
Darren Beyer was born in Washington, D.C., but quickly became a child of the world. His family moved overseas when he was age two and together they traveled extensively throughout his childhood. Darren draws on these experiences to add an element of realism and depth to his writing. At the age of six, he was awakened in the middle of the night by his mother to watch live pictures being broadcast from the surface of the moon during the Apollo 17 mission. At that moment, even at so young an age, he decided to pursue a career related to the space program. In high school, he took classes in math and science. In college at Virginia Tech, he enrolled in the engineering school and received a degree in aerospace engineering in 1989. Following graduation, he was hired by NASA at Kennedy Space Center, where for nearly ten years he worked as a Space Shuttle experiment engineer. While there, he worked on the Hubble launch, as well as numerous Space Lab and other scientific missions. Experiments he was responsible for ranged from telescopes to frog life support. He conducted astronaut training, performed installations onboard the Shuttle just prior to launch, and was part of the recovery crew following landing. Darren has had the honor of working onboard every Space Shuttle orbiter except Challenger. In late 1998, Darren left NASA to become an entrepreneur, and, after more than seventeen years, an author. He is a student of science and technology and is an instrument-rated private pilot. Darren lives in California near San Francisco with his wife, dogs, cats and fish.
