Her first impulse was to turn and run away, but she was suddenly too afraid. Coming down the mountain had been a terrible mistake. She knew that now. She vaguely remembered that Jann Linn had never wanted her to travel to the city, but she could not remember him ordering her not to do it. Of course, he had done so several times before. She’d simply chosen to forget. Now, as three men appeared from the dark grey shuttle, she didn’t know what to do.
She’d hidden in the darkness before. When her father had been taken to the lab on Enrilea she’d been a statue of the night. Likewise, during many of Ziin’s visits she’d been motionless and unseen in the shadows as he’d walked past her. Hiding had worked before.
The three men knew exactly where Cass Linn was standing. Unlike commander Zinn, they were carrying thermal scopes and could see her tall frame easily as she stood in the shadows. They walked towards her, slowly, and Cass thought that the scopes they were carrying looked like quartermaster pistols. But they were not quite like quartermaster pistols just like the sound of the shuttle had not quite matched the sound of Commander Zinn’s shuttle.
“You can come out of there,” One of the men said quietly, “We can see you.”
She did not move. The men had to come closer still. There was no mistake now that they could see her.
“Come on,” The voice was soft and unthreatening, speaking like her father might speak, “There’s no need to be… Just come out.”
She’d disobeyed Jann Linn’s instructions not to visit the city, but she recalled how important it had been to her that she listen to him and understand his meaning. But she’d been unable to disobey him without erasing those memories also and all that remained of them were faint and ghostly echoes in her consciousness. But they were enough for her to be afraid.
She stepped forward, still in blackness, and she could see that each Enrilean officer had a holstered quartermaster pistol by his side.
She still did not know what the men carried in their hands.
She finally emerged from the darkness as the nearest alien came so close that he could reach out and touch her. But he didn’t touch her and as she studied his face it seemed to move in very strange ways – some that she didn’t understand. A wide open mouth. Eyebrows rising. Eyes narrow. Surprise. Shock even.
“What…” the mouth uttered that one word. Then the eyes were wide again, and the head was starting to turn around towards the
other two men, “What is this?” he was saying. But she couldn’t hear the sounds. She didn’t understand why.
Commander Zinn’s ship was less than a hundred kilometres from the eighty thousand tonne fireball as it sped past. The ship’s sensors just picked up the object in time for the shields to activate. Then the sensors stopped working as smaller debris fireballs slammed into and through the partially erected shields. The Hard Edge’s shields took less than a second to reach full power, but by that time many parts of the ships had already been heavily damaged.
“Report!” Zinn shouted, “Navigator! Give me eyes!”
The lights in the control room were flickering. At least eight different alarms were sounding and there were calls coming in from the sensor operations control centre and the engineering section. Ziin waved his hand over his own console and silenced most of the alarms.
“A… meteor. asteroids…” the navigator stumbled over his words, “Sir, I’m not sure. Shields came on automatically but whatever it was still managed to damage the sensors.”
“Sir, I’m hearing reports of casualties ship wide. We have various hull breaches along the starboard bow.”
Zinn looked at the communications officer. “Send medical and engineering teams to the affected areas. Breach protocols are now in force.”
“Yes sir.”
“Captain, we’ve been hit by something moving at extremely high velocity,” the navigator stated, “We’re blind, sir. All sensors are not operational. The shields have been penetrated in eight locations, but they’re on full strength now.”
“Are we under attack?” Zinn blasted, “Are we in harms way? What is going on?”
Ziin was on his feet, storming across the control room. He glanced from console to console. He had to see for himself. His mind was spinning.
“Sir!” it was the communications officer again, “Sir… Message from the Caanalooma… Not an attack sir. She’s tracking… name of the Gods… a massive object is heading straight for Jann Linn city. It’s entering the atmosphere!”
The ship rocked again as more of the smaller debris smashed into the hull. New alarms started to sound. More damage. Ziin moved instantly. There wasn’t time for much thought. He pushed the navigator aside roughly and piloted the stars hip away from the Relathon home world. The ship was sluggish. There was damage to the starboard thrusters. It was apparent in the slow yawing way that the large ship moved. Ziin pushed the main thrusters to two thirds full power, but he was aware that the ship had started to spin. He tweaked the port thrusters, then the starboard thrusters again. He cut the power to all the engines. Hard Edge had just moved two hundred miles away from the debris field, and was out of danger.
He exchanged a glance and a slight nod with the navigator. He’s known the young lieutenant for almost a year. They understood each other. Ziin’s decision to take over the controls had not been made because Ziin doubted his officer’s competence. As captain, the fate of the ship was his responsibility. Taking the controls had been a reflex action. Ziin, besides, was a better pilot.
He didn’t yet realise that there would be no saving the Hard Edge. And even if he’d known – he’d still have tried to pilot the ship to safety.
Cass Linn heard and felt the tremendous blast tearing through the air towards her. She did not pay it any mind as her full attention was on the Enrilean soldiers. She was so much more concerned about them and what them being here must mean. She continued to study their faces in a confused, terrified panic.
The night was becoming brilliant day behind the soldiers as the massive fireball blasted into the city. It was hotter than the sun itself and tore the atmosphere apart as the sky literally exploded in a desperate and catastrophic rush to be out of the way. The enormous deceleration caused the unrecognisable ball of wreckage to explode in a series of massive flashes. The thunderclap from each wouldn’t be heard by anyone in the city as the apocalypse would out speed each one. But Ziin’s men felt the heat and the light behind them and they started to turn round just in time to stare death in the face.
The soldiers changed to unrecognisable shapes as everything around Cass Linn brightened as though the sun itself had suddenly come down from the sky. She felt heat like she’d never felt before and she watched as the Enrilean soldiers screamed and briefly started to melt before bursting into flames and dying. She was on fire too and her skin was peeling away to reveal her silver frame. The pain was intense, but she decided to switch it off as she quickly realised there was nothing she could do to stop it. The heat was everywhere around her and could not be avoided, as if the very air itself had caught fire.
The soldiers died mercifully quickly as the fireball that had once been the Spirit of the Future obliterated Jann Linn city. A catastrophic blast followed a few seconds later. The five hundred year old city was tumbling and splintering and cascading around her. Cass Linn’s white hot frame tumbled head over heels along with the seemingly endless ragged edged wave of flaming debris and then she was lost in the storm of flame, metal and madness.
SEVEN
2195AD - Spirit of the Future.
Sloane opened his eyes. He reached for his sidearm. He clawed for it suddenly as if electrified only to find that it wasn’t there. Neither was his holster. Something was wrong. He controlled his breathing, trying to stay quiet. Around him there was only darkness and silence. He didn’t know where he was. He realised that this couldn’t be China. That had been a dream.
China was decades ago. There would be no sidearm to find. He hadn’t held one for over fifteen years, or
fired one in twenty. He wasn’t where he thought that he was. But he hadn’t really been thinking at all. He wasn’t waking from sleep. He recognised this kind of wakening. His senses were slowly returning, having been battered from his body.
The darkness was not total. The emergency lights had come on – or three of them had – in his room. The fourth had been smashed by some piece of flying debris. Two of the working lights were covering in clothing and sheets from the bed. The gravity generator was still working, but not on full power. Sloane felt lighter.
The air smelled of smoke. But he could breathe. There had been a fire in his room as he’d lay unconscious, but the fire suppression system had managed to put it out. He could smell the remnants of the choking gas that would have choked both the flames and his own life. But the gas had been purged once the fire had been extinguished. He couldn’t move, but he didn’t want to try yet. Somehow he just felt that he couldn’t. There was no pain, but his body just felt… stunned.
He lay still for a while, listening. He could see faint shapes in the light. There were noises around him both inside and outside the room. There were vibrations, shudders, movement. Metal straining. Voices crying out like animals howling. All of it distant or muffled by the door of his room or both.
It was a long time before he moved, he thought, but in reality only two minutes passed. And when he moved he coughed because his face was covered in dust from the room and it entered his nose and mouth as he moved.
“In here,” he shouted, “In here!” at the top of his voice.
He stumbled over a chair and the smashed wooden bedframe to reach the door. The voices behind the door were no longer voices. He realised they were the sounds of the door metal straining. Metal screamed its protest somewhere on the other side of the door. He touched his hand to it and his fingers stuck to the cold. He pulled them away too quickly and lost a thin layer of one fingertip near the nail.
“You bastard!” he snapped. Squeezing the finger hard. Blood trickled from the skin that had peeled away from under the corner of his nail. He sucked his finger hard like he was trying to remove poison from it. The sound of tortured metal continued beyond the door of his flying hotel’s room. The door groaned its protest as the vacuum on the other side tried to pull it from its mount.
“Fuckin fucking fuck,” Said Sloane, breathing hard, “Holy fucking fuck.”
He closed his eyes. The room was cold. There was heat coming from the emergency lights. He yanked the covers from the two lights that had been masked by debris and touched his cold hands to one of them. There must be oxygen too, he thought quickly, or he’d have been dead already. He’d been out who knew how long, but he’d lain morbid for a few minutes and there was still air to breathe.
The correct procedure in this situation was to contact the nearest steward. The steward was summoned by dialling out from the video unit. Sloane smiled insanely for a tiny moment. The video unit was lying on its side on the floor. The dialler was nowhere to be seen. The room was a fiasco of broken bedframe, strewn linen and clothing and other unrecognisable artefacts.
He could see his breath now like thin fog. He moved back towards the door, imagining that he saw it bend in the middle as he moved. He hoped it was just his imagination. He knew there was a vacuum beyond the door. Somehow, he sensed it. But he didn’t realise that there was nothing beyond the door at all.
He tripped over one of the chair legs and fell on his elbow and right hand. He felt something under his hand and picked it up. He stared at it for a how moment and his face changed expression several times. First confusion, then a crazy laughter in his eyes and then a flash of momentary rage.
It was the video unit dialler, or most of it. He picked it up and put it to his face.
“This is room eighty seven,” he said, “Something’s fucking wrong here!”
He laughed quietly and let the dialler drop to the floor. Then the terror returned.
He imagined terrible things. Some of them he was right about, but he couldn’t know it. He had lots of tumbling twisted thoughts bouncing around inside his head. The voice of sanity continued to shout itself hoarse among them.
The ship had hit an asteroid. One that nobody knew about or had seen. Something that had somehow avoided the sensors.
The engine exploded. Or one of them had exploded. How many engines did the ship have? It didn’t matter. One of them had exploded, somehow.
A terrorist bomb exploded. Smuggled aboard Or perhaps driven into the ship as part of a smaller ship.
The wormhole had collapsed. Somehow the collapse had squashed or torn apart or crushed all or a part of the ship.
Pirates had attacked the ship. One of the two frigates that had been lost ten years ago had actually been ceased by pirates. Or terrorists again, even. And they were attacking the Spirit of the Future. For some reason.
He shook his head to clear it.
“For fuck’s sake get a grip,” he grunted.
He found his computer amongst the wreckage. He picked her up and shook her. She squeaked indignantly and lit up.
The little palm sized screen flickered. Pamela’s face appeared as it usually did, but it was a sad face.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
Pam frowned. The little device checked its memory banks. It considered its response carefully.
“It seems there’s been an accident,” it said simply, “My link to the ship network is down and I’m not sensing any other networks nearby. I’ve been damaged. I shouldn’t really be thrown about. I have to notify Vodafone of this and it may invalidate…”
“Sure Pam, but tell me about the accident.”
“What would you like to know?” the little digital assistant asked sweetly.
“Tell me what happened,” He asked patiently. Pamela (Personal Assistant with Mnemonic and Encyclopaedic Lexical Analysis) could be very useful if you knew the right questions to ask and had the patience to ask them.
“I was lying on the floor. Did you sense that?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Tell me what happened before I started to lie on the floor.”
“About six hours ago I lost connection to the ship network. I was about to run a diagnostic check when I was thrown to the floor. Sir, you were bouncing around the room too. You were shouting but I could not understand your words. I’m not designed to interpret shouted commands, Sir.”
“Okay Pam,” He said.
“I shouldn’t be dropped either. My warranty…”
He gave her a little shake and she was quiet.
“What else did you record? When I was flying around the room I mean,” Sloane winced as a grinding noise sounded somewhere beyond the door of his room.
“I lost contact with the ship network, as I explained,” Pam said evenly, “And I also lost contact with eighty nine of the one hundred and four data sources I was aware of.”
Sloane licked his top lip.
“So you’re still in contact with… how many personal assistants?”
“Fifteen, sir, but eight of them are asleep.”
The little handful of electronic gadgetry was giving Sloane comfort, he realised. He’d heard Pam’s voice a thousand times giving him weather reports, messages, news and other information. But the little electronic device had never been more than a gateway to the information he needed.
There were fifteen other devices within range of Sloane’s Pamela.
“I want you to try contacting them,” Sloane told his little computer, “Start with the nearest one first and work outwards.”
“There are now thirteen devices within range,” Pamela said without feeling.
Sloane studied her display for himself. Swishing a thumb across to move her face out of the way. He surveyed the area. He could see that there were indeed thirteen personal assistants within range. He noted absently that two of the thirteen were three miles away. He blinked and another of the devices had moved out of range. Then another passed three and a half miles and was go
ne.
The door groaned. He stared at it. He stared and stared hard, imagining what was beyond. When Pamela spoke, he got such a shock that he dropped her.
“I’m not…”
“Shut up!” he shouted, “What?”
“I’m in touch with one of the other passengers on the ship,” she said, “She’s a bank clerk from New Jersey.”
“Christ, let me speak to her,” he snapped, already touching the appropriate controls on the device before the Pam operating system did it for him. The voice on the other personal device was screaming and screaming. He screamed back.
“I’m here! I’m here!”
“The ship!” the female voice shrieked, “I… I can’t breathe. The ship… They’re all dead here… Please… can you get to me? Can you get here now?”
He squeezed his brow hard with the index finger and thumb of his right hand. He didn’t know what to say, but he waited too long to say anything.
“Please help!” the voice was loud, intense, terrified, “Oh please just get here… I can’t get to the shuttles. I’m in the movie theatre. Its sealed. It’s all sealed.”
“Are you alone,” He asked, “Who’s with you?”
“There were five others, but they left before the doors sealed. They weren’t meant to leave before the crew would tell us what to do. That’s what you’re meant to do! That’s what they told us in the safety brief! But they left and then the door closed and… and…” she sobbed, “Oh please tell me you can help me.”
“I can’t. I CAN’T!” he found himself shouting back, “I’m a passenger too. And my fucked up room door is jammed shut too! I’m sorry!”
The screaming stopped. She was breathing hard only now.
“What happened?” he asked after a while.
The breathing continued. Then it stopped. Sloane felt that his heart too would stop. Had she died?
“My name’s Zoobell,” She said suddenly, “I’m only twenty eight years old. I’m not married. My profile just says I am so I don’t get contacts from random romancers. I’ve never been to space before.”
Beyond the Starport Adventure (Bullet Book 1) Page 16
