Strange New Worlds
Adventures of the Starship Satori Book 11
Kevin McLaughlin
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Other Books by Kevin McLaughlin
Afterword
About the Author
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One
Beth glanced around the briefing room and smiled. It was good to see so many old friends back together again. In the two months since the battle above the Naga homeworld, she’d seen little of the other original Satori crew. Overseeing the repairs of her ship kept her far too busy to do much socializing.
Everyone was on edge. This new enemy race, the ones called the Kkiktchikut? Charline had coined the more straightforward term ‘bugs.’ Beth thought that fit the centipede-like creatures. No one had seen the Bugs since that last, pitched battle. No one thought they were likely to vanish, though. It was only a matter of time before they struck again, and Earth wanted to be prepared.
Bad enough if the Bugs hit the Naga another time. But it was probably just a matter of time before they found Earth. Once they did, humanity would be the next on their list.
But something new was up. The Satori and Independence were both back to full operational status as of yesterday, and last night Beth had been notified of a briefing first thing in the morning. That wasn’t a coincidence. She wondered what was being planned.
“Charline, any idea what’s going on?” Beth asked.
The other woman shook her head in reply. “Not sure. Does Dan know anything?”
“Nope. I asked him earlier,” Beth said. Whatever this mission was about, it was a hush-hush project.
She looked at Charline. The woman had changed since they’d last been together. A little scarring tinged one side of her face, remnants from a bad plasma burn which hadn’t entirely healed. Her face had a harder line to it. The young woman who’d first boarded the Satori to explore the stars was all but gone. What Beth saw before her was a hardened commander.
Then Charline smiled, and that old twinkle was back in her eyes. “Whatever it is, it looks like someone is getting the band back together!”
Beth laughed. She looked around the room again. Only one member of their old team was missing. “Any word from Andy?”
“No, I haven’t seen or heard from him since he left the hospital,” Charline said. She frowned. “If he wants to talk, I’m not hard to find.”
Ouch, that was a little cold. Beth winced, then tried to bring a pleasant smile back to her face. Andy and Charline had been something of an item early on, a little budding romance on board the ship. Beth was pretty sure everyone but them knew about it pretty much from the start of their voyages.
They’d had a rough time of it on Dust, and again after escaping that dead world. Whatever happened to them both seemed to have fractured their relationship. Beth wondered if they’d ever get back what they used to have.
She glanced over at Dan. The same could easily have been said for them. She still used his last name, after all, even though they’d been divorced for years. Coming back together on board the Satori had been hard as hell, at first. But over time, they’d gotten closer again.
Their different commands kept them apart much of the time, but Beth spent what time she could with Dan. Earth was effectively at war. You never knew what might happen next, so it was essential to spend one’s time wisely. With the people one loved.
The thought made Beth’s cheeks feel warm, but it was hard to deny that she and Dan were both still nuts for each other at this point. She might be too embarrassed to admit it aloud, but that didn’t make it any less real.
The conference room door opened, letting General Hereford and an aide through. The general strode to the center of the room and cleared his throat.
Everyone else was seated on risers above the center. The room could hold scores of people, but today there were very few. Beth was present, along with her second in command, Major Ayala. Dan was there, of course. He had a Marine colonel seated next to him, and the two were deep in conversation with each other that silenced the moment Hereford arrived.
Charline was there as well as a few of her people, officers from her new armored combat unit. Beth still had a hard time believing that was for real. It seemed like something out of a B movie. Giant robots armed with machine guns and rockets? But the machines had proven their effectiveness during Charline’s first attempts, and the design had only been refined further after she returned home. The new Armor was a killing machine.
The captain of the Constitution, Colonel Wheeler, and his second were also present. Beth wondered a bit at that. The Constitution and Independence were still Earth’s only big battlecruisers. A few ships had been captured from the Bugs by Charline’s team, but Earth’s scientists were still going over those craft with a fine-tooth-comb, hoping to eke every bit of new technology they could from the vessels.
The room was a mixed bag of senior ranks from the budding Space Force. The place could hold a lot more people, though. Most of the time, a briefing would include more staff. The fact that only senior officers were present shouted to Beth that something big was up. Something big and secret, she amended.
“I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve gathered you all here today,” Hereford quipped. There was a mild chuckle from those assembled.
“We’ve started a pool,” Beth said drily. More chuckles followed.
Hereford flashed her a smile. “Just make sure I get part of the take.”
He looked about at everyone, seeming to check off names in his head. Making sure everyone was there, Beth thought. Then Hereford nodded his head at his aide, who pressed a button on his tablet. A large screen slowly lowered from the ceiling. Once it was unrolled, the aide pressed another button, and a slide was displayed.
“Here’s what we saw over Patala,” Hereford said, pointing at the screen.
“Patala?” Colonel Wheeler asked.
“The Naga homeworld. Keep up,” Hereford barked. “That ship there is the important one.”
He tapped the tablet, and a circled appeared on the screen around one gigantic ship. Beth sucked in a breath. She remembered that one, the massive super-dreadnought the Bugs brought into the battle. It was the largest ship Humans or Naga had ever seen. Bristling with weapons and filled with smaller craft, the ship was a powerhouse. But its real purpose wasn’t just the regular weapons it housed.
That dreadnought had a main gun runnin
g through its spine, a weapon capable of enough power discharge to annihilate an entire planet. Whether it would blow up a world or just scorch it to bare rock, no one was precisely sure. Scientists were still arguing over the specifics. The answer everyone was certain of was that you didn’t want to be on the planet they hit.
It was a doomsday weapon the likes of which they’d never seen before. Worse, the super-dreadnought was jump capable. It could open a wormhole and instantly arrive almost anywhere. The only good news was that the weapon seemed to take a long while to charge and had a relatively short range.
That would be small comfort to those living on a world the weapon actually hit, though.
“Yes, you’ve all read the data we have on the Bug super-dreadnought. It’s a world-killer, the final answer to wiping out an enemy for good,” Hereford said. “We’ve gotten news from the Naga that every world they control except their homeworld has been wiped clean by the Bugs.”
“If the Naga lose that last world, they’re gone. Wiped out. Annihilated. They’ve brought every ship they have home, and they’re madly building defenses to try to stay alive,” Hereford said. “Which brings me to my next slide.”
He pressed an icon, and the image changed to a picture of Earth.
Two
It was what they were all worried about, of course. They’d almost lost the planet when the Naga attacked. Now they were up against a foe with even more enormous destructive potential. If the Bugs showed up in Earth orbit, they’d be hard-pressed to stop their planet-killer ship before it annihilated all life on their world.
Their hope to set up a secret colony on the abandoned world they’d named “Dust” was a failure. Maybe it had once been a Bug colony, or perhaps it was the Bugs’ ancient homeworld. Whatever the case, they clearly had an interest in the place. Humans settling there wasn’t going to be an option.
Beth thought over all the ideas they’d had for exploration. The hopes that they would be able to soar to distant stars and see new worlds, increase humanity’s knowledge of the universe, and see things no one had ever seen. Those had been John Carraway’s dreams, but they seemed as dead as he was. In all their trips, the Satori had only visited three alien worlds. Four if you counted seeing one at a distance.
Hereford began speaking again. “We all know the Earth is at risk. If Humans want to survive this mess, we need a failsafe. An Alpha Site, a backup if all else goes wrong.”
“We tried that once, sir. It didn’t work out well,” Charline said.
She should know. It was her job to lead the colony mission. Most of the people with her died, instead, and the ones who made it back to Earth only barely survived.
“I know. Which is why we’re looking at a different location,” Hereford said. “The mission is still just as important as it ever was. Our error was in looking too close to home. But thanks to Captain Wynn and the Satori, we may have an answer now.”
Beth sucked in a breath. She knew what he was talking about. “That was an accident, sir! A fluke.”
“Our scientists think they’ve figured out how it happened, and better still how to repeat the process,” Hereford said. “The best part? The Bugs might not have this tech. They seem to only use the wormhole drive for long-distance travel. None of the ships we captured have a Naga-style hyperdrive on them. Which means they may not know what happens when the two drives operate in the same place at the same time.”
What happened was that the hyperdrive added enormous power to the wormhole. Instead of traveling just a few hundred light-years, the accidental jump had taken the Satori and a Naga warship out beyond the limits of the Milky Way. They’d found a star system. Probably, the gravity of the star had warped the wormhole and brought them in. They’d managed to repeat the process to get back, but the idea of journeying so far intentionally...!
“Sir, if anything goes wrong, even a little bit, those people will be stuck out there,” Beth said.
“Yes. At which point, they will be the Alpha Site. But we won’t be tossing all our eggs into this basket, Captain,” Hereford said. “We have multiple wormhole ships now, thanks to Colonel Foster.”
Charline nodded back to him. She’d captured several Bug ships during her astonishing adventure.
“We also have three hyperdrive ships now, with more on the way. We can’t build new wormhole drives — yet,” Hereford emphasized. “But we can send a rescue team if need be.”
Beth closed her eyes for a moment. It sounded like this trip was a certainty. Well, hadn’t she just been wishing for more exploration a short while ago? She opened her eyes, smiling ruefully. Be careful what you wish for, she supposed.
“We sure on those numbers?” Dan asked.
A melodic woman’s voice came from the room’s speakers. “I checked them myself,” Majel said.
“Good enough for me,” Dan said with a chuckle. “If Majel says the math works, then it works.”
She was an AI, after all; numbers were her thing. She was also the beating heart of the starship Satori. In many ways, it was her body. In all the universe, Majel seemed to be unique. The Naga had incredibly intelligent computers, but they never displayed the sentience Majel did.
“Good, because you’re going on the mission. The Independence will be the hyperdrive ship,” Hereford said. “She’ll carry a complement of Colonel Martelle’s Marines and a platoon of Colonel Foster’s Armor units. Just in case you run into any problems while you’re there.”
“And the Satori, sir? I assume we’ll be the wormhole ship for this op,” Beth said.
Hereford nodded. “Yes. While the Independence and her personnel examine the surface of the Goldilocks world you spotted, the Satori will be checking out the rest of the system. I don’t want any surprises, so you’ll do a full survey of the place.”
“And me?” Colonel Wheeler asked.
“You’re in command of the defense of Earth, Colonel. Don’t let us down,” Hereford said.
Colonel Wheeler opened his mouth as if to say something, then subsided again. Beth wondered if he was bothered by being left behind again or relieved. He’d always been a play-it-safe sort of officer. Not that he was terrible at his job. Far from it. No one got to command a starship without being superb. But she couldn’t help noticing that the team was made up of most of the original Satori crew. Plus Martelle, who’d already proven himself in close combat with the Bugs.
Hereford was sending his first-string team out there. He must really want this mission to succeed, she figured. Which made sense, in a horrific sort of way. If the Bugs showed up to blast Earth to smithereens tomorrow, there would be nothing any of them could do about it.
“I don’t have to tell any of you how important this mission is,” Hereford said, his words echoing Beth’s thoughts. “If we can’t set up a secret colony someplace, then all our eggs are in one basket — the one we’re sitting on right now. But if this works, if that world is habitable, as it looked on the long-range scans? Well, we might have a place to run that even the Bugs will take many years to reach, and that’s assuming they can find it in the first place.”
The star was far outside the spirals of the Milky Way. Still closer to that galaxy than any others, so that the stars of the Milky Way formed a brilliant disk in the distance, the system was so far away that it might in fact represent the best, safest place to flee if things got bad. Of course, the Naga knew where it was, too. But if they didn’t know Humans planned to build a colony there, the Bugs couldn’t discover it from them.
“You have your orders,” Hereford said. “Make preparations to depart. You’re leaving in two days.”
Three
Dan slipped into the captain’s chair of the Independence. It felt like this ship was his real home now. He certainly spent more time there than anyplace else! The past days had been busy as hell. Getting the Armor loaded aboard was a complicated process. They still needed to work out a better way to stow the stuff. The drop shuttles took up an alarming percentage of his fighter bays,
too. That would leave the Independence with a lot fewer teeth if they ended up in a firefight with another ship.
But the Armor and Marines were the core of the mission, along with a large component of scientists who would survey the surface after the ground-pounders cleared a safe zone. The whole point of this mission was to be as quiet as possible about it. If they engaged another ship out there, then the trip was a bust. They’d have to look for some other bolthole.
The whole idea of running off to another planet bothered Dan in ways he couldn’t quite put a finger on. It felt like defeatism to him. Like they were planning to fail. He wasn’t about to let Earth go under, not to the Naga, not to the Bugs, not to anyone. But he’d seen that massive Bug ship. How many of those did they have? Hope might not be enough to keep humanity alive.
“Status?” Dan asked, glancing around his bridge.
Martelle was there, legs crossed, reading an ebook on his tablet. He looked bored, but Dan knew better. There was a quiet tension in the man’s shoulders that he would never have spotted had they not spent so much time together. He knew how much was riding on this journey. Luckily, Dan knew that Martelle’s Marines were the absolute best of the best. If anyone could handle the unknown, it was them.
“Green across the board, sir,” Lieutenant Scott replied. “We’re ready to link up with the Satori.”
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