Shroud of Eden (Panhelion Chronicles Book 1)

by Marlin Desault

  On board, he went straight to the command deck. A quick check of the ship’s systems told him all was in order. The ship’s computer files were his next order of business. After he scoured the armory inventory, he made a quick check of his message file.

  What he found stunned him, and for several minutes, he sat in silence, fixated on a memo Anton had sent before he was murdered.

  He returned to Niobe, and with his PLM drawn, confronted Klaas and Marie.

  Marie stared at the PLM. “What the hell?” she said in an indignant voice. Her eyes went gaping wide. “What’s all this about?”

  Scott held up one of the sidearms. “When I asked you for your sidearm you gave me this.” He held the weapon in his outstretched hand. “Unfortunately, it isn’t yours. It’s the one you took from Anton after you killed him. I checked the number on the receiver.”

  Scott handed Klaas back his PLM. “You’re in the clear. Marie will remain in confinement. After that, you and I have a few loose ends to clean up.”

  His weapon pointed directly at Marie’s chest. “In your case, I have enough evidence to bring you up on murder charges. You’ll remain confined until we return to Panhelion Authority, at either one of our logistics bases or a ship with the facilities to hold a full court-martial.”

  “Charges?” she huffed. Marie curled her lip in a determined sneer. “You can’t prove anything. Your evidence doesn’t amount to a Plank’s constant. A simple mix-up. Anton took my weapon by mistake. Then one of the Niobians took it from him and killed him.”

  “I don’t think so.” His jaw muscles hardened. “It wasn’t a simple case of you taking the wrong PLM from the arms locker. There’s more.” He studied her face for a moment. “I think I know the answer, but why did you do it?”

  “You’re the one who claims to have proof.” Marie’s hand exhibited a slight tremble. “If you do, show it to me.”

  “When I returned to the ship,” said Scott. “I found a message from Anton in my message folder. You had no way of knowing, but he reconstructed a deleted message sent from Pegasus to ECCO Central—a message you sent and then deleted. You’re Kasimir.”

  Marie threw her head back and took a deep gulp of air. “Does the message mention my name? If not, anyone could have sent it. You’ll need more than that to pin a murder on me.”

  Scott pointed his finger at her. “Good try, but there’s more. Anton recovered the computer time and date stamp on the message. I checked to see who was onboard the ship. Klaas was in the shuttle on his way back to the ship. You were the only one with access to the on-board ECCO transmitter at the time the message was sent.”

  She glanced left and then to the right as if searching for a way out. “What are you going to do now?”

  Klaas stepped away from her, gawking in disbelief.

  “Tell me why you killed Anton,” Scott bellowed, and then softened his voice. “I’m guessing this has something to do with an official in Defense Command. Did he promise you a promotion, a command, money?”

  “Do you think I’d kill for something as trivial as that?”

  “At this point, the fact that you killed Anton is not in question. The question is why?” His eyes raged with anger.

  She slumped her shoulders. “He was about to expose me.” She glared defiantly. “I couldn’t allow that. My mission is too important, but I obviously got to him too late.”

  “Who are you spying for and what are you trying to find out? Your explanation had better be a good one.” Scott drummed his fingers on the table.

  She glared at him through narrowed eyes. “You’ll never bring me before a court-martial. My orders come from the highest levels of the Panhelion.”

  “You’re spying for Admiral Camus. That’s clear, but why?”

  “He is the only one with a will strong enough to defeat an alien threat when it appears. I’ve read the New SETI reports and I know how imminent the threat is. The Panhelion President and our military leadership haven’t the stomach or the competence to deal with an attack. Camus made that much clear to me.”

  Hyades Star Cluster, the Anomaly

  -

  Aurora

  ~~~

  With insufficient fuel for his ship to return to Earth, Poland Tanner was on edge with a nervousness born of uncertainty. His starship had cruised twenty-four hours in an unsuccessful search pattern over the anomaly surface, seeking an opening. To further complicate his situation, his orders had only said ‘as further directed.’

  “Damn,” he muttered to no one in particular. “We won’t find a way through with our remaining fuel.” He tapped the implant behind his ear to connect him with his comm officer. “Premis, any word from HQ on our refueling tanker?”

  The resonant voice of Charlotte Premis sounded in the receiver. “Sir, ECCO just alerted. We’re receiving now. The check code indicates a long message.”

  “I’ll be right down.” He spun round and hurried to the comm center.

  Tanner entered Aurora’s communications center, and Premis handed him a code key. “Captain, here’s the decode for your message. You can read it in your private comm station.”

  Tanner grabbed the key code and slammed the booth door shut. He inserted the key into the projector, and as he scanned the first few lines, his face broke into a wide grin. After reading it again, he copied the critical section and sent it to the navigation station memory. Then he stuffed the code chip in his breast pocket and marched off to the combat deck.

  “Blyds, we got a break. I just loaded a file in the nav computer. It has our new destination. Command sent us the coordinates of the entry point to the anomaly interior.”

  The dark-skinned second officer whipped his finger over the computer icon. “Got it. New course for the coordinates loaded into the nav computer.” He swiveled his station pod to face his captain. “Shall we rendezvous with the Beluga before we transition through the opening?”

  “No, our orders specify we make transition as soon as possible. The Beluga won’t arrive for another month or more. Order navigation to take us to ten kilometers from the entry point of the opening,” he ordered. “We’ll hold there and run some tests before committing to passage.”

  His arms grew heavy, and his knees buckled slightly under the increased centripetal force as the thrust of the steering nozzles re-vectored Aurora into a tight turn to her new course. In the main display, the star field blurred across the projection.

  The ship wouldn’t reach the entry point for another half-day-cycle, giving him time to prepare for transit. On Aldebaran Class strike cruisers, the captain’s quarters were appointed with a duplicate set of navigation and systems instruments. He’d keep watch on the ship’s flight and power systems from there.

  He settled into the small office in his quarters and retrieved the decode key. With the ship steadily on course, he focused his attention on the political and military details described in the message.

  An hour later, he gathered his senior staff and weapons officers in the ship’s conference room.

  Tanner entered the room and paused a moment, scanning over the officers standing at attention before he announced, “Take your seats.” He sat at the head of the black, standard-issue table in the center of the drab room. “Since we now have the coordinates for the opening, we’ve broken off the search.”

  He paused for a minute to read his notes. “With this new information, we begin transit in a few hours. According to Command, once we’re in the interior, we’ll find a particular star system with an inhabited planet. Here’s what we know so far. Nine months ago, Exploration Command sent the light corvette, Pegasus, with a crew of four to do scientific research on the anomaly. We now know this anomaly as the time gradient we’ve been surveying. However, Pegasus had a secondary mission, to search for the remains of a primitive star ship named the Themis.”

  “But Skipper,” Kurtz protested. “The Themis is only a legend. Are you telling us it actually existed?”

  “As I was saying.” Tann
er shot a withering glare at Kurtz. “A hundred and seventy-five years ago, the breakaway nations of the Hegemon launched the nuclear war against the United Sovereigns. Mere hours before the attack, the Themis fled Earth with a compliment of scientists who had been working on a highly classified weapons project.” He held up his hand to shush the whispers among the staff. “The few Themis records we have show they were bound for the outer planets, but they never arrived at any station in the solar system. The ship continued beyond the solar system and, according to the narrative of the time, on a course roughly in the direction of the Hyades Cluster.”

  Tanner leaned forward on his elbows. “When the Pegasus arrived at the anomaly, they discovered an opening in the gradient and made a successful transit to the interior. There, they discovered an inhabited planet called Niobe.”

  The assembled officers uttered a collective murmur of disbelief and then engaged in hushed chatter.

  He allowed the discussion to continue for a moment, and then rapped on the table to regain their attention. “In a few hours we arrive at the opening.” With fingertips together and pressed to his lips, he leaned back in his chair. “Any questions?”

  Kurtz raised his hand. “Sir, the legend of the Themis says they escaped with some sort of technical breakthrough. Did the report provide any information about that? It’d be nice to know what we face before we get there.”

  Tanner narrowed his eyes and with a slight harrumph continued. “Pegasus has not reported a military threat from Niobe, but we’re the most modern capital ship in the Panhelion fleet, armed with the most powerful weaponry and defensive shields known to our species. We can easily fend off a two-hundred-year-old technology, but for the record, your concern is noted.”

  Tanner dismissed his officers and retired to his cabin. He hadn’t admitted that Kurtz’ question about the legend nagged at him as well.

  At his station on the combat deck, Blyds Gatura focused his attention on the flashing spacial-coordinate readouts. He then dialed in the comm channel for his captain. “Skipper, we’re ten kilometers from the opening. Our laser pingers verify it’s directly ahead of us.”

  Tanner closed out the projected file describing the history of the Themis. “Thank you, Blyds. Continue pinging the opening and hold our position. I’ll be on deck in ten minutes.”

  On deck, his eyes darted to the display confirming the size and location of the opening. Satisfied, he stepped next to his Executive Officer. “All right, Commander Gatura, let the ship’s company know we begin transit in five minutes, and keep pinging.

  The acceleration was barely perceptible. Seconds later, the ship hesitated as the bow pushed into the opening, and the gentle resistance of the gradient slowed the giant craft, as if it were pushing through a heavy curtain.

  The ship’s stern passed into the gradient opening. The engines hummed louder, and the Aurora was engulfed in changing time. The auto throttles of the hadron engines advanced, increasing thrust and nudging the massive cruiser onward through the years.

  “Blyds, tell nav to let us know if the size of the opening shrinks.” As if defying the will of the universe, Tanner planted his feet apart and crossed his arms, staring at the computer-rendered image of a reddish tunnel with jagged protrusions jutting inward from the sides.

  Blyds exchanged glances with his captain. “The navigation program is updating the convolved image returns, allowing us to verify the opening’s center coordinates, as well as its size.”

  Tanner leaned closer to the secondary display, watching the gradient walls slide past as the ship slipped deeper into the future, and crystalline sapphire specks swirled around the sides of the opening.

  The warship’s hadron engines spurred her onward through increasing entropy, and the date-time readout waxed ever larger as the vessel pushed deeper into the chasm.

  Small beads of sweat broke out over Blyds’ pinched brows. “Captain, in the stern view, the star fields we observed before entry are only smeared streaks of red and blue. We can no longer determine our position from visual star plots.”

  “Just keep tracking the center. Pegasus reported she made her way through by following the gradient tunnel. We’ll do the same.” Tanner forced his voice to reflect a tone of confidence.

  During the three-day-cycle transit time, the crew speculated endlessly about what they would find once they arrived. Many placed side bets on their arrival time and the possibility of battle action. The minimum alert level provided plenty of opportunity for the crew to speculate on and fret the mission.

  Tanner’s military mind ceaselessly worked out various scenarios about how he might interdict this passage between two universes, in the event he received orders to control traffic through the tunnel.

  Toward the end of the shift, he again scanned the forward visual-projection and caught a glimpse of a bright, fuzzy ball off the starboard bow. “Blyds, there.... You see a bright spot?”

  “Yes, sir, the closer we come the more distinct it is. We reach our scheduled arrival at the interior in two hours.”

  As they approached the interior, the spot resolved into a distinct disc the color of light champagne.

  “That’s the star, the one Pegasus reported.” Blyds half-stood and with a hoarse voice spoke with obvious relief. “There are more farther out, but they’re not as bright. We made it to the interior.”

  “Blyds, as soon as we clear the opening, contact Pegasus. I want to know what’s happening on Niobe.”

  Star Cluster Mel 111

  -

  Demos

  ~~~

  “A hot spot on the starboard outer-hull, near the bow.” Lieutenant Bram Heizer’s panicked voice sounded through the narrow confines of the command deck.

  Captain Emily Saville’s hair swung as she spun her command pod around, shifting her view from the myriad of numbers and images in the display space to her Sub Lieutenant. “That makes no sense. On the outer hull?”

  “Yes, Captain, and it’s spreading. The inner hull’s now warming in the same area. If it continues we could lose the integrity of both.”

  A moment later, the annunciator sounded. Concentric circles repeatedly formed and shrank to a point on the screen displaying the forward hull.

  “Outer hull breached,” Heizer’s shrill voice echoed off the bulkhead.

  The outburst jolted Saville into action. “It’s an energy beam. Roll ship!” Her order shot through the cabin like a bolt of lightning.

  The ship banked hard as the crew struggled against restraints that bit deep into muscles and flesh.

  “The hot spot has moved abeam, port side. Not as hot, but the moment we slowed rotation the temperature increased.” Heizer’s face turned ashen.

  Saville ran her fingers through her ash-brown hair. Enough is enough. “We’re under attack. Reverse roll and put us on a reciprocal heading, flank speed. Helm, put some distance behind us.”

  Demos swerved in a tight arc. The pulsing beat of her engines built to a rapid pitch as she ramped her velocity to sub-light maximum.

  More than seventy parsecs separated Demos from Earth. From that vantage, the spiral arms of the Milky Way stretched across the starry sky, a profusion of bright beacons dotting the surrounding heavens, showing the way deep into the interior of the star cluster Mel 111.

  Two days before, the receivers had been overwhelmed by an Electro-Magnetic transmission emanating from a star system in the open cluster. Saville immediately broke off her survey mission to map the star cluster’s planetary systems for potential carbon based life when she read the computer results. Signal analysis concluded the message contained symbols from sapient alien life. She mulled her next actions and finally ordered her ship to bear on the signal source.

  After a day of continuous homing on the source of the E-M radiation, her ship came under attack. As near as she could determine, the beam came from an alien ship or satellite—Saville couldn’t be sure which—in the vicinity of a star known only as CB2 in Coma Berenices, a constellation the a
ncients knew as Berenice’s Hair.

  “That was close,” she muttered after the mood on the ship returned to a sense of normalcy. “When the Poohbahs back on Earth hear of this, they’ll be shocked out of their mahoganite offices.”

  Engagement reports filtered in on her implant, but she couldn’t fully relax until she checked on her crew. Diagnostics confirmed all vital systems operational and the crew reported no injuries.

  “Any damage to maneuvering or propulsion? What’s the status of the outer hull?” Her mind raced to the next priority. The inner hull has to hold until we get back home.

  Heizer answered. “We’ve confirmed a tear in the outer hull and a weak spot on the inner hull. For the time being, environmentals are holding.” Again, her implant sounded with another report. “Skipper, the ship’s answering the helm normally. Acceleration is holding. Propulsion is still running checks, but Nav suggests we slow when we’re out of danger in order to run full diagnostics on both hulls.”

  She spun back to her display and prodded the icons of her input panel. “Heizer, I’ve composed a message for Admiral Delmar and put it the ECCO cache. Send it priority flash.”

  Heizer stared at her. “You mean—”

  “Yes, initial enemy contact. Send it.”

  In his spacious office located near Shuttle-Port Earth, Admiral Delmar paced before the great window overlooking the port. A clear azure sky outlined the gleaming towers and broad arches of the city. When the e-secretary announced the arrival of his visitor, he stood and steeled himself for a confrontation.

  Admiral Andre Camus, in typical garish military dress, strode into Delmar’s office wearing a light blue ascot around his neck. His service coat sported gold piping, and gold laurel leaves embroidered his lapel.

  Delmar acknowledged his visitor with a nod. “Thank you for coming on such short notice. One of our ships in Coma Berenices stumbled across some peculiar signals in the millimeter spectrum.” His somber voice might have hinted at more.