Endless Sky (An Island in the Universe Trilogy Book 1)

by Greg Remy

  “Anomalies? No. Every signal accounted for; everything in its place. Can you be more specific with your question?”

  Zoe firmed up her voice, “Have you ever intercepted any transmission which couldn’t be defined as… from mankind? I mean, a transmission not natural and not man-made?”

  “What are you alluding to, aliens?” The word resonated a chord within Zoe. “Miss, there is no such thing. Humans have been all throughout the galaxy. We’ve inhabited over a million star systems and have thoroughly scanned the rest. There have never been any signs of other intelligent life or any evidence to suggest there might have been in the past. There are simply no aliens... except, of course, if you count the primordial bacteria that are found throughout the galaxy, which can barely even be categorized ‘life.’ No. We are unique.”

  “I know,” rebuked Zoe. For her, it was difficult to argue. It was such an abstract idea, so full with nothing. She was struggling to rationalize the concept and yet, at the same time, a piece of her was becoming dedicated to it.

  “I do not like to have my time frittered as such. Tell Professor Kring that he or any future ‘associates’ will have to follow proper CF proposal protocols for future use of the Stellar Lab. We are quite busy. I’m beginning to think he was being generous and you are simply a student. He may be falling far from the tree these days. Shame.”

  Zoe wanted to growl and pounce on this man. “Dr. Wright,” she said. “I do think we are done here. Thank you for your time.”

  Her sudden and formal valediction caused the group to straighten up.

  “You are welcome Miss Zoe. Please, see yourselves out.” He motioned to the door. “I must recalibrate the settings of the Stellar Lab for the next user.” The Doctor then held out his hand. Zoe was lifting her own to reluctantly shake it when Darious sprang and grabbed the outstretched hand, giving it a stiff shake, and causing Dr. Wright to wince. Zoe could have given Darious a high-five.

  “Good day, Dr. Wright,” he said.

  Zoe nodded. “Good day,” she muttered as they left the Doctor to his toys.

  They began to make their way back down the corridors to the front lobby.

  “Zoe,” Darious said, “your statement about ali—”

  “Darious. Not here. Let’s depart before we talk further. I already feel I have said more than I should have.”

  Her own statements from the hollo-lab sunk in deeper as they wound through the outbound halls of the monitoring station. Even the secretary’s ‘goodbye’ was met with a distant echo from Zoe. It was not until they had boarded her craft and were exiting the bay that Zoe became cognizant of her surroundings.

  “Darious.”

  “Captain?”

  She set her hands on the armrests and turned to him. Her mind was resolute, but her words were broken and unsure. “Even the CF has been infiltrated, completely. Pantheon seems, to me, to be the culprit. This secret of theirs… it’s above and beyond everyone, everything. This secret of theirs…” Zoe bit her lip and stared into Darious’ eyes. They had become her one earthly comfort in all the cosmos. “Darious. I don’t think this secret of theirs... is entirely theirs.”

  Deep within the unfathomable depths of space, the bantam ship, with its two occupants, traversed the stars. At some unbeknown point of inflection, their journey had been noticed and had begun to be undone, such as infinity becomes undone when its inverse is granted, enlarging values. Thermodynamic recklessness is no longer possible. Instead, cosmic mountains arise, and the travelers slide in the only direction possible with infinity rushing past them.

  Of all its theorized forms, none is truer than space’s paradoxical nature. It is a fabric stretched as reality, whose single fibers have no endpoint, no middle, and only a supposition of a beginning. Its intricacies are only fathomable by conceptualizing the lack of it. Nonetheless, one single truth of space’s enigmatic nature remains steadfast, to which its occupants must always succumb to: the true force of nothing—a force harnessed to create the extreme, and extreme by its own right. This harness, created by metal and polymers and ridden by corporeal creatures erroneously thinking they hold the whip in one hand and the reigns in the other, is not a harness at all but a cage. When considering the abysmal complexities of infinity, unbridled space does not follow their path, they follow its. Inhabitants of the galaxy, take heed, as its strands had been woven long before your day. What is the noble lie?

  Chapter 34

  Kappa Ignites

  About an hour after departing from the Copper Ephemeris Station, as Zoe was fiddling with a piece of coding to clear her mind, an inbound call from Professor Kring appeared across her screen. She answered the call.

  “Zoe!” declared the Professor, evidently in an excitable mood. “I could not wait to get an update from you. My duties here have distracted me long enough. We old men, as you know, are quite impatient when it comes to our research.”

  Zoe couldn’t help but smirk. “Professor, perhaps next we should invent a time machine.”

  “Indeed, my dear. Have you arrived at the Ephemeris Station? I’m positive Dr. Wright is preparing for your visit.”

  “We just left.”

  There was a pause. “Ah. Zoe, I can tell by your tone it did not go well.”

  “I am sorry Professor. Results were zero for the entire galaxy.”

  “Hmm. I was sincerely hoping for some further clue. That is fine.” He sighed. Zoe knew he was not displeased with her, but rather, disappointed that the search had not yielded anything new. “Well, Dr. Hubert Wright was the one to do such an examination, a true wizard at these things. I trust he was helpful?”

  “He was,” said Zoe. She did not want to talk about the last bit of their meeting. She then giggled at remembering how oddly he had first looked her up and down. “Though I think he was expecting a man, a much older man.”

  “Ha! Gave him a bit of a shock, did you? Well that ’ought to have woken the old boy up. Genius comes in many forms; a university will sure teach you that.”

  Zoe looked behind her and saw Darious very much absorbed in a textbook in the main chamber. He had quickly taken up researching her ‘alien’ hypothesis to which she spoke no more of. Zoe turned back to the microphone.

  “So, Prof, how has Origin-X held up?”

  “Safe and locked away. We must now think of alternative solutions. I would like to ask your permission to bring in more minds on this project, but first, I must tell you of a gentleman that came by looking for you a couple of days ago.”

  Zoe immediately bent toward the microphone as if electrically prodded.

  “Who?”

  “He did not leave a name, but he did ask for you by name. Do not worry. I know that any friend of Zoe would already have her contact information, thus I proceeded to tell the chap that I did not know where you were or when you would be visiting the university again. I understand your need for secrecy. I suppo—”

  “Professor, what did he look like?” Zoe interrupted.

  “Well, let’s see, he had a large brim hat. Like one of those cowboys from the western era of Earth-1. Is that coming back in style with the boys?”

  Zoe felt herself go pale. She closed her eyes and let reality whirl all around her. Opening them once again, she let out a long breath. At least he didn’t harm the Professor.

  “Zoe, do you know him?”

  “Professor...”

  Zoe suddenly felt as though her lungs weren’t able to provide enough Oxygen. She tried to shrug off the feeling. Dr. Kring immediately seemed to pick up on her strangulated state.

  “Please, please dear, be safe.”

  “Professor, I will try.”

  “Dear?”

  Zoe could not tell him about all that had happened, she just couldn’t.

  “I’m sorry Professor; I’ve just been a bit on edge.”

  “I understand. I can’t help but worry. Anyhow, back to my question, may I bring in more brainpower on this project?”

  “No!” Zoe then bl
ushed. “No, not yet. Give me a bit more time.”

  “As you wish. If I think of anything new I will be sure to call.”

  “Thank you, Professor.”

  “I need to go now. It was a pleasure talking with you Zoe.”

  “You as well.”

  As Zoe hung up the call, she couldn’t help but feel a bit contrite from her tone with the Professor. She knew he had seen through her poor guise, but she couldn’t let down her walls; after all, it was for his own safety.

  Then it hit Zoe like a fusion bomb. Dr. Kring had not told the man in the cowboy hat where she was, but he had just called her through an unsecured channel. If that man was this close to her trail, then he would no doubt be monitoring the Professor. Dr. Kring had just inadvertently given away her exact coordinates.

  “Darious!”

  Zoe began prepping all thrusters for a rapid kick. Darious came running into the cockpit.

  “Captain?” he asked, while taking a seat and readying his projection console.

  “I just spoke with the Professor. The man in the cowboy hat, he’s—”

  “He has found us,” said Darious in a manner that made Zoe’s skin burn cold.

  Long range sensors just then came to life, having picked up a craft heading straight toward them. Zoe immediately scanned the ship. It matched the one she had torpedoed on Kratos. With her two hands and ten digits, Zoe quickly calibrated the thrusters and fired a pre-burst to warm them up. The craft leapt forward, and Zoe fired all engines at maximum, in the opposite direction of the oncoming vessel.

  “Darious! I need you to go into the cooling routines and relay power from everything we aren’t using.”

  “Aye, Captain!”

  Zoe could see his quick work on her side screen while she fervently set the ship’s thrusters to pulse like clockwork in order to maximize power without burning up any of the engines. She looked down at the long-range scanners and nearly jumped from her chair. The mad cowboy had already halved the distance to them. He would be upon them within minutes.

  “We won’t make it,” said Zoe breathlessly. She looked out to the stars surrounding her, surrounding the harbinger of death, and surrounding all things. “No,” she said. “Not today.”

  Surely by now the assassin had modified the communication protocols of his ship so her last trick would not work again, and he would undoubtedly be prepared for any frontal assault, not that she had any torpedoes left anyhow. There had to be another way. Then it came to Zoe. Oh, this time he would get his. She had something for him, something with much more… flare.

  Zoe eased off the throttle. The low of rumblings of her craft subsided and the cabin felt calm, that same faux calm that comes right before a storm, when the conscious mind only comprehends stillness, but the body knows something is amiss and skin tingles as hairs stand on end.

  “Captain, why are you slowing the ship!?”

  “It’s okay Darious. You can let up on the cooling systems. I’m bringing us to a stop.”

  “Zoe!?”

  “We will burn up trying to outrun that Drak-9. Instead,” Zoe began loading Dr. Saknussemm’s program, “we are going to give him a taste of what the good Doctor left behind. You might want to strap in.”

  There was no response from Darious, but she could see her ship’s cooling systems return to their automated configurations. Zoe had made a couple tweaks to the Doctor’s program since they had last tried it. She was a flurry over the projection console as she prepared all the routines. This should be their best lightshow yet.

  Her ship came to a full stop. Zoe turned it about, directly facing the oncoming bird of prey. She stretched the focal point of the Z-Pulsers as far out as it could go in order to intercept the oncoming craft’s trajectory, though it was still going to have to come quite close. Zoe loaded the last of the sequences. The Drak-9 was momentarily upon them, having also stopped about half a kilometer away, and was now slowly creeping forward. The cowboy was evidently being more cautious this time. Zoe reveled at the thought that perhaps their last meeting had riled him. She opened the Z-Pulsers’ small bay door and began charging the capacitors for one big burst.

  “Darious, track his weapon locks. We don’t want any surprises.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  Zoe brought up her visual array to take a closer look at the enemy craft. The zoomed-in view on her screen showed the demonic vessel in all its unyielding viciousness. Some metal patchwork had been completed since their last meeting, giving the vessel a more barbaric look. In addition, all along its low-bending wings, the Drak-9 was armed with missiles, guns, and plasma cannons. Perhaps the CF would like to have a word with this gentleman regarding his armory, that is, if they were not the ones doing the arming.

  “Quarter kilometer and continuing approach,” called Darious. “14 weapon locks on us.”

  “Any powering up?”

  “No,” he quickly replied.

  Zoe stared at the ship. “Come on. Come on.”

  The two vessels continued their standoff while space around them seemed not to take heed of the scene unfolding. The stars shined just as they always had. Here, Zoe and Darious were alone. No judges, no jury; just the cosmos to bear witness.

  “Weapons loading!” yelled Darious. “20 percent powered!”

  Zoe grit her teeth. “Just a little closer...”

  “65 percent! 85 percent! 95 percent!”

  “Now!” shouted Zoe, engaging the program and sending a nova of a shock through her ship.

  The repercussion nearly threw Zoe from her seat. She could hear Darious scrambling behind her. A massive bolt of white light seared through space, ripping across the void, and striking the Drak-9. Zoe saw it happen. Through the near-blinding light, she saw arcs traverse the exterior of the vessel and spark around its aft spoilers. There was an explosion. In the next moment, thick smoke consumed the Drak-9.

  Suddenly, loud popping sounds resounded within Zoe’s craft and the interior lighting went out. A plethora of alerts appeared across her screens. As she brought up the error menu, her ship veered to its starboard side. She strained to hold on while typing on the console. A dozen fuses had been blown. The Z-Pulsers had gone offline and the feedback energy had ruptured part of the central power conduit. She quickly shut off the damaged segments and circumvented their circuits. The ship soon stabilized, and the lights returned to normal. Zoe breathed a sigh of relieve. That was almost really bad.

  “Are you okay Darious?”

  She turned back and saw him regaining his seat.

  “Yes, Zoe.”

  “Okay that time, you can’t say I didn’t warn ya.” She smirked.

  “You are correct, and we are still alive. What is the status of the other ship?”

  Zoe had already turned back and was rotating her ship to face the Drak-9.

  As it came into view, Zoe was simply stunned. The fiery glow had subsided, and smoke was mostly dissipated. The Drak-9 seemed to have lost power and was now slumped over. It reminded Zoe of when she had first seen Captain Henry’s vessel floating in space. The ship looked abandoned. It had sure taken a beating since meeting her. As the Drak-9 slowly turned, Zoe got a good look at its thrusters.

  “Darious! Take a look at that!”

  He immediately came over and gawked at the view.

  “On my!”

  An entire chunk of the vessel was missing. It was like a spherical bite had been taken from its main thruster and the two connecting boosters.

  “Haha!” exclaimed Zoe. “Take that!” She compiled a quick scan and read through the results. In addition to the engine damage, that large explosion had been from one of his missiles erupting during the event, further damaging the aft wing of the vessel. “Luckily, our damage was minimal. A couple fuses and I may have overloaded the Z-Pulsers. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Aye captain,” said Darious, patting her on the shoulder. “A good idea.”

  Just as Zoe was plotting a course for far, far away, the Drak-9 spru
ng to life. The whole ship rattled, and black exhaust blew out from its thrusters.

  “Oh shi—,” Zoe started.

  “Zoe! It is rebooting!”

  With the Drak-9 powering up, Zoe scanned its propulsion system. The results came back in a few seconds.

  Summary:

  Ballast Thrusters:

  Online.

  Force Thrusters:

  Primary Array:

  Primary Array: Significant damage. 53% operational; inconclusive.

  Secondary Array:

  Operational; inconclusive.

  Ancillary Array:

  Inconclusive.

  Conclusion: Estimated .51 f-p/hour maximum speed.

  The chase was not over, not by a longshot.

  “Darious, find a way to close the Z-Pulser door. The main circuitry to it is fried. Find a work around. I’m ramping up thrusters.”

  Zoe brought up an interactive display of vacuum-to-fuel ratios for all her thrusters side by side. With her fingertips on the projection console, she slowly raised the bars upward. Her ship began a smooth, yet rapid acceleration. Zoe kept a keen eye on the cooling systems and on the Drak-9. It was evidently still rebooting but had turned to face them as they passed it in the night of space. Soon the ship was a speck in the distance.

  “Darious, status?”

  “Door sealing now, Captain.”

  “Thank you. That was one thing I did not want to lose. Speeds approaching .2 floating-parsecs an hour; continuing acceleration.”

  A red light on Zoe’s console signaled the Drak-9 had begun its own acceleration in their direction. The cowboy had not given up. Zoe continued ramping up power with moderate enhancements to the thrusters, ensuring they could fly as long as possible at high speeds.

  “Captain.”

  “Yes Darious?”

  “Good work back there.”

  Zoe smiled and for a moment the chase seemed to glaze over, as if Darious and she were merely out for a Sunday cruise to see the rings of Saturn.

  “Aw, it was nothing, Hot Sauce.”