Mapped Space 1: The Antaran Codex

by Stephen Renneberg

  Moments after our bubble dropped, we extended sensors and began scanning for the Soberano, hoping Vargis had found a way to stop his ship from crossing into restricted Vintari space.

  “There’s only one energy source in the entire system,” Jase announced as the Lining’s sensors identified a neutrino hot spot far inside the hydrogen wall dividing interstellar and interplanetary space. “She’s crossing the orbit of the sixth planet, accelerating hard.”

  The curved view screen flashed to life, revealing Vintari as a distant point of yellow light and the Soberano as a very dim blue dot. Jase zoomed the optics towards the blue pinpoint, resolving it into a tightly packed cluster of glowing engines organized into four rows of four.

  “That’s the Soberano’s engine configuration all right,” I said.

  “Why didn’t they bubble all the way to the planet?” Marie wondered.

  Unfortunately, we couldn’t ask them. At that distance it would have taken over thirty hours to bounce a signal off the Soberano – time we didn’t have. Instead, I had the autonav extrapolate her course, confirming she was heading for Vintari II.

  “Skipper,” Jase said. “I’m picking up a transmission, audio only.”

  “Put it through.”

  Vargis’ voice burst from the comm system with an emotional fervor he’d shown no sign of on Icetop or Deadwood. He must have transmitted the message at least fifteen hours ago for it to be reaching us now. “. . . the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed!”

  “What the hell’s he talking about?” Jase asked.

  There was a moment’s pause, then Vargis spoke again. “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken!”

  The intercom sounded as Izin, who’d been listening in from engineering, cut in. “He’s quoting from a pre-Unity religious text known as the Christian Bible.”

  “How can you tell?” I asked.

  “I read it once, years ago.”

  I’d skipped ancient monotheism altogether. “What does it mean?”

  “I’m not sure, Captain. I find ancient human religious texts to be rather cryptic. He’s quoting from the Books of Peter and Matthew.”

  I realized the Matarons were using our ancient belief systems against us as Vargis’ began chanting another passage: “And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world – he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him!”

  “That was from Revelations, twelve nine,” Izin added.

  “They’re doomsday quotes!” Marie said.

  “He sounds like an end-of-the-universe religious nut,” Jase said.

  “That’s exactly what he’s supposed to sound like,” I said, motioning for Jase to kill the signal. “Vargis is a lot of things, but he’s no zealot. That’s the Mataron SI talking, mimicking his voice.”

  “But there’s no one out here to hear it, except us,” Marie said doubtfully.

  “Not yet there isn’t, but those signals will be drifting for centuries. Anyone who wants to hear them just has to fly out ahead of the signal and wait for it to reach them. It’s a confession to the future.”

  The autonav’s intercept course indicated we had to bubble in towards the sixth planet followed by a twenty hour stern chase. By the time we caught the Soberano, we’d be hurtling along at a small fraction of the speed of light, so fast that we’d have virtually no helm control and little time to board the super transport before we reached Vintari II.

  “Pull sensors,” I said, “We’ll micro-bubble in behind her.”

  “You can’t go in there,” Marie said. “It’s Access Treaty restricted.”

  “I can’t let the Soberano reach that planet, so unless you’ve got a better idea . . .?” She opened her mouth to protest, then fell silent.

  “We could bubble ahead of them,” Jase suggested. “Fire a drone down her throat as she passes.”

  “She’s too big,” I said. “Our drones would be pinpricks, and head-on we couldn’t hit her critical systems.”

  “What about that fancy new burster Izin’s installed?” Marie asked.

  “How about it, Izin?” I asked. He’d been working with his hull crawlers night and day for weeks to get the new cannon installed.

  “The Soberano’s relative velocity is too high,” Izin replied. “She would be in range for only a fraction of a second. That’s insufficient time to target and fire our new weapon. There is an alternative solution if you are determined to stop her.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “We could bubble ahead of the Soberano and place the Silver Lining directly in her path.”

  “Let her hit us?” Jase said incredulously. “That’s insane!”

  If I thought it would work, I might have tried it. We could have taken to the lifeboat and hoped for a pick up, but I knew it would have been for nothing. “Nice try Izin, but the Mataron SI would see us and raise the Soberano’s shield. We’d bounce off her like a bug hitting an elephant.”

  “Are you sure we need to do this?” Marie asked. “By the time the Soberano gets to the planet, she’ll be going so fast she won’t be in weapons range long enough to do much damage.”

  “The Soberano isn’t going to bombard the planet,” I said, throwing the autonav extrapolation up onto the screen. “She’s going to crash into it.” The screen showed the super transport’s course leading directly into Vintari II.

  “Why go to all this trouble just to destroy the Soberano?” Marie said, puzzled.

  “The Soberano is the weapon,” I said, “a kinetic weapon to destroy the entire planet.”

  “It’s a dinosaur killer!” Jase said, shocked.

  The Soberano was smaller than the comet that hit Earth sixty five million years ago, but her velocity would be more than thirty times greater, making the impact far more destructive.

  “Izin,” I said, “how bad will it be?”

  Silence filled the flight deck as he did the math. “If Vintari II has a structure similar to Earth’s, the Soberano will crack the planet’s crust and eject enough debris into the atmosphere to cause a global winter that will last for decades, collapsing the planet’s ecosystem. The impact will generate a shockwave that will pass through Vintari II’s interior, rupturing the crust on the far side of the planet and triggering super earthquakes and mega tsunamis that will roll across the surface for days. Complex life will not survive.”

  Shock appeared on Marie’s face. “The Matarons are going to murder two hundred and eighty million people, just to get back at us!”

  “It’ll look like fanatical humans did it,” I said. “The Forum will have no choice but to lock us away for a very long time.”

  “They’ll throw away the key!” Jase said soberly.

  “That’s why we have to board the Soberano and get the Codex.” I still had the SI fragment in bionetic storage, but the Mataron’s would claim I stole it. What I needed was irrefutable proof we’d been framed, and only the Codex could provide that.

  We retracted sensors and blink-bubbled a fifth of the way around the edge of the Vintari System. When we could see again, we found the Soberano’s faint engine bloom now obscured the star’s distant yellow point, confirming we were perfectly aligned astern of the giant Consortium super transport.

  We blink-bubbled again, this time in towards the Soberano, becoming the second human ship in two days to enter a restricted system, violating the Access Treaty and putting at risk everything I’d sworn to protect.

  * * * *

  Two hours after the stern chase began, I found Izin in engineering studying our fragment of the Mataron synthetic intelligence that now controlled the Soberano.

  “It’s
a pity I don’t have more of it to analyze,” Izin said. “It’s a fascinating logical construct.”

  “But can you destroy it?”

  “Unlikely, assuming it has full control of the Soberano.”

  “Can it fire her weapons?”

  “I expect so,” Izin said, “which is why we must approach from behind her engines, to prevent her bringing those weapons to bear.”

  “Let’s hope she doesn’t have drones.” Energy weapons required line of sight, but one drone could fly around and hit us while we were hiding astern.

  “The Soberano’s weapons are not our problem, Captain. Catching her is. By the time we get alongside, it will be too late to save the planet, the Codex or even ourselves.

  “Are all tamphs as optimistic as you?”

  “Both ships will be travelling too fast to avoid the planet.”

  “Then we blow her up.”

  “Detonating her energy core will simply break her superstructure into several smaller pieces which would result in multiple strikes on the planet, multiplying the damage.”

  “Can we push her off course?”

  “Our engines aren’t powerful enough,” Izin said, pulling an image of Vintari II up onto one of his displays. It was a brownish, arid world, with fewer but deeper oceans than Earth. Great rivers flowed from snow covered mountain ranges, through vast dry plains to dark blue seas. The rivers formed strips of fertility, bordered by irrigated fields and pockmarked with burgeoning stone and mud brick cities.

  “Could we bounce her off the atmosphere or use the planet’s gravity to slingshot around Vintari II?”

  “Our linear momentum will be too great. We’ll have no effective maneuvering ability and no time to avoid a collision.”

  “You want to think about that some more?”

  “I’ve considered every possibility. No human ship is designed to maneuver at that flat space velocity.”

  “There’s two hundred and eighty million people down there who are going to be dead in twenty four hours if we don’t think of something.”

  “Yes Captain, I know.”

  If the Local Powers hadn’t enforced interstellar law for eons before the rise of Homo sapiens on Earth, mankind might never have made it this far. I was damn sure the tiny bronze age riverine civilization of Vintari II would get no less from us.

  “Put that oversized brain of yours to work, Izin. Find a way to miss that planet.”

  “I have considered every logical alternative.” Izin’s voice was its usual synthesized calmness, but I sensed his helplessness.

  “Then find an illogical alternative!”

  “Illogical thinking?”

  “Yes!”

  Izin’s bulbous eyes blinked slowly. “I will try to think more like you, Captain.”

  “That’s the spirit!” I patted Izin’s shoulder encouragingly. “You’ve got eighteen hours.”

  * * * *

  The glow of the Soberano’s engines had been growing steadily on the flight deck’s wrap around view screen for hours, giving me time to think. Finally, I made a decision and caught Marie’s eye, nodding for her to meet me in the corridor while Jase remained dutifully focused on the ship’s systems and sensors.

  Once outside the flight deck’s airtight hatch, I whispered, “There’s something I want you to do.”

  Marie gave me a seductive look. “Really Sirius? At a time like this?” She shrugged helplessly. “Well, if you insist.”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  She looked disappointed. “This might be our last chance.”

  I was momentarily tempted, then shook my head. “No. I want you to get into the lifeboat and steer away from us – you and Jase.”

  She sobered. “And watch as you incinerate yourself on Vintari II? I don’t think so!”

  “Someone has to tell the TCs what happened. Izin’s convinced by the time we catch the Soberano, it’ll be too late to save either ship.”

  “You’re seriously out of your mind if you think I’m leaving!”

  “If we save the Lining, I’ll pick you up later. If not, the TCs will come. They’ll find you no matter how far out of the system you’ve drifted.”

  “I’m not leaving you here,” she whispered.

  “Yes, you are. Izin and I can handle this.”

  “You really think you’re going to get Jase off this ship?”

  “Not willingly. I’m going to stun him and put him in the lifeboat, then you’re going to pilot it away. We’re still slow enough for you both to get clear.”

  “Not going to happen, Sirius!”

  “Absolutely not going to happen!” Jase exploded behind me.

  I spun around to see my tall, blonde copilot standing in the hatchway with an angry look on his face. “I don’t need either of you onboard for this!” I said.

  “The hell you don’t!” Jase said. “You can’t fly straight without me!”

  “You’ll be throwing your lives away if you stay.”

  “We’re not throwing anything away, Sirius,” Marie said, “because you’ll think of something.”

  “Izin says it’s impossible.”

  “So how are you going to save the Codex?” she asked. “Or are you planning to die with it in your arms?”

  “I’m going to replace a drone’s warhead with the Codex and fire it into space. The drone’s acceleration is much greater than ours. It’ll get clear and eventually the Tau Cetins will find it. If you two get off the ship now, you can tell them where to look.”

  “I’ve got a better idea,” Marie said. “You take the lifeboat and Jase and I will put the Codex in a drone and you can explain it to the TCs.”

  The thought of watching from the lifeboat as the Lining crashed into Vintari II – as she died – flashed into my mind. “I can’t do that,” I whispered.

  She took my hand. “Neither can I, so you better come up with another plan, because I’m not leaving.”

  I glanced at Jase, who slowly drew one of his pistols and began spinning it in his hand. “Don’t mind me, I’m about to mutiny!”

  “This is nuts,” I said slowly, realizing I wasn’t going to get either of them off the ship.

  “Now that we’ve got that sorted,” Jase said, “I thought you should know we have company. There’s another ship out there.”

  “Where?” I asked, following Jase back onto the flight deck.

  “Six billion clicks above the star,” he said as he slid back into his couch. “It’s just sitting up there watching us.”

  A grainy image of the black, stretched teardrop shaped Mataron cruiser filled the fully zoomed view screen.

  “It’s got the same energy signature as the Mataron ship that’s been tailing us,” Jase said.

  “Why don’t they do something?” Marie asked.

  “They don’t need to,” I said. “They know if we keep going, we’re dead.” If it had been any of the other Local Powers, they’d have already stopped the Soberano, but not the Matarons. They were simply going to watch their handiwork play out.

  “They might hate us,” Marie said angrily, “but the people on Vintari II have done nothing. They’re innocent.”

  “I know, that’s why we have to save them.”

  * * * *

  Seventeen hours after we began chasing the Soberano, Izin summoned us to engineering.

  “I have an idea,” he said as he projected a three dimensional representation of the planet into the center of the compartment. “This is Vintari II,” he said, then zoomed out until the Soberano and the Silver Lining could be seen as two tiny points moving in a line towards the orbital path of the planet. “In less than four hours, both ships and all life on Vintari II will be destroyed when we collide with the planet.”

  A timer appeared beneath the image counting down to the moment of impact. At minus twenty five minutes, the pair of dots representing the two ships became one as the planet’s orbit carried it into their path.

  “At this point,” Izin said, zooming in towa
rds the two dots, “we will dock with the Soberano.” The dots resolved into images of the two ships, locked together side by side. “Note the relative aspect of the two ships.” The Silver Lining’s stern was facing towards the gigantic Soberano’s bow.

  “How does docking backwards help us?” I asked.

  “The Silver Lining will apply three percent thrust,” Izin said, pointing to the soft glow produced by the Lining’s two maneuvering engines. “It’s the maximum thrust we can use without breaking free of the Soberano’s docking system.”

  The timer counted down as the Soberano slowly rotated until it was travelling sideways towards the planet, its engines blazing with light, vainly trying to push it onto a new course.

  “You’re using the Silver Lining like an attitude thruster!” Jase said.

  “Yes,” Izin replied. “There isn’t time to overcome the Soberano’s linear momentum, but we can turn her sideways and let her engines do the rest.”

  I watched the super transport’s sixteen large engines blast away for a few seconds, achieving very little. “How far can we move the Soberano off its current trajectory?”

  “One third of a degree.”

  “That’s not enough!” Jase said.

  “It will take time to turn the Soberano,” Izin said. “That leaves very little time to change course.”

  “But we’ll still hit the planet,” Marie said.

  “Not according to my calculations,” Izin said, zooming back towards Vintari II where a small dark sphere drifted across the face of the planet. A moment later, the Silver Lining and the Soberano struck the tiny moon, shattering it in a brilliant flash and spraying a cloud of debris over the arid world below. We all jumped, startled by the unexpected explosion. The timer stopped at planetary impact minus zero point zero nine seconds.

  “Turning the Soberano,” Izin explained, “will provide sufficient lateral thrust to redirect both ships into Vintari II’s smallest moon. The moon will be vaporized, but it will shield the planet from a direct impact. Granular debris will strike Vintari II and burn up harmlessly in its atmosphere.” Izin turned to us, waiting patiently as we absorbed his plan.