Renegades (The Progenitor Trilogy, Book Two)

by Dan Worth

  ‘Far-fetched?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t like to say.’

  ‘Yeah, listen to me, eh? Hmm, so how many black holes are there in the galaxy?’

  ‘Don’t know, dozens, hundreds maybe. Most of them are situated towards the galactic core, where most of the older, heavier stars are. Why?’

  ‘In the dream I kept seeing the surface of a planet. There were these strange ruins and in the sky was what looked like a black hole. I could see the accretion disk edge-on, and there was something built around it, and lots of ships too.’

  ‘An image of the ship’s origins? Their home planet perhaps? If the ship comes from an ancient civilization as Cox and Reynaud claim, it’s conceivable that their home-world was destroyed long ago. Maybe that’s what it was trying to show you, an exodus of some kind.’

  ‘Maybe, who knows?’

  ‘Perhaps someone does. We should ask around Katherine, see what we can find out. I wonder if anyone else has experienced anything strange like this?’

  Chapter 10

  The stars wheeled around the cockpit as Isaacs threw the bomber into another tight, evasive turn. He banked the heavy craft then spun it laterally through one hundred and eighty degrees to face the target asteroid, negative gees throwing him forward against his seat restraints. As he did so he heard Valdez, his weapons officer, let out a whoop from the back seat as he released the training torpedoes at the now receding target. He gunned the main engines and the port lateral thrusters, sliding the ship sideways around the asteroid so that Valdez could get a clear shot at the second target marker. Valdez obliged with an acutely angled shot that grazed some of the higher surface features on the asteroid before smashing home with a powerful kinetic blow that scattered a plume of rock and ice chips from the slowly tumbling boulder.

  ‘All right Alpha four, good shooting. Isaacs, you want to come out of that reverse vector move a little quicker but that was some nice flying.’ The gravelly voice of Captain Carlotti - his squadron commander - crackled over the ship-to-ship comm. system.

  ‘Yes sir, though I think the gyroscopes are a little out on this tub,’ Isaacs replied. ‘You know the fitters back at the carrier have been griping about these new Azraels ever since we got ‘em.’

  ‘Yeah well, in a real battle situation you got to be prepared for unexpected mishaps like that. Hell, I once took down an Imperial destroyer’s bridge with half of my fucking ship missing during the war.’

  ‘Yes sir, you said sir.’

  ‘Did I?’

  With a start, Isaacs realised that his commander had snuck his ship alongside whilst they had been talking. The stubby wing of the torpedo bomber floated mere inches away from that of his own.

  ‘You see pilot, sometimes things can surprise you. Being able to handle that marks out the good pilots from the lizard fodder.’

  ‘Sir.’

  Isaacs glanced at the cockpit of the other vessel and saw Carlotti give him a thumbs up.

  ‘Hey Isaacs,’ came Valdez’s voice from the rear cockpit. ‘I thought it was pretty sweet manoeuvre myself, but still not as daring as that one you pulled on that young Lieutenant last night. What was her name? You got her name, right?’

  ‘Yeah, it was Mrs Valdez. Apparently her son flies torp bombers for the Navy, though he may not live long enough to see any action.’

  ‘Fuck you, man!’ Valdez replied with a laugh as the other three craft in their wing dropped into formation having completed their own runs. The shark-mouthed paint jobs of the five ships snarled in the pale yellow light of the system’s sun. Isaacs tried to remember the name of the system. It was just a string of numbers and he had to look at his navigational computer to refresh his memory. This far out on the south-western reaches, the Commonwealth had staked a claim on many systems that it hadn’t actually got around to settling yet and so many of the stars possessed only catalogue numbers rather than names.

  They’d been out here a few weeks now, as the Saipan conducted a sweep of the area, rooting out pirates and smugglers as a show of force designed to dissuade anyone from preying on the new, fragile colonies out here on the frontier. The old carrier was due to be retired to make way for a new Jupiter class carrier that would carry its name and Isaacs and his squadron were due to be transferred to the Agrippa at the end of the month. The old ship was one of the few carriers that had survived the war thirty years earlier and was now being finally defeated by progress. It was due to end up in a naval museum somewhere back in the Solar System, shoved in a dry dock for tourists to gawp at. The once proud warship would lie silent and dead, like a stuffed creature in a glass case.

  ‘All right listen up people,’ Carlotti voice cut in over the comm. ‘The Saipan’s receiving a distress call from a freighter in the system. It’s not far from here, but she’ll have to recall her squadrons before moving to intercept. We’re the nearest to the source of the signal so we’ll go and check it out. I’m transferring the co-ordinates to your navi-comps now.’

  ‘Fucking freighters,’ said Valdez over the comm. ‘What’s the bet that some dumb-ass junker fried his engines or drove into an asteroid? Don’t they have any fighter pukes this far out? They should send them. It’d be much faster as long as they could persuade them to stop admiring their reflections in the cockpit mirrors for five minutes.’

  ‘Fighters ain’t got our range mate, ain’t got no jump capability neither,’ said Watts from Alpha two’s driving seat. ‘Besides, maybe someone wants this done right?’

  Valdez chuckled in agreement.

  ‘Fucking fighter pukes. Hey, you here about the time a fighter puke managed to hit the target? He actually got it in the bowl for once.’

  ‘Alright ladies, stop your yapping and slave your jump drives to mine,’ said Carlotti. ‘Jumping in five, four, three, two, one…’ Space folded itself out of existence.

  A few moments later the five Azraels emerged from their collective jump destination fifty kilometres from the source of the distress signal. The freighter could be seen in the distance, a roughly oblong shape of struts, engine and habitation modules around a cargo of cube shaped containers. The vessel seemed to be drifting slightly.

  ‘Picking up the distress signal now,’ said Valdez. ‘Putting it through.’

  ‘…this is the independent haulage vessel Bactrian out of New Fife. We have suffered a complete power failure and are drifting out of control. Repeat this is the independent haulage vessel…’

  ‘Roger that Bactrian,’ said Carlotti as they pulled alongside the stricken ship. ‘This is Alpha squadron of the 110 Bomber Wing. We have sortied from the carrier Saipan in answer to your distress call. Repair teams will be with you shortly. Over.’

  ‘Oh thank God!’ said the Bactrian’s captain. ‘We thought we’d be drifting out here forever. We only just managed to get the comm. system working again.’

  ‘What was the cause of your systems failure?’ said Carlotti. ‘There’s no obvious damage to your vessel.’

  ‘We… we don’t know. We registered unusual readings just before the whole ship died on us and we dropped out of our jump. Most of us thought that the readings were due to the malfunction that killed the ship - whatever it was. It’s difficult to trace the fault in near darkness - but our navigation officer swears he saw something on the hyperspace scanners just before it happened.’

  ‘What kind of something?’

  ‘Another ship, unknown type. He said he only saw it for a second.’

  ‘Alright, we’ll check it out. Alpha squadron, set your sensors to maximum resolution and range. If anything’s hiding out here behind a rock, or has jumped in and out of the area let’s find it. We don’t want any surprises.’

  ‘Sir, I thought you said…’ Isaac started to quip.

  Carlotti silenced him. ‘Now’s not the time pilot. Anyone spot anything?’ There was no reply from any of the others in the wing. ‘Alright, the repair team should be here any time now. Got the jump signature of the transport, twenty-one light minut
es out from our position. Hang in there Bactrian. Can your nav officer give us any further details about this unknown ship?’

  ‘Got something,’ said the weapons officer in Alpha Three. ‘There’s a localised area of space-time distortion coupled with some weird neutrino and tachyon radiation about five clicks off the port bow of the Bactrian. Maybe that’s what fried the ship? I dunno.’

  ‘Doubtful, if they haven’t flown through it yet,’ Carlotti replied.

  ‘Unless it was bigger when they arrived here and the disruption to their jump drive envelope fried the rest of their systems.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Hang on, I’m getting something now,’ said Valdez. ‘Building levels of neutrino emissions and tachyon radiation, there’s some fucking weird shit going on in local space-time too.’

  ‘Location!?’ barked Carlotti.

  ‘Shit... fuck, it’s all around us!’

  Isaacs saw it then, in the rear view cockpit mirrors, an impression of a shape at first. He turned his head to see.

  ‘Something’s behind us!’ he cried out over the comm. As one, the squadron spun their ships through one hundred and eighty degrees to face the new threat. Something was emerging from hyperspace. It seemed to break the surface of space-time like a whale emerging from the ocean depths. It was large, approximately the same size as the Saipan, an alien ship of a strange and unfamiliar design. The vessel was composed of interlocking blue-white glittering plates arranged in concentric rows that tapered back from the blunt prow, giving it the appearance of a spiked bloom made from shards of ice. It possessed a terrible, cold beauty, like an arctic winter. It filled Isaacs with an overwhelming sense of dread. Despite its splendour the ship exuded pure terror. Something about the way it moved made his skin crawl, like the sight of a maggot burrowing through flesh.

  ‘Sir, I recommend we get out of here. We should notify the Saipan…. Sir?

  There was no response from the comm. system. He looked over at Carlotti’s ship and saw this squadron leader frantically signalling to him with his hands. Isaacs then realised with a start that the entire console in front of him was dying. Controls and head up displays winking out one by one. Frantically he tried the back-up power reserves and got no response as the huge, beautiful, awful thing swam closer. In desperation he thumped the controls, eliciting no response from the dead instruments. The mysterious craft reached out with its energy fields and dragged the flight of helpless ships into its maw.

  ‘What’s up? What’s the matter?’ Anita’s large dark eyes looked down at him in the darkness beneath prominent, arching eyebrows. He had been half dreaming, half remembering again, drifting in and out of sleeping and waking nightmares. His rapid breathing and tossing and turning must have woken her.

  ‘Were you having a nightmare?’ she said, brushing a strand of dark hair away from her mouth.

  ‘Yeah, something like that.’

  ‘You poor thing,’ she replied and kissed him slowly on the lips, pressing her firm, light brown body against his.

  He had ended up getting very drunk at The Hole with Shigs. Far drunker than he had intended, and then his friend had introduced him to this new bar maid of his, Anita, who kept pouring him more free drinks the more he flirted with her. She was working her way around the galaxy, stopping for a few weeks or months at a time in different places and taking odd-jobs to fund her next hop to another system. He’d stayed well after closing time with them both and then he’d volunteered to escort Anita back to her rented quarters in a different part of the asteroid. Considering the extent of his drunkenness he wasn’t sure who had been seeing who home safely. She’d pretty much dragged him up to her room in any case, and he hadn’t protested too loudly. The poor demented girl obviously had a thing for dishevelled freighter captains.

  What the hell, it felt good to be with a woman again. It had been quite a while, his solitary existence on board the Profit Margin being what it was. He actually felt human again for the first time since Anna had left him, instead of the hollow detachment he usually experienced. Anita had seemed to appreciate his enthusiasm at any rate, though he’d found her occasional exclamations in Hindi a little off-putting.

  It was always the same when he drank heavily though. He’d decided some time ago that the alcohol must do something to his brain functions to make the dreams come back. As soon as he fell asleep the dark and unpleasant memories would come swirling up from the depths of his consciousness to haunt him. He wasn’t about to share them with Anita; she didn’t need that kind of shit to deal with. She’d probably go scurrying back to the safety of the core systems if she knew of half the stuff he’d experienced out here on the frontier.

  He had an absolutely appalling head-ache too. It had only been a few hours since he’d fallen asleep, but already the hang-over was starting to bite. A spear of pain lanced into his head from behind his right eye-ball. Fucking Shigs and his dodgy free beer, he cursed inwardly.

  ‘You got anything for a hang-over?’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, in the bathroom. There’s some pain killers in the cabinet over the sink.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  He swung out of bed and padded naked to the bathroom, eyeing himself in the small mirror whilst he swallowed the tablets with a glass of tepid water, feeling the painkillers kick in within a few seconds. If he’d had any sense he’d have taken some hang-over prevention pills before he’d even gone to the bar. What the hell. What was point in drinking heavily if you didn’t get the full effect? Some people even took things that stopped them getting drunk at all, which seemed to Isaacs to defeat the entire point of the exercise.

  He rubbed his bloodshot eyes as the painful effects of the hangover ebbed away then made his way back to the bedroom, slipping gratefully back under the covers.

  ‘Feeling better now?’ said Anita, wrapping herself back around the right hand side of his body.

  ‘Yeah thanks, too much dodgy booze. I blame that barmaid who kept forcing me to drink it.’

  She laughed in the darkness. ‘It was all part of my devious plan.’

  ‘What, get me drunk and take advantage of me? What was it that did it for you? Are you just after a ride in my spaceship?’

  ‘Something like that.’ She gripped his balls suddenly, causing him to gasp. He kissed her hungrily.

  ‘You are feeling better aren’t you, Captain Isaacs,’ she purred, noting his response.

  ‘Better by the second.’

  ‘So I see.’

  He laughed quietly and kissed her again.

  He left Anita’s late in the morning, kissing her once as he left her apartment and making promises to call her which both of them knew were empty. Even if he did come back this way, in all likelihood she’d be long gone. He grabbed breakfast from a street side vendor and made his way to the transport tube with what could only be described as a spring in his step, the last after-effects of his hangover dissipating as his body digested the food.

  He took the tube to the polar docking bays. On the brief journey he took the key card that Shigs had given him from his wallet and inspected it, finding nothing unusual about the scratched, rectangle of plastic. He would return to Anna’s apartment later, but first he was going to check out the docking bay still leased in her name here on Merenik.

  As he replaced the card inside his wallet he noticed a Nahabe across the carriage from him. Was it watching him? He chided himself for his paranoia. The silent presence of those monolith-like sarcophagi was a little unsettling. He got a little more paranoid however, when the same Nahabe followed him off the tube and then shared another transport tube capsule with him, before floating off into the crowds of the busy port area that formed a disk at the asteroid’s pole. He walked for a while amongst the throngs along the main circumpolar thoroughfare of shops and dock entrances and eventually found the commercial section where individuals and companies could lease or buy bays for regular use. There were fewer people about around this section and Isaacs kept checking to see whether he
was still being followed, assuming he ever had been in the first place.

  The curving street took him past a number of large bays rented to the major corporations and freight haulage concerns, until he reached a section of privately owned ones. He checked the number that Shigs had given him against the blocky figures stencilled next to the entrance and walked down a short corridor to an armoured pressure door fitted with a combination key pad. Pausing to retrieve a scrap of paper from his wallet, he punched in the code, opened the door and stepped into the airlock within. There was a brief pause whilst the second door opened, then he stepped into the bay beyond.

  To his disappointment, the bay was largely empty. The large steel and concrete space echoed to the sound of his footsteps. The air smelled faintly of the spilled coolant which had formed a rainbow puddle in the centre of the huge flat ship lift. The delineated and chevron covered surface filled most of the floor space and its quartered structure would have been capable of accommodating one large vessel or four smaller ones. The air cycling system hummed faintly in the background. Isaacs shivered slightly in the chill air.

  There was little else in the bay, save for a small stack of crates piled against the walls of a small prefabricated hut in one corner of the bay. Isaacs sauntered over for a look, and found them to be the remainder of a consignment of ship electronics or at least, that’s what the labels claimed they were. The crates were tightly locked and there was no way of opening them without keys or heavy cutting equipment and Isaacs had neither.

  The hut however, was not locked. Isaacs shouldered its rusty aluminium door open with a teeth jarring scrape of metal and poked around inside its musty, cluttered interior. The hut appeared to have been used in the recent past as a sort of workmen’s refuge-cum-office of some kind. There was a scattering of various power tools, a few boxes of assorted small ship components and bolts and folders full of hard copies of invoices. Isaacs flipped through them.