Interim: On the run from the Galactic FTL Police

by P. K. Lentz

  INTERIM

  by

  P. K. Lentz

  Text copyright © 2003, 2015 P.K. Lentz.

  All Rights Reserved

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  DATE NOTATION

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE: MERADA

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  PART TWO: COUNTING STARS

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  PART THREE: ONA

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  A SWARM IS COMING.

  NORSE & GREEK MYTH MEETS EPIC FANTASY MEETS LOVERCRAFTIAN MONSTERS.

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  DATE NOTATION

  The most common dating system employed by spacers (CR.xxxx, ‘Years from the Crossing’) is calculated from the traditional local date ascribed to the founding of Terra Nova. The ship-year used in this notation is the Terra Novan calendar year consisting of 8,210 sixty-second hours. With the collapse of civilization on Terra Nova in CR.642, the only practical standard by which spacers might calibrate chronometers was lost. Hence ship-dates aboard spacer vessels have been found to vary by as much as eighty years. Accordingly, references to CR dates in spacer datastores and elsewhere are typically regarded only as estimates.

  The Interim calendar (I.xxxx) employs the Reissan year of 10,250 sixty-second hours. Dates are calculated from the Interim’s founding, with negative numbers used to reference pre-Interim events. Official Interim (Commonwealth) Time is kept on Reissa, where the chronometers of all Fleet vessels are recalibrated upon each return. Commonwealth academics have also adopted a standardized version of the CR calendar, according to which the Interim Year 0 coincides with CR.2038.

  Durations:

  One year (CR) = 8,210 hrs (492,600s)

  One year (I) = 10,250 hrs (615,000s)

  Conversions:

  I.xxxx = (CR.xxxx - 2038)*0.8009756

  CR.xxxx = (I.xxxx*1.2484775) + 2038

  PROLOGUE

  1,753 SHIP-YEARS SINCE THE CROSSING (CR.1753)

  228.3 YEARS BEFORE THE INTERIM (I.-0228.3)

  The colony ship Star of Beshaan had been adrift for two centuries. Long odds favored its remaining that way forever. Yet instead of slipping quietly out of human space and history, the hulking ship now loomed black-on-black in the main viewscreen on the bridge of Lucifer’s Halo. The three occupants of that cramped, dimly-lit space were silent as they maneuvered the much smaller Halo past the doomed Beshaan’s fractured, flailing magsail and into position for docking.

  After a tense few minutes of acceleration Halo’s pilot and navigator, Serenity Martijn, declared, “We’re in.”

  “Nice job, Ren,” said Halo’s captain, Mayweather Kearn. He ordered the ship’s engineer, sweating profusely into the air around his station, to deploy the docking tether.

  The forces involved in engaging the tether, and afterward the rigid docking clamps that would let Halo cut its engines to conserve fuel, were easily strong enough to rip their small freighter apart. Halo was not built, and its small crew not trained, for salvage operations. But then when they’d set sail for Reissa seven ship-years ago, none aboard could have anticipated the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that would cause their unscheduled revival from hibernation.

  The odds of encountering a derelict in deep space were...well, astronomical, but there it was.

  Odds be damned, boarding Beshaan was an opportunity Kearn would have gladly declined had it not been for the dogged insistence of his subordinates. Naturally, now that they had passed the point-of-no-return Kearn hoped to have his instincts proved wrong. He even dared to hope that the derelict wasn’t as lifeless as it seemed, that some of its occupants had managed to cheat death all these years.

  He wasn’t holding his breath for that.

  What did cause Kearn a few missed breaths was the docking procedure. Fortunately, like all interstellar ships, Lucifer’s Halo was of necessity flexible in its ability to couple with foreign structures. Planetary civilizations separated by gulfs of decades or more from their nearest neighbors tended not to bother much with standardization, and even if they tried, the intention never quite translated to reality.

  Kearn watched onscreen as Halo’s articulated metal tether snaked down toward the derelict’s dark hull. The bulkheads vibrated around Kearn--just slightly, but enough to make him wince--when the tether’s magnetic endcap struck home and locked into place.

  Halo’s engineer reported success, and responsibility shifted back to Serenity at the helm, who would close the remaining distance between the two ships, mating them.

  Docking clamps emerged claw-like from Halo’s smooth underbelly, and a deep rumble filled the bridge. Gentle inertial forces pressed Kearn into his couch. The viewscreen’s image of Beshaan zoomed rapidly and faded to black.

  On contact, a booming crash coursed through Halo’s hull. Then silence. Serenity stared pensively at her instruments.

  Moments later she raised fists above her head and shrieked with joy.

  Letting that display suffice for announcement of success, Kearn unbuckled from his station and propelled himself toward the bridge’s exit hatch. “Let’s get on over there,” he said.

  ***

  Less than an hour later Kearn and five of Halo’s crew, suited for void, made the short trip to Beshaan’s hull via the tether’s transit elevator. The lift doors opened on the ark’s darkened hull, a flat artificial horizon underlining a featureless expanse of space. It struck Kearn then, as it might have his fellow boarders, just how helpless they really were should anything go wrong. The void that spacers called home was vast and unforgiving, and would kill them all in a heartbeat if given half a chance.

  But such thoughts were not new to Kearn, and gave him scarcely a moment’s pause as he stepped forward to launch a magnetic impulsion cable onto Beshaan’s hull.

  The line struck home near the airlock they’d chosen as their
port of entry. Clipping onto the cable the party set forth across the surface of the lost ship. At the airlock, plasma cutters made short work of the outer hatch. Then the inner.

  No inrush of air accompanied breakthrough, for what little remained of Beshaan’s atmosphere had long since frozen solid. The boarders’ suit beams plunged into an otherwise pitch dark passage ahead, lighting swirling clouds of crystallized air, disturbed for the first time in centuries by their unlikely intrusion.

  “Passengers are first priority,” Kearn said over the v-suit comms. “After that, datastores and any useful cargo. Split up, but don’t get lost. Be generous with signal beacons. Initial foray is to last no more than twenty hours.”

  Wandering alone, Kearn found Beshaan’s bulkheads adorned with prominent signs in the language of its native world, Troia. Unfortunately Halo’s datastores didn’t have a full Troian language module available, and even if they had, the eight ship-months of hibe between detection and boarding of the derelict wouldn’t have been sufficient time for full imprint. And so the otherwise helpful signs were of little use.

  Two hours into his exploration, Kearn received the word he’d been hoping for. It was delivered over his comm by Halo’s apprentice engineer.

  “Captain,” the apprentice reported, “I’ve found the passenger holds.”

  Signal beacons guided Kearn through a maze of corridors to the entrance of Beshaan’s cavernous passenger hold. The apprentice engineer awaited him there.

  “No sign of power,” the man said grimly.

  Extending at least fifty meters above and below the cage in which the two hovered were row upon row of dark, dead hibe capsules. Shining a suit light on any one of them revealed a vague and featureless face behind frosted glass. Without power the capsules had failed and their human contents expired.

  Kearn let a suitably respectful silence pass before speaking. “I studied the Troian numerals from the partial file in datastores,” he said. “That’s a Four over there on the entrance.”

  Kearn’s apprentice engineer didn’t need to be told what this meant. Assuming there were three more passenger holds of this size, Beshaan held upwards of twelve thousand icy corpses.

  Death permeated the airless chamber and cast a pall of silence over the next half hour, during which Kearn’s suspicion of the massive death toll was confirmed.

  The passenger hold marked One, as dark as the others, was the last to be inspected.

  “Ah, Captain?” the apprentice said hesitantly toward the end of their sweep. Kearn looked over to find the man pointing down the length of the hold. “Do you see that?”

  Bringing his suit beam to bear, Kearn squinted into the darkness. “No--what?”

  “Kill the light.”

  Doing as advised, Kearn peered into the jet black depths.

  Those depths, he found, weren’t entirely black. Kearn launched himself out into the hold, homing in on what he’d seen. Closer inspection confirmed it: somehow, impossibly, amongst the countless banks of dead hibe capsules, a lone status indicator shone green.

  Reaching the live capsule Kearn hurriedly scraped frost from its transparent faceplate. A second later his suit beam penetrated it to light the ashen face of a young woman. In outward appearance she was no different from any of Beshaan’s other, less fortunate passengers--except that, according to her capsule’s lit display, she lived.

  “How does this thing have power?” Kearn wondered aloud.

  Long ago when Beshaan’s engines had failed, the capsules’ independent supplies would have kicked in, but even the best of those couldn’t have lasted more than ten ship-years. Why had this one endured--and for that matter, why just this one out of thousands? “Better double-check the other holds,” Kearn said upon reflection. “Make sure we didn’t miss anything.”

  But they hadn’t missed anything, and before long Beshaan’s sole survivor was being transported with supreme care back to Lucifer’s Halo. Kearn accompanied it over. Staring at the slumbering girl in the transit elevator he suffered an attack of conscience and commed the boarding party with a late addition to his orders: in no case were they to touch anything that might be the personal effects of Beshaan’s passengers and crew.

  He spent the remainder of the short trip back considering whether to revive the girl immediately or wait until Halo was safely underway. The latter, he decided. No point in informing her she was Beshaan’s last survivor until she was entirely out of danger. The hibe unit had kept her alive for centuries, and could probably stand to do so a few more hours or days.

  Kearn was desuiting when Serenity’s voice erupted over his comm. “I’m reading strange output spikes from number two engine,” she said. “Not causing any trouble yet, but it’s something I haven’t seen before.”

  Normally Kearn wouldn’t have fussed over what was likely a trifle, but at a time when they were already under tremendous risk even the slightest complication was wholly unwelcome. He put Halo’s engineer to work on the problem, with permission to call back whatever personnel he needed from Beshaan.

  ***

  Over the next hour the complications multiplied. Something was clearly amiss with the engines, no longer just one but all four. The engineers were at a loss to explain, much less stop the anomalous spikes. Worse still, Ren had been forced to resort to thermal dumps to avoid overload, an action that amounted to venting precious fuel into space. Already the unanticipated loss was going to delay their arrival at Reissa by ten ship-months beyond the four years already lost intercepting Beshaan.

  The extent of the emerging problems forced Kearn to a decision.

  “Attention crew aboard the derelict,” he commed. “Haul ass back to Halo--we are leaving now!”

  Kearn’s order was punctuated by the loud, unmistakable rumble of Halo’s engines firing.

  “Ren, what the hell was that?”

  “Biggest spike yet. Thermal dumps couldn’t handle it. I had to fire the vectors. No other choice.”

  Kearn fought to maintain calm. So he’d been right all along--this had been a bad idea.

  ”Crew aboard the derelict,” he broadcast next. “Double-time it!” He switched comm channels to address the engine room and asked, “What’s going on down there?”

  “Nothing! These engines pass every test we can run!”

  “Keep on it. The second we disengage I want maximum gees on Reissa. We’ll sort the rest out later.”

  Kearn hurried to the bridge to find Ren focused on her displays, her nerves obviously frayed. They exchanged no words as Kearn strapped in.

  After a seeming eternity the comms sprang to life with a report from the boarding party. “Exiting the derelict, Captain. En route to the tether.”

  “Make it quick.”

  Ren blurted an expletive. “Another spike,” she reported. “If we don’t fire the engines they’ll overload.”

  “We’ve got crew out there.”

  “I know! What do I do?”

  “How much of a burn do you need?”

  “Too much for them.”

  And here it was, a captain’s age-old nightmare: the choice between the lives of the few and the fate of the ship.

  “How long do we have?” Kearn asked hopefully.

  Ren’s panic verged on hysteria. “Maybe thirty seconds! What do I do?”

  “Search team,” Kearn commed, ignoring her. “Do not be on that hull in twenty seconds! Get inside either ship now!”

  Understandably there came no spoken response. Kearn cycled through Halo’s available exterior views but gave up with hands shaking when he failed to find one showing his endangered party.

  “Wait for the last moment,” he told Ren. “Then burn just enough to save us.”

  “Longer the wait, stronger the burn,” she said.

  “I know.”

  Roughly twenty seconds later Serenity flashed Kearn a loaded look, her fingers poised over the engine controls. Kearn gave a grim nod.

  Halo’s hull shivered, engines whined. But those sou
nds were swiftly drowned out by the shriek of metal straining against enormous force--the docking clamps protesting their outrageous mistreatment.

  “Status?” Kearn called over the clamor.

  Ren didn’t answer. Kearn looked over to find her face livid. When next she spoke it was not with her former nervous urgency but rather with calm detachment, as though she’d passed through hysteria and into resignation.

  “Containment failure imminent,” she reported dully. “Number two engine is locked at max burn and non-responsive. We have to disengage now.”

  The cacophony of wrenching metal rose. The hull shook wildly. Halo was being torn apart.

  In the centuries Kearn had owned it, Halo hadn’t experienced a single major system failure. Yet here, at the least opportune moment, came disaster upon disaster. This had to be a bad hibe-dream. Like the encounter with Beshaan itself, these simultaneous failures stretched the limits of probability.

  Kearn said at length, “Eject containment chamber on my word.”

  Just then the comms crackled to life. The boarding party, with some good news at last. “We’re in the elevator, Captain.”

  Kearn’s hands moved swiftly to retract the tether from Beshaan’s hull, presumably with his crewmates safely inside. Now to disengage Halo in time to stabilize the antimatter core.

  “Secure yourselves,” Kearn commed shipwide. The moment the two vessels uncoupled, all aboard would experience sudden high-gee acceleration as Halo’s rogue engines catapulted the far smaller ship away from the huge derelict.

  That was not to be, though. A single indicator light on Kearn’s panel quashed any budding sense of hope.

  “One of the clamps is jammed,” he reported.

  Ren offered nothing. Maybe she hadn’t heard him over the thunder of wrenching metal. More likely she was just scared senseless. Perhaps she did have more reason than others to fear and regret this moment--but something had to be done.