“Not too slow, not too slow…”
The speedometer on his visor’s HUD plummeted. A bead of sweat ran down into Jack’s eye. He frantically blinked it away. He couldn’t let his velocity drop too low otherwise the supply ship would leave him floating helplessly in its wake.
Yet still he hurtled towards the flank of the ship like a hailstone towards a tin roof. Jack’s breathing turned erratic again. He didn’t care what the data inside his helmet was telling him. It sure didn’t look like he was getting any slower.
He looked for something on the ship to grab onto.
Three…
A handle just above the hatch. Anything else?
Two…
No. Nothing sturdy. It would have to do.
One…
Jack crashed into the side of the ship. Had it not also been travelling in the same direction and at a similarly mind-boggling speed, the collision could have been catastrophic. For Jack, at least. The ship would have been absolutely fine.
The resulting thud sounded like an explosion in Jack’s ears, but his body felt no worse than if he’d slipped on a patch of ice. Some light bruising on his ribs, nothing more. The suit took the brunt of the impact, absorbing and transferring the energy to its internal power cores for later use.
Jack flailed for the handle… and missed.
Red hot panic surged through Jack’s veins. He scrambled for purchase as he bounced away from the hatch like a stone skimming across a pond. The supply ship continued on its course, oblivious. He was nothing more than a pebble pinging off the underside of a car on an old dirt road.
His gloves slipped against the smooth carvings, unable to find anything sharp enough to grip. He kicked his feet about, hoping one of them might get caught on something.
Then he remembered the second of Tuner’s new upgrades.
“Activate mag-boots,” Jack yelled into his helmet.
With a sudden, muffled clang, Jack’s feet bolted themselves to the wall of the ship. The rest of Jack swung backwards while his boots stayed in place. His back slammed against the hull. The impact slowly bounced him back into an upright position.
He winced and let out a long, staggered sigh.
Part One of the plan was out of the way. Now he just had to get inside.
The hatch was about thirty metres back in the opposite direction. Reminding himself that, in space, there was no up and down – only what was beneath his feet, and what wasn’t – Jack started walking.
Mag-boots made this a long and laborious process.
They didn’t deactivate each time he went to lift a foot up, only lessened their stickiness. It was a strange sensation that reminded Jack of wading through knee-high mud. His thighs burned with the effort.
At least the supply convoy wasn’t accelerating. If it had been, Jack would have been flung backwards fast enough to snap his legs off.
It took him nearly a minute to cross that small gap, and he arrived drenched in sweat. With his mag-boots still activated, he squatted down beside the hatch.
He gave it a tug. Then he gave it an almighty yank.
It wouldn’t budge.
“Give me a break,” said Jack, gritting his teeth.
Then he remembered he had to turn the valve underneath the panel to his right. Jack tutted to himself sarcastically. For all the Mansa’s fancy technology, they still hadn’t the wisdom to install automatic doors on the outside of ships hurtling through the depths of space. Idiots!
He flipped open the small panel beside the hatch and started twisting. The valve turned sluggishly. Jack guessed it wasn’t regularly used.
With a final grunt, Jack shifted the valve as far counter-clockwise as it would go. It locked in place with a hard clunk that rattled through Jack’s bones. The lip of the hatch popped up weightlessly.
Jack reached over and threw the door of the hatch aside. It floated back on its hinges without much effort.
The vent was long and dark. Metal nooks and ridges formed a makeshift ladder down its walls.
Despite the uninviting gloom, Jack didn’t hesitate to climb inside. It didn’t take much to convince him to stop surfing the flank of an interstellar starship.
He pulled the hatch shut and followed the ladder down.
Jack took almost a full minute to reach the bottom. The rungs of his makeshift ladder were set a little too far apart from one another for a normal human physique, and by the end his hands had cramped into claws.
He glanced back up the shaft before closing a second hatch and dropping to the ground. Hmm. Getting back out with the Solar Core was going to pose an interesting challenge.
He turned around, slowly dialling up the brightness on his flashlight.
Stacks of metal racks filled the hall, creating a dense maze of narrow corridors and alleys. The light from Jack’s torch struggled to reach their uppermost shelves. They were filled with metal boxes carrying supplies for the new Mansa world, each clamped shut and stamped with a unique serial number. The interior walls were black and industrial, twisted and knotted as if the metalwork hadn’t been built but rather… grown.
Nothing moved save for the few specks of dust floating in front of his helmet. The whole ship was eerily silent – not even the gentle rumble of an engine shook the floor. Jack felt more like he was exploring an ancient tomb than infiltrating an alien starship.
He peered through the gaps in each shelving unit, searching for a door into the next hall along. The beam of his flashlight only stretched so far. He sneaked along the closest rack until he reached what looked like a central aisle. The darkness made it hard to tell how wide the hall was.
So far, the intel had been accurate. If there were any guards on board, Jack couldn’t see any. He just had to hope that meant they couldn’t see him, either.
Still, it didn’t hurt to play it safe. Jack switched off his flashlight and enabled the night vision setting on his helmet’s visor instead.
He crept onwards through the ship. All he could hear was his own nervous breathing, amplified inside his helmet and growing more agitated with every identical row of shelves he passed.
What was he supposed to be looking for? A giant neon arrow or something? Sek had told him the Solar Core would be stashed away amongst the construction materials. He even had a serial number for its container: JR-1106853. But that wasn’t much use. There were probably tens of thousands of crates and lockboxes in just that single hall alone, and God only knew how many other halls there were in the cargo ship. He didn’t have time to search through each and every one.
He paused beside another set of shelves disappearing into the gloom to his right, and chewed his lip.
Well. Maybe he had time to check one or two of them.
He crouched down beside a chunky container. Its casing looked strong enough to withstand a grenade. Two black clasps secured its hinged lid. Jack pushed them in. They popped open without resistance.
Inside were six rifles – three in slots at the bottom of the case, and three fixed to the lid itself. Jack had trouble recognising them as guns due to their bizarre crescent moon shape, but there was no mistaking the muzzle and the trigger. They were weapons, all right.
So much for building a new world. From the look of things, they were out to take one.
Jack snapped the case shut again. Maybe the Mansa were just bringing the guns as a precaution. He looked at all the similar cases in the hall. A really big precaution perhaps, but still possible. Or maybe this supply ship was actually headed for war. It didn’t matter. That was going to happen with or without Jack’s interference. Without anyone’s interference, frankly. And besides, that wasn’t the mission. The mission was to get in and out with the Solar Core… preferably before anybody noticed it was missing.
He stood up. Better get on with it, then.
Half an hour came and went. Jack started nervously optimistic, descended into mild panic, and finally arrived at a state of desperate depression.
If the Core was on board, he
couldn’t find it.
The first hall had been stocked with weapons like the crescent-shaped rifles. He’d found grenades and rockets further along the aisle. Upon arriving at a dead end, part of the wall had automatically disassembled itself, cube by cube, to allow Jack into the next hall. There was still no sign of any guards on board, but Jack was sure such activity should have alerted those in the attack ships outside.
And yet no retaliation came.
The next hall had held produce of all kinds – seeds for grain, the genome sequences for growing synthetic meats, actual food packets to be rationed out to workers (who would surely be Krettelian, Jack noted). Further along he found countless stasis tanks. White cryogenic mists whispered across the floor. Jack wondered which zoological species were being brought over to the Mansa’s new world. He wondered how many Krettelians were being shipped in this state, too.
Now, in his third hall, and with both his pace and his heart rate quicker than ever before, Jack was really starting to wish he’d taken Rogan’s advice and told Sek where to stuff his stupid plan.
Thirty minutes. The Adeona would be skipping back into the Penin system to pick him up soon. Jack had two options if he couldn’t find the Core before then. Either stay on board until the supply ship reached its destination – at which point he would no doubt be executed on sight – or jump ship without it. As much as he wanted to find a way back to Earth, the latter option was by far the more appealing.
He opened a case at random. At first he thought he’d found more weapons, but a closer inspection revealed the container to be full of tools – automatic hammers and drills.
Jack stood up and almost gave himself a heart attack. An enormous drone stared at him from the opposite side of the rack. It had “hands” like car crushers and propellor blades as big as a helicopter’s.
Then Jack relaxed. The drone was deactivated, inert. Either it didn’t share the sentience possessed by the automata or it had been ordered to shut down for the duration of the flight.
He felt his heart lift. Tools… Construction drones…
Sek had told him the Core would be amongst the building materials on the manifest. Did that mean case JR-1106853 was in this hall as well?
He went back to the container with the tools and found its serial number. JR-1107249. The hair on the back of his neck stood to attention. So close.
Jack sprinted from stack to stack, running his hands over the codes printed on each container. Some grew closer numerically, some further away. His panting breaths became more and more deafening inside the damp silence of his helmet.
“Six-eight-five-three,” he gasped, his throat dry. “Six-eight-five-three…”
He came across a pair of enormous curved pillars shaped like mammoth tusks, their pointed tips an inch from touching one another. They were made of the same golden material as the exterior of the ship. Religious artefact? Teleporting gateway of some kind? As intriguing a museum as the Mansa supply ship was, Jack didn’t have time to be curious. The serial number engraved on their metal base didn’t match the one he was looking for, so he moved on.
The stocky cases behind it were a better fit. He was getting closer. Ignoring the burning ache in his legs, he ran across the central aisle to check the stacks on the other side of the hall.
JR-1106850. Only a few digits away. He inspected the case beside it. JR-1106851. Then JR-1106852, and then…
Jack stopped in front of it. 6853. The square container onto which the serial number had been stamped look no different – and no more securely locked – than any of the others. He almost couldn’t bring himself to open it.
As with the other cases, the black clasps popped open with no issue. Slowly, as if afraid it might be full of some toxic chemical, Jack lifted the lid.
Huh. They were smaller than he expected.
Two identical silver spheres sat inside a soft casing of grey sponge. Each Solar Core was the size of a melon. A thin dividing line ran around their middles, and a row of shallow indentations ran in rings around each end. As with other Mansa technology, they looked as advanced as they did ancient.
He reached for the one on the left, then drew his fingers back. Even with gloves, it scared him. Was it safe to touch? Given the incalculable mass it carried within its shell, could a mortal like him even pick it up?
Only one way to find out, he guessed.
He scooped it up in his two trembling hands. It was no heavier than a snow globe. He supposed it wasn’t all that surprising. How else could the Mansa have brought it on board the ship otherwise?
As delicately as his nerves would allow, and making sure to follow the stolen intel to the letter, Jack turned the top half of the sphere an inch counter-clockwise.
It clicked into place. The two halves of the sphere sprung apart, revealing the true core inside.
“Holy mother of God,” said Jack, as the bottom dropped from his stomach. “That’s impossible.”
A star was trapped inside the transparent cylinder within. Not some distant, twinkling object in the night sky, but an actual real-life sun – burning, throwing out flares, fighting to break free.
The power of a whole solar system, his ticket back to Earth, perhaps even the secret to saving Earth… and he had it cupped inside his hands.
No pressure, then.
Not wishing to go blind from staring at the miniature sun for too long, Jack twisted the two halves of the metal sphere shut again. He delicately placed the Core back inside the case and checked the one on the right.
This one was empty, its chamber hollow.
Strange. Jack shrugged. He guessed they always came with a spare.
Jack was struck with an idea. Well, more of a contingency plan of sorts. He unclipped a pouch from his hip and carefully slipped both of the spheres in.
After all – if stealing one Solar Core was punishable by death, why not take two?
He’d just finished stuffing the dud inside the pouch and clipping it to his hip again when Tuner’s voice broke through his comms in a cloud of static.
“Jack? Are you still in the ship?”
“Of course I’m still in it,” whispered Jack, as if lowering his voice had any chance of keeping their conversation private. “Why on Earth are you talking to me? The Mansa will—”
“Hear us? I think it might be a little late for that.” The concern in Tuner’s voice made Jack’s stomach clench. “They’ve deactivated the convoy’s shields.”
“What? Why would they do that?”
“To blow a hole in it, if my guess is worth anything,” Tuner replied. “Get out of there, Jack. I think you’ve walked into a trap.”
7
Crossing the Line
Jack sprinted through the hall. The Adeona had skipped back into the Penin system and somehow the Mansa attack ships knew he was on board their convoy. Things weren’t exactly going to plan.
He squinted past the stacks and shelves, searching for a way out. If there were any ladders leading up to shafts like the one through which he’d first entered the supply ship, he couldn’t see them.
There was no other choice but to head back to the first hall before the Mansa did what Tuner suspected – fire a missile barrage at their own transport ship.
Jack ran towards the wall at the far end of the central aisle, the two Solar Cores swinging heavily in the pouch secured to his hip…
…and crashed into it.
“What?” He slapped his gloved hands against the cold, featureless wall. “Open, goddammit!”
Whatever the Mansa had planned, it apparently involved shutting down the internal door mechanisms as well as lowering the exterior forcefields. So much for going back up the original ladder. Unless he could find a new way out, he was stuck in there.
“Tuner, we’ve got a problem.”
“You’re telling me. The two attack ships are loitering to either side of you.”
“Where are you guys? Are you safe?”
This time it was Rogan who answered.
“We’re fine. We’re in our original position behind Penin-III – if the Mansa have picked us up on their radars, they don’t seem to care. They seem much more interested in their supply ships, surprisingly enough. You’ve got to get out of there, Jack!”
“Working on it,” he replied, running towards the other end of the hall. Not that he thought he’d have any better luck there. “What do you think, Rogan? Would the Mansa really blow up their own ship?”
“To keep their technology from falling into enemy hands? Yes, Jack. They would. I told you this was a bad idea!”
Jack stumbled to a stop and hunched over, out of breath. Even with the suit’s generous supply of oxygen, his lungs ached as bad as his calves.
Still no sign of a way off the ship.
“Come on, Rogan. You know everything. How do I get out of here?”
He heard the frantic shuffling of paper schematics on the other end of the line. Given that Rogan had the mind of a supercomputer, this wasn’t a particularly reassuring sound.
Neither was her answer.
“The only conventional exits on board the supply ships are the backup shafts you already know about,” she said. She sounded distressed. “Unless you’ve suddenly become an expert in classified Mansa engineering while you’ve been poking around in there, there’s no other way.”
Jack was about to reply with something deadpan and sarcastic when Tuner jumped back in.
“Watch out!” he screamed. “They’re about to—”
Jack didn’t hear what happened next. With no atmosphere inside or outside the ship, there was nothing through which the resulting sound could carry.
But boy, did he feel it.
The shockwaves were almost visible, the ship rocked so hard. A sudden burst of hot, orange light flashed above Jack’s head. When he looked up a moment later, little was left of the ship’s otherwise impenetrable ceiling. A massive gap looked out into empty space. The metal surrounding the hole was jagged, twisted and burned.
Jack felt the ship’s artificial gravity give way. Crates and shelf-stacks went careening out through the ruptured hull. Jack had enough sense to activate his mag-boots again before he could be flung outside with them.
Thief of Stars (Final Dawn, Book 2) Page 6
