by G J Ogden
Once he had fully recovered, he stood up and looked around, but it didn’t take long before he was confronted with something that again stole the breath from his lungs. “I don’t believe it…” said Taylor in a hushed voice as it suddenly dawned on him where he was. “It actually worked!” He was near the center of one of the wireframed cubes, but now he was able to comprehend just how vast each one was, with each individual section engulfing what would have been hundreds of thousands of kilometers, maybe more. And in the very center, so close he felt like he could reach out and touch it, was a bright blue, cloud covered planet. From the shape of the continents there was no question that it was Earth, but Taylor knew it instinctively, like a baby recognizing the face of its mother. Yet, paradoxically, Taylor realized that this could well have been the first time his eyes had ever seen it. Either way, from his current distance, it was difficult to tell whether it was the Earth of his memory – the original Taylor Ray’s memory – or the Earth of now. As he watched the planet slowly rotate, he became aware of something new and alien hanging in space close by; a black sphere, almost invisible against the darkness. At first he thought it was some sort of rogue asteroid, but then he made out the spikes protruding from the surface and realized what it was. That’s a super-luminal transceiver! The Hedalt must have placed one directly at Earth after the war.
The presence of the super-liminal transceiver only strengthened Taylor’s theory, but it was too early to make any solid conclusions. He would have to test the theory some more first, to see where else in the galaxy he could potentially travel. But, if it was true that he had unlocked an ability to traverse the very Fabric itself, it was a discovery that was not only simply astonishing, but one that could potentially give them a vital edge in the war to come.
TWENTY-ONE
The Hedalt War Frigate, commanded by Provost Adra, lurched out of the Fabric, having completed its blind jump to intercept racketeer raiders. Provost Adra took a reluctant, small step forward to help brace herself against the acute pain that had seized her body as a result of the jump. But she recovered swiftly and had straightened to her full height again within seconds. Adra inhaled deeply and let out the breath slowly, while adjusting her uniform, which was armored like a scorpion’s exoskeleton, and long black coat to ensure her appearance was unchanged from how she had looked before the jump. This was not vanity – Adra cared not for such things – it was pride. Pride was something to be embraced; she was a Provost of Warfare Command, a member of the elite inner circle and the commander of one of the most powerful vessels in the Hedalt armada. She had attained her high status through ruthlessness, determination, dedication and raw ability. Anyone of lesser rank or status that looked upon her should know their inferiority and stand in fear and admiration.
Had her Adjutant been watching, he would have barely noticed Adra’s discomfort, but as it was, Adjutant Lux was still holding tightly to the metal frames of the two pilot’s chairs that bookended his station at the front of the bridge. Adra scowled; though her own pain was receding, it still felt like there were needles pressed into her eyeballs, yet she had shrugged it off, while Lux continued to show his vulnerability.
“Report, Adjutant Lux,” said Adra, unwilling to allow her Adjutant the luxury of any more time to recover.
Lux released his hold on the chairs, which were occupied by two simulant pilots, and turned to face Adra, pressing his still throbbing hands behind his back to hide the fact they were trembling. “We have arrived at the designated system, Provost Adra,” Lux began, using all his energy to control his voice to ensure the agony he was feeling was not apparent to his commander. “Scans are detecting two racketeer vessels and three freighters. One freighter has already been disabled and its cargo raided. The second and third are still under attack.”
“Intercept the closest racketeer,” Adra ordered, and then without waiting for Lux to reply, she pointed up to one of a halo of screens above her command deck and then drew her hand to her chest. The screen immediately swung down on a spindly metal arm and hung in front of Adra, displaying a tactical readout of the system. She studied it closely, noting that the two racketeer vessels were modified light cruisers, bastardized with weapons and upgraded engines no doubt stolen or salvaged from other victims of their acts of piracy. Adra clenched her teeth and her frown deepened. She hated racketeers; they were parasites that wasted their rare gift of being able to withstand super-luminal travel by preying on the supply lines in the farthest and least defended reaches of the empire. But no matter how insignificant the cargo in the greater scheme of the empire, Warfare Command would not permit even a single act of piracy to go unpunished. To do so would show weakness, and weakness repulsed Provost Adra, more than the racketeers themselves, and only slightly less than humans, whom she had helped make extinct.
Lux, meanwhile, had turned back to face the main viewport and rapped the back of his fist against the primary pilot simulant’s shoulder, prompting it to begin a pursuit of the racketeers. The simulant automaton said nothing, but reacted instantly, powering up the powerful engines of the massive War Frigate and setting them on an intercept course. Lux then checked his own console, which showed a similar tactical readout to that of Adra’s screen, and noted that the second freighter was also now in the process of being raided. He turned to face Adra to report the finding.
“Provost, the lead racketeer vessel has attached itself to the second freighter and is cutting through its hull,” Lux began, “I suggest we adjust to intercept; there may still be time to prevent the loss of cargo.”
Adra brushed her screen off to the side with the brusque mannerism of a Roman emperor dismissing a slave, and glowered down at Lux from the elevated position of her command deck. “Did I request your opinion?” she growled.
Adra’s reaction caught Lux off guard. He had only recently become her adjutant, and though Adra’s reputation preceded her, he knew nothing of her personality. “Apologies, Provost, I did not mean to presume…”
“You did not mean to, yet you did,” Adra interrupted him. “You are not here to offer suggestions, Adjutant, you are here only to carry out my commands.”
“Yes, Provost,” Lux replied instantly, bowing his head slightly as he did so.
Adra pulled the screen back in front of her and then completed a short series of commands, before brushing it to the side again. “Follow the course I have indicated, and stand ready with all weapons.”
Lux responded and turned back to look at his screen. He frowned, noting that the course Adra had programmed took them past the lead racketeer and its prey without slowing, and then on to the second. At the velocity she had indicated, there would be little-to-no chance of targeting the racketeer without risking damage to the freighter. He turned back, swallowing hard before asking the question. “Provost, the course indicated takes us past the lead racketeer…”
“Was my previous statement unclear, Adjutant Lux?” Adra cut across him again.
Lux bowed his head, “No, Provost. Apologies again.” He then turned away and knocked the pilot simulant on the shoulder to initiate the course change. Unseen by him, Provost Adra continued to glower at his back for several seconds longer, before returning her attention to the screen, and locking weapons on the conjoined mass of the freighter and lead racketeer ship.
Before long, the War Frigate had caught up with the lead racketeer, and as Adra had expected, it hastily began to detach. Greed was the principal weakness of all racketeers, and Adra also knew that the racketeer Captain would wait till the last moment to detach. But, her outlaw counterpart would have counted on the more powerful War Frigate decelerating first, so as not to overshoot, and since Adra had not done this, she had caught them with their hand still very much in the cookie jar.
“Fire forward cannons and turrets,” Adra ordered, and the simulant at the tactical station to her right responded, silently carrying out the command.
Lux watched on, aghast, as a storm of plasma shards lit up the viewport an
d burst out into space. It was like the equivalent of firing a blunderbuss at a barn door, peppering not only the racketeer ship but also the freighter and the surrounding space. Both ships were hit multiple times and both exploded almost simultaneously, moments before the War Frigate surged through their flaming debris, bouncing fragments of scorched hull off its armor like a windshield deflecting bugs.
“Racketeer ship destroyed, Provost,” Lux confirmed, though it did not need saying, “but the freighter was also destroyed.” He expected Adra to acknowledge the destruction of the freighter as a mistake, or unintended collateral damage, but she did not.
“Continue on course,” Adra ordered, as she targeted the second racketeer ship, which had broken off and was fleeing. “Maintain pursuit.”
Lux knocked the pilot simulant, which responded by adjusting their course to intercept the remaining racketeer. As soon as he had done so, his console alerted him to an incoming message. It was from the fleeing racketeer. He read it and then relayed it to Provost Adra.
“The remaining racketeer signals that it wishes to surrender, Provost,” said Lux. “It has powered down its weapons and is coming to a full stop.”
Provost Adra did not answer, and instead merely monitored the time remaining until they intercepted. Since the Captain of the racketeer ship had chosen to reduce velocity and surrender, the gap between them was narrowing rapidly.
Lux waited patiently for a response, knowing that the racketeer had a right to a trial. Warfare Command preferred to parade criminal elements as a warning to others who would defy their authority, and though the outcome of the trials were a forgone conclusion, those who surrendered would at least keep their lives. But Adra continued to remain silent, and Lux chose not to speak up again, for fear of further displeasing his Provost.
Adra was, of course, also aware of the right to trial, but she did not care for this rule. Her own position afforded her the ability to act unilaterally, within reason, and she had no intention of wasting any more time on this particular band of outlaws.
The pilot simulant reduced their velocity as the immense mass of the War Frigate approached the racketeer ship, like an eagle swooping down on a vole. Adra watched their distance to target fall to within weapons range and then looked up at her helpless prey on the main viewport.
“Fire all weapons,” Adra commanded, again issuing the order in the direction of the tactical simulant, which obeyed without delay.
Lux’s eyes widened and his mouth opened slightly with the intention of reiterating the racketeers’ desire to surrender, but he caught himself just in time and remained silent, before turning to watch the shards of plasma annihilate the comparatively small pirate ship.
Adra watched Lux with interest, wondering if he would be foolish enough to point out Warfare Command’s rules over surrenders, as if she herself would somehow not be aware of them. A more fateful mistake would be to question her actions, and become one of the many Adjutants in the centuries-long history of the Hedalt Empire to have been executed at the hands of his or her commander for disloyalty and dissent. But Lux remained silent.
Adra considered pushing him, to test the loyalty of her new adjutant further and to teach him a lesson, but these thoughts were interrupted by an alert from the halo of screens above her head. She peered up, noting that the alert had come from the screen that monitored activity in the CoreNet. She frowned and pointed to the screen, before drawing it down beside her. The alert indicated an unidentified, anomalous reading inside the CoreNet. All thoughts of Lux left her mind and she focused in on the data with a laser sharpness. An anomaly in the CoreNet was a serious event; the CoreNet carried everything from simple ship communications to the very control signals that maintained the entire simulant network across the galaxy. Any risk to the CoreNet was a risk to the very stability of the empire itself.
She pushed the screen to one side and fixed her intense green eyes on Lux again, noting that he had turned to face her already, seemingly aware of the danger. “Direct all resources to analyzing the signal anomaly,” Adra called out, “ignore all other standing orders. This is now our sole priority.” Then she paused, and with a darker edge added, “Is that understood, Adjutant Lux?”
The Adjutant bowed his head, “Yes, Provost Adra, it is understood.” Then he set to work without another word.
TWENTY-TWO
The ramifications of his newfound ability to seemingly travel inside the Fabric were still bouncing around Taylor’s thoughts when a bright flash of brilliant white light startled him. The light blinked out of existence and Taylor saw three ships, which had just emerged from a jump, close to the super-luminal transceiver that loomed just beyond Earth’s orbit. Taylor didn’t recognize the configuration of any of them, but two had the predatory profile of warships, albeit ships that were far larger than either a Nimrod or Corvette. However even these large cruisers were dwarfed by the hulking mass of the third vessel, which was like a giant stingray, soaring through the cosmos. Taylor had never seen anything like it, which must have meant that the original Taylor Ray had also never seen this class of ship before, or that it simply didn’t exist at the time his brain was harvested. Whatever it was, simply watching it glide through space gave Taylor chills.
He knew it would be prudent to learn more about these new classes of Hedalt vessels, but he had an overwhelming itch to find out how else he could manipulate his newfound ability, and it was an itch he had to scratch.
“Satomi Rose, I know you’re out there somewhere…” Taylor spoke into the void. He concentrated hard, trying to remember Satomi’s face, the sound of her voice and how she moved; even how she smelled. He forced himself to remember the woman he knew, the Satomi from before his awakening, picturing her at her station on the bridge, rather than slumped in a chair in the Contingency base. He remembered one of their last moments on the ship, before discovering the base, when Satomi had stood in the threshold of his cabin door, and he had blown yet another opportunity to tell her how he felt.
“Show me where you are, Satomi, show me…”
And then he was moving again, away from Earth and back into the network of cubes dotted around the galaxy, jolting from one to the next until again everything became a blur. This time, his vision did fail. The jolting continued for several more seconds, as he travelled blindly through the cosmos, and then the sensation of movement stopped, and he could hear the thrum of a starship’s engines. Next he heard voices, at first his own voice, followed soon after by Casey’s, unmistakable in its joyfulness, like sonic sunshine to listen to, followed by a sarcastic quip from none other than Blake, right on cue. Then he heard Satomi, the frustration laced thickly through the tone of her reply, trying to put a stop to the seemingly endless frolicking of the pilot and TacSpec crew member.
“In case you two hadn’t noticed, we are actually approaching the planet,” said the voice of Satomi Rose. “So, perhaps you could pay attention to that, rather than whether Casey’s hat is regulation issue or not.”
“I’m just sayin’, it ain’t fair that she gets to wear a hat and I ain’t allowed to,” said the voice of Blake, though in classic Blake fashion, he wasn’t really annoyed, he was just enjoying teasing Casey.
“No-one said you weren’t allowed to wear a hat, Blake.” This was his own voice, and hearing himself talk was a surreal experience.
“No, we just said you looked dumb in a hat, that’s all…” said the voice of Casey, and though he couldn’t see her, he knew how her eyes would have been smiling, and exactly how her lips would be curled up into a roguish smirk.
He continued to listen and as he did so his vision began to return, until he could see the bridge of a Nimrod-class cruiser, or the replica of it fitted to a Hedalt Corvette, the same as his ship. But it was not his ship, and these were not his crew. The differences were subtle for the most part, but to Taylor, who had memories of nearly four years with his version of Casey, Blake and Satomi, they were easy to spot. Some of it was down to simple changes, li
ke how the bridge stations had been configured, right down to small details such as the level of screen brightness being far higher on Blake’s second screen than the Blake he knew would have set himself. Then there were more obvious things, such as Casey’s black bakerboy hat. He’d never seen Casey wearing anything like this, though he couldn’t deny it suited her very well. But, though there were differences, after observing their interactions for several more minutes, he recognized them as the people he knew. Their characters were the same, tempered by different experiences, but sharing the same core memories and personalities that he and his Casey, Blake and Satomi shared. They all had the same brains, after all. It was good enough, Taylor thought. It may not be my Satomi, or my Casey and Blake, but once they are woken up, they wouldn’t stay the same anyway. At least they will know me; at least we’ll have something in common.
He peered through the main viewport, which was centered on a planet he didn’t recognize, though there was no reason he should. This crew’s DSR mission could be on the other side of the galaxy, for all he knew. Then he thought to see whether he could move closer to Casey’s station and perhaps glimpse the co-ordinates on her screen, but as he stepped towards her, along his near-invisible tunnel, he could feel himself being pulled away. He stopped and felt a dull pain at the back of his head, which quickly began to build and become more intense. He stopped and rubbed the back of his neck. What the hell? Where has this come from? he wondered.
