Frontier's Reach: A Space Opera Adventure (Frontiers Book 1)

by Robert C. James

  Psi-Aion

  The tall, lush trees towered a hundred meters above Nicolas’s head. He wondered if Earth’s large rainforests were like them before they’d been devastated by the hand of man. Usually new worlds of the commonwealth would either be terraformed to near-Earth conditions or have their settlements constructed under massive domes to keep out harsh environments. But Psi-Aion was something else. It felt almost like home.

  He pondered whether the commonwealth should have sent expeditions past Frontier’s Reach all along. The vast distances from Earth would pose problems, but if this was anything to go by, there might be more similar worlds out there. Beside him, the others were equally in awe of the environment.

  “This is amazing!” Tyler said.

  “And that smell,” Susan added.

  Nicolas put his nose to the sky. Rain was coming. But so was something else. He spun his head to a buzzing beyond their position, getting ever closer. In the distance a large insect, the size of a dog, hopped between the trees.

  Corporal Higgs raised his rifle, as did the other Marines. The insect took no notice and disappeared farther into the forest.

  “Watch out, Susan,” Nicolas said, “you don’t want to get bitten.”

  “Or eaten.” Her eyes darted around warily.

  “How far away are we?”

  Tyler waved about his handheld tracker and pointed slightly to the west. “Eight hundred meters in that direction.”

  Nicolas had been impressed with Tyler Cassidy’s piloting. The cargo captain had found a small patch in the tree line where he’d squeezed the old-style pod through and landed it within two kilometers of the beacon. He may not have had the reputation of his brother, but Nicolas assumed jockeying must run in the Cassidy blood.

  He turned to his ex-wife to say something, but she wasn’t there. She’d stopped meters behind. “Susan?”

  She put up a finger to shush him. “Can you hear that?”

  Nicolas tilted his head upward and around. “I think you’re imagining things. Maybe you—”

  Susan raised her hand again. “Listen.”

  She was right. It was faint rustling. But then as quickly as Nicolas heard it, it vanished. “Might be just those insects.”

  Susan didn’t seem so sure.

  “The signal’s over this rise.” Tyler read from his tracker.

  The rest of them caught up with the cargo captain and stopped at the top of the small hill. Above their heads, wreckage hung from some lower-lying branches of the trees. Below a field of gray-colored alloys had been scattered over two hundred meters in diameter.

  Tyler led the way. His tracker beeped at increasing intervals as they marched closer. Nicolas kneeled and picked up a large chunk of the debris. “It’s definitely one of ours,” he said, rolling the sheet of metal alloy over. The letter C was painted on it in the same bold font marked on the outside of all CDF vessels.

  “Over here!” Higgs called out.

  Nicolas, Susan, and Tyler caught up to Higgs who stood over something yellow, sticking out of the ground.

  Tyler pointed his tracker at it. “We’ve found our beacon.”

  Nicolas kneeled again and dug with his hands through the muddy soil. With some help from Higgs and Tyler, he pulled at the object. It was a yellow cylinder, measuring half a meter. They heaved until they yanked it from the muck.

  “A flight recorder.” Nicolas brushed the mud from one side and read the faded lettering from its casing. “UECS Raptor. Pod Three.”

  “Nash’s pod?” Susan said.

  Nicolas nodded. “Seems so.”

  Tyler switched his tracker off. “How could debris from his pod have traveled all the way here? From what Jason told us, they found his wreckage in the nebula.”

  “Some. Not necessarily all.” Nicolas added up all the clues in his head. “With what we now know, a Seeker ship was in Nebula TPA-338 that day. They destroyed Nash’s pod and abducted him in the process. We know they generated a trans-space corridor to leave the nebula.”

  Susan nodded, seeming to be on the same page. “They came to the Psi-Aion system.”

  “Yes, and if that’s the case, some debris from his pod may have got caught in the vortex’s wake, pulling it through the trans-space corridor until it came out the other side. Psi-Aion’s gravitational field would’ve drawn it into orbit, until it finally landed on the planet’s surface.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” Tyler said. “The bigger question is, what exactly is in the Psi-Aion system?”

  Higgs raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if the Seeker ship came here four years ago after looking for Benjamin Tyrell, what are they doing back here? What’s so special about the Psi-Aion system?”

  A cold chill blew across the forest floor. Tyler had asked a superb question, one Nicolas didn’t particularly want to hang around for to find out the answer. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  Transport Pod Julieanne

  The moon of Psi-Aion was not unlike Earth’s natural satellite. It was barren, gray, and crater-ridden. As the Julieanne’s viewport filled with it, it reminded Jason of his childhood when the Argo would sometimes do the Earth-Luna-Mars run. There wasn’t as much to do on Luna, but he loved going down to the surface and walking on the same patch of dirt where the first astronauts had done so centuries earlier. It was overly commercialized, but they’d still done a good job of preserving the past.

  Jason ran his hands over the controls doing the final calculations—he figured that the only chance he had of not being detected by whatever was on the dark side of that moon was to go in completely unpowered. To do that, he would have to do a final burn on the correct trajectory so he could slingshot from one side of the moon to the other.

  The numbers on the helm all added up. With a push of a button, he punched the pod’s aft thrusters. The Julieanne lurched to the right of Psi-Aion’s moon and entered orbit. With another command, he stopped the pod’s thrust, leaving himself at the mercy of gravity.

  Above his head he flicked open the pod controls and toggled every switch, including climate control. He’d have enough oxygen until he reached the other side of the moon. The interior and exterior lighting deactivated. His console dimmed, and the engine powered down. If he didn’t feel like an astronaut as a kid on the surface of Luna, he certainly did now.

  With every kilometer the Julieanne rounded the moon, the pod’s cabin darkened, leaving Jason bathed in nightfall. He swiveled his chair and opened the bulkhead compartment beside him, pulling out an old coat. The lack of climate control created an instant chill. His nose upturned at the ancient piece of fashion. It smelled like Althaus’s aftershave. Jason put his pride aside and threw it on.

  Continuing to round the moon, he kept his eyes peeled. After several minutes of nothing, he thought his trek had been in vain, just like it’d been when he’d reached Frontier’s Reach. He wondered if the blip had been an optical ghost. But before he doubted himself any further, it appeared, and just as large as he’d remembered it. The Seeker ship, sat in a geostationary orbit. But there was something else. He leaned forward in his seat.

  Another ship?

  It became clearer the closer the Julieanne got. It was painted in the same sinister black, but it was even larger than Nash’s vessel. It shared none of its characteristics. Instead, it resembled a giant cigar inside a web-like network of metal frames and supports. Jason assumed it was still under construction. Whatever it was.

  He squinted at his dimmed helm controls, tossing up whether he dared turn on the scanners. He’d got halfway around the moon without being detected. But without some scans, he’d be unable to take any concrete data back to the Argo, to explain why he’d gone on his little jaunt.

  Screw it.

  He flicked the switch, and data started pouring across the monitor. The Julieanne shuddered and Jason peered through the viewport, wondering if he’d been hit. But he couldn’t see anything. However, the stars began moving in
the wrong direction. He was being pulled. Checking the scanners, something was emanating from the new ship he’d discovered.

  A tractor field?

  Jason wasn’t sure, but was regardless being jerked against his will. He opened the terminal above his head and toggled every switch back on. The lights reactivated, and the engine roared to life. He punched at the helm controls and fired the Julieanne’s forward thrusters, but his course didn’t change. Whatever had him wasn’t letting go.

  He fired the thrusters again and the Julieanne shook around him. Warning lights blared ominously. He’d burn the ship out if he kept it up. The small pod was fighting a much stronger force. With a push, he deactivated the thrusters and allowed fate to take its course.

  Well, Nash, I guess I’ll get to see you again after all.

  Thirty

  Cargo Ship Argo

  Aly slid out from under the main junction beneath the Argo’s FTL engine, and sat in awe. She couldn’t get over the sight of Professor Petit in her engine room. He was, after all, one of the brains behind the Mark IV drive.

  “This is unbelievable.” Petit shook his head, standing over the maintenance console.

  That wasn’t a word Aly had heard describe the ship for a long time.

  “This Argo was originally fitted with a Mark III engine, was it not?” he asked.

  Aly stood and walked over to him. “About five years ago it broke down. We picked up a secondhand Mark IV at a decent price. Took a while to iron out the kinks, but I got there in the end.”

  “And you installed it yourself?”

  “More or less.”

  “You’ve done a great job keeping her going. E-Class cargo ships are few and far between these days.”

  Aly blushed. “Thank you, Professor.”

  Petit pointed to the monitor on his console. “Well, it seems like everything’s in order. Are you ready to start up the FTL engine?”

  Aly studied the data herself. It seemed good from where she was standing. “Sure.”

  Petit flicked the switch, and the engine reverberated, finally taking hold and sparking to life. Aly touched the side of the engine’s housing. Something was wrong. She felt it in her bones. As the vibration intensified and she grabbed hold of the nearest bulkhead. “Shut it down!”

  He did as instructed, and the vibration subsided. Aly marched over to Petit, and surveyed the readings.

  “What happened?” she asked him.

  “I don’t know.” Petit stopped. “Wait. Look at this.” He scrolled to the relevant data.

  “A blockage in the plasma exhausts?” Aly scrunched up her nose. “What could be doing that?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Whoa, what’s that?” Aly said, telling him to stop scrolling though the data.

  “Iota particles,” they both uttered in unison.

  “When we traveled through the trans-space corridor, they must have got lodged in the exhausts.” Petit stopped himself before continuing. “Do you see the same thing I’m seeing?”

  Aly studied the data. She’d had no experience with the particles apart from what Jason had told her. “Enlighten me.”

  “They’re not decaying. The Iota particles have a half-life.”

  “That was why the vortex would shrink over time and why Jason hadn’t been able to detect them at Frontier’s Reach. What do you think’s the cause, Professor?”

  Petit shook his head. “I’m not sure, but it has to have something to do with the plasma.” He smiled. “This is a great find. The biggest reason that they weren’t studied in more depth four years ago was that we didn’t have a physical specimen. Now we do.”

  “We’ll have to find a method of storing the particles. If we can’t expel them from the exhausts, the FTL drive won’t ever work.”

  “Agreed. Do you have any spare plasma storage cylinders?”

  “There should be a few lying around in the cargo bay.”

  “Good. Now we just have to figure out a way to extract the Iota particles without losing them.”

  Aly thought it best to leave someone much more qualified to decide on how to do that. “I’ll find a storage cylinder.”

  Transport Pod Julieanne

  Until yesterday Jason hadn’t seen anything as monstrous as the Seeker ship in orbit of Orion V. But this new cigar-shaped craft had blown that record out of the water.

  The tractor field took the Julieanne to the underside of the peculiar vessel and upward through a large aperture. Jason didn’t think the dark side of the moon could get any darker, but it had. Up through a labyrinth of shadowy black passageways, the pod hurtled farther inside the ship, until it approached another wide entry. A strange, almost-translucent curtain stretched across it.

  Realizing he was going to collide with it, Jason sank in his seat. But instead, the Julieanne passed through the curtain as if it were a wall of soap bubbles. He assumed it was the Seeker’s version of an airlock.

  Beneath him appeared a huge landing area, several football fields in length and width. Dozens of smaller craft were scattered all over it. He descended, and without so much as a thud, his journey came to an end. He stood and waited for the inevitable.

  A tinkering emanated outside the Julieanne’s side airlock and a moment later it opened. The next thing Jason knew he was being grabbed by the legs and dragged out onto the alien hangar deck by a Seeker welcoming party. Four of the black-clad soldiers threw him to the deck and trained their weapons on him. Jason raised his hands in surrender.

  The soldiers parted, and another figure walked toward him, flanked by two more of the Seeker henchmen.

  “You couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you, Cassidy?” Nash shook his head disapprovingly.

  Jason pulled himself to his feet in a manner that wouldn’t get himself shot. “What did you expect I’d do?”

  “I had hoped you’d die at the bottom of that godforsaken hole in the ground.” The message was blunt. More forthright than Jason expected.

  “Then why didn’t you kill us all and be sure of it?”

  Ever since Jason had seen his friend down in that antechamber on Orion V, Nash had radiated an air of confidence. He had an answer to every question, but in that instance, his arrogance escaped him.

  It quickly returned. “An oversight. Not one I’ll repeat.” Nash turned to his soldiers and nodded.

  Jason found himself with a brute on each side of him, and they walked toward an exit at the end of the hangar deck.

  “You would kill me? After coming back to rescue you?”

  “I never asked you to rescue me, Cassidy.”

  They moved into a corridor. The walls were black, like the exterior of the vessel, while soft light radiated from the floors. And appearing every so often on the bulkheads was a symbol. It looked like an S, but backward with a horizontal line through it and a dot above. He wondered if it was a letter or number in the Seeker language.

  “You don’t really mean that.”

  “You don’t understand anything, do you?” Nash said as four of the soldiers peeled off down one end of the corridor. The other two remained by his side. “The Christian Nash you knew died in the nebula that day.”

  They all entered an elevator. One soldier waved his hand over a small circular panel and it scrolled through several Seeker letters.

  The elevator ascended. Jason regarded his old friend and started to doubt himself. Did he believe his friend was still there, or was he believing it because he wanted it to be so? Without Jason being able to give it another thought, the elevator stopped, and they all filed out.

  Ahead appeared another letter on the wall. Three horizontal strokes with two dots beneath. They walked along the corridor and at the end through a door, in to a large room. Throughout were a row of smaller rooms, all sealed shut by pale-yellow barriers. Jason knew a brig when he saw one, even on an extraterrestrial ship.

  “Put him in the cell,” Nash instructed.

  One of his captors waved at the circular terminal ne
ar the cell and the pale-yellow barrier dropped. The two soldiers manhandling Jason threw him in on his face, and he glanced back as the barrier reactivated.

  “I wish you’d hadn’t come here.” Nash shook his head and turned, leaving the brig with his men.

  Jason stood and contemplated his new surroundings. It was just as black and spartan as the rest of the ship. While he wondered where he’d have the privacy to pee, a groan wailed from the cell opposite his own.

  He peered through the barrier…

  “Kione!”

  Thirty-One

  Psi-Aion

  Tyler remembered back to when he and Jason were children. They would always try to see who the first one off the ship would be when they reached a different port. As the elder brother, Jason had a knack of beating him most of the time. But it didn’t diminish the amazement a small child had when stepping onto a new world. As an adult, those feelings were still there. While Psi-Aion had been welcoming, as the sun set on the majestic green forest, it no longer resembled a vast tropical Eden. Instead, it now seemed like something from a nightmarish fairy tale. After completing their mission to find the CDF beacon, the adult inside Tyler was happy to be heading back to the Maybelle.

  Up in the trees, more of the large insects they’d seen earlier were coming out for the night. Tyler wasn’t too fond of bugs. On the Argo, he rarely came across them, unless they had an infestation in a contaminated shipment. He shuddered remembering the time a food consignment filled with dormant Perseus Spider eggs spoiled. No one realized until three weeks later when the pests had grown to the size of dinner plates. He tried to take his mind of it and turned to Captain Marquez, who was fiddling around with the small datapack he’d taken from the data recorder.

  Marquez hadn’t said a great deal since coming back from the wreckage. Tyler could only imagine what the captain was going through. He’d lost his ship and crew. The old saying said the captain should go down with his ship. From what Tyler understood, it was especially so for a military man.