Landry nodded. “I respect that. I’ll see you in three hours. Think about where you want to have dinner.”
***
Censorial Commodores weren’t supposed to go out in hyperspace in just a pressure suit. But the rescue specialists had been worked to exhaustion in hopes of finding survivors. The regular crew filling in for them were tired to the point of being accident prone. Now the staff officers were out helping recover debris and bodies. That left no one to tell Commodore Meckler to stay on his flag bridge and supervise.
As he pushed out the airlock Meckler paused to listen to his suit. No hiss of escaping air. No bubbling of hyperspace aether forcing its way in. He was secure for now.
The wait let him drink in the sight of the Phoenix Void. Wisps of purple fog obscured the glowing shoals marking where stars rested in normal space. On the far side, blurred by distant aether, an orange shoal made a wall across the sky.
The phoenix formation that gave the void its name wasn’t visible on this side of the ship. But Meckler had seen it from the flag bridge. He was tired of watching. He wanted to do something.
“Please grab hold, sir,” said the chief walker’s mate on the suit to suit radio. The NCO operated a sleigh, a thruster built into an open frame. The other spacers coming on shift for salvage work were already holding on.
Meckler found a handhold. The chief activated the thruster, towing them all to the nearest bit of wreckage.
At fifty meters across this was the biggest piece of CNS Implacable they’d found yet. The first team had already made a check for survivors. Now the power supplies must be stripped out so it could safely be taken in tow.
A mild current in the aether pulled the sleigh off course before the chief could correct it. That took them around the side of the wreckage, revealing torn open compartments. Sparks jumped through the aether between torn cables.
“Everyone stay clear of the live lines,” transmitted the chief. “We need to find the power sources and take them off line.”
The sleigh moved to the far side. A clamp latched onto a protruding girder. Commodore Meckler eyed the jagged edges of the torn bulkheads. The injury reports he’d been reading suddenly seemed low.
“Stay in pairs,” said the chief. Meckler noticed the chief didn’t apply that to himself . . . or to the commodore, who found two spacers following him around.
Felt like a nasty trick to play on the kids. Those two were so green they’d be intimidated by any officer, even an ensign. Dealing with the highest ranking officer for at least ten light years in any direction left them mumbling every word except “Sir!”
Maybe the Chief did it to make Meckler be more cautious out of sympathy for the kids. Too bad.
Meckler led the way down the passageway. He tapped his voltmeter on every panel, wire, outlet, and suspicious piece of debris. Nothing.
A rupture had twisted the wreckage enough that the deck, bulkheads, and overhead all had cracks big enough to swallow a foot. A broken pipe supported a wiggling bubble of water. Broken wires waved in the aether current.
He ran the voltmeter around the edges. A cable spat sparks as he came close. “Paydirt,” Meckler muttered.
The cables ran through a conduit for safety. The conduit was now ruptured, making it easy to recheck the voltage as they followed it down the passageway.
The conduit went through the bulkhead next to a hatch marked ‘EMRG BTTY CMPT—High Voltage Certified Personnel Only.’ The voltmeter declared the hatch was safe. It was buckled, with enough space between it and the coaming to grab it with both hands. It didn’t bulge at Meckler’s tug.
“Get this open,” he ordered.
The spacers wrapped an insulating blanket around a prybar. They shoved it into the gap and braced their feet against the opposite bulkhead. The first few heaves did nothing. Then the hatch flew open. A wave of aether shoved Meckler hard enough to lose his grip on the bulkhead.
“Falling rocks!” spat a spacer.
The commodore pushed off toward the hatch. When he reached it he saw the reason for the swearing. A body floated in the battery compartment, dressed only in a utility uniform. The face was frozen in twisted agony.
“Poor bastard,” said Meckler. “A lungful of aether hurts.”
“Sir, why didn’t he have a suit on?” asked a spacer.
“Because they were chasing a freighter, not whatever did this.” Meckler waved an arm to take in the destruction of Implacable. And because their commodore thought sending one ship was sufficient, he reproached himself.
One of the spacers produced a black bag. The two of them fumbled fitting the corpse into it. Meckler finally helped hold the bag open.
When the bag was zipped shut, one spacer asked, “Sir, are we going to punish the people who did this?”
“Oh, yes. We’re going to find the traitors. We’re going to make them pay. And we’re going to make their whole bleeding planet pay.”
The Series Continues
In Between Home and Ruin, our heroes join a diplomatic mission to entreat the Censorate for peaceful coexistence. If they fail, they’ll face war.
Other Works by Karl K. Gallagher
Science fiction fans, check out Torchship, a working-class hard SF adventure.
A captain who’ll take any job if there’s enough money in it. A pilot with an agenda of her own. And a mechanic with an eye on the pilot.
The crew of the Fives Full are just trying to make enough money to keep themselves in the black while avoiding the attention of a government so paranoid it’s repealed Moore’s Law. They’re not looking for adventure in the stars . . . but they’re not going to back down just because something got in their way.
The Torchship trilogy was a finalist for the 2018 Prometheus Award for best libertarian science fiction novel.
The sequels Torchship Pilot and Torchship Captain are included in the Torchship Trilogy omnibus.
Adventure story fans will enjoy The Lost War:
It was supposed to be a weekend of costumed fun. Instead these medieval historical reenactors are flung into a wilderness by magic they don't understand. They must struggle to survive and deal with monsters who consider them prey . . . or worse.
About the Author
Karl Gallagher has earned engineering degrees from MIT and USC, controlled weather satellites for the Air Force, designed weather satellites for TRW, designed a rocketship for a start-up, and done systems engineering for a fighter plane. He is husband to Laura and father to Maggie, James, and dearly missed Alanna.
About Kelt Haven Press
Kelt Haven Press is releasing print, ebook, and audiobooks by Karl K. Gallagher. For updates see:
www.kelthavenpress.com
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Storm Between the Stars: Book 1 in the Fall of the Censor Page 21
