The truth machine, p.2
Nebula: A Space Opera in the Classic Tradition (Blood Empire Book 2), page 2
“Oh. Is that what you meant by ‘bounty’?”
“She’s quick, isn’t she?” Frohlt gives Pedro a toothy grin.
“Used to be.”
I wave my hand at him. “Ok, I get it. S’okay. I’m used to not being likable. Now can you answer my question?”
The stims have taken effect, so I sit up, ignoring the residual ache. “What was Papa working on? Why was he tracking the Blood Empire’s movements?”
Pedro and Frohlt exchange glances.
Frohlt is the first to speak. “He wouldn’t say.”
This creature knew Papa? How old is this little beast? I motion for him to continue.
The doc hesitates. “He had some interesting theories about dark energy. He and I had some… robust conversations.”
Dark energy. I don’t know the first thing about it.
“Tell me more—” but I’m cut off by a violent shudder of the ship’s hull, followed by a dull boom.
Pedro looks up to a nearby commPanel. “We’ve been hit.” He looks at me. “Better strap yourself in. As I said, there’s a price on your head. Looks like someone else wants in on the action. I gotta go.”
He turns and runs down the passageway, I presume to the helmroom, followed by Frohlt. This dilapidated shuttle might not be all it seems if it’s been modded to include artificial gravity.
The craft jolts again. I reach for the straps to secure myself.
Then a distant memory awakens. A leering man in a leather duster brandishing an illegal laserSword.
I groan to myself and release the straps. Paying close attention to my injuries, I swivel off the bunk and test my balance. So far, so good.
The ship’s bulkheads clang, then screech in protest.
I hold one arm across my chest to protect myself and clamp the other to my side as I run down to the helm.
I hope our attacker isn’t who I think it is.
Pedro hears me run into the helmroom. He swivels round and yells at me. “Get back and strap in!”
“Short answer: No.” I grit my teeth and slam into the navchair beside him. “Have you ID’d the attacker?”
Pedro frowns as he punches into the datapad. “Too busy saving us.”
The ship crashes to one side and we’re thrown to the floor. I scream out as my bent arm digs into my chest and curse Frohlt’s calculations.
Pedro clambers back into the pilot chair and slaps something on his console. The shuttle kicks back under acceleration, making it difficult for Frohlt and me to regain our places, but I persevere through my pain. I fall back into my seat and hit the button for the flightwebbing to strap me in. I wince as it tightens onto my battered body and scrapes against my patched wound.
The controls on the navchair reveal unusual mods to a standard shuttle. Hyperspace capability. As well as artificial gravity. An idea pops into my head.
I tap Pedro on the shoulder. He whips around, the stress showing more than the usual number of beads of sweat on his brow. “What? I’m trying to not get us killed.”
“Then turn off the grav. We’ll have more power.”
He realizes his mistake, nods and gets to work on the pilot’s datapad. My weight eases for a moment under the straps, then the acceleration increases and I’m pushed into my seat.
Pedro turns to me and smiles. “Good call. I think we’re out of range—”
The shuttle’s alarm blares.
Warning. Tractor beam hold detected. Reduce propulsion to avoid irreversible damage. Warning. Tractor beam hold detected. Reduce—
Pedro slaps the alarm to silent.
I incline my head to his commPanel. “Check the beam fingerprint. Could give us a clue who’s on our tail.”
Pedro swipes through several screens, then stops, transfixed.
“What?” I can’t see his screen from here. But it looks as if he’s found something unpleasant.
He gestures and the screen holo lights up in front of us. “You’re not going to like it.”
I wait for the image to form.
Our attacking ship is owned by one N. J. Fassbender.
No surprise to me.
“Give me the helm and cut propulsion.”
“Huh?” Pedro looks at me, confused.
I climb out of my seat—easier now the tractor lock is working against our own acceleration—and unclip Pedro from his harness. “Give me the chair. This is my fight. Not yours.”
“But—”
I ignore the man’s protests. “I’ve learned a thing or two since we last met. Let me do this.”
I’ve flown Constellation, the Sector’s most powerful battlecruiser. I’ve defeated massive fleets. I’ve fought the Scorpion, triggered a coup on a Jovian General and brought the Sector together to confront the Blood Empire’s latest maneuvers.
I discovered my father may not have died after all.
Now I’m after the truth.
I’m not going to let a two-bit Ganymedian hitman stop me.
Pedro throws his hands in the air. “We’re dead, anyway. Only a matter of how.” He eases into the navchair I vacated and folds his arms as the flightwebbing pulls him in.
“Yeah, well, I’m not giving up that easily.” I swipe through the helmpad’s screens, find what I’m looking for and tap in some settings.
We’re thrown to one side as the ship begins rotating end over end.
Pedro is hanging on to the arms of his seat to keep himself upright. Behind me, I hear Frohlt retching. I wedge myself into the pilot chair and activate the webbing tight, ignoring the electric jolt through my chest.
“This is nuts,” Pedro says. “You can’t spin your way out of a tractor beam.”
“Hold on tight. It’s gonna get ugly.”
I slap another few screens and ready myself. I glance at both Pedro and Frohlt to make sure they’re secured.
The ship’s disconcerting motion against the tractor pull is already getting to me, but my quick glance at Pedro reveals his green pallor.
“Here we go. Sorry.”
The helmpad displays a circular compass-style view of our small shuttle. The ship’s icon is turning round and around anti-clockwise, with an increasing velocity. If this carries on, we’re in danger of causing damage. Spaceships routinely undergo immense acceleration stresses, hyperjumps and shield themselves against space debris.
But not many engineers thought to allow for a thruster-propelled merry-go-round set to Ludicrous Mode.
My right hand hovers over the helmpad, one finger on my left hand poised to tap.
The ship is almost at six o’clock, pointing back to Fassbender’s vessel when I slap my hand down and milliseconds after, tap another icon I’ve preprogrammed to appear the instant I stopped the spin.
More violently than I had predicted, our poor shuttle halts its absurd spin, throwing badly secured objects across the helmroom. We all duck when a portable ID scanning unit detaches from its fittings and flies across our consoles, smashing into the front bulkhead.
This all happens in an instant, as the vessel accelerates savagely under full thrust.
Into the source of the tractor beam.
The combined power of the fDrive and the beam pulling us act as one giant elastic strap, and we slam into our chairs under heavy g-force.
“What the—” The ship’s alarm system interrupts Pedro.
Red alert. Propulsion stabilizers at dangerous energy level. Shutting down—
I mute the warning system with a tap on the helmpad. “Override shutdown.”
I steel myself.
“What are you doing?” A white-faced Pedro forces the words out.
Good question. I’m doing something I’ve never done before. I only heard about it from other space pirates who regaled us with drunken stories of famous escapes in history.
I have no idea if they are true, or if those legendary pirates survived to tell of the maneuver.
For all I know, I’ve only hastened our departure from this universe.
The shuttle’s structure screams in protest as we hurtle towards Fassbender’s ship.
My chest protests along with it, but pinned back in my chair, I force myself to reply against the dull pain.
“We’re playing a game of chicken.”
Where the ploy’s name originates, I don’t know. I’ve never seen a chicken. I only know that they were a source of food.
But we won’t even be recognizable as meat if I don’t pull this off.
And if I do, I might be the first person in history to succeed at combining a game of chicken with a legendary old-Earth undersea tactic.
My teeth grind as I stare at the helmpad, watching two images speed toward each other.
“Indy!” Pedro’s voice is on edge, his face sweaty and his eyes large.
Pinned by the tractor beam, the two ships race toward an inevitable head-on collision. Our combined velocity at impact ensures any would-be rescuers will be vacuuming up spacedust.
I can hardly look. Yet, if I am to play this out, look, I must.
The screen auto-zooms to show both ships only a few thousand meters apart.
The tractor beam cuts. This is my moment.
“Yes!” I exclaim, and pound the helmpad.
The shuttle careens away at a steep angle.
In readiness, I’ve pulled an adrenoStim from the chair’s emergency medibox. I slap it to my neck to stop the high g-forces blacking me out. Though the low blood flow to my head makes me wonder if I will execute part two of my plan, or if this will be my final moment of consciousness.
Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Pedro and Frohlt are already out cold.
Better that way. They’ll either wake up, or never know what hit them.
I ready the shuttle’s puny plasmacannons as we swing around to bear down on our less-agile attacker, which is struggling to regain stability after switching off its tractor beam and taking belated evasive action. If what I plan doesn’t work, plasma weapons might be all we have.
Now for the risky part.
My head is light. All the helm lights flash in different colors. Pretty.
I’m sure I’m supposed to do something.
I peer down at my console, which is blinking a warning signal and the text:
Hyperjump instated. Warning: objects in vicinity. Risk of aborted/partial jump and object co-fusion.
I press “Jump.”
Everything goes black for the second time in two days.
Lost In Space
Baap! Baap! Baap!
The sound blasts through my ears, insisting on finding a conscious cell buried somewhere in my skull.
Someone is shaking me. My eyes open to reveal a giant furry face looming. It stinks of vomit.
The smell jerks me awake and I push the creature away. “Gross! Go wash your mouth.”
“She’s alive, then.” Pedro enters my field of view, a blood-soaked bandage covering half his forehead.
I shake my head to clear it and look around. I’m still in the pilot’s chair, strapped in.
“Where are we?” I struggle to think with the siren’s insistent baaping. “Can you mute that damn alarm?”
Pedro twists round, taps something, and the screeching halts. I breathe a sigh of relief.
He turns to me. “We’re somewhere a high-risk random jump would take us, is my best guess.” Pedro’s expression is tight and his eyes look tired. Well, the one eye I can see.
“What happened to you?” I motion to his bloodied face.
He grimaces. “Some lunatic ran a hyperjump right next to another ship. Field disturbances shoved stuff around in the cabin.” He rubs his cheek. “An ID scanner craving freedom found me instead.”
I pout. “Sorry.”
“Yes. So you should be.” He grins, then winces as his cheek pulls at the bandage. “Escaping Fassbender. Hell of a move. Where did you learn that?”
“Told you. I picked up a few things since you last saw me.”
“Including Crazy Ivan?” Frohlt waddles back into the helmroom, wiping his mouth and fur with a steriwipe.
“You know it?” I widen my eyes. “I only ever heard it called Crazy Russian.”
“Whatever you call it, hyperjumping that close to any vessel is poor form, miss.” Frohlt says.
“I suppose you think putting a price on my head is okay then? I should just surrender? Some appreciation for my skills might be nice.”
“Calm down. But I vote we call it Crazy Indy from now on,” Pedro says. “Whatever it is, crazy is an understatement.”
“Any damage?” I point to the ship. “Apart from your head, I mean.”
“Outside of jumping at random into unknown space, avoiding emerging inside an asteroid, planet, sun or anything else that could kill us as dead as Fassbender might… no.”
“So we’re lost, then?” I look at both Frohlt and Pedro.
Pedro nods, but Frohlt is preoccupied, tapping paws on a datapad.
“I don’t think so, miss,” he says, scrolling through rows of comms logs before arriving at one he taps to bring up the visuals. “If this can find you, we must be in known space.”
The holo displays a message:
I reach across to the commPanel, groaning at my bruised ribcage, and tap the ID request. “Captain India Jackson, confirming voice and DNA.” I hold my finger on the biopanel until the holo icon turns green to signal DNA reading complete.
We wait.
The holo flips round to reveal the message contents.
“Urgent. Attention India Jackson. Attendance required. Sector Leadership Group, War Committee. Rendezvous Rykkamon Space Station. Attendance compulsory and urgent. Repeat. Urgent. Attention India Jackson. Attendance required—”
I flick the display closed with a gesture.
“I suppose we’d better reverse engineer to their coordinates and do as they say.” I turn to Pedro. “Coming with me?”
He sighs and glances at Frohlt, who offers a passable shrug. Pedro looks back at me. “Probably time we said goodbye to Ganymede. We may have overstayed our welcome.”
Frohlt peers up at me. “Does this space station have a bar, miss?”
Frohlt—or “Doc” as he keeps insisting I call him—is an astronavigation whizz. As luck would have it, it turns out we’re only three jumps away from Rykkamon. Less than a day’s travel.
I might even get some sleep.
“You wanted to know about your father?” Doc interrupts my musing and hops up on the crew chair next to me. Programmed hyperjumps means we can almost relax. Almost.
And now that my chest is healing, or I’m learning to ignore the dull agony, I return to my thoughts.
I close my eyes and lean back in the chair, enjoying the medium gravity Pedro has dialed in. “You said he was researching dark energy. Tell me about that.”
“He had a theory, miss.” Frohlt waits for me to respond.
“Why the hesitation?”
“A lot of physicists thought he was mad.”
I chuckle to myself. Even I thought Papa was deranged sometimes. Then I frown. He’d hidden this world from me, and had either been pretending to be an energy trader, or leading a double life.
As for his involvement in the innovative drive systems of the Sector’s biggest battlecruiser… why would he keep that hidden from his son and daughter, yet give them the only credentials to access it?
And why in the stars did he hide the driveless starship, then give the drive to the Jovians?
My brain is spinning in circles.
“Miss?”
I’d forgotten the doc was there. I open my eyes and study the perplexing creature. Part small bear, part mini-human. Super-intelligent. “What was his theory?”
Frohlt thinks for a moment, then his bright eyes find mine. “Unlimited energy supply.”
I cock my head. “Perpetual energy? I thought that myth was debunked centuries ago?”
The doc waves a paw in the air. “Not perpetual energy, miss. Unlimited.” He pauses, as if searching for an explanation, then jerks his head up. “Like a waterwheel, driven by running water.”
Funny. Papa had both Mitch and me construct toy wooden waterwheels when we were kids. We’d placed them by the side of a stream, and Papa connected their axles to an electrical generator. We used them to power up a music player and dance. I strain to remember which planet we’d been on, but all I remember is that I’d gone back months later in the drought to find the stream dried up, and our wheels and axles fallen to one side, baked by the sun.
I screw up my face. “How can that be unlimited?”
He shrugs. “It’s an analogy, miss. Frederic thought if dark energy constantly flows into our universe, and we could harness that, all our energy politics would become redundant, with free energy available anywhere, any time.”
Frohlt looks up and around before settling back with a brief nod. “Try this analogy, miss. Imagine a bathroom sink, only it’s filling up from the drain.”
“Yesss,” I answer slowly, wondering where Frohlt is going.
“And we can put waterwheels wherever that water current enters from the drain.”
I hold out my palms. “And?”
“Now think of that sink, not as a half-sphere, but as a spherical sink. Imagine the drain is at the center, and the water comes in from the drain outwards in all directions.”
My brain hurts trying to grasp it all. “But the sphere of water would just get bigger and bigger. And where are the waterwheels now?”
The doc gesticulates. “Don’t worry about where the waterwheels are. They can be anywhere. Where is the current of water in the sphere?”
I’m not sure where this is heading. “Running outward? Everywhere.”
Frohlt smiles. “Exactly. Welcome to our universe. Continuously expanding with the ingress of dark energy, miss. But not just from the center. Expanding everywhere.”
