Rise of Nimrod Fleet (The Contingency War Book 3) Read online

  “It’s nothing, Casey, though it’s probably best if you don’t look,” said Taylor, but merely saying those words made it impossible for Casey not to look. She peeked out around the edge of the pilot’s viewport and saw the beast-like crane picking the helpless Corvette to pieces and her face fell.

  Suddenly the collision alarm sounded and they heard the resonant thud of an object colliding with the hull, something large enough that the impact could even be felt through the deck plating. Casey darted her eyes back inside the pilot’s viewport and frantically worked the controls, twisting and turning the ship away from the debris that now rattled off the hull like giant hailstones.

  “Casey, talk to me!” shouted Sonner, but the pilot was too focused on steering the ship out of danger to answer.

  “We ran into some debris,” Taylor called out, seeing that Casey was preoccupied, “but we’re okay, just a bit dented, that’s all.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not all…” called out James, peering down at data streaming across his console, “whatever we hit bounced back into the debris field and is pin-balling off other debris out there.” There was a pause, during which time Sonner and Taylor exchanged concerned glances, before James turned his chair around to face them. When he spoke, his voice was urgent and on the brink of losing control, “One of the larger ship fragments contained an unstable power core, and it’s gone off like a flare. There’s a ship heading this way from the breaking yard!”

  “Taylor, can you confirm?” Sonner asked, but Taylor was ahead of her.

  “Confirmed, one ship has departed the breaking yard. It’s a small scout ship, twin occupancy at the most,” he said, looking at the readout. “It’s no threat on its own, but if that ship spots us then you can bet it will call in some friends.”

  “Either that or the breakers yard will just use its turrets to pulverize us,” said James, and on reflection, Taylor realized that the younger Sonner’s suggestion was more probable, and more deadly.

  Commander Sonner glanced down at the console in the arm of her chair. The scout ship would be on them in less than ten minutes, and there was still a chance that it would intensively scan the debris field and detect them sooner than that. They had to prepare for the worst, but she wasn’t willing to give up on the mission just yet.

  “Casey, stand ready to run an emergency power restart,” said Sonner, but Casey didn’t answer. “Casey? Pilot are you listening?!”

  Casey pulled her eyes out of the pilot’s viewport and anxiously glanced back at Sonner, “I’m... sorry Commander, this is my fault,”

  “Casey, get your head back in the game,” said Sonner, firmly but without anger, “prepare for an emergency power restart, and make sure the reciprocal jump is loaded and ready. We may need to get out of here in a split second.”

  “Yes, Commander,” replied Casey, though her synthetic voice betrayed the unmistakably human signatures of stress. “I’ll make sure we’re ready.”

  Sonner took a deep breath and let it out. Casey may not have been entirely human, but on an emotional level the simulant pilot felt as deeply as anyone she’d ever known. “For what it’s worth, Casey, I’m not interested in blame, unless it relates to the damned Hedalt, anyway,” Sonner went on with the same firmness, “You made a mistake. We all make them. I know you won’t make another one like it again. As far as I’m concerned, that’s all there is to it.”

  “Thanks, Commander S,” said Casey, sounding a little more like herself.

  “Besides, if I what I have in mind works, it won’t matter,” Sonner continued, “Taylor, I need you to do your party trick.”

  Taylor spun his chair around and frowned. He’d been impressed with how Sonner had handled Casey’s guilt over the accident, and how she’d shown an empathic understanding of her unique sensitivities. But, though Casey had blamed herself, Taylor actually felt responsible, because he’d inadvertently tempted Casey to take her eyes off the road, when he should have been firm and ordered her definitively not to. If Sonner had a plan to get them out of this mess, he was glad it would fall to him to carry it out, though what she meant by ‘party trick’ he could only imagine.

  “Well, I do have a few tricks that I like to show off at parties, Commander,” said Taylor, “but they’re all terrible and usually fall flat. Which one did you have in mind?”

  “I need you to enter the Fabric, disrupt the CoreNet and shut down that scout ship.”

  “What?!” Of all the tricks that Taylor had imagined Sonner might be referring to, that was not among them. “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “You did it before, on the Way Station.”

  “Yes, but I was just making it up as I went along,” complained Taylor, “I have no idea if I can do it again! And what if Provost Adra is still probing for ‘signal anomalies’ in the CoreNet? I don’t fancy being ‘purged’, thanks very much!”

  “You have no choice, Captain,” said Sonner, with the same firmness she’d shown Casey, “It’s either that or we jump back to the Contingency base. And if we leave now, and that scout figures out there was a ship hiding out here in the debris field, they’ll likely plug this hole in their security and we’ll have no chance of reaching the reserve base.”

  “Damn it Commander,” said Taylor shaking his head. He’d wanted an opportunity to fix the mess, but Sonner had calmly shoved all of her chips into the center of the table without even looking at the cards she was holding in her hand. She was betting on blind faith that Taylor would deal her the card she needed to win. “How long do I have?”

  Sonner glanced down at the console in her chair again, and then flicked her eyes back up to meet Taylor’s shining silver orbs, “Five minutes... if we’re lucky...”

  TEN

  Taylor raced back to his quarters so quickly that he had to grab hold of his door frame to stop himself hurtling past the entrance. Had he missed the catch, he might have burst out into space, leaving a perfect, simulant-shaped hole in the hull, like in an old Warner Bros cartoon. His grip on the door frame was so tight that it left finger-shaped crimp marks in the metal, but Taylor managed to swing inside and drop down on his combined bed and regeneration apparatus, as if diving for cover to avoid incoming fire.

  Wasting no time, he enabled the regeneration systems and closed his eyes. Within moments he was inside the deep space corridor, staring at the starlight door. He ran through it, emerging into the CoreNet and its brighter and busier expanse of stars and glowing, wire-framed cubes that represented the countless thousands of super-luminal transceivers that made up the Fabric. Everything he’d done had been instinctive up until that point, but now he needed a plan to find the scout ship, and he needed one fast.

  He didn’t know how many of the five minutes that Sonner had given him had already elapsed. He wasn’t even sure if time moved at the same rate inside the strange place he now inhabited. But his sense of urgency had also become heightened, because the CoreNet was uniquely the only place in the universe Taylor could still feel physical sensations of emotion. And chief amongst the physical emotions he was feeling at that moment were panic, anxiety and sheer, unbridled terror.

  “Contingency One!” he yelled into the ether, and then he closed his eyes and thought of Sonner, Casey and James. “Take me to the Contingency One...” He felt the sensation of movement, similar to how the motion of the sea can still be felt even when indoors on a huge cruise ship, and he opened his eyes to see himself hurtling through space. It was still dizzying and disorientating, but he had become more used to it since his first terrifying experience, and he was able to remain calmer as the stars slipped by in silver streaks. He raced through super-luminal node after super-luminal node, until he re-emerged inside the deep space corridor, and the blur of motion resolved back into sharp focus. He was following behind the Contingency One as if locked onto its tail like a missile, watching it twist and jink and weave through the debris field. If Casey’s piloting had been impressive witnessed from inside the bridge, watching the scor
pion-like ship respond to her inputs from his new and unique vantage point only hammered home just how exceptional her abilities were.

  Then he remembered about the scout ship that the breaking yard had launched, and he spun around looking for it, but it was like trying to spot a single speck of dust on a carpet. He closed his eyes again, trying to remember its shape and configuration from the tactical scans and urged himself to locate it. Find the scout ship, find the scout ship and travel to it... Travel now! But, when he opened his eyes again, he was still tethered to the tail of the Contingency One as it danced through the debris field.

  “Damn it, Taylor, think!” he cried out, “How do I find that ship!?”

  “It’s called a Swordtail-class scout.”

  Taylor spun around and saw Satomi Rose standing in the deep space corridor a few meters behind him. Instinctively, he ran to her and tried to gather her in an embrace, but his body slipped straight through hers as if she were a ghost. For the brief moment that he had passed through her image, Taylor felt his skin prickle, as if he’d just been struck with an icy gust of wind, yet he felt suddenly hot rather than cold. The sensation faded in an instant, and he was left feeling foolish and embarrassed. It had been naïve to assume that Satomi was ‘physically’ there with him, because he only existed inside the Fabric as consciousness and energy, but he also regretted how clumsily he had given away his feelings for her. He wasn’t used to feeling physical emotions anymore and seeing her had overwhelmed him. He turned to face Satomi again, standing tall and battling to hide his awkwardness.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Taylor began, “it was just a shock to actually see you in this place.”

  “It’s okay, I know my appearance must have been unexpected,” Satomi replied, looking down at her feet and brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear. But when she looked up at him, Taylor noticed that she didn’t look embarrassed; she looked worried. “I don’t know how, but I knew you were in danger, and then I was here.”

  “Satomi, can you tell me where you are?” Taylor asked. Seeing her again had made him forget why he was inside the Fabric. “I mean, where your physical body is. Can you show me or give me co-ordinates?”

  “Taylor, there’s no time for that,” said Satomi, taking a step towards him. “The scout ship – the Swordtail – you must to act now to stop it!”

  “But, how?” asked Taylor, “I don’t even know how to find it.” Then a more disturbing question presented itself, “Wait, how do you know about the scout ship?”

  “I don’t know… I just felt it,” Satomi replied, throwing her arms out wide, “I think we’re linked somehow. I sensed you when you jumped to this system, and just now, I felt your fear and your panic. I knew you were in trouble and it drew me here.”

  Taylor was about to ask how she had sensed him and how she’d travelled to the deep space corridor, but Satomi knew his curious nature and headed him off, “Look, none of that matters,” she took another step towards him and reached out as if to hold his shoulders, and despite there being no physical sensation of touch, Taylor could feel a heat from the proximity of her hands. “You have to stop that scout!”

  “Tell me how,” said Taylor, “You said it was a Swordtail-class scout, but I’ve never seen one up close. I don’t know how to visualize it.”

  “Focus on its energy, not what it looks like,” said Satomi. “It’s linked to the CoreNet, just like you, and everything that’s linked to the CoreNet has a thread that can be followed. Feel for the thread, Taylor. It’s close...”

  Taylor closed his eyes. He could still feel the warmth from Satomi’s proximity as he reached out with his hand, as if physically trying to catch this thread she spoke about. And then he felt a tingle in the tips of his fingers, similar to what he’d felt when he’d moved through Satomi, and similar to what he’d felt on the Way Station when he’d overloaded the power grid there. He could feel an energy, like a low electric current of only a few milliamperes, but it was enough for Taylor to focus on. Then like a fish being slowly drawn in on a line, Taylor pulled on the thread and suddenly he was moving through space once again.

  He opened his eyes and Satomi was still with him inside the deep space corridor as the blur of stars resolved clearly again. The Contingency One had slipped into the distance, but he could still see the debris field, and just about make out the small shape of the ship as it continued along its chaotic path. But now, instead of being locked onto the tail of his own ship, he was fixed onto the nose of a small scout ship, close enough that he could see its two Hedalt operators inside, through the cockpit.

  “They’ll be directing scans at the debris field any time now, so you must hurry!” said Satomi, and for the first time there was a hint of her composure faltering. “You know what to do next, don’t you?”

  “I think so, but, I’ve only done it once before...”

  “Then this will be the second.” Satomi sounded considerably more confident in Taylor’s abilities than he felt himself. “Do it, now!”

  Damn it, here goes nothing! Taylor thought, and then he reached his hand out towards the small Swordtail-class scout, and was surprised to feel the energy of the ship start to flow through him. Then a jumble of white noise penetrated his mind, like a detuned radio with the volume cranked up, before slowly the sounds condensed and he heard voices; the voices of the two Hedalt crew inside the ship. He could hear them complaining about the pointlessness of being sent out to investigate junk, and what they would do once they got back, and he could see them adjusting the ship’s controls and focusing scans on the area close to where the Contingency One lurked inside the debris field. They were close, but they had not yet detected the ship. He concentrated on the energy flowing through the sensor circuits and felt it flowing through him, and then he closed his eyes one last time and said, “Overload...”

  A raw, visceral pain scorched through his temples and his eyes stung as if soap had been rubbed into them, but he managed to prize them open for long enough to see that the scout ship was now in serious trouble. Electricity crackled along its length, tearing open sections of the hull as the surge of power erupted through conduits that could no longer contain it. Its engines had failed and the lights inside the cabin had gone out, yet in the brief flashes of illumination from the internal sparks and flames, Taylor could see the two Hedalt inside panicking and reaching for fire suppression devices and emergency respirators. Then the gravity inside the little scout failed and the two crew began floating inside, as utterly helpless as the ship itself.

  “I did it!” cried Taylor, turning back to Satomi, but she was no longer there. He ran along the corridor, away from the scout, calling her name, but she had gone, vanished back to wherever she had come from; a place that he still did not know. He should have felt dejected, but he didn’t, and this wasn’t because of his success in disabling the scout ship. This time Satomi had known him. She had remembered him, and what they had discussed during previous encounters. And she had come to him – she was linked to him. How, why, were questions that still burned in his mind as brightly as the fires that engulfed the ship floundering in space behind him. But one thing seemed clear; inside the Fabric, inside the deep space corridor, Satomi was already freed from the grip of the Hedalt Empire. He had to find her, not inside this place of thought and energy, but in the outside world, and he vowed in that instant that he would never give up the search.

  ELEVEN

  The simulant’s eyes had been fixed on the console screen persistently for the last eight hours, and in that time it had remained so still that it could have been mistaken for a mannequin in a store window. Eight hours previously, it had taken over from another identical unit that had watched the same console with the same unwavering diligence until it had been required to regenerate. A third unit stood ready to take over, and so it would continue until Adra found what she was looking for. It was only a matter of time, she reasoned. Sooner or later the rogue Hunter simulant would enter the CoreNet again and lead her
directly to the hidden human base. And then she would destroy it and all the remaining humans in the galaxy. This time, it would be for good. This time it would be their extinction.

  Slotted into the main interface of the console in front of the simulant was Adra’s spider-like breaker, the device which contained the fragments of data recovered from the asteroid base. Amongst this information were clues to the location of another hidden human refuge. The breaker’s only purpose, along with the simulant that monitored it, was to detect and decipher the location of the unique signal anomaly that indicated an incursion into the CoreNet. If the rogue Hunter simulant entered the Fabric at any point inside the radius defined by the breaker, she would be able to locate the star system where the incursion took place with pinpoint precision.

  The console flashed and the breaker sparked into life as new data was fed through it. Moments later the screen changed to a three dimensional map of the galaxy with a single white lane, tracing a path from one super-luminal node to another, until eventually the line branched away and stopped. The end of the line was a star system close to the intersection of a major spiral arm and a prominent minor structure. The simulant absorbed the information and sent a brief message to Adjutant Lux’s console.

  Lux was standing at his station at the front of the bridge, peering out into the emptiness of space with his hands clasped together at the small of his back. He glanced down as his console softly bleeped an alert and read the text twice to be certain, before hurriedly bringing up the new navigation data on the screen. He frowned at the information and then accessed the data himself, checking that the location was correct. Though Lux did not display the same scornful disregard for simulants as Provost Adra did, he still considered just as inferior and abhorrent as she did, and he did not trust the simulant’s analysis. He glanced back at the automaton who had reported the data, looking at it with the sort of contempt a judge might show for a convicted murderer, before running the analysis again personally to confirm. A simulant cannot be certain of anything, because they are nothing. Just as the humans will soon be. Lux said to himself as the data continued to process.