For a moment, she stopped to marvel at the beauty of the thing, darkness wrapped in light as it fed on matter, held in place by powerful magnetic rails. It was only a kilometer across, but the energy it spewed out of its jets as it consumed the bits of star that entered its event horizon were breathtakingly beautiful.
she called out, as she spun the ship and accelerated toward the black hole, building speed, aiming for a tight slingshot and breakaway back around the ring, to safety—she hoped.
Sabrina began to buck and shimmy even more, and a panel fell off the overhead and smashed into the deck beside her, before another jolt sent it toward the weapons console. She saw it smash into the console’s chair and was glad to see Trevor wasn’t there—thank the stars Sabrina had directed them to get into suits.
Trevor called out, and she saw him in an emergency EVA suit, wrestling the dislodged panel into a safety net.
Sabrina warned Jessica,
Jessica snapped. She knew what she was doing, if they played it safe, they would never achieve breakaway velocity.
Suddenly Trevor slammed a helmet over her head, and Jessica winced as it clamped around her neck. She had totally forgotten that she wasn’t wearing a helmet and would have died when Sabrina vented the atmosphere—though hopefully the ship’s AI would have reminded her first.
Proximity alarms blared on the bridge, but then fell silent as the atmosphere rushed out of the vessel. At the exact same moment, Jessica fired both fusion engines on full burn, dumping two-hundred percent the recommended volume of Deuterium and Helium 3 into the reactors.
The ring and flaring black hole flashed past—less than five hundred meters off Sabrina’s bow—and then they were past the worst of the gravitational waves, clear dark space ahead of them.
Jessica turned to watch the holotank, praying that Bes’s ship didn’t emerge from behind the ring. Scan was a mess and they weren’t sure if the limpet mines had destroyed the Excelsia. If that ship emerged from behind the ring, she didn’t know that they would be able to defend against it.
Then an explosion flared at the edge of the ring, and Jessica let out a long breath and slumped into her seat. They’d done it. They were safe.
Trevor exclaimed.
Jessica didn’t respond, her entire body shaking from the adrenaline coursing through her veins.
Iris said.
Jessica managed to utter before scan updated and she saw the ships approaching them.
Sabrina said.
Jessica said.
Nance asked.
Jessica asked.
There was no response, but Jessica did breathe a sigh of relief as she felt the cold air blowing through the vents. Internal readouts listed it as nearly one-hundred percent nitrogen. Cold, but deadly.
She wondered at how she could feel the air so well, and then pain flooded her mind as she realized that her skin had been exposed to vacuum.
She dampened the sensation as her body’s med-readout showed that capillaries across her entire body had burst when Sabrina vented the atmosphere.
she said to Iris.
the AI replied.
Jessica rose on shaky feet to see Trevor standing behind her with an EVA suit.
she said with a mental smile—too exhausted to give a physical one.
Trevor replied.
Jessica said shakily.
Trevor barked a laugh that she was able to hear through the thin atmosphere in the ship while he held up the EVA suit for her to climb into.
Once it was on, she realized how cold she’d just been—a far cry from feeling like she was going to burn to death a few minutes earlier.
Nance said.
Cargo replied.
Finaeus said, his voice weak but triumphant.
Iris announced.
Jessica added.
She calculated their best vector and decided to arc gently toward the floating ring. No point in giving their destination away to the TSF fleet too soon.
Sabrina said.
Jessica debated putting the admiral on, but Finaeus spoke up.
Krissy said as Sabrina connected her with their shipnet.
Finaeus replied.
Krissy asked, worry in her voice.
Finaeus replied.
Jessica removed everyone else from the conversation, allowing Krissy and her father to have a few private moments as the ship raced toward the gate.
Most of the TSF ships were well behind them, boosting out from Gisha Station, though a few were near the gate. Jessica held her breath, hoping that they would hold their fire.
A few shots did lance out, but the stasis shield still had enough power to shed their beams, especially now that no one was shooting at them from behind, and the cooling vanes were deployed.
Ahead, the Ford-Svaiter mirrors around the rim of the jump gate began to flare, antimatter reactions generating negative energy that the mirrors directed into a single, roiling point.
Iris said.
Jessica saw a strange field emanate from the front of the ship, and watched in awe as the mirrors on the gate turned toward them, moving the roiling ball of negative energy until it met with the field in front of Sabrina.
Then the ship’s sensors went blind and the universe ceased to exist.
A FAREWELL
STELLAR DATE: 07.22.8938 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sabrina, between Gisha Station and the DSM Ring
REGION: DSM Ring, Grey Wolf System
Finaeus said.
Krissy used the private key her father had given her years ago and unsealed the data packet, confirming its checksums. Her eyes widened as she realized what she was looking at.
Enough dirt on the admiralty to ensure they protected her from the Grey Division.
Finaeus replied with a mental smile.
She took a deep brea
th. If what was in the data packet was true, her father’s crazy theories were real. The Transcend was in great danger—and her father getting to New Canaan would be the first step in saving it. In saving them all.
Krissy said.
She winced at the pain she heard in her father’s voice. Their prior encounters had often ended with her saying unkind things to him. Not her proudest moments.
The connection cut out, and Krissy watched the scan data flow in from where she stood in Gisha Station’s auxiliary STC.
The Sabrina was racing toward the gate, moving fast after its breakaway around the mining ring. Around her, engineers were frantically trying to understand how the Inner Stars freighter had taken control of the jump gate, while Krissy allowed herself a small smile.
In a way, it was good to know that they hadn’t figured everything out. That a crew of pirates, an ancient TBI agent, and an old man, centuries past his prime, could best them.
Maybe it meant that there was hope for what lay ahead. If this little group could stand against the TSF, maybe the colonists at New Canaan could furnish some solution to the looming war—and the poison she now knew lay within the heart of the Transcend.
“How are they doing this?” Stationmaster Lloyd asked from Krissy’s side. “It’s like they have total control.”
“I guess they’ve a few tricks we’ve never seen,” Krissy replied.
Lloyd cast her a sharp look. “You’re surprisingly blasé about this.”
Krissy laughed. “I’m alive, my father is alive, Bes is dead. This is an outcome I can live with.”
“That’s almost treasonous,” Lloyd said.
“Almost,” Krissy nodded in agreement.
“Something’s happening,” one of the civilian engineers called out. “The ring’s moving!”
Krissy’s eyes snapped to the main holotank. Sure enough, a control thruster on the ring was firing, turning it just as Sabrina’s mysterious new mirror touched the ball of negative energy on the focal line.
And then the ship was gone.
A wave of panic washed over her. “Was it destroyed? What happened?”
“No…it just changed their destination,” the engineer replied. “It’ s…”
“What is it?” Krissy snapped.
“Their destination…it’s extragalactic.”
PERSEUS ARM
STELLAR DATE: 07.22.8938 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Unknown
REGION: Milky Way Galaxy
Finaeus cried out.
Jessica replied.
From what she could see there was nothing outside the ship. Not the same sort of nothing as the dark layer. That was still a plane of existence. Here, as far as scan could tell, nothing existed beyond the small bubble of space wrapped around the ship.
Finaeus asked, desperation in his voice.
Nance said over the shipnet.
Finaeus let loose a string of curses that almost made no sense, unless he was naming every deity in some pantheon Jessica had never heard of.
Cargo asked.
Finaeus said.
Jessica said.
Finaeus shouted back.
Trevor said.
Nance suggested.
Finaeus asked.
Jessica didn’t want to know what ‘or worse’ could be, and didn’t ask.
Cargo ordered.
Nance reported.
An instant later, regular space snapped back into place around the ship and Jessica let out a long sigh of relief.
A field of stars never looked so beautiful.
And unrecognizable.
she asked.
Iris said.
Sabrina reported.
Iris announced.
Several voices yelled at once.
* * * * *
Breathable air had been restored to the ship, and the reactors were running on minimum, slowly charging the SC Batts while the ship cooled down.
The crew—minus Cheeky who was still unconscious, and Piya, who had written herself into static storage and couldn’t be re-initialized until Cheeky’s brain had recovered—were assembled on the bridge.
“I still can’t believe it,” Nance said. “Perseus. We have to be at least nine-thousand light-years from New Canaan now.”
“Way to go, Finaeus,” Trevor chuckled.
Cargo scowled at him. “It’s really not that funny.”
Trevor shrugged. “I’m just happy to be alive, and not adrift in the intergalactic void. Considering our options over the previous couple of hours were jail, being blown up, disappearing into a black hole, getting blown up again, being smashed into bits by negative energy, or dying a slow death in the deep black, the Perseus Arm is practically a miracle.”
A smile crept across Cargo’s face and he began to laugh. “Well…when you put it that way.”
Jessica began to chuckle, and Finaeus joined in, and then Nance and Trevor. A minute later everyone was still laughing their asses off when Sabrina broke in.
“Sorry,” Jessica gasped. “We’re just all really glad to still be alive, I guess.”
Sabrina said.
“Oh really?” Finaeus asked. “Settlements out this far? You realize what that means, right?”
Jessica did. “We’re in Orion space and at least twenty years from home.”
“Bingo.”
“Then we have some time on our hands,” Jessica grinned. “Join me in our cabin, would you, Trevor?”
* * * * *
Nance couldn’t sleep.
The events of the last day filled her mind, making it feel as though it would burst. Somehow, Erin seemed oblivious to it, off with the other AI, doing whatever it was they did in their little Expanse on Sabrina.
But she knew what she did.
There had been no stealth ship at Gisha Station, and no incoming fire from Bes’s destroyer. That had been her doing, as had the enlarged opening in the stasis shield that allowed the TSF soldiers to attack, and finally the solution that had helped Finaeus get the Ford-Svaiter mirror to work.
Except it hadn’t been her. It had been the thing inside of her, the thing put there by the entity she had met so long ago on Senzee station.
The Caretaker.
THE END
Jessica and the crew of Sabrina are a long way from home, on the far edges of human expansion. Now, faced with a twenty-year journey to New Canaan, they must first repair their ship, help Cheeky recover, and figure out the best route home.
A route that starts with a little trip to a place Jessica likes to think of as The World at the Edge of Space.
Pick up The World at the Edge of Space for just $2.99 on
Amazon.
If you’re looking for another quick read, and haven’t checked out Rika Mechanized yet, it’s a great start to a new part of the Aeon 14 universe.
THANK YOU
If you’ve enjoyed reading The Gate at the Grey Wolf Star, a review on Amazon.com and/or goodreads.com would be greatly appreciated.
To get the latest news and access to free novellas and short stories, sign up on the Aeon 14 mailing list: www.aeon14.com/signup.
M. D. Cooper
BOOKS BY M. D. COOPER
Aeon 14
The Intrepid Saga
Book 1: Outsystem
Book 2: A Path in the Darkness
Book 3: Building Victoria
The Intrepid Saga Omnibus – Also contains Destiny Lost, book 1 of the Orion War series
Destiny Rising – Special Author’s Extended Edition comprised of both Outsystem and A Path in the Darkness with over 100 pages of new content.
The Orion War
Book 1: Destiny Lost
Tales of the Orion War: Set the Galaxy on Fire
Book 2: New Canaan
Book 3: Orion Rising
Tales of the Orion War: Ignite the Stars Within (Fall 2017)
Tales of the Orion War: Burn the Galaxy to Ash (Fall 2017)
Book 4: Starfire (coming in 2018)
Book 5: Return to Sol (coming in 2018)
Visit www.aeon14.com/orionwar to learn what’s next in the Orion War.
Perilous Alliance (Expanded Orion War - with Chris J. Pike)
Book 1: Close Proximity
Book 2: Strike Vector (August 2017)
Book 3: Collision Course (October 2017)
Rika’s Marauders (Age of the Orion War)
Prequel: Rika Mechanized
Book 1: Rika Outcast (August 2017)