Precipice of Darkness Read online

  “Yeah, we got past that…eventually. He did it for the right reasons—well, technically he wasn’t even the one to have done it. Either way, he said he had a grand new adventure, one last flight into the black.”

  “How’d that turn out for ya?” one of the onlookers called out.

  “Well, I’m still out here. Not sure if this counts as the same ongoing adventure, or if I’ve had a few since the Intrepid set sail. Oh ho! My date has arrived. Sorry, folks, I’ll have to save the rest for another time. I can’t keep a lady waiting.”

  he sent privately to Sera.

 

  He continued to dismiss his assembled listeners while replying to Sera.

  “OK, If I’m here another day, I’ll swing by again. No promises, though,” Jason said as he pushed through the crowd toward Sera. “Just let me settle up my tab—”

  Sera asked, as the crowd thundered that he had no tab so far as they were concerned.

  he replied with an apologetic smile.

  Sera continued pushing through the crowd, which parted when the patrons realized who she was.

  When she reached Jason’s side, she turned to the throng. “To be honest, I want to hear his stories as much as you do. I’m willing to share him for the evening if you still want to hear more…”

  The crowd roared in the affirmative, and she turned to Jason.

  “So where were you?”

  He shook his head and leapt back onto his chair. “OK…where was I? By the way, you’ll all forgive me if I paint myself in a slightly better light to impress my girl here, won’t you?”

  The question was met by laughter and a few catcalls, which quieted down when Jason lifted his hands.

  “OK, so my buddy Terrance wanted me to fly this bloody big starship out to 82 Eridani—you folks did good work there, from what I hear, not that I ever got to see it. Anyway, that ship was being built in Sol, but I was back at Alpha Centauri again. And like always, there was a mess that seemed like only I could clean it up. Luckily, some of my old friends were still there, and we teamed up for one last adventure under the twin suns….”

  THE MARCH

  STELLAR DATE: 09.27.8949 (Adjusted Years)

  LOCATION: TSS Cossack’s Sword, Edge of the Quera System

  REGION: Midway Cluster, Orion Freedom Alliance Space

  Admiral Sebastian began speaking the moment he entered the conference room.

  “OK, I know we didn’t have to utterly crush them, but I also don’t think we needed to let that many get away.”

  General Lorelai sat next to him and nodded slowly, but didn’t respond.

  Colonel Caldwell was also seated at the table, sipping a hot cup of coffee. Other than his initial greeting, the taciturn man hadn’t said a word while they’d waited for Sebastian to arrive.

  Now, at the admiral’s words, he looked up from his cup and shrugged. “We denied them the system and got their attention. We suffered one loss and gathered valuable intelligence. I consider this to be quite the victory.”

  “Annihilation would have been a better victory.” Sebastian’s tone was sour as he sat heavily. “We could have done it.”

  “Probably,” Svetlana replied with a nod. “But we want to sow chaos. The Quera System is too isolated to do that. Now these ships will disperse to one or more nearby systems to rally and get ready to fight us once more.”

  “They don’t stand a chance, why—” Sebastian cut off his response mid-word. “Oh, shit. I’m such an idiot.”

  “No need to go that far,” General Lorelai said with a wink.

  “You want them to think that we don’t have the stamina to go the distance,” Sebastian said, shaking his head as he gestured for a servitor to bring him a coffee.

  “Glad you picked up on it.” Svetlana summoned a display of the surrounding systems on the table’s projector. “They’re going to assume that we’ll move to one of these three systems, and they’ll believe that they have a chance of defending them against us.”

  “They just might, if they have enough of those EMG ships,” Caldwell murmured. “Those things are ridiculous.”

  “And as much a liability as a weapon,” Svetlana replied.

  “You can bet they’re not going to station them too close to a planet next time.” Admiral Sebastian lifted his cup of coffee and took a long draught. “But my team analyzed the beam cohesion. They can shoot a lot further than the standard ranges.”

  “Fleet Intel has come to the same conclusion.” Svetlana folded her hands before herself as she spoke. “Shield-breaching range could be as far as five million kilometers.”

  Sebastian whistled. “Yeah, things’ll hit you half a second after you see them.”

  “We have fighters. We should use them more effectively,” Caldwell said. “Deploy them ahead, widespread. If there are EMGs, they can’t hit that many fighters—can’t even see them at few million klicks. Fighters will make short work of ships like that.”

  Svetlana nodded slowly. She was still getting used to having fighters as a major part of her battlegroup. For so long, they hadn’t been practical—unable to house powerplants large enough to support good shields.

  But now with stasis shielding, her fighters were well nigh invincible, and far more maneuverable than capital ships.

  “You’re right. I need to have Colton and Lia more involved in future strategies. Our TR-9s are more deadly than an Oggie destroyer now.”

  “So which of these three closest systems do we hit next?” Admiral Sebastian asked.

  “Half-wish we could strike all three at once,” Colonel Caldwell mused.

  Svetlana shook her head. “Too risky. If something goes wrong, we’re cut off, and we’re already severely outnumbered. I think the Sullus System is our best bet. Admiral Jessica passed through there, and we have solid intel on it.”

  “You thinking we hit this outpost here?” General Lorelai asked, enlarging the system view and gesturing to a station orbiting a terrestrial world in the outer system.

  Svetlana nodded. “We’ll jump in stealthed and move the fleet into strike positions around the system before launching our attacks. Military targets, strike and run. That’ll keep the insystem forces chasing us while you hit your target, Lorelai, and get us more intel on opportunities in the vicinity.”

  A grin lit up the general’s face. “Sounds like a party. What is it you like to say? ‘Let’s get this show on the road’!”

  Svetlana nodded, considering paying a visit to her father. It would be nice to get his thoughts on this plan.

  THE RIVER STYX

  STELLAR DATE: 10.01.8949 (Adjusted Years)

  LOCATION: Sabrina approaching Styx Baby-9

  REGION: STX-B17 Black Hole, Transcend Interstellar Alliance

  Jen said with a note of derision in her voice, as Cheeky shifted Sabrina into a lower orbit around the dark gas giant.

  “I kinda like it,” Cheeky said with a soft giggle. “I mean, I’ve docked at a lot of stations, but never had a berth at a place with ‘baby’ in the name.”

  “You should take the SS Sexy out and get it its own berth,” Fina said from where she sat with her legs draped over the scan console—since she’d opted for flowmetal limbs, ‘draped’ was a very apt description. “Then you could call it the ‘Sexy Baby’.

  “Pretty sure it got called that a few times over the years, anyway,” Finaeus commented, giving his head a slow shake. “Damn sweet pinnace, too. Especially with the alterations I made.”

  Nance called up from her station in engineering. like then, you’re on the bridge hobnobbing, and I’m down here doing all the work.>

  “I’m not crew on this mission,” Finaeus replied with a sniff. “Just here to spend some time with my wife.”

  “Liar.” Cheeky cast a mock glare over her shoulder. “You told me last night that you’d punch a god in the dick to find out how Earnest figured out to set up jump gates in a gravity well like this. I’m playing second fiddle to your curiosity.”

  “Well, seriously.” Finaeus gestured at the forward view. “Fucking planet’s nine jovian masses, and we’re in orbit of a stars-be-damned black hole! There should be…one, maybe two viable jump vectors out of here…and none from below the cloudtops. But freakin’ Earnest has successfully jumped drones on seven hundred different vectors.”

  “You sound jealous, Uncle Fin,” Seraphina said through lips that were threatening to twitch into a smile.

  “Fucking right, I’m jealous. I invented this technology—well, I was the first one to get it to work, at least. Earnest Redding is a freak of nature.”

  “You know what this means?” Cheeky glanced back at Nance and Finaeus. “If it works here, it should work at Star City.”

  Finaeus blew out a long breath. “Yeah. Earnest sent his new models to me before we left the I2, and I ran them for the gravity wells around Star City. It’ll work. Hell, they could put gates right inside the sphere.”

  “Before this is all over, I really want to go see that place,” Sera said, trying not to sound too wistful. “Must be amazing.”

  “Thing like Star City puts the FGT out of business,” Finaeus replied.

  “Or puts us in a whole new business,” Seraphina countered. “You’re just jealous you didn’t think of a reverse dyson sphere first.”

  “Maybe…” Finaeus chuckled while shaking his head. “You know…every human we know of could fit on ten of those with generations of room to spare. Still wish we could have met the builders—now that was vision.”

  Sabrina asked as the ship slotted into its final approach vector.

  “That’s a good question,” Sera said. “I suppose we get onto the Airthan ring and figure out how to target all of her nodes. If we can’t introduce some sort of counter to her, we’ll have to blow them, or maybe see if Bob can make an appearance.”

  “Which means we have to take out the EMGs she has defending the place,” Seraphina replied. “Airtha made those specifically to guard against the I2. I think she seriously fears Bob.”

  “There’s the beginnings of Plan B, then,” Sera said, as Sabrina dipped into the cloudtops of the gas giant.

  Sabrina said.

  “Sorry, Sabs,” Cheeky said as she monitored their approach. “Just have to get through a few hundred klicks of this mire, then we’ll be at the station.”

  No one spoke further, as the ship continued to plunge, dropping deeper and deeper into clouds of frozen ammonia and nitrogen. Then a glow appeared ahead of the ship, gradually increasing in brightness until light exploded around them.

  “Now this is a secret base,” Sera said with a laugh as she surveyed the massive structure drifting in the center of a hundred-kilometer bubble within the planet’s clouds.

  Though the construction of Styx Baby-9 had only begun a few weeks prior, it was already large enough to dock fifty TSF capital ships.

  The plan for the station was to create a docking grid that could funnel fuel and supplies to ships as needed, and then send them through the jump gates mounted at the end of the structure. When completed, it would be able to support over ten thousand capital ships, providing services from refit to refuel in a matter of days before sending them back out.

  Long spires jutted out from the station’s grid—it was toward one of those that Sabrina was headed—while on the far side of the station, long shafts dropped down into the planet, disappearing into the roiling clouds below.

  “You have no idea how many beers I owe Earnest,” Finaeus muttered. “The guy’s such a show-off. I bet he’s pulling liquid metallic hydrogen right from the core of the planet. He’s been talking about how he could use some new technique he’s all hush-hush about to transmute that into other elements as it exits its superfluid state—provided that there are enough neutrons in the slurry.”

  “You’re saying he’s transmuting matter from the planet’s core to build the station?” Sera asked.

  “More or less,” Finaeus grunted. “That’s my guess, at least. The bastard.”

  No one spoke for a minute as Finaeus’s scowl deepened. Then everyone on the bridge, barring the ancient engineer, burst into tear-inducing laughter.

  THE LMC

  STELLAR DATE: 10.02.8949 (Adjusted Years)

  LOCATION: Interstellar Pinnace, Approaching Jump Gate Array 9A9

  REGION: Troy, New Canaan System

  Cary was still more than a little surprised that her father had agreed to let her take Kent to the Aleutian Site in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Granted, he had layered on a goodly number of requirements and restrictions.

  The first requirement he had was that Saanvi and Faleena accompany her.

  Faleena had been more than eager to travel outside the galaxy. Her exact words were, “If you didn’t bring me along, I’d’ve secretly re-implanted myself in you.”

  The prospect of asking Saanvi had worried Cary. She knew her sister was busy with her schoolwork at the academy, and was also helping the StarFlight group with several aspects of the new field generators that would alter where Canaan Prime outputted the energy from the fusion at the star’s core. However, even before she had finished asking, Saanvi was screaming for joy and jumping into the air.

  “Are you kidding me?!” her sister had hollered at the top of her lungs. “Who wouldn’t want to go to another galaxy?”

  Cary had asked Saanvi privately over the Link, while the pair was in their quarters’ common room—hoping to keep the information a secret—but Amy had been in her room, and overheard Saanvi’s excited screams.

  “Another galaxy?” she’d asked, poking her head out from her room, eyes wide and filled with concern. “Are you leaving me?”

  Those events—combined with a few others—were what led to Cary now sitting in the pilot’s seat of an interstellar pinnace with Faleena, Saanvi, Amy, and Kent.

  And a platoon of ISF Marines.

  Most notably was the Marine standing directly behind Kent. Lieutenant Joshua Mason wore a grim expression along with his fully powered armor, feet maglocked to the deck and a hand on the back of Kent’s chair as Cary eased the ship toward its assigned jump gate.

  Kent leant forward and tapped the viewscreen. “Looks real, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t trap me in a VR sim. There’s no way I’d be able to tell—especially with my Link removed.”

  “It’s not a sim,” Cary said for what she guessed to be the seventh time. “You’re about to jump out of the galaxy. This is the real deal.”

  “Yeah?” Kent glanced over his shoulder at Amy. “You often bring kids on your extragalactic jaunts? And don’t you think a whole platoon is a bit much for little ol’ me?”

  “We’re here to protect them from you,” Lieutenant Mason grunted out the words. “You so much as twitch in any one of these girls’ direction, and I tear a limb off your body. You get to pick which one, though.”

  “How magnanimous of you,” Kent muttered.

  Cary asked privately.

  Lieutenant Mason replied equably.

  Cary sighed and nodded, knowing that her father likely had given Mason a goo
d talking to before the mission.

  “We have clearance from the STC,” Saanvi announced. “Light is green.”

  Ahead of them, space boiled within the ring, forming a spherical non-space bubble that was the terminator and origin of the singularity they were about to stretch across space.

  Cary eased the ship forward, carefully watching actuals and ensuring they matched her preprogrammed path. Vector was important on any jump, but it was exceedingly important on an intergalactic jump.

  A moment before the pinnace’s Ford-Svaiter mirror touched the not-space, Kent peered at the viewscreen, craning his neck to the right. “Is that the Britannica?”

  Then New Canaan disappeared, replaced by the nothing of the gate’s transition as the singularity was stretched across the galaxy and beyond.

  “You have the Britannica?” Kent pressed.

  “Yes,” Saanvi replied absently. “We captured it in the Defense of Carthage. Same as all the other Oggie ships—well, those that survived.”

  “And Garza was aboard?” Kent asked, his tone earnest, almost frantic.

  “He was,” Cary nodded. “Surely you’d heard we had Garza; I recall that the interrogators let it slip deliberately.”

  Kent’s hand sliced through the air in front of himself in a dismissive arc. “Yeah, but I thought that was a clone.”

  Cary twisted around to face the man, glad for the diversion from the time the intergalactic jump was taking.

  I wonder how lo—

  “Seventeen seconds more,” Saanvi announced.

  Cary sent to her sister.

  Saanvi asked.

 

  She snorted.

  Cary shot Saanvi a dirty look, only to see her grinning back.

 

  Then the meaning behind Kent’s words struck her.

  “Wait…you know about the clones?”

  Kent shrugged. “Sure, it was common knowledge on the Britannica that General Garza had obtained the cloning and memory-reintegration technology from the Hegemony of Worlds—it all started after their president sent a clone to watch the staged battle in Ascella.”