Storm Between the Stars: Book 1 in the Fall of the Censor Read online

  Storm Between the Stars

  Book 1 of The Fall of the Censor

  Karl K. Gallagher

  © 2020 Karl K. Gallagher.

  All Rights Reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Published by Kelt Haven Press, Saginaw, TX.

  Cover art and design by Stephanie G. Folse of Augusta Scarlet, LLC: www.scarlettebooks.com.

  Editing by Laura Gallagher.

  3D spaceship model and interior art by Winchell Chung

  To those actually building rockets to take us to the stars.

  Merchant Ship Azure Tarn

  Storm Between the Stars

  “All stations report readiness for survey,” ordered Captain Niko Landry.

  “Navigation, sightings and inertial coordinates agree to seven digits.”

  “Power, ready for surge.”

  The rest of the bridge crew made their reports. “Proceed with survey pulse,” Landry said.

  The power and sensor techs went down the checklist as they prepared to shunt maximum power to the radar dish.

  Landry listened with half his attention while he watched the clouds of hyperspace through the bridge windows. To his eyes the near-zero density formations looked the same as the solid ones. It took a radar pulse to see which his ship could fly through and which would smash her to bits.

  “Bringing full power on line—now!” said Welly, the power tech.

  On previous survey points this had triggered whines and creaks from overstressed machinery. This time the bridge lights went out. Along with the artificial gravity.

  Emergency lights came on, drowned out by the glow of hyperspace. Buckles clicked as lazy crew hastily fastened their belts.

  Captain Landry silently counted to ten as he watched his feet drift up from the deck. When the power tech still hadn’t said anything he prompted, “Welly?”

  “Working it, Skipper. Generator is down, we’re running on batteries.”

  Batteries were obviously working since all the bridge consoles still functioned. Landry started counting again.

  “Circuit breakers aren’t tripped. The generator was producing power up to ninety percent of max. Then it went to zero.”

  “Right. I’ll go aft and check on that.” Landry unbuckled from his seat. “First mate, you have the con.”

  “Aye-aye, Captain,” said Lane Landry from the Comm station. Having his wife as first mate was a good way to run a family-owned ship. Keeping their interactions formal on duty was a good way to reassure the crew they were staying professional.

  Once he closed the bridge hatch Landry arrowed down the corridor faster than he’d tolerate any of the crew going. If the artificial gravity came back on he’d be in danger of a broken wrist or worse. But he suspected there wasn’t much danger of that happening without warning.

  Landry could hear shouting through the closed engine room hatch. He sighed and flung it open.

  “—was one job you could do without me watching you! Just pour in the lube, check the dipstick, done!” Gander kept bellowing as his apprentice tried to get a word in to defend himself. The clang of the hatch didn’t stop him either. “You gotta get the details right!”

  Landry broke in. “Chief!”

  Gander muttered, “Keep your mouth shut,” at the apprentice then turned around. “Yes, Captain?”

  His tone was neutral. The chief engineer was properly deferential elsewhere in the ship. In this compartment he considered himself in charge.

  Captain Landry let it slide. “What’s with the generator?”

  “Fumbles here”—a thumb indicated the apprentice—“only gave the generator half the lubricant it needed. It seized up.”

  “I didn’t know there was a second lube tank!” burst out young Tets.

  “Keep yer mouth shut in front of the captain! We gotta dismount it and replace some bearings. Should take an hour or three.”

  “Very well. Get started. The sooner we finish the survey the sooner we’ll be home again. Need any more hands to speed it up?”

  “No, we’ve got it.” Gander turned to the generator housing. “Gimme a three-quarters.”

  Tets flew across the compartment to the wrench rack. He grabbed the right one as he bounced off the bulkhead, putting it right into Gander’s palm.

  Landry watched them work. Tets watched closely, bagging each bolt as Gander popped it out. I guess monkey-see, monkey-do will serve as training. It’ll have to unless Gander learns to explain things.

  He decided to go back through the cargo hold to see if anything had come loose with the gravity out.

  The emergency lights left the hold full of shadows. Two flashlights darted among the stacked crates like fireflies.

  One popped into the open. “Hi, Dad!”

  Glare.

  “I mean, good afternoon, Captain.” Marcus Landry flushed, visible even under the emergency lights.

  “Afternoon. What’re you doing?”

  Marcus’ assistant cargo handler popped up. She had the sense to not shine her light in his eyes. “Just checking the tie-downs, sir. Making sure nothing’s loose in free-fall.”

  “And Alys suggested more practice in zero-g maneuvering,” added Marcus.

  The captain translated that as playing tag to sneak in some grab-ass. But they didn’t have much else to do right now. “Don’t let me interfere with the inspection.”

  “Yessir,” they chorused. This time they took diverging paths through the maze.

  Landry drifted along the ceiling of the hold. The cargo was an eclectic mix of machinery, toys, and luxury goods. When a hauling job had fallen through he’d sunk most of his savings into buying speculative goods for a run to Svalbard. Then this survey gig popped up and he’d grabbed it. So instead of collecting hundreds of marks in interest his savings were gathering dust in the hold.

  The survey charter is buying me some time, Captain Landry thought, but I need to find a way to make some real money or the payments on the ship will eat me alive. When we get back to civilization I need to find a speculative venture we can take on.

  Well, if the survey took too long they’d have to make a resupply stop on Svalbard or Iolite. He could sell the junk then. “Silver linings everywhere,” he muttered.

  The forward ladder took him back to the bridge. “Power generator’s under repair,” he announced. “Everyone take a break. Be back in ninety minutes.”

  ***

  Gander’s voice rang over the PA. “Generator back on line. Power in one minute.”

  Landry thumbed the intercom button on his chair. “Thank you, chief.”

  It was a bit over a minute when the lights came back on. A few moments later his feet dropped to the deck.

  Welly sighed and put away the bag she’d been holding open.

  Hums and whirs indicated more equipment coming on line. Red indicators on consoles turned green.

  “Run basic diagnostics,” ordered Landry. “Let’s make sure the power drop didn’t break anything.”

  The only problem found was an auxiliary navigation processor needing a reboot. Landry concealed a smile. No problems would leave the crew grumbling about wasted time. One problem was perfect.

  With the ship back in running order they repeated the survey routine. This time nothing interrupted. The overhead lights flickered as the sensor dish fired a pulse of radio waves into hyperspace.

  The senso
r tech’s console lit up as returning echoes created an image of the shoals.

  Hyperspace was full of clouds. Some were wisps that a ship could fly through without slowing. Others were shoals. A ship striking one would be as wrecked as if it ran into solid rock.

  Eyeballing clouds couldn’t tell the difference. You could fly a ship through empty space without radar but you’d always run into a cloud before reaching another star. Wisps and shoals looked the same. Color, glow, shadows, flickering lightning all appeared in both.

  Surveys were critical for maintaining the safety of shipping lanes. An ordinary freighter didn’t have the radar power to spot a shifting shoal in its path. High-traffic zones had dedicated survey cutters checking for intrusions.

  Zero-traffic zones, such as the wall enclosing the Fieran Bubble, could be left to tramp freighters with oversized military surplus radars. It wasn’t quite charity work. The walls had to be checked every few years in case a shoal started moving toward inhabited regions. But it wasn’t urgent. Their homeworld had been trapped in the Bubble for centuries, cut off from the rest of the human race by a solid sphere of shoals. The fear was that they’d close in and leave the three worlds in the Bubble only able to reach each other through years-long trips in normal space.

  “Welly, did you have a power drop out during the scan?” demanded Betty, the sensor tech.

  “Huh? No, it was a clean draw.”

  “It’s not a clean scan. Looks like the radar didn’t transmit for the middle third.”

  Welly just shrugged.

  Captain Landry broke in before Betty could ramp up the argument. “Run the scan again. Watch your power throughput.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Betty repeated the scan. The radar swept the bow quadrant from port to starboard. “Okay, power’s steady. But look at that.”

  Captain Landry unfastened his seat belt and took two steps to stand behind her. The center display on the sensor console compared the radar returns to the plot of the last survey mission five years ago.

  Most of it showed small displacements, the typical amount they’d seen in the past three weeks of survey work. The center had a roughly triangular zone with no return at all.

  “Looks like a cove formed,” said Landry.

  “Deep enough to have no return at all?”

  The navigator had the data echoed on her screen. “There was already a dimple in the wall there. It’s been five years since the last survey of this stretch. Plenty of time for big changes.”

  “I didn’t ask you, Soon,” retorted Betty.

  The captain raised his hand to avert another argument. “We’ll go in and look for the bottom. Helm, ahead slow. Sensors, do a short range full sphere scan. Let me know if you see any visible movement.” Landry returned to his chair. If there was any sign of the cove closing up again he’d reverse course at full speed.

  Betty and Roger responded, “Aye-aye.”

  Roger steered them down the centerline of the cove. Wisps of fog obscured the view. He relied on radar data and suggestions from Soon.

  An empty patch let them see the walls of the cove. It was a boring bit of hyperspace. The walls were smooth, like a pale orange stratus cloud folded into a prism.

  “I’m detecting motion, sir,” said Betty.

  Landry sat up straight. “Where?”

  She pointed out the port window. “That wall is receding just barely enough to measure.”

  “I like receding,” said Roger. He kept the ship aimed down the centerline.

  A cloud waited for them. Radar said it was just a wisp so they entered. Lightning flickered off to starboard, too far away to affect them.

  “Whoa!” Betty fiddled with her displays. “The shoals just widened out.”

  Roger’s hand tensed on the throttle lever. “Safe to proceed?”

  “Yeah, plenty of room.”

  They broke out of the wisp into the clear.

  Everyone was silent as they stared out.

  They could see farther than they ever had before. Glowing cloud banks marked where stars might lay in normal space. A dark thunderhead might indicate a black hole, if the theories the academy taught were true. More clouds cast shadows, changing the pastel blues and pinks and yellows to deeper colors.

  “Are we . . . out of the Bubble?” asked Roger.

  Captain Landry replied, “Yes. Helm, all stop.”

  “All stop, aye.”

  Then there was more silence.

  A streak of lightning leapt from the dark thunderhead. It zig-zagged through an arch of pale purple cumulus then lit the edge of a green horsetail before grounding out in the puffy mounds surrounding a sun.

  The far side of the volume was indistinct. Clouds of all varieties overlapped. Glows were too faint to tell their cause from here.

  Some clouds were drifting. Probably wisps. Shoals moved slowly if at all.

  There were no ships close enough to see.

  “Comm, are you picking up any traffic?”

  “Nothing digital,” answered Lane Landry. “The high energy signals I’ve listened to have all been stellar noise.”

  “Right. Sensors, make a spherical scan.”

  Betty and Roger worked together to rotate the ship between each radar pulse. It took twelve shots to cover the sky.

  “Sir, the hole we came out of is in a rough wall. Other than that, there’s nothing close enough to give us a return.”

  “Thank you.”

  Captain Landry picked up his mike and pressed the PA button. “All hands, crew meeting in the galley.”

  Azure Tarn’s galley had a clear geodesic dome over it. The sales copy for the ship described it as an attraction for passengers. Landry considered it another sign the designers couldn’t make up their mind what they wanted the ship to be.

  The bridge crew were slow to tear themselves away from the view. The mechanics and cargo handlers were already there when they arrived.

  Gander stood with his head tilted back, glaring at the new suns. Tets lay on the floor wearing a broad smile. Marcus and Alys slouched in chairs to look out the dome.

  She was leaning toward him, Landry noted with no change in his expression. That’s a complication I don’t need.

  The bridge crew found seats and resumed staring.

  Several minutes went by.

  “How long has it been?” asked Alys.

  Marcus answered, “Over nine hundred years.”

  “Nine hundred and fifty-seven,” corrected Soon. “Francis University is planning a commemoration for the one thousandth anniversary of Arrival.”

  “We can rejoin the human race.” Alys’ voice had a dreamy tone.

  “If any of them survived,” rasped Gander. “It was a hell of a war our ancestors fled. Might have killed everyone. Did your textbook have the picture of the last evacuation ship? The half ship the Gap closed on?”

  “Yes,” said Lane calmly. “We all saw that. But there’s been wars in the Bubble and we survived.”

  “We can’t be sure anyone else survived the Great War,” said Gander.

  “Could be a good opportunity for us if they didn’t,” said his apprentice from the floor. “Imagine what’s lying in the ruins to be picked up.”

  Marcus laughed. “Guarded by mutant monsters?”

  “This isn’t one of your fantasy games,” said Captain Landry. “If we find a depopulated planet we’re not landing on it. I want no part of any war plagues.”

  Betty started. “We’re not going to go back and report, sir?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “We can’t go back!” Tets pushed himself up to sitting. “This is our chance to be famous. The first people to recontact the rest of humanity—or prove they’re gone—we’d be remembered forever.”

  “Fame doesn’t pay the bills. But there ought to be chances for profit there. Our cargo is discount ware at home but it’ll be exotic out there.” Landry waved at the dome.

  “Or technology has advanced so far they’ll co
nsider it trash,” said his wife, wearing her first mate hat now.

  “That’s one of the risks, yes.”

  Alys hadn’t taken her eyes off the dome. “If they advanced far enough they could have transcended. Not be humans any more, but gods.”

  “Ha!” Roger laughed. “That’s ridiculous. Our technology has been advancing. They can’t be that far ahead of us.”

  Lane Landry kept her voice gentle. “Our advances are rediscovering what was lost. The Evacuation Fleet didn’t have enough people to maintain their technology base. What progress we did make was interrupted by wars and the horrid flare. We’re barely ahead of what the Evacuation fled from.”

  “If they’re that far ahead we can sell our stuff to historians,” said Soon.

  “Good thought,” said the captain. “How long would it take us to get to the nearest stars?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “I don’t have a distance. But if we run along the wall for a day I’ll have enough parallax to make an estimate.”

  “Good.”

  Betty burst out, “Wait! If we go exploring aren’t we violating our contract?”

  The first mate held up a tablet. “The contract requires us to fully measure all deviations from the previous survey. So technically we need to survey all that before we’re done.” She waved at the cloudscape.

  “I think they’ll forgive that lack of compliance,” said the captain with a chuckle. “Let’s start on that parallax run. Survey shifts are over. We’re back on watch rotation.

  Gander made a face. Landry wasn’t sympathetic. If he’d hired a second mechanic like I told him to he wouldn’t have to work twelve hour shifts.

  ***

  A day later parallax revealed that one of the dimmer stars was only a week’s cruise away. Azure Tarn set out for it.

  Most of the crew was looking forward to seeing what they’d find. Betty needed a talking to from the first mate before she’d shut up about death traps and contract violations. Gander grumbled as well but he was always complaining about something, so Landry didn’t fret over it.