War of the Spheres Read online

  “No! No, no, no!” he sharply interrupted. “No self-examining ‘investigation’ is going to happen. The perpetrator isn’t going to cover his own tracks. Not this time. I’ve got my own investigators on the task. In short, your questionable services, Chief Gray, are not needed in my domain!”

  “Uh…” Hughes said. “I’m afraid I must differ with that, sir. He’s still my security chief. I have no replacement.”

  “I’ll provide one. No charge—my budget, not yours. We can ship Mr. Gray back to Earth on the next shuttle.”

  “Excuse me—it’s Chief Gray,” I interjected. They both ignored me.

  “Unacceptable,” Hughes said. “He’s been cleared. I have no one else.”

  “You have Major Knox.”

  “No… he’s staying here on Luna.”

  That was news to me, but I didn’t argue. I just looked mildly at both of them.

  Niederman looked enraged for a moment, but then, suddenly, his face cleared. That fake smile grew back on his blubbery lips like a weed patch after a spring rain.

  “All right then. He’s all yours. We’ll talk about this later, Colonel.”

  That was it. We were kicked out of his office like problematic children.

  Out in the passageway, I glanced at Hughes. “You kind of threw me to the wolves in there.”

  “The mission comes first. You were a handy scapegoat—but you survived the sacrifice. I knew you could take it. Congratulations, in any case.”

  “You might have warned me.”

  “Hmm… yes. He took it even worse than I thought he would.”

  “What’s pissing Niederman off so badly? The destroyed patrol boat? The alien attack in general?”

  “No… neither of those. There’s something you might not know… that raider had a crew… and one of them was related to Niederman.”

  “Oh…” I said, feeling a pang of regret. “So his son was killed?”

  “His nephew, I think it was.”

  “But he can’t really blame us for that. The aliens did it.”

  “I know—he’s been advised of the alien contact. He just doesn’t believe it.”

  “It is a lot to absorb at once...”

  She nodded her head. “We have little proof. Some blood samples, some dark, streaky security vids. Too bad they took their dead with them when they dimension-slipped back off our ship.”

  “What about on the patrol boat?”

  She shook her head again. “Nothing. The destroyer we called back to help ran down the wreckage and did a complete analysis. They didn’t find much. The whole ship had been roasted in flame and radiation.”

  “Right…” I said, heaving a small sigh.

  This was a setback, that was for certain. We’d gotten the cargo to Luna Station, but in the process we’d alienated the local brass. Hopefully, that wouldn’t interfere with the next step of the mission.

  “Where are we headed now?” I asked, noticing we weren’t walking toward Quark’s docking bay, or the main hub of the station.

  She gave me a smile.

  “I’m going to show you where that engine of ours is going,” she said.

  We stopped our bouncing march, and I looked around. A large vaulted door stood nearby with heavy security.

  It was thick—like a bank vault. From the look of it, it was lead-lined, too. After identifying ourselves to the guard-bots, we went inside the vault and found a bulbous contraption that resembled a deep-sea submarine.

  “Could this be the curiously-named Fairweather?” I asked her.

  “Yes. Come inside—I suppose you’ve earned it.”

  Chapter 17

  We were crouching above the open hatchway of a dark and weirdly bulbous vessel. It seemed very small and round for a deep-space vehicle, and could easily have passed for a large deep-sea diving vehicle.

  “Look, duty calls and quite soon,” she told me. “You have my undivided attention for a short while. Let’s make it count.”

  I could tell by the expression on her face this was true, and that the advice was solid.

  “Okay,” I said. “My first impression is that the craft itself is very compact—I was expecting more of a traditional and elongated ship.”

  “How typical…” she said and offered nothing more.

  “Come on,” I said coaxing her, “let’s be professional.”

  She glanced at me sharply, but she didn’t ask what I was talking about. I think she knew. Immediately, she donned a professional approach.

  “Your observation is quite astute, Chief Gray,” she said. “I prefer the word ‘craft’ myself in fact—and this craft is utterly unique and experimental.”

  “I’m surprised at the size... but how is it different from a conventional deep-space vessel?” I said jumping right in. I was thinking this would cut to the chase about why her ship looked like a small submarine instead of a battleship or something.

  “I’m sensing mockery beneath your expression, Chief. This is no toy, I assure you. Fairweather is a capable machine—she’s both intelligent and formidable.”

  “Is the engine installed?”

  “Not yet. That’s the key component, of course. This ship is designed to control and operate the engine.”

  “How will we all fit in here?”

  “It’s a test unit. We’ll send a crew, and if that works out, we’ll attach Fairweather to a larger ship and move the whole thing.”

  I glanced at her, more impressed.

  “Show me something amazing,” I said.

  Her eyes began to gleam as she continued. “I will. Designed as an exploration craft, she’s capable of such far-reaching range that a weapon systems retrofit is being installed—there’s no telling what she might run into.”

  “Or who?”

  “Precisely, Chief Gray. To answer your earlier question, she varies the most from typical ships in the way she gets places. Our design doesn’t need to follow the usual approach because this craft doesn’t move or perform like other vessels.”

  “But… I don’t even see an engine exhaust port anywhere.”

  “Correct. There is no engine exhaust.” She paused again.

  I waited and inquired for more with my expression. She came to some sort of conclusion in her mind.

  “I’m going to level with you Chief,” she said. “You’re a significant pain in the ass. You continually hang around and interfere with my work—not to mention seducing my team-members.”

  I began to protest, but she waved for silence.

  “Let me finish,” she said. “Having said all that, I know you’re not going anywhere, and I do have a degree of respect for you. Dr. Brandt is no push-over, and she seems to like you. In short, I’m not happy that you’re here, but I’m going to trust you with some secrets I wouldn’t tell just anybody.”

  “I appreciate that, Colonel.”

  She peered up at me for long enough to determine I wasn’t goading her, and then she led me further inside the ship. I followed, crawling down meter-wide tubeways.

  Then I heard the hatch seal behind me. The sound reminded me of a cork being forced into a bottle.

  A glance showed me that the hatch had been secured by sort of melting it into the rest of the craft. There was only a shadowy outline where the open portal had been. I’d never seen anything this advanced before—it had to be nanite technology.

  I was led down glowing passages until we came to a globe-like chamber with smooth, dark walls. Hughes took a seat in one of the swiveling chairs, so I took the other and found it surprisingly supportive and comfortable.

  “Not bad,” I said, settling in.

  “I’m a busy woman, Gray. I have no time for unnecessary discomfort. We’re sitting in the nerve center—the nucleus if you will. All systems can be accessed from here even though there is a separate bay being installed for weapons control. This is the navigational center and overall seat of command. The knowledgebase onboard is a current and exhaustive library of science, history and other da
ta.”

  “The design is very unusual.”

  “You’ve only seen the beginning,” she said. “Note that I’m now sitting in the pilot’s seat?” She indicated two joysticks that pegged up at either hand. She caressed them fondly and a distracted smile grew on her face for a second. Then, she flipped up a virtual screen and toggled something on a flat glossy dashboard.

  The walls all around us jolted to life. The hangar bay outside—Hughes had told me it was fondly known as the inner sanctum—became visible from every angle.

  “Wow,” I said, feeling like a kid at a space-launch for the first time. I couldn’t help it.

  I stared, and she let me drink in the view for a moment. We could only see the small hangar around us, but the highly defined view was remarkable. Even the stained floor below the craft was visible beneath our feet.

  “You’re sitting at the copilot’s position, Chief.”

  I was well aware she meant this figuratively as well as literally. She indicated a dark, glossy screen that was folded back out of the way of my own chair.

  I watched Hughes again as she toggled something on her dashboard, and the room shrank around us as if we were staring at every wall from an inch away. Next, my stomach lurched when the walls drew back suddenly. It appeared as if the craft itself had become miniscule in size.

  “That’s quite an illusion,” I said and pulled my own dash into view, so I could have a look at it.

  “Technically speaking, it’s not an illusion,” she said without bothering to give details. “It’s a conglomeration of live video feeds merged together.”

  “All right. Since you haven’t explained it yet, how does this ship move, anyway?”

  I was hoping to gain still more information, while keeping up the novice act. Also, I needed to do another bullshit test on Fillmore.

  Colonel Emily Hughes stood up from her chair as if she needed room to gesture. She then launched into a brief, but dizzying, torrent of physics and astronavigation. The most interesting part to me was the theory about permeating the usual barriers between dimensions. By the end, she’d given me much more than Fillmore had been willing to.

  “Sorry,” she said at the finish, “but that’s as close as I can get to a layman’s explanation.”

  “So… this dimension travel thing sounds new—who’s the expert on all that stuff?”

  “We all have some familiarity, and I know more than most, but Sean Fillmore is the real expert here.”

  “I see… So, Fillmore is more than a bag of charmless hot air? There’s something to him after all…?”

  “Yes,” she sighed, “I’m afraid so. We overlook his short-comings in character because he’s a brilliant scientist.”

  “Short-comings in character…? Ha! He’s a shameless ass.”

  “Yes… we’ve noticed that, too.”

  “Back to the main subject,” I said. “How important is dimension-jumping to your project?”

  “It’s vital, Chief—it’s the whole point. We’re going far out into the Oort cloud.”

  “Where no one has gone before?”

  “Where no one has been able to go before,” she corrected. “This is more than an exploration mission.”

  “Beyond the boundaries of the Sphere, huh? Others have tried before. What makes you so sure this ship can pull it off?”

  “Fairweather was built for the task. We’ll be following a map of electromagnetic confluence. Let me over-simplify it for you: the lattice of intersecting EM waves creates weak points that can be penetrated and thus gives us access to inter-dimensional travel.”

  “Short-cuts?”

  That’s a trite and vulgar way to put it, but yes—these points amount to short-cuts through space-time.

  “What do you make of these alien infiltrations? They seem to be using inter-dimensional travel too.”

  “It does seem likely,” she agreed. “But, they’re certainly not doing it in a manner we’re familiar with. We can’t transfer a person alone, only a ship filled with people.”

  “You sure you want to go off exploring with these hostiles around? What if they have a fleet outside our system, waiting to attack any Earth ship they see?”

  “We won’t start exploring at first, Gray. It’s almost more of a surveillance operation to infiltrate and study a particular target in far space which certain people have an interest in. We are counting on speed, surprise and being unnoticeable”

  “Really?” I said. “Well, I appreciate the time you’ve taken, and your confidence, Colonel Hughes…”

  I’d considered adding that it seemed to me like the unnoticeable part was questionable and the surprise part had failed for sure, but I didn’t want to alienate her any more than necessary.

  My mind spun with a torrent of new questions for a moment, then a sound interrupted my thoughts.

  The double doors of the inner-sanctum vault clanged loudly outside. A burst of activity erupted as a throng of excitedly chattering scientists poured in to surround Fairweather.

  I was amazed that even the sounds outside were piped into the nucleus in low tones.

  “Have you seen enough?” she asked me, smiling.

  “I’m good for now.”

  “Well, I’m overdue to check-in with the weapons installation team-leader. Niederman has also called a team meeting with the military and our people to discuss weaponizing Fairweather. You’ll have to get any further information you need from the archives—you know where they are.”

  “Yes…” I said. “I know where they are. Wait… where’s the engine?” I said, peering outside.

  Hughes didn’t even follow my gaze.

  “It’s in a secured bay nearby. Niederman has put a hold on the installation until his people sign off on inspections. The big man wants regulation protocols followed to the letter, and up here he’s the boss.”

  “Oh, hell. I’d better go find Jillian.”

  “Jillian…?” Hughes echoed, drawing attention to my familiarity

  I looked at her flatly. She could mind her own business.

  “I would prefer that you leave her alone. Dr. Brandt is probably very keyed up right now. You might want to give her some space.”

  “Colonel Hughes, I’ve got a mission to fulfill. That is my highest priority, and nothing will deter me from seeing it through.”

  Fairweather’s main access hatch popped open out of sight. The sounds of activity outside could be heard louder than before.

  “Oh, you’ve proven that much, Chief,” she said. “That’s why you’re still around.”

  She ducked out of the nucleus and I quickly followed.

  Chapter 18

  The engine occupied my mind. I envisioned Major Knox and his questionable team crawling over it, damaging it somehow…

  After a brief search I found the field-generating device was quite close to Fairweather, just as Hughes had said.

  I saw a closed vault door that stood at the end of a short, wide passageway. The big door was six meters across, but to one side there was a smaller, man-sized access door.

  I saw Niederman had placed a triple guard just outside the vault itself, and I was impressed. At least he was taking this part of the job seriously. Major Knox had been lax in comparison.

  I passed up the vault to look for Jillian and other members of the team in the Personnel Housing sector. After I questioned her, one of Dr. Gevan’s aides directed me to a meditation garden.

  The garden was impossible to miss. An open archway yawned—central and near to a concentration of private quarters.

  The margin around the archway was decorated with the colors of life. Greens, yellows and browns flecked with hues of red festooned a meter wide lip of the opening as if living vines were clawing their way out of the chamber.

  Through the portal was a convincing holographic effusion of verdant life—complete with the appropriate fragrances and humidity. A quaint stream trickled and spluttered over small stones cathartically near a cluster of low, comfortable b
enches.

  Amid this paragon of soul-nourishing peacefulness the frustrated words of Dr. Jillian Brandt reached my ears.

  “I can’t believe you’re feeding me this garbage!” she said sharply—pacing furiously between a pair of seated techs. “There should be no question about the duty roster at this point. Why isn’t anyone taking initiative?”

  “Look, Dr. Brandt…” the younger of the two men started, and he stood up. Jillian stopped, turned to face him and waited. He considered a few different things that he might say, but none of those things were spoken aloud.

  “Yes, Vincent?” she said daring him.

  “I’ll see that it’s taken care of, alright?” he said after a pause.

  The other tech, who had remained calmly seated had a brave face on, but the way he gripped his computer tablet with two hands like a shield exposed his intimidation. Standing as well, he added his voice.

  “Dr. Brandt, there is no problem here. Consider it resolved.”

  It was a perfect break in the whole exchange, so I made my way near the tense trio.

  “Dr. Brandt, please excuse my interruption,” I said. “I have something I believe to be of great importance to share with you at the engine bay.”

  “The engine bay… What’s going on at the engine bay?” she asked. She stepped forward to meet me—her rant now forgotten.

  “It really doesn’t translate well. I was hoping you’d accompany me there, so you can appreciate it in its full context.”

  “Just tell me what’s going on. Why hasn’t anyone contacted me?” she demanded, giving her comm-link a shake.

  “Look, just trust me. It won’t make any sense unless you see it yourself. C’mon,” I said.

  Tugging her sleeve, she finally came with me, leaving her relieved lab techs behind.

  By the time we were passing the private quarters, she started fussing and slapping at my arm, but I kept on going. Several attempts to get me to divulge more information caused me to speed up my pace. She followed in frustration.

  When we finally rounded the corner into the short passage, Jillian saw there were guards—Luna guards—at the entrance.