Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
FROM THE PUBLISHER
About Rick Partlow
[ 1 ]
One by one, bits of the universe detached from the mass of white in front of us and streaked backward into the identical lobe of glowing energy behind us. I wasn’t sure how long I’d sat there in the command chair and watched the fabric of reality put on the private show for me. It could have been hours.
There was nothing else to do on this ship. Nothing remained of the virtual reality systems we’d had on the Orion, either for entertainment or training. This millennia-old Predecessor ship came equipped with the warp drive that could take us home, but it lacked the amenities of the Fleet vessel it had replaced. No gym, no galley, no individual living quarters. Just crates of prepackaged emergency rations and row upon row of stasis chambers.
Everyone else slept soundly in their transparent coffin, hibernating through the long, cold winter, waiting for the first gasp of spring. Even Captain Nance had given way to the tug of incessant boredom and taken his turn at the big sleep. But one of us had to be up, just in case. In case of what, I still wasn’t sure. This ship had been built tens of thousands of years ago by the Predecessors, a species descended from theropod dinosaurs that had barely survived the mass extinction sixty-six million years ago, and even for them it had been an experimental design never tested. If things went bad, there wasn’t a damned thing any of us would be able to do about it.
Particularly not me. I was a Marine Drop Trooper, not some sort of scientist, and even when I’d been the beneficiary of a nanovirus that had rewired my brain and given me access to a supercomputer the size of a universe, it had been more a matter of being told something was right rather than figuring it out myself. Now that I’d been cut off from all the useful parts of the vast neural network by the hive mind that called itself the Unity, I didn’t even have that advantage.
I still commanded this mission though… what was left of it. And rank having its privileges, I’d scheduled myself to be awake for the last leg of the trip, the one that would take us back into the Cluster. Back home. Vicky had wanted to be awake for it too, but I needed some time alone to think. And beyond that, I’d decided that if we were disappointed yet again, if this didn’t work, I wanted to be the one to find out first.
We’d been searching for a way home ever since the unplanned journey through a one-way tunnel into the fabric of spacetime… how many years ago had it been now? It was hard to remember, since so much of it had been spent in those stasis pods.
Nine years, ten months, and fourteen days. And that’s if there are no time dilation effects from this ship’s spacetime inflation drive, which is an unanswerable question as of yet.
I frowned at the intrusion on my private thoughts, though there was no one around to see it.
“I told you, Jim,” I murmured a reply to the voice inside my head, “that I wanted to be alone.”
You know that’s not really possible anymore, Cam, the AI tsk’ed. To quote your Bible, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.
“Are you trying to depress me? Because it’s working.”
You don’t have to speak aloud, you know, Jim assured me. I can hear you just as well when you merely think the reply.
“I know. I’d just like the chance to talk to you out loud without people thinking I’m crazy.”
Or maybe without me thinking I was crazy. It was easy to believe that sometimes, even without the AI whispering sweet nothings into my brain from the implant computer wrapped around my brain stem. The computer had built itself out of the nanite assemblers injected into my brain by the larger version of the AI I’d named Jim, in a vain attempt to rewire me before my exposure to the other beings who lived inside that universal mind drove me insane.
The Unity had saved me from that fate, although not out of altruism on its part. I’d used the power of the connection to the network to wipe out an engineered species the Unity had created and seeded this galaxy with, and that had been enough to attract the hive mind’s attention. The thing had cut me off from the power of the network… except for an awareness of it, just enough knowledge to keep me aware of its constant pursuit.
Another reason I’d wanted to be alone when we dropped out of the warp drive. I hadn’t sensed the Unity’s presence since we’d activated the drive and I’d gone into stasis, though I wasn’t sure if it was the drive or the hibernation that had done it. If it was the drive, then there was the very real possibility I could get hit with the awareness again when it cut off, and I wanted time to deal with it before I wound up scaring the others to death.
Is that the real reason? Jim asked, far too attuned to my moods for my comfort. Or is it that you think the experience will leave you cowering and helpless and you don’t even want Victoria Sandoval to see you that way?
