The Expanding Universe Read online

  “Not so much,” Pinks answered softly. Jonesy helped him to his feet, then they both helped Goldy. The three walked more as friends helping each other after a bender out on the town than soldiers conducting a tactical movement to an objective.

  Jonesy took a magazine from each of the others. They were almost out of ammunition. The mission changed from one of death and destruction to reconnaissance and reporting. The clarity of combat left them. They’d return to the peace where they felt sorely out of place.

  A plain corridor stood behind the unopened door. They followed it to another room where Globs and humans were together. The humans shouted and pecked away at their computers. Jonesy calmly fired his 53 into the ceiling, swinging the barrel from left to right and back again, bringing the surface of Ceres crashing down on the enemy and their equipment.

  The room was far more extensive than the first and Jonesy felt some gratification in its destruction. When he started firing, the other two soldiers hit the deck and covered their ears. He pulled them to their feet afterwards, and they returned the way they’d come.

  The second corridor was much like the first, but beyond the final door wasn’t a room, but a hangar. Jonesy looked for a way out. There, on the far side was a staircase that zig-zagged up the wall to a doorway. They strode across, as boldly as Jonesy could manage, while half-carrying his partners.

  The place was surprisingly empty. A single ship and no personnel. They had no way of telling if an armada had left recently or not. Jonesy didn’t bother himself about it. The ship looked aged with rocket motors for its main engines.

  “That equipment back inside. Now that’s it’s gone, does that mean the Globs are done for?” Jonesy asked, not expecting an answer.

  And not getting one.

  They slowly climbed the stairs. When they got to the top, Jonesy finally noticed what a hot mess they were, from repaired rips to scrapes and scorches.

  A Glob part splattered the wall over his head. Without hesitating, Jonesy aimed and fired a single shot to suppress, then finding his target, he fired two more rounds. Globs were pouring in through a far door, that he’d assumed opened to space. Maybe it did, but that’s where the Globs were coming from. He’d never seen so many.

  “Whaddya say?” Jonesy asked between shots. “Scrap the run, and let’s toast us some Globs?”

  Pinks looked out from behind the other soldiers. Goldy was pulling on the door without success. They were trapped.

  Like a switch was thrown, the lights inside their heads came on. Fury seized them. Pinks shot one handed as he vaulted recklessly down the steps. He screamed incoherently with Goldy close behind him.

  “Dammit, you knuckleheads! Wait for me,” Jonesy called after them as he snap fired shots into the approaching tidal wave. Pinks and Goldy fired well-aimed single shots into the mass as they screamed their hatred of the Globs.

  Jonesy scanned the area, looking for anything to help them. This was a human base and along the wall, as he suspected, was firefighting equipment. He started pulling the foam hose. When he heard the magazines drop from his friends’ weapons, he pulled like a Wildman, turning to launch foam into the closest ranks. The sticky mess kept them from throwing their goo.

  Pinks had a hand on the hose beside Jonesy helping him to arc it high over the heads of the approaching wave. The front rank bogged down, then the second, stalling all the ranks of Globs that followed.

  “Die, mother fuckers!” Goldy yelled as he ran toward the spaceship during the break in the Glob attack. Goldy took the time to give them the finger with one hand as he ran toward the ship and climbed inside. The hatch closed behind him.

  “You don’t think…?” Jonesy started to ask. Pinks, eyes wide, nodded slowly.

  Then he found his voice. “Run!” he yelled as he threw the hose down and headed for the stairs. He jumped up them, using the lighter gravity to his advantage. When he reached the top, he turned, huffing and puffing, and took aim, ready to cover Jonesy as he rapidly worked his way up the stairs. At the top landing, they dug in each other’s packs, pulling out the last of the ammunition. Two magazines each.

  The Globs started working their way through the foam. Those in front were on the receiving end of well-aimed exploding projectiles from the two soldiers at the top of the stairs.

  After a sequence of pops and whistling, the rocket motors of the ship came to life. The initial blast was thin, but as Goldy throttled up, the rocket exhaust quickly filled the vast chamber. The air started to get hot as the main hangar doors were closed and couldn’t vent the gases.

  The smart hangar sensed the exhaust overload and the door behind the two soldiers released. When it popped, Pinks was through it in a flash, heading up a ramp that led to another door, the final airlock before reaching the surface of Ceres. Both men ran up the ramp and into the airlock, leaving the door to the hangar open, even though the smoke-filled exhaust poured through. Because the hangar was still pressurized, they had to cycle the lock, flush the air, and then they could leave.

  Pinks bolted out as soon as he could and raced across the pocked surface of Jupiter’s moon. Ceres looked like just another dead rock, but beneath its surface, life teemed.

  Life that was getting extinguished at the wrong end of a rocket motor.

  Goldy watched the external monitors until smoke and haze filled the cavern. Then he touched the throttles to juice the engine, running it up, then idling back, then hitting it again. “Die, fuckers!” he yelled, laughing. The rocket motors coughed twice and sputtered. Goldy hadn’t been sure how much fuel was in the ship, there had been some, but it was definitely empty now. The soldier grabbed his Mod-53 and last magazine.

  He popped the hatch, happy to be wearing his spacesuit within the toxic confines of the ruined hangar. “Come on boys, dinner’s served, and it looks like we got us some barbecued Glob!” Goldy yelled nonsensically. He had no idea how many survived the conflagration behind the rocket ship, and he didn’t care. He had one magazine to make a difference.

  Goldy strode forward without regard as he waded through mounds of charred Glob. Some areas were soft and he hoped it didn’t burn through his boots. So he twisted in the ashes to keep the slime cleaned off. The haze remained in the air, thickening as he approached the back of the hangar. He finally found survivors and started blasting, methodically. He tried the flamer, but threw it to the floor when it wouldn’t spark. It, like the rocket ship, was empty.

  He fired one round per target. When the last one exploded. The first Globs shot were already starting to reform. He dropped his Mod-53 to the deck and looked around. He had thought he’d be good with dying, but not this way, not with all weapons empty. He wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, so he turned and ran in the direction he hoped his friends had gone. He’d never told them he was going to fire the engines, but they should have known.

  He ignored the thought and didn’t look too closely as he passed the foamed and charred front ranks of the Globs. They were closest to the rocket’s exhaust and with the flame treatment, they didn’t survive.

  Goldy continued up the steps, dodging incoming slime as the reformed Globs launched their projectiles. He wondered briefly how his friends had gotten the door open but didn’t dwell on it. All that mattered was that it was open. He continued up the ramp, through the airlock and outside. He saw the others’ tracks in the moon’s dust. He ran after them.

  Jonesy looked back and saw the figure in the space suit jogging toward their spaceship.

  “I’ll be damned. Almost like we planned it.” Jonesy activated his short range communication. “Right on time, Goldy. We’re leaving. Then we can ask the army to nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure…”

  The three of them entered the ship together. Jonesy went through preflight procedures as the others put the gear away and strapped in.

  “We’re going to have to burn those suits. They’ve had it,” Pinks said, wrinkling his nose.

  “After today, I don’t think we’re goi
ng to need them again,” Goldy added. “Fucking humans. There’s no boogeyman in space, just assholes from our own planet. No, we won’t need our suits, but our gear hasn’t seen the last of us.” The others nodded in grim agreement.

  Chapter 11 – A New Technique

  Doctor Shlieffer hadn’t spoken yet. She examined three of the four men closely. Jonesy, Goldy, and Pinks shifted uncomfortably while Smitty was happy not to be on the receiving end of her critical eye.

  “Well, gentlemen?” she finally asked. The men had bandages poorly hidden under their clothes and where she could see, there were scrapes, bruises, and scars. Jones had limped heavily when he had entered the room, leaning on the other two to get into his chair.

  Pinks looked away, finding great interest in a distant spot on a bland wall. Goldy pursed his lips and made to whistle, but only air came out, no sound. Jonesy looked at the other two for backup before shaking his head. “Fine,” he started. “You know I wouldn’t lie to you, right?” She held up her hand.

  “The only time someone says that, they’re preparing to lie. Out with the truth, and you know I can tell, right?” she countered.

  Jonesy leaned back in his chair, thinking carefully. “Okay, Doc, the truth. We went out looking for a fight and found one. Sorry, too much of that good ale,” he misled her smoothly, trying to look guilty, while not feeling it.

  Pinks and Goldy continued to look away.

  “And you two back that up, I suppose?” she said pointedly.

  They both nodded politely, while making faces.

  “I’ll believe you for the moment. I have to say that you all look better, happier. Why is that?” She refused to let it go.

  Pinks stood up, jabbed his thumbs into his waistband. “I think that as grunts, there’s nothing better than to see the enemy get nuked from orbit. The best battle is the one you don’t have to fight.”

  Pinks sat back down. Jonesy nodded. “Maybe we learned something about ourselves between the last session and this one, thanks to your therapy, Doc.”

  They knew that the sound of combat would cause them great pain, but finally, they felt like it wouldn’t drive them into their shells. Maybe they were on the road to healing, to feeling better, to doing more than just surviving. They looked forward to the day when they’d be completely over it. That day wasn’t today, but finally, they believed that day would come.

  More About Craig Martelle

  Craig writes the Free Trader series (a cat and his human minions fight to bring peace to humanity) and the Cygnus Space Opera series, starting with Cygnus Rising, Humanity Returns to Space. Believable characters work within themselves to realize their potential, while exposing their flaws. Interactions between the intelligent species help us best understand ourselves, too. What would we do if we were there? See more at www.craigmartelle.com where you can see all of Craig’s publications or even join his newsletter.

  Genre: Space Exploration

  The Iron and the Mud by James Aaron

  New ShipLord Asarik Karak is about to take her crew and ship, Serens' Reach, through the long-dormant Halith Gate, a wormhole built by humanity and then lost during a great Galactic Dark Age. If the gate fails to activate, everyone aboard the exploration vessel will be caught in its gravity for the rest of their lives. If they make it through, they may discover lost colony worlds hungry to reconnect with humanity -- or a horror cut-off from the Known Worlds to protect those who survived the ancient war that spawned the Dark Age. For Asarik, haunted by the battle that killed her mother and her father's political manipulations, Halith and its lost colony worlds are a chance to prove herself to her crew and strike her own path into the future, if Serens' Reach can survive the crossing and what they find on the other side.

  Chapter 1

  My mother burned her crew, Asarik thought. I'm going to strand mine on the edge of known space.

  ShipLord Asarik Karak stood on the circular command deck of Serens' Reach, watching her navigators and systems techs as they struggled through another hour waiting for the wormhole called Halith Gate to wake.

  For the last five standard days, the exploration vessel had been moving deeper into the boundary of the dormant gate. To the sensors, Halith appeared as an anomalous gravitational source several light seconds across, surrounded by rings of dust and debris gathered by the millenia. Had the wormhole been active, they would have translated to its connecting system, where they hoped to discover a lost colony or even another gate.

  As it was, Halith remained unresponsive, and the crew could only stare at their instruments, dreading the moment the gate either recognized the ship's presence and woke, or caught them in its gravity well like a fly in a spider's web and held them until they died.

  Old age or suicide? Asarik thought. For the thousandth time that day, she imagined her mother, Ahsal Karak, facing the Garalan armada four years ago, giving the order to overload her ship's engines.

  When she was small, Asarik had told her mother she wanted to meet the aliens in the stars and her mother had answered, "There are no aliens, Asarik, only ourselves and the monsters we become."

  The speeches all said Ahsal and her crew accomplished their mission for the glory of Serens System, their deaths the ultimate expression of loyalty under the Serensian Authority. Faced by the same decision, Asarik knew there was nothing glorious about dying. Accomplishing the mission was what they clung to when every emotion told them to turn back and run.

  At twenty-seven, having graduated the military academy at the top of her class and served five years on the CombatShip Victory's Ardor, Asarik Karak understood more of what her mother had meant about the monsters in space. She sometimes secretly wondered if she took lordship of Serens' Reach and accepted its mission to explore dormant GalaxyGates to prove her mother wrong. Now she only wanted to survive longer than her mother had, to keep her crew focused and safe.

  She watched one of the young navigators keep scratching obsessively at the side of his head. The skin on his ear looked scalded a deeper crimson than his blood-red duty uniform.

  "You," Asarik said, pointing at him. She was the tallest person on the command deck. When she barked the command, every face looked at her, then relaxed slightly as they realized her anger wasn't directed at them.

  The lieutenant jerked in his seat, fear plain on his face.

  "Go to medical," she commanded. "You're breaking down as you sit there."

  "But, ShipLord," he stammered. "I'll need to--"

  Another navigator cut him off, a focused young woman with short, curly black hair and a wide nose named Lieutenant Sythil. "ShipLord, we just registered an increase in gravitational activity."

  When the other lieutenant had left the room, Asarik turned her attention to Sythil. "Another asteroid?" she asked. The sensors had already misread several large objects floating around the gate, forming loose rings.

  Sythil shook her head, staring at the cloud of data dancing over her console, picking among the rising and falling lines of white light. She tapped the edge of the display and rotated the sensor data.

  "The echo we spotted earlier is still behind us. This is wave activity with no mass source the sensors can locate." She glanced at the navigator sitting next to her, Lieutenant Athan, a young man with a thin face and long hair black barely within regulation. "Do you see it?" she asked.

  Athan nodded impatient agreement, eyes rapt on his display.

  Sythil looked up at Asarik, face flushed with new excitement. "The gate is activating, ShipLord."

  Shouts went up throughout the command deck, an exhalation of pent energy from the last five days.

  Asarik allowed herself a slight smile her subordinates might read as relief or assurance; they hadn't thought about the dangers of the transfer yet. She nodded. "Inform the rest of the crew," she said. "Do you have an estimate on transfer?"

  "Sixty minutes," Sythil said.

  Asarik paused. An hour was enough time for the crew to start worrying again. She couldn't wait too long to
share the news: engineering would pick up the gate's activation through changes in the engines before too long.

  "Wait twenty minutes," she said. "Gather more data and let me know if anything changes. If there are no anomalies, make the announcement."

  Sythil gave her a sharp nod and turned back to her console.

  "Lieutenant Athan," Asarik said. "Gather more info on the echo behind us. If it's another ship, I want to know as soon as possible."

  Pushing his hair out of his eyes, Athan acknowledged the order and cracked the knuckles in his long fingers. "It's still too far away to know for certain, ShipLord. It could be a failure in the data but I don't want to recalibrate while we're in the gate. There are no constants here."

  Athan might have been the smartest person on the command deck but his languid manner made it difficult to take him seriously. While Sythil grew more brittle under stress, face thrust into her cloud of data, Athan was often leaning back in his seat, hands behind his head as he surveyed his entire console. Sythil would be a ShipLord someday, Asarik knew. She didn't know what Athan might become -- probably a council member like her father, Robert Karak.

  Asarik's father sat on the Council of the Known Worlds, representing Serens System and the sixteen worlds within its protectorate. Her failure could impact the standing of Serens System among the other Known Worlds. Her triumph could mean greater power for all her people. After all, it was Serens System that had fielded the most InquiryShips, discovered seven new gates in the last ten years. It was Serens that held the torch for humanity, lighting the path out of the Great Dark Age.

  Inwardly, she did feel relief that the gate was finally going to do something, even if that meant tearing them apart. As many InquiryShips had been lost as had discovered anything of value. She knew she should have counted Serens' Reach fortunate to have passed through the Kinsla and Bitralis gates and returned intact, even if they found nothing. They were already ahead of the odds.