Watching the people of Neu Schweitz was hypnotic. They’d suffered in the war with the Skaintz Imperium, but in his opinion they’d gotten off lightly thus far. All told, the people of this planet had been barely scratched when compared to past populations that had come into contact with the enemy. This world had lost no more than a million souls, and with that minor price the enemy had been expunged from the system. Unfortunately, the rest of the local Nexus-governed worlds could not be guaranteed such a rosy experience.
The Nexus Senate had passed a resolution to warn them in detail, and official transmissions had been made. The situation should alarm any colonial government: countless vids streamed out, showing the enemy, their ships, their virulent power to grow in numbers and military strength exponentially in a very short time span. Every world was exhorted to vigilance and defensive build-up. They were to arm themselves and seek out every anomaly in their local handfuls of planets and asteroids, hunting down possible invaders. The biggest fear was of sleeper-agents, reawakened and goaded into activity by signals sent out by the enemy over recent years. The alien transmissions had awakened pockets of dormant creatures with these signals, or at least had done so in the grim case of Minerva, and her slaughtered inhabitants, a people formerly known as the Vlax.
Droad’s mind turned back to Aldo. He wondered how he would fare on the frontier world of Ignis Glace. Hopefully, he would perform great deeds there, should they require doing.
Droad feared that they would.
Aboard Gladius, events unfolded slowly at first. The continuously accelerating ship blazed onward for the first leg of the journey toward Ignis Glace without mishap. The middle leg of the voyage would be spent coasting at approximately sixty percent of the speed of light, while the last stretch would be spent decelerating so the ship would not flash through the destination system in a matter of hours. The course and program were locked in, and little variation could be applied to these preset arrangements without disastrous consequences.
For those of the crew that were not in cryo-sleep, the two Gs of acceleration weren’t the only hardship that must be dealt with. The incredible speed of interstellar travel was not without complications. Ships such as Gladius generated a time dilation effect for those aboard, a side-effect of Einstein’s theory of relativity, which unfortunately for spacers, had turned out to be more than just a theory. The faster the ship went, the slower time progressed for those who existed aboard her. All told, the journey would take a little over two years of relative time off the lives of the crew and passengers, despite the fact the distance covered was several lightyears. Most spacers aged at approximately one third the rate of people who lived on a planet. Aging slowly was an unavoidable part of life for those who traveled regularly among the stars. They were nomads of the cosmos who rarely returned to their native worlds-and they were unlikely to see a familiar living face if they ever did go home. Their parents would generally be dead after what seemed only a decade to them. Likewise, anyone left home such as a spouse, sibling or even their own children might be found old and decrepit by the time they returned. Spacers occasionally took their families with them, but more often they simply didn’t have a family, and lived disconnected lives inside the bellies of their vast ships.
Fateful events began to unfold on Gladius when the AI watchdogs on the bridge detected an anomaly. The lifeboat systems were going offline, one after another. In the strictest terms, this was not a huge problem. When traveling at half the speed of light, lifeboats were useless anyway. If there was a serious problem aboard ship, none could escape death by abandoning Gladius. Small ships didn’t have the propulsion required to decelerate enough to make a safe landing. In past cases where lifeboat exits from interstellar craft had been attempted, the results had been dramatic and troubling. Anyone in such a small craft traveling at such extreme speeds often slammed into the planet of their destination at speeds measured in millions of miles per hour-or more likely, they sailed through the system entirely and vanish into deepest space.
Extreme speeds caused other deadly hazards as well. Large vessels such as Gladius had a field generated in the nose section, an electromagnetic trick of physics that prevented the bits of stardust and debris that floated everywhere in the cosmos from piercing the hull. Traveling at tremendous speeds, a grain of sand became a tiny bullet that would puncture the ship’s skin and anyone inside the hull. The forward fields prevented such catastrophes.
Lifeboats, however, had neither protective fields nor powerful engines. In short, they were useless during long-range crossings of the void. Knowing all this, the midshipman who discovered the anomaly in the lifeboat pods did so without grave concern. The ensign who received the midshipman’s boring report was equally disinterested. He filed an email, and a copy of the work-order was sent to all the lower deck maintenance people, most of who were hibernating in cryo-sleep. The ensign knew the matter would be properly handled in a few weeks, when the majority of the crew would be awakened for the long months of coasting in space. At that point, there would be plenty of time for repairs on relatively useless systems.
#
Third-rate maintenance crewman Garth was a tall, gangling man who rarely spoke and who had been cursed with a haunting stare. After the aliens had been hunted down and expunged from Gladius, Garth had been found hiding in the vast hold and declared a stowaway. His status was upgraded to that of ‘refugee’ after it was determined he’d survived the horrors of both Garm and Neu Schweitz. Taking pity on the skinny wretch with coal-black eyes, the Captain had ordered that he be released from the brig and assigned to cleaning the engine rooms to earn his keep. Garth performed his duties as a silent, ghostly presence. Others tried to befriend him, but they were routinely ignored until they gave up.
Seventeen standard days before the coasting period began, Garth received a memo in his email box. It was a work-order, suggesting that some unknown level of maintenance was required in the lifeboat berths on the starboard side of the ship. Garth studied the email with concern. The order was vague, saying a warning alarm had been tripped, but there was nothing about the cause nor the solution. He was to ‘investigate’ this ‘anomaly’. Neither of these words were ones that Garth welcomed. After dealing with the alien Skaintz on multiple occasions, he’d come to recognize their operational signatures. This could be nothing at all-or it could be the end of everything.
Garth tucked his computer scroll into his utility belt, tightened the touch-seals on his coveralls and headed for his supply closet. The door groaned on metal hinges as it swung open. Inside was his kit: a self-propelling cart mounted on an octagonal anti-grav pad. A bewildering array of power tools, cleaning systems and a central trash compactor made up the bulk of the kit. A tall suction-mop stood clipped to the compactor. The ragged head of the mop flapped like a pennant as he pushed the humming contrivance down the tube-like corridors.
Garth passed one or two crewman on his wending way down to the lifeboat pods. Often, they waved or called out a salutation, but Garth did not respond-he never did. His eyes might flick to theirs, but after a fleeting moment of contact, his vision roved elsewhere. The crewmen shrugged, unoffended. He was the weird maintenance guy-there was nothing unusual about his behavior.
To reach the lifeboat pods, he had to travel through the forward hold. Garth didn’t like the hold. It was too big, and too impossibly full of unknowns. Mountains of equipment and trade goods filled the chamber, which was miles long and dimly lit. His eyes never ceased trying to examine everything as he walked through the hold. Now and then, he thought he heard an odd sound, but although he halted the cart and paused stock-still, listening intently, he never heard it again. After a moment he continued on his way, more agitated than before.