The Empty Warrior

By John McCartney

Hill O'Keefe is a veteran of the Vietnam conflict, older now, and with war wounds that have left him a paraplegic. His only pleasures; despite his post-war financial successes; are alcohol, tobacco, and the company of prostitutes. He is biding his time, waiting only for death, when his existence is suddenly and unexpectedly transformed. One lonely night a tremendous explosion high above his secluded estate leaves him comatose and gravely injured. He awakens to find himself healed, rejuvenated, and in the care of a mysterious band of alien, yet human, outworlders. In time, he learns that he has landed in the midst of a galactic war, a war in which he may hold the key to victory or defeat. Yet in spite of his importance to both belligerents, one side views him as nothing more than a criminal who should never walk free, while the other would be more than happy to see him enslaved if not killed. No matter which way he turns, it is going to be a long, hard road for Hill O'Keefe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John McCartney
• Release date: May 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476498171

Book preview

The Empty Warrior

Volume One of the Aberrant Chronicles

By J. D. McCartney

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Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 J. D. McCartney

License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

eBook ISBN: 978-1-61914-453-8

Table of Contents

Prologue: The Past

1. The Fifth Angel Blows His Trumpet

2. Entropy in the Outlands

3. And All the Children Go Insane

Part I: The Aberrant

4. Hell on Wheels

5. Empyreal Trespassers

6. Forbidden Planet

7. Burnt

8. Mercy from Above

9. Gauntlet of Fire

10. Aftermath

11. A Wolf in the Fold

12. Eluding the Pursuit

Part II: The Prisoner

13. Awakening

14. The Eyes of a Savage

15. Vigilant’s Master

16. A Pawn is Born

17. Return to the Union

18. Woodland World

19. Shadow Nexus

20. Cry Havoc

Part III: The Slave

21. Mada Elorak

22. Ashawzut

23. Colt .45

24. The Guardians

25. Crime and Punishment

26. A Time to Kill—or Die Trying

27. Banes from Below

Prologue: The Past

Chapter One: The Fifth Angel Blows His Trumpet

38,276 B.C.

Fentan Mult scowled, then sighed. His shoulders sagged in frustration. Despite his best efforts, the blue that he had just painstakingly swirled into a unified pigment still remained several shades lighter than the tint he had been aiming to reproduce. He had mixed in the whole of a large, viscous droplet of his purest ebon, and still it had not been enough. The stiffening glob of mixed oils that now sat glumly atop his palette was simply not the color that would faithfully represent the reality of what he meant to convey.

He grunted softly in vexation. He was attempting to replicate the color of the sea where it met the sky, where it was very nearly indigo, and the hue he had just created was missing that dark, inky tone that would have given his ocean the authenticity for which he strove. He shifted his focus from the blotchy palette held in his hand to the holographic image that hung in the air by his canvas. He then held the palette up in a way that put both it and the holograph directly before his eyes. There was no doubting it; what he had was not what he needed. For the hundredth time he contemplated the purchase of an autoblender, and for the hundredth time he rejected the thought. Procuring one would make his hobby immeasurably easier to master, bringing him that much closer to the artistic apotheosis to which he ultimately aspired. But it would also be cheating the craft, and any public knowledge of its use would cheapen—no, negate—any success or notoriety that he might attain in the end.

He reached for his paints, found the black again, and squeezed out yet another, but this time smaller, droplet. Carefully he swirled the mixing brush past it, pulling only tiny lines from the dark orb into the thickening smudge of blue that lay at its side. After a minute, maybe longer, the tint of that smudge darkened into what he believed, after careful comparison to the image he copied from, to be exactly the shade he needed. He checked the color against the holograph one last time before setting the mixing brush aside in favor of a more slender model. After dipping it into his paint, he proceeded to limn a long, thin ribbon of his new tincture across his canvas just below the horizon. When the brush strokes were complete, he stepped back and once again compared his reproduction to the projection next to it. Yes, he thought, much better. The sea he was recreating was slowly beginning to look more and more like the waters beyond the white sands of the beach at Keo Rocca.

Choosing a slightly wider and stiffer brush, he meticulously mixed the new shade into the lighter, more brilliant blue of the water closer to shore, striving mightily to form a smooth transition. When he had commingled the pigments as adeptly as he was able, Mult backed away, halfway across the compartment this time, to survey the scene in its entirety. Although he felt it still not reflective of his best work, it was nevertheless coming along nicely. A few more touch-ups and perhaps he would call it complete, and prepare it, along with the rest of the portrayals he had put to canvas during this voyage, for the transit home. However, there was very little time. He would be debarking in less than forty-eight hours, and at any moment would likely be called to the bridge for the final approach. Mult shrugged as he set his brushes and palette aside; he would take care of the finishing touches in orbit, before the company shuttle brought out the harbor contingent.

The scene he had been painting was of his new home, as seen from the mounting heights that overlooked it, the home he had lived in for only a few short weeks before being called away for his latest trek between the stars. It was a stucco house by the shore, its many tiers and flat roofs nestled against the pure white sand of the dunes, with only them and the wide beach between it and the sea. When he had left, his wife had still been unpacking and only beginning to decorate. The painting was a gift for her, a celebration of and future keepsake for their new and for so long only dreamt of dwelling, and as such he had struggled profoundly over many weeks for sublimity in his depiction of it.

The thought of his mate brought a slight smile to his lips. He imagined the two of them standing on one of the many terraces that overlooked the waves, with the salt breeze caressing their faces and the cries of the gulls overhead. The gay shrieks of their children at play along the water’s edge echoed in his mind. He could almost feel the touch of her hip against his thigh as he imagined holding her closely around the waist, the pressure of his hand over her belly pulling the fabric of her dress tightly over her breasts. Yes, he mused silently, it will be good to be back home again. He thought fondly of spending hours naked in his own bed, holding his beloved’s warm body close to his own.

That was the one of the few disadvantages of commanding an interstellar tow, all the time spent away from hearth and home. Otherwise he was handsomely paid to read, paint, exercise, and in general do whatever he wished. He, like the rest of the crew, was only on board to supervise the ship and of course to provide the completely unnecessary signatures on the uncounted reams of anachronistic authorizations, registrations, and requisitions that the tow and her cargoes generated. The ship was really more in need of an accountant than a crew. If not for the bureaucratic administration involved, Endurant would have been perfectly capable of completing her cruises with no human complement whatsoever. But laws were laws, and they stipulated that even the most reliable machines should ultimately be overseen by flesh and blood. As a result, Mult stood in his quarters in the middle of the day, or what passed for the middle of the day aboard ship, wearing only his uniform pants and an unbuttoned shirt, surrounded by easels all holding one or another of his creations.

He turned away from the fruits of his avocation, drifting out of the main room and into his sleeping chamber. There, he at first sat and then lay back upon the luxurious bed the captain’s quarters contained before curling up dreamily into a near fetal position and closing his eyes, still dreaming of home, of Akadea—Endurant’s next port of call.

Akadea was a man-made wonder of the universe, the most mammoth construction project ever conceived by the collective minds of humanity. It was a replacement for Old Akadea, the home world of mankind, which was now engulfed by the red giant that had at one time been its nurturing sun. The new version of home was very much like its namesake environmentally, but there the resemblance ended. New Akadea was monstrous in size. It consisted of a sphere within a sphere, both rotating in opposite directions around the sun in the center, the whole of the construct being nearly as large as a small star system.

The outer sphere had a diameter of over 300 million kilometers. Its inner surface was home to untold billions of people, and yet it was hardly crowded. Even with roughly three quarters of the area of the leviathan ball covered with water, deserts, ice, high mountain ranges, entry hatches, or otherwise inhospitable terrain; there were still over 620 quadrillion square kilometers of space perfectly apt for human settlement. So despite the enormous population, there were over 3000 square kilometers of habitable land for each and every human resident that lived within the great globe. Upon its completion, Akadea had put an end to man’s competition for space with his neighbors, as well as his competition with the flora and fauna of both the now deserted home planet and the thousands of other worlds remade in its image and scattered throughout this part of the galaxy. There were no overcrowded cities or endangered species on Akadea. There was only seemingly unlimited space for everyone and everything.

The inner sphere was much smaller, searingly hot, and utterly lifeless. It spun in place over 90 million kilometers from the interior surface of the outer sphere, between the Akadean landscape and its sun. In addition to its dimensions and its sterility, it differed from the outer sphere as well in that it was not solid, but rather slotted perpendicularly across its equatorial circumference. Each slot resembled two slender, spherical triangles joined at the base, projecting both north and south from the equator, their apexes nearly touching at the poles. The hollow globe rotated at a rate that gave any random spot on Akadea alternating periods of approximately twelve hours of sunlight shining through the slotted holes and twelve hours of shadow when the light was blocked, except for an inconsequential area at each pole that was perpetually clothed in darkness. The designers had even thought to leave millions of appropriately sized holes through the sphere’s solid portions, giving the appearance of a starlit evening sky to the residents of the vast landscape beyond.

Inside the inner ball was the sun, a lonely star, its former bevy of planets having been completely consumed during the construction of the spheres. But this star was different from any other in that it would never go dark. It would never cease to send out its life-giving rays to the great Akadean construct, for this star was fueled, nurtured, and fed by a vast fleet of ships built solely for the purpose of bringing in new matter to be immolated in the great fusion furnace that was the Akadean sun. The whole process was controlled and overseen by the most sophisticated artificial intelligence network that had ever been devised. This star would not fail the humans that were dependent upon it. It would last as long as humanity did and longer.

Not only did the star provide heat and light for the construct, but also power. And since nearly all of its energy was captured, there was more power available than humankind could ever hope to exploit. Even after the ravenous hunger of the massive gravity generators was sated, there was still so much energy to spare that some of it was constantly being bled off into space lest the temperate globe become a searing oven.

In addition, the Akadean star was positioned slightly off center within the spheres, the gravity generators holding the giant globes in place, defying the will of nature. It was just enough to mimic the seasons of the old home planet across the whole of the inner surface of the world. The outer shell had also been built not as a perfect sphere, but rather a slightly oblate spheroid. This arrangement provided a close approximation of the varied temperature ranges that had existed on Old Akadea, allowing the complete spectrum of biological diversity of the old world to flourish in the new. It was, as far as Mult could tell from his limited knowledge of ancient history, a near perfect copy of the conditions that had existed on the birth world of humankind.

There were exceptions of course. There were no plates to shift and set the ground atrembling; no powerful, dangerous storms to turn everyday implements into deadly projectiles. There was no sea of magma waiting beneath the surface to someday spew forth and obliterate anything unfortunate enough to be caught in its path; no toxic ash to be sent skyward, obscuring the life-giving rays of the sun. There were none of the perilous and unpredictable banes of nature that, without proper controls, regularly frequented their wrath on the residents of non-engineered worlds; they had all been fastidiously deleted from mankind’s new home. That in itself was enough to make Akadea an extraordinarily pleasant place to reside and raise a family.

Whether the vast construct was flawless or not was certainly open to discussion, but there was no denying that it was indeed benign enough to have drawn, over the centuries since its creation, most of the human race back home from their far flung colonies. There were still a few men and women spread across a fair portion of the Milky Way; mostly scientists and workers, like Mult himself; engaged in the sometimes hazardous process of bringing knowledge and raw materials back for refinement in the academies and factories of home. There were also an insignificant number of colonials, those hardy few who dared to risk the danger and endure the hardships that abounded on conventional worlds. They remained on their distant outposts either out of attachment to the places they had called home for so long or loyalty to one of the many sects, each united by strange creeds and moral codes, that had settled on several dozen worlds spread across the fringes of the outlands.

But on the whole, the creation of Akadea had effectively depopulated the remainder of the galaxy. The last Akadea-forming of a planet had begun before New Akadea was totally complete, and although it and several other worlds were still in the midst of their transformations, there were no new planets slated to undergo the metamorphosis into habitable orbs. When the giant sphere of Akadea had been opened to families, environmental modification had become obsolete. Planetary remodeling took centuries to complete and was prohibitively expensive, so now that living space was no longer at a premium, new projects had been shelved indefinitely.

It was a fact that bothered Mult not one iota. Notwithstanding the daredevil reputation spacefarers and outlanders had engendered over the years, he was hardly the adventurous type. He loved living safely within the sphere of Akadea, and the relative ease of his shipboard life never dampened his eagerness to return to the comforts of his home there while he invariably sank into melancholy as the scheduled departure for his next voyage loomed ever nearer. He looked forward to the day when he could retire, despite the surety that that time was a great many years away. His current body certainly would not last that long. Maybe in his next one, he thought, when the last of his children were grown and gone and both he and his wife were young again. They already had their dream home; all they needed now was to put enough away to support them in style and keep their portfolio growing, and he would be extraordinarily content to do any further paintings mere feet from his own bedroom. He would create exactly the opposite of what he painted now. Instead of generating visions of home from billions of miles away, he would compose scenes of the infinite cosmos from the luxurious opulence of his Akadea-bound studio.

He smiled again. As much as he disliked his job, it had allowed him to see a great many things that others would never have the chance to. The vast majority of the people of Akadea had never seen, at least through their own eyes, the exterior of the sphere in which they lived. They had never gazed through the view-ports of a shuttle as it weaved through traffic amidst the mechanical jungle of robotic factories and shipyards that surrounded the outside of their home. They would never witness the sight of a tow ship suddenly appearing as it went sub-light, its 80-kilometer train of elephantine barges trailing behind, the whole assemblage decelerating into high orbit and gracefully settling in with the thousands of other ships that always begirded Akadea. They would never see the filmy, luminescent brilliance of a nebula or the long tail of dust and debris trailing a comet approaching a star. They would never personally gaze upon any of the wonders of the galaxy that their ships so commonly traversed. Most would live and die inside their globe, having never visited another world.

The people were, of course, aware of all such things. The entirety of the towering academic achievements of mankind was readily available to any resident of the sphere. Many people owned, and all had access to, physical reality simulators that were touted to be capable of recreating any encounter or happening that one might wish to add to their life experience. And yet, through personal trial, Mult had found that it was never quite the same, as the mind was always aware that for all the attention to every detail, the simulation was exactly that, a simulation. No technology could replicate the simple awareness of the human mind, and the mind would always on some level be cognizant that the simulators were merely generating an illusion; that there was no real ecstasy being enjoyed, no real hardship being endured, no real chances being taken, and no real danger being faced. Mult was of the opinion that the pure essence of reality would never be artificially fabricated with absolute authenticity.

He knew many of his Akadean friends envied him on that basis, envied him due to the unreality of their own experiences, envied him because he had actually traveled the void, living a life complete with real and perilous hazards—hazards that could kill rather than merely frighten for a moment. He lived a life into which actual, poignant excitement intruded from time to time; the kind of life that no longer existed for most of the inhabitants of Akadea.

But very few and quite possibly none of his benevolently caged friends would trade places with him. They coveted his past of having risked danger and surviving it, but they hardly desired a future for themselves of occasionally facing situations that had the potential of threatening their very existence. In that respect most were more than content with the prospect of a long life spent safely within the confines of their protective world. And Mult looked forward to joining their pedestrian and vapid existences on a full-time basis just as soon as he was able.

Captain, your presence is requested on the bridge, a feminine voice intoned politely, breaking into his reverie. It was Endurant, sticking to protocol as computer minds always did.

Mult sighed, momentarily thinking of ordering the ship to proceed with the braking maneuvers and the drop into sub-light without him, but then thought better of it. Endurant would file a report and the company would schedule a hearing and he would probably end up with a reprimand as he was in no way ill or incapacitated. All for not wanting to watch the ship perform a maneuver it had accomplished flawlessly a thousand times before.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and placed his feet squarely on the thickly carpeted deck. He was for a moment still loath to leave his quarters. Instead he rubbed the three-day growth of stubble on his chin, thinking that he should shave before he left the depot to go home to his wife.

On my way, he finally replied in a tone sullen with reluctance. He pulled on his boots, felt them tighten snugly around his feet, and stood; scanning the room for his uniform coat, and not seeing it. He walked to the closet and applied a bit of pressure to the door with his fingertips. It slid soundlessly to one side, but only to reveal that the sought-after garment was not within.

"Endurant, he asked, where’s my coat?"

Specify, came the curt, yet pleasant, reply.

Damn fool ship, he thought. What other coat would I be looking for to report to the bridge in? But machines were machines and they knew only what one said, not what one meant. So Mult hid his annoyance as best as he was able. My blue uniform coat, he said evenly.

It is draped across the back of one of the two armchairs at the dining room table, the voice said. Sometimes, as now, Mult almost got the feeling that there was a hint of peevishness in the ship’s replies to his more petty inquiries, but he knew very well that it was only his imagination. Endurant was not programmed to mimic emotional responses. She was built for commerce. Beyond the comforts of the crew’s and passengers’ quarters there was no unnecessary extravagance on board. That knowledge, however, did not make the constant and aggravating perfection of Endurant’s computer brain any easier to stomach.

Mult shuffled indolently into the dining area. There, just as Endurant had asserted, was his coat. I see it, he said as cheerily as he was able. Thank you. His gratitude was false, of course, as it pained him to be civil to the ship. He would much rather have grumbled something uncharitable except for the fear that it would be overheard and understood.

You’re quite welcome, Endurant replied in its pleasant and yet somehow infuriating tone.

Mult most times suffered from a peculiar compulsion when shipboard, which as each cruise proceeded became progressively harder for him to contain. With each conversation between himself and Endurant he wished more fervently to simply scream at the blasted vessel; to tell it in no uncertain terms to take its omniscient precision and stick it up its star drive. He would have been elated to find something, anything; that the ship knew nothing about. He was Captain of this tow, but most times it seemed that was true only on paper. Endurant was really the one running the show, and it irked him mightily that not only was there so little for him to do, but also that the ship invariably acted so damned superior in every interaction that he had with it. All the while he was stuck doing those petty tasks still deemed insignificant enough to be left to a ship’s captain to undertake. Just once he would like to feel free to give full vent to his feelings in the matter, to tell the ship exactly how he felt.

But he was certain that some company hack witnessing such an outburst after the fact would surely consider it a sign of mental illness, and as one never knew just how much of Endurant’s logs the company examined while the ship was in port or exactly what might be forwarded to the attention of some high muckety-muck, he always stifled any acerbic responses that came to mind. Besides, it certainly couldn’t hurt his career to be polite to corporate property; as far as he had heard a little brown nosing never worked to anyone’s detriment with the suits. So he swallowed his pride on this occasion as he had on all those previous and said nothing as he slipped into his coat and buttoned his shirt.

Determined not to ask for help again, he made his way back to the bedroom to find his short-billed cap. After a somewhat lengthy search, he found it lying in a nightstand drawer. What had possessed him to place it there he could not say, but at least he had located it without assistance. He reached for it, donned it, and turned to look in the mirror.

Not bad, he thought. He looked the part of a captain; a wizened spacefarer, tall and erect, with a piercing gaze and a high forehead. He leaned in toward the mirror adjusting the cap, cocking it slightly to one side, just for effect. Even the nascent beard he sported added to his persona, giving him an olden maritime look—a look of authority. He was a bit pale though, even for someone on a deep space mission. No matter. He would have plenty of time to spend lying on the beach once he returned to Keo Rocca.

Setting his jaw in what he considered to be his steeliest expression, he marched into the foyer, saying Unlock entry door, please, as he went. At his approach the door slid to one side and he stepped out into the corridor.

Once there his nose wrinkled involuntarily as the floral scent of his quarters gave way to the ozone-like electrical smell that permeated most of the rest of the ship. He found the odor to be most unpleasant.

Not bothering with the lift as his quarters, like those of the others on the command crew, were close to the bridge; he turned and made his way carefully down the narrow passageway. Long experience of moving his lanky frame through the claustrophobic confines of space vessels had engendered the caution that now burdened his movements. He was particularly wary of low hanging conduits and fixtures as Endurant’s corps of autonomous repair robots was constantly upgrading the ship, and one was never sure when some new protuberance would appear on a bulkhead or ceiling to do damage to an inattentive crewperson’s head. And it would not do to arrive on the bridge with a welt laced across the side of his face.

When he at last stepped through the hatch that led onto the bridge, he was pleased to see that both of the other members of the command crew were already present. Hyra Cofi sat wedged into her navcom station, a look of total ennui etched across her mien. There was nothing for her to do or even monitor as long as the ship’s velocity remained above the light barrier. Absently twirling her short black hair between the fingers of her right hand, she stared vacantly at the blank screens of her station and waited. Mult made an unspoken bet with himself that she saw as little need to be on the bridge at this moment as he did.

He bent over and leaned into her station. Good day, Hyra, he said, smiling. She started slightly, as if Mult had snatched her away from a pleasant daydream, but quickly recovered.

Good day, Captain, she replied, meeting his eyes and then looking sheepishly away. I was just... thinking, she said.

Mult had shipped out with Hyra before and knew that she brought along a lover whenever possible. For whatever reason, she was alone this time out, and he felt sure that her mind had been fixated on the imminent reunion with whoever had been sharing her bed prior to the ship’s departure.

Not a problem, he said. But we will be going sub-light momentarily, so let’s try to concentrate on the business at hand, shall we?

It bothered him a bit to be so hypocritical, but his captain act would at least make him look professional and competent in the logs.

He ducked out of Hyra’s post without waiting for an answer and turned to face the payload station where Jarad Mustacka sat. He found the man surprisingly busy, his monitors lit with columns of moving numbers while he spoke somewhat urgently into his intraship com link. Besides five non-company passengers, there were only a half dozen other people on board—all engineers, all of whose stations were buried deep within the bowels of Endurant. It was their job to watch over the computers and the robots. If Mustacka was on the line to one of them, and he almost certainly was, it might be of import.

Trouble, Jarad? Mult asked.

Mustacka glanced up at him, shaking his head. I don’t think so, he replied. "We’ve got a higher than normal temperature reading in one section of barge forty eight. Probably just a bad sensor. I just checked with engineering, and they told me Endurant had already put some repair bots on it. There should be something more from them any moment now."

Well, let me know if there’s anything to it, Mult said, relieved. With the exception of a few artifacts, they were hauling only raw ores this trip. There was nothing in any of the barges, or at least nothing listed on any of the manifests, that was either sensitive to environmental changes or capable of producing heat, so there was very little to worry about in that regard. He left Mustacka to deal with the anomaly and continued up the short, narrow aisle that split the bridge into two sections of jumbled electronic gear. At the end of the aisle, the most forward spot in the compartment, was his station—the captain’s chair.

He reached it, turned with as much aplomb as he was able, and sat down, sinking slowly into the heavily padded, leather-covered cushions. He nonchalantly spun the chair around until he was facing the bow. His com link hung from the console to his right. In rote imprinted motions born of a thousand repetitions, his hand grasped it, hooked it over his ear, and pressed the tiny speaker into his auditory canal, all without a glance or a conscious thought. He adjusted the slender wand that held the microphone until it was directly before his lips and then spoke. Captain to crew. Communications check. Navcom?

Ready. Hyra’s reply seemed alert enough now.

Payload?

Check, replied Mustacka. And I’ve got something on forty eight. It was a bad sensor. The bots are replacing it now. If that doesn’t correct the problem I’ll get back to you.

Please do, Jarad, Mult responded in his best captain’s voice. Engineering?

Receiving, came the short but friendly reply. The voice was that of the chief engineer, Gunter Tock. He was a terribly efficient officer, approaching retirement and long past overweight. It was rumored that, due to his multitudinous excesses, he went through bodies faster than any crewmember in the corporate fleet. Mult was sure the man’s exuberant lifestyle hurt the company’s bottom line, health expenses and insurance costs being what they were; but he was simply too competent, and too stubborn as well, to be disciplined into a more profit-conscious lifestyle, and he certainly could not be let go. He was one of the best the company had, and both they and he knew it.

Any ship on which he served he considered his personal property, and he was never too shy to give an executive a piece of his mind any time he thought the powers that be were skimping on maintenance or in any way neglecting the general welfare of the ships that comprised the company’s fleet. That in itself was enough to endear him to Mult, and over the years the two had forged a fast friendship. They shipped out together whenever possible.

So how’s my girl, Gunter? he chided.

"My girl, Tock replied, is doing quite well. Her engines are all humming sweetly, well within nominal limits. The robotic contingent is operating at 100 percent efficiency. And the network is running smooth as silk. Apparently her mind is totally uncluttered. Deceleration and orbital insertion should be a breeze. Everything’s a go down here."

What about that sensor in barge forty eight? Mult asked.

Yeah, we saw that. She took care of it though. The new readings just came in a few seconds ago, and there’s no temperature variance now. Even through the com link, Mult could hear the pride in the man’s voice.

Good job, chief. When we hit the depot, the drinks are on me.

Crews never went directly home from a ship. Once Endurant was ensconced in high orbit, a company shuttle would be dispatched with a harbor pilot and a fresh crew to oversee the barge disbursements and the space-docking of Endurant for her service checks. When the shuttle departed it would take the mission crew with it, carrying them en masse to the nearest orbital depot. From there they would each catch different flights that would take them closer to their respective destinations. But there was generally a long wait for even the first of the departures, and Mult knew how Tock liked to relax after a voyage. As soon as his bags were off the shuttle and stowed, he was certain make a beeline for the nearest bar.

I hear that, Cap, Tock answered with his usual informality. And I’ll hold you to it, too. Engineering out. Mult smiled to himself at the thought of a little drunkenness with the Chief. His wife wouldn’t like it if she found out, but then Keo Rocca was a long way from orbit. Even if she happened to make a careful check of the family expenditures, he could always claim to have been entertaining the entire crew, and he could sleep off any aftereffects from the binge on the many layovers and flights it would take to finally deliver him to Kuthboca station, where she and the children would be waiting to take him home.

"Endurant, he asked, how long before the drop into sub-light?"

Twelve minutes, forty-six seconds, was the unruffled reply.

Before he could acknowledge, Tock’s voice was back in his ear. "Captain, we’ve encountered somewhat of a deviation down here. It seems we’re pulling a tiny bit more G-force than we should be at this point, and Endurant says it’s getting progressively worse."

What’s causing it? Mult asked.

"I’m not sure. The diagnostics show no problems, and she’s nailing the deceleration curve right down the line. I would hardly call it serious, but something’s not right. I’d bet a week’s pay it’s some kind of instrumentality glitch, but I can’t tell you why Endurant hasn’t found the fault. I suggest we send some bots back in the barge line, out of the dampening field. They can use a gravimeter from there. Then we’ll know if these readings are real or not."

Despite the chief’s unperturbed assessment, Mult felt a chill creep beneath his ribs, filling his chest with unease. An involuntary shiver shot up his spine. Whenever there was anything wrong, the ship always knew what the problem was. The fact that this time she did not was disconcerting, to say the least. Mult mentally took back his wish that Endurant should be mystified by something. Now was not the time.

Do it, he ordered the engineer, but do it quickly. We aren’t inserting around some outland colony. There’s too much traffic here for the damn ship to be screwing up.

Aye, Cap, Tock replied laconically. Engineering out.

Mult waited, staring into space and again absently kneading the stubble on his chin between thumb and forefinger. In a short time he found himself wanting the results from the robots at once, but he resisted the urge to bother the chief prematurely. He told himself that Tock would get back to him as soon as he knew anything and besides, it certainly would not be good form for the captain to appear ill at ease over something that was almost certainly utterly inconsequential.

But despite that reassuring rationalization, he began to feel a palpable wrongness within the ship. Even through the dampening field and the vast superstructure that lay between where he sat and engineering; something, not a vibration really, but something perhaps akin to that, radiated from the deck plating into the soft soles of his boots, then up his legs and into his breast, where it planted a cold dagger of fear in the pit of his heart. The engines simply felt wrong. It was as if the ship itself lay trembling in terror at something unknown and fast approaching.

Finally Tock’s gravelly voice grated against his eardrum, surprising him even as he waited and causing him to sit suddenly more erect.

I have the results from the bots, Cap. I was wrong. These readings are real. We’re definitely experiencing more gravity than we should be, and the gap between what we’re getting and what’s nominal is definitely increasing, and increasing more quickly the closer in we get.

Tock advanced no further theory, explanation, or solution. That was very unlike him, and the idea that there was something happening on approach that neither his ship nor his engineering staff understood instantly catapulted Mult’s mood from simple unease into unequivocal consternation.

It took him less than a second to come to a decision. Override the approach program, he ordered. I want this ship sub-light in two minutes.

Aye, sir. But that’ll be hard on the drives and really ramp up the G’s when all we’re liable to gain from it is a long glide into orbit. It was clear Tock did not like mistreating the engines without more substantial proof that it was a necessity.

Mult, however, had no such qualms. I don’t care, Chief, he snapped autocratically. Just do it! He had no wish to pull rank on his friend, but something was not right, he had no idea what was happening, and he was not in the mood for any arguments about what to do next.

Instinctively, he whipped his chair around to face aft and immediately afterward was pressed more deeply into its padding as the inertial dampeners struggled to compensate against the suddenly increasing deceleration. Normality was restored momentarily and he spun his chair back into his station. The chief engineer’s voice was already in his earpiece.

New parameters are engaged. Sub-light speed in one minute, fifty four seconds. Stress levels are high, but manageable. She’s handling it as if she just came out of the yard, sir.

Very good, Chief, Mult said. "Endurant, start a countdown at sub-light plus twenty seconds." The ship acknowledged and he waited, continuing to nervously squeeze the skin beneath the whiskers of his unshaven chin. When the ship finally spoke he was yet again startled.

Commencing countdown. Twenty, nineteen, eighteen,... As the ship droned on with the count, Mult reached for his sensor goggles and placed them over his eyes. He adjusted the fit until they sat comfortably over the bridge of his nose and then removed his hands. As he did so the two straps on either side of the device found each other behind his head and tightened to hold it snugly against his face. He sat in the darkness provided by the thick eyepieces, waiting for them to activate, as the countdown proceeded.

When the ship dropped below the speed of light the sensors suddenly came to life, but did not reveal the sight that Mult had expected. There was no giant sphere of Akadea looming before him, no mass of factories, no thousands of ships. Instead only an area of utter darkness lay directly before the bow, a darkness so deep and complete it could mean only one thing.

Klaxons were ringing in his ears even as the thought flashed across his brain; while in the background the steady intonation of Endurant’s warning repeated itself over and over. Emergency proximity alert, gravity well at three fifty six by five degrees. Emergency proximity alert... He waited, paralyzed, for Endurant to take evasive action before it abruptly hit him that he had taken control from the ship.

He lifted the goggles slightly with his left hand and peered out from under them for long enough to find the intercom mute with his right, silencing the cacophony of voices that sounded in his ear. Everyone off the com, he ordered. Now! I want silence on board. Endurant, enough of the warning! I can see it. Jarad? For a moment there was no reply. Jarad? he repeated.

Here sir. Mustacka’s reply was tense, with fear dripping audibly from both syllables.

Uncouple us, Mult commanded. We’ll never get out of this pulling the barges. He did not need Hyra’s navigational displays or even a report from her to know that they were already much too close to the monster that confronted them. Escape, even without the barge train, was going to be a dicey proposition. Nevertheless, somewhere deep in the back of his mind an inane thought crystallized. He felt certain that if he survived, the company was going to be very upset with him for losing the payload, and for a split second he actually felt guilty about it. He pushed the thought aside and, without waiting for Mustacka to respond, turned his attention to the Navcom station. Hyra, we’re losing the barges, he said. As soon as we’re free, move us out of the way, and take the best course to starboard that will get us around this thing while putting the least amount of stress on the ship. Copy?

Yes sir! Copy that. Her response was by the book, but the relief it conveyed was unmistakable. Apparently she wholeheartedly concurred with his decision to abandon the barges to their fate within the singularity.

Behind him, Mult could both hear and feel the heavy metallic scrapes and muffled clangs as the connections to the barges were severed. He glanced over his left shoulder, and through the goggles he could see them being pulled past the ship toward their destruction. Endurant veered away, her engines pushing her nose to starboard. Around him, the ship began to groan as the gravitational stresses of fighting against the black hole’s immense pull built on her hull.

Hyra, where are we? he demanded, his mind unable to process the most likely conclusion.

Her voice came back almost whimpering. This is the right spot, Captain. This is where Akadea is supposed to be. I think it’s gone. Gone? It took a moment for the word to sink into Mult’s consciousness. Gone? His wife, his family, along with billions and billions of other people; simply gone? It couldn’t be. There had to be some mistake.

Hyra, he said, forcing himself to speak calmly, Akadea can’t be gone. Check again.

"I’ve checked and rechecked, sir, several times. The stars are where they’re supposed to be, and we are where we’re supposed to be. It’s Akadea that’s not here. Ask Endurant." Mult swallowed hard, then did as the Navcom officer suggested.

"Endurant, he asked. Where is Akadea?"

The ship replied softly in its feminine voice which was, despite the enormity of the situation, as inflectionless and devoid of emotion as it had ever been. Akadea is no longer at its mapped coordinates.

I don’t want to know where it’s not; I want to know where it is, you witless bucket of bolts! Mult was too upset now to worry about any repercussions from insulting the ship. He was on the verge of losing control.

Endurant, of course, took no offense. Insufficient data exists for definitive conclusion, the ship replied sweetly. However, the most likely hypothesis is that Akadea is no longer at any spatial point of reference. It appears to have been swallowed by the gravity well before us.

Mult slumped in his chair. It was unthinkable, very nearly the entire human race killed. Dead. Gone. How can that be? he murmured, unaware that he had spoken aloud.

Nevertheless Endurant heard and answered. Insufficient data exists for definitive conclusion. However, the most likely hypothesis is that the star that burned at the center of Akadea has collapsed, and pulled the surrounding spheres into itself, and that has somehow vastly accelerated the process of creating a black hole. Insufficient data exists for definitive conclusion as to the cause of said collapse or the processes involved in the formation of the black hole. No further hypothesis available at this time.

The words left Mult speechless and stupefied, unable even to curse the ship and its sterile, impassive assessment of the cataclysm. The magnitude of the catastrophe had reduced him to numbness. Around him the ululation of metal strained beyond its limits ratcheted ever higher as Endurant struggled against the gargantuan forces that clawed at her, but all Mult could do was tear the goggles from his face and sit staring into the controls before him.

It was Hyra’s frantic voice in his ear that finally penetrated his horror induced catatonia. Captain, we’re not going to make it! Every bit of thrust I have is pushing us to starboard, but we’re still not hitting the angle we need. We’re going to be pulled in. The sheer need implicit in her pleading report brought Mult back to himself. He was the captain; he had to do something.

Chief, he yelled into his com unit, we need more power. All the power you’ve got or we’re all dead. Do you copy?

There was a pause before Tock answered. When he did, his voice was nearly drowned out by the screaming metallic agony of Endurant, the hull seeming to wrench and grind with even greater ferocity deep in the ship than it did on the bridge. I copy, Captain, he screamed over the din. But the engines are all firewalled now. There’s nothing left.

Mult considered their options and immediately realized there was only one. Engage the star drive, he said softly, as dread, heavy as an anvil, fell into his awareness.

I didn’t get that, sir, shouted the Engineer. Did you say engage the star drive?

Yes! Mult ordered, this time much more forcefully. Engage the star drive now.

That’ll tear us to pieces, sir, Tock protested. We’re not that far from minimum activation velocity, but against this gravity it’s still suicide; there’s no way she’ll take the strain. The drive assembly will separate from the ship and take half the hull with it.

I know that, Mult shouted with resignation. But if we don’t do something right now we’re all going to be a whole lot smaller. It’s the only chance we’ve got. Now light that drive! And hope whoever built the old girl did it well enough that she comes out of this in one piece.

Mult retrieved his goggles and resettled them over his eyes. He only had time for one glance at the black hole before he felt the surge of power shudder through the ship. For an instant the bow moved several degrees farther to starboard, pulling away from the horror that sought to devour them. But abruptly a visceral, excruciating scream of tearing metal emanated from below, ending what little hope Mult had entertained of escape. He knew they were finished even before the remnants of the drives shot from beneath his perch, cartwheeling away amidst a cloud of debris and then, bereft of a power source, being pulled back toward the singularity.

Chief? Mult whispered into his com, expecting no reply and getting none. Gunter? As he spoke, the fatally wounded Endurant heeled over to port, and started to fall almost directly into the blackness that had once been Akadea. As the ship hurtled over the event horizon, Mult’s last living perception was a vision of his wife and children standing before him, their arms opened wide as if in welcome.

Chapter Two: Entropy in the Outlands

38,224 B.C.

Despite the hood of rough homespun the old man had draped over his head to shield both his scalp and the back of his rawboned neck, and the robes he wore to protect the rest of his body; the relentless African sun still burned hotly enough in the afternoon sky to plague him as he bent to his fruitless task. Droplets of perspiration formed in the crooks of his legs and rolled down his calves, while sweat from his armpits wetted his flanks. Beads of the fluid gathered in the graying hair over his sternum and pectorals, matting the curly bristles to his chest. His garments clung to his skin wherever they touched his body.

He would have preferred to work indoors, but there was nothing beneath a roof with light bright enough for him to discern the details of his work. Even the relative comfort of a shade tree was denied him by his failing eyesight. He raised the next circuit board and held it up in the sunlight, three quarters of a spindly arm’s length from his face, just far enough away for him to focus on its intricacies. At that distance he propped it against a block he had set atop the wooden table before him and connected it to a portable power supply.

He then retrieved his battered circuit tester, and took one of its electrodes in each hand, reaching out unsteadily to touch the thread thin needles to the tiny contacts on the board, attempting to determine if it was usable, reparable, or beyond hope. With each touch his back stiffened and his head rose, moving his squinting eyes just far enough away from the tester for him to be able to read the results displayed across its tiny screen. Finally one touch of his electrodes brought forth a muttered obscenity as well, as its results were not to the old man’s liking.

He worked through most of the afternoon, patiently disassembling the guts of the robot, testing each component as well as he was able with such a basic instrument, and then reassembling the unit with those parts he could find no fault in along with others cannibalized from units long since retired. Nothing worked. With each incarnation the automaton simply lay in the dust, immobile and unresponsive. At last he disgustedly tossed the most recent board he had tested to the table top and leaned back in his rickety chair. It’s no use, he thought. They’re all going to fail sooner or later. Without spare parts there was nothing he could do to prevent it.

Already there were too few Grangers to plant, mind, and harvest the fields, and too few Sentinels to protect them. No Sentinels remained to guard the village. With each passing year there were fewer of each, and each season the earth yielded up its abundance in a more miserly fashion. It had reached the point where most of the colonists worked only in the pursuit of sustenance, accomplishing nothing save mere survival. Indeed, not only was the colony not prospering, it was falling into disrepair. The solar collectors, like the robot corps, were slowly failing, and there was no way to repair them or manufacture replacements. As the power dwindled, the lives of the colonists became progressively more primitive.

The loss of the robots and the power grid were not crucial; the settlement could survive bereft of both. But the old man was hardly so certain their small band could deal with the other problems they faced. The most pressing of these was the utter savagery of the unfinished world upon which they lived; the planet was simply not ready to be colonized.

Sol Three’s atmosphere had been perfectly apt for human habitation for uncounted centuries before the colonists’ arrival, and the bio-diversity of the globe had been planned to the last detail. After centuries of work, the planet should have been well on its way to becoming a literal paradise. But the plans that had been so carefully laid had never come to ultimate fruition. While the great apes and mankind’s more distant genetic ancestors had been established here long ago and had survived well enough, many other life forms that should have been sent to Earth had never been introduced at all. And by the same token, many native species that had been marked for alteration or eradication had ultimately never been dealt with.

There was danger everywhere one turned, and the perils increased by leaps and bounds as the technology designed to protect the colonists slowly failed. There were poisons in the plants, insects that carried disease, reptiles and arachnids with deadly venom in their fangs, and predators galore, many of them large enough and strong enough to easily kill and carry off even the hardiest male among the colonists. Even the microbes in the air and water here could be deadly now that the medical supplies had been exhausted. And there was nary a magma vent constructed anywhere on the planet. If the myriad other dangers did not destroy the colony, it seemed certain that some mammoth eruption ultimately would. Either that or a cosmic collision, as there was no functioning asteroid protection. The condition of the planet was more akin to an automated mining colony than something fit for human habitation.

The men and women sent to Sol Three had supposedly been an advance team meant to carve out the beginnings of the first city on the new world while the final stages of the planet’s remodeling were under way. But the settlement had never been meant to be an entity capable of self-sustainment, a colony that could survive shorn of support from the home world. Everyone involved had been well aware of that, from the upper echelons of the Colonial Authority down to the youngest settler. And yet here they were, stranded on a malignant globe.

And if all that were not enough, there were the indigenous proto-humanoids, bipeds who walked nearly as upright as the colonists did, but were otherwise hirsute, brawny creatures with sloping foreheads and large, heavy brow ridges. They seemed to possess some rudimentary intelligence, but if they had a language it remained indecipherable to the colonists. The brutish beings traveled in small bands and were for the most part still fearful of the Akadeans, giving their enclave a wide berth. But despite their avoidance of the settlement proper, their often empty stomachs did at times overcome their natural reticence and drove them to raid the colony’s fields.

Agriculture was beyond the scope of their intellect, and the readily available nourishment that grew on the farms of the colony had over time become a greater and greater temptation to the simple hunter gatherers. And over the years, as their initial trepidity of the interlopers from the skies had waned, their depredations had by now become almost commonplace, sometimes dangerous, and on occasion led to lethal confrontations between themselves and those colonists forced to help the overworked Sentinels drive them away. Some few of the colonists and many more of the stocky humanoids were killed each year in these clashes.

The Akadean population had been further decimated by other, less feral means as well; as some had given up on the community altogether, abandoning it to go in search of more hospitable climes. Several times each year, a group as large as a dozen or as few as two would slip away, usually in the dead of night, never to be seen again. With each desertion, the colony became a little weaker and little more vulnerable.

There was desperation behind each of the departures. Every man and woman in the village knew full well of the centuries the planet had been meticulously groomed for colonization. Even before they had embarked on the ships that brought them here; years of study had deemed their present location to be the most beneficent on the planet for both prosperity and expansion. Dreams of randomly stumbling into a less threatening and more bountiful locale were almost certainly nothing save delusory hopes. But desperate minds never allow the facts to interfere with their views, the old man thought, so people continued to drift away.

Clumsily, he maneuvered his chair back from the table and rose to his full height, frowning as he did so at the creaking sounds that came from his knees. The fabric that covered his head fell down over his back as he stood, revealing a shock of shoulder length white hair, which thinned to nonexistence across the crown of his pate. He rearranged the makeshift hood so that once again only his weatherbeaten face was left bare to the sun, and turned to shuffle away toward the hill where he had begun to spend more and more of his time. The whitish robes he wore trailed through the dust his sandal clad feet lifted in his wake.

Where are you going? He turned in the direction of the voice to see the slight figure of his wife standing in the doorway of their dilapidated home. Her hair was askance, locks of it loosed from the tie at the back of her neck, the graying strands falling about her sweat-stained cheeks. Standing with hands on her hips, her lined features looked as severe as the sound of her voice; while her clothing was as rough and native as the old man’s own.

I need a break, he said. I don’t know if I can fix that one anymore. He gestured to the assortment of parts strewn around the table that had at one time been a functioning Sentinel. I’m going for a walk.

Well, don’t be too long, she said, scolding him gently. And be careful. I’d go with you but I have dinner on. And say a prayer for her from me while you’re up there. He nodded, not thinking it unusual in the least that she would know exactly where he intended to go without him saying. He turned and trudged away between the empty houses.

We’ve both grown so feeble, he thought, as he walked slowly through the village. He had never felt nor seen the effects of aging before he had come to this world. On Akadea, the magic of medical science kept people from showing their age, and when age outdistanced the reach of technology, a person simply exchanged a worn out body for a new one. It was a process that continued until one was either killed in some freak accident or the brain became too ancient to respond to treatment and lost function. So the old man had been unprepared for the aches and pains, for the loss of youth and vitality, that a life on Earth had come to mean. He had expected to be able to leave the colony for home when the time came for rejuvenation. But it was not to be. He was only in his third embodiment, less than three hundred years old, and slowly dying.

How could they maroon us like this, he raged silently. The bastards! He walked along with his mind a seething tempest, until the tide of anger that had flooded his brain ebbed and reason returned. They had not been deserted or forgotten; that interpretation of events was clearly irrational. It simply could not be. Akadeans did not do such things. It was true that the band of colonists had come here to establish a secluded retreat for their now eccentric religion; to be free from the scorn of a society were so few still believed. But surely it was not possible that their brethren had turned their backs on them for that reason alone. No, that was not what had happened. Something had gone wrong;