The Path To Destruction (Alex Kaidan S01E03)

By Darren Hoyland

The crew witness the formation of the path that will soon lead to The Village and destroy everyone they know and every hope they ever had for what remains of Humanity. Alex must rally his crew to not only come up with a plan to stop the Pathfinders, but also to stop the mother of all hangovers he's currently enduring. Ideally, the former plan should not involve single-handed combat with a race of space giants, but things are getting desperate and every idea counts...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Darren Hoyland
• Release date: Feb 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310546389

Darren Hoyland

Darren Hoyland (1980-Still Going) was born and raised in the town of Grimsby on the north-east coast of England and is only slightly traumatised from the experience. He first realised he wanted to be an author when he was told off by his English teacher for writing too much. He still gets a buzz from other people reading his work and is not, it would seem, above walking into Tesco and loading Episode 1 up on the e-readers. Having spent the best part of ten years at seemingly every university the country had to offer, he has acquired a BSc in Biological Sciences, a MSc in Informatics and a PhD in Computational Neuroscience, as well as a love for all things sciencey and an unmanageably large student loan. He currently lives in County Durham in the UK with his wife, son and collection of small, annoying animals.

Book preview

Episode 3 of Alex Kaidan (Series 1)

THE PATH TO DESTRUCTION

By Darren Hoyland

Episode 3 of Alex Kaidan (Series 1)

Episode 3 of Alex Kaidan (Series 1)

Previously in Alex Kaidan:

About the author:

Episode 3 of Alex Kaidan (Series 1)

Alex Kaidan S01E03 The Path To Destruction Smashwords Edition (Version 1)

Copyright © 2014 by Darren Hoyland

Discover more about the author and other titles at http://www.darrenhoyland.info

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Dedicated to Marjan, for showing faith in me when I needed it most.

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This is a work of fiction. Persons, living or dead, places or events are productions of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance is purely coincidental, which is probably for the best as it is set in the future, on several other planets and is about aliens trying to wipe out humanity. Your support and respect for the copyright of the author is appreciated.

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Previously in Alex Kaidan:

Following a successful raid on a Nedic planet, Alex Kaidan and his crew secured the data they needed, grabbed plenty of Earth plants for analysis and reinvented the art of extreme cow tipping. They also nearly got lynched by a mob of Humans and Dann got an important reminder why it is important to brush up on your orbital mechanics before attempting to chat anyone up. Educational as it may have been, nothing could prepare Alex for what he would learn from the Nedic logs: evidence that one of the Pathfinder fleets was heading towards the Un home-world and The Village.

Alex and his crew have made it their mission to find and rescue however many Humans they can that are being held captive by any of the alien races, but that will not be of any use if the ones that they have already rescued get paved by the Pathfinders...

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It was rare for the entire crew to be on the bridge at once. There were two reasons for this. The first was that when they were not docked or in a stable orbit, there were usually so many minor emergencies going on at any one time that it was prudent to have at least one person babysitting each of the critical systems. The second reason was that there were only three chairs. These were exceptional circumstances, however, and Alex had ordered everybody to the bridge.

The spherical structure offered views in whichever direction they cared to look, obscured only by the occasional console, chair or person who got in the way. The feeling of floating in the void (while conveniently provided with warmth, gravity and oxygen) never lost its magic, even for Alex who spent the majority of his time here.

The nine crew members, all standing except for Liam, were illuminated only by the faint glow of distant starlight as they arched their necks to watch the six ships as they glided silently through space. There were originally eight of the ships, but that was not too surprising - the Pathfinders liked to work in eights for some reason. One stood out purely because of its size, dwarfing the others considerably. With no obvious landmarks nearby, and no sensory data, it was impossible to deduce the incredible velocities with which they traveled. Determining their size was almost as difficult, but a rough idea could be gained by looking at the windows, which were usually easy to spot when the inside was illuminated. The Pathfinders were known to be tall, with a typical individual being about one and a half times as tall as a typical Human male, and if conventional wisdom was to be followed, the windows would be about half this size. However, in this case, the crew had decided that the ships must have lots of tiny windows otherwise the ship would be almost impossibly large. It had a disc like structure with a central cavity hollowed out that could easily accommodate the rest of the ships in the fleet ten times over. As the viewing angle changed, they could see that there was a matching cavity on the other side, so that only a thin ring of hull separated the two sides. This area of hull seemed to be coated with a black charring as if burnt in an attack by some kind of super-massive space dragon. Which was only marginally less plausible than what they were about to witness.

Surrounding the massive disc ship were two other types of ship: the first had so many armaments protruding out of its hull that it could only be a warship, and there were initially four of these. The second type, of which there were initially three, had two similar ring structures to the disc ship, located in front and behind of its relative direction of travel. These rings were detached from the main hull, held in place by pylons, and were equally as charred as the larger variety.

The fleet had left one of the smaller ring ships behind with a single warship escort before entering the first Strachan current. The crew had no idea what the purpose of leaving it behind was, and were not able to find out. All they could do was helplessly watch as the ship entered a nearby Strachan current to follow the rest of the fleet. A familiar flash of white light briefly lit the room as the ship entered the Strachan current and the stars were gone, but unusually they were replaced by the streaks of colour in a rainbow pattern which formed perfectly horizontal arcs following the curvature of the room.

Oh, sorry, said Alex, "I forgot to recalibrate for