Interim

By P.K. Lentz

WINNER, Cinescape Genre Literary Competition 

The Interim, humanity's sole possessors of faster-than-light travel, stand between the species and extinction, or so its Founders claim. The crew of the sub-light freighter Lady of Chaos wants nothing to do with it. But when two fugitives, one a scientist, the other a rogue agent of the Social Engineering Service–the Interim's death squads–come aboard, Lady suddenly becomes the most wanted ship in the galaxy. And that's even before the Interim learns the true identity of Lady's captain. The hunt is on, and its outcome will leave the universe forever changed.

 

"...reminiscent of sagas like Dune and Foundation, without ever being repetitive. It's thoughtful, but also a good old-fashioned page-turner." -Cinescape magazine

• Language: English
• Publisher: P.K. Lentz
• Release date: Nov 23, 2015
• ISBN: 9781536587531

Book preview

PROLOGUE

1,753 SHIP-YEARS SINCE THE CROSSING (CR.1753)

228.3 YEARS BEFORE THE INTERIM (I.-0228.3)

The colony ship Star of Beshaan had been adrift for two centuries. Long odds favored its remaining that way forever. Yet instead of slipping quietly out of human space and history, the hulking ship now loomed black-on-black in the main viewscreen on the bridge of Lucifer’s Halo. The three occupants of that cramped, dimly-lit space were silent as they maneuvered the much smaller Halo past the doomed Beshaan’s fractured, flailing magsail and into position for docking.

After a tense few minutes of acceleration Halo’s pilot and navigator, Serenity Martijn, declared, We’re in.

Nice job, Ren, said Halo’s captain, Mayweather Kearn. He ordered the ship’s engineer, sweating profusely into the air around his station, to deploy the docking tether.

The forces involved in engaging the tether, and afterward the rigid docking clamps that would let Halo cut its engines to conserve fuel, were easily strong enough to rip their small freighter apart. Halo was not built, and its small crew not trained, for salvage operations. But then when they’d set sail for Reissa seven ship-years ago, none aboard could have anticipated the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that would cause their unscheduled revival from hibernation.

The odds of encountering a derelict in deep space were...well, astronomical, but there it was.

Odds be damned, boarding Beshaan was an opportunity Kearn would have gladly declined had it not been for the dogged insistence of his subordinates. Naturally, now that they had passed the point-of-no-return Kearn hoped to have his instincts proved wrong. He even dared to hope that the derelict wasn’t as lifeless as it seemed, that some of its occupants had managed to cheat death all these years.

He wasn’t holding his breath for that.

What did cause Kearn a few missed breaths was the docking procedure. Fortunately, like all interstellar ships, Lucifer’s Halo was of necessity flexible in its ability to couple with foreign structures. Planetary civilizations separated by gulfs of decades or more from their nearest neighbors tended not to bother much with standardization, and even if they tried, the intention never quite translated to reality.

Kearn watched onscreen as Halo’s articulated metal tether snaked down toward the derelict’s dark hull. The bulkheads vibrated around Kearn—just slightly, but enough to make him wince—when the tether’s magnetic endcap struck home and locked into place.

Halo’s engineer reported success, and responsibility shifted back to Serenity at the helm, who would close the remaining distance between the two ships, mating them.

Docking clamps emerged claw-like from Halo’s smooth underbelly, and a deep rumble filled the bridge. Gentle inertial forces pressed Kearn into his couch. The viewscreen’s image of Beshaan zoomed rapidly and faded to black.

On contact, a booming crash coursed through Halo’s hull. Then silence. Serenity stared pensively at her instruments.

Moments later she raised fists above her head and shrieked with joy.

Letting that display suffice for announcement of success, Kearn unbuckled from his station and propelled himself toward the bridge’s exit hatch. Let’s get on over there, he said.

LESS THAN AN HOUR LATER Kearn and five of Halo’s crew, suited for void, made the short trip to Beshaan’s hull via the tether’s transit elevator. The lift doors opened on the ark’s darkened hull, a flat artificial horizon underlining a featureless expanse of space. It struck Kearn then, as it might have his fellow boarders, just how helpless they really were should anything go wrong. The void that spacers called home was vast and unforgiving, and would kill them all in a heartbeat if given half a chance.

But such thoughts were not new to Kearn, and gave him scarcely a moment’s pause as he stepped forward to launch a magnetic impulsion cable onto Beshaan’s hull.

The line struck home near the airlock they’d chosen as their port of entry. Clipping onto the cable the party set forth across the surface of the lost ship. At the airlock, plasma cutters made short work of the outer hatch. Then the inner.

No inrush of air accompanied breakthrough, for what little remained of Beshaan’s atmosphere had long since frozen solid. The boarders’ suit beams plunged into an otherwise pitch dark passage ahead, lighting swirling clouds of crystallized air, disturbed for the first time in centuries by their unlikely intrusion.

Passengers are first priority, Kearn said over the v-suit comms. After that, datastores and any useful cargo. Split up, but don’t get lost. Be generous with signal beacons. Initial foray is to last no more than twenty hours.

Wandering alone, Kearn found Beshaan’s bulkheads adorned with prominent signs in the language of its native world, Troia. Unfortunately Halo’s datastores didn’t have a full Troian language module available, and even if they had, the eight ship-months of hibe between detection and boarding of the derelict wouldn’t have been sufficient time for full imprint. And so the otherwise helpful signs were of little use.

Two hours into his exploration, Kearn received the word he’d been hoping for. It was delivered over his comm by Halo’s apprentice engineer.

Captain, the apprentice reported, I’ve found the passenger holds.

Signal beacons guided Kearn through a maze of corridors to the entrance of Beshaan’s cavernous passenger hold. The apprentice engineer awaited him there.

No sign of power, the man said grimly.

Extending at least fifty meters above and below the cage in which the two hovered were row upon row of dark, dead hibe capsules. Shining a suit light on any one of them revealed a vague and featureless face behind frosted glass. Without power the capsules had failed and their human contents expired.

Kearn let a suitably respectful silence pass before speaking. I studied the Troian numerals from the partial file in datastores, he said. "That’s a Four over there on the entrance."

Kearn’s apprentice engineer didn’t need to be told what this meant. Assuming there were three more passenger holds of this size, Beshaan held upwards of twelve thousand icy corpses.

Death permeated the airless chamber and cast a pall of silence over the next half hour, during which Kearn’s suspicion of the massive death toll was confirmed.

The passenger hold marked One, as dark as the others, was the last to be inspected.

Ah, Captain? the apprentice said hesitantly toward the end of their sweep. Kearn looked over to find the man pointing down the length of the hold. Do you see that?

Bringing his suit beam to bear, Kearn squinted into the darkness. No—what?

Kill the light.

Doing as advised, Kearn peered into the jet black depths.

Those depths, he found, weren’t entirely black. Kearn launched himself out into the hold, homing in on what he’d seen. Closer inspection confirmed it: somehow, impossibly, amongst the countless banks of dead hibe capsules, a lone status indicator shone green.

Reaching the live capsule Kearn hurriedly scraped frost from its transparent faceplate. A second later his suit beam penetrated it to light the ashen face of a young woman. In outward appearance she was no different from any of Beshaan’s other, less fortunate passengers—except that, according to her capsule’s lit display, she lived.

How does this thing have power? Kearn wondered aloud.

Long ago when Beshaan’s engines had failed, the capsules’ independent supplies would have kicked in, but even the best of those couldn’t have lasted more than ten ship-years. Why had this one endured—and for that matter, why just this one out of thousands? Better double-check the other holds, Kearn said upon reflection. Make sure we didn’t miss anything.

But they hadn’t missed anything, and before long Beshaan’s sole survivor was being transported with supreme care back to Lucifer’s Halo. Kearn accompanied it over. Staring at the slumbering girl in the transit elevator he suffered an attack of conscience and commed the boarding party with a late addition to his orders: in no case were they to touch anything that might be the personal effects of Beshaan’s passengers and crew.

He spent the remainder of the short trip back considering whether to revive the girl immediately or wait until Halo was safely underway. The latter, he decided. No point in informing her she was Beshaan’s last survivor until she was entirely out of danger. The hibe unit had kept her alive for centuries, and could probably stand to do so a few more hours or days.

Kearn was desuiting when Serenity’s voice erupted over his comm. I’m reading strange output spikes from number two engine, she said. Not causing any trouble yet, but it’s something I haven’t seen before.

Normally Kearn wouldn’t have fussed over what was likely a trifle, but at a time when they were already under tremendous risk even the slightest complication was wholly unwelcome. He put Halo’s engineer to work on the problem, with permission to call back whatever personnel he needed from Beshaan.

OVER THE NEXT HOUR the complications multiplied. Something was clearly amiss with the engines, no longer just one but all four. The engineers were at a loss to explain, much less stop the anomalous spikes. Worse still, Ren had been forced to resort to thermal dumps to avoid overload, an action that amounted to venting precious fuel into space. Already the unanticipated loss was going to delay their arrival at Reissa by ten ship-months beyond the four years already lost intercepting Beshaan.

The extent of the emerging problems forced Kearn to a decision.

Attention crew aboard the derelict, he commed. "Haul ass back to Halo—we are leaving now!"

Kearn’s order was punctuated by the loud, unmistakable rumble of Halo’s engines firing.

Ren, what the hell was that?

Biggest spike yet. Thermal dumps couldn’t handle it. I had to fire the vectors. No other choice.

Kearn fought to maintain calm. So he’d been right all along—this had been a bad idea.

Crew aboard the derelict, he broadcast next. Double-time it! He switched comm channels to address the engine room and asked, What’s going on down there?

"Nothing! These engines pass every test we can run!"

Keep on it. The second we disengage I want maximum gees on Reissa. We’ll sort the rest out later.

Kearn hurried to the bridge to find Ren focused on her displays, her nerves obviously frayed. They exchanged no words as Kearn strapped in.

After a seeming eternity the comms sprang to life with a report from the boarding party. Exiting the derelict, Captain. En route to the tether.

Make it quick.

Ren blurted an expletive. Another spike, she reported. If we don’t fire the engines they’ll overload.

We’ve got crew out there.

I know! What do I do?

How much of a burn do you need?

Too much for them.

And here it was, a captain’s age-old nightmare: the choice between the lives of the few and the fate of the ship.

How long do we have? Kearn asked hopefully.

Ren’s panic verged on hysteria. "Maybe thirty seconds! What do I do?"

Search team, Kearn commed, ignoring her. "Do not be on that hull in twenty seconds! Get inside either ship now!"

Understandably there came no spoken response. Kearn cycled through Halo’s available exterior views but gave up with hands shaking when he failed to find one showing his endangered party.

Wait for the last moment, he told Ren. Then burn just enough to save us.

Longer the wait, stronger the burn, she said.

I know.

Roughly twenty seconds later Serenity flashed Kearn a loaded look, her fingers poised over the engine controls. Kearn gave a grim nod.

Halo’s hull shivered, engines whined. But those sounds were swiftly drowned out by the shriek of metal straining against enormous force—the docking clamps protesting their outrageous mistreatment.

Status? Kearn called over the clamor.

Ren didn’t answer. Kearn looked over to find her face livid. When next she spoke it was not with her former nervous urgency but rather with calm detachment, as though she’d passed through hysteria and into resignation.

Containment failure imminent, she reported dully. Number two engine is locked at max burn and non-responsive. We have to disengage now.

The cacophony of wrenching metal rose. The hull shook wildly. Halo was being torn apart.

In the centuries Kearn had owned it, Halo hadn’t experienced a single major system failure. Yet here, at the least opportune moment, came disaster upon disaster. This had to be a bad hibe-dream. Like the encounter with Beshaan itself, these simultaneous failures stretched the limits of probability.

Kearn said at length, Eject containment chamber on my word.

Just then the comms crackled to life. The boarding party, with some good news at last. We’re in the elevator, Captain.

Kearn’s hands moved swiftly to retract the tether from Beshaan’s hull, presumably with his crewmates safely inside. Now to disengage Halo in time to stabilize the antimatter core.

Secure yourselves, Kearn commed shipwide. The moment the two vessels uncoupled, all aboard would experience sudden high-gee acceleration as Halo’s rogue engines catapulted the far smaller ship away from the huge derelict.

That was not to be, though. A single indicator light on Kearn’s panel quashed any budding sense of hope.

One of the clamps is jammed, he reported.

Ren offered nothing. Maybe she hadn’t heard him over the thunder of wrenching metal. More likely she was just scared senseless. Perhaps she did have more reason than others to fear and regret this moment—but something had to be done.

I’ll disengage the three working clamps, Kearn said. The last should tear off. He wasn’t sure why he bothered speaking aloud. Even were his voice not drowned out, Ren was in another world entirely.

Kearn went ahead with the plan. Upon release of the three functioning clamps, a force like an explosion rocked Halo—the final, malfunctioning clamp tearing loose. The abrupt onset of acceleration shoved Kearn into his couch. Ren! he cried. Align us on Reissa!

At the sound of her name Serenity shook off a mournful stare. Life flowed back into her limbs, her hands flew over the controls.

A few agonizing seconds passed before she looked up.

I can’t, she reported. Two is still locked at thrust. Nothing else responds. A few labored breaths preceded her nightmarish afterthought. Containment failure in ten seconds.

Still? Kearn shut his eyes and cursed. Now it had to be a hibe-dream, for in real life this many things simply could not go wrong at once. His hands fumbled through the scarcely recalled sequence to jettison Halo’s antimatter chamber. Rather than delegating the task, he thought, it should be his own hand that doomed his ship and all aboard.

With seconds to spare, Kearn executed the procedure. Instruments confirmed success. The trill of Halo’s engines faded and died, leaving the bridge in total silence but for Ren’s fast, shallow breathing.

The weight of acceleration yielded to zero gee. Kearn studied his displays. The engines, of course, were dead. A small backup plant would ensure life-support for a while, but beyond that there was no good news. Like Beshaan before it, Halo was adrift.

Ren swallowed audibly, face buried in her hands.

At least we’re alive, Kearn offered unconvincingly. I need you, Ren. Stay with us.

She nodded, even if her expression was far from hopeful.

What are we aligned on? Kearn asked her.

Serenity wiped watering eyes to focus on her displays. Nothing, she said at length, and choked back a sob. Nothing at all.

We can adjust course by magsail. Kearn knew the suggestion was desperate.

That would take a century. We’re eighty degrees off alignment with Reissa.

"Well, what can we align on?" Kearn’s growing exasperation stemmed almost as much from his navigator’s fatalism as from the unfolding catastrophe.

Composing herself somewhat, Ren went back to work. Meanwhile Kearn sent a shipwide request for crew to check in. One by one they reported: all present, no injuries.

So it could have been worse, Kearn told himself. At least he didn’t have any deaths on his conscience. Not yet. Not until they all perished of hibe failure like the poor icy souls on Beshaan.

No—he refused to give up. They still had a chance. Any spacer knew that nothing was easier than interstellar travel. Just point in the right direction and go.

Unfortunately, right now they were pointed in quite the wrong direction, with no apparent means of changing that.

Well... Ren began. Good news, I guess. With sail deployed we can align on L155-0918. Unnamed, unexplored, non-life-supporting system. She raised one wrist to stave off a fresh volley of tears. ETA sixty-eight years.

Good news, indeed. Yet Kearn’s heart sank upon hearing it.

Maybe Beshaan’s lucky sole survivor wasn’t so lucky after all, he thought. In any case, she had another very long voyage ahead of her.

PART ONE: MERADA

CHAPTER ONE

600 SHIP-YEARS LATER

286TH YEAR OF THE INTERIM (I.0286.7)

With the casual flick of a few fingers, Erick Fyat signaled the all-clear. The movements registered in the web of sensors that laced his flesh, and his brief message was beamed via discreet pulse to ISS Whisper of Death, in orbit high above the surface of Merada.

To any casual onlooker Fyat was a normal Meradi civilian enjoying a warm summer day in the park. Maybe his broad nose and dark skin were slightly out of place on this particular continent, but few were rude enough to stare.

Fyat sat on a bench pretending to watch a common handheld vid. What he actually watched from behind his shaded lenses was the storefront across the street, a known safehouse for one of Merada’s numerous anti-Interim factions. In concert with Meradi authorities, Social Engineering Service had initiated planetwide operations to crush the insurgency. If any rebels sought shelter here, Fyat and the three SES operatives under his command would move in to liquidate.

Fifty meters away, Agents Coleridge and Viera lazed in the grass like any young couple taking lunch in the park. Elsewhere, out of sight but not far off, Agent Kosta maintained a similar cover. On the display inside Fyat’s dark glasses, which were in actuality a discreet model of SES visor designed to mimic local fashion, there shone a trio of status indicators, one corresponding to each of his subordinates. The three agents under Fyat’s command reported to him at regular intervals using the same coded language of seemingly innocuous hand and facial movements by which Fyat then signaled the orbiting Interim warship.

Right now all three agents’ indicators were solid blue: all systems nominal, negative enemy contact. Other colors corresponded to a range of pre-defined status codes, while an extinguished light meant an agent’s life functions had terminated.

In another corner of the display hovered the exact local time. Next check-in with Whisper was due in 319 seconds. Fyat’s squad had maintained its current position for nearly an hour and would soon have to redeploy to avoid suspicion.

The Interim voidship and its accompanying groundside forces were deployed at Merada in pursuit of a single individual, a runaway academic that Fleet had been hunting for well over a century. Some officers had spent the entirety of their unenviable careers trying and failing to dig her up on any of two dozen worlds. The exact reasons for Jilan Zerouali’s pursuit were a closely guarded secret, but judging from the time and resources invested in finding her, she could single-handedly topple the Commonwealth.

A skeptical mind might question whether Zerouali actually existed or was rather just a convenient excuse to unleash Social Engineering on non-Commonwealth worlds. But such skepticism was a luxury for the theorists who created policy, not the groundside agents who implemented it.

Intuition, on the other hand, was an attribute of any successful Social Engineer, and Fyat’s now began to tell him that his reports to Whisper would not remain all-clear for long.

Minutes later that instinct proved accurate when Agent Kosta’s indicator winked out in Fyat’s visor display. The accompanying datastream denoted a powerful energy discharge in his vicinity.

The display flashed warning of a second discharge, even closer. Fyat looked over just in time to see Viera’s head disintegrate.

Even as the headless torso slouched to the ground Fyat was vaulting backward over the stone bench upon which he’d sat. None too soon: two more rapid-fire blasts burned craters in the granite. Hostile contact, he signaled to Whisper.

Within fractions of a second, Fyat’s visor display pinpointed the incoming fire’s precise origin and superimposed two sets of crosshairs on his view of the structures across the street. Color-coding confirmed the targets were the enemy snipers themselves and not merely last known positions, acquired by residual energy in their weapons. Neurilace targeting routines assumed control of Fyat’s arm, and within three seconds of initial contact he was returning fire.

Two guided projectiles programmed to detonate only on contact with flesh plunged through the walls concealing the gunmen. Fyat’s visor display registered two hits, two hard kills, and the now-irrelevant targeting data faded from view. A second scan of the facade came up clean.

In the meantime, Fyat noticed, Coleridge’s status light had turned amber. That meant substantial damage. But she was on her own for now; the discharge that had downed Kosta could only have come from a third hostile, still at large. Fyat had the general origin and range of that first blast, but insufficient detail for target acquisition. He leaped back over the bench to put it between himself and the third assailant’s last known firing position.

If the politically-impaired thug was also a poor tactician, he might move in and try to finish off Coleridge, thus letting Fyat target his energy discharge. But it was a mistake to underestimate any enemy, especially one that had already cut a superior force in half. No, a worthy opponent would choose from three possible courses: maneuver for a clear shot, cut his losses and flee, or wait patiently for Fyat to run to the aid of his fallen comrade. The second was by far the attacker’s wisest option, while the last would leave him waiting in vain for a mistake no Social Engineer would ever make.

Fyat’s instinct said this foe would take the first path. Given that, and the fact that maintaining cover was no longer a necessity, Fyat’s own course was clear: anyone still in the vicinity was a potential enemy. Neurilace targeting routines took free rein, identifying thirteen heat sources within a hundred meters and assigning each a threat level.

Nine sets of crosshairs faded when the subjects were confirmed unarmed. Normally Fyat would have eliminated those anyway, just to be safe, but current orders did include minimizing collateral damage. For better or worse, Command frowned upon high civilian body counts on worlds approaching Commonwealth candidacy.

That left four questionable but valid targets. Fyat’s arm moved of its own accord to aim and fire on the most distant. The human-shaped splash of colors plunged to the ground in a burst of white fire. In the space of as many seconds the remaining three fell, as well, all confirmed terminations.

Now to withdraw. With cover blown and seventy-five percent casualties sustained, this mission was over. Exchanging his projectile weapon for a palm-sized pulsecaster, Fyat sent a wide beam into a nearby grove of trees, setting it aflame. He turned and blasted three parked vehicles on the street, sparing extra fractions of a second to choose unoccupied ones in deference to mission parameters.

The resulting blaze gave thermal and visual cover while he crossed the open ground toward Coleridge. As he ran Fyat sent Command a new status report—Redeploying. They would already know of their two dead, since any fallen asset’s neurilace transmitted such data automatically prior to melting down to leave enemies and scavengers with no functional or even identifiable Interim technology.

When Fyat reached her, Coleridge was kneeling in the grass, wavering and staring blankly groundward. Beside her, tendrils of smoke rose from Viera’s headless remains as the agent’s augmented flesh turned to slag.

The reason for Coleridge’s amber light was clear enough: her left arm dangled uselessly from the shoulder socket by shreds of flesh and fabric. Above, on her face and neck, patches of raw and glistening flesh peeked from beneath a blackened shell. A thick swathe had been cut through her long blonde hair, exposing red scalp. Sheets of charred skin hung like dry paper from her jaw.

She felt no pain. Assuming it was still functional, Coleridge’s neurilace would have blocked pain receptors in the affected areas instantly. SES operatives could continue to function with any damage short of the catastrophic system failure of the sort Viera had sustained.

Despite this, there was something akin to pain in Coleridge’s eyes now as she gazed up at her superior. Confusion, maybe. Shock, fear? Any of them should have been impossible, unless—

Fyat had an idea what might have gone wrong, but this was no time for diagnosis. They had to leave, and fast.

Taking the woman’s now-useless arm in one hand, Fyat leveled his pulsecaster and vaporized the few ribbons of flesh holding it in place. As the limb fell into the grass where Fyat proceeded to incinerate it, Coleridge appeared unfazed. Neurilace inhibitors were working then.

Shrugging off his jacket, Fyat draped it over Coleridge with the aim of making her injury less conspicuous. To the same end he tore some loose skin from her jaw. She would still draw stares, but at least it was no longer so obvious that her trauma was far more than an unaugmented human could endure. Although the pair of them could likely handle any opposition they met en

Reviews for Interim

[soumyajyoti mukherjee · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Interim combines existential commentary with personal struggles into a novel that is at once gentle and thought provoking.