Silent Order: Image Hand

By Jonathan Moeller

The galaxy is at war, and the ancient relics of dead races can unleash catastrophe.

When Jack March finds the crew of a space station killed by mysterious radiation, he soon finds himself on the trail of a deadly superweapon.

And unless he finds the weapon, he will be its next victim...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jonathan Moeller
• Release date: Jun 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463496909

Jonathan Moeller

Standing over six feet tall, Jonathan Moeller has the piercing blue eyes of a Conan of Cimmeria, the bronze-colored hair of a Visigothic warrior-king, and the stern visage of a captain of men, none of which are useful in his career as a computer repairman, alas.He has written the "Demonsouled" trilogy of sword-and-sorcery novels, and continues to write the "Ghosts" sequence about assassin and spy Caina Amalas, the "$0.99 Beginner's Guide" series of computer books, and numerous other works.Visit his website at:http://www.jonathanmoeller.comVisit his technology blog at:http://www.jonathanmoeller.com/screed

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SILENT ORDER: IMAGE HAND

Jonathan Moeller

***

Description

The galaxy is at war, and the ancient relics of dead races can unleash catastrophe.

When Jack March finds the crew of a space station killed by mysterious radiation, he soon finds himself on the trail of a deadly superweapon.

And unless he finds the weapon, he will be its next victim...

***

Silent Order: Image Hand

Copyright 2018 by Jonathan Moeller.

Smashwords Edition.

Cover image copyright ID 70626742 © Luca Oleastri | Dreamstime.com

Ebook edition published June 2018.

All Rights Reserved.

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law.

***

Chapter 1: Ghost Station

Jack March stared at the image of the space station.

On the surface, there was absolutely nothing wrong with Outer Vanguard Station. The station had a cylindrical central core about a kilometer in length, ringed with solar panels and bristling with antennas and sensor arrays on either end. It was a common enough design, and the Kingdom of Calaskar used this design of station as both a communications relay, a scanning installation, and as a resupply point for courier ships. Because of the station’s minimal armament of point-defense lasers, the design was used in systems firmly under the control of the Royal Calaskaran Navy.

The Vanguard system was one such place. Outer Vanguard Station sat in deep space beyond the orbit of the system’s final gas giant, its sensors sweeping space for any dangers and providing a convenient stopping point for courier ships heading out of the system.

Yet March’s instincts screamed that something was wrong.

To all appearances, nothing was amiss. The station’s running lights were on, and its automatic transponder broadcast its identification. The Tiger’s sensors reported that the station’s fusion reactor functioned normally, all systems were online, and there was no sign of battle damage or malfunction. Nor were there any traces of anomalous radiation or meteorite damage.

Everything appeared normal, and Outer Vanguard Station ought to have a crew complement of fifty men.

The Tiger’s sensors detected no life signs aboard the station.

And no one answered March’s requests for communication.

"This is Captain Jack March of the licensed Calaskaran privateer vessel Tiger, said March again, watching the sensors. Calling Outer Vanguard Station control. Requesting status update and docking permission, please."

He sent the transmission and waited.

No one answered.

March’s frown deepened. He could think of any number of reasons the crew would abandon the station – radiation leaks, structural damage, air contamination. There were a billion things that could go wrong in deep space, yet nearly all of those things left signs, and as far as the Tiger’s sensors could tell, there was nothing wrong with the station. For that matter, it looked as if the docking bay held the station’s full collection of shuttles, and none of the escape pods had been launched. If there had been a disaster, the crew would have either launched the shuttles or used the escape pods.

Unless they had all been killed first.

Then again, anything that would kill the crew would have damaged the station.

March checked the sensors again. He was now only ten thousand kilometers from the station, close enough for the Tiger’s scans to show great detail. Yet Outer Vanguard Station still registered as empty of life, but otherwise perfectly functional.

March shook his head and cut the Tiger’s fusion drive, bringing the ship closer with ion thrusters. Once more he sent his greeting to the station, and once more he was answered with silence.

He had no choice but to dock with the station and investigate. Best to take precautions.

Vigil, said March. Keep a continuous scan going, all sensors at maximum power and range. Notify me if we detect any dark energy radiation within ten million kilometers, any weapons emissions, any battle debris, and any life signs other than my own.

Acknowledged, Captain March, replied the cool female voice of the ship’s computer pseudointelligence. Scanning underway.

March picked one of the large cargo airlocks near the station’s docking bay. As the Tiger crossed the final kilometers, he rotated the ship, aligning the rear cargo airlock with the station’s airlock. A few moments later he eased the ship into place. A faint clang went through the hull as the Tiger’s docking clamps locked onto the station’s hull. March cast an eye over the sensor displays, but there was no response from the station.

Right, said March. He locked the pilot’s console and stood up. Vigil, maintain the previous scanning parameters. Notify me immediately if anything is detected.

Acknowledged.

March stepped into the dorsal corridor, locked the flight cabin door, and opened the door to the ship’s armory. He equipped himself with his usual kit for boarding a hostile ship. Electronic goggles with low light enhancement went over his eyes and a breath mask on his nose and mouth, the straps digging hard into the back of his head. He slid an earpiece with microphone and camera attachments over his left ear, and synced the earpiece, the mask, and the goggles to his phone, letting them communicate with the Tiger. For weapons, he took a pair of plasma pistols, a plasma assault rifle, several grenades, and spare power packs for his guns. Knives went into the hidden sheaths in the sleeves of his coat. Once he had his equipment and weapons, March did a communications check, making sure he could talk to Vigil.

Then he headed down the dorsal corridor, descended the ladder into the cargo hold, and headed for the stern airlock.

Shipping containers of rare ores filled the Tiger’s hold. It was a cover for his last assignment, a mission to the Antioch system. It also paid quite well and would cover the cost of his trip to the Antioch system and back with an ample profit left over. At the rear of the hold was the cargo ramp, which would open to unload the ship. In the middle of the closed ramp was the airlock March used for docking with space stations and other starships.

He opened the outer door, closed it behind him, and then cycled the inner door.

A wave of disorientation went through March as he shifted from the Tiger’s gravitics to the station’s. The outer door of one of the station’s airlocks stood before him, a sheet of solid metal with a small window in the center. March opened the access panel next to the airlock and examined the controls. The airlock wasn’t locked down. Whatever had happened, it had happened so swiftly that the station’s automated defenses hadn’t activated.

He opened the airlock’s outer door, waited for it to close behind him, opened the inner door, and stepped into a corridor. It looked unremarkable, with a metal grillwork floor and ceiling, polished metal walls, and lights every few meters. Nothing seemed amiss. March waited as his mask scanned the air, and then a message in his goggles’ HUD informed him that it had detected no contaminants or pathogens in the air.

Best to start with the docking control office, March decided. The station wasn’t on alert status, which meant that the computer consoles would not be locked down. From there, he could access several key systems, and perhaps even the log files. That might give him an idea of what had happened here.

March was familiar with the layout of this design of space station, and he started down the corridor, his eyes sweeping the walls and floor for any threat, his ears straining to detect any sounds. He saw no enemies. Nothing but the faint hum of the air handlers came to his ears or the occasional clink of his boots against the deck. At last, he came to the door to the docking control office, which would have a view of the hangar deck.

He hit the door control and brought up his plasma rifle, ready for any surprises. The door hissed open, and March found himself looking into the docking office. Through a window on the other side of the room, he saw the hangar deck. There were four computer consoles against the walls, and at two of them…

March’s finger tightened against the rifle’s trigger, but he remained motionless.

Dead men sat at two of the consoles.

March looked at them, at the ceiling, and then the floor. His mask reported no sign of contaminants or toxins, and he examined at the dead men.

He had seen death in nearly every form and shape, but he could not figure out how they had been killed.

March’s first thought was that they had been burned alive, but that didn’t make sense. The two dead men looked charred and blackened, but their jumpsuits were intact. For that matter, there was no trace of any damage to the docking control office. March took a step into the room and looked at the floor and the ceiling, but saw no smoke damage. Any fire that could have burned two grown men to a blackened crisp would have done a great deal of smoke damage and triggered the emergency fire suppression system.

Had a directed energy weapon done this? March could think of any number of weapons that inflicted burns, from a common maser to more exotic devices, but a weapon like that would have destroyed the men’s jumpsuits. For that matter, a directed energy weapon capable of burning a man to death would have damaged the station itself.

March tapped the twisted, charred hand of a dead man with the end of his plasma rifle. It made a faint crunching noise, and one of the fingers crumbled into dust.

Burned…and mummified?

March had never heard of a weapon that could do that.

He tapped his earpiece to activate its built-in camera and started recording. March made sure to get a good look at both of the dead men, recording the names on the ID cards hanging from lanyards around their crumbling necks. Once that unpleasant task was done, March stood at one of the computer consoles and scrolled through the available menus. The station’s computer hadn’t been locked down, and there were no notification flags or alerts. Neither did he see anything unusual in the lists of scheduled arrivals and departures.

There were limits to the information that March could gather here. He needed to visit the operations center. In one of his pockets, he carried a thumb drive loaded with targeted malware that would breach the station computer’s firewalls and copy the log files and security recordings. March needed access to the operations center to use the drive.

He left the docking office and set off for the operations center at the other end of the station

What followed was one of the most unsettling walks of his life.

The station was perfectly functional, but it had become a tomb.

March passed twenty more corpses on his way to the operations center, all them in the same condition as the dead men sitting at their stations in the docking office. Outer Vanguard Station wasn’t a military installation, but a civilian station operated under the authority of Calaskar’s Ministry of Colonies. The men had all been employees of one of the companies the Ministry contracted to run the space stations.

And now every single one of them had been reduced to twisted black husks.

March couldn’t make sense of it. Weapons that could have done that should also have inflicted massive damage to the station…

He pushed the speculations out of his mind and focused on remaining vigilant.

Five minutes and twelve more corpses later, he came to the station’s operations center. It was a large round room, the walls lined with computer consoles and several more workstations dotted the main floor. A large hologram floated overhead, a master display of the station and its systems. Everything showed green, though there were an increasing number of unanswered automated status queries from the life support and water recycling system.

Nine dead men sat at the computer consoles. All of them had been killed in the same way as the other corpses on the station. March plugged his thumb drive into the engineering console and then made a circuit of the room, making sure to record the ID cards of each of the dead men. By the time he had finished, the malware on the thumb drive was downloading the station’s logs and had unlocked the console, and March began accessing logs and video recordings.

He checked the list of automated queries from the various life support systems. The last one of those queries had been answered about twelve hours ago, which would put the time the crew had been killed between twelve and nine hours ago, depending on the station’s maintenance schedule.

March brought up the security footage from the operations center, set it to twelve hours ago, and fast forwarded through it. It did not take long to find what he sought. Nine hours and forty-five minutes ago, the men in the operations center began screaming in agony. They went rigid, their bodies melting into twisted black husks, and their life signs vanished from the station’s internal sensors.

It only took them about twenty seconds to die. At least it had been quick. He scrolled through the other recordings of the station’s critical areas, and every single crewer had died at the same time.

But March could find no trace of what had killed them.

It made no sense. There were no anomalous energy readings, no radiation surges, no signs of intruders, no equipment malfunctions. Something had turned the men to blackened, charred husks, and it had done so without leaving any trace of itself on the station’s sensors and without triggering the internal alarms.

March frowned and keyed for the external sensor logs, searching for anything anomalous that had happened in the three hours before the death of the station crew.

Nothing significant showed up, but he did see something strange.

A half-hour before the crew had died, a small starship had dropped out of hyperspace about a million kilometers from the station. Outer Vanguard Station had done a sensor focus on the ship, and it was a mid-sized luxury yacht, a shiny, chrome-colored craft that usually ferried around wealthy men and their entourages. Starships like that were common, but for some reason this ship hadn’t been running its identity transponder, which was illegal in Calaskaran space. Faking an identity transponder was easy enough, and March had done it dozens of times.

But it was rare for a ship to fly with the identity transponder switched entirely off.

March scrolled through the logs. The station had hailed the yacht and received no response. The yacht maintained its relative position to the station for thirty minutes, and then without warning, had vanished into hyperspace.

Two minutes later, the station’s crew died.

March looked through the sensor data, checking for any sign of weapons usage from the yacht. There was none. The yacht’s power signature and radiation profile had remained unchanged during those thirty minutes, save for the usual dark energy radiation spike before it retreated into hyperspace. If not for the dead crew, March would have assumed the yacht was