The Dam Across The Stars

By Bob Lock

Humankind finally achieves a method of space travel that enables them to explore our galaxy. However, whilst on a routine transport mission, a cargo ship 'folds space' too close to a planetary body causing a catastrophic accident and ends up projecting itself to the furthest reaches that its drive allows. Upon materialising in normal space the crew find themselves confronted by an impenetrable barrier which ultimately becomes known as The Dam.

Humankind wonders whether this dam is meant to keep something out, or us in, and soon ships of all kind begin to search for a way through. Planetary authorities decide to set a quarantine zone around the barrier and a new breed of human is formed. The Sentinels, they are genetically adapted to survive the loneliness and rigours of patrolling such a vast area.

Two such Sentinels are involved in a re-entry burn-up, one manages to download his memories so that he can be re-trunked in time, the other doesn't and has to hand in his commission (not an easy thing for someone grown for one purpose only) he goes rogue.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bob Lock
• Release date: Feb 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393793830

Bob Lock

Bob Lock was born on the Gower Peninsular, Wales, back in the Dark Ages when there were no computers, televisions or FTL spaceships. (Ok, there still aren’t any FTLs whilst writing this, but who knows how long this bio might be around?) First published in Cold Cuts 1&2 (Horror anthos) Debut Dark Fantasy novel ‘Flames of Herakleitos’ published in March 2007 His Urban Fantasy Novel 'The Empathy Effect' (set in Swansea) published in September 2010

Book preview

Chapter 1 – In the genes.

Casper Tuttle knew from the earliest that he could recall that he wanted to be a Sentinel.  It was only later he realized this desire was pre-programmed into his DNA. Perhaps that should have dulled his hunger somewhat, but it did not. He questioned his indifference to the fact that he had been conceived to serve as a Sentinel and wondered if he should have felt bitter over his pre-ordained future. However on deep reflection he knew, prearranged by genetic coding or not, he believed that even given free choice he would have yearned for the stars and to be a Sentinel along the Dam anyway. The absurdity was, he also knew this was probably programmed into him as well. However, if so, then the DNA coding was perfection personified, for nothing on God’s Earth meant more to him than the Dam and its well-being.

‘LEVEL OUT NOW AND JUST tilt her nose slightly; your angle of attack is still too steep,’ the voice from ground control sounded slightly worried.

Pen Gasquet’s gloved middle finger flicked up into a rude gesture and he mentally switched off his mesh.

‘You’ve dropped off the mesh,’ Casper Tuttle said from the co-pilot’s seat then turned to look at his friend, saw the finger and shook his head. ‘You’ve switched it off.’

‘Yada yada yada. We have simmed this a hundred times. If I can’t do it now for real I’ll never be able to do it.’

‘Thanks for that. If you don’t do it for real now, neither of us will be able to do it. We’ll both be dead,’ Casper replied. ‘G.C. is going ballistic; you need to get her nose up.’ A strange feeling of déja vu swept over him for a moment and he wondered if this had happened in VR too and how had they gotten out of it.

‘Look, if we were coming in under fire do you think we would have the luxury of skipping down nice and gently?’ Pen replied, and then grimaced as the little training ship bucked beneath him. ‘No, we’d be blown out of the sky. So, we punch through the envelope quickly, airbrake in the upper atmosphere and discharge decoys before going covert.’

‘How do you propose we stay covert when we’re glowing white-hot or worse still are in pieces scattered across the ionosphere?’ Casper asked, his teeth grinding.

‘You worry too much, Casper.’

‘No, I only worry when I’m paired up with you, Pen. Otherwise I’m as cool as a piece of shit on the moon.’

Casper’s mesh flashed an alarm in the corner of his eye and the little craft’s A.I. interfaced directly with him, breaking all protocols.

‘As I am forced to declare this an emergency, and am unable to interface with Private Gasquet, I have no other alternative than to inform you control will no longer be available. I now have control.’

The craft skewed violently to the left and Casper’s head almost collided with his friend’s thick skull.

‘Ship has taken control! Damn thing just meshed straight into me without asking for protocol!’ Casper said.

‘Is it fuck?’ Pen snarled and slammed a hand down onto the soft terminal in front of him. It swallowed his gloved hand and he meshed in.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Casper groaned as the ship yawed violently. His stomach turned and his gorge rose to the back of his throat.

‘Priority over-ride, meat beats sheet,’ Pen replied, referring disparagingly to the A.I.’s sheet membrane on which its persona was stored. Humans always took priority over Artificial Intelligence, even when the A.I. was obviously the more competent of the two.

‘Pen, you’ll push it into a reset doing that!’

‘So?’

‘So, you just killed us you bloody idiot,’ Casper said, looking at his friend and wondering why he had ever allowed the reckless idiot into his life.

‘Have faith,’ Pen said and then flashed a smile. His teeth gleamed white, but then within an instant flashed red, just before his smile disappeared and a frown took its place. Casper looked forward and realized the red was coming from just below the small windscreen. The ablative shield was burning away and the underlying heat soak had reached critical temperature. The normally cool air circulating his suit rose swiftly and sweat began to pour down his forehead and into his eyes. He meshed into G.C. and accessed a persona dump. Casper felt the surreal experience of disembodiment that accompanied a cognizant memory dump – which is normally done whilst sleeping. He reached over and gripped Pen’s arm.

‘For God’s sake! Mesh in and dump. Pen, do it!’

Pen stared back and Casper saw the realization dawn on his friend’s face that this time they would not walk away from his audacious, but ultimately brash attempt, at beating the system. He nodded and a moment later, the ship disintegrated around them. All that remained of the ship turned into glowing fragments which streaked like falling stars across the dark sky over the Pacific Ocean.

CHAPTER 2 – THE DISCOVERY.

Humankind, in their vainglorious belief that they were unique in the universe, populated their solar system. Then their galaxy, much as they had done on their native planet, with no regard whatsoever to any flora or fauna they encountered on other worlds.

Man was a supreme being and as such all others were there for their use, to be exploited, domesticated or subsumed by Humanity. More often than not inferior beings tended to achieve extinction upon acquaintance with the sons of Adam. The autocratic expansion into space continued for millennia, unchallenged, aloof and arrogant. Until the Dam.

A Behemoth-class trading-ship in 2093 folded space too close to the Lagrange point of Bester 3, a small-colonized planet on the edge of the Milky Way, and never arrived at its destination. The subsequent disturbance of its departure caused an anomaly in the centripetal force between the planet and its small moon. It was not long before the moon’s geosynchronous orbit had become perturbed enough for it to begin to enter the gravitation well of the planet, and shortly afterwards, get pulled down into a cataclysmic collision. This resulted in an ELE - an extinction-level event. Providentially for the colonists there had been enough time for most of them to depart. The indigenous life-forms left behind were less fortunate.

As newsworthy as this event was it was nothing, compared to the transmission received from the trading-ship when it appeared again within space shipping lanes. Thrown out to the edge adjoining the Local Group of galaxies by their ham-fisted folding within Bester 3’s L-point, it had discovered something strange. Something very strange indeed. Materializing from the fold into normal space, the Behemoth, St Michael was confronted by an impenetrable wall that was almost invisible to everything other than the auspices of their proximity detection system. When observing through view-ports a vague veil of what seemed to be stellar dust, debris that had collected up against the barrier, could be seen. Human eyes, however, fought to interpret the vastness of the barrier. For days, they had tried to circumnavigate the obstruction. They travelled in all possible directions, apart from the reverse of their ingress. They found no break, no lessening of its impenetrability. With the same recklessness that had caused the destruction of Bester 3 the captain ordered a fold through the barrier to an estimated point of one light-year beyond its confines. The great Huzita-Hatori engines powered up to maximum and space folded, but the St. Michael exited at its point of origin. The barrier remained unbreached. St. Michael’s Dam – supposedly named after the captain’s expletive when discovering their position – had not changed one iota. Suggestions were made that the barrier be perceived truly as a dam, an artifact constructed to hold back something that lay on the other side. Others opined something more frightening – that it was built to ostracize us from the rest of the universe. Humankind. With the fervour that only human beings can engender saw religions spring up throughout the galaxy. Surely, here was a demonstration of a higher being? A supreme deity, God? Many reasoned that beyond the barrier lay Eden – for obviously the discovery of its existence by a ship named St Michael was no coincidence – but an omen. St Michael was the gatekeeper. The archangel, incarnate in a star-ship, had lead humankind to the wall surrounding the fabulous garden from which all creation had stemmed. It was now dependent upon Man how they should proceed, for somewhere along the vastness of the dam there had to be a gate. The gate, slammed in Adam and Eve’s face. The gate, which the Archangel Michael had now deemed passable by Adam’s sons and daughters, for had he not sent a sign?

Others regarded the dam with wariness. What if Eden was here, with us now and the gate, if one existed, did not let us out, but let something in? The Galactic Council, not known for its synthesis and unity on reaching important decisions calmly and quickly, shocked the federation of planets by announcing the commissioning of a new military force. This force would be charged with the mapping, patrolling and defense of what was fast becoming known by its other name. The Dam across the Stars. The fledgling force was named The Sentinels. Within twenty years of its discovery, the dam had acquired an infestation of craft of various types and origins. All were attempting to find the gate and control it or be the first through. Sentinels were single-man ships, heavily armoured and armed, with military spec Huzita-Hatori engines capable of folding the craft across a quarter of the known galaxy in one jaunt. Their mandate was to clear the dam of all non-Sentinel traffic – by force if necessary – and if upon finding a way through, guard the portal. Nothing was allowed out. However, more importantly, definitely, nothing was to be allowed in.

All thoughts of finding a way over, under or around the dam were quickly discounted within a few years of its discovery as un-manned RDPs – rapid deployment probes – adept at multi-folding until destruction, confirmed humanity’s deepest fear. The dam was impenetrable and circumnavigated the entire Milky Way. Humankind existed in an enclosed sphere, albeit one of immense dimensions. However, some people found it claustrophobic and wanted out. Pen Gasquet was one. He was also the person who killed Casper Tuttle for the first time.

CHAPTER 3 – RE-ENTRY

It tasted like peppermint. He could have just awoken from a dream after dropping off to sleep with an oral cleanser in his mouth. They tasted like peppermint too. But Casper knew the truth. Even before he opened his eyes the memories came flooding back and his heart rate soared as his adrenal glands flew into fight or flight mode. Somewhere, in the fuzzy distance, he thought he heard a high-pitched alarm and, for a nano-second, he imagined he was still on Ship. An icy cool metallic kiss brushed against his neck and his panic dispersed leaving him feeling calm and cocooned. Through the lethargic haze that held tight rein on his mind, he realized that he was truly cocooned. However, the confirmation that he had been trunked both saddened and relieved him. He had meshed into the mainframe and dumped his persona in time. His original body – the one he had been born into and he hoped to have inhabited for more than his twenty-two years – no longer existed, obliterated when Ship was destroyed. Sentinels had a reserve trunk into which they could be expressed in the event of an emergency. Casper shivered when he acknowledged the fact that he had just used up his one. It would take two years to clone a new trunk. If, in the meantime he badly damaged or destroyed the one he now inhabited, it meant existing inside the mainframe in VR until a new one was grown or this one repaired. He had heard stories of men who had never left the mainframe after being meshed into it for more than six months. It was rumoured the longer you stayed in VR the more your persona degraded.

Something muculent sloughed away from his face as he coughed and spluttered the first breaths into his new lungs. The umbilical membrane then slid off his chest as he eased himself upright. His eyes refused to open and he raised his right hand to his face and rubbed them.

‘Wait, I’ll do that. The lids are a bit gummy. Move your fingers away.’ The voice was feminine and sounded far way and full of echoes.

He let his hand flop back down to his side where it splashed into the amniotic fluid that was draining out of the clone-womb capsule. A cool, moist pad patted his eyes gently.

‘There, that’s better, open them now.’

Casper’s blue eyes fluttered open to see an angel. ‘I’m in heaven,’ he spluttered as the fluid dribbled out of his mouth.

The young clone-womb attendant smiled. She was demure. Light brown hair, cropped short, surmounted by the white band of cloth that signified her rank. By now she was used to every type of comment from newly revived trunks. She stepped forward and held out a white coverall sheet for him. Casper struggled to his feet and the attendant put out a hand to assist him.

‘It’s ok, I think I can manage,’ he said, and then looked down at his groin. ‘Hmm... looks like I’m quite pleased to see you.’

She laughed. ‘Don’t worry it happens to all the trunks, oh... sorry, I should say re-born. They don’t like us using that euphemism. It’s undignified, but everyone uses it. I’m Tani and you’re not in heaven, yet.’

‘For a second I thought I was. You are very beautiful, and no problem, trunk doesn’t offend me. I’m just damn glad we were downloaded into the ‘frame in time. I thought we weren’t going to make it.’

She handed him the sheet which wrapped itself around him like a second skin. She looked away. For a moment he thought she was embarrassed by the sheet’s covering of his erection, which only seemed to highlight it. Then he felt that it was not that, but she was hiding something from him.

‘Something’s wrong, what is it?’ he asked.

‘I’m not supposed to say anything. The doctor will be along shortly; he’ll explain things better than I can.’

Casper grabbed her arm. ‘What’s wrong with me? Fuck the doctor; tell me Tani, what’s happened to me?’

She struggled. ‘You’re hurting me.’

He towered over her, full of menace, but then let her go and looked at her beseechingly. ‘For God sake’s tell me what’s wrong with me?’

Tani rubbed her arm. ‘It’s not you,’ she replied reluctantly.

He frowned. ‘Then what’s wrong?’

‘It’s your friend, Private Gasquet.’

Casper jumped out of the capsule and stood before her, a good head above her. ‘What about Pen, he is ok isn’t he?’ A cold feeling swept over him. ‘He meshed in and dumped to ‘frame,