Worlds Beyond: The Indigo Reports, #3

By Cameron Cooper

Peace is balanced upon a knife edge…

 

With the incomparable advantage of personal bridge forges and the elusive flying city, Demos, Bellona and her Ledanians have contained their rabid enemies, the Alliance, for more than a decade, preventing them from swallowing whole the hundreds of worlds who look to Bellona to preserve their freedom and peace.  If the Alliance's relentless ambition to find a decisive advantage is realized, the delicate balance Bellona maintains would be destroyed, and the free worlds vulnerable.

Rumours emerge from the Alliance-annexed states of a new type of bridge forge which might just be the tool the Alliance needs to defeat her…

Worlds Beyond is the final book in the Indigo Reports space opera science fiction series by award-winning SF author Cameron Cooper.

The Indigo Reports series:
0.5 Flying Blind
1.0 New Star Rising
1.1 But Now I See
2.0 Suns Eclipsed
3.0 Worlds Beyond
3.5 The Indigo Reports

Space Opera Science Fiction Novel
__

Praise for Worlds Beyond:

The story is unpredictable, the horror and pain is real. This is an epic saga!!

The signature intensity and tension of the Indigo series is back!!!

This is epic science fiction at its finest. Realistic far future worlds. Incredible characters and scenarios.

Cameron knows how to tell a story, regardless of whether we are going back in history or forward in time.

Until this book I had forgotten just how much I love good science fiction and Cameron's book is not just good, it's exceptional.

This is a complex tale of planetary politics, plotting, spying, scientific marvels, and advanced androids. Plus there is the fascinating floating city of Demos.

The concepts are staggering and intensely interesting.

The Indigo Reports series is far more than I ever anticipated.

This story is terrific! It's intriguing and futuristic and human in its telling.

One of my favorite and most satisfying science fiction series to read. A series to devour.
__

Cameron Cooper is the author of The Indigo Reports science fiction series and the alter ego for an Amazon #1 bestselling author in an unrelated genre. The Indigo Reports was originally conceived as a one-off series, but readers demanded more.  A new series will be released in 2020.

Cameron tends to write space opera short stories and novels, but also roams across the science fiction landscape.  He was raised on a steady diet of Asimov, Heinlein, Herbert, McCaffrey, and others. Peter F. Hamilton and John Scalzi are contemporary heroes.  He is an Australian Canadian and lives near the Canadian Rockies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stories Rule Press
• Release date: Aug 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781774382660

Cameron Cooper

Cameron Cooper is the author of the Imperial Hammer series, an Amazon best-selling space opera series.  Cameron tends to write space opera short stories and novels, but also roams across the science fiction landscape. Cameron was raised on a steady diet of Asimov, Heinlein, Herbert, McCaffrey, and others. Peter F. Hamilton, John Scalzi, Martha Wells and Cory Doctorow are contemporary heroes. An Australian Canadian, Cam lives near the Canadian Rockies.

Book preview

WORLDS BEYOND

BOOK 3.0 ● THE INDIGO REPORTS

Copyright Information

This is an original publication of Cameron Cooper

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

Copyright © 2020 by Cameron Cooper

Text design by Tracy Cooper-Posey

Edited by Mr. Intensity, Mark Posey

Cover design by Dar Albert

http://WickedSmartDesigns.com

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

FIRST EDITION: May 2017

SECOND EDITION: October 2019

Cooper, Cameron

Worlds Beyond/Cameron Cooper—2nd Ed.

Fiction | Science Fiction | Space Opera | Galactic Empires | Action & Adventure |

202403

Special Offer – Free Science Fiction

Space cities have been locked in war for centuries over the resources of an asteroid belt.

Humans pilot swarms of pod fighters to protect their city’s mining operations from other cities, risking everything and suffering multiple deaths and regenerations. Then Landry goes through a regeneration which introduces an error that will destroy the delicate balance of the war.

Resilience is a space opera short story by award-winning SF author Cameron Cooper.

__

Epic science fiction at its finest. Realistic far future worlds. Incredible characters and scenarios. – Amazon reader.

This short story has not been commercially released for sale. It is only available as a gift to readers who subscribe to Cam’s email list.

See details once you have enjoyed Worlds Beyond

Table of Contents

Half Title Page

Copyright Information

Special Offer – Free Science Fiction

About Worlds Beyond

Praise for Worlds Beyond

About the Author

Title Page

PART ONE

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

PART TWO

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

PART THREE

19

20

21

22

Epilogue

Coda

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Other Books by Cameron Cooper

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About Worlds Beyond

Peace is balanced upon a knife edge…

With the incomparable advantage of personal bridge forges and the elusive flying city, Demos, Bellona and her Ledanians have contained their rabid enemies, the Alliance, for more than a decade, preventing them from swallowing whole the hundreds of worlds who look to Bellona to preserve their freedom and peace. If the Alliance’s relentless ambition to find a decisive advantage is realized, the delicate balance Bellona maintains would be destroyed, and the free worlds vulnerable.

Rumours emerge from the Alliance-annexed states of a new type of bridge forge which might just be the tool the Alliance needs to defeat her…

Worlds Beyond is the final book in the Indigo Reports space opera science fiction series by award-winning SF author Cameron Cooper.

The Indigo Reports series:

0.5 Flying Blind

1.0 New Star Rising

1.1 But Now I See

2.0 Suns Eclipsed

3.0 Worlds Beyond

Space Opera Science Fiction Novel

Praise for Worlds Beyond

The story is unpredictable, the horror and pain is real. This is an epic saga!!

The signature intensity and tension of the Indigo series is back!!!

This is epic science fiction at its finest. Realistic far future worlds. Incredible characters and scenarios.

Cameron knows how to tell a story, regardless of whether we are going back in history or forward in time.

Until this book I had forgotten just how much I love good science fiction and Cameron’s book is not just good, it’s exceptional.

This is a complex tale of planetary politics, plotting, spying, scientific marvels, and advanced androids. Plus there is the fascinating floating city of Demos.

The concepts are staggering and intensely interesting.

The Indigo Reports series is far more than I ever anticipated.

This story is terrific! It's intriguing and futuristic and human in its telling.

One of my favorite and most satisfying science fiction series to read. A series to devour.

About the Author

Cameron Cooper is the author of the Imperial Hammer space opera series, among others, and is the pen name used by best selling author Tracy Cooper-Posey. As Cameron Cooper, she writes science fiction short stories and novels, including space opera. As Tracy Cooper-Posey, she writes romantic suspense, historical, paranormal, fantasy and science fiction romance, plus women’s fiction. She also writes contemporary, epic and urban fantasy stories and novels as Taylen Carver.

She has published over 180 titles under all pen names since 1999, been nominated for five CAPAs including Favourite Author, and won the Emma Darcy Award. She turned to indie publishing in 2011. Her indie titles have been nominated four times for Book of The Year. Tracy won the award in 2012, a SFR Galaxy Award in 2016 and came fourth in Hugh Howey’s SPSFC#2 in 2023. She has been a national magazine editor and for a decade she taught romance writing at MacEwan University.

She is addicted to Irish Breakfast tea and chocolate, sometimes taken together. In her spare time she enjoys history, Sherlock Holmes, science fiction and fantasy and ignoring her treadmill. An Australian Canadian, she lives in Edmonton, Canada with her husband, a former professional wrestler, where she moved in 1996 after meeting him on-line.

WORLDS BEYOND

BOOK 3.0 ● THE INDIGO REPORTS

By

Cameron Cooper

STORIES RULE PRESS

Edmonton ● Alberta

PART ONE

A picture containing music Description automatically generated

1

Arriguci I, Arriguci System.

A MONTH’S REVENUE WON OR LOST HUNG upon the next few minutes. It sharpened Rochus Askes’ focus upon details as they lowered him through the excavation manhole.

Even the manhole itself provided data they would have to analyze pixel by pixel, later. Layers of grown metal gleamed in the light from his helmet. The edges were silvered. Bright where the archeology team’s ion cutters had sliced through. The metal sandwiched insulation bloom, and power and communications veins, all severed in a neat, meter-thick circular cross-section.

Definitely man-made, Askes murmured. "Very old, too."

At the confirmation, excited babble from the team sounded over all the channels.

Askes raised his voice. Quiet! He hoped the command reminded them that, unlike most digs, they were not the only people watching and listening to his feeds. Millions around the known worlds had sliced in to see if the remains of the Ship of a Thousand Places had been found.

Ready to proceed, boss? Roma Ingersleben asked, her tone cool and professional now.

Askes glanced between his knees. Nothing but dark, below. The only way to see more was to go down there. Lower me down, Control.

Ingersleben got the winch moving once more. Askes descended at a slow, steady pace through the excavation manhole and into nothing.

The winch halted.

Waiting for secondary risk assessment to complete, Control murmured, as Askes hung in nothingness.

To keep the wager fair, Askes blinked his attention from screen to augmentation layer, to the view through his faceplate. The constant shift let everyone monitoring see it all, which was nothing, right now.

Yarrick Kader, Secretary General of the League of Sovereign States, would be one of those who watched. It was Kader who had suggested Askes put not just his professional reputation, but a month’s revenue, on the line. Kader would be in his big office, a dozen screens generated, monitoring everything with close, skeptical scrutiny.

Cleared and descending, Control said.

While nothing changed in Askes’ natural vision, the augment layer showed he was descending once more. The probe they’d lowered first was pulsing reassuring blips, eight meters below and growing closer with every second.

Normally, bots and probes would do the initial surveillance work. The nature of this dig, though, demanded a human touch. So did the money resting upon the outcome. His was not the only bet made that this was or was not the Invisible City.

Still nothing was visible to the naked eye, although his augments were steadily painting an overlay as the data from the probe and the scanning pack compiled.

A large space, Askes said, as the augmentation layer built. Oval…no, a flattened egg-shape. Ten meters at the tallest point. He didn’t bother reading out the rest of the dimensions for the space. Everyone could read for themselves it was thirty meters across. No wonder the non-invasive, heavily filtered light of his helmet illuminated nothing.

Even so, his vitals monitor showed a rising heartbeat. Control would see it too, although she didn’t mention it over the too-public feed. She knew better than most people how deep Askes’ interest in the mythology ran.

None of the myths spoke about an oval space at the top of the city. The Field of Assembly, the original landing bays, the Czarina’s personal wing…he called up the file indexes and cataloged quickly. No, nothing about an oval space.

The scant handful of known facts about that time in history had nothing to do with a ship, or even people, except for one or two names which may or may not be related. Everything else—if there had been an Invisible Ship at all—was lost in the chaos of the Age of Misrule.

Probe does not find human DNA of either sort within its range, Control said. Cleared to proceed.

Down to the floor, Askes confirmed.

The winch continued. The blip of the probe came closer. The screen in the top corner of his faceplate showed a green, indistinct blur, which was new. The filtered light was being bounced back, at last. The screen showed the floor of the oval room.

The augment layer displayed a solid line beneath the descending dot which was Askes. Dot and line approached each other.

The probe life signs switched off, as something pushed against Askes’ toes. His boots leveled out, pressed down upon sloping floor. His weight transferred properly. The boots’ magnetic fields engaged.

Down.

Arriguci was a small planet, with less than ideal gravity. Since the scout satellites had sent back the exciting thermal images of a ship beneath the rocky surface, the xenobiologists had been arguing about the constitution of the ball. No large indigenous mammals, they pointed out—which was all wrong.

The lack of warm-blooded creatures made Askes’ and his team’s jobs easier. It meant they didn’t have to put up perimeter beacons to guard their backs while they were bent over the hole.

Askes didn’t detach the elevator wire. Instead, he tucked a length into a loop on the back of his belt, under the air tank, to keep it out of his way. He pulled up the list of procedure steps they’d hammered out on the six-week sub-forge flight to Arriguci and checked off the first.

He’d landed safely. That was the first step.

Then he bent and pressed the heavy tips of his instrument gloves against the floor by his toes. Dust, dirt, less of it than I expected.

Initial dating puts it at two point two millennia, boss, Control replied.

None of his team needed that date interpreted. Askes spoke, instead, to all the lay people observing. It’s the right era, then. His heart did a little jump and flip in reaction.

He consoled himself with the fact that only Control could see his vitals.

It still doesn’t mean it’s Demos. The raspy, deeper voice was that of Yarrick Kader. By virtue of his position, he had privileged access to the direct feeds of the team, and Askes’ vitals. There were pre-forge ships back then.

Not this big, Control murmured.

Askes connected with her neural node and silently warned her. One didn’t dispute the Secretary General. Not in public. Not even if he was a lay person quoting childhood history lessons.

Wasn’t the ship supposed to be invisible? How does an invisible ship hit dirtside in the first place? Kader replied.

Askes cleared his throat. If the ship actually existed at all, sir, then we can’t take the name literally. Language changes over time… The answer would reach everyone who could only watch right now. Was Kader asking the stupid questions for this purpose? Kader was very good at his job, after all. Askes followed Kader’s lead, and expanded on his answer. History—or in this case, mythology, which is all we have to work on—has to be sifted and adjusted for language shifts.

On his personal screen, Control typed: Move toward a wall.

That was step three. Askes nodded and moved down the mild slope.

Our records from two thousand years ago are perfectly preserved, Kader pointed out.

Askes knew then that Kader was playing to his audience, because they had already had this argument back on Quintana, before the team had left for Arriguci.

Bellona, Czarina of Demos, if she lived at all, was from a time before the Age of Misrule, Askes replied, taking one careful step, then another. There are no records from that time. Still nothing but space around him, although the screen in his visor was showing another green fuzzy glow—a wall was coming up.

Haydeé wrote that book about the ancient emperors…

Control turned her snort of derision into a heavy clearing of her throat.

"Haydeé wrote her histories four hundred years after the Age of Misrule, Askes explained. He was in familiar, stable history, now. She couldn’t possibly have had direct knowledge of events before the chaos. Therefore, she was recording stories she had collected from others’ memories. It is impossible to tell what is fact and what is pure invention."

You are saying that all the people in the stories, Kader said, C’Leal, Bellona, Dyson. Spring the Angry, Thecla and Reth the Killer. Humble Hay and his magic garden…they did not exist, even if Demos did?

It would be unlikely, Askes replied. There might have been a Bellona, but not the Czarina we know from the…I’m approaching a wall.

He put his hand out, because the non-invasive light tended to distort depth perception, even his. The augment layer said the wall was three meters away. Two. One.

His fingers pressed against solidness. The monitor recorded warmth. Yielding firmness.

Ship skin, Control said, reading the glove’s feedback displays like normal people read text.

Askes put the flat of his hand against the wall and let the glove do its job. There are gouges and scrapes in the skin. Evidence of violence…or a hasty departure.

Analysis says normal light will be non-damaging, Control replied.

Askes accessed the controls for his suit and switched on brighter, standard filter light and blinked as his eyes adjusted.

Dust, stains. Black floor…perhaps it had been black to begin with. There was no way to tell. The walls are… He tilted his head. Ocre.

Insert a needle data probe, Control prompted him.

He adjusted the glove and rested the tip of his pointing index finger against the wall and shot the probe. The probe slid through the ship skin, sampling as it went, and buried itself in the wall. Nanobots streamed out, seeking.

Secondary dating confirms two thousand, three hundred years, plus or minus fifty, Control said.

Askes lowered his hand and switched his attention to the probe screen. This was Control’s area of expertise. He would let her sort out the mash of information flowing over the screen.

Oh… Control breathed. "There is a massive store of data. It’s everywhere. We’ll spend years sorting this out. She added with a wry tone, Once we figure out how to even read the files."

And then interpret them, Askes added, for the folks back home.

The topography is like nothing I’ve ever seen. Downloading to preserve the architecture, which will be a study all on its own. She hummed to herself. The humming checked. Wait…

I am, Askes pointed out. He shifted his shoulders and feet, playing the light over the wall, as far along as it would reach. Still nothing remarkable. No plates declaring this was the UCS Demosthenes.

He chided himself. He was letting personal interest bias his professional analysis. This was still merely an unknown, unusually large derelict, even if its age was remarkable.

Wait, wait, wait… The excitement in Control’s voice was unusual. There’s readable data here. She gave a choked sound. It’s basic binary. Awe tinged her voice. "Someone