Contraband

By Drew Wagar

"It's an interesting collection this, written prior to Drew Wagar's major works. You can see the kernels of ideas that would go on to form the basis of Shadeward, Reclamation and the Elect Saga here. Yey, these shorts are good yarns and stand on their own as tales that will make you pause and think."

A collection of seven science fiction and fantasy short stories, written by Drew Wagar.

Dawn Rite Publishing is an independent UK press, founded in 2011. We deal exclusively with fictional works in the SF and Fantasy genres.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Drew Wagar
• Release date: Feb 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9781915966193

Drew Wagar

Drew Wagar is a science fiction and fantasy author, living in the UK. He is the author of the Hegira Series, the Shadeward Saga, The Midnight Chronicles, the Elect Saga and the official Elite Dangerous novelisations.You can join a mailing list and discover more about Drew's books at his website.www.drewwagar.com

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Contraband

Drew Wagar © 2023

All Rights Reserved

The right of Drew Wagar to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher or unless such copying is done under a current Copyright Licensing Agency license. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Contraband

Drew Wagar

A collection of short stories.

First Published 2023 by Dawn Rite Publishing

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-915966-19-3

ISBN (paperback): 978-1-915966-20-9

Contents

Foreword

Metal

Ascension

Written in the Stars

Nine

Train of Thought

Replay

Schism

Also by Drew Wagar

About the Author

Foreword

These stories pre-date most of my proper books by some degree, written whilst I was still playing around with ideas and not having yet committed to full length storytelling. They’ve been tidied up and edited a little, to bring them in line with modern standards.

Here you will find the genesis of some of the ideas which later found their way, in full form, into the Shadeward and Hegira series, the Elect Saga and my work on Elite Dangerous.

Most are set in space, or involve space in one form or another, although one is set here on Earth in the here and now… well, mostly.

Even then, I focussed on characters rather than scenes. Space is a great place to tell a story, but it’s the people… what they do and what happens to them, that really make a tale.

I hope you enjoy them.

Drew Wagar.

February 2023.

Metal

The planet recedes rapidly in the viewport as I gaze upon it. It is a world of serene beauty, harking back to how Earth must have been before humanity spread across its face like an unchecked infection. I can see ornate swirls of cloud, not quite obscuring the lush and verdant lands filled with exotic vegetation. I have walked this tragic world and can tell its story first hand.

We came in response to a distress call from an early survey ship. Long ago its crew had been tasked with searching out other worlds we could plunder, a mission we continue to this day; a desperate scramble to slake our thirst for metal. Lost before I was born, that ship was little more than a minor footnote until a chance pass by a probe picked up its faint beacon, still pulsating after all this time. The world in question had long since been deleted from our portfolio. It was lacking in metals, suitable only for a simple agrarian culture, irrelevant to the high industry that drove our civilization.

On entering orbit we quickly ascertained that the survey ship had landed upon the planet, a contravention of laws governing exploration at the time, as it was suspected that the planet supported higher forms of life, perhaps even intelligence.

We could get nothing from the automated systems aboard. Our cameras gave us a low-res image of the ship, revealing the broken carcass of the hapless vessel upon a hillside. The cameras also revealed something else; the wreck was sporting a plume of unidentified pale white material, stretching into the surrounding greenery before fading away after a few miles.

It took a few days to receive permission to descend. Even now, we have found no efficient way to short-cut organizational bureaucracy. The white material continued to baffle us. Most assumed it was some sort of windblown sand that had accumulated in the lee of the wreck. Our chief scientist, a more imaginative fellow, proposed a form of coral attracted to the metals that composed the old survey ship.

Descent was a leisurely process. We cautiously dropped our scout ship into the atmosphere, stopping at various points to check and confirm our position and estimates. Our ship, equipped as it was with zero-point energy engines, could hold any given position indefinitely. Not for us the tense fiery plunge though the atmosphere that original survey crew would have endured.

We had a strict agenda; other worlds beckoned, and the Consortium paid us to find resources to support humanity’s endless expansion, not to solve ancient mysteries. We had terse instructions to retrieve the survey ship’s memory core and then proceed with our work.

We landed someway clear of the wreck and spent a moment checking atmospheric pressure, temperature and composition. Everything was routine. It wasn’t a parallel Earth by any stretch of the imagination, but short exposure wouldn’t cause any lasting effects to our crew.

The atmosphere felt thin and dry. Overhead a pale azure sky stretched from horizon to horizon, a strange but oddly comforting sight, for it has been many centuries since Earth and her colonies have sported anything but the rolling grey clouds of industrial progress.

Beneath our booted feet a velvet carpet of moss-like vegetation covered the hillside. Dark green plants grew absurdly tall and spindly in the low gravity. We could hear no birds or insect life. Apprehension gave way to bemusement as we acclimatised to an almost complete lack of noise, save the faint rustle as the breeze gently swayed the fragile vegetation.

The wreck’s squat metallic form, a series of incongruous sharp edges and straight panels, was a jarring contrast to the soft curves of the landscape it had impaled. Immediately we could see that it had crashed, the forward nose cone buckled and bent upwards, the ship twisted halfway down its length, spilling the contents of its hold away from our vantage point. The hull was tarnished and scored. The plume of white material was on the far side of the hill, hidden by the ship’s dark and silent bulk.

We’d read stories of those days, of course. Primitive ships manned by highly trained crews chosen for toughness, endurance and versatility. Rations were mean and living conditions intolerable to our modern sensibilities. Had our society retained a sense of history we might have been motivated to preserve this relic of a time long past, but we no longer value such fripperies.

We continued up the hill, still unnerved by the silence. It felt as if we were invading some holy sanctum, intruders in a carefully manicured garden. Any moment the grounds-keeper might appear, dealing out severe punishment for trespassers.