Ethereal Fiends: Bright White Darkness, #3

By Andrew G. Betts

The epic 3rd instalment of the Bright White Darkness saga. The human race is on the brink of a technological revolution, but the fearsome Skin aliens are still a threat, and now a new horror, a terror beyond imagining, lurks in the shadows.

Who and what is the mysterious human-alien hybrid? Is Lo Issa the saviour, or the monster? What does the future hold for mankind? Many shocking answers will be revealed! Friends will become enemies, but will enemies become allies? Murder, battles, destruction, discovery and mind-bending science, but will the human race survive? The Watchers are here!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andrew G. Betts
• Release date: Aug 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223819509

Book preview

Prologue

Ripples. Gentle, invisible waves originating from a seemingly insignificant point, and radiating across the vast nothing of an almost empty universe. Here and there, infinitesimally small clouds of gas, stars and planets hung, lost in an endless blackness. Cold, vacant, unknown. The nebulous signals travelled out past every sun, every white dwarf and red giant, heralding events that in themselves were too small for the universe to care. Two insignificant incidents that altered nothing for the infinite void, but were momentous to those microscopic beings whose fleeting lives and histories were shook by them. A planet, a particularly small one, had shifted from its own dimension to another place, the same universe but on a different level, another realm. For most on that tiny blue sphere little had altered at the time, even when their world shifted back again. Then, just a little later, a star, the sun of that same blue planet, but again in another dimension, had turned supernova! It was an everyday occurrence in the vastness of space, but this event was unusual, this supernova was unnatural, it was made to happen by technology, a rare and extraordinary incidence indeed. The small star, only four and a half billion years old, so very far from the end of its natural life, had been caused to expand rapidly and engulf the planets of its solar system. Then the artificial supernova had died down, pulling the sun back from the brink of its own destruction, and leaving it an angry, vast Super Red Giant, filling the space of its system in place of the companions it had obliterated. The ripples spread, almost completely unobserved in a universe where sentient life was the rarest of all things, but eventually they were noticed, and soon, minds of a sort beyond the imagining of those who dwelt on the little blue planet, turned their attention and focused their intent upon the bright, vulnerable world. Terrible things, in the darkest corners of the coldest places in the universe, stirred, stared, and began to contemplate the small planet, and the tiny beings upon its surface.

The Hermes & Thanatos

Part One

Contact

Chapter 1

Little Hakeem blew the dust from his hand and watched it float away on the warm breeze. The sun was almost setting, but his father would be a few more hours yet. The men were haggling, as usual, but in the end the ten-year-old and his family would hopefully have enough rice and pulses to feed them for another two weeks, hopefully, unless his father could not strike a bargain with the black market sellers this time. Hakeem trusted that his father knew what he was doing, they had survived until now, a testament to how capable Abdul Al-Zahawi was at negotiating deals, and sensing when it was time to move on. Iraq had been a dangerous place to grow up for a very long time before little Hakeem had come into the world, and now it was possibly worse than ever.

Beyond the borders of the shattered nation much of the world had changed so dramatically since the day Hakeem was born. Wars were almost a thing of the past, between men at least. An era of cooperation and trust had begun, though the reasons and details were hard for the ten year old to grasp. He did understand, from the few snippets of news he had seen on TVs in cafes and shops, that amazing events had occurred. Something had happened to the world, when he was just a baby, something so great it had changed everything, yet had not affected the lives of those in the war-torn lands that were his home. There, people lived their lives in constant fear, not of the terrifying alien creatures spoken of in the news, but of other men, ordinary men, who claimed their actions were ordered by god. Men who ruled the fractured streets of broken cities, men who terrorized the people into following their laws, their ideas, their beliefs. Anyone who did not was hanged, or shot, or worse. Once Hakeem himself had seen a man set on fire. Right in the middle of the street. The men who called themselves police had dragged him from his home, accused him of blasphemy, of being a servant of the devil. Hakeem had not understood what the man had done wrong, even after his father explained that the man was a teacher, and that the science he spoke of was something no one was permitted to study in the caliphate.

Little Hakeem stood up as he heard a rumble of vehicles go past on the road behind him. A wall, worn by the desert sands and splintered by bullets and shrapnel, was between him and the dusty road, and he kept low so the men with guns did not see him. There were two trucks, and lots of men, maybe forty or more, all with their heads covered in hoods and wearing army clothing. Their boots kicked up dirt as they rushed into the building next door to the one Hakeem’s father was in, negotiating for supplies. There were shouts, screams, then loud gunfire that made Hakeem jump with fear. He dropped low behind the wall, heart racing. More shouts. What should he do? Run? Wait for his father to come and get him? More shouting, and a woman screaming. Little Hakeem slowly raised and peeked over the wall. There were lots of men with guns standing in the street, and others dragging two men and a woman out of the building. The woman and one of the men were half-naked, as though they had been dragged from their bed. Hakeem had never seen a female who was not covered from head to toe by a black burka. The woman wore a large white bra and underwear that was like shorts, for some reason her bare feet caught his attention as they kicked up sand and dirt from the road, like the armed men’s boots had done.

The man who was dressed looked younger than the couple, perhaps he is their son, thought the little boy. Then one of the hooded men casually put a pistol to the younger man’s head and there was a popping sound. Not a loud bang, but a sudden crack, and the young man’s head whipped to one side as blood shot from his face. He fell to the ground, dead, as the woman erupted into screams and sobs. Movement pulled the terrified boy’s attention to his right. At an archway of the building next door people were looking out, one of them was his father Abdul Al-Zahawi. The woman suddenly went silent and Hakeem looked back to her. She was lying face down on the road, one of the armed men was standing over her, his assault rifle held in such a way that the little boy knew he had struck the woman with its butt. Her husband, if that was who he was, pleaded with the armed men, though Hakeem could only hear a little of what he was saying, and understood none of it. The man wore only underwear and socks, his pot belly shook as he was knocked around by the men, some hitting him with their weapons, other just pushing with hands, or punching with fists. It was awful to see, but the little boy found he could not look away.

One armed man kicked their victim’s legs out from under him and watched him drop to the ground, still pleading. There was laughter. Most of those in hoods appeared to find what was happening very funny. Some were getting back into the trucks, others standing over the pleading man, a few more were wandering down the street towards the onlookers, their weapons held at the ready. Little Hakeem wanted to shout something to his father, tell him to go back inside. The hooded men terrified him. He knew they could kill anyone they liked, sometimes, often in fact, for no reason. Hakeem put his hands on the wall and jigged up and down with excitement and fear, trying to will his father and the others to go back inside. The hooded men were just a few feet away, and calling out something. Suddenly a blindingly bright object flew past overhead and one of the trucks exploded with a deafening bang!

The boy dropped down behind the wall instinctively as men screamed and gunshots filled the streets. There was a whooshing sound as another bright something shot past, followed by another, much louder explosion. More screams, but only a few shots. Next there was a roaring sound and an acrid smell of smouldering metal, rubber and flesh reached Hakeem’s nostrils. He cautiously looked over the wall again and saw both trucks were ablaze. Men lay all around, some on fire, there were patches of dark in the dirty sand which he did not pay attention to as he searched for his father in a street now filling with smoke. Had he moved closer he would have realized the patches were pools of blood. Death was everywhere. There was shouting, and the sound of women screaming from somewhere he could not see. Through gaps in the smoke he saw that his father and the other men were still crouched in the archway and his heart ballooned with relief. Baba! Hakeem called out. Baba! He did not think his father could hear him over the shouts of others and the roar of flames.

Suddenly a figure was stood before him, on the other side of the wall. It wore a hood too, but not like those of the militiamen. This was a broad hood pulled up from a military-style black coat. Hakeem stood, frozen to the spot, and stared at the figure as more like it moved past and headed down the street, weapons that looked somewhat different to the AK47s of the militiamen held in their hands. The figure near him slowly began to turn his way, just as one of the others fired their weapon, and a bolt of what the child thought to be lightning shot from it, somewhere further down the street there was another explosion. His eyes widened as the figure bore down on him, then a gloved hand raised and pulled back its hood. Little Hakeem stared in terror, confusion and fascination at the beautiful face of the young, blonde-haired woman. She smiled, then turned away and walked down the street, disappearing into the smoke.

Chapter 2

There was nothing out there. Nothing that Jamie could see anyway. Just an endless nothing, up and down, left to right. She had expected to see stars when looking out of the portals, like staring up at the night sky, but now she actually found herself travelling through the cosmos which she had spent most of her twenty-six years gazing up at, all she could see was blackness. There was the odd vague, dim twinkle of something here and there, more the suggestion of a celestial body than one she could really make out. A few days earlier the Hermes 1 High Speed Exploration Vehicle had swept past Mars, and the view through the portals had been crowded with the dark brown-redness of the planet. Mars had filled the small, round window for over twenty-four hours as the Hermes rocketed by, on its way out to the farthest point of the solar system humans had yet to reach, the mighty gas giant of Jupiter. Now, like most of the times Jamie had chosen to peer out during their six months of voyaging, all that could be appreciated was just how incredibly empty space was. Mars was a pinprick in the distance now, and too far to their rear for the woman to see from her portal.

She pushed away from the four inch thick acrylic pane and floated down into the centre of a narrow corridor. The long tube of the central walkway, which could not be walked in the literal sense while in near zero gravity, stretched from one end of the Hermes to the other. From the reactor chamber that powered them through the solar system, to the bridge where Captain Yuen was forever on duty, unable to sleep in his cramped cot and always paranoid that without him something terrible would befall his ship, the fastest craft humans had ever built, thanks to the technical renaissance which had followed the Shift Events and the capturing of an alien Skin vessel some four years ago now. Jamie, graduate of MIT and a pilot in the United States air force before she applied to be one of the new breed of astronauts, used her hands and feet to push on the smooth sides of the corridor, creating enough momentum for her athletic body to float all the way down to the end, where the bulkhead leading to the bridge waited.

Their journey was planned to coincide with a time when the orbits of the Earth and Jupiter around the sun brought the two planets to their closest relative positions, making it a mere three hundred and sixty-five million miles from one to the other. Jamie was one of only two people on board who understood how the reactor at the rear of the Hermes actually worked, using the mysterious dark energy, that all Skin technology seemed to exploit, to create a strange form of cold nuclear fusion. The top speed of the Hermes was unknown, no one was sure just how much the materials of the craft’s fuselage could actually withstand out there in space, though everything had obviously been rigorously tested. The scientists and engineers at NASA were quite sure that the fifty thousand mile-per-hour velocity at which the craft was hurtling through space was easily within safe parameters.

The Hermes was a hundred feet in length, nowhere near the size of the old Saturn 5 rockets that had taken man to the moon so many decades before. Another of the many differences was that the Saturn 5s worked in stages, each breaking off and falling back to the planet after it had served its purpose. The Hermes was still in one piece and had not blasted up out of the atmosphere, using vast amounts of energy in a dangerous attempt to reach escape velocity. Such a speed would have been easy for the new vessel, but totally unnecessary as the Hermes was constructed in space and launched off on its mission from orbit, detaching itself from the International Space Station which had itself grown to five times the size it was before the technological jump.

Those who had made it all possible, the heroes of the Shift Events and the narrowly avoided war with the fearsome Skin, had introduced a new era in human history. All governments, cooperating through the United Nations on a level that was unprecedented, were unanimous in their desire to advance human technological ability and knowledge to a point where such beings as the Skin could no longer be a threat. There was clearly some way to go toward achieving that ambition, and Jamie, Captain Yuen and the Hermes’ four other crew members were at the spearhead of that technological drive. Their test flight, powering out to the solar system’s largest planet, before taking a hard, slingshot turn and whipping back in the direction of home, was the next pinnacle of Earth’s recent achievements. There were three other space stations around the planet now, the Chinese one, which had also expanded massively, and two newer platforms, operated by European nations and the Russian Federation respectively. Before the Hermes even accomplished her two year mission, another craft, named the Thanatos High Speed Defense Vehicle, would set off on its own journey to the same huge planet, testing its speed, structural integrity, engine performance and weapons systems. The Thanatos had been given an ominous designation quite intentionally. It was named after the Greek god of death, and was to be the flagship of a defensive force that would orbit the Earth, and hopefully protect it against attack from the heavens.

Of course, previous contacts with the Skin did not involve their approaching from outer space, but by interdimensional travel. However, the humans who had led a small mission to the Skin Earth of that other realm had ensured that route through the dimensions, simply hopping from one version of the Earth to the next, was no longer an option, when they used Skin weaponry to incredibly, and somewhat terrifyingly, create a temporary supernova in the solar system of our neighboring realm, engulfing all the planets of that dimension in a mighty red giant star that even the Skin could not travel through.

The humans of our Earth now stood, temporarily safe, and working hard to become a force to be reckoned with, in the vast nothingness of their own dimensional space. Learning, building, training and contemplating what other monsters might exist out there in the deepest, darkest parts of the universe.

The bulkhead door opened with a hum of electricity. Lieutenant Jamie Farris floated through and smiled at the thirty-seven-year-old Chinese astronaut who looked very much in charge as he sat in the broad chair in the centre of the bridge. More than one comparison to the captain’s chair on the Starship Enterprise had been made about Captain Yuen’s seat, and he certainly filled it with the same easy confidence of William Shatner’s Jim Kirk, however the rest of the cramped bridge was nothing like the interior of the starship from the old TV shows and movies. It was a very small space, less than eight feet in diameter. There were three other seats, one in front of Yuen and one either side, all facing inwards. Each station had its own docked tablet computer, displaying data on whichever part or function of the Hermes that particular crewmember was charged with monitoring. There was no ‘big screen’ showing the space ahead, with the stars whizzing by. If there had been, Jamie knew all it would show was the never-ending blackness, with perhaps a tiny, pinprick glimmer in one corner that was the distant giant of Jupiter. There were cameras all around the Hermes’ exterior, including several at the front, and the feed from each could be accessed at any time on their tablets.

The Hermes was not a typical rocket shape, but it did taper to a point at the front, and the whole nosecone, the entire first thirty feet of the craft in fact, was one solid section of titanium. The outer skin of the flat nosecone was formed of plates made from silicon carbide and between them and the titanium sat a layer of Kevlar. This nearly indestructible front end of the High Speed Exploration Vehicle was to protect it from debris the craft encountered as it hurtled through space at that mind-numbing fifty thousand miles-per-hour pace, with its navigation and any possible, if minuscule, course corrections all being handled by the digital brains of the Hermes’ main computer. The vessel was an ellipse that stretched to a point at one end, and although the circular main body of the Hermes was some fifty feet in diameter, most of its interior was taken up by storage tanks and machinery for keeping the crew alive, and so had precious little space for them to actually live within. Despite the six-person crew almost everything was, in reality, being controlled by technology, the humans were mostly there for maintenance and monitoring, and to enjoy the long, hopefully uneventful, ride. Their presence was vital only because the purpose of the craft was to transport humans to places they had never yet been, and at speeds never before experienced. It was all experimental, dangerous and, as the crew of the Hermes were discovering, intolerably uncomfortable.

Space is not an agreeable environment for human beings. All the problems were known long before the technological jump made possible by the reverse engineering of alien tech. Those working on the long-planned Mars mission had been studying the various issues of prolonged spaceflight for some years. Most immediate were the problems micro-gravity presented to the astronauts. On Earth the circulatory system and other processes work against the effect of gravity. In near zero G the whole system is disturbed, for example the blood cells change shape, from their usual disc appearance into spheres. Muscle-loss, fatigue and bone degeneration occur after more time. The Hermes was equipped with a tiny gym room containing a machine designed to exercise the whole body, working the arms, legs, back and abdomen in order to strengthen muscles and reduce the loss of calcium and marrow which leads to bone weakening.

The most dangerous problem of long-term travel in outer-space had been solved by studying and reproducing the alien technology. The ‘living’ metal that formed the outer skin of the captured alien vessel and the famous dimension-shifting Kanaan Machines, which could be cultivated and grown like living tissue, was found to be extremely effective at blocking the radioactive cosmic rays which penetrate spacecraft, and the bodies of those within, being noticed by astronauts as flashes across their vision when they have their eyes closed. That material now formed an inner layer of skin of the Hermes’ main fuselage. There was one potential problem however which had not been solved before the Hermes’ mission, sleep deprivation! Several attempts had been made by scientists in the US, Europe and Japan to create hibernation chambers so the astronauts could lay dormant, switch off while the spacecraft took them the mind-boggling distances now being attempted, but all of the experiments had failed. Hibernation was put aside and it was decided the first missions would go without it, demanding a great deal of courage and determination from the pioneering souls aboard the Hermes, and the next big mission craft, the Thanatos. Anything to report, Karl? the young Chief Engineer asked her subordinate as she pulled herself effortlessly over to his station on Captain Yuen’s left.

Only that all is operating as expected, Jamie, replied the twenty-eight-year-old German without taking his eyes off the screen before him. It was dark and gloomy in the bridge, one small light shone down from the ceiling, reflecting off the top of Yuen’s bald head, the rest of the low-level illumination came from the tablet screens themselves and tiny torches each member of the crew wore clipped to a thin band around their heads, which also held small communication devices. Despite the incredible reactor which powered the craft through the void, the crew of the Hermes were still reliant on old fashioned, traditional electricity, gathered by solar panels, to light the cramped rooms and long corridor as they travelled through the icy cold of space. A tiny percentage of the heat being blasted out of the craft’s rear was continually being re-directed along conducting pipes so that the Hermes’ interior was sufficiently warm.

Want to get some shut-eye? Jamie asked with a pretty smile.

Oh nein Lieutenant, I am fine for now, replied Karl. It’s the usual story of course, he went on, stretching and leaning back in his seat. When I am sat here staring at the readouts for hours I could easily drift off, but when I lay there in my cot, with those straps holding me down, I can’t sleep for more than a few minutes at a time.

It’s mainly the lack of gravity, mumbled the captain without taking his eyes of the smaller screen affixed to the right arm of his chair, the body is experiencing sensory confusion, so the mind is too busy to switch off.

Ya, agreed Karl, I cannot switch off, but right here, peering at these barely altering stats, I feel my eyelids weighing down. It is harder with every week, and far more...challenging than it was in the simulator.

The darkness doesn’t help, added Jamie.

That’s true, the woman on the opposite side of Yuen agreed. She was unbuckling her harness and slowly floating up out of her seat. It seems a lot darker on board than it did in the Hermes simulator, but I think that’s partly psychological, the computers say the lighting levels are the same.

It is darker, stated Captain Yuen, his voice betraying just a little tension, whatever the tech says.

We’re lost in the dark, Jamie stated in a low voice, but we have each other. She reached out and touched Yuen’s arm, causing him to noticeably tense but then relax.

Object ahead, just three and a half degrees off out trajectory, announced the man in front of the captain in a casual voice.

What is it, Dr Gibbins? demanded Captain Yuen, the tension returning to his body and voice.

Ice, not enough data to be sure of its course but it could be part of the Asteroid Belt, a rogue object some million miles or so from its buddies.

There’s no danger of collision? asked Jamie, a thin thread of nerves running through her words.

Again Lieutenant, absolutely not. I know you never believed me in the sim’ but after so many months of real flight-time?! I think you can have confidence in me and my program’s course predictions now sweetheart.

I trust you, Doc, but not the rocks out there, or the computer all that much.

An MIT graduate who doesn’t trust computers! Dr Gibbins exclaimed. In this day and age.

I welcome her cautiousness, Doctor, suggested Captain Yuen. I don’t want anyone in charge of that infernal reactor who doesn’t trust their own judgement first.

Well I agree there, Captain, the Texan scientist told him with a smile as he glanced up and peered at both Yuen and then Jamie. That SARE energy or whatever we’re calling it these days is a far greater threat to our safety than the chunk of ice that just flew past us. He grinned and looked back down at his console.

We’ve past it? asked Jamie.

Yep, just as you asked your question. That’s why the computer’s in charge Lieutenant, at this velocity once you see it you’ve hit it, even on long range radar, our own reactions and thought processes just aren’t fast enough. And there goes another!

Meteorite? asked Captain Yuen.

Yes sir, Dr Gibbins replied. Also ice, maybe some iron in there too, not enough time for the spectrometers to be sure. There’s gonna be more and more as we approach the Asteroid Belt, but the computer is way ahead of us, already halfway done plotting its course right through it all.

This is the scariest bit, stated the woman on Yuen’s right as she floated out and took hold of the back of the captain’s chair. How many times did the Hermes hit an object in simulation? The blonde woman’s voice held more fear than Jamie’s had.

What’s with this trepidation all of a sudden? Yuen asked, shaking his head. We know what this ship can do, none of us would be here otherwise, and you were the most fearless of us all in training Maggie. He craned his neck to look up at her.

Fearless? Maggie Jones, astrophysicist, chuckled while putting a hand on the captain’s shoulder. Ambitious and over-excited I think is more accurate. Actually being out here, tearing through the void with all those unknown objects flying around out there, it’s just...

Have a little faith, Maggie baby, Dr Gibbins uttered in his Texan drawl. We’ll be past the belt and on to Jupiter before ya’ know it, and you can do your space walk and take lots of pretty pics and selfies with the planet behind ya’ for the folks back home.

Selfies! Jamie sniggered, yeah you’re definitely gonna have to do that.

I’m sure it would be very popular back on Earth, the images should reach them in just a few weeks, Karl told them.

Estimated distance to the Asteroid Belt, Doctor? asked the captain in a more business-like tone.

Just about a million clicks Captain, we’ll be on it in less than two days, Dr Gibbins answered. Maggie released the back of the captain’s chair and turned to the bulkhead.

Wake me when we get there, she joked, causing the others to smile dryly, like Karl, none of them could sleep for more than minutes at a time in their cots. As the bulkhead door closed behind the astrophysicist Jamie took the woman’s vacant seat and buckled up, the slight disorientation of weightlessness fading somewhat now that she was anchored down. She rubbed at her temples.

This rest issue is going to impair all of us, Captain, maybe we should consider using sedatives, she suggested. Captain Yuen shook his head and turned to her.

I’m reluctant to do that for obvious reasons, Lieutenant, but if the same problem persists on the homeward journey it may have to be reconsidered.

That’d be fine by me, Captain, exclaimed the Texan, again still peering at his little screen. I think narcotics would make this trip a whole lot smoother, and my program will see us safely home with or without our presence here on the bridge.

Ya’ know I’m changing my mind, muttered Jamie."

Oh, on what issue? asked Yuen.

I do have faith in his computer, Jamie replied, it’s this crazy Texan I don’t trust. Dr Gibbins grinned broadly but did not look up.

Chapter 3

The old man was greeted by the president who smiled and held out her hand, happy to see her old friend again after his trip to the Machine Vaults in Switzerland. Professor Conrad Harker was now a special advisor working for the United Nations, his sole remit being to investigate, inspect and secure any and all technology based on alien devices and materials. In effect that meant the pieces of Kanaan Machine, both large and small, and all new equipment reverse engineered from the dimension-hopping craft he and the other heroes had commandeered when they had escaped Skin Earth four years previously, although some tech had slipped through Harker’s net. It was a great responsibility, but the seventy-four-year-old bore it well and Angela Maynard smiled as she looked into his eyes, which sat behind a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles. They looked tired, but even so, still glistened with a sharp intelligence. How are you, Conrad?

As well as ever, the professor replied, still shaking her hand and using the other to lean on a thin, black walking stick. "How about you, Madam President? I