Dumain

By C. P. Clarke

From intergalactic space a ship enters the Dümain.
Bigger than anything ever seen before it strikes fear into the hearts of some, ambition in others. In a race to control it, the fractured government teeters on the brink of war.
An ancient creature, the last of her kind, joins forces with a criminal and a small boy. Each carries a secret of their own as they skirt the edges of known space, hiding from those hunting them.
The galaxy hangs in the balance of a figure in hiding, one more ancient than history itself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: C. P. Clarke
• Release date: Dec 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223356615

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C. P. CLARKE

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For Brad,

a keen follower of sci-fi epics, a loyal fan of my work,

a damn good bloke, and a fantastic friend.

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DüMAIN

The universe is vast. We know this. We have mapped it using telescopes. We have shrunk the distance between planets, stars, and galaxies, but the distance of time eludes our travel. There are some obstacles we cannot overcome. The expanse of our own worlds, our systems, and our galaxy is wonder enough to master.

The great black beyond is a mystery best left to a future design. When unity across the multitude within our grasp is achieved, and calamity of power put to rest, and an understanding of a common goal brought about, only then will we be mature enough to seek to traverse into the great black beyond.

Matulyan

8th Grandmaster and Chief of the Institute of Knowledge of the Intellect Superium

Krys slept.

His dormitory was a cavernous abyss. A chamber so deep no light emitted from its depths. Within this he slumbered.

There were many reasons for his infrequent years of lying dormant. It was not so much a hibernation, more a rest from monotony. Natural sleep did not come easy to a perturbed mind, nor to one with the wonders of the universe to discover. Yet loneliness left him reluctant to lift his eyelids to the world he called home.

Beyond his bedchamber lay corridors. Empty and echoey. Cold and lifeless. Travel farther still and there be other rooms, and wing upon wing of breathless monuments abandoned to the stillness around them, all expectant, all awaiting... something. Anything.

From time to time something, anything, would happen, and he would awake. The alarm bells would sound. The chime to break the nocturnal curse would stir him like a vampire at dusk.

The clump. The thud of doors. Bolting on. Breaking open. The automated drawing in, the attraction to his abode startling him and shaking him from his capsule. Out of the darkness and into the light.

A visitor cometh, and he is awakened.

Part One

ANCIENT HISTORY

1 - Slaves And Masters

Balking at the slap, the boy rose his head in challenge. Another slap followed. How dare he challenge the masters. Slaves should know their place.

His father held him back. He knew better. With a quick strike their lives could be ended there and then. There was no coming back. Death was a given for their kind.

The boy struggled under his father’s arm, wriggling and writhing. He was too young to understand why his father stood still and let the masters abuse his mother in front of them. She lay on the floor, her gown ripped from where she had been pulled from the house and thrown onto the street.

Dust, so the master said. He had found dust. He claimed the boy’s mother hadn’t cleaned his home adequately, and so deserved to be punished, publicly as a lesson to others.

He stripped her of her clothes and pinned her to the ground in full view of all and then spread her legs and took her.

The boy hated his father for not standing up to the master. The boy pitied his mother, who within a month would take her own life.

Worse still, the boy burned a fire in his heart for all the masters who lorded their control over the ordinary people of the world. He vowed to seek revenge. He vowed to kill them all. He had heard rumours of rebellion. His father had spoken about it when he thought his son wasn’t within earshot. But his father was too cowardly to join, even after his wife had been molested.

They were called The Holy Order. The boy was too young to join. He was too young to offer himself as valuable to the cause. But that would change. One day he would be old enough. One day he would rise up to fight the few masters that remained. One day he would find a way of killing those would be gods who lorded their longevity over them. One day, he vowed, he would slaughter them all. One day the masters would fear him, and they would pay for what they had done to his mother.

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2 - The Woods Of Ages Past

With the exception of the fire that lit the sky the night before last, roaring an arrow through the woods in the distance, it has been a tiresome and uneventful few days roaming lost on my own. Marie will be fretting; I wasn’t supposed to be gone this long.

The sprawling forest of the Languedoc can be a nightmare to navigate if you don’t know the region. Rarely have I wandered through it alone, and never before in a time of war.

I left Castres twelve days ago in a hunting party seeking wild deer to feed the village. The king has been starving the smaller towns and villages, sending all the supplies to feed the men in the campaign against the Cathars. The people are going hungry, not yet starving, but if things continue the way they are then we’ll all start to get desperate.

Enough of us men have been home on a short reprieve from fighting our county neighbours to hunt out some venison for the women. King Philip II, and the Count of Toulouse, Raymond VI, expect us back, although the Count is more sympathetic to our cause. They will both be disappointed in our desertion of duty.

This isn’t a crusade against the Moors, but one against our own kin. Neighbour fights against neighbour, village against village, town against town. No one knows who to trust. The great noble knights with the bright red crosses emblazoned across their tabards ride through the country lanes as though they own them already, claiming them for the king and for Rome, dictating to the lords of Toulouse to ensure the country is rid of the heretic faith that challenges the beliefs of the Catholic Church. But they are losing. We are gaining ground.

The air is on fire with rumour of a new incentive to quash us. They are desperate. In response more of us seek ways of taking down Rome’s private army.

Pope Innocent III and the might of Rome want the sect eliminated from the map of Europe, and their aggression has sent us into a civil war across the whole of southern France. In the ten years since the crusade began in 1209, we have fallen at the hands of the king’s men. Many of us have been drafted into the ranks, hiding in fear among their numbers. But now we are rising up and revolting. Turncoats many of us are, luring our comrades into the thickets of the woods on a wild goose chase, into the lair of a trap. In this way we have been regaining much of the lost territory in a move that is encouraging more support among the locals opposed to the overbearing rule of Rome and its dictator Pope.

Philip is his puppet. He is weak, the throne having already suffered defeat at the hands of the English. Innocent, to ensure victory, has promised our lands to any noble who can take them. The Templars, already too lofty in their power and wealth, roam our paths thirsty to seek us out and run us through, if they can discover who we are.

Eight of us, armed as hunters seeking food for our village, wearing the colours of the realm, had lured the knights in under the suspicion of knowing of a Cathar hideout in the woods. It wasn’t a lie. There is a hideout deep within the forest, thick with its coniferous oaks and dense bush, but it is our own, and no one knows it better than us.

Just four knights, riding high and aloof behind us as we wound a way through the trees on a marked path that only we could follow. Deer ran across us, and we stopped to hunt them, keeping up the pretence that we don’t abstain from meat like the Cathar’s we’re pretending not to be. We scored two and saddled them to our horses, the knights not once decamping from their mounts to assist, it being beneath them and not of their concern. Impatiently they urged us to move on.

Deeper into the wood we went, the day growing tired. The long shadows making the unfamiliar ground more treacherous and disagreeable to the rear carriage of our train. And then we fanned out into a circle, using the trees, hiding our swords and shields as cover as the knights rode in between us unawares.

It was a well thought out and executed plan. The knights stood no chance, or so we thought. It is a hard lesson to learn, to not underestimate the strength, agility, and expertise of these noble warriors who wear the tabard of the Pope’s private army – although, whether he owns them, or they own him is a matter for debate.

We fought swift and hard, having the element of surprise. I can’t help but think now that maybe we were too predictable, that we had somehow shown our hand. No matter, we, though greater in number, were of no match for these well-trained soldiers. One by one we fell.

I survived, despite the would-be fatal slash to my chest. The blade didn’t go deep, saved mainly by the thin chainmail I had hidden beneath my cloak. The strike that swept me off my feet span me to the ground where I smashed my head against a log. I don’t know how long I was out, but when I came too, the knights were gone, leaving behind the fallen corpses of those they’d been despatched to eradicate. There was enough blood from my head and chest for them to have assumed me dead. I would say I was fortunate to have survived, had I not been left to wander the forest on my own in the dark of night, lost and wounded.

Concussed, I must have strayed in the wrong direction, farther away from Castres at the edge of the forest, instead roaming deeper, seeking a stream to follow that might lead to the lake at Saints-Peyres. Finally, knowing my direction, I hoped to stroll across La Jasse or L’Acapte where I knew I would find Cathar sympathisers who could provide me with food and shelter.

Marie would be beside herself with worry, and with good reason. I didn’t relish the job of returning home to tell the other families of their loss. I have seen others receive this news before, collapsing to the ground and praying that they were not lost to the god of this world. We have all tried to stay strong in our faith, trying to model the faith to our children. Luc and Camille are too young to understand, but they will learn.

Under the thick canopy of the trees, it has been hard to see the direction of the sun during the day and impossible to chart the stars at night. A thick cloud obscures the view most of the time, ensuring a pitch of night and blindness I have never experienced before.

The rains that have fallen haven’t helped. Such a downpour that forced me to shelter within the hollow of a tree for many hours, scaring the natural inhabitants from their sanctuary, forcing them to seek another hovel elsewhere.

And so, my pace has been slow. Supping on rainwater drained from the dripping leaves. I was not even left with the kill of our deer to feast on as the knights stole it along with our horses and our weapons.

But today has been dry, and I can smell the running water. I can hear it faintly beyond the thicket. I sludge through the undergrowth, my feet sodden and sore, yet that elusive water evades me. Once again, the light dims and the night owls cry out. My stomach is sore with the pangs of hunger and my body is weak to fainting. At least that’s all I hope it is. The cramps have been getting worse, and my head has been thumping drumbeats in the silence. The forest is alive with food, yet I have been unable to catch and kill any. There is little fruit growing from the trees, and what is within reach has been gnawed at by animals unable to climb to the heights for the riches only the birds can reach.

I am desperate to wash. My mud-covered blackened fingers are sore, my feet too. My wounds burn with infection. The giddiness of exhaustion is riding my back, but I know I need to keep moving.

I walk, keen to make distance whilst my legs will carry me, frustrated that in all this time I have failed to stumble upon any signs of human life. My eyes adjust to the gloom. The ranks of soldiers stood to attention bulk out with surprising definition, their arms outstretching above my head and linking arms to crest above me in a crown, ordaining me as the lost prince of the Languedoc.

And then in the depths of the deepest nocturnal abyss, I see it. The black knight.

His face shines. No, it glows. An evanescent blue, no, purple, or a violet that seems to flicker as it radiates, providing the dimmest outline of a manly armoured figure.

Seeing me, or at least sensing my presence, he turns to flame. His face glowing a violent red conflagration, only without the flicker.

I think, at first, it is a torch he is holding, but as he steps out from the trees towards me, I realise it is a mask of colour across his face. I can make out his dark furnished armour, finely crafted and snug fitting to his enormous frame as he towers above me. He holds a muted grey sword in one hand, blunt as I can see no sharp blade but only a long barrel which ends at his gloved hand. I assume his weapon is still sheathed within, where his index finger is poised ready to pull out and defend himself. There is no emblem across his chest and no shield denoting his allegiance.

I hold my hands up in defence, in surrender, and in cowardice. I have been head-to-head with mighty noble knights already, I have no wish to battle another, and certainly not one so tall and nimble looking. I am unarmed and his armour looks solid and impenetrable, and his weapon looks, well, strange.

He steps forward. I step back.

I say something. He stops moving. He seems to be assessing my words. Words of reassurance that I mean no harm, that I am simply lost and looking for refuge.

He cocks his head, the flame flashing, speeding up and swirling hypnotically. Suddenly I’m beginning to wonder whether he is no knight at all, but a demon sent to admonish me for my beliefs. Has Rome invoked such creatures to vanquish us from the land, I wonder. Innocent by name but not by nature, we all know the church will stoop to all lows to achieve their goal, whether that aligns with their faith or not.

The demon steps forward once more. Now I am sure he is not human, not in the sense that you and I are. Gone are my thoughts of this being a simple caliginous draped knight, equally lost in the woods. This, I am sure, is Rex Mundi himself, or the embodiment of his worldly power.

I step back. Fear is gripping me now. A cold chill is shrinking my skin as my throat swells and warm fluid trickles down my breeches. Then I feel the trunk of a tree at my back and realise I can go no further.

And then it rushes at me.

******

I awake in a strange temple. The floor is of a strange smooth metallic surface, shinier than any blade I have ever seen. I can almost see my reflection in it, to the point that for a moment I think it a pool of water and that I am drowning in the river I had long sought after.

I look around and see that there are magical lights scattered around the temple. They blink. They flash. Each one a dancing fairy or a spirit of its own. How many souls are trapped in this place? Is this what happens to us when we ascend the evil physical world?

I look for the demon. He is here, standing over me, pressing living jewels next to some of the lost souls I had originally laid eyes on. He doesn’t seem to be paying me any attention.

I have a headache, but no worse than it had been before. I have no further wounds on my body that I can ascertain. The dried blood on my head and chest has not been visited by any fresh injury. How it knocked me out and brought me here is in itself a mysterious work of demonic force I cannot imagine.

I begin to pray beneath my breath, but in all truthfulness, I am worried my god won’t hear me, that he isn’t listening, and that maybe I am praying to something that isn’t there at all. And then I see the darkness. There is a window, and beyond it is the night. Clearer than I have ever seen it. Bigger than I have ever seen it. And coming into view is a smoky globe, blue and white in colour. A strange ball in the heavens I can’t identify. It is too big to be the moon. Too close. Too bright.

The demon speaks. It is a language I don’t understand, have never heard before. It is guttural.

The demon unclips its lantern of a mask and I see for the first time that there is a possessed man beneath the armour. His features are gauntly chiselled. His eyes dark and slanted. His nose sharp. His skin deeply tanned. His teeth hidden beneath thin lips, but with a jawline that tells me he has a great many with which to chew me.

He points to the far side of the temple floor, and I see for the first time that there is another demon lying there, dead.

So, they can die, I think to myself. I look for the brave knight who has slain the demon, but it appears we are alone.

He points to an altar where the souls have been freed from their chamber, having been let loose to rise to the heavenly realm. With his fingers he makes a gesture of flicking outwards from the palm. I don’t fully understand, but I think he is trying to tell me that the souls sudden and violent escape was the result of the other demon’s demise.

He crouches. With a great strength that I am fearful to challenge, he picks me up harshly and thrusts me towards another set of lights. There is a lever there in the upright position. He indicates for me to pull it down, then holds his hand up in a gesture that I read as ‘wait for my signal’. I nod, unbelievably agreeing with this soldier from beyond, this god of the material world. In consenting to do its bidding I am expectant of meeting my own death at the command of its action.

He walks heavily over to another section of lights to where I see another lever. He looks to me and I realise he wants me to pull it at the same time as him. Again, I nod.

He gives the signal. We both pull down on our respective levers. I close my eyes and brace my body, prepared to be struck down. Nothing happens. Not at first.

I hear a hum, and sense rather than see a room out of view coming to life in a white-hot bolt of lightning. He stomps toward me, pulling at my arm as he ushers me to that other room where I see the ceiling magically illuminated above. There are two coffins, stood upright, with glass lids. They seem to open automatically as we approach, and the demon knight pushes me into one of them. I don’t resist, to do so would be futile. I stand in the coffin, more souls trapped in here with me. Am I to become one of them? I am certain this is my fate. Then the lid closes me in, and I feel the claustrophobia of death as I’m buried alive, never to see Marie again, never to embrace my children once more. Maybe this is it, my deliverance from the mortal and material world. Maybe this is the realisation of my faith. To be immortalised in a standing coffin. To become a blinking light for all eternity.

As these thoughts cloud me, I see the demon knight step into the other coffin, and suddenly I’m reminded of a priest sidling up beside me on his confessional bench ready to absolve me of my sins before I depart. The echo of my life’s crimes flies to the fore and gallop upon my brow in a tumultuous confusion, but before I can pin them down and send them to my tongue to confess and beg forgiveness, my eyes close and my mind swoons, and all that I have ever known goes black.

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3 - Space Poo

Ten parsós in this old space bucket. Ten parsós floating around in this pile of crap. The nuts and bolts holding it together spinning loose where they’re not rusted and busted. The outer hull is holding – just! It’s taken more of a battering than your average salvage hauler, but that’s mainly due to its smuggler’s hold and the regular skirmishes trying to evade the Galactic Authority that tries its best to blast us into space dust.

Water drips from ceiling struts where the air filtration system fails to draw out the moisture from the artificial oxygen pumped through the ship. The excess is supposed to be recycled through to our fresh water supply, but the fault means we may as well shower in the corridor, for the flow has more pressure there than in our quarters.

The damp atmosphere on board affects all the ship’s systems, sparking electrical fires at irregular and often inconvenient moments. We’ve learnt not to walk too close to the walls in case a sudden spray of sparks should jet out. The steel wall panels are hot to touch. Too often we’ve scolded ourselves with burns that give us the appearance of battle-hardened criminals decorated with angry scars to frighten off the odd, not so innocent, passengers seeking transport to some far-flung sector of the Düminion. Usually they’re running, escaping who knows what, and who cares so long as they pay their passage.

Deacon has lost an ear to a faulty bulkhead door that shut suddenly as he was walking through the corridor. It was one of those doors that only gets used in an emergency to seal off a section of the ship in case of an outer hull breach. They can, and do, slam closed quickly. Fortunately, Deacon’s head was turning at the sound of the door releasing so that it only caught the side of his head, knocking him clear. Had it been a moment earlier he would have been sandwiched in between the two ten-inch-thick metal doors. The indent in his temple did nothing to improve his brain function or competence on board the ship.

Yadul’s sounding an alarm. The aft shield has gone down. We can’t take another strike to the rear. I give the order to turn us around to aim at the Galactic Authority ship on our tail. I’ve used this tactic before to good effect. The enemy is bigger and better armed, but even they don’t want a head-on collision if they can avoid it. Their shields might absorb most of the impact but there will still be extensive damage and loss of life.

Debatably, there are six of us on board.

Dias, a Matolian female who fled her home world after defrauding the central bank of ten million denari. Had she not been caught she would have been able to buy herself a lavish life on an off-world colony somewhere. Instead, her short tentacled face made it onto the GA’s most wanted page, broadcast all over the Düminion.

Shumi is a one-eyed Cyclops from Uronia. He’s a petty thief who made the mistake of stealing a bag belonging to a government official. It was an opportunist theft. He had no way of knowing who his mark was nor that the contents of the bag contained a blueprint to a new planetary defence system called WEB. Of course, he off-loaded it at the earliest opportunity, but by then he was already a highly sought-after individual and ended up fleeing for his life.

Then there are the Calmec’s, Dio and Dasgh. Sister and brother, they are almost inseparable. They have been on the run for most of their life, having fled their family due to their incestuous relationship. Sexually they have no inhibitions, and even to this day their behaviour on board the ship is hard to get used to.

I include Yadul in the six. He’s our ship’s computer. At one point it had a fully functional physical form; an android capable of walking this old rust bucket and effecting repairs, but alas it got caught in an airlock and triggered the doors, accidentally spacing itself. That should have been the end of Yadul, but somehow it managed to hook an arm onto the rim of the outer door and held on until help came. Even AI have an incredible instinct for self-preservation.

Of course, bringing Yadul back inside meant having to close the door on its lower half that was floating in the vented atmosphere outside the ship. We were able to recover the upper torso, head, and the one good arm that still clung to the inner section of the airlock. What remained we mounted to the control console of the bridge.

And then there is me, Kadji. I am a dwarf of the Kanukad clan of Hejbar. I was a simple cargo driver to begin with, but I soon got fed up of the red tape and hoops that I had to jump through in transporting goods between worlds, all of which have their own trade deals and operating systems and procedures. The complexity of it used to drive me insane. Often I was held up in containment whilst every item in my hold was checked, and then unscrupulously confiscated. Many times I was turned back to where I’d come from due to the documentation not being dotted in the right place. It didn’t take long before I joined the ranks of illegal smugglers just trying to make an honest living.

And so, as a ragtag group, we spend our eternal nights dodging the authorities as we dart from one score to another across the stars.

The newly formed Galactic Authority has been trying to clamp down on the likes of us lately. Apparently, we’re a scourge amongst the legitimate traders and transporters, and we’re causing panic among the corporate delegates vying for position within the ruling council of the wider Düminion. Truth be told, we are too often used by rebel resistance forces to transport arms and intelligence to the independent worlds, and to the disgruntled moon and asteroid belt mining communities demanding greater rights and working conditions. Such is the demand for us that there are moves to legitimise the unofficial Guild as a formal Union.

Dias is on the bridge manning the guns manually. We lost automatic control some time ago, it’s on the list of things needing urgent repair.

The Calmec’s are in the lower half of the ship trying to secure the bilge well which has sprung a leak, the sealant having split after a direct hit to that section. If they can’t get it fixed we’ll be drowning in a stinking pool of our own waste, and the ship smells bad enough as it is.

Shumi is singularly focused on trying to divert power from the private quarters and the cargo hold in order to restore the failing shields.

As for me, I’m trying not to panic and trying to think of a way out of our predicament.

We take another direct hit and Yadul announces that life support is down to sixty percent and falling.

I give the order to dive beneath the looming, and much bigger, GA ship and risk flying close to the fighter bays. The hyper-drive needs two more minutes to reach full charge before we can jump to another sector and hide amongst the rebel moons and outposts of Gardari Prime.

We skip beneath the destroyer before us and, as predicted, two small, manned fighters drop out from the open flight deck. They won’t send more than two after us; they can tell the state of our ship, our heap of junk that’s so had its day; how the hell it’s still flying is anyone’s guess.

Yadul pilots a manoeuvring pattern whilst Dias provides cover fire. If we can evade them for another minute, we can jump.

The comm bursts to life with Dio’s panicked voice informing that the bilge tank has burst and has flooded the lower corridors. Dasgh is trying to close the section manually.

I raise my eyebrows and shake my head simultaneously.

The fighters take out our guns and Dias throws her arms up in frustration and thrusts her chair back helplessly.

To add to the misery, Shumi informs me of what we all already know, that our exposed rear only needs one direct hit from the ships behind to ignite our fuel reactor.

Thirty seconds to a fully charged hyper-drive. We’re not going to make it.

In the throes of battle no one ever has time to think about the need to go to the toilet. The need may be there, but no one ever stops to raise their hand to ask to be excused at the vital moment. In fact, little thought is ever given to waste products produced and discarded by vessels large or small on continuous space voyages. Usually, such waste is broken down chemically in the bilge tanks and deposited in recycling centres or the raw sewage sold to the farming colonies on barren moons to be used as fertilizer. Rarely is it disposed of the old-fashioned way by letting it drift in a frozen globule of excrement into space, but at times, needs must.

I check that the Calmec’s are clear of the section I intend to vent and then command Yadul to open the airlock.

With ten seconds to spare the quickly solidifying flying turd hits the fan, smashing into the windscreens and blocking the forward viewers of the two fighters as they close in for the kill with no time to pull away. It won’t do any lasting damage, but it buys us the valuable time we need.

Yadul has already made the calculations. I give the instruction and we jump to hyper-drive, hoping and praying that this old faithful heap of crap will hold together long enough to make it through to the other side.

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4 - Black Death Satellite

Voyager Expulsion we read you as having cleared the satellite net. You’ll be drifting on the edge of high orbit. Target should be somewhere to your three o’clock in about twenty minutes if you maintain current velocity.

SpaceX Control, roger that. The net looks full by the way, you might want to send up a hoover and stop filling the sky with crap. It’s beginning to look like Saturn up here.

We hear you. There’s a haulage ship due to depart in two days. Just to reiterate, the decommissioned sats tend to interfere with communications, so be prepared for intermittent comms beyond the net.

Roger that. So far so good. Comms A1. Still hearing you loud and clear. Expulsion out.

Roderic switched the broadcast to ship-wide with the push of a button. An amber light shone on the control panel telling him he was live.

Guys, we’re twenty minutes on starboard side. First one to see it gets to breach first.

Is that a reward or a punishment? came the reply from Adonkwe.

Roderic looked on screen at the service corridor between the galley and engineering. The muscle bound African looked to be leaning at an angle into the wall as he looked up and smirked his chiselled jaw at the camera, his finger still depressed on the button as though he wanted to pass another quip. He shook his head and pushed away from the wall.

What’s wrong, you don’t want to be first on? asked Roderic with genuine surprise. Seriously, if it was me, I’d be chumping at the bit.

Gladly swap places with you, skip, said Adonkwe leaning in again.

On the camera the French captain could see the slender and athletic figure of his science officer, Manuela Cortez, swinging out of her bunk in the private quarters. She didn’t have her mag-boots on and looked like she was dropping down from an over ambitious pull-up against the door frame. She swung down into the corridor and hit the intercom.

Seriously guys, her S’s cut short sounding more like Z’s, this thing has been out here god knows how long and we’re the first to get a chance to board it. Are you not in awe of this?

I’m in awe, Mani, I just have no wish to die just yet.

You’re a damned astronaut, man, you signed up to die.

You tell him, cap! laughed back the only female crew member.

Nervous anticipation affected them all. The Black Knight Satellite had been an elusive myth for decades. Appearing and disappearing from scanners as though it had some on-board system that tuned in and then blocked each new signal bounced in its direction. In the same way, its orbit seemed to change, never a regular altitude, presumably to avoid detection. In the early days the major space agencies that were government controlled like NASA, Roscosmos, EPA, and CNSA, all steered clear of it, each assuming it was the property of another. A secret research facility, or a spy probe, or worse still, the first in a fleet of a new military space force. Each country denied knowledge of it. Each agency insisted it wasn’t theirs. The more they protested, the more the suspicion fell on them. It didn’t help that it was difficult to track, and clear images were as reliable as the Lock Ness Monster or Bigfoot. Even the ISS failed to get it in its sights. It was as if the damn thing knew the space station was there and was trying to avoid it.

Once the private sectors started cashing in on the space race the government agencies lost control of what had originally been confidential and controlled airspace. Anyone who had the money suddenly bought up a stake in space flight technology. The new money was in the stars. New industries: tourism, terraforming, bioresearch, shipbuilding, you name it. Once the flights were deemed safe and manageable for your everyday bum willing to buy a seat, or earn it through expertise, everyone jumped on board. It was amazing how many were eager to escape the tension created by the multitude of terrors that ravaged the planet and caused so much heartache and distress. In space there was none of that. Not yet anyway. Everyone just wanted to explore, and for those with the experience and expertise to make it happen there was big money to be made.

Roderic and the others on board didn’t know who was bankrolling this mission. Whoever it was had enough money to charter a SpaceX cruiser and pay off the other corporations to steer clear. The NDA’s were signed and sealed. The mission was a tight-lipped affair, and no one outside of mission control and the-powers-that-be were to ever know the details. Not in this lifetime at any rate.

There had been huge speculation as to what would be found on the Black Knight, aptly named for its darkened hull and its shadowy stalking of the planet. It showed no signs of life, other than an automated evasive nature. Many speculated that it had been there silently watching our development for decades, ever since we had become technologically advanced as a race. Others thought it much older. Some had even suggested that it had been there since the dawn of mankind and had even been complicit in the manipulation of our DNA.

Not that Roderic thought they were about to meet their maker. He suspected the ship was empty, remotely manned, the crew and pilots no longer living. It was the easiest way to explain the prolonged inactivity of the vessel. What had happened to them he couldn’t guess, but he was more concerned about bringing contaminants back on board his ship. But for that they were ready. There was a high-grade system of precautions in place for decontamination before he would allow anyone back on board his ship.

Chow, you awake?

Huh, came the disgruntled reply.

Chow sat in engineering, a games console in hand. He was neither doing his job maintaining the ship’s systems, a role to which he was superbly qualified, nor was he playing on the console which rested under his hand on his rotund torso. A slither of drool hung from his chin, threatening to uplift into his nostrils if the trail got any longer. He slapped at his mouth at the mention of his name and smeared the sludge across his palm.

Twenty minutes Chow. Suit up. You’ll be manning the airlock. I don’t want any balls-ups. We’re not taking any chances with this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, replied the slothful South Korean.

Ten minutes later and all four of the crew were staring out the starboard windows trying to get a peek at the elusive ship that was the first definitive contact with something of extra-terrestrial origin. Or at least that was what the governments and corporations would have the world believe.

There were few who made the journey beyond the Earth’s atmosphere who doubted that the great starry abyss held something, some form of life other than our own. It was just another of those boundaries of the mind to be broken. Yet so many were in denial: the religious, the obstinate, the cowardly. Hell, there were even Flat Earth enthusiasts still sitting down there denying the evidence of their own eyes.

It came into view, only visible by the slither of moonlight catching its upper edge and allowing a very brief silhouette to impress its size upon the crew. Its orbit was high, dogging both the elliptical curve of the moon and the penetrating light of the sun. It hid as far on the horizon as it could out of the light of the Earth and any other probing eyes that could reflect in upon its soul. The rare glimpses of its presence over the years had been by chance. Looking at it now, it was both obvious, and yet not, as to why it hadn’t been found.

Obvious due to its blend, that it reflected nothing but stars, appearing transparent, absorbing all else. To say it had a shield or a projected screen capable of mimicking what lay beyond it would be too simplistic, but surely it was wrapped up, shrouded, cloaked in a blanket of camouflage.

Yet it was astounding that after so many years of human space flight and telescopic eyes mapping every dot of light