Wanderer

Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Adrenaline burnt through Clay’s veins as his fighter skimmed through the opening hangar doors, squeezing through the gap with only a few centimetres to spare on each side and bursting into space. This was what he lived for — flying fast with a clear target.

He didn’t know whether the target was hostile yet. The Casatarna, the freighter he’d just launched from, was busily hailing the enigmatic target ship but so far there was no reply.

Despite the adrenaline rush he hoped the ship would be friendly, or at least not hostile. For Clay the universe had become a whole lot stranger over the past months. Sometimes he missed the time when he’d been a fighter pilot for the Empire, fighting against traitors, pirates and the horrific spread of the Taint.

Since then he’d seen the ship he’d been based on destroyed by the Taint. He’d briefly joined up with an Imperial Fleet which had strayed far from the ideals he’d always stood for, and when he’d decided it was too much he’d chosen to take his fighter off into the emptiness of space to die amongst the stars.

Except he hadn’t died. The civilian ship Casatarna had found him, saved him, and taken him in. For a short while he thought he’d found somewhere to take refuge, but he’d soon realised the crew of the Casatarna were keeping secrets from him. He’d set out to find what those secrets were, never imagining what he would find.

He’d discovered the crew were aliens, surgically modified to pass for humans, and the ship carried thousands more of their kind who hadn’t been modified suspended in cryogenic sleep.

That alone was difficult to take in, but he’d learnt much more. The crew had an ability to withstand the Taint, devices they wore on their wrists which could interrupt the Taint’s ability to take them over. That was a unique ability as far as Clay knew, and it had saved his life when the Taint had managed to sneak aboard the ship.

The most unbelievable part, though, was where the Casatarna was from, where and when. The Casatarna had started its journey hundreds of thousands of light years away and a hundred thousand years in the past. The ship had been caught up in some form of destructive wave which had spread throughout the universe, caught up and flung that immense distance in space and time in a matter of moments.

And that was why Clay’s target was so important. Scanners indicated it was radiating the same energy the Casatarna had after its hundred thousand year trip. The target had appeared, giving off the tell-tale radiation, just as a destructive wave rolled across the fabric of space. At the very least they should have quite a tale to tell. At best they might be able to explain exactly what the waves were, and might even be able to help make a stand against the Taint.

Clay checked his scanners. The ship seemed ordinary enough. It was a smallish freighter, though it was showing signs of having been in quite a bad fight. Clay might have been disappointed if it wasn’t for the fact the Casatarna was also a freighter. He’d learnt how deceiving appearances could be. He checked his instruments then opened a comm channel back to the Casatarna.

“Zeek, I’m halfway there and it’s not showing any sign of noticing either of us. What do you want me to do? Have you had any reply?”

“No, nothing yet,” replied Zeek from the ship. “We’re not seeing any hostile signs, though.”

“Alright, I’ll get a little… what the… Zeek, that ship just jumped!”

“I see it. Get back here now. We need to get into jump space and follow it. I don’t want that ship giving us the slip.”

“Already on my way,” replied Clay, pushing his fighter to its limits. “You’d better have that docking bay open when I arrive because I’m coming in fast.”

“It’s open. Try not to do too much damage.”

Clay chuckled at Zeek’s resigned tone of voice. Despite seeing Clay fly from the ship several times, Zeek’s civilian mindset still struggled with the military style manoeuvres Clay flew, especially when docking and launching.

Soon Clay’s fighter was rushing towards the docking bay door, shedding massive amounts of speed at the last minute and slipping in perfectly. For once the Casatarna’s crew’s reactions almost matched his own. The moment his fighter was within the freighter they shoved the ship into jump space. They wanted to catch the enigmatic ship as much as Clay did, and they were determined not to let it get away.

Jess frowned as the Wanderer nudged his mind, highlighting some strange readings from just after they’d been dumped out of the disintegrating wormhole. They’d emerged into empty space with nothing around and had seen no sign of any other ships up to the point when the Wanderer entered jump space.

Except there had been a ship. They just hadn’t seen it. The Wanderer had picked up a few strange readings and kept worrying away at them. Only when it combined readings taken across several minutes was it able to be sure there had been a ship, and that it had been trying to contact them.

The turn of events frightened Jess. In the short time since he’d escaped s*****y and become the Wanderer’s captain he’d learnt how dangerous travelling the Empire could be. Many ships would be a threat simply because the Wanderer was there, pirates and slavers looking to take what they could by force. Then he had plenty of enemies who would attack the Wanderer because they recognised the ship.

If the sensors weren’t working then any of those ships could get close enough to inflict heavy damage without his even knowing they were there. He’d dealt with a few truly stealthed ships, but this was something different. The other ship hadn’t been trying to hide, in fact it had been shouting for attention but the Wanderer hadn’t detected anything.

The Wanderer was worried too. Jess could feel it running diagnostics and scans, trying to understand how that could have happened. He reached out to the ship, joining his mind with its to try and help. The Wanderer welcomed him, as it always did, and their two consciousnesses became so closely linked it was hard to say where one ended and the other started.

The answer, when they finally found it, was a great relief. The breakthrough came when the Wanderer checked its own hull and discovered strange readings.

Several minutes of feverish investigation showed the readings were similar to those of the wormhole the Wanderer had travelled through. When the wormhole broke up and dumped the Wanderer back into real space something of the wormhole’s structure had coated the ship. Experiments quickly showed that the substance was interfering with sensors.

Finding the cause was good news, but far better was the fact that the effect was rapidly diminishing. Whatever the substance was it would soon be gone, and the Wanderer would be back to its normal self.

With that mystery solved Jess turned his attention back to more pressing matters. The Wanderer was heading towards the nearest system. Jess wanted to understand what was happening in the Northern Sector, what he might be facing. He’d hardly seen any of it on the previous visit because the Wanderer had diverted to a system from which a wormhole could be opened. That had taken them directly to Sanctuary, the nearest thing to a home system the Wanderer had left.

The Wanderer would reach its destination in three hours. He could have shortened that time by pushing the jump engines harder, something only the Wanderer was capable of, but the ship had taken heavy damage fighting off two fleets, the first Imperial and the second Tainted. Coasting at the normal jump space travel didn’t require the jump engines which meant the worst damaged engines could be repaired. Going slower also allowed more time for repairs to the shields and weapons and spot fixes to the worst of the hull damage.

The three hours would leave the Wanderer able to defend itself better but still far from full strength. The ship simply didn’t have the supplies needed to make better repairs. Getting those supplies was something else Jess had to factor in. Maybe he could find some asteroids to mine in the system they were heading for, if time allowed.

Time was the biggest enemy he faced. Destructive waves were rolling out from Sanctuary, warping both real space and jump space. The effects were unpleasant but, for the moment, weren’t actively dangerous.

That wouldn’t last. Jess knew the waves would get steadily stronger. In time they would start to rip the fabric of the Universe apart. In the end everything would be destroyed. Every star, every planet. Everyone and everything, even at the atomic layer. Space itself would be destroyed.

Jess knew that, but he didn’t know how long it would take. Not even the Guardian knew that, the last remnant of the Wanderer’s creators and the cause of the destruction.

Jess was trying to reach Sanctuary in time to stop the process, to offer an alternative solution. He knew any delay to his journey might mean he wouldn’t make it in time. On the other hand if the Wanderer didn’t spend some time and resources to repair itself it might easily be destroyed in a fight before reaching Sanctuary. He didn’t have enough information to know what to do, so he’d have to make the best guesses he could.

Another destructive wave! Jess clung onto the arms of the pilot’s chair as the Wanderer warped and twisted around him. Finally the wave passed and everything returned to normal. The effect seemed to be getting worse, but slowly. At this rate there might be dozens more of the destructive waves before the effect was anything other than temporary. He hoped there would be.

He wasn’t sure how long it was since the last wave because the Wanderer had been travelling down the wormhole, experiencing time differently than the rest of the universe. He’d know how the interval was changing, if it was, once the next wave struck. In the meantime he focused on the Wanderer’s repairs once more, trying to achieve as much as was possible given the limited time and supplies available.

Clay was still in his fighter, nestled inside the Casatarna, when the fourth destructive wave struck. He wanted to be ready to launch the moment they caught up with the mysterious ship.

He relaxed as the effects hit him. While unpleasant, they weren’t actually as bad as some of the testing machines he’d had to endure to become an Imperial pilot. He let the strange effects wash over him, keeping his breathing steady.

Once they had passed he checked the time. Sure enough the interval had increased again, by a little over ten percent. Was that a good sign? Did it mean the waves would just keep spreading out and eventually dissipate altogether? He didn’t know.

The Wanderer was nearly at its destination, a relatively small manufacturing and trading station. Jess had chosen it because it was fairly close and should be quiet.

He checked the Wanderer over one last time, letting the information flow into his mind via his implants. The ship wasn’t in a good state. It felt sluggish and tired, the patchy repairs they’d managed to implement dealt with the worst problems but overall the ship was still in poor condition.

Jess hoped they wouldn’t have to fight. He decided they would have to find the time to gather supplies and let the Wanderer start to repair itself before heading on, though first he would visit the station and find out what the local area was like.

The last minute ticked down. The timer reached zero. The Wanderer dropped into normal space. Alarms flared, jerking at Jess’s attention. They’d arrived right in the middle of a vicious fight.