Tech Planet (Project NightStorm Book 2) Read online

  Ray charged, shoulder dropped low aiming for a quick takedown. Arri lightly dodged to one side, he had sparred with Ray many times so was ready for the quick attack.

  "Nicely done," Ray said even as he did something unexpected, turning the suit quickly whipping his leg out he caught Arri at the back of the knee causing his leg to buckle.

  Arri launched himself into a forward roll, placing his arm high and tucking his head in. His suit created a sound like thunder as it struck the metal floor of the ships cargo area.

  The forward roll had caught Ray off balanced sending him to his seat in unceremonious fashion. With both combatants now on the floor the referee paused the action.

  "Timeout," March said, "point Arri."

  "That's unfair I clearly caught him first," Ray said forcing his armour back to a standing position.

  "Point Arri for questioning the ref," March stared at Ray unblinking unmoving.

  "Fine," Ray raised his hands into a guard position.

  The sparring session continued, kicks and punches were thrown and blocked, March calling out points where one or the other connected.

  "We are ready for the second jump," Jenkins' voice rattled through Arri's comms.

  "OK, let's do this again when you're a bit more used to the new armour."

  "Firing in three, two, one."

  The world around him froze and warped, it was as if in his mind he could see time slow down as the ship jumped from one location to another. A process of folding spacetime and punching a hole through the remainder, which the ship could then traverse.

  As Arri opened his eyes a memory filled his mind. He was stood drumming his fingers on the side of a power generators controls, a great feeling of annoyance washed over him, where was that dam cyborg, then the world went dark.

  He blinked rapidly clearing the blurriness from his eyes. Arri was back on the bridge of the Outrider, but for a moment the memory of Titan A25 filled his mind.

  "Second jump completed. We are now in the heart of the great Nebula," March said, "this is a place where stars are born from the ashes of stars that have come before."

  Arri was looking at one of the displays floating around Jenkins, it showed the ships outside cameras, the whole of space had acquired a red tint.

  "Sir there is something out there," Jenkins said, "and its heading straight for us." Jenkins' eyes widened and he yelled "Brace."

  Two pinpricks of bright light appeared on the display Arri was watching as the ship shook like a building in an earthquake. If he had been standing he would have been thrown to the floor.

  Jenkins was moving his hands in front of his body in a rapid series of gestures, March was doing the same. Arri sat and watched for a moment before calling the rectangle display of his wrist device. The ship shook again, blurring the image projected above his arm. He used the fingers on his right hand to flick through applications, pushing aside social data feeds until he found the information he needed on the Outrider.

  "That felt like large fusion rounds," Arri said eyes turning the numbers of his display into meaningful data about the condition of the ship.

  "Sir, our shielding is holding and I am deploying countermeasures," Jenkins said.

  "I have matched their ship to one in the database, they are a known pirate vessel, and are wanted in all controlled space sectors," March said, hands moving at almost blurred speed in front of her.

  "Why attack a military ship, makes no sense," Arri said "unless they made a mistake. Jenkins return fire just try not to disintegrate them."

  "Sir that hasn't happened in a long time."

  Arri noticed the wild look in Galdan's eyes, the last time he had been in ship combat he had nearly lost his life, with the ship being cut into pieces. He was gripping the sides of his chair so tightly that the blood was draining from his fingers.

  "Don't worry we have one of the most advanced ships in the fleet and the combined talents of March and Jenkins are a match for almost any pilot combo in the navy. That pirate ship looks like it was put together on a shoestring," Arri said looking directly at Galdan, he noticed as he spoke a little bit of colour returning to Galdan's hands.

  Jenkins increased the Outriders speed, turning the ship tightly in a circle using the many display maps and grids to work out the enemy's position. His goal was to point the front of the craft directly at the target then unleash its firepower. Turning speeds generally became slower the bigger you were, fortunately, the Outrider wasn't that big and had been equipped for just this type of battle.

  The two ships danced, increasing and decreasing speed trying to get their guns to lock onto each other much like the sky combat dogfights of old. The fusion rounds themselves had targeting devices but these were hampered by vastly complicated countermeasures.

  Since the initial few shots, Jenkins had shown his skills as a pilot and managed to avoid many of the others, taking only minimal hits in the process. His own fusion rounds peppered the rear shields of the pirate ship, a ship that was complete with skull and crossbones motif.

  As he watched Arri could make out the damage inflicted to the other ship, which try as it might could not out manoeuvrer Jenkins and the Outrider.

  "Steady," Arri said.

  "There rear shields are almost down. I will attempt to disable their engine," Jenkins said. The spaceship in the centre of the display watched by Arri imploded, then showered chunks of jagged metal out into space.

  "Sir I didn't get a chance to fire, we must have damaged there engines before their shields went down," Jenkins said.

  "Dam, I really wanted to speak with them, there must be a reason they are out here in the middle of nowhere. Any survivors, escape pods?" Arri said, looking intently at the small pieces of the spaceship.

  "No readings detected on the first scan," March said, her hands calmly by her sides.

  "Do we know how many were aboard? May their souls be at peace and rest in holy light," Galdan said.

  "There are ten distinct biomasses in the debris field," March said as Galdan closed his eyes and mouthed a silent prayer.

  "Message to command," Arri said, at his wrist the device selected the messaging app auto-populating the to field with commands address. "Completed the second Jump, on schedule but encountered a pirate vessel. They attacked us and were destroyed in the following battle. Please send a cleanup crew to retrieve their bodies. Send message."

  "We could go and see if the data core is intact anywhere out there," March said, "it might tell us why they attacked."

  Arri looked at the remains of the ship, "You know me always up for a walk in space."

  The machine that rested below Arri's body gave him one of the greatest senses of freedom he had ever experienced. The ICNH-43 was a marvel to behold, at home in space or dense atmosphere, underwater or tearing across the land. It offered its rider raw power in a great looking protective package.

  Controlled by either the mind interface via the overlay or manually using hands and body the ICNH cycle really had it all. It also packed a punch in combat able to carry two larger fusion cannons mounted either side of the front steering.

  With his overlay temporarily on hiatus, Arri used his body to control the machine, as he glided towards the debris field he felt at times one with the craft.

  He glanced over to his left and saw the outline of March's cycle, to his right Ray's, the three of them in a triangle formation.

  "Can anyone hear that scratching no tapping," said Ray, "its distracting." Ray started to grind his teeth putting a large amount of pressure on his bottom jaw.

  "I can't hear anything, maybe its a faulty circuit in your comms," said Arri.

  "Still it could be worse, I could be itching as well. Come to think of it my suit feels a little hot, anyone else running hot. Not like the time I made use of a steam room, an actual room full of steam, produced by splashing water on hot coals."

  "Not used a coal-powered steam room myself. Spread out through the wreckage, we are looking for any part of the
main computer or data core," said Arri.

  Small pieces of the former starship bounced gently off the hull of the ICNH-43 cycle. What was left of the ship was a mess with no part bigger than a human fist. The implosion could only have been the drive core linked to the gravity generator breaking down.

  All the energy that once powered the ship had dissipated into the void, all heat had gone the same way. The ship was cold and lifeless and it had only taken a few minutes from the explosion.

  "I can't detect anything, I think there is nothing left of this ship," Arri said.

  "I had a spike for a moment, an energy reading but when I turned the scanners to search for it, it was gone. The strange thing is it seemed to be moving in the direction of the ship," March said.

  "Let us head back there's nothing but death here," Arri said.

  Before he had finished speaking Ray had turned his cycle and applied maximum thrust shooting off in the direction of the Outrider. Arri watched his cycle get smaller, taking a moment to appreciate the wonderful engineering that had gone into its design.

  As he approached the Outrider the outer door to his cabin slowly opened allowing him to dock the ICNH-43. The autopilot handled the process allowing the rider to become just a passenger. Once docking was complete the outer door closed sealing the airlock, air was then pumped around the ICNH before the inner door opened.

  3

  The Cross

  "Hows the ship?" Arri asked over the communications channel as he pulled one armour plated gauntlet from his hand.

  "Shielding looks good, the pirate attack did next to no damage, though we might need to get a new paint job," Tidal's voice crackled over the comms.

  "You're sounding a bit crackly, anything wrong with the internal systems?"

  "Will look into to it," Tidal replied.

  Arri headed back to the bridge bypassing the breakout room by taking the circular corridor around its edge.

  "Are we ready for the final step?"

  "All systems functioning normally, refuelling has been completed, we are ready to go," Jenkins replied.

  Ray took up his position flopping down hard into his chair. He was rubbing intently at his right eye, which had started to turn an angry red.

  Arri raised a questioning eyebrow at Ray, who promptly stopped what he was doing and almost glared back.

  "Space dust," Ray said, "need to get the cleaning rovers to do a pass over of my room. My eye hurts like hell. Probably shouldn't have tried to rub it with the armour on," He snorted a little as he finished the sentence.

  "Location locked in, scorch drive firing in three, two, one,"

  A fraction of a second before the jump, Arri thought he saw Ray's face form an expression of fury. The Outrider dropped out of normal space disappearing into the space between everything. When time started to move again the expression was gone, Ray just sat there with a very sore looking eye.

  "Are we in range?" Arri asked.

  "We are at the location provided, there is a planet several hours out," March said.

  "In that case set the autopilot, everybody take a break, I'll be in my cabin if needed, Jenkins you have the bridge," Arri said.

  The fog of sleep added a layer of confusion to the sounds and light show which had awakened him.

  Arri turned over on to his back, his dream merging with the waking world for a few seconds. He couldn't stop the deep yawn that escaped his lips.

  "Jenkins report," Arri said.

  "Sir we have experienced an internal explosion."

  Each word struck at Arri pulling him out of his disorientation, he sat up pushing aside the silk-like bed cover. The vibration of the alarm pounding at him, his room had been covered in the emergency red light.

  "What exploded?" Arri asked as a pen floated towards his head.

  "Part of the engine core, which then damaged the gravity generator and the air scrubbers, basically engineering is burning a little," Jenkins said.

  "Anyone hurt?"

  "We were lucky, Tidal was in the breakout room at the time, no other personnel were present."

  "Can the ship still move?"

  "We still have some thrusters but have lost the ability to fast travel," Jenkins replied.

  "Going to check out engineering, if anything changes update me," Arri said as he hastily threw on his discarded uniform. Pulling on his boots he noticed he still had the foldable computer connection device attached to his arm, he had gone to sleep with it on.

  Arri stood next to Tidal both looking into the engineering section of the Outrider. There had been a small fire, which had been extinguished by the internal fire suppression system.

  "I don't understand how the damage have been caused during the jump?" Arri asked.

  "Its more of a working theory. I watched the visuals back." Tidal sent the video to Arri, "as you can see before scorch drive no crack, after we re-enter space the crack is just there."

  Without the overlay display Arri had to pull back his sleeve and engage the device on his arm, the footage clearly backed up what Tidal had just said.

  "It's not possible," Arri said.

  "I'll do what I can to get us up and running, but the damage to the core is extensive and it's not like I have a spare lying around."

  "How come it didn't explode?"

  "One word, luck," said Tidal.

  "Good to know, is it stable?"

  "Well its a bit like a soda that's been shaken, then opened if it didn't go pop when it was first damaged then we should be OK, assuming it doesn't get shaken up again."

  Arri turned his back on engineering leaving it's problems in Tidal's hands. The air had a taste of smoke to it mixed with the chemical that formed the gas that had put out the fire, he couldn't quite place the name. Instinctively his mind reached for the overlay, its interface appeared on demand and with it a stab of pain at the sides of his temples. It was like reaching out to grab a hot object his reaction was to throw it away.

  The pain remained with him as he hurried back to his cabin, it was like someone pounding on the sides of his head. His vision started to warp, small colour dots floated creating a hole as the headache turned to a migraine. He raised his hand out in front of his face, he could see his fingers but the area where his thumb should be had disappeared, replaced by, well it was hard to describe as he knew his hand should be there but wasn't in his vision.

  He took two little white pills washed down with a hastily poured glass of water. He closed his eyes tight waiting for the medicine to work. The minutes ticked by.

  "Captain, we have some interesting scans of the planet coming back, did you know there is a space station?" March asked her voice causing Arri to open one eye. His vision had returned to normal and the painkillers had taken the edge off his migraine.

  "We didn't have any intel on this location, frankly command were surprised there was anything out here. Speaking to Marcus wasn't much help, he is still somewhat incoherent," Arri said.

  "That planet is huge, one hundred times the size of earth, but with the same gravity?" March asked as Arri walked onto the bridge.

  "There are gravity generators in effect but in reverse creating a negative field that cancels out the planet's mass," Jenkins replied.

  "So the planets safe for us?" Arri asked shooting a smile at March, though he wasn't sure she caught it.

  "The air mix matches that of the earth in places, but I wouldn't say its safe, there are too many unknowns and if anything happened to those generators," Jenkins said.

  The space station that orbited the planet had started as a tiny speck no bigger than a few pixels when the Outrider had first detected it. Arri used the wrist device, also known as a WD to zoom in on the station.

  It was striking in appearance, shaped like a cross, it had obviously been built up over time. The line of blue energy pulsed back and forth to the planet's surface touching all corners of the cross. Docked around the edges were large starships, cargo transports for the most part with a smattering of smaller pe
rsonal style craft. There were ship designs from all over controlled sector space, every species was covered.

  "Sir the station has sent us a welcome pack, forwarding to you now."

  Arri opened the message, "Welcome to the Cross your home away from home. A place for trade and entertainment, please find attached our docking fees. Treat your fellow travellers with respect and please enjoy your stay." The message had several attachments.

  "They don't use credits on the planet's surface but a form of physical coin called bar units." He touched the explanation pulling up a conversion table from credits to bars.

  The Cross loomed larger as the Outriders computer had initiated the docking process, which had turned out to be an older version of the software currently equipped, luckily backward compatible. Once locked in the process was pretty much autopilot, Jenkins hovered over the settings alert for any problems ready to jump in if needed.

  The airlocks came into contact without any problems. The Outrider came to a limping rest, many light years away from home.

  4

  Guide

  Stepping out of the airlock the first images that greeted Arri were those of colour, neon colour. Looking up he couldn't see the roof of the station. He hadn't been paying too much attention as the Outrider approached distracted by the onboard problems. This place was huge, the air had layers of smells a hint of beef a whiff of chips.

  The gravity matched those of other stations, the floor was covered in a black substance, reaching down it was rough to touch.

  Arri adjusted his long coat, checking each pocket was empty. Before he stepped out into the station he had taken a few minutes to monitor the surroundings and had made the decision to hide his uniform.

  "Think we need better clothes to blend in, quite a few people are staring," March said.

  "Can you access any station maps?" Arri asked, another decision he had made was to take only March with him on this trip. She had the skill set to provide back up in any conflict situation.