Stars Apart (Seven Systems #1)

USN Battleship Stalwart Monument (Command Bridge), No Man’s Land.

August 22nd 3561, 12:02pm (Old Earth Time)

Most people forgot what it was like out here, in the dark.

When most people thought of space, they thought only of what they knew; the Seven Civilised Systems, full of stations and habitats and planets. They thought of the arduous sublight journeys, and the tedious FTL jumps. They thought of the aurora-esque clouds drifting amid the ethereal gleam of gaseous nebulae, and the metallic glimmer of orbiting satellites. They didn’t think about Interstellar Space; the vast, empty blackness that lay between the familiar confines of the settled systems, beyond the reach of planetary gravity, far away from stars and civilisation.

Simply put, they didn’t think about the unknown.

Being out here—in the endless, eternal enigma, with only distant pinpricks of starlight for company—helped to remind one just how small and insignificant they truly were.

For Captain Maxwell Morgan, the sense of insignificance was a familiar, almost comforting feeling. He’d been in the navy for almost forty years now, and with every venture this far beyond the safety of civilisation, he’d been more, seen more, wanted more. But each time, he still felt himself belittled by the vastness around him. Even now, standing at the helm of a skyscraper-sized starship, the single largest vessel ever manufactured by human hands, space was still able to firmly put him in his place.

“Permission to speak freely, sir?”

Maxwell was pulled from his thoughts by the voice of one of the bridge crew, a young man wearing the navy trousers and jacket of a USN service uniform, the additional gold-and-purple stripes on his shoulders denoting his role as an officer. His expression was tense, wavering towards uncertainty.

“Granted.”

Maxwell already knew what the man was going to say. He’d heard the whispers behind his back, the growing mumblings of discontent. That someone else had finally found the courage to voice their concerns was a weight off his shoulders. His position denied him the freedom to express such doubts himself.

“We’ve been out here for hours, sir.” The man wrung his hands, unwilling to meet the captain’s gaze. “Whoever it is you’re looking for, they’re long gone.”

Maxwell said nothing, instead glancing down at the creased sheet of paper in his hands. A Priority One order, handwritten on paper, direct from High Admiral Verne himself, delivered in person by his aide McCarthy. The objective: to find and apprehend a fugitive vessel he believed was attempting to travel through No Man’s Land. In the vastness of space—with only the ship’s last known trajectory to act on—it was an insane, nigh impossible, task. They didn’t know exactly where or when the ship had emerged from FTL, or what direction it had gone after arriving. For all they knew, it could have immediately turned around and jumped off in a different direction. If they hadn’t found it by now, they probably weren’t going to.

But refusing, or even questioning, such a direct order from the High Admiral was an undeniable act of treason, one that could carry a death sentence for Maxwell and his entire crew. And, since Fleet Command could remotely access the computers of every ship in the fleet, that death sentence would be swiftly carried out.

He had no choice but to continue the hunt for as long as feasibly possible. Days, weeks, if need be; they had enough supplies on board to last that long.

Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.

“I understand.” Maxwell turned back to the crewman before him. “But I—”

“Sir, we’ve got something!” a woman called from near the front of the bridge.

The Stalwart Monument was a colossal vessel, which meant there were a lot of things the bridge crew needed to keep an eye on. As such, the bridge area was similar in size and design to an indoor cinema, packed with chairs and consoles, all positioned to face the massive rectangular viewport. The space was manned by close to a hundred engineers, technicians, and officers, each with numerous systems to supervise. Those whose jobs concerned monitoring what lay beyond the exterior of the ship—weapons, sensors, etc—were stationed towards the front end of the bridge, closer to the reinforced two-metre-thick glass of the vast viewport.

“Excuse me,” he said to the crewman before him, marching to where the woman was seated. “What is it?”

“Long range scanners just picked up a mass, at the outer edge of our detection range. Looks like some kind of asteroid, drifting.”

“How big?” He leaned forward, a glimmer of anticipation stirring within him. They hadn’t detected the slightest trace of anything relevant since arriving. This was a welcome change of pace; even if it ended up amounting to nothing, having proof that he did more than cruise around empty space would make his report look marginally better when he returned to admit his failure.

“Bigger than us,” the woman replied, her expression torn between curiosity and concern.

“Big enough for a rogue ship to use as a hiding place.” Maxwell grinned. “Send that data to my station. Helmsman, charge up the FTL drive!”

He hurried back to his seat, positioned on an elevated dais near the entrance, from which he could see everyone else’s screens. Powering up his own display, he inspected the incoming data. The mineral content detected by the scanners indicated it was likely an asteroid of some kind, although how it had wound up this far out was anyone’s guess. He couldn’t help but feel a thrill of anticipation as he waited for the FTL engines to finish charging. Hundreds of millions of square kilometres of space to explore, and the end looked to be in sight already. Was it really going to be that easy?

A popup appeared on his screen, asking him to confirm the ship’s intended flight path. He typed in his code, sending out a signal that deactivated the FTL blockers along their flight path. A miasmic mist of white light settled over the hull of the ship, forming the ‘jump bubble’ that would negate the ship’s mass and allow it to transit to Faster-Than-Light speeds. As the vessel shuddered and shifted, Maxwell noticed the asteroid’s coordinates on the readout before him had changed. That in of itself wasn’t entirely unusual; everything in space was in constant motion, carried by gravity or propulsion or momentum, or some combination of the three. But the asteroid… He leaned forward, squinting at the screen. Something about that motion didn’t look right to him…

The live sensor feed cut out as the ship accelerated to speeds the equipment couldn’t keep up with, the expanse of space outside blinking out of view, replaced by a wall of white. The ship lurched, then steadied itself, leaving Maxwell with a sensation not dissimilar to being in one of the ship’s elevators. Maxwell was among a scarce handful of USN personnel who had the access codes to deactivate the FTL blockers scattered through No Man’s Land. Where the rogue ship was undoubtedly doomed to travel sublight until it could find its way through the net—a journey that could easily take days—the Monument could take the technological shortcut, and close the distance.

While he waited for the jump to complete, he held down a button on his console to rewind the sensor data, trying to figure out what about the asteroid’s motion was bothering him.

From this extreme range, it was impossible to properly gauge the exact shape or composition of the object, but it seemed strangely fast… and symmetrical. It wasn’t drifting, or tumbling, it was flying straight.

Directly towards where the Stalwart Monument had been.

The implications of that were terrifying, but it wasn’t what sent a thrill of fear crashing through Maxwell’s body. If the object was still travelling on the same trajectory, at the same speed, then it was going to be way too close for safety when the Monument finished its jump.

“Helmsman, drop us out! Now!”

He launched to his feet, a mistake that sent him sprawling to the floor a split-second later when the helmsman complied with his order. While a ship’s Physics Field was meant to keep the crew comfortably protected from the force of acceleration and manoeuvres, the shift from FTL back to sublight could still be jarring, especially in a ship of this size.

Maxwell picked himself up off the floor with a grunt, surprised no one had come to his aid. But then he looked to the faces of the crew and saw them collectively staring, transfixed, at the viewport. He followed their gaze, and his jaw dropped.

Though the… thing… had the irregular texture of rock, it was no asteroid. And not only had it continued on the same course after they’d jumped, it had gotten faster. Fast enough that, if Maxwell hadn’t thought to pull out of the jump early, they would’ve emerged mere metres from its gaping, toothy maw.

“Turn us around! Engines to full burn!” he roared to the helmsman, returning to his seat and strapping himself in. “Red alert. All stations, weapons free. All batteries, fire at will!”

It wouldn’t be enough. It couldn’t possibly be enough.

He felt a shudder run through the floor beneath him as the Omega-class railguns on the decks below began to discharge. Those things were powerful enough to rip most smaller ships to pieces in a handful of hits, but if they were doing any damage at all to the monstrosity sailing towards them, it certainly didn’t show. It was only a few dozen kilometres away now, and closing with each passing second.

Too fast to avoid. Too fast to stop.

“Deploy the warheads!” he barked. “Recharge the jump drive!”

He knew it was a futile effort even as he said it. It took a lot of power to drag a ship of this size through FTL. There was no way the drive could cycle back to full charge before the beast reached them. Even if they scored a direct hit with one of the many low-yield nuclear warheads the ships carried, the monster’s momentum would cause whatever was left of it to plough straight into them, regardless of whether it was dead or not.

The crew had to realise that too, but they still did as he commanded. Within seconds, dozens of tactical nuclear missiles rocketed towards the immense creature. The beast slowed, banking to the side with more agility than any man-made ship could ever manage. A multitude of smaller objects broke away from the creature’s hide and flew forth to intercept the missiles, latching onto them and simply ripping them apart to prevent them from detonating.

The creature adjusted its course and weaved back towards the Monument, undulating like an eel, some kind of fin or claw unfolding from its flank as it closed in. Maxwell could see its eyes now, car-sized ovals of crimson clustered all over the upper part of its glistening, brown-green head. A faint reddish luminescence bubbled beneath its scale-like hide, the hellish hue bringing every menacing detail of the monster’s form into profile. Below the eyes, a multi-jawed maw bristling with an irregular assortment of broken, blunted teeth began to leer open, eager to fill itself with the fresh meal before it.

Captain Morgan’s final words came out in a breathless whisper. “What in God’s name?”

But he knew that no god his species believed in could be responsible for the living mountain bearing down on him.

The cosmic monstrosity’s appendage completely filled the viewscreen in the seconds before it collided directly with the bridge, killing those within instantly. The beast didn’t slow, effortlessly dragging its extended forelimb through hundreds of metres of fortified plating. It tore through deck after deck, annihilating man and machine alike through sheer momentum alone, before finally emerging from the rear end of the once-mighty vessel. The intense heat of the still-sputtering thrusters caused little more than mild discomfort to its carapace-encrusted hide.

The beast reduced speed and circled back, hundreds more of its denizens emerging from their nests on its body to sift through the wreckage of the bisected vessel, fervent to feed on the feeble, fleshy beings who had once sheltered within the shattered shell. The spaceborne beast picked through the feast of metals and meat it had claimed.

In the distance, a small ship, blacker than the empty void itself, watched the unholy sight for a few moments, before whisking away in a wisp of white, as if it had never been.