Ace of Spades / Bastion / Orion Nebular Complex
While the Ace of Spades traversed slipspace, Rion had gotten several nights of sleep in a row and was feeling a hell of a lot better than she had in weeks. Physically, her wounds had healed, and she was well on her way to gaining back the weight that she’d lost. Her dreams had been quiet, though occasionally plagued by events on Erebus VII, and as much as she hated to do so, she had turned to preloaded subcutaneous smart anxiety injections to ease the trauma and stress of sudden flashbacks—both during sleep and while she was awake.
The ensuing days were spent continuing to repair minor and cosmetic damage that had occurred when Ace crash-landed inside Zeta Halo, mostly within the cargo hold and the maintenance corridors beneath—bent storage bins, blown fuses, cracked interfaces…
The Librarian’s confessions weighed on her mind in the quiet of her work, and she no longer thought of them as dreams at all, but more of an interactive simulation, a story either downloaded into her during their time in the mountain or maybe—more wildly—a story stored in all humanity, one that just needed a kick start, an activation. It didn’t make Rion special; it just meant she’d been in the right place at the right time.
And now she had to finish it. It would never sit right with her to abandon the journey now, not after all they’d been through to get to this point, not after all that Spark had endured.
As she entered the bridge, a slight mix of apprehension and impatience went through her. While she had to give the crew the time alotted, she was ready to get this final destination out of the way and then, finally, make the jump to Myer’s Moon to reunite and, who knew, maybe down the road reconnect with her brother.
“So what are we looking at?” she asked, coming around her chair, eager to finally get a glimpse of Bastion as Ace dropped into normal space.
“Calculating now,” Spark said, his avatar lingering in his usual spot over the tactical table.
“In the meantime, let’s slow by one-third, LB.”
“Done, Captain.”
“We are eighty light-years inside the edge of the Orion Complex,” Spark announced.
“That can’t be right. Are you sure?”
The way Spark turned and stared over his shoulder meant he was dead sure. Goose bumps skated up her arms. The Orion Complex was over a thousand light-years from Earth. And while she styled herself an explorer at heart, this kind of distance, to be so far removed from humanity, from any living thing she knew, held a strong and definite note of dread.
“And you’re certain about the portal?” she was almost afraid to ask; if they were stranded out here, they’d never make it back, even by slipstream, no matter how advanced her ship—Rion would die of old age, many times over, long before that.
“It remains open. Dedicated on both sides,” LB assured her.
“We are on track to a mildly irradiated star system with four orbiting planets,” Spark said. “Two in close orbit. A larger midrange planet. And a fourth in far orbit. None are hospitable.”
“How far?”
“Three million kilometers.”
“Increase full, then,” she said, sliding into her chair.
At the halfway point, they slowed speed by one-half and checked long-range sensors.
“I am receiving anomalous radiation readings,” Little Bit announced.
Rion scanned her screen. “I see them.” The readings weren’t a total surprise; the complex was a vast nebular cloud, clouds within clouds, stellar nurseries, ionized gases, and hot spots of radiation light-years in size. “It’s helter-skelter out there, that’s for sure,” she muttered.
“There was a time it wasn’t,” Spark told her.
“What do you mean?”
“The Orion Complex was the home of the Forerunners. Several million years ago, a stellar engineering accident set off a chain of star collapses, supernovas that nearly destroyed all life in the complex. Ancient Forerunners of the time were nearly wiped out. Their natal world, Ghibalb, as well as several other planets across a network of twelve star systems, had either been completely obliterated or rendered inhospitable. Some areas of the complex are still highly irradiated, while others, after millions of years, have recovered.”
The star system they’d been directed to could have been such a victim, the accident likely resulting in the star’s formation into that of neutron star, which would account for the irradiation readings.
From what she could see so far, this particular region of the nebular complex held no value for any spacefaring race. Orbiting planetary fragments or newly formed planets from the supernova debris were barren and uninhabitable and, from a mining standpoint, undesirable—mostly silicate rather than organic compounds, with a few containing metals. There were plenty of other sectors and planets easier to get to and far safer to plunder than this far-flung irradiated region.
As far as places to hide, this was an excellent choice.
After the usual cursory study of the star system, Rion zeroed in on their target. Spark was unusually quiet, and she was pretty certain he’d already finished his inspection of the area and their target planet. “So let’s talk fourth planet,” she said. If this had truly been the Bastion of legend, it had seen better days.
“Four billion kilometers from its sun,” Little Bit piped up. “A glacial planet with a thin silicate crust.”
“How thick is the ice?”
“About six hundred meters.” A picture built on the holoscreen above the tactical table. The ice was relatively flat and smooth, but lined with straight crisscrossing cracks.
“And we’re clear on coordinates?”
“We are. Though the planet is dead. No active core… Those cracks across the surface are most likely from impacts. No traces of technology or aberrant structures.”
“Well, there has to be something there. We’ll stay in high geostationary orbit once we arrive.”
Six hundred and seventy kilometers from the planet, the holoscreen flickered and distorted along with every screen on the bridge.
Rion rose to her feet.
Spark’s avatar shimmered and then appeared to warp. Before she could even speak, everything righted itself. It was quiet on the bridge.
“Talk to me, you two. What the hell just happened?”
The distortions came again, but this time more severe.
“Capt—” Spark’s avatar began unraveling like a ball of yarn.
A punch of horror hit Rion square in the chest as every screen on the bridge went dark, a brief lull before a blue-green glow swept over the bow of the ship.
“LB?”
No reply.
“Little Bit, respond.” Dammit. Spark’s avatar was nearly gone. “Get out of systems and into your armiger.” God, she hoped he could hear her. “Hurry.”
Consoles and stations across Ace’s bridge were shutting down in the glow’s wake. As the light traveled closer, Rion made a play for the closest access panel to switch the ship to manual control, but the pad didn’t respond and the glow was upon her, flowing through the pad and then her fingertip. She braced, holding her breath, as it flowed through her hand, arm, and then straight through her body, electrifying and making every fine hair on her body stand.
Before it made it out the other side of her, Rion turned and bolted from the bridge, raced down the corridor, and across the catwalk over the hold as Spark’s armiger powered up. “We need to regain control!” she shouted. “The whole ship is shutting down!”
The light caught up, passing through her again, and giving her a bird’s-eye view of its travel as it continued through the hold and out toward the stern before disappearing completely. In its absence, Ace took a sudden, deck-shuddering nosedive.
All power was lost, including the gravity generators.
Eerie silence descended through the Ace of Spades. Her ship was dead in the water, and the instant loss of gravity had her floating upward. She reached for the railing, but the nosedive sent her farther and faster away from it than expected.
Rion steeled herself as she tumbled out over the cargo hold. As her peripheral vision circled around and around, she caught a flash of silver and blue crawling on the side of the bulkhead before she had to squeeze her eyes closed to stave off approaching vertigo.
A cool metal hand snatched her forearm. She swung around in an arc and came face-to-face with Spark’s angled features. He was crouched on the wall like a giant spider, pulling her in slowly, anchoring his feet and one hand to the ship. Lucky for her, he had his own power source and therefore his own ability to generate gravity. He kept a tight hold as he walked sideways on the bulkhead, heading for the catwalk.
Rion glanced over her shoulder, eyes growing wide. Oh, no. “It’s coming back.” The turquoise glow was making another pass through the ship.
Spark picked up the pace, towing her by the arm as she floated behind him like some ridiculous human balloon. At the catwalk, he pulled her in enough to allow her to grab the railing and right herself, and from there, they worked their way together back to the bridge just as the wall of light entered the area after them.
Spark pressed her into the captain’s chair.
“Thanks,” she said, manually belting herself in. “We need to restore engines, thrusters at the very least.” Anything to push them off their current trajectory—a collision course with the icy planet.
“One moment.” Spark stalked to the main access panel on the wall, but as the glow moved through the bridge, the Ace of Spades came back to life and her nose lifted slightly. While the glow might have left the interior, it seemed to remain outside. A quick check of feeds told her it enveloped the entire exterior of the ship, and worse, they were still on a rapid descent toward the planet.
Gravity suddenly returned and a few systems began checking in. And while the main viewscreen was clear, every display screen around the bridge shifted from black to that same blue/green turquoise, and in the center a circular symbol around a smaller octagon.
Spark swung around and stared at the main screen with such intensity, it gave her the chills. “What? What is it?”
It took him several seconds to answer. “It’s the Librarian’s sigil.” He stepped toward Ace’s large viewscreen and stopped, staring out with an awe that was palpable. “This is Bastion.”
“Whatever it is, we’re still on a collision course.” She tried to regain control of her access panel. Nothing. “LB? Are you there?”
“Whew!” came his staticky reply. “That was… unusual.”
“Tell me about it,” she mumbled. “Can you access any engine controls?”
“No, Captain.”
Dammit! Ace was fast approaching the surface—without readouts she guessed they had another two thousand kilometers before impact. Desperate, Rion unbuckled and went to the manual override again. If they could just take control of the thrusters for a few seconds, they could push themselves off course.… “Spark—hey, snap out of it!”
“I do not believe we are on a collision course, Captain,” he said calmly. “Look.”
Two parallel cracks in the ice suddenly dropped inward, then split apart, sliding beneath the ice sheet and revealing a doorway filled with translucent turquoise light, the same as the field that surrounded the ship.
Bastion was pulling them in.