Dark Space Universe by Jasper T. Scott Read online

  Lucien glanced around, looking for the source of the voice. “Who’s there?” he asked.

  A whirr of servos gave him his answer. Glowing red holoreceptors appeared peeking over one of the control stations on the crew deck, just a few steps above the walkway where they stood.

  “Everyone, meet the last member of our team: Pandora.”

  “Howdy,” the bot said brightly.

  “Pandora is our navigator and sensor operator,” Tyra added.

  “Nice name you chose for her,” Lucien said.

  “I am not a her,” Pandora said, “and you can call me Panda. It’s more cuddly.”

  “So you’re a he, then?” Teelo asked.

  “Neither,” Pandora replied.

  Teelo shook his head and turned to regard all of them. “This is going to get confusing. I could fashion a little something for Pandy with the ship’s fabricator to help clear up the confusion.”

  “Why a little something?” Addy objected. “Give the poor guy a chance.”

  Tyra regarded them all with a frown. “We’re not adding genitalia to a bot. Panda, please set your vocal parameters to female. We’ll refer to you as a she from now on.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Panda said in a distinctly feminine register, and her holoreceptors went from red to pink. “Is this better?”

  Teelo whistled appreciatively. “Hey Pandy, you want to get a drink with me later?”

  “You can’t handle me, Lieutenant.”

  “Wanna bet?”

  “Yes. Didn’t your mother teach you what happens when you stick things in electrical sockets?”

  Addy burst out laughing, and Jalisa rolled her eyes.

  Teelo grinned. “So that’s a no?”

  “All right, enough joking around, Tinker,” Lucien said. “Let’s focus on the mission.”

  “Yes, sir,” Tinker replied in a flippant tone.

  Lucien frowned, realizing that his sudden transition from a peer of equal rank to superior officer wasn’t going to be a smooth one.

  “Watch how you speak to a superior officer, Lieutenant,” Tyra said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Tinker replied in a more subdued voice.

  Tyra gestured to the viewport, and the magenta nebula disappeared, replaced by a blurry red smudge in a blank sea of black space.

  Yellow brackets also flanked that image, but the distance in light years was represented in scientific notation.

  “What’s that?” Lucien asked.

  “GN-z11, our ultimate destination. It’s the farthest known galaxy from where we started, and therefore, the closest to the cosmic horizon,” Tyra replied. “But from our new location…” she gestured again, and the display zoomed out, providing a view of surrounding galaxies—more colorful smudges. “It’s no longer the farthest galaxy from us.” Tyra pointed to a smudge at the top of the viewport, and yellow brackets appeared around that galaxy, too.

  “This galaxy is two hundred and forty-two million light years farther away from us than GN-z11,” Tyra said. “As predicted, we’re just seeing more of the same—more stars and space. I guess that settles the question of whether or not we’re the center of the universe.” Tyra smirked and turned from the viewport to address them. “Is everyone ready to head out?”

  Lucien nodded, and the others murmured their agreement.

  “Panda, take us out and start the jump calculations.”

  “Already ahead of you, Captain,” she replied. “Course plotted, heading out. ETA fifteen minutes to reach a safe jumping distance.”

  Tyra nodded and went to take her place in the captain’s chair. She waved away the blurry smudges of distant galaxies, and magenta-colored space returned, along with the bracketed point of light that was the star they were headed for.

  A designation appeared above the yellow brackets: Panda-1.

  Lucien smiled. “Why not Pandora-1?” he suggested.

  The bot replied, “I named the star after the legendary Panda Bear from ancient Earth. I am not an egotist, Commander.

  “I see,” Lucien replied, not sure whether to believe the bot.

  “How long before Astralis jumps again?” Garek asked, absently scratching the scar on his face.

  “We have a standard month at each stop while the facet recharges its reactors and calculates the next jump,” Tyra replied. “Why do you ask?”

  Garek stopped scratching. “What happens if we don’t make it back before then?”

  “We’ll make it,” Tyra said, evading the question.

  A bad feeling wormed into Lucien’s gut, and he turned from the viewports to study Tyra.

  “That’s not an answer,” Garek replied.

  Tyra looked suddenly uncomfortable in her plush captain’s chair. All eyes were on her. “During the probe you were all fitted with timer implants.”

  “We were what?” Lucien demanded.

  “What is timer implant?” Brak growled.

  “When the timer reaches zero, if the implant isn’t somewhere aboard Astralis, it triggers a brain aneurysm, killing the host instantly.”

  “Get implant out!” Brak demanded. He leapt up to the crew deck and strode quickly toward Tyra. She rose from her chair, calmly drew her stunner, and shot him in the chest. Brak sunk to his knees with a loud hiss. Electrical energy leapt off him in crackling blue arcs. “Stand down, Brak,” she said.

  Instead, he rose to his feet with a roar, and lunged.

  Tyra fired again, dropping him to the deck with a thud. “Damned Gors are all so impulsive,” she muttered.

  Garek looked ready to follow in Brak’s footsteps. “You’d better start explaining fast,” he said. “You can’t stun us all before we get to you.”

  “I have the same implant,” Tyra said. “And yes, they can kill us, but if they do, we’ll be brought back to life aboard Astralis just a few minutes later, using the copies of our memories and consciousness that were taken before we left. It’s the cheapest and easiest way to recall all of our expeditions and keep Astralis moving forward toward its goal.”

  “Why don’t you just send search parties for the expeditions that don’t make it back in time?” Lucien asked.

  “Because whatever could prevent an expedition from returning could also capture or destroy whatever search parties we send. We need to be careful not to get in over our heads.”

  “Why not let the lost crews live?” Jalisa asked. “The copies will never meet each other if you don’t go looking for them.”

  “Making duplicate copies of a sentient being is against the law,” Lucien said.

  “It’s against Etherus’s laws,” Tyra corrected, “But would you really want to live out here, in an unfamiliar galaxy, cut off from your own species on a galleon full of bots?”

  Jalisa gave no reply.

  “That’s what I thought. Besides, if we leave copies of ourselves all over the known universe, eventually those copies are going to lead some powerful enemy straight to us. The smaller our cosmic footprints, the harder they will be for someone to track.”

  “All right, so you resurrect the crews,” Lucien said, “but what about the galleons? We can’t afford to keep throwing them away every time their crews get into trouble.”

  “The galleons are all programmed to return here before Astralis jumps again—with or without their crews. If they don’t return, it’s because they were destroyed or badly damaged.”

  “Captain, we are ready to jump,” Pandora announced.

  “Punch it.”

  “Aye, aye. Pandora-1, here we come.”

  “Don’t you mean Panda-1?” Lucien asked.

  “That’s what I said, Commander.”

  “No, you said Pandora.”

  “Human senses are notoriously unreliable. I wouldn’t trust them if I were you, sir.”

  “I is hearing Pandora, too…” Troo said. “And my ears is being more sensitivity than human ears.”

  Troo’s words were all but drowned out by a deafening roar of engine noise.

  “Sorry
! I can’t hear you over the sound of the jump drives spooling!” Panda said.

  “Jump drives don’t make any noise when they spool…” Lucien said, glancing at Troo.

  She hissed and bared her teeth at him.

  Still holding a grudge, then.

  The viewport flashed white and suddenly the stars were all shifted from where they had been a moment ago. A bright, blue-white gas giant lay dead ahead, taking up a sizable fraction of the viewport.

  “Welcome to Panda-1A!” Pandora said.

  “Let’s get to our shuttle,” Tyra added. “Panda, you have the conn.”

  “Finally! My own command!” Pandora said, flexing her robotic hands in anticipation.

  “That’s not what having the conn means,” Tyra said.

  “Oh, I know, ma’am. A slight exaggeration on my part. Just because I am the helmswoman, and the one who gives orders to the helmswoman, doesn’t mean I have command.”

  “I think she’s being sarcastic,” Garek said.

  “I know what she’s being. Panda?” Tyra asked in a dulcet tone.

  “Yes, Captain?”

  “The autopilot has the conn.”

  “But, ma’am…”

  “No buts. Cloak the galleon, and set the autopilot to evade any obstacles. In the event of a true emergency, the senior member of my science team will take command. You’re coming down to the surface with us.”

  Panda mumbled something about a female dog.

  “Excuse me?” Tyra demanded.

  “I said the autopilot is a female dog, ma’am.”

  “The autopilot…”

  “Yes, ma’am, who else? Do you know someone else who behaves like a female dog?”

  Garek chuckled softly to himself, and Lucien smiled.

  Panda-1A

  Chapter 9

  Lucien sat in the pilot’s seat of the shuttle, checking the latest scans of the Panda-1 System. Jalisa sat beside him as the shuttle’s co-pilot. She idly watched the view, keeping an eye on the comms and sensors in case they ran into any space-faring aliens.

  The door between the cockpit and the cabin lay open, and a steady rhythm of conversations bubbled to their ears from the rest of the crew.

  The Inquisitor had arrived just a hundred thousand kilometers from Panda-1A, but that wasn’t their destination. Its moons were. Panda-1A-IV, 1A-V, and 1A-XIV were the most habitable of the gas giant’s twenty-six moons. All of them were big enough to have atmospheres and a sizable fraction of standard gravity, and 1A-V was warm enough to have liquid surface water. It would be their first stop.

  Lucien tried to imagine what it would be like for a species to evolve on a moon around a gas giant, with at least two other habitable moons in easy reach. The first moon-landing of a species like that could potentially also establish a colony, or even make first contact with another intelligent species. Now that would be something. Two intelligent races of aliens living in such close contact… would they be friends, trading and working together? Or bitter enemies, launching missiles at each other across the void before they even learned how to fly to another star?

  Of course, if there were alien races in the system with the technology for rockets and missiles, then they should have detected something by now.

  “Still nothing on scopes and sensors?” Lucien asked.

  Jalisa shook her head. “My boards are clear.”

  “Let me know if that changes, Guns.”

  “What did you call me?”

  Lucien glanced at her. Those unblinking violet eyes reminded him of his mother’s. “Guns…” Lucien replied. “It’s my nickname for you.”

  “Guns… it fits,” Jalisa decided. “What did you name the others?”

  “Well, some of them already had nicknames, like Tinker, and I already knew Brak and Troo from when I was a tyro.”

  “That’s only three. There are eight of us. Nine with the bot.”

  “Bot is an offensive term!” Panda objected from the back of the shuttle.

  “Sorry, Panda,” Jalisa said, glancing over her shoulder. “So?” she prompted, turning back to him.

  Lucien hesitated, not sure if he wanted to elaborate within earshot of the people he’d nicknamed. “Garek is The Veteran,” Lucien said. “Addy is Triple S…”

  “What’s that stand for?” Addy called out.

  “Ah… sexy sniper-scout.”

  “Aww, the XO has a crush!” Tinker piped up.

  “Shut up, Tinker!” Addy replied. “Just because you already had a call sign, doesn’t give you the right to make fun of other people’s.”

  “I think I can do better than Tinker,” Jalisa said. “Tiny—because it must be.”

  Addy laughed at that.

  “You wanna prove that theory of yours, Gunner Girl?” Tinker called back. “Any time, any place—you and me.”

  “The only reason for a man to try his luck with anything that moves is because he isn’t very lucky,” Jalisa replied. “Contrary to popular belief, size does matter, Tiny.”

  “All right, that’s enough. Leave the poor guy alone,” Tyra said.

  “Humans are ridiculous,” Brak said. “Who cares what genitalia look like, so long as they function?”

  “Said the dickless alien,” Addy put in.

  Brak didn’t seem to notice the insult.

  Lucien smiled. Gors didn’t have any external genitalia—probably because the planet where they’d evolved was so cold that it would have frozen off if they did.

  “What’s my nickname?” Tyra asked.

  “I didn’t give you one,” Lucien replied.

  “He is being lies,” Troo said. “He is calling you Tyra the Tyrant.”

  Everyone laughed long and hard at that. When Lucien looked over at Jalisa, he saw tears running down her cheeks.

  “You get to name everything from now on, Commander,” she said through a smile.

  “If the captain has a call sign, it’s only fair for the XO to have one, too,” Tyra suggested.

  “I’m guessing you have one in mind,” Lucien replied.

  “Oh, I have more than one.”

  “All right…” Lucien waited for Tyra to announce his call sign, but she kept quiet.

  Five minutes later, Panda-1A-V came into view, a small dark blue-green speck against the pale white gas giant that it orbited.

  Lucien heard footsteps approaching from the cabin. Tyra appeared beside him. “ETA?” she asked.

  “Twenty minutes to reach orbit. Another ten to make landfall,” he replied.

  “All right. Keep me posted, Lucy,” Tyra said, patting his shoulder as she left.

  Jalisa shot him a grin as muted laughter bubbled from the cabin. “Lucy,” she said, trying it out. “It fits,” she decided, smiling from ear to ear.

  Lucien smiled back. “I’ll take the compliment.”

  “Compliment?” Tyra echoed. “I think maybe you missed the point of this exercise in mutual degradation.”

  “If having a girl’s name is an insult, then three members of this team were insulted at birth.”

  Silence rang inside the shuttle.

  “He’s got you there,” Garek said, chuckling.

  “Touche, Lucy,” Tyra said. “Don’t worry, I’ll do better next time.”

  Lucien grinned. “Till then the score’s Lucy 1 - Tyrant 0.”

  * * *

  The shuttle shuddered as it hit Panda-1A-V’s atmosphere. Their inertial management system (IMS) buffered the effects, but did nothing to stop their view of the moon from shaking. Thick white blankets of clouds concealed gray mountain ridges, blue oceans, and mottled purple, black, and red landmasses—colors that hinted at what Jalisa’s scans had already found from a distance: this moon was rich with alien flora.

  The shuttle fell swiftly through the atmosphere. Air roared deafeningly against the hull. Clouds swept up, obscuring everything for a moment. Droplets of water streaked along the cockpit canopy; then the clouds parted, and the surface of the moon appeared in shocking clarity.


  “Wow…” Jalisa breathed.

  Suddenly the cockpit was crowded as everyone else came up for a better look. Purple and crimson trees soared hundreds of meters into a pale green sky, while towering black obelisks rose even higher between them, looking like a forest of pillars from some gargantuan alien ruins.

  “Are those naturally occurring?” Lucien asked, pointing to the obelisks.

  “Hard to say,” Panda said. “We’ll have to take samples on the surface.”

  “There’s no way for wind and rain to have carved those,” Lucien said. “They’re surrounded by vegetation for one thing.”

  “Now they are. Maybe they weren’t always,” Tyra said.

  “They could also be alive,” Garek suggested.

  “Living rocks?”

  “Silicon lifeforms,” Tyra said, nodding. “If that’s so, then they might even be intelligent.”

  Lucien skimmed the tops of those obelisks, looking for a place to set down. The forest opened up, revealing a field of black grass, and Lucien circled back for a landing. As they hovered down, the grass swallowed their shuttle whole, covering it completely. Only slivers and specks of light made it through to the cockpit.

  “Getting out of here is going to be a challenge,” Lucien said. “Maybe we should clear a path with the shuttle’s laser cannon before we go outside.”

  “And set the whole forest on fire?” Tyra asked.

  “Good point,” he replied.

  “We’ll cut a path. Let’s go.”

  Chapter 10

  The outer doors of the shuttle airlock parted, revealing a dark, impenetrable wall of grass. Wearing their exosuits to avoid infection from alien microbes, the team couldn’t breathe the air or touch anything, but their suits had sensors to relay sensations of touch and smell. Lucien took a deep breath, sampling the loamy, floral scent of the air. He walked up to the wall of grass and probed it with one hand. The haptic sensors in his glove gave him an idea of what the thick blades of grass felt like: they were fuzzy like a spider’s legs.

  He shivered and withdrew his hand.