The Dragon Writers Collection Read online

  Before his eyes lay a virtual desktop with seemingly innocuous virtual file cabinets. Some of these little cabinets had virtual drawers that popped open when he tapped them with his finger. Hall wasn’t fooled by the names, they were neither innocuous nor randomly generated. Each name was a complex cipher. To any person who hacked this far into the system, these cabinets and files would be utterly meaningless without the key that would allow them to decode the names. Then, there would be self-destruct defenses in place should the cipher be cracked improperly. Finally, the data itself would be encrypted and further hidden within layers of truly innocuous data.

  Hall knew all this because he’d helped to design it. He knew the key to the cipher, he’d created many of the self-destruct defenses, and he’d personally written the algorithm used to encrypt the data. In minutes he was inside the virtual cabinet containing a file called Centaurus Expedition. Of course, the file wasn’t titled so until he’d broken through all the defenses and encryption. He remembered creating this very cabinet so long ago when he was a youth in the Commonwealth Fleet writing protocols; he hadn’t been allowed to read any of the data, of course.

  When he’d examined the data on the dead informant’s holotablet, buried very far down, he’d found obscure references to a wormhole. At first Hall hadn’t given it much thought. Wormholes in space had never been proven to exist. When Revelier revealed that Marshal Thomas had helped the Ryevolutzia gain control of Alamo Drift, Hall was shocked. Everyone knew that Gesellschaft was using it to conduct their illegal mining operations. Admittedly, Gesellschaft was an anomaly. No law enforcement or intelligence entity had ever successfully penetrated Gesellschaft beyond the lowest levels of the organization. So a true understanding of them was lacking. Gesellschaft literally meant ‘Perfect Society.’ The goal of the group was to create a super-race from the stock of certain ancient Earth bloodlines. It seemed that being a true sociopath with sadistic and cruel tendencies was a requirement for membership, along with being from whatever ‘pure’ gene pool they thought appropriate. Their initiation rights were so barbaric and brutal that many didn’t survive them. And no one wanted to volunteer to spy on those crazy bastards.

  With Alamo Drift’s inhospitable location, deadly radioactive waste, and alleged haunting, the rest of the criminal world was content to leave it to Gesellschaft. As had the Commonwealth.

  Hall thought it was curious that Ryevolutzia was interested in taking that away from Gesellschaft, so he decided to research the drift’s history. And what he found was utterly useless. Strikingly useless, in fact. It was so useless as to make Hall think that perhaps that was the intent of whoever created the files pertaining to it. After hours of scrutiny, Hall had found only one cabinet that seemed suspicious enough to possess hidden data. When he cracked a new file he found obscure references to an element called U-999, which had been the focus of the mining operations of the ancient drift. The data were incomplete and there were many gaps. There wasn’t enough information there for him to understand anything beyond the obvious; the U-999 was being mined to study its effects on wormholes. But no one had ever seen a wormhole or proved that they existed beyond science fiction novels and movies.

  Until today.

  Revelier had enough data in his ‘secret’ virtual cabinets to fill in all the holes. The early years of space exploration had been driven by the desire to move Earth’s population beyond our solar system. The fear was that the population would outgrow the planet and its resources triggering war, famine and destruction. Along with the movement to seek naturally occurring resources within our solar system was a project whose goal was to explore and colonize worlds thought to be habitable by the space telescopes of the 21st Century. It was a commonly held belief, and all the history books supported the belief, that all such experiments had failed.

  What Hall was reading now, however, seemed to dispute those long held truths. A great experiment, called ‘The Centaurus Project,’ had been conducted in a suspicious area of space located between the Asteroid Belt and Jupiter. It had been called ‘suspicious’ because several space telescopes had recorded the inexplicable appearance of two asteroids from that location. These asteroids seemingly appeared from nowhere and subsequently disappeared into nowhere. The event had been classified at the highest levels of all the governments involved at the time.

  Unmanned expeditions to the region confirmed the suspicions of scientists that something was very bizarre about that place. Scientists began to theorize that perhaps the anomaly was a wormhole, a place where time and space joined physically and theoretically allowed one to travel vast distances in brief moments of time. Several manned expeditions followed where data was collected but scientists had been unable to force the wormhole to open. Finally, a discovery had been made that enriched uranium seemed to trigger noticeable effects on the wormhole but failed to control it. After experimenting with various forms of uranium, scientists learned enough to theorize a way to operate the wormhole; at least enough to cause it to open. And what they needed was a form of uranium with very specific properties, one that was as yet undiscovered.

  When discoveries of naturally occurring variants of elements found on Earth were made in the Asteroid Belt; officials in charge of the Centaurus Project watched very closely. Finally, government forces took over one particular mining operation from a drift called Alamo Drift.

  Hall sat back a moment and pretended to rub his eyes and stretch. No one was paying him any attention. He dwelled a moment on what he’d found. Clearly, Ryevolutzia found the connection between Alamo Drift and the Centaurus Project. How they knew was something of a question. Perhaps the Ukrainians or Russians had been part of that project, neither of those nations had ever been very good at keeping secrets. Another possibility, one which Hall wished fervently wasn’t true, was that someone sold the information to the Ryevolutzia. That was unlikely due to the very high level of security, and low level of knowledge surrounding the information. But, once something entered a person’s head, it could easily exit their mouth. So however distasteful it was, Hall had to admit the possibility. And the only person he knew of with the knowledge was his boss, Gem Revelier.

  It didn’t really matter at this point, however, as Hall’s goal wasn’t the indictment of his boss. Right now he had to see where this plot went and what its purpose was. In any case, a functional wormhole device could easily shift the balance of power in the solar system. In the hands of a rogue state, or a non-Commonwealth state, the very existence of the Commonwealth could be threatened. Hall envisioned warheads equipped with wormhole devices that could cause a target to disappear into a void of time and space. He didn’t know if such a thing were possible, but he knew that he couldn’t be the only person thinking it.

  He continued reading.

  The Centaurus Project advanced in leaps and bounds with the discovery of various forms of uranium. Each experiment seemed closer to having success with actually manipulating the wormhole. Experiments in other areas where there had been no suspicious activities yielded results encouraging to the project staff. It seemed that the wormhole effects could be manipulated in places where there were no known wormholes. Finally, the introduction of the newest element discovered yielded the results that the project staff really wanted. The wormhole could be manipulated at will. The new element was uranium 999, or simply U-999. It was given this strange designation due to the unbelievable array of never-before-seen properties it possessed. The element had the potential to affect standing matter, to manipulate time and space, to disturb gravitational fields and more. But it had a terribly negative side effect: intense and deadly radioactivity.

  The counter radiation technology of the time was sophisticated enough to withstand the powers of U-999, but only for short periods of time. Large amounts of money were spent on endless replacements of radiation suits and plating. Casualties were reported as being too horrific to disclose and corpses had been launched into space to prevent further destruction. Hall found that bit o
f information odd.

  Not wanting to be bogged down with minutia, Hall scanned the data for more pertinent information. Finally he found it.

  Two spacecraft named after the famous Mars rovers of the early 21st Century, Spirit and Opportunity, were built and equipped to enter the wormhole. Due to the incredible nature of the Centaurus Project technology and the bizarre effects of U-999, the mission remained classified at the highest levels. Scientists estimated that the spacecraft would emerge from another wormhole near a planet located within the Centaurus Constellation. Centaurus had the distinction of possessing the nearest star to Earth, Proxima Centauri, which had been thought to be devoid of habitable worlds. But imagery captured by deep-space probes bearing powerful telescopes revealed new possibilities for habitable worlds.

  Hall shook his head at that, even today the fastest spacecraft could barely attain one-quarter the speed of light in short bursts. With the fears of impending global devastation at the time, it was no wonder governments were eager to see how this technology played out. If they couldn’t use it to travel the stars, perhaps they could use it to wipe out their enemies in the coming armageddon.

  Immediately after Spirit entered the wormhole, all contact with the ship had been lost. The same had been true of unmanned expeditions through the wormhole prior to this point and so this was not unexpected. What they had hoped was that the large crew could travel through the wormhole and conduct experiments and record data from the planet beyond and return one month later using the wormhole device. When a month had passed without contact, Opportunity was tasked with going through the wormhole after Spirit to rescue the crew and return with the necessary data.

  Opportunity failed to return within the allotted time as well. Hall read that several more manned ships were sent through the wormhole, along with a number of probes and satellites, but nothing ever returned. Finally, the casualty rate and odd effects from exposure to U-999 coupled with the loss of the explorers, caused the Centaurus Project to be shut down. The terrible side effects of the element known as U-999 had been determined to far outweigh the positive benefits. All of the government entities involved deemed it best that the Centaurus Project and U-999 be forgotten.

  The project was deemed such a failure that all of the equipment, data, space craft and the wormhole devices, were jettisoned through the wormhole to be forgotten. And at about the same time, breakthroughs in terraforming and artificial gravity made the need for manned extra-solar exploration unnecessary. The project was dead.

  Until now.

  Hall backed out of the virtual cabinet and searched around Revelier’s other cabinets for anything that might cement the connection. He felt like he was wasting his time and risking apprehension for treason for nothing. Certainly the Centaurus Project amounted to a record-breaking cover-up, but it had occurred before the existence and jurisdiction of the Commonwealth. There was no one alive today who had anything at all to do with it.

  Then Hall did find something suspicious. It was an official report from Moon Police Service regarding the bank job that triggered this entire fiasco. There wasn’t anything strange about the file or its name, other than that it was odd for it to be so heavily safe-guarded. Hall decided to read the report to satisfy his curiosity and end the session. But when he read the report he was shocked to the core.

  That’s it! He’d figured it out.

  “Is everything OK, Agent Melrose?” Hall’s heart lurched in his chest, as he looked up into the questioning eyes of a Commonwealth Marshal.

  Sixkiller floated out into space beyond the behemoth ship owned by Ryevolutzia. Heck and Dooly watched the beast drift slowly by until it was out of sight. Mafia patrol craft, having won their little turf war with Gesellschaft, remained in the area of Platform Ten, Alamo Drift. Presumably the patrol craft were there to retain their claim on the hellish place while Ryevolutzia moved its personnel, supplies and defenses into place.

  Heck watched it all numbly. He had been so close to Laylara, on the same ship even. But he’d been so caught up in the moment, in keeping business mode running, he hadn’t really thought about Laylara all that much. And that thought upset him. What was happening? Was he becoming an unthinking, unfeeling, machine? No, deep down he felt very strongly for Laylara. But he never allowed himself the time to explore those feelings, to see where it led and what it all meant.

  And now there was every possibility he might never see her again. He might not have the chance to really see what ‘us’ was all about. What the attraction was to settling down, getting married; having kids, even. All of these things buzzed into and out of his head while he sat, unmoving at the controls.

  “Boss,” said Dooly.

  Dooly. Stephen William Doolin. Descendant of the head bastard of the Doolin Gang. And here he was partnered with Heck Thomas, descendant of the lawman that killed Bill Doolin. Heck had to admit moments of doubt about Dooly, especially when Virgil and his gang of criminals seemed to know so much about him.

  “Yes,” he answered.

  “Time to go.”

  Heck engaged the drive systems and piloted Sixkiller away from Alamo Drift, and away from the pain in his heart.

  “How do we know where to find Uzefski?”

  “The First Minister of Science will be where he always is: the Palace of the Prime Minister.”

  “The Palace of the Prime Minister?” Dooly said, incredulous. “As in the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth?”

  “That would be the one.”

  “The one with an entire regiment of troops guarding it?”

  “Yep.”

  “The one with an array of orbital and ground defenses missile batteries?”

  “Yes.”

  “With a combat carrier full of nasty attack craft on patrol around it at all times?”

  “One and the same.”

  “You’re crazy. How are we gonna get him outta there?”

  “The first question is: how are we going to get in?”

  “Do you have a plan?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Yes, Marshal DiNova. I’m fine,” he answered hurriedly, trying to sound nonchalant. “I’m sorry for taking up your time, I’ll wrap it up now and leave.”

  Hall cursed himself for a fool, he’d completely lost track of time and had forgotten that he was borrowing someone else’s workstation! Although he had been a top notch investigator for most of his career, Hall had not needed to do much undercover work on his own. Most of his arrests came from skillful suspect and witness interviews and good evidence collection. He was unused to assuming someone else’s identity and he hoped that the mistake wouldn’t cost him.

  The Marshal left the area, but didn’t go far. Presumably he was waiting for Hall to shut down the computer and leave. Hall did exactly that, but left a few decoy trails in place in the event someone decided to analyze Marshal DiNova’s system browsing habits, particularly Marshal DiNova’s apparent use of Commonwealth computers to operate a side business of selling data to non-Commonwealth states. Hall managed to figure that little tidbit out in the first five minutes, and he had not been looking. DiNova wasn’t a true traitor, the data he was selling was insignificant and unclassified. But a crime is a crime. And it would serve as a nice distraction in the event some of his snooping had been linked to this holocomputer station.

  Hall left the Marshals Service Headquarters disguised as Special Agent Melrose without a second thought. He wandered down the long palm tree lined sidewalk in the comfortable artificial light of Palace Drift, his mind gone astray with the information he had just learned.

  Now it makes sense!

  Hall was in a complicated position. He now knew the nature of the sinister plot that would shake the foundations of the Commonwealth, and he knew who was involved. His evidence was sketchy, however. And if he reported any of it he would be immediately arrested. That would only make matters worse. Not to mention that as soon as word got back to Revelier, the self-destruct systems protecting his data would very
quickly be engaged. Hall made certain to make backups of the data he read in Revelier’s computer files, but that still wouldn’t excuse him from the crimes had had committed to get that data.

  He needed something more tangible, more damning. But the only way he could think of to get it was to capture a conspirator in the act of treason. He mulled over exactly how he planned on doing that when he came upon a large crowd of protesters violently clashing with each other. Riot police stood guard at the periphery, knowing better than to get in the middle when the protesters seemed only to be hurting themselves. Hall decided to take another path and continue to work through his plan in his mind.

  If he was going to stop this plot, he had to find Heck Thomas.

  The Palace of the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Spacefaring Nations was an impressive fortress. It was guarded by a host of military forces from the ground, from space and in the air. It was protected by a variety of cutting edge weaponry including orbiting satellite missile batteries and regular patrols by Commonwealth ships like CS Revenge, CS Stalker, and CS Retribution.

  But the most interesting part of the Palace was that it was a drift; a drifting space station that was, like Churchill Drift, a country unto itself. It was the most luxurious drift in the Solar System and only the most affluent could afford to live there. Ministers of Parliament, department directors, Cabinet Officers, high ranking military officers, lobbyists, and corporate executives lived on Palace Drift. It was also the home of the Commonwealth Houses of Parliament and all the functions of Commonwealth government were carried out there.

  Before Palace Drift was Palace Drift, it was a large drift housing the communities that supported and outfitted the forward mining operations in space. Over the years it had been rebuilt and refurbished. But deep in the bowels of the drift was the one place no one liked to go: the prison. Marshal Heck Thomas had been to Palace Drift a number of times picking up or dropping off prisoners, participating in judicial hearings, and attending official functions of the Marshals Service. The Marshals Service used Palace Drift as their prison hub, where fugitives from across the system were brought and held for processing, court hearings, and sentencing.