Hyperspace (Star Breaker Book 6)

  HYPERSPACE

  STAR BREAKER, BOOK 6

  JAMES DAVID VICTOR

  Copyright © 2021 James David Victor

  All Rights Reserved

  Except for review quotes, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. All people, places, names, and events are products of the author’s imagination and / or used fictitiously. Any similarities to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design by Christian Bentulan

  CONTENTS

  Prologue: Venus

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue: Cleanup

  Thank You

  Free Story

  PROLOGUE: VENUS

  “Red Team in position?” the words crackled over the narrow-band suit comms, and their targets: the black-suited, tactical armor-wearing men and women, gave a silent flutter of nods and hands.

  The men and women of the Earth Alliance Marine Close Assault Squad (Inner Command) were crammed into the narrow confines of a containment box. It held barely enough room or light or air for the eight Marines who waited here.

  In their hands, they held shortened versions of the stubby assault rifles used by their Outer Command brothers and sisters. Their weapons looked designed for close quarters; they were nasty, brutish, and short.

  But the men and women of the Close Assault Squad were trained for such interventions. Not one of them grumbled about their current predicament, and every one of them kept radio silence as they roared towards their destination.

  “Red Team ready to deploy in ten . . . Standard operation procedure . . .”

  The voice of some distant lieutenant said to them, transmitted by a relay of sharp multiphase beams to this box and these Marines. All the better to not be overheard. They couldn’t let their target know they were coming.

  Each of the warriors in this fast-moving box knew just what “standard operating procedure” meant. They were not automatically advised to shoot on sight under such standard protocols—but if it happened?

  They were dealing with an Extreme Threat. And that meant neutralization, first and foremost.

  Each of the Close Assault Red Team went through their personal, private rituals known only to themselves in the silence of their own heads. For some, it might have been prayers. For others, it was the reliving of memories that motivated their action. For a few, it was doubtless just taking a deep breath and wishing that they had a better cup of coffee before being shipped off to here.

  Suddenly, the speed of the box that they were traveling in braked and braked hard. They all lurched forward—despite the fact that they were waiting for something like this. A red light flared over the door. Everyone tensed.

  Outside, the bleached-out orange-and-yellowy sands of Venus swirled, and they looked sickly. Venus, the Planet of Love, the grotesque playground of the megacorporates and business elites always looked ill, never welcoming.

  A low, silvered dome rose in an arc over one of Venus’ many craters. Where its walls met the rock, there was a collar of steel hexagons with brilliant red-and-brass lining. A stylish, slanted Z over one of the hangar ports declared this dome to belong to none other than the Zenetic corporation, the third largest corporation in the entire Sol system.

  And under that great and pretentious Z, there was Hangar Port 3, where a small truck with giant planetary rubber tires was quickly wheeling inside the opening air lock.

  The truck thumped home, performing an automatic seal with the air lock as it always did. All of the traffic out here was drone traffic anyway. Even the trucks that held people were automatically piloted and controlled. The wagons and supply and staff vehicles only needed to have the right clearance codes, easily available if you were a special ops military intelligence outfit.

  The red light over the inner air lock door was flashing its expected red. All at once, the backdoor of the transport block that drone truck 238 had been carrying exploded inwards into the Zenetic dome. It burst apart on the preplanned charges as eight men and women clad in black roared into the hangar.

  “FREEZE! EA MARINES!”

  “Down! Down!”

  “Everybody on the floor!”

  The first of the EA Close Assault Squad were bellowing, their suits abruptly roaring into sound, their voices amplified and made curiously robotic and inhuman.

  Only to find that there was no one at all, here to answer them.

  “What the—Sarge?” One of the first and the most stocky-looking of the guards was saying as they slowed to a puffing halt after their charge.

  Hangar Port 3 was massive underneath its vaulted ceiling. It was only that—a great big empty bay. Stacks of containment boxes like the one that Close Assault Squad had just jumped out of lined the walls. Giant crane hands on either side stood silent witness to not very much at all, and elevators and lifts stood mutely open—with not a soul in sight.

  “Sarge?” said the stocky-looking Marine as they slowly turned around, surveying the empty building. This was not what the team had expected. They were following immediate orders to secure the Zenetic facilities and expect the possibility of retaliation. Perhaps even extreme retaliation.

  “I don’t know, Private . . .” The Close Assault sergeant raised a black-gloved gauntlet to scratch at their head distractedly.

  It was at that point that the extreme retaliation happened.

  Alert!

  All of the tactical suits of the Close Assault Squad pinged at once, as all of the hangar port doors and windows opened, letting in the Venusian noxious air and depressurizing the dome in a whirlwind of storm, dust, and death.

  1

  EA Marine Blockade Ship Helvetica on route to Venus

  “They blew the damn dome!?” Captain Holly Cropper gasped as she watched the footage replay from the safe confines of the debrief lounge, still several hours out from Venusian space.

  Around her stood her command squad: Sergeants Bastion Li and Marshal Smith, nominally of the Forward Recon squad, but recently seconded to the forefront of operations against the Thaal invasion. Added to their numbers was the short, ascetic, and bleached-blonde figure of Commander Silas of the Outer Command Marine Corps, as well as the tall and athletic Dr. Crow, and Dr. Metz (lately an inmate at the Pluto Prison Facility).

  It was a full meeting, housed in a functional, metal-walled, and metal-interior lounge with a giant port window that now held the flickering images of destruction. Seconds before, Holly Cropper had been able to look out of that window and see the distant sweep and haze of stars as the giant blockade ship, the Helvetica, sped towards the planet of love.

  “They should be more careful. Zenetic seems to have a habit of blowing up,” remarked the largest man in the room, Bastion Li.

  Hmm, he’s not wrong, Cropper thought almost idly as the image looped back to the start and began to replay. The last time that she had been en route to Venus to “talk” to Zenetic, one of their mad scientists had released a shipment of those murderous Jackal drones, resulting in a terrific loss of life.

 
They had managed to get out of it that time, Holly thought, by claiming that it was all the work of crazy Verondas. Not them. Even though she was on their payroll . . .

  “You can’t say that this was an accident.” Dr. Crow raised an eyebrow in disgusts. Tall with long brown hair in a braid down her back and wearing probably the nicest civilian robes of the entire group, the doctor looked the most out of place here—even more so than Dr. Metz, who wore graying, standard-issue fatigues. The Earth Alliance Senate hadn’t decided if Dr. Metz was a citizen or still a criminal.

  But Dr. Crow, ironically, probably had the most understanding of the Thaal invasion: more so than anyone else after she had spent the last two years studying their dormant invasion starcraft.

  She’s also more than capable in a tight situation. Holly nodded a little to herself, thinking about their recent adventures attempting to exfiltrate the doctor from Pluto.

  “This time, the entire corporation has gone dark,” Commander Silas barked gruffly as the images before them looped around once more to the beginning.

  EA Marine Deep Sky Satellite: . . .

  In the top right corner, the video footage showed the tiny drone truck hurtling over the flattened avenue road on Venus. Exactly like they always did every day of normal operations for the corporate dome. If the truck was moving a little fast this time, then perhaps any viewers might assume that it was on an urgent delivery or that its internal processors were on the glitch.

  It swerved and parked, backing into the opening of Hangar Port 3 exactly as it should. The static of overheard Close Assault recordings could be heard playing over the image.

  “FREEZE! EA MARINES!”

  “Down! Down!”

  “Everybody on the floor!”

  The view of the military intelligence spy satellite showed nothing but the same old dome. The Close Assault Squad got to work, blowing the doors to their vehicle as they leapt out to begin their operation.

  To apparently find that there was no one inside the dome.

  “No one, I mean, no one at all?” Marshal Smith said with a wince. “Wouldn’t there at least be guards there? Or cleaners?”

  “Wait for it.” Commander Silas held up a finger to silence the sergeant while there was a sudden glimmer of light from across the top of the dome. The satellite didn’t even pick it up, but they had all seen this footage once before. Holly’s eyes concentrated on the small, octagonal port windows and vents that were rising automatically everywhere across the dome.

  The movement only took a second, and then suddenly, there was a visible tremor that ran through the dome. The dust over the plains started to eddy as all of the internal pressures and atmospheres inside the dome were released at once.

  Holly couldn’t begin to contemplate what it must have been like inside that dome. A sudden and acute decompression event would have seen hurricane-level winds rip through every open room and corridor, probably blowing the doors and air locks of those rooms that weren’t open. Features, desks, processing units, storage, computers, pipes on the walls—they would all have been ripped from their housings in moments, creating a deadly whirlwind inside, moments before—

  Flames spurted out of the windows and ports all across the rounded semicircle, forming a corona of flames and fire as the severe pressure—or lack thereof—must have burst wires, batteries, and fuel tanks . . .

  And then the entire dome shuddered one more time before it went.

  There was an amazing flash that tore apart the dome and hazed the camera of the military intelligence satellite for a moment. Then, as the bright flash faded, it revealed just the black and broken remains of the dome, an entire fog bank of smoke rising out of it.

  “There were no survivors,” Holly heard Commander Silas say severely.

  “The Close Assault Team, Interior Command, was sent in to halt Zenetic operations after what Dr. Metz told us,” Silas said gravely. “And this is what happened. Every senior Zenetic executive and key staff member has gone off the grid. Those lower down the rungs—the cleaners and guards, as you say, Sergeant Smith—are in the process of being questioned. They went to work today to find their offices or facilities closed.”

  “They know we’re onto them,” Holly growled.

  There was a sudden angered hiss and movement. The smaller Dr. Metz, middle-aged and with dark hair struck through with silver-white, suddenly moved forward.

  “Of course they know! They always know! They told me as much years ago!” The doctor glared at the broken image before them as if she could force her hate through the video feed and back, back into the past.

  There was a sharp cough from the commander as he glared at Dr. Metz. The commander’s view on including a mass-murdering criminal in his briefing seemed obvious to Holly.

  But she worked for Zenetic. She KNOWS what she did for them, Holly was thinking as she watched the two of them face off.

  And what Dr. Metz had done was to build a Hyperspace Gate. Holly looked back at the image. A Hyperspace Gate like the ones that the Thaal attempted to build every time that they threw themselves into human space.

  Dr. Metz had built one functioning Hyperspace Gate for the megacorporation years ago, many years before the Thaal invasion. Then she had built another one to prove her hypothesis—which had blown up and murdered at least two hundred people. That had stopped the project and sent her to Pluto.

  But Zenetic still had the first Gate, Holly considered.

  “So where is it?” the captain wondered out loud. “The Hyperspace Gate that you built for Zenetic?”

  Dr. Metz tore her frown away from Commander Silas and nodded back at the dome. “Should be there. Should be under there. But I guess that it’s destroyed now. All of my work, gone! Useless!”

  “Then excuse me if I am being dim,” Sergeant Marshal Smith stated out loud. “Doesn’t that mean we are golden here? Zenetic had the Gate—probably the most dangerous artifact in all of human history if the Thaal could walk through it any moment. Now they destroyed it by dropping the dome on top of it. Do we have to worry about it anymore?” Marshal shot an annoyed look over at Dr. Metz. Sergeant Smith shared some of Commander Silas’ opinions about the doctor and criminals.

  “Unless you made any more of these interstellar trapdoors and left them around without telling us?” he cast at her.

  “Of course not! I—” Metz hissed back and appeared about to start a tirade of abuse at him. The Forward Recon squad had realized that she was pretty good at doing that in their long flight from Pluto to here.

  “And then there is this,” the commander said. The images on the screens quickly changed to show a view of the ruins, close-up and seen at about eye height.

  “You’ve got people on the ground already?” Holly stated. The viewer moved into the ruins. Immediately, everything was gray-and-blackened bits of metal and composite materials. It was almost impossible to tell what anything had originally been, and there were pipes, cylinders, chair legs, shattered glass, bent radiators, broken blocks, and more, everywhere.

  “Dragonfly spy drone,” said Silas, gesturing with a hand to fast-forward the footage quickly. The scenes flashed past at an astounding rate before he slowed it down as the spy drone abruptly turned and shot down a still-open metal shaft.

  “We dispatched them at the same time as the Close Assault Squad, following the description that Dr. Metz gave us of the internal layout of the Zenetic dome.”

  They wanted to get eyes on Metz’ pre-built Gate down there, Holly thought. The footage showed hundreds of feet of gray metal piping, turning, and connecting before it came to a vent. A flash of red as the dragonfly deployed its laser cutter, and then the drone was heading out into a large, cavernous space.

  “That’s it!” Metz said automatically, raising her hands to her mouth as if horrified or excited or both. “I remember that cavern! It’s underneath the entire dome. It is where my best work was.”

  But the doctor’s voice fell silent as the spy drone revealed just a large, emp
ty red-rock cavern ahead of them.

  Well, not entirely empty, Holly thought as the spy drone moved towards the few objects here. Some empty ruggedized, plastic crates sitting on their own and doing nothing at all. A few even had packing material still scattered around.

  “There’s nothing there,” Holly heard Marshal whisper.

  “Your powers of observation never cease to amaze me,” Commander Silas commented (a little harshly, Holly thought). “The spy drones have found no evidence of your research, Dr. Metz. No architecture. No devices. Nothing.”

  It was then that Holly abruptly realized the meaning of what the commander was suggesting. Did he not believe Dr. Metz at all?

  “However, Commander . . .” there was a smooth purr of noise from the door as yet another arrival entered the room. Only this new arrival wasn’t even human, despite the Texan accent.

  It was, instead, a floating disk made of dark blue metal, entirely round and almost two feet in diameter. At four points, it had a dim, glowing blue light, and it moved on its own tiny air rotors.

  The Duke. Holly recognized it, although she had never spoken to it before. She saw Dr. Crow beside her visibly stiffen at its approach.

  The Duke was an artificial intelligence. Not a fully sentient intelligence, but one that had originally been grown to help the Marine Corps training program on Mars, and since then sent with Dr. Rachel Crow to the Thaal invasion ship.

  “There might be no sign of Dr. Metz’ hyperspace technology here, but I have analyzed the situation and found it highly likely—seventy-two percent, to be exact—that as soon as Zenetic decided to kidnap the doctor from Pluto, then they most likely took measures to conceal their actions.”