Galaxy Unknown (Forgotten Galaxy Book 1), page 1
GALAXY UNKNOWN
FORGOTTEN GALAXY
BOOK 1
M.R. FORBES
Published by Quirky Algorithms
Seattle, Washington
This novel is a work of fiction and a product of the author’s imagination.
Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2023 by M.R. Forbes
All rights reserved.
Cover illustration by Geronimo Ribaya
Edited by Merrylee Laneheart
CHAPTER 1
“We’re here, Cap!” Ham shouted, his deep voice echoing along the bulkheads stretching from the flight deck throughout the confines of the scout ship Spirit. The rumble pulled Caleb out of his slumber in berthing. Eyes snapping open, his right hand instinctively reached for a sidearm that wasn’t there.
Relax. It’s only Abraham.
Ishek’s alien voice echoed in Caleb’s mind, the signal carried by a pair of hair-thin tendrils plugged into his brainstem.
Caleb shed the thin gray blanket covering him and rotated up on his berth to plant his bare feet on the cold metal deck. “You know me, Ish. It’s habitual to go right for my gun. And if I’m not relaxed, it’s because I’m excited to finally be here,” he said out loud, spreading his legs to bend over and open one of the drawers beneath his thin mattress with a tap. The compartment slid open, revealing his magboots and a pair of socks.
“Cap, did you hear me?” Ham shouted. “I said we’re here!”
“Everyone heard you, Ham,” Corporal Jii Kwon complained from the berth adjacent to Caleb’s. He was still flat on his back, his arms raised overhead as he stretched before sitting up and yawning.
“Everyone?” Ham’s voice boomed out. “Last I checked, there were only three of us on this boat!”
“I think everyone on Proxima heard you!” Kwon shouted back. “All the way back home!”
“Maybe all the way back to Earth!” Caleb corrected. “Forty light years! The shout heard across the universe! My ears are still ringing!”
“Mine are bleeding!” Kwon joked.
Grinning, Caleb finished putting on his boots and stood up. He closed the open drawer and tapped the one below it open. It contained a simple wardrobe of black t-shirts and boxer-briefs. Already dressed from the waist down, he plucked a perfectly folded t-shirt, pulling it on over both his lean muscled upper body and the symbiote wrapped around his upper right arm. For anyone getting only a cursory look, Ishek was easy to mistake as a black tribal tattoo, his body two inches wide and lying nearly flat against his skin. The only way to identify him as a living creature, let alone an alien, would be to get close enough to see the sluglike texture of his dark flesh.
“What’s our distance from the signal?” Caleb asked Ham as Kwon skillfully hopped off his berth and into his boots, already maglocked to the deck. The fastenings automatically tightened up until they comfortably snugged up to his feet.
Slimmer and shorter than Caleb, he still bore the physique and posture of a Centurion Space Force Marine, though his thick, dark hair had grown out enough during the four-month trip that he had taken to tying it back into a topknot. It was against regulations, but the only rules out here were the ones Caleb enforced. He didn’t care how long his men grew their hair as long as it didn’t interfere with their ability to get the job done.
“Three point eight AU!” Ham answered.
“Velocity and heading?” Caleb requested.
“Twenty-eight thousand klicks per hour! About the speed of an orbiting satellite! In fact, according to the computer, the source is orbiting Trappist-G!”
“That’s right in line with the Astrophysics Lab’s projections,” Kwon commented, his voice low enough for Caleb’s ears only.
“So far, they’ve been dead on with their calculations,” Caleb agreed with Kwon at a normal volume before shouting back at Ham. “Can we get a visual?”
“Negative! We’re still too far out!”
“Do you think it’s Pathfinder?” Kwon asked Caleb. “After all this time?”
“Orbiting a perfectly good planet?” Caleb answered. “I’d prefer to find it on the surface, surrounded by domes.” He raised his voice again. “Any sign of a colony? Comm signals? Radiation?”
“I’m scanning the entire spectrum, but nothing so far!” Ham shouted .
Caleb tensed at the reply. He’d hoped for some sign of human life.
The CSF had spent the last five years working diligently to expand the network of outposts and sensors that allowed scout ships like Spirit to reach further and further beyond Alpha Centauri. It had come as a shock to everyone when they had flipped the switch on the latest and greatest long-range probe and discovered a regular, repeating transmission originating dozens of light years away. It was an even bigger shock when the comms team decrypted the encoded communication.
Two hundred and fifty years ago, a generation ship named Pathfinder had lifted off from a ravaged Earth carrying forty-thousand survivors to a new home in the Trappist-1 system. It had never been heard from again, both the ship and the colonists long considered lost.
Not anymore.
The transmission itself was an automated distress call, repeating every minute for who-knew-how-many years. The location, identifiers, and encryption keys all matched Pathfinder, and the powers-that-be had decided it was in humankind’s best interests to track down the signal’s origin to find out what had become of the colonists.
Even if he hadn’t volunteered, the mission was too important and potentially too volatile for General Haeri to have sent anyone but Caleb. He and his Vultures were the most experienced scout team in the CSF. Caleb had spent the entire transit expecting the worst and hoping for the best, and now that they had arrived, it seemed his expectations were as spot on as AP’s fold calculations.
Sometimes, he hated being right.
“What about the enemy?” he asked next.
“Nobody here but us chickens, Cap.”
Caleb exhaled. At least he could hold onto the hope they hadn’t come all this way for only bad news.
“Coffee, Cap?” Kwon asked Caleb.
“Yeah. Coffee sounds great.”
“Ham! Coffee?”
“You know I never say no to caffeine! Although it’s dicey when you’re the one brewing it! You push the button wrong!”
“How do you push a button wrong?”
“Man, you tell me!”
I hungerrrr.
“Now, Ish?” Caleb asked. “I don’t feel anything.”
Would you prefer we wait for a less opportune time to feed?
“You heard Ham, it’s clear sailing out there.”
For now. You of all people should know not to underestimate us.
“So much for hope. I was afraid you might say that.”
I only tell it like it is.
Caleb sighed, turning back to his berth as Kwon passed behind him, headed for the galley. Opening the drawer on his left. He shoved aside his spare utilities and went for the cushioned metal tin at the bottom of the compartment. Flipping the cover open, he glanced down at the remaining row of vials inside, sixteen in total. More than enough to get him back to Proxima once this mission was complete. Picking one out, he closed the tin and put it back in the drawer, pushing the compartment closed with his foot while he pinched the vial, cracking it open under his nose.
Electric tingles ran through his body as he breathed in the synthetic pheromones. In addition to the resources Ishek pulled from his body, the alien needed the chemicals to survive. All the members of his parent race, the Relyeh, did. It was what had made them such a blight on the universe. Not only the constant need to feed, but the way they gathered the pheromones to consume. The chemical mixture only occurred naturally through the fear response of organisms evolved enough to be afraid of monsters.
The Relyeh were monsters by nature. And they enjoyed it.
Ishek had been the same once, delighting in the pain and terror of his victims. Their symbiotic connection and the synthetic pheromone had changed that. Unfortunately, the stuff was difficult and incredibly expensive to produce. It would never be a solution to the needs of the Relyeh as a whole. They could never make enough to end the war. And even if they somehow found a way, Caleb doubted Shub’Nigu and the other Ancients of the Relyeh would accept peace. The Relyeh believed it was their destiny to subdue every intelligent life form in the universe. Unlike Ish, they refused to exist any other way.
I am satiated.
Caleb took one more deep breath of the pheromones to completely satisfy the khoron before depositing the empty vial in the enclosed trash bin to the right of the drawers beneath his berth. He moved from the berthing compartment into a narrow, eight-foot-long corridor, pausing where a closed hatch led to the head on the port side and an open hatch exposed the galley to starboard.
Crossing his arms over his chest, he leaned against the bulkhead at the galley entrance, watching Kwon get three thermoses out of the overhead cabinet and set them down on the small metal counter, their magnetic bottoms holding them in place. There was only room for one person in the galley at a time, with nowhere to sit, making it hardly a galley at all. The only thing they could make in it was coffee. All of their nutrition came from MREs.
“I’ll have the coffee up in a minute, Cap,” Kwon said, noticing him there.
“I’m just making sure you pressed the button right,” Caleb replied, grin
“Hmph. I did my best.” Kwon looked drolly at Caleb. “I can’t believe Ish was hungry again.”
“I know. You’d better not get fat, Ish. I don’t want to carry any extra weight around.”
Fear is zero calorie.
Caleb paused, surprised by the statement. “Was that a feeble attempt at a joke?”
You are amused. I can feel it.
Still grinning, Caleb continued to the end of the corridor where the bulkhead curved as the corridor split in two. He took the starboard fork, stepping through the open hatch on his left.
The largest, most open space in the ship, the flight deck was just barely large enough for a raised command station in the rear, and a pilot station and a co-pilot station sitting side-by-side just behind the forward viewscreen. Ham occupied the pilot seat, hands hovering over touch surfaces located at the end of each padded armrest. A thin column rose from behind the seat, curving forward at the top and culminating in a crown-like extension that wrapped around his forehead. Additional extensions secured him in the seat, holding him down as if he were in the clutches of a praying mantis.
Built like a raging bull, with a thick beard, a shaved head, and an intimidating stare, he looked like he should have been a professional wrestler or an MMA fighter, not a starship pilot. And certainly not a pilot for Spirit, since its neural-controlled primary interface required a more delicate approach than a typical Centurion starhopper.
The ship itself was the latest and greatest out of R&D, barely a step beyond experimental. She was currently the only vessel in the fleet outfitted with a fold drive utilizing the Stacker Equation, an upgraded jump algorithm that was the only reason they had the range to venture this far out into space.
“Trappist-1,” Ham announced without turning his head. “Looks sweeeeet.” He whistled emphatically.
Caleb turned his attention from the pilot to the forward viewscreen, a semi-circular, high-resolution projection stitched together from a composite of the dozens of cameras on Spirit’s forward hull. A portion of the Trappist-1 system spread out before them. Still only the size of a baseball in the magnified surround, Trappist G was at least visible, unlike the other three planets within the system’s potential habitable zone.
“It is impressive,” Caleb agreed, taking the three steps up to the command station and dropping into the seat. Sensing his presence, the column behind him slid forward, the security ribs locking around his upper torso while the crown adjusted snugly to his head. Immediately, the area between his position and the forward viewscreen turned into a heads up display. What he saw there was injected into his brain’s interpretation by the ship’s computer.
I hate this.
“I know, Ish. Can't be helped.”
Ish had to mindshare with the system’s neural interface, and his senses didn’t react well to the electrical signals altering reality. There wasn’t any way around it. They had a job to do. Of course, that didn’t prevent the symbiote from voicing his displeasure.
You should have told them to install a normal control system.
“You know I don’t get to make those kinds of calls.”
I don’t know why you insist on being subservient. Together, we’re superior to any of them.
“Now you’re just being grumpy.”
Ishek fell silent as Caleb watched Trappist-G grow steadily bigger until it nearly filled up the viewscreen. Even though it was habitable, it was obvious the planet was anything but hospitable. A small, brown ball of mud with no evidence of an atmosphere. Pulling the sensor readout of the planet up onto his HUD confirmed his visual impression. Still, that didn’t necessarily mean the settlers on Pathfinder hadn’t established a foothold there. The generation ship was loaded with equipment to survive on a planet like Trappist-G. All they needed was a water supply, and Caleb couldn’t discount the possibility that there was plenty of it stored beneath the surface.
“Caffeine delivery,” Kwon announced, stepping onto the flight deck with the three thermoses cradled in his arms. “I can’t believe we’re this close to learning what happened to Pathfinder. Here you go, Captain.” He handed Caleb his coffee first.
“Thanks, Jii.” Caleb stuck it to the arm of his chair, where it held fast to a powerful magnetic grip.
“No problem. Ham?”
The big pilot reached out to take his thermos just as the neural interface sounded an alarm in Caleb’s mind, quickly joined by Ishek’s painful scream. Wincing at the instant, dizzying agony he shared with Ishek, Caleb barely made out the sudden appearance of a pair of dark, roughly almond shaped objects.
“Shit!” Anyone with less experience than Ham could have easily mistaken them for asteroids. Until they made an impossible, high velocity turn to vector straight toward them.
Ishek overcame the pain of the unexpected wail from Spirit’s sensors long enough to state the obvious in response to the unexpected appearance of the Relyeh attack ships.
I told you not to underestimate us.
CHAPTER 2
“Evasive maneuvers!” Caleb cried.
Not that he needed to tell Ham what to do. The milliseconds the pilot saved interacting mentally with the flight control systems was the only reason they survived the first pass of the Relyeh attack ships.
As it was, the sudden hard shift in their vector pulled the remaining two thermoses out of Kwon’s grip, sending them hurtling across the flight deck, one of them whipping past Caleb’s head with only a few inches to spare. The heavy Gs tried to pull Kwon that way too, and he strained in his magboots, face twisted in pain. Ham straightened Spirit out, but only for a moment, allowing the artificial gravity inside the ship to pull the thermoses down. They landed upright as designed, their magnetic bottoms gripping tightly to the deck.
“They’re cutting back toward us,” Ham announced, though his play-by-play was unnecessary. Caleb didn’t have a visual through the viewscreen surround, but he brought them up on his HUD, which showed the Relyeh ships making impossible course corrections to bring them back around onto Spirit’s tail.
“Damn, that was close,” Kwon said, throwing himself into his seat. The seat’s ribs wrapped around him, his neural interface moving into place.
‘I’m killing gravity.’ The interface immediately translated Caleb’s thought, passing it on to Ham and Kwon at the same time he shut off the artificial gravity. They didn’t need the extra pull while they made high-G maneuvers. “Ham, you’re on the helm. Kwon, you have the forward guns.”
“Of course, you get to take the rear guns,” Kwon said. “Since that’s where the baddies are.”
“Knuckle up, Vultures,” Caleb barked. He was fine with the playfulness and banter. Up to a point. And the arrival of the Relyeh attack ships had pushed them over that point.
“Yes, sir,” Kwon snapped back attentively.
Caleb dialed the opacity of his HUD to one hundred percent, switching the view in his eyes to the rear. Another thought told the targeting computer to dim the stars in the background and outline the Relyeh ships, which were otherwise nearly invisible against the black backdrop of space. Spirit’s systems could automate the firing solution if he wanted, but he already knew it would struggle against the Relyeh ships, which both the computer and his eyes identified as Shales. Since their movements defied accepted laws of physics, the Advanced Tactical Combat System AI tended toward confusion and would lock up completely. He didn’t think Ham would appreciate waiting thirty seconds for their offensive capabilities to return.
With another thought, Caleb armed the ship’s guns. Armor plating slid aside to allow the eight tucked-in turrets to expand. “Loading tacks,” he announced, referring to the thumbtack-sized, explosive rounds that were one of the ship’s two ammunition types. The thought accompanying the statement told the computer to close the linkage to the priming super-capacitor and open the belt feed.
‘Not the pew-pews?’ Kwon asked, surprised by his choice.
‘Haven’t you completed Shale training in the simulator?’ Caleb replied. With the entire conversation unspoken, entire sentences took milliseconds to cross between the crew, allowing them to communicate easily in the midst of the attack.
