Battlecruiser Alamo~Cries in the Dark by Richard Tongue

Author:Richard Tongue [Tongue, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Publisher
Published: 2018-01-17T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

 “It is an ancient story,”Akana began. “A tale told by my people. Once, generations ago, a group of people arrived, calling themselves Nautili...”

 “Nautilus!” Lombardo said, before being silenced by a gesture from McCormack. Everyone at the table had picked up on the word. The ship whose trail Alamo had been following, the lost colony ship that had somehow managed to make it home from Andromeda, had been the Nautilus.

 “They were seeking a gateway, a portal to take them back to their homeland. Had been searching for many years. Finally, they claimed to have found it. They spent many months with us, taught us some of their technological secrets, including agricultural techniques, metallurgy. Sufficient that we advanced far faster than we had ever dared to hope. For a time, they even contemplated staying, but...”

 “The genetic problem,” Mortimer suggested. “That ship didn’t have enough people for genetic viability either, and if they didn’t have the ability to explore widely, they might never have known that there were other humans here, on the Sphere.”

 “Eventually, they found what they were looking for. Their vessel had been stored under the ground, and one night, they soared into the sky, up through the air, and disappeared as though they had never been.” Pulling out a well-worn piece of paper, he added, “The report of Colonel Carter, the commander of the ship. All of us carry copies of his final log entry, by his request. Any other visitors to the Sphere were to be provided with his data.”

 McCormack looked at Lombardo, and said, “Under the ground? That must mean outside. Which means there has to be a passage into the Sphere, a way of getting inside.” She paused, rested her hands on the table, and said, “Can the entrance actually be within the Sphere? Is that possible?”

 “Your guess is as good as mine, ma’am,” the engineer replied. “We don’t know very much about the basic physics involved. I can’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be up there somewhere.” He paused, then added, “In fact, that would explain a lot. The Hegemony must have been looking for that gateway for decades, and they might have an idea that it’s in here somewhere.”

 “Strategically, it makes sense,” Clarke said. At McCormack’s frown, he continued, “Think about it. Any ship can launch from within the Sphere and travel to our galaxy. Or to several other places, perhaps. There doesn’t seem to be any reason to believe there’s only one entrance. That keeps in-system traffic to a minimum, which is precisely what they would want.”

 Nodding, Lombardo added, “The close hendecaspace points are very close to the side of the Sphere, and that has to be by design. If you knew exactly where you were going, you could be inside in a matter of minutes. And as for the exit, you certainly wouldn’t want that in here. It’d be a license for any attacker to destroy the place easily. Try a few hundred asteroids thrown through at a fraction of light-speed?

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