Derelict: Destruction (Derelict Saga Book 3) by Paul E. Cooley

Author:Paul E. Cooley [Cooley, Paul E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severed Press
Published: 2018-04-29T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Forty-One

Dunn had sat riveted before the holo display as the SV-52 approached Mira’s aft section. Although he hadn’t been exerting himself, hadn’t been in the pilot seat of the relatively tiny craft, his heart rate had steadily risen. He did feel fear, and it wasn’t the terror a commander sometimes experienced upon sending their marines into danger. No. This was personal. This fear rattled his bones and struck pangs of ice through his skull. This fear was that of the unknown, of the alien, of reality slowly coming apart.

As the cam feed had given way to that of the nanoprobe, his mind completely cleared of all thought. He’d allowed himself to float into the terrifying images of the pulsating lights, Mira’s shattered superstructure, and the slithering shadows. Taulbee’s and Copenhaver’s comms chatter faded into a distant whisper of meaningless noise as he experienced every image from the nanoprobe as though he were riding it into the alien maelstrom.

He’d been aware that Taulbee was moving the SV-52 out of harm’s way, but it didn’t pull his consciousness away from the rolling movie in his mind. The nanoprobe had continued forward, its small, powerful cone of light stabbing through the shadows, illuminating impossibly black limbs waving in the vacuum. But the light began to fade, visibility decreasing as something he couldn’t see swallowed it. No, he couldn’t see it, but it was something he thought he could nearly feel. A presence. Or something humans didn’t even have a word for.

When the light completely disappeared and the cam feed became nothing more than a pane of absolute darkness, something hitched inside his mind and brought him back to the present. He was still sitting in the command chair, his hands gripping the armrests so tightly that his fingers throbbed. A moment later, the world was brighter than he’d dreamed possible.

For just an instant, a quanta of second, the darkness transformed into a flash so bright that he thought he’d been dropped into Sol. His body prickled with something like goose flesh, but there was no cold, no sensation of ice being poured down his back. Instead, it was like sitting next to a fusion engine blasting an inferno of hot plasma into a tightly enclosed space.

And then the feed was nothing more than static with an alert flashing across his HUD: “Signal Terminated.”

After a moment, he realized he was shaking with excitement, heart pounding hard enough in his chest to make him shudder. Oakes’ voice pulled him from the fugue.

“Void wept. What the hell was that?” Dunn pushed away from his block connection and re-engaged with reality. Oakes had turned in his chair to face him. “Sir?”

Dunn took a deep breath and commanded, no, demanded, his heart slow its rapid beat. When he felt he could speak without sounding like an asthmatic, he cleared his throat and exhaled. “I don’t know. Black?”

The AI was silent for a moment. “My sensors have detected another massive photon burst. After the last such pulse, I adjusted the instruments to filter out known EMR types and look for anomalous readings.

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