Shadow Agents The Benevolency Universe by David Alastair Hayden

Author:David Alastair Hayden [Hayden, David Alastair]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Typing Cat Press
Published: 2018-01-04T07:00:00+00:00

25

Karson Bishop

Karson woke, buzzing with nervous energy. He dressed clumsily inside his tiny sleeping cubicle then climbed out to look for Kyralla and Oona. He hurried onto the bridge, and then the galley. But they were both empty. Suppressing the bubbles of panic welling up in his chest, he rushed around the rest of the ship searching for them. Empty. Finally, he asked Bartimaeus, his 6G chippy, where the girls were.

“Sir, Oona and Kyralla are both still asleep.”

Of course. Where else would they be? It’s not like they would step out into space or get captured without him noticing the ship being boarded.

“Thank you, Barty.” Karson sank into a seat in the galley and took several deep breaths, trying to get his pulse back to normal. It was silly to let his fear get a hold of him like that. His worry for Mitsuki and Siv was just making him jumpy. “Have you finished installing the update Silky gave you?”

“I have installed as much of the update as my limited 6G capabilities will allow, sir. It will take quite a while to integrate all the new functions.”

“Keep at it, Barty.”

“Yes, sir.”

Seneca heated and seasoned one of the ration packs for him. He ate it and sipped at the bitter tea that was, unfortunately, the best drink they had onboard. Meanwhile, he carefully read over all of the new information on cryogenic storage Bartimaeus had gathered for him.

“One thing’s for certain, Barty. For it to last ten millennia, the technology preserving the priestess has to be far beyond anything we have.”

Siv was lucky he'd made it a hundred years without any complications. According to all the test results published online, commercially available cryo-storage units usually failed within fifty years.

He went over the scans Siv had done of the capsule using the ScanField-3 sensor array. The Ancient stasis pod was utterly different from the ones humans used. It wasn’t cryo-sleep for starters, and the power source was unusual. A small box, not unlike a power pack, mounted underneath the control panel provided power to the entire capsule. The box emitted flux energy in keeping with residuals he’d expect to see from a discharging power pack or a stardrive.

"Barty, I think she's being preserved by a hyperphasic generator of some sort. Look at the energy signatures coming directly from the power cube. Remind you of anything?"

“Very similar to a stardrive’s signature, sir.”

Karson nodded. “I think the Ancients’ version of cryo-sleep involved displacing the occupant into an alternate dimension where time flows differently. Sort of like dull space, only in regards to time instead of space.”

“I suppose, sir, that it is theoretically possible such a place could exist.”

“The device that projects the “bubble” keeping her in this alternate dimension must be malfunctioning so that she’s…leaking…into realspace.”

“If your theory is correct, sir, that would make sense.”

“The priestess told Oona her condition began to deteriorate once she returned to real space after thousands of years in hyperspace. So if there’s a containment leak, perhaps there’s a conflict of energies between real space and this slow space.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.