Star Carrier (Lost Colonies Trilogy Book 3) by B. V. Larson

Author:B. V. Larson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Hard Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Space Exploration, Alien Invasion, Genetic engineering, Space Opera, Colonization, Science Fiction, Space Fleet, Galactic Empire, Military, Exploration, First Contact
Publisher: Iron Tower Press
Published: 2016-05-26T00:00:00+00:00

-33-

Instant death didn’t await us once we’d found the exit to the bridge. This left me mildly surprised. I’d calculated that if the Stroj had been engaged in a careful act of deceit, this would have been the perfect point to spring his deadly surprise.

What of the other jump points on the list? Were they window-dressing? Had they only been scrawled there to put us off our guard? Logically, it would be the first blue-jump, the first jump into the total unknown, that would be our undoing. The rest of the coordinates were only included to give us false hope.

But that wasn’t how it played out. The trip here hadn’t been easy, to be sure. This last bridge in particular didn’t want to give up its secrets. We’d searched for an unusually long time, but we’d eventually found the exit.

“Data is coming in now, Captain,” Yamada said. Her voice was professional, but she sounded stressed. She knew the stakes and the odds as well as I did—perhaps better.

“Display everything you have as soon as it’s confirmed,” I said.

“Coming on screen now.”

We could all see as a group that we were in a single-star system. Most stars were multiples in our galactic neighborhood. The star in question was a dwarf but a relatively bright one.

Staring at it with narrowed eyes, I stepped closer to the screens. One by one, the local litter of planets were being detected and displayed on the holo-maps.

“Captain…” Durris said, “we have a ninety-percent match-up already. Can you guess where we are?”

I nodded. “As a matter of fact, I thought I recognized it. A young star, with no gas giant to clean up the outer system debris… this is Beta Cygnus, if I don’t miss my guess.”

“Exactly,” Durris said. “Not the safest system in the galaxy, but not the worst, either.”

“I can’t believe that we’re back here again,” Yamada said. “Last time they were hostile… Should we transmit a welcoming message?”

Her question gave me pause. It would be a polite gesture, but there were several flaws with the idea. For one thing, when we’d been here before, several Beta warships—each of them a twin to Defiant—had chased us. One had caught up, and we’d been forced to battle her. We were fortunate to have survived that encounter.

That wasn’t the only reason I hesitated. The Betas might be no more. If the star carrier had come through this system, I doubted the Betas could have destroyed it. As before, they may have left variant forces behind. Calling out to the Betas might well alert this hypothetical enemy to our presence.

For several long moments, I didn’t issue any orders. I was considering my options.

The system made me think of Zye more sharply than I’d done since we’d left Earth weeks before. Here we were, visiting her home system again. The strange thing was that, even if she’d been with us, she’d have been no more welcome here today than she was back on Earth.

“What should we do, Captain?” Durris prompted me at last.

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