The Antaran Codex by Renneberg Stephen

Author:Renneberg, Stephen [Renneberg, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780987434791
Google: AL7AoAEACAAJ
Goodreads: 22702157
Publisher: Stephen Peter Renneberg
Published: 2014-07-09T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four : Axon Way Station

Free Station

The Shroud Dark Nebula

Outer Lyra Region

Artificial Gravity

1,082 light years from Sol

18,000 inhabitants

It took three weeks to make the seventy-eight light year voyage to Axon Way Station, a sprawling ramshackle structure that had grown haphazardly over the centuries into one of the largest free floating habitats outside Core System space. It was gravitationally anchored to the edge of the Shroud, a vast dark nebula of dust and ionized gas which in a few million years would begin spawning new stars, turning the cold dark nebula into a glowing spectacle of light and color. The station had originally been a hydrogen refinery established by the Axon Corporation over three centuries ago. Being located halfway between Hades City and the Outer Cygnus colonies, it quickly became a favored rest stop for trade ships. Once the traders came, the merchants and smugglers followed.

Axon was a free station, a self governing commercial enterprise under corporate rather than political control. It was on friendly terms with the four Earth collective-governments, but was carefully independent of them all. That autonomy and its location fuelled the illicit trade which transformed Axon into the black market capital of the Outer Lyra region. There was a small UniPol outfit there providing a semblance of law and order to the more civilized inhabitants, while the local EIS cell operated in secret who, thanks to my purge and wipe, I had no way of contacting. The station’s location, freedom and thriving trade made it a natural choice for the Beneficial Society’s regional headquarters, which said volumes about how close the Society was to the black market. The next nearest Society HQ was months away, which was why I was betting Marie was headed to Axon.

The Outer Lyra run was always hazardous because the Shroud created natural bottlenecks marked by navpoint beacons where ships unbubbled to make course corrections. Ravens were known to lurk around the edges of these natural choke points, occasionally picking off easy prey and running the moment a navy frigate appeared. Everyone knew there was a Raven base inside the Shroud, although no one outside the Brotherhood knew where it was. Even inside the Brotherhood, it was a closely guarded secret, known only to a handful of senior navigators, all of whom would die fighting rather than be captured by the navy.

This time around, we had a clean run all the way to the second last navpoint, where we picked up a signature drifting at the extreme edge of sensor range.

“Can’t tell what it is,” Jase said. “No transponder, no energy emissions. I can’t even tell if it’s human.”

It was human. No one else used our navpoints. “Any emergency beacons?”

“Nothing. No active scanning either. If it’s alive, it’s just listening.”

It could have been anything from a derelict to a Raven ambush. I studied the signature warily, well aware of the tricks the Brotherhood used to lure well meaning fools to their deaths. There was no mayday signal and its reactor was stone cold, indicating it was a lifeless wreck.

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