Exodus: A Military Archaeological Space Adventure (The Zenophobia Saga Book 4) by Craig Martelle & Brad R. Torgersen

Author:Craig Martelle & Brad R. Torgersen [Martelle, Craig]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Craig Martelle Inc
Published: 2022-10-30T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Sankar? Sankar? Wake up!” Ausha’s voice said loudly in Sankar’s ear.

He quickly sat up in his spacer’s bunk.

Repeated trips across the gravitational swells—going horrendously deep into the singularity, for the several long black hole transits which had been made—had taken both a mental and a physical toll on all four of the Starveyor’s crew. Following the last and final transit, they’d all practically collapsed into their separate bunks, seeking the solace of sleep after what felt like a literal battering for mind and body alike.

“How long was I out?” Sankar asked.

“About a full day, give or take,” she said.

Sankar’s bladder quickly confirmed Ausha’s analysis.

He rolled from the bunk and hurriedly pushed his way into the cabin’s single, tiny latrine, and relieved himself, while talking to Ausha through the door.

“Any problems?” he asked.

“Ship seems in good shape,” she said.

“What about the Four-Claw?”

“Doesn’t seem like those several deep-dives on the singularity did the Four-Claw any damage, either,” she said. “And the Starveyor’s telescopes are working fine. It took hours for the computer to figure out where we came out this time. And it’s amazing just how far we are from Hinteran space.”

Sankar thought about it, as he stared at the closed door, his arms folded over his knees. Nobody in Hinteran space had ever gone this far from civilization and returned. Nobody! And especially not angling so hard out of the galactic plane. Star density this far off the plane was a lot thinner than normal, and there was little out here except the occasional globular star cluster.

Sankar realized he must have been thinking out loud, because Ausha said, “If it’s globular clusters you want, it’s globular clusters you’ll get. We’re smack in the middle of one, and about five days away from a particular star with few close stellar neighbors. I would have waited to wake you until we were decelerating, but the readings Starveyor is getting off this star are strange. I think we need four minds working on this instead of just one.”

“Good thinking,” Sankar said. “We’ll need all of us at one hundred percent. Who knows what we’ll find when we get there. How close are we to the coordinates General Chayken provided?”

“Pretty close. About as close as could be hoped, considering how we daisy-chained our way across so much space so quickly. And the Starveyor’s transit engine performed admirably. Both it and the shields are still reading green, despite the stress they’ve been put through. I’d say Commodore Qlovys’s people did their work well.”

“Any images yet?” Sankar asked.

“Not much,” She said. “There is a lot of dust in this cluster, and I can’t get good imagery when we’re still this far away. In a few more days we should be able to get a better look. But what I can see, looks pretty different from what I’d expect.

“What do you mean?” Sankar asked. “Any signs of civilization?”

“I picked up a few signals that might have been intelligent in origin, but they were too garbled to mean anything to me.

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