Endeavour

(Ark Royal, Book XVIII)

Christopher G. Nuttall

Book One: Ark Royal
Book Two: The Nelson Touch
Book Three: The Trafalgar Gambit
Book Four: Warspite
Book Five: A Savage War of Peace
Book Six: A Small Colonial War
Book Seven: Vanguard
Book Eight: Fear God And Dread Naught
Book Nine: We Lead
Book Ten: The Longest Day
Book Eleven: The Cruel Stars
Book Twelve: Invincible
Book Thirteen: Para Bellum
Book Fourteen: The Right of the Line
Book Fifteen: The Lion and the Unicorn
Book Sixteen: Fighting For The Crown
Book Seventeen: Drake’s Drum
Book Eighteen: Endeavour

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Cover by Justin Adams

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All Comments Welcome!

Author’s Note

Endeavour is set roughly a year after Drake’s Drum, and draws on characters established in that cycle – The Lion and the Unicorn, Fighting for the Crown and Drake’s Drum – but it is intended to be as stand-alone as possible.

As always, I welcome reviews (hint, hint).  I’ve also been broadening my social media presence – please check the list at the rear of the book, then follow me if you are so inclined.

CGN.
Cover Blurb

For generations, the human race has feared an encounter with an alien race so advanced their technology might as well be magic.  And yet, no such alien race has been encountered ...

... Until now.

During the Virus War, human explorers discovered proof of alien technology that was beyond human understanding, technology so strange it was impossible even to guess at its function.  Now, in the aftermath of the war, HMS Endeavour embarks on a mission to the core of the alien civilisation ...

... And discovers a mystery older than the human race itself. 

Prologue: The Sphere, Virus Prime

Racism, Doctor Athena Gaurs told herself, is a mental illness.

It didn’t help.  Her heart began to race as she drifted through the Sphere.  She had spent most of her professional life working with aliens, studying their cultures and technologies in the hopes of promoting interspecies cooperation and harmony, yet the Sphere was just too alien for her mind to process.  It was so huge, built on such a great scale, that she felt like a fly crawling across a cathedral window, something so far beyond the poor creature it couldn’t even begin to comprehend what it was crawling on.  The other alien races humanity had encountered, in nearly a hundred years of contact and conflict, had all been understandable.  Whoever had built the Sphere was not.

She tried to calm herself as she glided onwards.  The Sphere was inert, powerless, and yet it wasn’t.  The xenospecialists had noted and logged everything from strange lights, with no discernible source, to faint flickers of energy and gravitational pulses that came and went so quickly that even the most sensitive equipment in the known galaxy was barely capable of detecting their presence before they were gone.  Athena had read the reports, when she’d been assigned to the project, and she’d had trouble understanding why so many of the exploration team had managed to get lost in the structure.  She knew now.  The interior seemed purposely designed to be confusing.  There were even hints it restructured itself when humans weren’t looking.

And some of us are sure we’re being watched, she thought, grimly.  What if we are?

The thought taunted her.  It had been nearly a year since HMS Lion had stumbled across the Sphere, during the final days of the Virus War.  Since then, a covert project had been mounted to explore the alien artefact and unlock its secrets, a project that – so far – had produced precisely nothing.  Athena had read the reports from the first teams, brimming with excitement and enthusiasm until they’d started their work.  They’d drawn a series of complete blanks.  They didn’t know what material had been used to produce the alien artefact, let alone what it was intended to do.  They didn’t even know why it had remained undetected in the system for so long.  There were even people who wondered if the Sphere hadn’t been detected because it simply hadn’t been there.

A shiver ran down her spine as she drifted into the next chamber.  It was hard, sometimes, to avoid the sensation she was being watched.  They hadn’t found anything to suggest they were, but that was meaningless.  Whoever had built the Sphere was so far ahead of humanity that their surveillance tech, assuming they even relied upon something as primitive as tech, might be completely undetectable.  The human race could produce bugs so small they couldn’t be located without the proper equipment.  Who knew what the Builders could produce?

She frowned, turning slowly to take in the entire chamber.  It was a bare sphere, within the Sphere, the bulkheads utterly unmarred by even the slightest hint of writing.  The bronze material had defied everything humanity had thrown at it, from pens designed to leave marks on everything to laser cutters capable of slicing through a battleship’s hull.  It was maddening to think of all the secrets waiting for discovery and exploitation, if only they could figure out how to unlock them.  And yet, they’d found nothing.  There was a small but growing consensus amongst some of the scientists that there was nothing to find.

This installation was clearly not abandoned in a hurry, she reminded herself, grimly.  They had all the time they needed to strip it bare, taking everything save for the shell itself.

It was possible, she’d been assured.  The Sphere might be nothing more than a hollowed-out asteroid, as far as the Builders were concerned.  They might have abandoned it, secure in the knowledge they’d taken everything that could be used to unlock their technology or leave a trail of breadcrumbs to their homeworld.  Athena would have believed it herself – she knew how carefully warship datacores were swept for sensitive information, then rigged for destruction if there was even the slightest chance the warship would fall into enemy hands – if she hadn’t seen so many oddities surrounding the alien structure.  It just didn’t feel dead and cold, abandoned like so many mined-out asteroids.  It felt as if it was watching and waiting as the team probed its innards.

Perhaps it’s an intelligence test, she thought, as she proceeded into the next chamber.  And we’re failing.

Athena keyed her sensors, taking a reading and comparing it to what she saw.  The results made no sense.  They never did.  Some suggested the Sphere was bigger on the inside, some suggested it was imploding … she gritted her teeth and looked at the nearest bulkhead.  Her sensors insisted the walls were closing in.  Her naked eyes told her the bulkheads weren’t moving.  Athena sighed, inwardly.  There was no way to know if the Sphere was spoofing their sensors deliberately or if the structure was just too alien for the sensors to handle.  Athena wasn’t sure, sometimes, if she could handle it.  The Sphere was just too big.

We’ve seen larger structures, she reminded herself.  But none of them were quite so solid.

She shook her head slowly as she made her way onwards, feeling oddly isolated even though the rest of the team was only a radio call away.  They’d been told, at first, never to be alone on the alien structure, but they’d rapidly discovered that the more interesting events only took place when there were only one or two witnesses.  It didn’t help when they reported their findings back to Earth.  Athena had a feeling, reading between the lines, that there were factions on the homeworld that thought the researchers were seeing things.  There was no shortage of tales of weird sightings in the depths of space, of alien starships and entities that were – somehow – never captured by starship sensors.  It was generally believed most of the stories were made up, and yet …

Her radio crackled, once.  Athena keyed her wristcom, a shiver running down her spine.  She’d been told to remain in touch and, if there was a hint she was losing contact with the rest of the team, to back out at once.  The Sphere just wasn’t safe.  She thought she saw something at the corner of her eye, a flicker that was gone when she looked.  Her radio crackled again.  There was no reply.  She swore under her breath as she made her way back to her hatch.  Perhaps it was nothing, just a random burst of energy within the alien structure.  Perhaps it was not …

Light flared, behind her.  Athena spun around.  The chamber had come to life, glowing energy flaring through the air.  A wave of panic shot through her.  She was alone and defenceless and utterly unaware of what was happening … she found it hard to believe, deep inside, that a super-advanced race would deliberately seek to harm her, but it was hard to be sure.  How many insects were trodden on by humans, without any malicious intent?  The light grew brighter.  She hoped – prayed – that her recorders were still working.  They were meant to record everything and yet, ever since they’d started exploring the Sphere, there’d been odd gaps.  It was suddenly very easy to believe the Sphere was toying with them.

The glow sharpened, the lights becoming something oddly familiar and yet alien … it took her several seconds to realise she was looking at a holographic starchart.  Humanity’s holographic projects always had a faint sense of insubstantiality, a reminder they really were nothing more than illusions.  The alien projections were so sharp, so perfect, it was hard to believe they weren’t real.  She reached forward, despite her training, and felt resistance as her fingers brushed against a holographic star.  Solid-light projections?  They’d always been theoretically possible, but no one had made them work.  Not until now.

And then the hologram snapped out of existence.

Athena felt a sense of overwhelming loss as darkness crashed down on her.  The starchart was gone, as if it had never been … her radio crackled, her team trying to contact her.  She barely heard them, tears prickling in her eyes as she tried to come to terms with what she’d seen.  Her CO was demanding she report immediately, that she make her way back to the starship, but she couldn’t bring herself to reply.  Would they believe her?  Athena hadn’t believed some of the stories she’d heard, from the first teams to explore the alien structure.  It would be ironic, indeed, if her team refused to believe her.

“I … I think I found something,” she said, checking the wristcom.  The sensors insisted they’d recorded everything.  She hoped, desperately, that they were correct.  “I’m on my way.”

Her heart started to pound, again, as she recalled what she’d seen.  The sensors might not have recorded anything – there was no way to know, not until she got back to the ship – but she had.  There were ways to get memories out of someone, even memories that they didn’t consciously recall.  She could be hypnotised and urged to draw out the starchart and then …

If that was a starchart, it might have shown me their homeworld, she told herself.  We can find them.  And then, we can learn so much …

Prologue II: London, United Kingdom

“They used to say my ancestors couldn’t see the white man’s ships on the horizon, so alien they were to their experience,” Admiral Lady Susan Onarina said.  “I think I understand how they felt.”

The First Space Lord studied the report from the Sphere.  Training and experience demanded she rebuke the xenospecialists for a decidedly careless approach to exploring the alien structure, although – going by the reports – it was clear they’d had little choice.  The weirder manifestations never showed themselves to more than two humans and there was only one witness to the alien starchart.  Susan didn’t like the implications.  The Sphere was clearly neither dead nor understood.  It might be playing with the human explorers, it might just be letting off random bursts of energy, or it might be something in-between.  

It was just too alien for anyone to be sure.  Of anything.

“I always had the impression such stories were exaggerated,” Admiral Paul Mason said, as he sipped his tea.  Her old friend, and occasional lover, had been running the top-secret research program into the enigmatic aliens since the first traces of their existence had been discovered, back during the war.  “They might not have been capable of building ocean-going ships, but they certainly understood the concept.”

Susan nodded, although she wasn’t so sure.  Humanity had encountered two alien races – three, if one counted the Virus – that possessed more advanced technology, but it hadn’t been that advanced.  The tech had been understandable.  Human scientists had been able to reverse-engineer captured alien technology or, knowing something was possible, simply figure out how it was done and produce their own version.  It had never been easy – and she knew there’d been admirals who’d expected the scientists to simply wave a magic wand and put the new tech into production instantly – but it had been done.  Here, though … the scientists didn’t even know where to begin.  The tech was just too different.

The RAF of the Second World War might not have been able to duplicate a jet fighter of the Troubles, she reflected.  But at least they’d understand the concept of a flying machine.  Here …

She shook her head, slowly.  The Sphere didn’t have any technology, at least as far as the explorers could determine.  It was just an empty shell.  And yet, it was clearly doing something.  Susan had read the reports, each one little more than empty speculation that read like something out of a science-fantasy novel.  The tech was welded into the bulkheads.  The tech existed in some weird alternate dimension.  There was no tech.  Instead, there was an alien ghost playing games with humans unable to so much as detect, let alone deduce, its presence.  They just didn’t know.

“The starchart does match the local stellar environment,” Mason said, quietly.  “And, if the tramlines are as laid out on the map, we can get a ship to the alien homeworld.”

“If it is their homeworld,” Susan said.  “And if they’re not trying to lure us there …”

The thought chilled her .  She was a student of history.  She knew what happened when a primitive race met a more advanced one, even when there was no malice involved.  The primitive race found it hard, almost impossible, to take the shock.  How many human societies had collapsed, falling to pieces in the wake of contact?  The Vesy really hadn’t had an easy time of it, after they’d encountered humanity.  The gulf between the two races was just too wide for them to catch up, at least quickly enough to matter.  Susan had read those reports too.  There was a very real chance the Vesy would lose what remained of their own culture, becoming little more than copies of humanity.  And the hell of it was that copying humanity might be their only chance to survive.

Whoever built the Sphere might not mean to harm us, she thought.  But contact with them might be destructive, all the same.

She sipped her tea, organising her thoughts.  Humans had been spacefaring for nearly two hundred years when it had discovered, to its dismay, that it wasn’t alone in the universe.  The concept of aliens had been far from unknown.  Indeed, it had preceded the first true offworld settlements.  And while there had been a gulf between humans and Tadpoles, the gulf hadn’t been insurmountable.  There had been some culture shock – Susan could hardly deny it, given the number of humans trying to model themselves on the Tadpoles – but not as much as the politicians had feared.  The Tadpoles had not been vastly superior.  But whoever had built the Sphere was different.

Mason cleared his throat.  “What are you going to advise the PM?”

Susan said nothing for a long moment.  She was mildly surprised the government hadn’t asked her to step down, or resign, after the murky end of the war.  She’d already been in office longer than she’d expected.  The government just had too many other problems to worry about her … she wondered, idly, if that was about to change.  What would she advise the PM?  There were risks, very real risks, in trying to make contact and yet, failing to make contact would have other risks.  It was just a matter of time before someone else sent a ship to the alien homeworld themselves.

If it is their homeworld, she thought, numbly.  What happened to them?

It was a worrying thought.  The days when humanity had all of its eggs in one basket were long gone.  Earth had been shipping out millions of colonists yearly, before the war, and the colonisation program was starting to pick up steam again.  A race that had been in space for far longer should have filled up the entire galaxy by now, leaving no room for humanity and its peers.  Where were they?  The researchers speculated they’d drawn back, leaving room for the younger races, but Susan was too cynical to believe it.  She knew from experience that principles often went by the wayside when they demanded sacrifice of any sort.  Maybe they’d run into something even a super-powerful civilization couldn’t handle.

“We need to know what happened to them,” she said.  “And we have to get a handle on their technology before we encounter someone far more advanced than ourselves.”

“And promote British interests,” Mason added, dryly.

“That goes without saying,” Susan said, although she had her doubts.  She knew how Britain would react if one of the other Great Powers suddenly gained access to super-technology and she was entirely sure they’d react the same way.  “I’ll discuss it with the PM, but the final call is a political one.”

She rubbed her forehead.  The war was over and yet … it wasn’t.  Not quite.  The virus’s power had been broken and yet, it was still out there.  It might never be eradicated completely, no matter what they did.  And humanity was too tired and divided to continue the fight.  She had no idea if the plans for a united government would ever be put into practice or not – they were far from popular, now the war in space was over – but it might not be enough to save the day.  Humanity needed to rest, not to find new challenges.

Mitch – Captain Campbell – would have been ideal for the mission, she thought.  It would have gotten him away from Earth for months, if not years, allowing the post-war political chaos to settle without destroying his career.  Her protégé had made a fool of himself – he’d said as much in his final message – and yet, he was still a good man.  If he’d survived ...

She put the thought aside.  She had no time to indulge in wishful thinking.  The future of the entire human race, and Britain’s place in the stars, might be at risk.  She needed to act fast.

We have no choice, she thought, tapping her console.  Her aide would set up the meeting with the PM, as soon as possible.  If we don’t go look to see what’s there, who will?

Chapter One: London, United Kingdom

Commander Staci Templeton awoke, drenched in sweat.

For a moment, she was unsure of where she was.  The nightmare had been intense, a bitter reminder of HMS Unicorn’s final moments before she’d rammed the alien brainship, blowing both starships into atoms and giving HMS Lion a chance to escape before it was too late.  It had been a hard battle, and a costly one, but they’d won.  Or had they?  Her nightmare had been so intense, so real, that she honestly wasn’t sure what was real.  She’d seen the virus infecting the ship, the crew turning into monsters before her eyes …

She rubbed her forehead as she sat up.  She’d declined the offer of a bed in the admiralty barracks, or a room at one of London’s many clubs, and chosen a simple bedsit on the outskirts of the city, simply because she wanted to be alone.  Her peers didn’t know what to make of her.  She’d been ordered to abandon ship, to abandon her commanding officer, and yet they judged her for leaving him behind.  One did not abandon one’s comrades, they said, even if one was ordered to do so.  Staci knew she’d feel the same way, if she was in their shoes, although she knew it wouldn’t make a difference.  Captain Mitch Campbell, Staci’s friend and mentor, had gone down with his ship.  All she could have done, if she’d stayed, was add one more name to the final casualty list.

And he told me to go, she thought.  She felt guilty, even though she had obeyed her commander’s orders.  She’d had commanders she hadn’t really respected, men and women who had never inspired loyalty, but Captain Campbell had been a good man, even if he had been fucking a married woman.  I had to do as I was ordered.

The thought hurt as she stared around the cramped room.  She’d spent the last nine months, after her return to Earth, standing in front of a Board of Inquiry and answering their questions … the same questions, time and time again.  It felt like torture, even though she understood the logic.  It was supposed to be hard to maintain a consistent lie if one was constantly asked the same questions, slightly differently phrased every time.  She suspected that wasn’t the real reason.  If the Board had thought she was lying, they had the right – and the duty – to pump her full of truth drugs and ask her questions while the tech monitored her brainwaves to make sure the drugs were working.  No, she was sure they were drawing the inquiry out as long as possible, simply because of the political implications.  Staci snorted at the thought as she clambered out of bed, feeling old despite her relative youth.  If Captain Campbell had kept it in his pants, perhaps his death and his ship’s destruction would have passed unremarked.  Perhaps …

He told you to remain in the navy and, when you reached command, stay there as long as possible, she reminded herself.  Her former CO’s last message had been both affectionate and stern, telling her to put her own career first.  And never ever give up.

She staggered into the tiny washroom and glared at herself in the mirror.  The face looking back at her didn’t feel like hers.  Blonde hair, blue eyes, a trim yet muscular body … she’d put on a little weight, she noted sourly, because she hadn’t kept herself in shape.  She’d allowed her hair to grow out, when it had dawned on her she wasn’t going to be reassigned to a new ship in a hurry … she ran her hand through her chin-length curls, wondering if it was worth getting it cropped short again.  The navy didn’t encourage long hairstyles.  They got in the way when one had to throw on a spacesuit in a tearing hurry.

Her nightmare flickered at the back of her mind as she stepped into the shower, washed hurriedly and then clambered out before the water could shut off.  London was still in lockdown, the water – and everything else – rationed to ensure everyone had enough to eat, drink, and wash.  It didn’t bother her that much – the navy rationed water even though there was no shortage of ice asteroids that could be mined – but she’d read endless complaints on the datanet.  The civvies believed the war was over.  Staci wished they were right.  Sure, the virus’s space fleet had been destroyed, but there were still hundreds of infections right across the Human Sphere and beyond.  

They just want it to end, Staci told herself.  And who can blame them?

She flicked the wall-mounted screen on as she returned to the bedroom and started to dress.  The BBC was as bland and boring as ever, talking heads pontificating about politics and the endless debate in the House of Commons over who – if anyone – should succeed Prime Minister Harrison and lead Great Britain into the post-war world.  Staci rolled her eyes as they brought on a series of academics, none of whom had any experience of the real world nor any awareness of just how unworkable their suggestions actually were.  One might as well wave a magic wand, chant some bastardised Latin, and expect it to work.  She dismissed the thought as she finished dressing, then forced herself to watch a mindless show about navy life, silently listing the many inaccuracies in the show.  She’d reached fifty-seven when her wristcom bleeped, informing her she had an appointment with the First Space Lord in two hours.  She sighed as she stood, keying her wristcom to call a taxi.  The Board of Inquiry had probably reached its decision.

And that could be either good or bad, she thought.  She’d had the feeling the verdict was already done and dusted, before the inquiry had started, but that hadn’t stopped the assembled officers from giving her a very hard time.  Bastards.  They’d had plenty of time to review the records well before she’d returned to Earth.  They had no real cause to give her a dishonourable discharge, or even a black mark in her file.  If the Admiral herself is speaking to me …

She put the thought out of her mind as she checked she had her wristcom and pistol, then made her way downstairs.  The bedsit appeared empty, no one manning the desk in the tiny lobby.  She knew it was an illusion.  The people who rented such rooms – often for little more than an hour or two – wanted privacy, without any real social interaction.  Everything was electronic.  There was no such thing as room service and she wouldn’t have trusted it if there had.  The rooms were so unclean she dreaded to think what might come out of their kitchens.  The only upside was that reporters couldn’t track her down.

The taxi was waiting.  She climbed inside and forced herself to relax during the drive into London, passing through a handful of military and police checkpoints before finally reaching Whitehall.  There were fewer with every passing month, she noted, although it hadn’t stopped the civvies complaining.  Staci understood their point.  She was used to passing through endless checkpoints, when making her way from one posting to another, but it was irritating to have to show her papers time and time again.  And yet, there was no choice.  A single zombie could cause no end of havoc, if he got into Central London without being detected.  Staci had seen the statistics.  Better to endure some minor inconvenience than get infected and killed.

Perhaps on the streets, perhaps in a hospital bed, she thought, coldly.  There were ways to purge the virus from a host’s body, but they were sometimes fatal.  The civilians don’t understand how hard it is, even with modern medicine, to cure the infection.

She put the thought out of her mind as the taxi stopped outside the Admiralty Building to let her disembark.  A uniformed aide saluted, then led her down a series of corridors – and two more checkpoints – into an antechamber.  Staci had expected to be told to wait, to cool her heels to show her who was really in charge, but instead she was shown straight into the admiral’s office.  She stood to attention and saluted.  Admiral Lady Susan Onarina was one of the few flag officers who’d enjoyed Captain Campbell’s unstinting respect.  Her record spoke for itself.

“Commander,” Lady Susan said.  “Thank you for coming.  Tea?  Coffee?”

Staci relaxed, slightly.  The offer of a drink was a clear sign she wasn’t in trouble, although she wasn’t out of the woods yet.  The admirals would be looking for someone to blame for Unicorn’s destruction; and her commanding officer was dead, his body nothing more than atoms orbiting an alien star.  Staci doubted they could make her a scapegoat, but they could make life very hard if they’d decided she’d been technically in command of the frigate during its final moments.  She knew officers who’d landed in hot water because they’d been technically in command, but never been aware they were the senior survivor until it was too late.

The aide brought her a cup of tea, then withdrew silently.  Staci studied the admiral thoughtfully, waiting for her to speak.  Lady Susan was a dark-skinned woman, her hair slowly shading to grey.  Staci felt a twinge of sympathy.  Lady Susan had been a starship commander, but now she was flying a desk in London, the uniformed head of the Royal Navy who was permanently accountable to politicians who knew little about how the navy really worked.  It couldn’t be an easy position, no matter the honours regularly poured upon the incumbent.  Staci wanted to climb the ladder, but perhaps not that high.

“The Board of Inquiry has finished its deliberations,” Lady Susan informed her.  “They have ruled that you are personally blameless in the loss of HMS Unicorn and, in fact, following the orders you were given by your CO was the right course of action.  The tactical analysts will be debating the precise course of the final battle for many years to come, I fear, but their conclusions will not affect you personally.  Captain Campbell’s final report on you, filed before he departed on his final mission, included a recommendation for you to be promoted to captain as soon as possible and given your own ship.  I have chosen to accept his recommendation.”

Staci’s breath caught in her throat.  She’d known she was blameless, but … her career might have suffered, just for spending so much of the last couple of years as Captain Campbell’s XO.  The man had had powerful enemies.  It would have been easy for one of them to insist his recommendations were worthless, that Staci might even have picked up bad habits from her former CO.  Who knew?  Some senior officers, no longer in touch with the realities of naval life, became political creatures, fighting bitter bureaucratic wars rather than concentrating on what was really important.  And they might have casually destroyed her career in passing.

The admiral smiled.  “You are being given HMS Endeavour,” she added.  “And we have a very specific mission for you.”

Staci blinked.  Endeavour?  A deep-space survey ship, if she remembered correctly.  Her class had never been particularly popular, not when they were intended to serve as both military and civilian vessels.  The Royal Navy had done its best to keep survey ships and crews isolated from the rest of the fleet, although – with an increasing need to find newer tramlines –prospective admirals often served a term on a survey ship before they were promoted.  And she was being given a survey ship?  She wasn’t sure if it was a sign the admirals thought she’d join them one day or a cunning plan to get her out of their hair.  Before the war, it had been common for survey ships to spend years away from home.

“I … thank you,” she managed.  A survey ship … it would be something different.  And yet, she was sure there were more qualified officers.  She’d spent most of her career on frigates and gunboats, not capital ships.  “What do you want me to do?”

Lady Susan smiled again, perhaps recognising the unspoken question.  “Tell me … did you hear anything about the alien artefact discovered at Virus Prime?”

“Yes, Admiral.”  Staci had no trouble recalling the details.  “I was told it would be studied properly after the war.”

“Quite.”  Lady Susan leaned forward, slightly.  “Unfortunately, too many people on both Lion and Unicorn were aware of the artefact’s discovery.  They certainly heard rumours, rumours that – as always – grew increasingly wild as they moved from mouth to mouth.  We were careful, in line with protocols devised after the first hint there was an ancient and very powerful race out there, to try to limit word spreading from place to place, but we may have been unsuccessful.  We don’t know how many unfriendly powers may have heard the stories.”

Staci frowned.  “If the stories are that wild, Admiral, surely they won’t be believed.”

“We hope not, yet we don’t know,” Lady Susan said.  “You can read the reports later – I’ve had you cleared for them – but right now, all you need to know is that an alien starchart was discovered within the artefact under odd and slightly unclear circumstances.  If it is accurate, we may know where to find the alien homeworld.  Your mission is to travel to the alien homeworld and, if possible, attempt to make contact.  Your orders are a little vague, I’m afraid, because we don’t know what you’ll find.  You’ll have considerable freedom to proceed as you see fit.”

Because I’ll be travelling well outside the flicker network, Staci thought.  I’ll have a truly independent command.

She schooled her face into impassivity.  It was hard not to feel a twinge of excitement, mingled with unease and fear.  She knew the basic parameters of interstellar combat, as laid down by the known spacefaring races.  There were few true surprises.  But unknown tech, from an unknown race … who knew what it could do?  Who knew what certainties would vanish, as if they’d never been, in the face of technology she didn’t have the slightest idea was even possible?  Her imagination provided quite a few possible answers.  Who knew what was so far beyond her imagination that it would blindside her completely, if it was deployed against her?

“We don’t know much of anything about the Builders,” Lady Susan said.  “We know they were watching the virus, Captain, and we know they had some means of keeping it in check, preventing it from trying to overwhelm their installations.  We know they left a large artefact behind, something we cannot even begin to understand.  Beyond that, all we really have is speculation.  Did they create the virus?  Did they let it go or … or did it break free of their control?  Or … or what?  We don’t know.  We dare not assume their motives are friendly.”

“If they are unfriendly,” Staci pointed out, “we may be … screwed.”

“They may do us a great deal of harm, just by existing,” Lady Susan said.  “Our existence did the Vesy no favours, when they finally realised just how advanced we were.  There have been hundreds of complications, from them trying to discard their old ways and embracing ours to demands for newer and better weapons, medical technology and everything else we can offer them.  In a sense, their society may have hit a brick wall and stopped dead, the moment the Russians landed on their world.  They are steadily losing the ability to innovate for themselves – and why should they, why should they even try, when we already have all the answers?  The same could happen to us.  It has happened, in the past.”

“Not on such a big scale,” Staci said.

“No,” Lady Susan agreed.  “But contact between two very unequal societies has always been painful, even when there is no hostile intent.  We know a great deal about how the universe works, and we were capable of using what we knew to catch up with the first aliens we encountered.  But what will happen to us when the gulf is so wide as to be beyond all hope of jumping across, before it is too late?  That’s another reason for sending you out alone, Captain.  If you encounter something beyond our ability to accept, word will not spread beyond the handful of people already involved in the project.”

“It seems unlikely,” Staci said.

“We don’t know,” Lady Susan said.  “What if we encounter an alien race so advanced they just need to snap their fingers to do anything?  What if we encounter a race of pure telepaths, who can read our thoughts effortlessly?  What happens if they know there’s life after death, or think their religion is the one true faith, or something – anything – that will disrupt our society and damage it beyond all hope of repair?  We have to plan for the worst, without even being sure our thinking can encompass the worst.”

“I see your problem,” Staci said.  Her stomach churned.  “How do we know they’re not already watching us?”

“We don’t,” Lady Susan said, flatly.  “And because we know nothing about them, we don’t know what they’ll find objectionable.  Not yet.”

Staci nodded, grimly.  The idea of being watched by alien minds was unpleasant, even though she’d spent most of her life in the navy, where there was no such thing as privacy.  It was rare for a pervert to take advantage of it and, if one did, she knew how to deal with it.  But watching aliens?  She hoped they were just being paranoid.  They might never know for sure.

“I understand,” she said.  “I won’t let you down.”

“I’m sure of it,” Lady Susan said, passing Staci a datachip.  “Your orders.  A shuttle flight has already been organised to get you to your new command.  Once you assume command, prepare for departure.  I want you ready to depart by the time the ambassadorial and xenospecialist staffs arrive.”

“Understood,” Staci said.  She felt a thrill of excitement, even if they were plunging into the unknown.  “We’ll be ready.” 

Chapter Two: London, United Kingdom

The statue didn’t look like him.

Lady Charlotte Hammond stood under the column, wrapped in a scarf that protected her identity from prying eyes and studied the statue sourly.  Mitch Campbell had never been a particularly handsome man, although he’d had a certain charm – and liveliness – about him that had more than made up for the deficiency.  Charlotte had grown up amongst the aristocracy.  She’d known hundreds of boys and girls who’d body-shaped themselves before even reaching puberty, making themselves so stunningly handsome or beautiful that it had been common, then creepy.  Their adult selves had lacked for nothing but character.  They’d been boring, so boring Charlotte had been reluctant to spend any time with them.  Mitch, on the other hand …

He told me he regretted nothing, she thought.  Mitch’s last message to her had been short and surprisingly sweet, for a man who knew he was going into harm’s way ... she wondered, not for the first time, if he’d had a premonition of his own death.  And that I should live my life to the full.

She sighed, as a wave of despondency overcame her.  She’d had no illusions about herself.  She’d spent too long running her husband’s estates to let herself hide behind self-deception.  She knew she’d set out to build something for herself, to make a career that would give her a chance to be someone in her own right, not just the daughter of one aristocrat and the wife of another.  She knew she’d hurt her husband badly, along with her daughters, and yet … she’d spent so long submerging her own ambitions and carrying out her family duty that she found it hard to care.  Didn’t she deserve something of her own?  When was it going to be her time to shine?  And … she shook her head, trying to resist the urge to curse herself, or to blame everything on her lover.  She’d known what she was doing.  She couldn’t hide anything from herself, no matter what she hid from others.

And if he hadn’t died, she mused, I could have built one hell of a career.

She held the image in her mind for a long moment, considering it.  She wouldn’t have held any public post, nor would she have tried to win elections.  Captain Campbell, war hero, would have been the public face, while she pulled the strings and quietly built up a reputation of her own.  She would have held power, real power … she dismissed the tantalising image.  Her lover had died, saving – irony of ironies – her husband’s life.  And she was alone.

Her datapad vibrated, once.  She ignored it.  She’d burnt her bridges, chopped off the branch before realising – too late – that she was sitting on the wrong side of the cut.  Her husband would hardly take her back, not after his public humiliation.  She didn’t even want to go back.  Her daughters might not disown her, but … they wouldn’t understand.  Not unless they went through the same experience themselves.  And they might, if their marriages were arranged by their father.  Lord Hammond was a good man – Charlotte conceded as much, at least in the privacy of her own thoughts – but he was a very limited man.  Military men tended to be unwilling to bend, unwilling to think about conceding something in the short term to gain a long-term advantage.  It was why she’d planned to ensure she held the reins, as Captain Campbell started his political career.  She would have taken him right to the top.

She shook her head, feeling a glimmer of frustration.  She’d trapped herself, as surely as Lady Hamilton had put herself outside the boundaries of polite society after Lord Nelson’s death.  There were no invitations waiting in her inbox, no parties or gatherings or even private chats.  Once, there’d been so many she could pick and choose as she pleased, showing favour or withholding it at will.  Now … she resisted the urge to check her bank balance again.  She knew it was dangerously low.  Her trust fund was almost exhausted.  She had no other sources of income, not even alimony, now that the political edifice she’d built was crumbling in the wake of her figurehead’s death.  She scowled in annoyance.  She’d thrilled to the idea of throwing together something fragile, yet daring.  She’d liked the idea of having to constantly improvise to keep her ramshackle edifice together.  In hindsight, it had been a mistake.  She really should have considered the possibility her lover would never come home.

The thought mocked her.  Affairs, private affairs, were a given in High Society.  No one cared, as long as they stayed firmly out of the public eye.  She could have had any pretty-boy she wanted, anyone who … she shook her head.  They hadn’t been exciting.  The idea of going to bed with them was about as thrilling as the idea of scratching her head.  Mitch … oh, there’d been one hell of a thrill in bedding him.  She’d loved every minute of wantonness, every moment she’d thrown caution to the winds and fucked him.  And yet … it had bitten her.  Hard.  She knew, now, there was no way home.  The last of her influence was fading quickly.  Once it was gone, it would be the end.  She had nowhere to go.

And I’m probably about to get my marching orders, she thought, sourly.  The PM’s message left no room for doubt.

She straightened, reminding herself she came from a long line of aristocrats who’d survived for nearly a thousand years, and started to walk towards Whitehall.  Hardly anyone paid any attention to her, something that amused and irritated her in equal measure.  Charlotte knew she was notorious, yet … who cared?  She was yesterday’s news, her story little more than sensationalist drivel that had run its course.  Mitch Campbell had been a great man in life, a war hero feted by all; now that he was gone, his lover was of little importance.  It was just a matter of time until she vanished completely.  Why should anyone pay attention to her, if they saw her on the streets?  If they recognised her, they’d pretend otherwise.  They wouldn’t want to be accused of paying attention to a has-been.  The world had moved on.

The thought mocked her as she turned the corner and approached the checkpoint.  There’d been a time when she’d been driven through, without having to stop and show her papers.  Those days were gone too.  She pressed her fingers against the scanner, allowing it to take a droplet of blood to check for infection, then waited for the policemen to confirm she had been invited to Downing Street.  It galled her to wait, as if she was a prospective governess presenting herself at the tradesman’s entrance.  She would have been happier, perversely, if she’d thought it was deliberate, that someone was making her wait to put her firmly in her place.  But she knew she’d fallen too far for anyone to bother.  It was a minor miracle the PM had even bothered to summon her.

He either got the hints I sowed, or he wants to tell me to step out of society personally, she thought.  She doubted it was the latter, although the former had been one hell of a long shot.  It wasn’t uncommon for political undesirables to be reassigned somewhere that looked prestigious – in reality, an excuse to get them out of the country – but she had a lot of political enemies.  The PM’s position wasn’t as solid as he would prefer.  If my enemies demanded that he tell me to leave personally …

Her heart sank as she was shown through the gates, then up to Ten Downing Street and into the waiting room.  She just wasn’t that important.  She’d made a fool of herself, fallen so far that there was no point in driving her any further out of society.  She could barely sustain herself, let alone rebuild her position.  Her enemies didn’t need to burn up their political capital, just to kick her when she was down.  All they had to do was wait and watch the world do it for them.  She’d be begging in the gutters shortly, if she tried to stay in London.  She wondered, idly, if it might not be time to run up the white flag and try to negotiate some kind of settlement with her husband.  If she agreed to leave quietly …

The steward brought her a cup of tea, then retreated.  Charlotte sipped it carefully, trying not to show her impatience.  There were no visible cameras in the waiting room, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.  Just having to wait was a mocking reminder of just how far she’d fallen.  A year ago, the PM would have seen her instantly.  A year ago … she’d been a mover and shaker, spending money like water to build influence and power.  Now …

Forget the past, she told herself, savagely.  Concentrate on the future.

An aide, a young blonde woman, stepped into the room.  “The Prime Minister will see you now.”

Charlotte stood, putting the cup to one side.  “Thank you.”

The aide said nothing as she led Charlotte through the maze of corridors.  Charlotte scowled inwardly.  The young woman wouldn’t have been there, in the very heart of government, if she wasn’t clever and perceptive.  She wasn’t fawning on Charlotte, which boded ill for the future.  And yet … Charlotte dismissed the thought with a flicker of irritation.  The young woman was only a few years older than Charlotte’s daughters.  The idea she’d have any real say in national policy was thoroughly absurd.  

She composed herself, standing proudly as she was shown into the PM’s office.  Arthur Harrison stood to greet her, holding out a hand for her to shake as though she was an honoured guest.  Charlotte doubted it.  If the PM had seen her as anything other than just another person he had to deal with, he would have had her shown to his private reception room, where they could have had a much less formal discussion.  She supposed she should count herself lucky they were having any sort of meeting.  She was in such bad odour it would have been easy for the PM to quietly ignore her until she ran out of money and went away.

“Lady Charlotte,” the PM said.  “Thank you for coming.”

Charlotte nodded, studying him thoughtfully.  Arthur Harrison looked tired, tired and worn.  He’d led Britain through the war, but now the population wanted the peace dividend yesterday, if not the day before.  And it was pretty much impossible.  Charlotte knew the only reason the Leader of the Opposition hadn’t pushed for a Vote of Confidence, which would have led quickly to a general election, was the fear of having to tell the public their demands simply couldn’t be met.  It had to be galling to know the only reason you were still in office was because no one wanted your job.  Charlotte wondered, idly, if the PM was already lining up his replacement.  The country would have to have an election in eighteen months anyway and it might be better if the party was led by a younger, more charismatic, leader.

But they don’t want to be encumbered either, she told herself.  They’d sooner have him make all the unpopular decisions, then try to take his place.

“I was very sorry to hear of Captain Campbell’s death,” the PM continued.  “He was a good man.”

“He was,” Charlotte said, resisting the urge to point out that he’d been effectively sanctified in death.  The PM and everyone else could deliver all the eulogies they wanted, talking about a saint rather than a living breathing man, warts and all.  It wouldn’t have been so easy if Captain Campbell had returned home.  “The country owes him a vast debt.”

“Yes.”  Arthur Harrison met her eyes, coldly.  “I trust you’ll understand if I speak bluntly?”

“Of course,” Charlotte said.  She’d never had much patience for the iron fist in the velvet glove.  If one was going to crush someone’s hopes and dreams, one could at least have the courtesy not to pretend they were doing one a favour.  “I will understand.”

The PM said nothing for a long moment, then spoke with quiet deliberateness.  “You attempted to build up a political machine that would propel you, and your paramour, into the heights of power.  You did, in fact, use the machine to convince the government to send reinforcements to Virus Prime, which played a major role in fighting the final battle of the war.  However, with Captain Campbell’s death, and your own disgrace, your machine is flailing itself to death.  Your supporters are edging away and your future lies in ruins.”

Charlotte nodded curtly, hiding a flicker of amusement.  Her own assessment of the situation was considerably worse.  Her supporters weren’t edging away – they’d edged away.  She supposed it was possible they wouldn’t be too overt about it – no one liked a traitor, even if edging away was the poor bastard’s best move – but she doubted they’d give her more than lip service, if she asked.  She hadn’t tried, not really.  The quickest way to undermine one’s position was to give an order you knew might not be obeyed.

“This gives us an interesting problem,” the PM continued.  “We are trying to rebuild after the war.  We don’t need political scandals or high-profile divorces, with everyone taking sides and political coalitions rupturing.  Your husband’s enemies are already licking their lips, considering the chaos that might follow in your wake.  We don’t need that either.”

“No,” Charlotte agreed.

“It is important, therefore, to get you out of the country,” the PM said.  “We are prepared to offer you a position as titular head of a diplomatic mission, with a salary to match.  You will, of course, have a staff who will do most of the actual work.”

Charlotte’s eyes narrowed.  Ambassadors were often chosen for domestic policy reasons, rather than practical or diplomatic ones.  They were little more than the public face of the country they represented, while their staff – as the PM had said – did the work.  It wasn’t uncommon, too, for an ambassador to take the fall if something went spectacularly wrong, but even then the ambassador would be pensioned off rather than simply sacked.  She knew at least two ambassadors who’d had to carry the can for failures of government policy, but allowed to go into paid retirement to keep them from making a fuss.  It crossed her mind to wonder if she was being set up, but it was unlikely.  The PM didn’t have to go so far if he wanted her to wind up with egg on her face.

“A tempting offer,” she said.  Where did they want her to go?  America?  France?  It was unlikely it would be any major power, let alone an alien homeworld.  Perhaps it would be Argentina.  It would be an uncomfortable posting even if she wasn’t expected to do more than chat about nothing, every so often.  “Where do you have in mind?”

“Deep space,” the PM said.  “We may have a lead on another spacefaring alien race.”

“And you want to send me as ambassador,” Charlotte said, in disbelief.  “Me?”

The PM explained, quickly.  Charlotte had to fight to keep her face expressionless.  The mission was … she honestly didn’t know if she wanted to laugh or cry.  If the alien race was dead and gone, she’d be out of the system for months … if not years.  The country would move on, forgetting her.  And if the alien race was still around, trying to make contact would be extremely difficult.  Her staff would do all the legwork and probably get all the credit.

And there aren’t that many xeno-trained ambassadors, she mused.  The Foreign Office had plenty of xenospecialists, but ambassadors rarely had a xenospecialist background. The ones we have are needed on homeworlds we know are alive and kicking.

Her thoughts churned.  If she accepted the offer, she’d have a chance to rebuild her reputation … or, at least, give the country a chance to forget her.  And she’d be paid a healthy salary.  If she refused … she doubted there’d be a second opportunity.  The PM clearly thought he could take the risk of sending her on the mission.  Hell, it wasn’t that big a risk.  If the Builders were dead and gone, she’d just be dead weight.  If they were still around, her staff would do the hard work while she just sat at the table and pretended to work.  She wondered, idly, if the Builders would know or care she was in disgrace.  Somehow, she doubted it.  Human politics meant very little to its alien allies and vice versa.

“The mission is due to depart shortly,” the PM said.  “Certain classified files will only be made available to you once you have accepted the assignment, at which point you will be bound by the terms of the Official Secrets Act.  I need an answer shortly, ideally by the end of the day.  If you decline the assignment, I’ll have to look for someone else.”

If you can find someone, Charlotte thought, coldly.  The assignment is unlikely to win anyone any plaudits.

She had to admire the PM’s gall.  None of her enemies could object to sending her hundreds of light-years away from Earth.  Her friends, such as they were, would probably be relieved.  He’d get rid of a tricky little problem … the only downside, for him, would be that he couldn’t put one of his cronies in the post, but even that worked in his favour.  Who wanted to be so far from the corridors of power?  And with little chance of actually making contact …

Everyone would know I’d been sent into exile, she thought.  But it might just give me a chance to pause and reboot my career.

“I accept,” she said.  “I’ll have to talk to the lawyers, to finalise everything, but I am happy to take on the assignment.”

“Good.”  The PM smiled.  “My staff will make the arrangements.  They’ll see to your supplies and transport to the ship.  You’ll leave in two days.”

Charlotte nodded.  “You move fast.”

“Yes,” the PM said.  “It’s only a matter of time before someone else realises what we’ve found.  We need to know what we’re dealing with before the rest of the world gets involved.”

Chapter Three: HMS Endeavour, Sol System

“Captain?”

Staci jerked awake, shaking her head as the shuttle glided towards its destination.  It had been a busy few hours, before her departure from Heathrow Spaceport.  The promotions ceremony had been thrown together on short notice, giving her almost no time to call her parents before her new pips were pinned on her collar and she was rushed to the spaceport.  She wasn’t sure if she’d have time to write a message to her family, certainly not one that wouldn’t pass through the censors before it was allowed onto the datanet.  Thankfully, they knew – now – that the Board of Inquiry had declared her personally blameless.  They wouldn’t have to keep deflecting questions when people asked about their daughter’s career.

She rubbed her forehead, forcing herself to sit up.  The shipyard ahead of them was a blaze of lights, hanging in the inky darkness of interplanetary space.  It felt like yesterday when it had been attacked, enemy ships trying to take out humanity’s ability to produce ships, starfighters and missiles to fight its battles.  There were hundreds of ships within sensor range, all hastily being refitted in preparation for the next war.  Staci liked to think the human race had entered a time of peace and prosperity, but she doubted it.  The virus was still out there, even though it was no longer spacefaring.  Who knew what else was out there too?

“We are making our final approach to Endeavour now,” the pilot informed her.   “Do you want me to orbit the hull before we dock?”

“Please,” Staci said.  

She braced herself as one collection of running lights seemed to grow sharper.  She had no idea when she’d have a chance to see her ship’s exterior again.  She’d never held command in her own right, not until now, but she knew how much work her former commanders had had to do.  She was going to be very busy, just handling matters that couldn’t be passed down to her XO.  It was funny, she reflected, how the movies trying to convince youngsters to join the navy never showed the paperwork.  It was all action and adventure, with laser blasts and starfighter battles and heroes so heroic they never so much as got their hair mussed.  Staci supposed she couldn’t blame the producers.  If she’d known how much paperwork she’d have to do, as she climbed the ladder, she might have thought twice about a naval career too.

Or perhaps not, she thought, as HMS Endeavour came into view.  If I’d become an accountant, I wouldn’t have a command of my own.

The blaze of lights suddenly resolved into a starship, illuminated by spotlights mounted on remote work platforms.  Staci leaned forward, drinking in the details.  Endeavour was over three hundred meters long, her hull seemingly rough and crude compared to a cruiser or battleship.  Most human ships were modular, but sheathed in armour; Endeavour seemed almost naked, as if her interior was exposed to enemy fire.  Staci reminded herself, not for the first time, that it made a great deal of sense.  Endeavour wasn’t expected to stand in the line of battle.  Instead, her crew needed access to carry out repairs hundreds of light-years from the nearest shipyard.  The thought made her grimace.  Mounting deep-strike missions into enemy territory had been hard enough, back during the war.  Now, they were going to be travelling even further.

She smiled as her eyes picked out the shuttles and landers docked to the starship’s hull.  Endeavour wasn’t that different from Lion, at least in some respects.  The docking ring looked larger, more generalist than the battlecruiser’s, but the basic principle was the same.  She wondered, suddenly, which one had come first.  The battlecruiser’s design had had its weaknesses, back in the war, but … she shook her head.  Endeavour wasn’t a warship.  She was designed to evade enemy contact, rather than snipe at enemy ships from long range.

And we want to make peaceful contact, if possible, she told herself.  We don’t want to find ourselves at war with a super-race.

The shuttle levelled out and glided towards the command hatch.  Staci braced herself, feeling a thrill matched with an odd sense of trepidation.  She’d always assumed her first command would be a frigate, a ship she knew from top to bottom.  It was rare for a frigate officer to be promoted straight into a command post on a capital ship.  She wondered, suddenly, if the survey crews would resent her.  They might have preferred someone with experience in survey work, rather than a cross-promoted officer.  She would have to work hard to earn their trust.  It wouldn’t be easy.

She waited for the gravity field to shiver and stabilise, then stood, picked up her knapsack and headed for the hatch.  She’d always travelled light.  There’d been little room for personal possessions on Unicorn, even for the ship’s XO.  She made a mental note to make sure she had everything she needed in the ship’s stores, just in case.  She’d been in the navy long enough to know better to than to assume the bureaucracy would take care of it.  It wouldn’t be the first time a transfer was organised so quickly the poor officer wound up without a spare uniform.  She’d once had to share one of her spares with a lieutenant who hadn’t brought a spare with him.

The hatch hissed open.  Staci stepped through and pressed her hand against the bioscanner inside the airlock.  There was a long pause – she was sure they’d made it longer than it needed to be – and then the inner hatch opened, allowing her to board her ship for the first time.  A wave of warm air washed across her face, bringing the scent of too many humans in too close of a proximity.  Endeavour wasn’t a new-build ship, Staci recalled.  Her refit hadn’t been anything like as extensive as her previous CO would have preferred.  She made a mental note to check the air scrubbers, as well as everything else.  She was going to have to spend the next few days crawling over the entire ship, just to make sure she knew where everything was.  A CO who didn’t know her own ship was asking for trouble.

“Captain,” a young man said.  “I’m Commander Mike Jenner.  Welcome onboard HMS Endeavour.”

Staci nodded, then shook his hand.  Commander Jenner was older than she’d expected, although – if she recalled correctly – promotion was always slower in survey.  He was a light-skinned man with brown hair, slowly shading to grey, wearing a simple shipsuit and gloves.  She made a mental note to read his file as quickly as possible, just in case there were any unexpected surprises waiting.  It was unlikely Jenner would have been left in his post, if there were any suggestions he wasn’t capable of handling the job, but it was important to be sure.  She sighed, inwardly.  Jenner would be more than human if he didn’t feel a twinge of resentment at her being promoted over his head, not if he’d been in the navy longer than she.  She’d have to keep an eye on that too.

“Thank you,” she said.  “It’s good to be here.”

Jenner nodded and led her along the corridor.  “We’ve finished most of the refit,” he explained, as they passed a series of open hatches and work gangs pulling old components out of the bulkheads and replacing them.  “The finishing touches are being completed now, Captain, and we should be ready to depart as planned.”

Staci nodded.  “What were you doing during the war?”

“Probing possible tramlines leading into enemy space, mostly,” Jenner explained.  “We found a pair of dead worlds, and three more so heavily infected that there was no hope of saving the local population.  The tramlines themselves were hardly worth exploiting, or so we thought.  We never had the chance to find out.”

“No,” Staci agreed.  “Did you encounter the enemy fleet?”

“No.”  Jenner shrugged.  “We stayed well clear of anything that might detect us.  We had a nasty moment in one system, where we thought they might have caught a sniff of us, but they never gave chase.  We decided, after a series of evasive manoeuvres that were designed to force a cloaked opponent to reveal himself, that we’d either been wrong or they decided it wasn’t worth coming after us.  It was never easy to know which way they’d jump.”

Staci couldn’t disagree.  The virus had been the most alien of humanity’s alien enemies, its thinking – if indeed it thought at all – so inhuman there was no way its actions could be easily predicted.  Staci had read the discussion papers, some arguing the virus’s behaviour was entirely instinctive, others insisting it was a single vast entity and cared as little for billions of infected bodies as humans cared about their skin cells and nail clippings; she knew, from experience, it simply didn’t matter.  The war had been total, ruthless on a scale that dwarfed anything in human history.  They’d had to win or lose everything.  She wondered, as they boarded the intership car and headed to the bridge, how long it would be before people who’d never been at risk started insisting the virus was just misunderstood.  Not long, if she was any judge.  

The hatch opened, revealing the bridge.  Staci stared.  It was bigger than a frigate’s bridge and more modular, with consoles scattered all over the compartment rather than carefully organised to allow the CO to sit in the middle and draw information from every station.  That might have to change, she thought.  The survey ship might have been put together by a military shipyard, but she’d clearly been designed by a civilian.  If she couldn’t get used to the layout, it would have to change.  She dared not risk confusion when the shit hit the fan.  

And we are going into the unknown, she thought, taking a long breath.  The crew looked professional, but casual.  We might fly straight into an alien ambush and get fired upon before we know what is happening.

Staci stepped forward, onto the bridge.  Eyes followed her as she made her way to the command chair and sat.  It felt … different.  She’d sat in Captain Campbell’s chair, when she’d taken command of his ship, but this was hers.  She ran her hand along the console, silently noting how it had been customised for survey command.  Whoever had done the layout had changed everything, to the point she knew she’d have to switch it back to the regular version.  Customised console layouts were forbidden on warships.  There was no way to guarantee the right officer would be at the right console when the shit hit the fan.

She looked up at Jenner, standing beside her chair.  “I relieve you.”

“I stand relieved,” Jenner said, tonelessly.  

Staci nodded.  It was hard to tell if he was pleased or resentful or merely unbothered by the whole affair.  Jenner probably wouldn’t have stayed in survey if he’d wanted rapid promotion.  The war had killed a lot of officers, leaving plenty of room for younger men to climb the ladder at a terrifying rate.  Staci knew a dozen officers who’d jumped up so rapidly that, in peacetime, it would have been seen as a sign of rampant nepotism.  Or worse.  Now … she smiled, wondering how many of their comrades would see them as bad luck.  Spacers were often more superstitious than groundpounders.  They knew how easy it was for something to go spectacularly wrong.

She keyed her console, bringing up the status display.  Endeavour wasn’t ready to depart, not yet, but she was getting there.  Her weapons and sensors were being checked and rechecked, her crew drilling endlessly to make sure they knew how to use the advanced technology at their fingertips.  It was odd to realise that the survey ship’s sensors were far superior to anything she’d used before, yet inferior to advanced alien tech.  They might as well have been sticks and stones.  Staci remembered what she’d been told about the risks of alien contact, and shivered.  The last thing humanity needed was a racial inferiority complex.

“I have to explore the ship,” she said, standing.  “You have the bridge.”

“Yes, Captain,” Jenner said.  “You also have some private messages in your ready room.”

Staci nodded curtly, then stepped through the hatch.  The ready room felt uncomfortably large, even though it was tiny compared to the admiral’s office on Earth.  She felt oddly guilty for having so much space devoted to her, after using her tiny cabin on Unicorn as an office.  But then, Unicorn had been a frigate with hardly any space for the crew.  Endeavour was large enough to ensure everyone had a proper cabin, although the junior crew would still be doubling up.  Staci smiled, reflecting – not for the first time – that the bigger the ship, the smaller the space set aside for junior officers and crew.  It was practically navy policy.  

They don’t want a young midshipman to have a big cabin on a battleship, then move to a hot bunk on a frigate, she thought.  That might cause discontent.

She sat at the desk and pressed her hand against the terminal, allowing herself a moment of relief as the screen lit up.  It was silly, but she hadn’t felt like a commanding officer until she’d unlocked the terminal herself.  The CO’s terminal was strictly for the CO’s use only, the regulation enforced so strictly that no one – not even the CO himself – could grant anyone else permission to use it.  She understood the reasoning behind it – the CO was often the only person onboard cleared for certain files and messages – but it was still a potential headache if her XO had to take command in a hurry.  They might need access to the former CO’s private datacore.

The messages appeared in front of her, a handful of orders, reports from Virus Prime and a set of refit updates that had been copied to Commander Jenner.  None were marked urgent, so Staci took a moment to read Jenner’s file first.  There was nothing particularly special inside it, no commendations or reprimands or anything else that might suggest he wasn’t as good an officer as the file suggested.  Staci had had plenty of experience in reading between the lines, of spotting reports that were carefully written to hint at dangers without ever coming out and saying them.  There were no hints in Jenner’s file.  The only real oddity was that he’d spent most of his early career on a deep-space monitoring station, rather than starting his climb up the ranks.  But then, it probably explained why he wasn’t a captain by now.

She shrugged, then brought up her orders.  They were vague, something that pleased and disturbed her in equal measure.  Proceed to Virus Prime.  Pick up the xenospecialists from the Sphere.  Proceed to the system indicated in the alien starchart.  If possible, survey the system from a safe distance before making any attempt to open contact … she frowned, noting how many weasel words were written into that section of the orders.  Standard procedure was to make sure Earth was alerted first if a new alien race was discovered, before the survey ship tried to open communications.  She suspected, reading between the lines, that whoever had written the orders feared retreat might be impossible.  A hyper-advanced race might be able to detect a cloaked starship from hundreds of light-years away.

“And if they’re that advanced,” she muttered to herself, “there’s no point in trying to hide anyway.”

Her lips thinned.  Humanity had been pumping out radio messages for nearly three hundred years.  There was no way, now, to jam those messages, let alone keep them from being detected.  Anyone with the right equipment, within range, would be able to detect the messages, even if they couldn’t understand them.  They’d know the human race was there … Staci frowned.  There were stars within a hundred light-years of Earth that were completely inaccessible, unless one used a catapult or tried to cross the interstellar gulf at sublight speeds.  Who knew what might be waiting there?  Or what they might think of humanity?

She put the thought aside as she scanned the next set of orders, her thoughts crashing to a halt as they penetrated her brain.  She’d known they’d be taking a diplomatic mission, just in case they encountered live aliens, but one headed by Lady Charlotte Hammond?  It was unthinkable.  Staci knew what Lady Charlotte had done to Mitch Campbell, as well as her husband.  Why was she in command of the ambassadorial team?  It was absurd!

Perhaps it’s a different person, Staci told herself.  Charlotte is hardly an uncommon name.

She worked her way through the rest of the orders, her thoughts churning.  It couldn’t be the same person, could it?  Perhaps not … but it did hint it was.  Lady Charlotte had been trying to build up her position in London, screwing her lover in every sense of the word.  Staci grimaced in disgust.  She’d actually told her CO he was letting his little head get his bigger head in deep shit.  If he’d survived the deployment, who knew what would have happened afterwards?  Somehow, Staci doubted it would have gone very well.  Society took a dim view of women who left their husbands, if those husbands were in the military and fighting to save the homeworld from death or infection.  Lady Charlotte was probably already in deep shit.

And she’s going to be on my ship, Staci thought.  Fuck.

She scowled, then stood.  She had work to do.  She had to explore her ship from top to bottom, to meet her crew and learn the ropes before it was time to depart.  Lady Charlotte could wait.  If she was the same person …

Orders are orders, Staci told herself, firmly.  There was no point in trying to complain about the ambassador.  The First Space Lord would not be impressed.  Hopefully, she’ll just stay in her cabin and you won’t have to put up with her.

Chapter Four: HMS Endeavour, Sol System

“Lady Charlotte,” Ambassador Humphrey Paris-Jackson said.  “Is this your first time off-world?”

“Yes.”  Charlotte felt sick, her stomach in knots even though the shuttle was travelling in a straight line.  “I never even went to the moon before.”

“It does affect some people like that,” Paris-Jackson told her.  “Keep swallowing and it will get better.”

Charlotte gritted her teeth.  Paris-Jackson wasn’t her equal, according to the official paperwork, but he was an experienced diplomat.  She suspected he’d been given private orders to override her, if he thought it necessary.  Or … she wondered, sardonically, if Paris-Jackson had been expecting a more prestigious posting before he’d been assigned to her and her staff as a minder.  She could easily imagine him in an embassy, speaking to his counterparts over lunch and hammering out details while his nominal superiors distracted public attention from the real diplomats.  Who knew?  Perhaps his career would suffer, if it turned out the cruise was nothing more than an expensive holiday.  Or if he overruled her, only to be overruled in turn by his real superiors.  She would have felt sorry for him, if her stomach hadn’t been churning so badly.  She wished she’d thought to fast before boarding the shuttle only an hour or so ago.

As long as I’m not a natural-born groundhog, she thought, crossly.  There were people who simply couldn’t endure life in space, even in a habitat in orbit or a settlement on the moon.  If I’m going to be sick every day, this mission is going to be over before it even begins.

She gritted her teeth, then forced herself to return to the datapad.  The idea of appointing her a diplomat wasn’t that crazy, she had to admit.  She had a lot of experience in being diplomatic, when she’d been running her husband’s estates.  The stakes were different – and higher – but the principles were the same.  If you understood your counterpart’s point of view, and the limitations they faced, you could make a series of very good guesses about what they actually wanted and how far they’d be prepared to go to get it.  It was never easy – the papers had reminded her, time and time again, that she was a British diplomat – but it was doable.  She was almost hopeful there would be someone to talk to at the far end, although she didn’t have the slightest idea what they’d want.  It was hard to bargain when you had nothing to bargain with.

The shuttle shuddered slightly, the gravity field washing over her like a wave on a beach.  She swallowed hard, looking up as the hatch hissed open.  Paris-Jackson and the rest of his team – five professional diplomats-in-training – stood and made their way onto the ship.  Charlette forced herself to stand and follow them, her legs quivering uneasily as she passed through the hatch and pressed her hand against the bioscanner.  Her estranged husband – the divorce was still being finalised – had told her starships could be claustrophobic, for someone used to the open air.  She realised, as the inner hatch opened, that he was right.  The interior of the survey ship felt like the bunker beneath the family mansion, the bomb shelter some distant ancestor had emplaced when the world trembled under the threat of nuclear destruction.  The only real difference, she noted as a middle-aged man greeted them, was that the corridors were brightly lit.

Her stomach calmed, slowly, as they were shown to their quarters and cautioned to remain inside unless they were summoned.  Charlotte looked around, keeping her feelings under tight control.  A year ago, she would have thought the cabins far too small for a lady of her standing.  They were barely large enough to swing a cat.  Now, she knew she was lucky to have a private washroom.  Hell, she was lucky they had a private compartment to study their papers and run through the scenarios the admiralty’s brain trust had put together.  She wasn’t sure what they’d been drinking or smoking when they’d devised their list of possible encounters, but her team had to take them seriously.  If nothing else, it would stretch their minds.

“This is it?”  Kari Potter was a young woman, barely starting her career.  “I thought we’d have a proper cabin.”

Paris-Jackson laughed, humourlessly.  “If you go down to the crew compartments, you’ll discover you have a very good cabin,” he said.  “You may be cramped, but you don’t have to share.”

Kari looked as if she didn’t believe him.  “But the ship is huge!”

“Yes,” Paris-Jackson agreed.  “And much of that space is consumed by the drives, the stores, the weapons and everything else.  The remaining space is relatively tiny.  Our cabins are amongst the best on the ship.  Believe me, there aren’t many officers who’ll have better quarters.  Here, at least, we have space to work.”

Charlotte nodded as she stepped into her cabin and looked around.  She’d been in worse places.  Really, she had.  The air was clean, smelling faintly of air freshener rather than anything less pleasant.  She recalled boarding school and shuddered, the memories reminding her of things she’d sooner forget.  It was hard to believe her parents had spent nearly a million pounds on her education.  She should have been paid to attend that boarding school of horrors.

She sat on the bunk and composed herself.  She was getting better.  She would be fine, by the time the ship left the shipyard and headed to the tramline.  She’d have plenty of time to brainstorm, to consider how best to handle any alien contacts … and her political future, when she returned home.  It was unlikely she’d stay for the rest of her life, even if she did so well no one could hope to match her.  The government would send a proper ambassador, without the sharply circumscribed powers she’d been given.  And yet, if she returned a heroine … she allowed herself the fantasy, just for a moment, before standing and heading back into the main compartment.  There was nothing to be gained by putting the cart before the horse.  If she did well, she could think about her future afterwards.

And if this is just a very expensive cruise, I can spend it preparing for a new career, she told herself.  Or even planning to emigrate somewhere I can start afresh.

Paris-Jackson caught her eye.  “The captain has requested the pleasure of your company, at 1800,” he said, holding up a datapad.  “Do you wish me to accompany you?”

“No, thank you,” Charlotte said, checking her wristcom.  It was 1740.  “Have our bags arrived yet?”

“No,” Paris-Jackson told her.  “They’ll be put through the security sensors first.”

Charlotte grimaced – normally, she didn’t have to worry about her bags being opened and her clothes pawed – but reminded herself, not for the first time, that she didn’t have anything to hide.  She’d packed one good outfit, something she could wear to a diplomatic meeting, then filled the remaining space with simple tunics and underwear.  The days of being a clotheshorse were long gone too.  She keyed her wristcom to pull up a starship diagram, then headed for the hatch.  If she started now, she should be at the captain’s cabin well before 1800.

“The captain will send an escort,” Paris-Jackson said, without looking up.  “I suggest you wait for him.”

Oh, you do, do you?  Charlotte flushed.  And if I choose not to take your suggestion?

She bit down, hard, on the flash of irritation.  “Why do I get an escort?”

“This isn’t your home, back home,” Paris-Jackson pointed out.  “This is a starship.  A very dangerous environment, if you don’t know what you’re doing.  If you go through the wrong hatch, or push the wrong button, you might accidentally kill yourself.”

Charlotte scowled, unwilling to admit he might have a point.  “And does that ever happen?”

“It has,” Paris-Jackson said.  “There was a horror story, a couple of dozen years ago, about a trio of young groundhogs who were vented into space.  No one wanted to believe they’d somehow bypassed the safety systems, and there was a big investigation on suspicion it had been murder, but finally everyone had to concede the idiots had rigged an airlock to open on both sides at once.  I don’t know what they were thinking.  They said they were idiots, but – in truth – I think they were more ignorant of their own ignorance.”

Kari cleared her throat.  “Perhaps we should just stay in here.”

“That would be a good idea,” Paris-Jackson agreed.  “Right now, the crew is very busy preparing for departure.  They don’t need distractions.”

Charlotte nodded, stiffly.  She’d never been in a really dangerous environment in her entire life, unless one counted boarding school.  No, that hadn’t been really dangerous … not unless you did something stupid like climbing on the roof in winter or swimming in the ocean where the currents would drive you onto the rocks.  The worst that could happen was six of the best from the headmistress, or simply being expelled.  She looked at the bulkhead, wondering if it was as strong as it looked.  It seemed solid, but was it?  A military weapon might be able to go through the hull like a knife through butter.

And we’re dealing with the remains of a powerful alien race, she thought, numbly.  We might not even recognise a weapon until we pull the trigger.

The hatch bleeped.  Paris-Jackson opened it, revealing a young midshipman.  “Captain Templeton’s compliments, Madam Ambassador, and she’ll be pleased to see you in her cabin.”

“Thank you,” Charlotte said.  She glanced at herself in the mirror – she looked strikingly out of place – and then headed for the hatch.  “I’m on my way.”

The starship was a human ship, but – to her eyes – it was as alien as a truly alien ship.  Crew hurried past her, speaking in incomprehensible tongues and carrying out tasks she couldn’t even begin to comprehend.  She almost doubted her grasp of English as a trio of spacers hurried by, snapping instructions as they shoved a loaded cart down the passageway.  The chaos seemed never-ending, the madness gripping her mind … she felt her head start to pound as they walked through the nightmare, struggling desperately to understand what was going on.  It felt like a complex dance, the kind that took days to learn and weeks of practice to perform flawlessly.  She wondered, suddenly, if her husband had faced the same chaos on his ship.  How had he coped?

And he had the nerve to say my life was boring, she thought, as she stepped aside to avoid another cart.  At least my people weren’t running around like mad, shouting and swearing and trying to meet a deadline that could be moved at a moment’s notice.

Her escort led her through an open airlock, then stopped in front of a closed hatch and pressed his hand against a scanner.  There was a pause, just long enough for Charlotte to wonder if the captain was even in, then the hatch hissed open.  Her escort stepped aside and motioned for her to enter.  Charlotte nodded her thanks – she wasn’t sure if she should tip him – and then stepped inside.  The hatch hissed closed behind her.  She felt oddly uneasy as she looked around the tiny cabin.  It was larger than hers, but still tiny compared to her bedroom back home.  The young woman sitting at the fold-out table – she stood as Charlotte entered – looked surprisingly young to be in command of a starship.

Although everyone seems young to you these days, she reflected, sourly.  It was hard to believe, sometimes, that she’d crossed forty a few years ago.  Not that she’d ever admit it out loud.  As far as she was concerned, she was still in her thirties and had been for over a decade.  You cannot hide from time for much longer.

“Madam Ambassador,” Captain Templeton said.  There was a hint of deeply personal disdain in the captain’s tone, although she hid it well.  “Welcome onboard.”

Charlotte shook her hand, studying her thoughtfully.  The captain was a stranger, yet she clearly knew Charlotte.  Charlotte had always been good at reading people and she was sure Captain Templeton’s dislike really was personal.  One of her husband’s former officers?  A young officer who owed her position to his patronage, someone who would take his side on instinct?  Or … or what?  Charlotte didn’t know many naval officers, outside the aristocracy.  The commoners had rarely been invited to her gatherings. 

“Thank you,” she said.  She was tempted to engage in verbal fencing, but she had the feeling the naval officer in front of her would prefer directness.  “It’s good to be here.”

Captain Templeton smiled.  Her first command, Charlotte guessed.  Given her relative youth – and Charlotte could spot someone who’d had cosmetic surgery a mile off – it almost certainly was her first command.  Lord Hammond had spoken, often enough, of the freedom of being in command of a ship, of being the sole ruler of a realm.  Charlotte had pointed out, at the time, that he was also supposed to be in command of his estates … she cut that thought off quickly, before it could lead her somewhere she didn’t want to go.  A starship wasn’t anything like the estates.  The latter needed far more tending from their master.

“We should be departing in two days, if all goes according to plan,” Captain Templeton said, coolly.  She made no attempt to serve tea or coffee.  “The Admiralty is still debating if they should send a second ship with us, to watch from a safe distance.”

“And we have no idea what is a safe distance,” Charlotte pointed out.  “If some of the more absurd possibilities are even remotely accurate, there might be no such thing.”

“No,” Captain Templeton agreed.  She looked unsure of herself, just for a second.  “But we will find out.”

Charlotte understood.  It was one thing to know the rules had changed.  It was quite another to be unsure if they were changing or not.  Endeavour had a cloaking device capable of hiding her from top-of-the-line sensors.  Human sensors.  Would they hide her from the mystery aliens?  Or would trying to cloak look like a child’s game of hide and seek?  

She motioned for Charlotte to sit, then also sat.  “This is your first offworld mission?”

“My first trip offworld,” Charlotte confirmed.  “It’s different.”

“Yes, it is,” Captain Templeton said.  “And I must speak bluntly.”

She didn’t wait for Charlotte to say anything, merely pushed on.  “There are ground rules.  I need you to follow them.  If you don’t, I’ll put you in the brig until we return home.  Are we clear on that point?”

“I read the briefing documents,” Charlotte said.  She’d also learnt a great deal just by listening to her husband.  And Mitch.  “I know the Captain is the sole commander of her ship.”

“Yes,” Captain Templeton said.  “During transit, I need you and your team to remain in your quarters unless escorted outside, both to keep you out of my crew’s way and for your own safety.  You will be assigned hours in the gym and I suggest you make use of them.  When we reach our destination, you will have full access to our sensor readings, but – again – you will remain in your quarters unless invited to leave.  If we do make contact with an unknown race, you will be in charge of handling the negotiations, but you are not to make any agreements that might put the ship at risk.  For example, you are not to promise we’ll proceed to a destination they suggest without my prior agreement.  The safety of this ship, and this crew, and the entire human race, is my first priority.  Is that understood?”

“Yes, Captain,” Charlotte said, tartly.  

“Good.”  Captain Templeton met her eyes.  “I expect, given time, that you and your team will forge friendships with my crewmembers.  I don’t object to that, and I can’t forbid it, but those friendships are not to distract my crew from their duties.  Once we take the xenospecialists onboard, you’ll have more time to spend with them.  You’ll need to read their reports and ask questions about matters they didn’t explain completely.”

“Of course,” Charlotte said.

“There will be some emergency drills,” Captain Templeton added.  “Ideally, if we run into hostile aliens, you’ll remain in your cabins until we break contact and run.  If we do suffer damage, you may be pressed into service to help treat the wounded.  If we have to abandon ship, you’ll have to make your way to the lifepods and get out.  There are rules concerning what you can take with you and it is vitally important you don’t break them.  We do not want to give prospective alien captors a starchart leading directly to Earth.”

“We were given a full briefing,” Charlotte said.  “We do understand the risks.”

“If we have to abandon ship, this hull will be blown to atoms,” Captain Templeton told her.  “It isn’t easy to make sure you’re not carrying anything dangerous, before you get into the lifepods and out of the doomed hulk.”

“No,” Charlotte agreed.  She made a mental note to download and read the captain’s service record, very – very – carefully.  It was clear they wouldn’t be friends, but they’d have to work together or risk losing everything.  “We understand what we need to do.”

“I hope the mission will be relatively simple,” Captain Templeton said.  “But realistically, I doubt it.”

“The Builders may be gone,” Charlotte agreed.  She wasn’t blind to the underlying motive behind the mission.  The Builders might be gone, but they’d left plenty of rubble behind.  Who knew what discoveries were waiting to be made?  “Or they might not.”

Captain Templeton nodded.  “They were an interstellar superpower, with technology beyond our comprehension,” she said.  “What could wipe them out?”

“I don’t know,” Charlotte said.  The speculations had ranged from the possible to the unhinged.  None of them had made comfortable reading.  “But I think we have to find out.”

Chapter Five: HMS Endeavour, Sol System

“Captain,” Lieutenant Andy MacPhee said.  The communications officer was older than most, a reflection of the far greater demands placed on survey personal.  He might have to more than just open hailing frequencies and exchange pleasantries with humans and known alien races.  “Grantchester is taking up escort position now.”

“Good.”  Staci kept her voice under tight control.  The idea of assigning a corvette to escort Endeavour wasn’t a bad one, but the delays had nearly scuppered the plan twice.  There were just too many demands on the navy’s limited time and resources, from escorts for convoys heading to the border to patrolling the solar system in case the virus had a few ships left that might be sent to attack the homeworld.  “Inform them we’ll be leaving as planned.”

She took a long breath.  She’d spent the last few days walking her ship, crawling through the tubes and speaking to her officers in a bid to get to know them before she had to take the ship into unexplored space.  The mission had been thrown together in a tearing hurry, something that bothered her more than she cared to admit.  Unicorn had taken several weeks to get everything shipshape and she’d been a frigate, with a crew so small everyone knew everyone else.  Endeavour was much bigger, with so many different departments that there were very few cross-departmental relationships.  She hoped the cruise would break down some of the barriers – they’d be alone, the moment they left Virus Prime – but there was no way to be sure.  The task ahead of her seemed daunting, yet … they had to be ready.  There was just no way to know what they’d be facing once they reached their destination.

I suppose that’s why so many people stay in survey, she mused.  She’d eaten dinner several times with Jenner, in hopes of getting a feel for his personality.  He’d admitted he loved the thought of being the first, or amongst the first, to see what lay beyond the borders of explored space.  They may be the ones to have their names written in the history books.

Her lips twitched as she scanned the departmental reports.  The thought was not displeasing.  If she’d died on Unicorn, would anyone have known her name?  There were very few people who’d remember the names of anyone below the vessel’s commander, save for students of the battle or biographers of the officers involved.  Who’d been Christopher Columbus’s XO, when he’d sailed across the Atlantic and laid eyes on America for the first time?  She didn’t know.  She wasn’t even sure the name was recorded in the history books.  The thought of doing something so spectacular people would have to remember her was very tempting.  But the odds were not in her favour.

Except this time, we’re following an alien starchart, she thought.  The odds might be better than we think.

She frowned.  The navy’s analysts had put forward a host of theories and scenarios, ranging from the plausible to the downright insane.  The researcher had been hallucinating.  The researcher had misremembered something.  The researcher … had been misled.  The starchart didn’t lead to the alien homeworld, or even a settled system, but a black hole.  Or a minefield.  Or … she shook her head.  It was hard to believe a hyper-advanced race would deliberately set out to torment a primitive one, but who knew?  There was no reason to think they shared humanity’s concept of morality.  The aliens humanity had met, over the years, certainly didn’t.

“Captain,” Jenner said, from his station.  “All departments have reported.  We are ready for departure.”

Staci nodded, reminding herself that Endeavour wasn’t a new-built starship.  She’d left the slip years ago, all the kinks worked out well before she’d set off on her first mission.  The refit hadn’t been that extensive, she told herself, and all the new sensors and weapons and other pieces of technology were well understood.  And they’d been tested, extensively, over the past few days.  There was no reason to think the ship would suffer a catastrophic failure the moment she powered up her drives and headed for deep space.

But it would be embarrassing as hell if we did, Staci thought.  We’d never live it down.

She pushed the thought aside.  “Helm, bring the drives online,” she said.  “Communications, inform System Command that we are ready to depart.”

“Aye, Captain,” Lieutenant-Commander David Atkinson said.  The helmsman was older than the average pilot, but his reflexes were still in good shape.  Staci had insisted on putting him through his paces before allowing him to retain his post.  There was no way to know what the ship might encounter, or what it might need to evade.  “Drives coming online … now.”

Staci took a breath as a low thrumming echoed through the ship.  It felt oddly unnatural.  Endeavour was quieter than a warship – the designers had included engine baffles, for reasons that escaped her – and her experience told her the ship wasn’t powering up, even though the displays insisted it was.  She scowled as she studied the power curves, silently comparing them to Unicorn.  Endeavour was hardly as slow and cumbersome as the legendary Ark Royal – the ancient carrier had handled like a wallowing sow, if the reports were to be believed – but she still lacked the agility of a frigate or the heavy armour of a modern battleship.  If they ran into hostile aliens, even with technology a decade or so behind hers, they’d find themselves in hot water very quickly.  She would have to deploy decoys, try to break contact and hope they could escape before it was too late.  And if they were wrong …

I’m not in command of a warship, she thought, waspishly.  I’m in command of a bloody cruise liner.

She felt a twinge of pity for her civilian counterparts.  In theory, a civilian commander was master of his own ship, the final authority as long as his vessel was underway.  In practice, it wasn’t anything like so simple.  A cruise liner for the rich and powerful was far from an easy command.  Say the wrong thing, to the wrong person, and one’s career might come to a screeching halt, even if one was in the right.  The same was true in the military, she supposed, but she at least had the comfort of knowing her fellow captains would back her if she gave commands to an admiral.  The civilian spacers had to answer to men who might never have even left Earth, let alone travelled the known universe.  Their grasp of the realities of interstellar traffic might be very limited.

“Communications,” she said, putting the thought aside.  “Are we cleared for departure?”

“Yes, Captain,” MacPhee said.  “Grantchester is standing ready to escort us.”

Staci nodded.  “Helm, take us out.”

Endeavour quivered slightly, very slightly, as she glided out of the shipyard, passing a swarm of automated weapons platforms.  Staci frowned as she studied the displays.  It still felt odd, as if they were in a simulator rather than a real starship.  Perhaps she’d have a word with the engineers, see if the baffles could be removed.  She found it hard to believe anyone, baffles or no, could actually forget they were on a starship.  The background hum was just part of the experience.  Given time, they’d stop noticing it was even there.

“Power curves are nominal,” Jenner reported.  “All systems go.”

“Bring all the sensors online,” Staci ordered, “and put the results on the main display.”

She leaned forward as the display started to fill with red icons, switching rapidly to green, blue and yellow as the datacores confirmed the prospective targets weren’t hostile.  The Sol System swarmed with activity, starships making their way to and from the tramlines while smaller interplanetary ships glided between the settled planets, moons and asteroids.  She spotted a pair of colony ships making their way to the tramline, crammed with settlers hoping to make a better life away from Earth.  It made her heart sink.  Humanity’s homeworld had taken one hell of a beating, over the last few decades.  There were people who thought the planet was doomed, doomed beyond all hope of recovery.  Personally, Staci thought they were being idiotic.  Given time, the planet could and would recover.

It isn’t as if the virus ever managed to infect the atmosphere itself, she thought, curtly.  And now we know what to look for, and how to counter it, it never will.

The display updated, again.  Staci was impressed.  Unicorn’s sensors had been good, but Endeavour’s were better.  If something was radiating emissions, they could see it.  If something was cloaked … her eyes lingered on the passive displays, cataloguing flickers of energy right across the system.  It was hard to be sure, but she was fairly certain a modern cloaked ship wouldn’t be able to sneak up on them.  She told herself, sharply, not to get overconfident.  They couldn’t take anything for granted.  As technology advanced, the technology to fool it advanced too.

She felt a flicker of excitement as she braced herself, preparing to issue the next set of orders.  She was the captain.  Endeavour was her ship.  And the moment she passed beyond the tramline, she would be sole mistress of her vessel … her lips twisted as she remembered the flicker network, a line of relay stations extending all the way to Virus Prime.  The Admiralty could look over her shoulder, at least until she headed into truly unexplored space.  She wondered, grimly, just how badly it would change things.  The navy had trained its commanders to act on their own, to be aware it would be weeks – if not longer – before they could get updated orders from home.  Now, they could get the orders very quickly.  What would it do to their initiative?

A problem for another time, she thought.  Right now, we are going well beyond the network’s reach.

“Helm,” she said.  Her mouth was suddenly dry.  Her heart was pounding like a drum.  “Helm, set course for the tramline.”

“Aye, Captain,” Atkinson said.  He’d already plotted out the course, or she was a civilian with as much military experience as an actor who played a movie star captain.  All he’d have to do was bring up the one he’d plotted earlier and load it into his console.  “Course laid in.”

Staci smiled.  “Take us out.  Best possible speed.”

Endeavour quivered, again, as she picked up speed.  Staci watched, keeping a wary eye on the power curves.  If there were going to be problems, perhaps something that would necessitate an immediate return to the shipyard, they would occur when the vessel brought all of her drive nodes online.  Staci didn’t expect any – Endeavour had been deployed a dozen times before she’d assumed command, plenty of time for any problems to make themselves apparent – but she was still careful.  The navy had taught her to check and recheck everything before she found herself isolated, light-years from any possible help.  Grantchester would do everything in her power, if Endeavour needed help, but there were limits.  There was no way the corvette could take off more than a handful of the survey ship’s crew.  

Perhaps we should assign two survey ships to the mission, she thought.  Or a small fleet of military transports.

She shook her head, crossly.  There were so many demands on interstellar shipping, now, that the navy hadn’t been able to assign her a single transport, let alone a small fleet.  The shipyards were churning out liberty freighters as fast as they could, but there were never enough to meet all the demand.  She was lucky she’d be able to draw on stores, when they reached Virus Prime.  Her skin crawled at the thought.  If there was one system she’d be content never to visit again, it was Virus Prime.  Even now, there were still pockets of infection within the system.  A careless man might lose everything in the blink of an eye.

“Captain,” Atkinson said.  “We will cross the tramline in two hours, forty minutes.”

“Good,” Staci said.  “Mr. XO, inform the crew they have two hours to write any final messages, then upload them for transmission.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Staci nodded.  The old tradition had weakened, now FTL signalling was more than just an unattainable dream, but the navy had always been slow to change its traditions.  Besides, any personal message uploaded to the flicker network would always be right at the bottom of the priority list.  The bandwidth was so low that it was difficult to send anything more advanced than a basic text message.  She’d heard horror stories of messages only being delivered after the sender had returned to Earth himself.   They were exaggerated, but not by much.

She glanced at her console, then shook her head.  She’d already sent her final messages.  Her family would be disappointed she hadn’t had a chance to visit, between returning to Earth to face the Board of Inquiry and being assigned to Endeavour, but they’d survive.  She’d never been that close to her parents, not after she’d reached adulthood.  They had never really approved of her decision to join the navy, not when they would have preferred her getting married and churning out grandchildren.  She scowled at the thought.  She liked children, and she wanted kids one day, but she also wanted a career.  She wanted to do something for herself.  

And that might have been what Lady Charlotte was thinking, she reflected.  What might she have become, if she’d started her career instead of becoming a homemaker?

She shook her head.  The aristocracy was … different.  Their thinking was as alien as any alien, without the excuse of being alien.  She didn’t pretend to understand how they could act like people out of a bad romance sim, claiming that honour and dignity and reputation were important while, at the same time, proving through their deeds that they didn’t really care.  It was hard to feel sorry for someone who’d been born to wealth and luxury beyond imagination, even if it was a gilded cage.  They certainly had no shortage of diversions to keep them occupied.  The poor bastards banged up in Colchester were lucky if they had books to read.  There were certainly no luxuries.

Endeavour maintained her course, the display updating time and time again as she was put through her paces.  Staci allowed herself to relax, slightly, as no problems became apparent.  It was a relief.  The crew knew how to repair their ship while underway, and Endeavour had been designed to make it as easy as possible, but she didn’t want to test the theory when they were a long way from Earth.  A dozen survey ships had vanished over the years, vanished so completely no one had the slightest idea what had happened to them.  Staci had heard all the theories, from catastrophic drive failures to hostile aliens or tramlines that led straight into black holes, but she suspected the real explanations were a great deal more prosaic.  So far from home, even a minor problem could easily cascade into something catastrophic.  In theory, Endeavour’s crew could set up a colony and wait for rescue.  It wasn’t something she was eager to test.

“Captain,” MacPhee said.  “We are approaching the tramline relay station.”

“Upload the messages, then copy our final status report to System Command,” Staci ordered, calmly.  “Helm, take us across the tramline.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Jenner keyed his console.  “All hands, prepare for jump.  I say again, prepare for jump.”

Staci smiled, keeping her eyes on the display as a timer popped up and started to count down to zero.  There were no virgins in her crew, no youngsters so fresh out of the academy they’d never crossed the tramlines … she frowned, suddenly, as she recalled Lady Charlotte had never even left Earth.  It struck her as absurd to put a novice in command of a diplomatic team, certainly one handling such a mission, although she suspected her team had orders to quietly sideline her if she proved she couldn’t handle it.  It was one thing to handle an estate’s affairs, quite another to open communications with an alien race of unknown power and intentions.  Unless someone was entirely sure the mission would only find alien ruins …

The countdown reached zero.  The display blanked.  Staci’s stomach twisted, unpleasantly, as the ship crossed the tramline.  The display rebooted, icons flashing back into existence as new data poured into the sensors.  Terra Nova system was as screwed up as ever, she noted sourly.  Between the virus, the various human powers and countless little warlords fighting over their patches of land, the system was one hell of a mess.  She noted the number of ships fleeing the planet and scowled.  No one really wanted to stay, save for the warlords and their armed forces.  Why bother, when the planet was so unstable?

And why bother to try to fight, when your efforts will be for naught, she reflected.  There were just too many factions that preferred anarchy to effective government, for one reason or another.  The warlords didn’t want anyone ordering them to give up their armies, the religious fanatics wanted to impose their beliefs on everyone else, the asteroid dwellers didn’t want a powerful government trying to tell them what to do …  If someone put together a working government, someone else would knock it down before it could get control of the entire system.

“Jump completed, Captain,” Atkinson said.  “No system abnormalities detected.”

“Good.”  Staci let out a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding.  She’d feared, at some level, that something would happen before they could make the jump.  “Set course for Virus Prime, best possible speed.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Staci stood.  “I’ll be in my ready room,” she said, brushing down her shipsuit.  She needed to go through all the reports, then write one of her own.  “Mr. XO, you have the bridge.”

Chapter Six: HMS Endeavour, In Transit

“All hands, prepare for emergency evacuation,” the intercom boomed.  “I say again, all hands prepare for emergency evacuation.”

Charlotte swore as the alarms howled.  The emergency drills had been exciting, at first, but they’d long since lost their lustre.  Grab one’s mask and put it into place, grab one’s helmet, grab one’s emergency kit … then wait, bracing oneself for the order to make their way into the corridor and down to the lifepods.  Charlotte hadn’t needed to read all the horror stories to know their odds of survival were not high, if they actually had to eject themselves into space and wait for rescue.  In theory, they could deorbit and land on a planet.  In practice, there might not even be a planet for them to land on.

She glanced from face to face as they waited, noting how her entire team looked as irritated as she felt.  The naval officers seemed determined to ensure no one had a quiet night.  They’d been woken up, day after day, to get ready for an evacuation that never took place … she scowled, reminding herself that emergency drills were necessary.  They had to know what to do, if the next emergency happened to be real.  And if that meant being woken in the middle of the night … she wondered how the crew coped, then remembered they’d been drilling ever since they started their careers.  They were probably used to being woken and put through their paces, then ordered straight back into their bunks.

The alarms died away, the all-clear sounding moments later.  Charlotte glanced at the clock, cursing under her breath.  It was too late to go back to bed, yet too early for her peace of mind.  If the bunk had been more comfortable, she might have considered going back to it away.  Instead, she dismissed her team with a wave of her hand and headed over to get a cup of coffee.  She’d taken a liking to navy coffee, even though it was nothing like the coffee she’d had back home.  She was tempted to wonder what would happen, if she served it at a gathering, before remembering it was unlikely she’d host a gathering ever again.  That part of her life was over.

She poured herself a mug, then settled down on the sofa with her datapad.  The common room – she couldn’t help thinking of it as a common room – might be large by navy standards, but it was tiny by her standards.  Back home, she could have taken a horse or pony out of the stable and galloped around the estate; here, onboard ship, she was effectively trapped in a small compartment, barely large enough to swing a cat.  She’d been cautioned not to leave the ambassadorial section without an escort and yet, even if she had been allowed to roam freely, there was nowhere to go.  The ship was a maze of corridors and compartments, each one in constant use.  She’d been to the gym a few times, under escort, but it had been boring.  She would have sooner walked around the mansion or explored the streets of London and …

It struck her, suddenly, that she was trapped, that she would be trapped for months – perhaps years – on the ship.  She lifted her head, staring at the bulkhead.  The walls were closing in … she cursed under her breath, telling herself not to be silly.  The walls hadn’t moved one jot.  It was just her awareness that she was trapped, that she couldn’t leave the ship … that, in fact if not in name, she was a prisoner.  The world she’d left would go on without her … she remembered, suddenly, a schoolmate who’d believed everyone missed her when she’d had to leave for a term, who’d seemed to think everyone had spent the entire term talking about her, who’d expected a heroine’s welcome when she’d returned the following term.  No one had called, Charlotte recalled.  The girl hadn’t been anyone important, not to them.  Her absence had barely been noted.  And the same was going to happen to her …

Unless you come home covered in glory, she told herself, sharply.  And what are the odds of that?

She sighed, returning her gaze to her datapad.  Her sealed orders had unlocked the moment the ship had passed through the tramline, outlining a handful of scenarios and detailing what she should do if any of them came to pass.  Charlotte had read enough, over the past few weeks, to know the government was taking the matter very seriously, but she honestly wasn’t sure what to make of some of the stranger scenarios.  She would almost have preferred to believe the government was being taken for a ride, by contractors who thought they could get away with it.  The thought of some of the scenarios being real was terrifying.

They’re just trying to cover all the bases, she thought.  And they know better than to expect all of the listed possibilities to be true.

Her head started to ache as she dug through the files.  She wanted – she needed – to understand what was expected of her, rather than doing little more than putting a face on the negotiations while her team did the work.  It galled her she didn’t know if there would be any negotiations, if there would be anyone – anyone at all – interested in talking to the human race.  If there was … she intended to play a major role in the discussions, to lead rather than have her strings pulled by her team.  She would listen to their advice, and take it if necessary, but she wouldn’t let them sideline her.  It would be risky – she’d get the blame if something went wrong – yet she found it hard to care.  She wasn’t blind to the real reasons she’d been offered the assignment.  If there was a major screw up, she’d be the one carrying the blame.

She took another sip of her coffee, then stood and started to pace.  The cabin felt even smaller somehow, her mind insisting the bulkheads really were closing in even though she knew they couldn’t move.  She scowled as she remembered the reports from the Sphere, the strange tales that insisted the interior changed randomly … it was hard to believe, yet she knew from grim experience there was no smoke without fire.  And when there were so many people making similar reports, she had to take them seriously.

The buzzer rang.  She looked up, half-expecting someone to get the hatch before remembering the rest of her team had gone back to their bunks.  She laughed at herself, humourlessly, as she walked over to the hatch and keyed the switch.  The butler was back home … no, it wasn’t her home.  Not any longer.  She didn’t even have a personal maid now, let alone a household staff.  The thought mocked her.  She was hardly useless without servants, but … how much would she have to get used to doing for herself?

You spent nine months alone in London, she told herself, sternly.  You don’t need a maid.

The hatch opened, revealing a young midshipman.  “Madam Ambassador,” he said.  If he was surprised she’d opened the hatch personally, he showed no sign of it.  “The captain would like to see you in her cabin.”

Charlotte frowned.  She’d barely seen Captain Templeton since their brief interview when she’d boarded the ship.  The captain’s file, however, had made illuminating reading.  She’d been Mitch Campbell’s XO, back when he’d fought his final battle.  And that meant … Charlotte didn’t know.  Would she be a friend?  Or an enemy?  She hadn’t seemed very friendly when they’d met, although both Charlotte’s husband and her lover had told her military personnel didn’t always think much of civilians.  The civilians could afford to hold delusions about how the world worked.  Soldiers and spacers couldn’t allow themselves that luxury.

“It will be my pleasure,” she said.  She wondered if she should change into something a little more comfortable, then shook her head.  Her shipsuit would suffice.  “Lead on, MacDuff.”

The midshipman nodded, then turned to lead her down the corridor.  Charlotte followed, feeling almost as if she’d been let out of gaol.  She understood the ship was a dangerous environment, a place that could easily hurt or kill her if she touched the wrong thing, but wandering the corridors was still better than staying in the suite.  The corridors didn’t seem to be so busy, now the ship was underway.  They only passed a handful of crewmen, none of whom paid any attention to her.  Charlotte glanced down at herself and snorted.  The shipsuit was comfortable, and disturbingly clingy in certain places, but it wasn’t the sort of thing she was used to wearing.  It certainly didn’t mark her out as an aristocrat.  The only sign she wasn’t a military officer or crewman was the lack of any rank badges.

She eyed the midshipman thoughtfully as they entered Officer Country and made their way to the captain’s cabin.  Should she try to befriend him?  Or would he be unsure of himself, if she tried?  She didn’t want to push him to talk to her.  It could make things awkward if someone felt pushed, even if they weren’t.  Charlotte was old enough to know how to read a situation.  A young man, easily young enough to be her son, might not have those insights.  She sighed inwardly.  She knew how to comport herself, in the halls of power.  Here, on a starship, she felt utterly unsure.

The hatch hissed open.  Charlotte thanked her escort and stepped into the cabin, noting – ruefully – that the captain’s cabin wasn’t that much larger than her own.  Captain Templeton looked disgustingly fresh for someone who couldn’t have much more sleep, if any, than Charlotte.  Charlotte reflected the captain was younger as well as more experienced in shipboard life.  Captain Templeton’s file stated she was in her late twenties, which made her at least fifteen years younger than Charlotte.  She felt a sudden stab of pain.  Her daughters weren’t that much younger than the captain.

“Madam Ambassador,” the captain said.  The hint of subtle dislike in her voice was all too easy to hear.  “Thank you for coming.”

Charlotte knew she should be diplomatic.  But she was too tired to care.  “Why don’t you like me?”

Captain Templeton blinked.  She hid her surprise well, Charlotte noted, but not well enough to hide it from her.  

“You can speak freely,” Charlotte added, a moment later.  “It’s your ship.”

“You seduced my previous commander, who was a friend as well as a commander,” Captain Templeton said, flatly.  “And you landed him in hot water.”

Charlotte felt a hot flash of anger.  “Do you think I dragged him to the bed and had my way with him?”

Captain Templeton reddened.  Charlotte hid her amusement.  Mitch Campbell had hardly been a bodybuilder with enhanced muscles, but he’d been strong and a martial arts artist to boot.  The idea she could have dragged him into her bed, if he hadn’t wanted to go, was thoroughly absurd.  She had made the first move, in a manner no one could ignore, but he could have easily said no.  What could she have done about it?  Sued him?  It would have been so utterly laughable no one would ever have taken her seriously.

“No,” Captain Templeton said, finally.  “But you didn’t have to make a spectacle of it either.”

Charlotte gritted her teeth.  That had hit a little too close to home.  No one would have cared, much, if she’d had a very private and discreet affair.  There was no shortage of hotels … hell, she could have taken her lover to one of the family’s smaller properties and slept with him there, well away from anyone who might have made a fuss.  She knew she’d used him for more than sex.  She knew …

“I never intended to hurt him,” she said, finally.

“You put him in an untenable position,” Captain Templeton told her, bluntly.  “He was fucking his commanding officer’s wife, for crying out loud!”

“I know.”  Charlotte tried not to flinch.  “I was there.”

Captain Templeton gave her a sharp look.  “What did you expect to happen if you were caught?  Did you think your husband would overlook it?  That he would be happy working with a man who’d cuckolded him?  That he wouldn’t try to ruin your lover’s career in retaliation?  That … fuck it!  You put them both in the worst possible position, where your husband’s reputation would be smashed flat if he didn’t retaliate.  You’re damn lucky Admiral Onarina laid down the law before things really got out of hand.”

Charlotte kept her voice under tight control.  “I am aware of my own role in the whole affair.”

“And do you expect people to trust you?”  Captain Templeton scowled at the table.  “You made a series of very bad decisions, which were made worse by the fact no one could handle it quietly.  And then you took to the media and dragged everyone through the mud.”

“I had no choice,” Charlotte said.  She couldn’t escape the sense Captain Templeton was right.  “It seemed the right thing to do at the time.”

“If you were that unhappy in your marriage,” Captain Templeton pointed out, “you could have just left.”

“It isn’t that easy,” Charlotte said.  “And if I’d planned it better …”

She sighed, the anger draining out of her.  She hadn’t planned it, not really.  Sure, she’d had vague concepts of what she might do if the truth came out, but she hadn’t intended for them to be discovered.  And yet, she feared part of her had wanted to get it over and done before it was too late.  She hadn’t had to lure Mitch Campbell into her bed in the middle of a gathering, at an event it was all too likely someone would ask where she’d gone.  She could have waited a day or two, then arranged a seduction somewhere a little more private.

“You don’t know what it’s like,” she said, finally.  “I had to burn my bridges behind me.”

“And you burnt the one someone was standing on,” Captain Templeton said.  “And now you have to live with the consequences.”

Charlotte said nothing for a long moment, then leaned forward.  “Yes, I do.  And I will.”

“I knew someone, once, who was in a bad situation,” Captain Templeton said, quietly.  “She made a very bad decision, because she was so desperate to get out she wasn’t thinking clearly, and that decision hurt other people.  And no matter what she did, afterwards, she couldn’t make it better.  Her desperation does not excuse the decisions she made or the harm she caused.”

“No,” Charlotte agreed.  “But it is easy to say that, when one is looking back from a position of safety.  It is harder to pick the optimum course of action when you are drowning in your own desperation.”

She met the captain’s eyes.  “If Mitch had survived, I would have married him and we would have built a life together,” she said, ignoring the glint of disbelief she saw on the younger woman’s face.  “If …”

Her heart sank.  “I am aware of my own role in the affair.  I will face the consequences, as they come to me, and deal with them as best as I can.  But I was not the only person involved and I will not pretend otherwise, not even now.  We both made mistakes.”

“You used him,” Captain Templeton said.

“I am not the innocent here,” Charlotte said, “but neither was he.”

She took a breath.  “I will do this job to the best of my ability and I expect the same from you,” she added.  “I don’t expect you to like me.  I’ve dealt with plenty of people who didn’t.  But I do expect you to be professional.”

“Duly noted,” Captain Templeton said.  She stood and poured two mugs of coffee.  “Tell me, what do you think of the scenarios the researchers outlined for us?”

“They may be too wild, or not wild enough,” Charlotte said.  She took a mug of coffee, recognising it as a peace offering of sorts.  “We just don’t know.  The Builders may be dead and gone, or so far advanced that communication of any sort is impossible.  Or that direct contact will destroy us, directly or indirectly.”

“Yeah.”  Captain Templeton sipped her coffee.  “Normally, the survey crews would have orders to avoid contact.  Here, we don’t know if it’s possible.”

Charlotte leaned forward.  “How so?”

“Fifty years ago, the best cloaking devices we had would render a ship more or less invisible until it got to point blank range,” Captain Templeton explained.  “Now, that same cloaking device would be laughable.  The user wouldn’t be able to get within weapons range without being detected and tracked.  Fifty years in the future, they may be saying the same about our cloaking device.  Who knows what the Builders can do?  For all we know, their sensors may be capable of detecting even the faintest gravitational twinge in the fabric of space-time, allowing them to detect us from light-years away.  We just don’t know.”

Charlotte felt cold.  She’d read the briefing notes, but hearing Captain Templeton say the words somehow made it real.  “They might spot us the moment we arrive.”

“Yes,” Captain Templeton agreed.  “And who knows how they’ll react, if they think we’re sneaking around their system?” 

“Poorly.”  Charlotte shivered.  “Shit.”

Chapter Seven: HMS Endeavour, Virus Prime

Staci had never expected to like Charlotte Hammond.  The aristocratic woman had made a fool of her mentor, something that bothered Staci even though she knew Captain Campbell deserved a share of the blame for the whole affair.  Staci was quite familiar with men who wouldn’t take no for an answer, but she was also aware that her former CO would have had no trouble escaping if Lady Hammond tried to push matters.  She wondered, rather sourly, what he’d even seen in her.  There was no shortage of brothels, high-class escorts and even women looking for a naval husband.  He hadn’t been short of options.  There’d been no reason to let himself fall for a middle-aged woman well past her prime.

And yet, she had to admit there was something about Lady Charlotte.  She couldn’t put her finger on it, but it was there.  It wasn’t her looks so much as her charm, her ability to make herself appear to be a good listener.  She made the people who talked to her feel important, Staci decided, something that didn’t make Staci herself feel better.  Captain Campbell might have felt drawn to Lady Charlotte because she made him feel good about himself, but he also might have seen himself as her knight in shining armour … Staci shook her head in irritation.  She’d liked and respected and even admired her former CO, but she had to admit he’d never been a long-term thinker.  He would have made a good starfighter pilot, she supposed.  Their unofficial motto – live fast, die young, leave a cloud of atoms behind – suited him perfectly.   She wondered, not for the first time, if her CO had known, on some level, that he was fighting the last battle of the war.  There would have been nothing for him, back on Earth.  Better to die in fire than spend the rest of his life looking back at past glories …

He thought it was a full-fledged relationship, she reminded herself.  And maybe it was.

It had been a long trip, too long.  She would have preferred to stop, to give her crew some shore leave, but the formerly infected sector had nowhere safe for them to take a break.  The virus had devasted the region, turning entire biospheres into infected nightmares.  She’d been told the BioBombs would wipe out the virus, but it seemed determined to take the rest of the infected planets with it.  The human race would probably have to terraform the planets from scratch, if they wanted to settle them.  She doubted it would be done in a hurry.  There were too many other worlds that had barely been touched by the virus.  And few people would really believe the virus was gone for good.

“Captain,” Atkinson said.  “We are ready to make transit.”

Staci studied the display for a long moment, bracing herself.  She knew there was no real danger, not as long as they didn’t risk landing on any of the infected worlds beyond the tramline, but her skin still crawled.  She told herself, firmly, that it was just her imagination.  The virus might not be gone completely, but it was no longer capable of mounting a deep space offensive.  There were no enemy starships left, as far as they knew.  If there were … she wondered if they’d headed into unexplored space too, hoping to survive and prosper somewhere far from the human race.  It wasn’t a pleasant thought.  The virus might pop up again, years after it had been defeated and thought to be gone for good.

“Jump,” she ordered, quietly.

The display blanked, then rebooted.  Virus Prime had been a cluttered system when she’d first made transit, over a year ago, and very little seemed to have changed.  The occupation force had been sweeping the system, picking off asteroid mining stations or dropping rocks on planet-based installations, but there was no way to be sure they’d got everything.  The system would probably be monitored for years, the slightest hint of industrial activity summoning a fleet to wipe it out.  She wondered, sourly, if Virus Prime truly was the alien homeworld, or if it had belonged to another race that had been infected and overwhelmed before realising it was under attack.  She suspected no one would ever know.  The planetary surface had been utterly devastated.  It would be decades, if not longer, before anyone could land and start looking for surviving records.

If the virus bothered to keep records, she reflected.  It didn’t need to store anything in external databases.

“Captain,” MacPhee said.  “We are picking up a challenge from a guardship.”

“Send them our ID and transit clearance, then request permission to proceed,” Staci said, her eyes never leaving the display.  “And then inform Admiral Summerfield that we’re inbound.”

“Aye, Captain,” MacPhee said.

“It’s a real needle in a haystack situation,” Jenner said, quietly.  “How many other alien structures are hidden in the asteroid fields?”

Staci shrugged.  There was some suggestion in the files that Virus Prime had once had significantly more planets, planets that had been blown to rocky chunks to produce the clouds of asteroids orbiting the primary star.  She didn’t believe it – the virus had certainly never demonstrated the ability to blow up a whole planet – but she had to admit it was possible, if pointless.  There’d been so much raw material in the system that it was hard to believe a spacefaring civilisation could run out, certainly not before they discovered the tramlines.  But then, who knew how aliens thought?  She’d read human plans to blow up Mercury.  It wasn’t that hard to believe someone might have tried to go through with them.

Particularly if they’re not sentimental about their worlds, she mused.  Pluto had been classed as a planet, then an asteroid, then a planet again.  They might have seen them as nothing more than raw material.  

“We may never know,” she said, quietly.  “We only stumbled across the Sphere through sheer luck.”

She forced herself to wait as they made their way across the system.  The Sphere was hidden within a cluster of asteroids, a cluster that the virus had never touched … there were people, Staci knew, who suspected the Sphere had protected itself from possible infection.  It was certainly true other alien artefacts had dulled the virus, ensuring they remained safe from its interference.  No one knew how the trick was done, but they wanted to.  Desperately.  If the human race could put the virus to sleep permanently, the threat would be gone for good.

“Captain,” MacPhee said.  “Admiral Summerfield’s compliments, and he’d like you to join him for dinner when we reach the Sphere.”

“Signal the admiral and inform him I would be delighted to accept,” Staci said, trying not to feel a twinge of guilt.  It wasn’t shore leave – visiting the port admiral was hardly relaxing  -- but she still felt as though she was putting herself first.  “And then request permission for some of my teams to visit the Sphere.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Staci glanced at Jenner.  “Make the arrangements to bring his men onboard, as soon as they’re ready,” she said.  “We don’t want to stay here any longer than strictly necessary.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Endeavour slowed as she reached the edge of the asteroid cluster.  There was no real danger, not when the gap between the two closest asteroids was still wide enough to fly an entire fleet through without risk of disaster, but it was well to be careful.  The asteroid pattern didn’t feel random.  It looked as if someone had carefully orbited the asteroids around the Sphere, hiding it from prying eyes.  Staci had no idea if she was imagining it or not.  The researchers seemed divided.  Half of them were sure the Sphere had been deliberately hidden, the other half thought it completely pointless.  The asteroid cluster alone, they’d argued, was enough to draw spacefaring visitors like moths to flames.

She sucked in her breath as the Sphere appeared on the display.  It wasn’t the largest structure she’d ever seen – she’d seen industrial nodes and asteroid settlements that were considerably bigger – but it was the largest that gave the impression of being a single solid object.  There was no sense it had been put together piece by piece.  Rather, it looked as if the makers had taken an asteroid – as one might take a diamond in the rough – and sanded it down until it became a perfect sphere.  The only blemish on the hull was the entrance, a black hole leading into the interior.  A shiver of unreality ran down her spine.  The Sphere was just too perfect.  It had drifted in space for centuries, perhaps even longer, and yet it remained unmarred by the passage of time.

“Mr. XO, you have the bridge,” Staci said.  “I’ll be back as soon as possible.”

“Aye, Captain,” Jenner said.

Staci nodded, then stepped into her ready room and hastily changed into her dress uniform before making her way down to the shuttle hatch.  The pilot disengaged from the starship and took his craft towards the research station, orbiting the Sphere at what was devoutly hoped to be a safe distance.  Staci suspected no one, not even the more optimistic members of the team, really believed it.  If the Sphere turned nasty, the research station was doomed.  Even merely human tech would have no trouble blowing it into atoms.

And the most worrying thing about the station is that no one has set it up on the Sphere itself, she thought, coldly.  They’re reluctant to risk sleeping on the Sphere.

The research station was typical – a collection of modules, linked together by a network of airlocks and cables – but it looked crude compared to the alien structure.  Staci couldn’t help feeling a twinge of disappointment, even though she knew the research station was extremely efficient.  It just looked like a child’s drawing, an attempt to emulate the adults who’d been doing it longer than the poor kid had been alive.  She bit her lip, suddenly feeling like a child again herself.  It was rare to feel inherently inferior to anyone, let alone anything.  And yet the Sphere, just by existing, mocked humanity’s pretensions to technological greatness.

We think of ourselves as an advanced race, she thought, as the shuttle docked at the station.  But, compared to the Builders, we’re just playing with sticks and stones.

The airlock hissed open.  She barely heard it.  She’d been told that a society could be destroyed by a cultural inferiority complex, but she’d never believed it.  Not until now.  The Sphere was … she shook her head as she stepped through the outer hatch, pressed her hand against the bioscanner and then entered the station itself.  The officer who met her looked … jumpy, as if she expected to be attacked at any moment.  Staci didn’t like the look of it as she followed the young woman through a maze of corridors.  The rest of the team didn’t look much better.

“Ah, Captain Templeton,” Admiral Summerfield said.  He was a beefy man, with dark hair and a beard that was decidedly non-regulation.  He’d traded in his uniform for a shipsuit with ADMIRAL written across the front.  “Congratulations on your promotion.”

“Thank you, sir,” Staci said.  She told herself not to feel overdressed.  The admiral would have been well within his rights to take offense, if she’d turned up in a shipsuit.  “It’s been an interesting few weeks.”

“I bet it has,” Summerfield said.  He motioned for her to enter his cabin, then nodded to the table.  “I’m afraid we don’t have much in the way of fancy food, and I’m pretty sure the cook hates his life, but we’ve done what we can.”

“I’m sure it will be fine,” Staci said, taking the proffered chair.  The admiral poured her a glass of clear liquid – shipboard rotgut, judging by the smell – and then sat facing her.  “This is a fascinating place.”

“It’s a downright worrying one,” Summerfield said.  He took a sip of his drink and made a face.  “Do you realise, most of what we know about the Sphere is little better than guesswork?  We don’t know what it’s made of, we don’t know how long it’s been here and we don’t have the slightest idea what it actually does.  Our equipment is dangerously unreliable within the Sphere.  We tried to measure the inner chambers and got a whole string of different results.  One even insisted the chamber was light-years in diameter.”

Staci blinked.  “That’s impossible.”

“Or so we thought,” Summerfield said.  “And yet it happened.”

He shook his head.  “The general theory is that the Sphere is protecting its secrets,” he added, taking another sip of his drink.  “Recording and communications equipment fails at the worst possible times.  We started laying down cables to carry messages through the Sphere, very primitive pieces of junk, and they started to fail too.  Then … some of the weirder sightings only occur when there’s no more than one or two witnesses.  I thought, at first, that people were playing jokes, the sort of thing you get on distant stations when there isn’t enough to do.  But there were too many odd reports …”

Staci tried her drink.  It tasted foul, worse than she’d dared fear.  “You’ve been sending people into the Sphere alone?”

“It seems the only way to provoke a reaction,” Summerfield said.  “And no, we don’t know how it works.  When there’s more than three people, the Sphere seems completely inert.  A couple of my researchers think the Sphere is really an intelligence test and we’re failing it.  We still know very little about it.  For all we know, it’s haunted.”

“I see, I think,” Staci said.  “Why did it show your researcher the starchart?”

“We don’t know.”  Summerfield stared into his glass, his eyes a long way away.  “There are a bunch of theories.  The entire system could still be in place, with us blundering around like a mouse in a computer lab and hitting random buttons that sometimes do something.  There’s a possibility their eyes are different from ours, that they can see controls we cannot … that, in short, we simply don’t know how to turn it on.  Or … like I said, the whole thing could be an intelligence test.  Or it’s playing with us, toying with us as a cat might play with a mouse.  It certainly made sure we didn’t get a proper recording of the starchart before it vanished again.”

Staci frowned.  The reports she’d read had sounded a great deal more certain.  “Are you sure it was a starchart?”

“The researcher – she’ll be going with you, when you depart – was hypnotised and regressed to the moment she saw the chart,” Summerfield said.  “She drew it out for us while she was in a trance.  At that point, we compared it to the starcharts within our datacores and found a match.  Obviously, we cannot confirm the existence of the tramlines shown on the chart, at least the ones outside explored space, but we know they could exist.”

“And leading us to a point well beyond explored space,” Staci mused.  It was hard not to feel excited and yet fearful.  She hadn’t felt that way since she’d lost her virginity.  “Why do they want us to go there?”

“We don’t know,” Summerfield said.  “One school of thought is that the starchart was activated accidentally.  Another thinks it’s an invitation.  A third thinks it’s a trap.  And a fourth thinks we’ve misunderstood what she saw, although the odds of it being a coincidence are very low.  There is no way the starchart could have matched so perfectly if it was a coincidence.”

“No,” Staci agreed.  She let out a breath as the cook arrived with dinner.  It smelled appetising, despite the warnings.  “How do your researchers cope with … with everything?”

“Poorly,” Summerfield admitted, motioning for her to dig in.  “The first bunch were a combination of specialists in xeno-culture and xeno-tech.  The former found nothing, no clues about the alien culture or anything else.  The latter rapidly discovered it was complexly mystified.  There has to be something within the Sphere, something that messed with our gear, but they found nothing.  The best theory they have is that the entire structure is a singular piece of technology … something they haven’t been able to prove.  And …”

He shrugged.  “Some have been enthused.  Some think the interior is shifting rapidly and, if we keep looking, we’ll eventually be shown into the control room.  Others … have started to give up.  Back on Ganymede … you’ve heard of the Jovian Effect?”

Staci nodded.  “That happens here?”

“The colonists on Ganymede see Jupiter looking down on them and … it starts to get to them,” Summerfield said.  “Most get used to it, but some can’t and have to leave permanently.  Here … we have people looking at the Sphere and finding themselves overwhelmed by its mere existence.  Some go into shock.  Others just start drinking.”

His lips twitched.  “There’s a theory the Sphere is screwing with our minds, just as it messes with our tech,” he added.  “They think it’s trying to drive us away.  Others think the effect is accidental, that the Sphere simply doesn’t know we exist.  And still others think it is purely psychological.  Again, we just don’t know.”

“The Sphere is a very daunting artefact,” Staci said.

“And one that is only really daunting to someone who can appreciate how tricky it would be to produce,” Summerfield said.  “There are times, I admit, that I believe it really is an intelligence test.  And then I think the Builders simply didn’t realise what their tech would do to us.”

“If they knew we’d be coming,” Staci said.  “For all we know, the Sphere predates every other known spacefaring race.”

“It does, or so we think,” Summerfield said.  “But we know so little, Captain, that we cannot be sure of anything.”

He smiled, rather dryly.  “Now, what news from Earth?”

Staci hesitated, then started to answer.

Chapter Eight: The Sphere, Virus Prime

“Keep your tether attached at all times,” the young midshipman ordered.  “If you feel uneasy or unwell at any point, please inform me at once.”

I feel uneasy now, Charlotte thought.  The spacesuit was thoroughly uncomfortable.  It felt as if she was wearing a suit of armour, or flying a one-person spacecraft, and the less said about the tubes hooked up to her genitals the better.  The training officers had gone into great detail about precisely what would happen if the tubes came loose, leaving her afraid to even think about putting them to the test.  If I didn’t have to see the alien structure for myself…

She staggered into the airlock, the rest of her team behind her.  The spacers hooked up the tethers, like a fish caught on a line, then deactivated the gravity field.  The airlock went dark the moment her feet drifted off the ground.  Charlotte felt a moment of panic – surely, something had gone wrong – before the hatch opened to reveal a field of burning lights, set in endless darkness.  Stars, she realised numbly.  They weren’t twinkling … the briefing notes had said as much, pointing out there was no atmosphere in space, but it still looked wrong.  The radio crackled, spacers checking in with the guests one by one.  Charlotte answered when her name was called, but otherwise kept her mouth shut.  She’d been cautioned that the radio channels were for emergencies only.

The tether tightened, yanking them out the airlock.  Charlotte felt another flash of panic as the deck vanished, an inescapable sense she was falling to her doom threatening to overwhelm her before she told herself – quite firmly – that she was floating, safely, in the middle of an endless sea of stars.  The helmet wouldn’t let her see the ship behind her, but she could see the research station – surrounded by moving lights – and the Sphere beyond, glowing faintly under powerful floodlights.  The spacers led them forward, the Sphere growing rapidly until it dominated the horizon.  Up close, it felt subtly wrong.  

Charlotte took a long breath as they fell – flew – towards the entrance.  The Sphere looked as if it were made of bronze, although the files stated the research team hadn’t been so much as able to take a scratch from the surface for analysis.  Charlotte didn’t pretend to understand the technobabble, the endless gibberish that seemed written to confuse rather than educate, but the summaries had been relatively clear.  They knew very little about the alien structure.  Origin?  Unknown.  Purpose?  Unknown.  Current status?  Unknown.  Charlotte wondered, suddenly, if she’d bitten off more than she could chew.  The aliens who’d built the Sphere were incomprehensible.

And if we were advanced enough to turn our starships and structures into works of art, she asked herself, wouldn’t we do it?

It was a surprisingly reassuring thought.  The team had tried to relax by watching movies and television programs from the pre-space days.  Some of them had been thoroughly absurd, by modern standards; others had thought things about the universe, and the pace of technological development, that just weren’t so.  And their starships had been works of art.  She smiled as she contemplated the question.  Endeavour wouldn’t win any design awards.  Even cruise liners looked blocky and crude, compared to fictional starships.  If human tech reached the point where starships could become works of art, wouldn’t they?  It was what she’d do.  She knew from experience that making things look good would make it easier for people to accept.

The thought distracted her just long enough for the tether to pull her inside the Sphere.  Darkness fell like a physical blow, then parted as the spotlights came online.  Charlotte stared around the alien structure, feeling as if she were an insect crawling over something vast and incomprehensible.  The chamber was spherical too, the perfection broken only by gaps in the walls that led into other – deeper – chambers.  She frowned as she spun her spacesuit around, wondering if the designers had preferred to live in zero-g.  The structure made no sense otherwise.  There was no distinct floor or ceiling.  She reminded herself, sharply, that this particular chamber was open to space.  For all she knew, it was nothing more than a shuttlecraft hangar.  It was certainly large enough to take a good-sized shuttle without a qualm.

But surely they should have airlocks, she thought.  What sort of idiot designs a shuttlebay that cannot be sealed and pressurised?

She frowned as they glided towards the next chamber.  She’d seen images of yarddogs working in orbital shipyards, where large sections of the complex were completely unpressurized.  Perhaps the Sphere was really an alien shipyard, or a shell of an industrial node that had had most of the equipment torn out and taken elsewhere years ago.  Or perhaps she was missing something.  The movies she’d watched had included such technological impossibilities as forcefields, something the navy had been researching for years.  As far as she knew, they’d never come close to producing workable hardware.  The Builders might have succeeded.  They might have thought they didn’t need to seal their hull completely.  It struck her as dangerously complacent – even the most advanced human technology was prone to failure, often at the most dangerous time – but they had been a very advanced race.  Their technology might have been too advanced to fail.

And then they pulled it out of the shell when they left, she mused.  There might be nothing left for us to find.

The sense of alienness grew stronger as they glided into the next section.  It was as perfectly spherical as the first, the walls so completely unmarked she couldn’t help thinking of a newly built house, just waiting for the first family to move into their new home.  And yet … she remembered some of the old houses on the estate, abandoned for years and yet bearing signs of their previous occupants.  Where was the stuff they hadn’t thought worth taking with them?  The old tables, chairs, cupboards and other junk not even worth being given to the local charity shops?  Or … what about the bookcases built into the walls, or wiring running through the walls?  The Builders had clearly not been pressed for time, when they’d abandoned the structure.  Or maybe some of the more exotic theories were right and it had never been intended as anything other than an intelligence test, for any wandering spacefarers who happened to notice it.

There isn’t even any graffiti on the walls, she thought, wryly.  Her daughters had drawn on the walls when they’d been toddlers, leaving marks that had eventually been painted over when they’d moved out of the nursery.  The poor nannies had never been able to stop them, not completely.  Where is the alien ‘KILROY WOZ HERE?’

She felt her head start to hurt as she glided from chamber to chamber, pulled along like a duckling following her mother.  The Sphere just felt wrong.  The endless series of interior chambers, each one a perfect sphere, was getting to her.  She kept trying to think of it as a human building, but it only made her headache worse.  The chambers were just too perfect.  There were no little imperfections, no compromises where the designer’s ambitions had clashed with the builder’s realities … no sense, she reflected numbly, that they’d ever had any limitations at all.  She couldn’t help thinking of bubbles in a bubble bath, pressing against each other, but … what lay between the bubbles?  It was impossible to tell.  The reports had stated that the interior of the structure was as invulnerable as the exterior.  No matter what tools – or weapons – were used, the bulkheads remained untouched.  One could detonate a nuke inside the chambers, one report had stated, and there’d be no damage.  At all.

Which is hard to believe, Charlotte thought.  Has anyone ever tried?

The radio crackled.  “Check in,” the spacer said.  “Does anyone want to go home?”

Charlotte said nothing.  She owed it to herself to stick with the team.  The thought of just going back to the ship was appalling.  And yet, half of her people seemed to think it would be a very good idea.  Charlotte understood, even though she had no intention of saying so anywhere other than her report to the PM.  It wasn’t uncommon for humans to feel uncomfortable in alien environments and the Sphere was very alien indeed.  Charlotte had used VR tools to explore Tadpole starships and yet, they’d practically been human compared to this.

A thought struck her as she looked around.  Tadpole starships had no discernible sense of up or down either.  They were water-dwellers, uncomfortable spending almost any time on the surface even with proper protection.  Was the Sphere designed to be filled with liquid, too?  It was possible.  They had no trouble making their way around because of the lack of gravity, but it would be just as easy if they were swimming instead.  It was an odd insight.  She’d always thought the Tadpoles had been very lucky, to develop technology without abandoning the waters for good.  Could it be the Builders were the same?

It isn’t as if we’ve met many aliens, she reflected.  Humanity had only encountered nine intelligent races, if one included the virus and the races it had turned into zombies.  The latter were still very much a mystery, their original cultures erased beyond all hope of repair or recovery.  For all we know, land-dwellers might actually be in the minority.

She filed the insight around for later consideration as they glided further into the Sphere.  It felt like a tour of a stately home, the guide blathering on about history that meant nothing to most of his charges, but there was something about the alien structure that kept it from becoming monotonous.  It nagged at her, a faint sense of something lurking at the back of her awareness, as if she were being watched.  She was used to people keeping a covert eye on her – it hadn’t been that long since she’d been surrounded by servants, people whose livelihoods depended on recognising and adapting to her moods – and yet, this felt different, almost unnatural.  She found herself looking for watching eyes or hidden cameras, even though they were probably designed to be impossible to spot.  Sure, her estate – her husband’s estate – had been lined with very visible cameras, but they’d been designed as a deterrent rather than anything else.  There’d been others concealed in places that would be very difficult to find without climbing over the walls.

The sense of watching eyes only grew stronger as they probed deeper into the structure.  She found it hard to tell how far they’d gone, let alone find their way back to the entrance.  It should have been easy to map the structure, to figure out where all the chambers were in relation to one another, but the reports had made it clear the researchers hadn’t been able to do anything of the sort.  Charlotte had been scornful, when she’d read their reports.  She wasn’t now.  It was suddenly very easy to believe the chambers were changing position when the research teams weren’t looking.

It would be easier if we knew, one way or the other, she mused.  But the Sphere seems designed to keep us guessing.

She took a sip of juice from the nipple in her helmet – the jokes had stopped being funny long ago – and forced herself to keep going.  The sense they were being watched grew stronger and stronger, to the point she half-expected to feel breathing on the back of her neck.  She hadn’t felt so crowded since she’d attended a ball where the organisers had grossly underestimated the number of attendees … and even then, no one had stood that close to her.  She felt as though her personal space was being violated, as if someone was in the spacesuit with her …

The chamber went dark.  Charlotte gasped – she wasn’t the only one – as the floodlights clicked off.  She thought she saw lights on the walls, just for a moment, before the radio crackled loudly, then failed.  A wash of panic ran through her.  If everything had failed … did that include the radio and the life support and everything else?  The spacesuits were as safe as human ingenuity could make them, with multiple redundancies worked into their systems, but … no one knew what would happen if they lost power.  She started to hyperventilate.  If the life support failed, she would quickly run through the air in the suit and find herself breathing her own fumes.  She’d suffocate.

She heard another crackle.  The lights came back on a moment later.  The chamber looked unchanged and yet, she sensed something different about it.  She tried to put it into words, narrowing the feeling down so she could add it to her report, but it was impossible.  She couldn’t see any change and yet … she was sure something had.  It was …

“We’ll make our way back to the exit,” the spacer said.  “If you’ll follow me …”

We don’t have a choice, Charlotte thought.  She’d been annoyed, when she’d been told they’d all be on tethers, but she could see the sense of it now.  It would be terrifyingly easy to get lost within the Sphere, to find oneself walking in circles until the life support ran out and you died.  If the Sphere starts cutting the tethers …

She shook her head as they started to retrace their path through the structure.  The researchers had worked their asses off, according to the reports, trying to find ways to identify the different chambers.  Nothing had worked, from writing on the bulkheads to leaving beacons within the separate chambers.  She thought she understood, now, why so many researchers believed the Sphere was toying with them.  It might not be intentionally screwing with their minds, but it was just too alien to have any other effect.  She scowled as she recalled some of the more exotic theories about the alien structure.  The Builders might be just too alien for any sort of meaningful contact.

And that would be ironic, she thought.  She’d thought she was prepared for anything, from hyper-advanced aliens who looked down on her to the ruins of a long-gone race, but the thought of simply being unable to talk was oddly galling.  We might never be able to ask them what they had in mind when they built the Sphere.

The radio crackled again, then fell silent.  Charlotte winced.  The team kept moving, hurrying through the eerie doors – if they were doors– until they reached the first chamber.  It was as empty as ever, but a shuttle held station on the far side, waiting.  Charlotte wondered, idly, why the pilot didn’t take his craft into the Sphere.  It wasn’t as if it would pose any real challenge.  A dozen shuttles could enter and leave the shuttlebay, if it was a shuttlebay, without any risk of collision.

She didn’t relax, not completely, until she was on the shuttle.  The gravity was a surprise – she told herself, sternly, she should have expected it – and she had to wait to remove the spacesuit, but at least the shuttle was human.  The interior might be crude – half the passenger seats had been torn out, to make room for crewmen in spacesuits – yet it was simple and easy to understand.  Charlotte had never had dreams of becoming a spacer, she’d never seen it as her duty, but … she understood the shuttle.  

I don’t need to know how an aircraft flies to recognise it as an aircraft, she thought.  But the Sphere is just too alien to understand.

She sipped more juice and waited for the shuttle to make its way back to the mothership, her mind running in circles.  The Sphere really was alien.  The reports had harped on it time and time again, but … she hadn’t understood, not really, until she’d seen it for herself.  There was no way to know what the Sphere was meant to do, when it had been built.  She’d expected clues scattered throughout the structure and yet there were none.  Perhaps it was just an alien orbital dorm, like the ones asteroid development crews used when they were hollowing out asteroids to turn them into orbital settlements.  It would be a decidedly mundane answer, and she’d be disappointed if it was the answer, but she had to admit it was possible. 

The gravity field seemed to flicker as the shuttle docked with Endeavour.  Charlotte breathed a sigh of relief as she stumbled through the hatch – the spacesuit made walking tricky, at best – and then relaxed, slightly, as the crew helped her clamber out of the suit.  Her tunic felt hot and sweaty, and she tried not to flush as she was unhooked from the tubes and pointed towards the shower.  No one had said anything, but she was sure she stank.  The timer insisted they’d been gone for only three hours.  It felt longer.  She felt a twinge of pity for anyone who had to work all day in a spacesuit.  No matter how much they were paid, it wasn’t enough.

Paris-Jackson caught her eye as they stumbled into the washroom.  “The admiral has requested the pleasure of our company tomorrow evening, before we depart,” he said.  “I took the liberty of accepting on your behalf.”

He may regret that, Charlotte thought.  Her tainted reputation had clearly not reached Virus Prime.  Someone would give the admiral a hard time for inviting her or her name wasn’t Charlotte.  But at least it’s something normal.

She nodded, curtly.  Right now, she needed something normal.  And the admiral could take care of himself.

Chapter Nine: Research Station, Virus Prime

“Don’t forget to pack everything, and I mean everything,” Lieutenant Colin Lancaster said, as he popped his head into the compartment.  “There’s no guarantee we’ll be coming back here.”

Richard Tobias Gurnard – Tobias to his friends – nodded without looking up.  The navy had never seemed quite sure what to do with him and the rest of his unit.  Some of them had gone back to Earth on HMS Lion, to be demobilised as the war was over, but a handful had remained in the system as shuttle pilots.  Tobias was mildly surprised he hadn’t been ordered back home long ago, given how he’d entered the navy in the first place.  There wasn’t much call for gunboat pilots now, while there were more shuttle pilots than shuttles.  The only reason he’d been left in place, he suspected, was that it was cheaper than sending a new pilot or two from Earth.

He shook his head as he dropped the last of the datachips into his carryall and stood.  If someone had told him, two years ago, that he and Colin Lancaster would wind up friends, of a sort, he would have thought the idiot was taking the piss.  And if that idiot had told him he’d also have a long-term girlfriend … he snorted, inwardly, at the sheer absurdity.  Boys like him didn’t get friends, let alone girlfriends.  And yet, he had.  It was hard to understand how it had happened – he looked back at the past and found it impossible to believe – but it had.  He didn’t want to go back to Earth.  He was sure, deep inside, that reality would reassert itself with a vengeance.

“I have everything I need,” he said.  He’d never had that much with him since joining the navy, even after beginning a long-term assignment to the research station.  The navy had taught him to be careful what he brought, if only because he might not be able to take it home with him afterwards.  His datapad and collection of datachips was about the only thing he didn’t want to lose and they barely took up any space.  “You?”

Colin shrugged.  “I think so,” he said.  “The platoon can draw most of what it needs from onboard stores.”

Tobias shrugged.  He’d never been clear on precisely why Colin and his platoon had been assigned to the research station either, although he could hazard a guess.  The Sphere might turn nasty and, if it did, the Royal Marines might be required to extract the researchers and run before it was too late.  Tobias suspected that was stupid – the Sphere was just too advanced to think the Marines would stand a chance – but no one had asked his opinion.  Perhaps there were other considerations.  It was just a matter of time before the news leaked and someone realised there was a massive alien artefact within the infected system.  And then all hell would break loose.

Not that anyone has expressed much interest in the system, he thought.  They were content to leave us with the task of finishing the job.

He shuddered.  He’d spent the first four months of the deployment pushing asteroids into impact trajectories, steadily wiping out the remains of the infected population.  He tried not to think about how many host bodies he’d condemned to death – the days when he could pretend it was just another online computer game were long gone – and it still bugged him, even though he knew there was no choice.  The infected were lost beyond all hope of recovery.  He wondered, at times, how Colin and his peers coped.  Starfighter and gunboat pilots engaged icons on their displays.  It was easy to pretend they weren’t firing on living people.  The Marines, however, got up close and personal with their targets.  They couldn’t avoid knowing they were killing intelligent beings.

Although no one knows for sure if the virus is actually intelligent, he reminded himself.  It certainly doesn’t always show intelligence.

He nodded as he glanced at his wristcom.  One thing he’d learnt very quickly was that navy bureaucracy was very poor at finding round pegs and slotting them into round holes.  His old CO had told him the bureaucrats read the reports, and the reports were accurate, but they didn’t have any feel for the realities behind the words.  There were times when he’d wondered if his presence in the system had simply been overlooked, if the bureaucrats would one day realise he was there and hastily call him home for discharge before anyone noticed.  Now … he had to admit they’d made a good call.  No one got used to the Sphere – one of the reasons the station was surprisingly luxurious was to help the researchers cope with the sheer alienness of the Sphere – but he didn’t let it affect his piloting.  If the rumours were true, and they were going to look for whoever had built the Sphere …

They might need me, he told himself.  I wouldn’t have an adverse reaction to a second Sphere.

“It’s a survey ship,” he said.  “You’d better make sure they do have everything.”

“I did,” Colin assured him.  He made a show of looking around the cabin.  “I’m afraid our quarters will be much smaller, once we’re on the ship.”

Tobias winced.  He’d grown used to sharing a bunkroom on HMS Lion.  The cabin on the research station, which he’d been allowed to share with his girlfriend and fellow naval pilot, Marigold Harkness, was a palace compared to the bunkroom.  Endeavour was a big ship and yet, she probably wouldn’t have much room for a pair of new pilots.  He cursed under his breath.  It would be hard to get used to sharing another bunkroom with a dozen strangers, most of whom would probably look down on him for not being a career shuttlecraft pilot.  And there’d be no privacy, again …

We’ll just have to book the privacy tubes, again, he thought, crossly.  And that will be a great deal less spontaneous.

“We’ll cope, somehow,” he said.  He had been in worse places, back on Earth.  The last email from his mother suggested finances were tightening, once again.  The government had done what it could to keep the population from starving, and to keep millions of families from being evicted, but now that the war was over the ministers were under immense pressure to dismantle the social security network.  “Don’t you get a special cabin to yourself?”

“Not a chance.”  Colin shook his head.  “Marine Country is pretty damn small.  There’s ten of us, fifteen if you count our attached staff, and we’re going to be crammed together like … fifteen people crammed together.  If we had more time to prepare …”

The hatch hissed open.  Colin stepped aside to let Marigold – Tobias’s girlfriend - step into the cabin.  Tobias smiled, then picked up his carryall.  Marigold picked up her own and checked it, just to make sure she had everything, then nodded.  They’d been ordered to report to the shuttle hatch at 1700, but their orders had changed so often Colin was starting to wonder if the admiral was making it up as he went along.  Or perhaps there were other considerations.  The briefing he’d been given, when he’d been told he was being assigned to Endeavour, had been grim.  If they fell into alien hands, they might be forced to talk.  The only way to keep from surrendering intelligence to the enemy was not to have anything to surrender.

And that includes starcharts and tramline diagrams, he thought, sourly.  But we don’t even know for sure the Builders are hostile.

The thought mocked him as they made their way down to the shuttle hatch.  He’d taken the time to read the files, the ones he was allowed to read, and they’d agreed that most survey missions were uneventful.  The long-range ships swept through a dozen systems, noted tramlines, planets and natural resources, then returned home to arrange for other ships to follow up on their findings.  It was vanishingly rare for a survey ship to discover an alien race and, so far, none of those encounters had turned violent.  But this time … he shook his head.  They were following an alien starchart, one leading them to a system they’d picked … who knew what they’d find?  Or what might be lurking in the rubble, waiting?

There could be anything, anything at all, he told himself.  And if they really are hostile, a race so powerful could turn the sun nova.

He shuddered.  He’d always been a science-fantasy fan.  He’d thrilled to impossible starships doing impossible things, to strong-jawed heroes and heroines fighting fantastical monsters and winning hopeless wars, time and time again.  And yet … the prospect of fighting such a war chilled him to the bone.  Could the human race hope to defeat a super-advanced race, if it turned out to be hostile?  Or would their certain destruction be very … certain?  The gap between Earth and the Tadpoles hadn’t been that wide, but the Tadpoles had still come very close to winning the war outright.  If Ark Royal had been scrapped …

Marigold nudged him.  “You’re being quiet.”

“Everything is changing, again,” Tobias said.  “And the ground is shifting beneath our feet.”

“I think that might be the cheese toast you had for supper last night,” Colin teased.  “I’m pretty sure they don’t bother to preserve it properly.”

“You know what I mean,” Tobias said.  “We’re being transferred to another ship and heading off into the unknown …”

“It could be worse,” Colin said.  “You have to roll with the punches as they come.”

He grinned.  “Hey, you want to know what happened to me during Basic?”

Tobias didn’t, but there was no point in saying so.  

“There’s a test,” Colin said.  “You have to beat this guy in unarmed combat.  You get told the guy’s feet are chained to the floor, so as long as you keep your distance he can’t get you.  Easy, right?  And then you go into the chamber and you have a few seconds to realise they lied to you, that his feet aren’t chained down, and you’re this close to getting a fist in the jaw.  And if you don’t get out the way fast, you’re fucked.  You’re going to be the one buying the drinks after the sergeants have finished scolding you.”

Marigold gave him a sharp look.  “But they told you his feet were chained, right?”

“Not quite,” Colin said.  “If you go back over what you were told, afterwards, you realise you didn’t quite hear what you thought you heard.  But by then it’s too late.”

Tobias wasn’t sure he believed the story, although – compared to some of Colin’s wilder stories – it was quite tame.  His own instructors had loved throwing curveballs at them during basic training, using the simulators to let the trainees get their mistakes out of their systems without expending vast numbers of gunboats and shuttlecraft.  And yet … he couldn’t recall any of them lying, directly or indirectly.  Perhaps it was because he hadn’t precisely volunteered for the program.  Or perhaps Colin was just trying to make them smile.

He put the thought aside as they reached the shuttle hatch and joined the line of researchers and support staff making their way past the guards.  The admiral hadn’t been happy to be ordered to send half of his research team to Endeavour, even though they were the closest thing anyone had to experts on Builder tech.  Tobias recalled the briefing and scowled.  It was quite possible some of the researchers knew enough to be dangerous, if they fell into enemy hands.  A lone astronomer who knew the coordinates of each and every one of humanity’s stars would be enough to let the aliens sneak all the way to Earth, then open fire, without being detected.  

Tobias shivered.  As if things weren’t bad enough already.

The guard held out a bioscanner.  Tobias pressed his hand against the sensor and waited for the ping.  They’d learnt the hard way just how dangerous the virus could be, even if it wasn’t really intelligent.  It had come very close to infecting the research station itself and that should have been impossible.  Tobias was inclined to wonder if the virus could survive in interplanetary space.  The biomatter would have frozen, surely, except that would only have put the virus in stasis.  If it reached somewhere warm and started to thaw …

He relaxed, slightly, as he heard the ping.  The guard motioned him into the shuttlecraft, where a steward pointed him to a seat.  Tobias breathed a sigh of relief as he sat and waited for Marigold to join him.  He’d had no reason to think he might be infected, but – as he’d been cautioned often enough – there was no way to be sure.  The virus had evolved with terrifying speed.  The days the victim had felt ill before it was too late to save them were gone.  If he’d been infected …

The shuttle rocked, then undocked and headed away from the station.  Tobias gritted his teeth as he felt the gravity field vibrate slightly, as if the drive harmonics were very slightly out of phase.  He made a mental note to report it.  He’d flown enough shuttles to develop an instinct for when something was wrong, although it would be a while before the mismatched harmonics did anything more dangerous than putting additional wear and tear on the equipment.  And … he sighed inwardly.  He would have preferred to fly the shuttle himself.  It was funny how hard it was to relax when someone else, even Marigold, had their hands on the controls.  He wanted to be in control of his flight.

And you know better, he told himself.  You can’t fly every last flight.

The shuttle vibrated, the gravity field flickering as it merged with the starship’s field.  A low thump echoed through the tiny ship.  Tobias smiled, weakly.  There were no portholes within sight.  It was hard to believe, somehow, that they’d just flown nearly a thousand kilometres in a few short minutes.  There were civilians, he’d heard, who honestly refused to believe it.  They didn’t know how to read the flickers passing through the shuttle.  A handful of researchers started to unbuckle, only to be told off by the stewards.  Tobias hid his amusement with an effort.  He’d made the same mistake himself, when he’d been a new trainee.  The passengers had to remain seated until their names were called.

“Good luck,” Colin muttered, when his name was called.  “See you on the far side.”

Tobias watched him go, then leaned back in his seat and waited.  The shuttle was starting to feel claustrophobic, even though it was hardly his first shuttle.  There was more room on the flight deck, he reflected.  He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate, to recollect the book he’d been reading when he’d been on duty, waiting for something to happen.  It had been a science-fantasy that had been good and funny, good because he’d enjoyed the story and funny because none of the tech was even remotely plausible.  And …

“Richard Gurnard,” the steward called.  “Marigold Harkness.”

Tobias opened his eyes and forced himself to stand, then walk into the hatch and through the airlock.  The bioscanner reported he was clean.  Again.  He felt a flicker of irritation, despite knowing they had to test and retest everyone to be sure they weren’t infected.  It was hard not to feel as though they were wasting their time.  And yet … he pushed the thought out of his mind as they stepped onto the starship itself.  The air didn’t smell clean.  It took him a moment to recall Lion had been fresh off the production line, while Endeavour had been in service for over a decade.  He hoped she was still up to the job.

“Welcome onboard,” a dark-skinned man said.  He was at least five years older than Tobias, although it was hard to be sure.  “I’m Chief Harrington, Shuttle Ops.”

“Tobias Gurnard,” Tobias introduced himself.  “And this is Marigold Harkness.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Harrington said.  Tobias doubted he needed the introductions.  “If you’ll come with me …”

Tobias glanced at Marigold, then followed Harrington down the corridor.  Endeavour didn’t have the same feel as Lion, although he couldn’t put his finger on precisely how.  The crew was hurrying, readying the ship for departure.  They looked as calm and professional as the battlecruiser’s crew, without the sloppiness that had settled – unfortunately – into the research station’s staff.  The admiral had done what he could, so Tobias had been told, but there were limits.  The combination of civilian staff and the sheer presence of the Sphere had done immense damage to military discipline.

Although we didn’t have a real breakdown, Tobias thought.  Perhaps that was why Colin and his men were really assigned to the station, to keep us in line if things went wrong.

“Your berths are in here,” Harrington said.  “There are six other pilots on the ship.  I expect you to get along or else.  Don’t worry about pecking order here, just do your duty and the rest will take care of itself.”

“Got it.”  Tobias wasn’t reassured.  The berth – the bunkroom – wasn’t that big and adding two more people would make it seem even smaller.  The others wouldn’t be pleased to have more pilots, even if they didn’t have other reasons to be unhappy.  “Do you have an updated mission brief?”

“Nothing you won’t already have,” Harrington said.  He lowered his voice.  “But we do have a betting pool, if you’re interested.”

“No, thank you,” Tobias said, quickly.  “I’m saving my money for old age.”

Harrington laughed.  “Good luck,” he said, clapping Tobias on the shoulder.  “I’ll see you both in the simulators, when we get underway.”

Tobias nodded.  “Got it.”