Metamorph: The Outbounder Chronicles Read online

  Metamorph

  The Outbounder Chronicles

  by Chris Reher

  Also by Chris Reher

  Quantum Tangle

  Terminus Shift

  Entropy’s End

  Sky Hunter

  The Catalyst

  Only Human

  Rebel Alliances

  Delphi Promised

  Copyright © 2016 Chris Reher

  All rights reserved

  ISBN: 978-0-9921090-9-7

  www.chrisreher.com

  Thank you to Jim Kolter

  And to Andy Brokaw, David Wooddell, Linda Witz, George McConnon, and Libby Baltrush

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents on this planet or any other are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  www.chrisreher.com

  Chapter One

  “Your timing is excellent. You can come along and watch old man Shelody bite my face off.”

  Laryn Ash, still holding out the card with her mission specs to the captain, froze momentarily as she tried to figure out his peculiar greeting.

  She had been directed to meet the outbounder captain here on this service bay where his ship had just hours ago locked onto the station’s docking port. It had taken a while before he had made his appearance, inspecting her like some new piece of cargo as the open lift descended from the belly of the Nefer. She was quite aware that, to these crews, cargo was all she was.

  “Sure,” she said, not at all sure and also a little disappointed that he did not invite her to take a tour of his ship. The Nefer had traveled the filaments for forty years and had stories to tell. “Sounds like fun.”

  “You have a weird idea of fun,” he said, stepping aside to let two service people, laden with the tools of their trade, board the lift he had vacated.

  He did not look at her credentials and so she put them away again. “Captain–”

  “Call me Ryle,” he said, heaving a box of supplies onto the lift.

  She turned when a hoarse voice cut through the din of machinery and the shouted exchanges of the mechanics echoing through the bay. “Heard you came up dry, Tanner.”

  The captain watched the ground crew and supplies ascend into the airlock before acknowledging the hail. “Is there anyone around here who doesn’t know that? Just so I can tell them myself.”

  The chief of the smallcraft berths held up his requisition tablet without getting off his dented scooter. “There’s a deckhand on Number Four who hasn’t heard. You’re home early.”

  “We are. Did you miss me?” Ryle Tanner tapped his thumbprint on the scanner to sign off on the usual services: thorough interior cleaning of the Nefer, restocking her galley, water and fuel racks, new scrubber filters, and a maintenance scan of conduits and circuitry.

  Like others who monitored the transmissions of inbound ships, Laryn knew that the Nefer had come home to Pendra Station under better circumstances. The tip about a possible strike beyond Ziferis Two should have yielded at least a rogue planet, going by the readings picked up by the probes. But there’d been nothing but empty space for centuries in all directions. The cost of the failed venture was no doubt why the captain worried about the fate of his hide at the hands of the company owner. Did he hope that Corlan Shelody’s wrath would be mitigated, somehow, by her presence?

  The chief grinned around a mouthful of choo. “I missed your currency. Or your boss’s currency, to be exact.”

  “I’m under-appreciated.” Ryle completed the transaction on the tablet to transfer the owed, somewhat exorbitant, amount into Pendra’s vast coffers. “Did you know on Orbel Four they sing to each other instead of using money? It does something to their brains. With your pleasant baritone, you’d be rich there.”

  “I’d also be dead, seeing how it rains mercury on Orbel.” The chief peered around Ryle at Laryn. His grin faded a little when he discovered the blue insignia pinned to her scarf, identifying her as a Pendra agent. “Got a new warden?”

  “Mediary,” she corrected as if the man didn’t know the proper term for the Pendra representatives that traveled aboard every ship heading out from the station.

  “Mediary, right,” the ground boss said with a wink at Ryle. “So did you wear out the old one already, Tanner?”

  Laryn didn’t much like the leering quality of the man’s wink and pulled her shawl up and over her hair and then tossed its fringed end over her shoulder. The delicately painted sash wrapped loosely around her hips and then wound up around her shoulders, and she wished she had worn something a little more substantial.

  She wasn’t exactly dressed for this place and she regretted not having asked to meet her new crew somewhere cleaner and quieter and, most of all, warmer. Especially since it didn’t seem as though she was about to receive a tour of the outbounder vessel. The ceaseless draft here suggested some new problem with the air exchanger and she tried to suppress her shivers.

  Likely, she thought, she would have to rethink her trendy wardrobe before debarking with this outbounder crew. She often indulged in the remarkable craftsmanship imported from a Terrica settlement where the making of clothes had become an art form. The translucent gowns and wraps she wore over her snug body suits glowed in shades of cinnamon, amber and fire to match the honey shades of her skin and hair. She had spent too many years clothed in rags to now adopt the plain and practical clothing too common up here. Unnecessarily drab, it blended one person into the next and then the walls that surrounded them. Another shiver crept up along her arms and she had to admit that the tough fabric and leather worn by the captain, and even the ground chief’s coveralls were the better choice for hanging around these docks.

  “The old one got bossy,” the captain said without a hint of mischief on his unshaven face. “Quoting regulations without end. It gets to you. We tossed him out the airlock.”

  The chief chuckled and then pointed upward. “How long are you going to leave this deathtrap here, Tanner? Guess you won’t need decon.”

  “I’ll need her ready to go by…” Ryle glanced at his timepiece, set to the station’s rhythms. “…by morning.” He tapped the com tab on his collar. “Nolan,” he said to the Nefer’s engineer. “I guess I’ll go see Shelody.”

  “Want me to come with?” was the reply. Something clanged in the background and Ryle heard Nolan mutter a few words his mother wouldn’t appreciate.

  Ryle looked up at the seal leading into the belly of the Nefer, the only part of it actually attached to the station. “You sound busy. I’ll meet you at Toko’s for dinner. I promised myself something with taste in it. Try not to break my ship.”

  He waved a farewell at the platform chief and motioned Laryn to head for the service bay exit. Her flawless recall of the station’s schematics told her that these passages led to the offices of the private prospector companies.

  Shelody Expeditions traded space aboard Pendra Station by transporting supplies or passengers to wherever they were going, including Earth now and again, as did most of the outbounder outfits. Real revenue, however, came from the explorations that took his crews and their paying clientele out from the Hub into far more exotic destinations, hopefully to return from there unscathed. Hopefully also with something to pay for the risks they took. The odds were poor, the journey dangerous, and the cost prohibitive. One didn’t have to be a poet or a scientist to understand the unfathomable vastness of space. Their high-risk forays into darkness rarely turned up anything more than some primitive life forms on an inhospitable planet or a rock ready for mining.

  For private prospecting comp
anies like Shelody’s, the cost of accommodation aboard the station meant turning over their discoveries to the Pendra Consortium who granted rights as it, along with the Ministry partners on Earth, deemed appropriate, if not always fairly. Men like Corlan Shelody worked with their partners on Earth to take advantage of what contracts Pendra made available. Even under Pendra’s heavy-handed oversight, there were fortunes to be made here.

  “Tomorrow morning?” Laryn said, hurrying to keep up with the captain’s long strides. “We’re heading out so soon?”

  “That’s how we pay the bills,” he said. “Nolan likes to eat.” His eyes took in her elegant wardrobe, although far less lewdly than the chief had. “Got your gear?”

  “It’s being brought down,” she said. “I hope it’s warmer aboard your ship than down here.”

  He smiled something that could mean anything at all and she berated herself for her inane remark. No doubt she sounded like the usual sort of freeloading, unwanted passenger foisted upon the prospectors by the Consortium.

  “Drat,” he said, pointing to a lit panel beside a door along the hallway. “He’s in. So much for just leaving a message and heading for dinner.”

  “There goes your clever plan,” she said, wondering if she sounded casual or like someone trying too hard to make friends with the civilians.

  “Corl,” Ryle said by way of greeting when they entered the small room his employer used for his work. The pastel-colored space offered a minimum of stylish furnishings surrounding a top of the line holo platform. Laryn had seen hospital rooms less brightly lit and less antiseptic.

  At the moment, an image of the Hub, or Bogen’s Hub, as they called this area of space, hovered above the projector in three-dimensional detail. The gravity well at the center of the Hub – small by any standard and unexplored by probe or telescope – showed simply as an empty wireframe globe to depict its event horizon. At some distance from that horizon, filaments radiated outward like a tangle of hair in need of a comb. Explored strands were labeled and marked with their destinations, coordinates and names, if they had one.

  Shelody had added blue for his own outfit, and green, orange and black for those explored by his competitors. He had highlighted one of them in red – Laryn did not need to guess which one that was. That there were more blue threads than any other color, largely thanks to the crew of the Nefer, didn’t seem to impress Shelody as much as the single red line floating in the air.

  Shelody sat back in his chair, regarding Ryle as if something truly marvelous had just walked into his office. “There you are, Mister Tanner. I’m pleased to see you. How thoughtful of you to visit.” His dark eyes shifted to Laryn, and he nodded to her in greeting. “Agent Ash? I’m not sure we’ve yet met in person. You’re no doubt looking forward to a more interesting venture than the one from which the Nefer just now returned.”

  She offered a polite smile. “The outcome of an expedition has no bearing on my presence aboard,” she reminded him.

  Ryle dropped into a chair, a low-slung number designed by artisans on Terrica – his knees nearly touched his chin. He leaned back and stretched his long legs out toward the hologram. “There’s no need for this, Corl. I’m too tired.”

  “It’s not like you flew home by flapping your arms.”

  Ryle sighed and let it go. He nodded toward the display. “I guess you got our report.”

  “You missed the drop?” Shelody’s pointer traced a dark matter filament radiating from the Hub to a marker only a few minutes along its path. Beyond that, the thread branched into a secondary path, usually the point where filaments became frayed and murky. They either dissipated, or they merged into larger streams until, at some unimaginable distance and encompassing a massive region of space, they formed the matrix dense enough to give birth to galaxies. Neither the murk nor the high density regions made for safe travel. To Laryn, it had always seemed as if the inquisitive, insignificant Humans were pesky infiltrators into a vast system of blood vessels, barely making it past the first layer of skin.

  Once Doctor Efan Bogen and his team had detected the highly concentrated threads of dark matter that were attracted, merged and then redirected by just about any planet or star with enough gravity, the first step, of course, had been to find ways of interacting with them. New applications of older technology had brought about the phase envelope that allowed objects to travel within those filaments in utter disregard of space and time. It had not taken long before the probes discovered the peculiar anomaly in the area now called Bogen’s Hub in the outer reaches of the solar system.

  The lure of wealth and adventure, as it had for millennia, meant no shortage of prospectors like Ryle Tanner willing to take the risks. Many had been lost during those early days, relying on conventional craft designed for challenges no greater than shuttling to Earth’s moon and orbiting stations. The losses spurred new developments for external shielding and more capable navigation systems, led by the powerful Pendra Consortium whose members had built this station.

  Most filaments led nowhere. Some led to places worth exploring. One had led to the earthlike Terrica in 22-05. And another had led them to meet the Kalons more than twenty years after that, the first of only a handful of sentient species ever encountered. Later came more finds of intelligent species on Chidi-4, Orbel, and Antica, making it clear that meeting further civilizations would be simply a matter of time and perseverance by the explorers. So far, only the Kalon species interacted with Humans, although cautious contact with the people of Antica showed promise.

  A painful start in relations with the Kalons had alarmed the governments of Earth who compelled the Consortium to create the Office of the Intermediary. Pendra agents like Laryn became mandatory on outbounder expeditions as ambassadors to ensure protocol in case of First Contact with any species, no matter their level of sentience. Even a trilobite found on some alien world had scientific, social and even political repercussions. It also meant that Pendra, trusting no one and least of all the private companies, had eyes and ears aboard each vessel, an arrangement that irritated the captains.

  “Jex got confused, Nolan thinks,” Ryle said, referring to the Nefer’s Artificial Intelligence, a JX.9 system. “We might have dropped from the thread too soon. Should have hit target at point four four kilo-secs.”

  Shelody pondered the hologram. He scratched his jaw, as bristle-free as his scalp. Laryn wondered if the man’s bronze skin, unmarred by time or accident, was entirely natural. Nothing distracted from his presence in the featureless room although she suspected that it was not just vanity that made him the focal point. His carefully maintained appearance, clothed in elegant layers of subtle grays, commanded the space, likely an effective setting for whatever deals and negotiations took place here.

  Of course, at this moment, the shaggy-haired outbounder captain sprawling in one of the delicate chairs, looking like the rough fabric of his jacket might scratch its buffed surface, ruined the illusion. She doubted Ryle was impressed by these impeccably polished furnishings.

  “That was a costly bit of nonsense you bought, then,” Shelody said. His nimble hands moved through the sensor field to add the appropriate tags to the filament going nowhere. From what she knew of him, it wasn’t likely that he’d share the discovery with the other outbounders companies. He loved to see others waste their investments as much as he hated losing his. “I think maybe I should look after your future missions myself.”

  Ryle snarled. Anything Shelody might come up with was sure to involve a few months of tedious trips to Terrica. Profitable, but utterly beneath the capabilities of his ship and crew. “We really should try this thread again. What do you have in mind for us instead? Shuttling migrants? Hauling ore?”

  “Your gratitude is heart-warming. Let’s not forget you’d be rotting in a cell somewhere if I hadn’t volunteered to take you in.” Shelody must have heard Laryn’s quick intake of breath at this revelation, and he turned to her with a sly grin. “Is this news to you, Agent Ash?”


  She glanced at Ryle, who didn’t look pleased with Shelody’s calculated words. “No, of course not,” she said, her expression neutral. The captain of the Nefer was a convict? Her supervisor could have mentioned this bit of news, she thought, before assigning her to the Nefer. But she owed Shelody nothing, least of all the satisfaction of embarrassing his captain in front of the Pendra agent.

  Shelody waved his hands to let the Hub fade from view and returned his attention to Ryle. “You’re lucky Azah found a new client who wishes to leave immediately. Fairly sure thing, from what she’s learned so far. Maybe it’ll make up for this botched expedition.”

  “So I heard, but she didn’t give any details. What client?”

  “Couple of mummies on a treasure hunt. Nothing fancy but they’re offering an advance guarantee, so play nice.”

  “Kalons?” Laryn said, more to remind Shelody of the appropriate name for these visitors than to confirm whom he meant. The mummies were the only alien species with a representation aboard Pendra Station, collaborating with the Consortium’s research teams on a few promising projects. The apparent lack of flesh beneath their leathery skin had earned them the nickname, never used in hearing distance.

  “Yes, yes. Kalons.”

  Ryle came to his feet. “Guess we better go find her, then.”

  Shelody waved a dismissal. “Don’t disappoint me, Tanner. That’s my coin you’re spending on that pretty ship of yours.”

  Chapter Two

  The public concourse above the smallcraft level buzzed with the hectic tensions Laryn had come to associate with the arrival of a new transport from Earth. She and Ryle made their way along a series of moving platforms that would soon be choked with travelers preparing for the last leg of their journey.

  The migrants, chosen through lottery, bribery, luck, or patience, came here aboard a fleet using a photonic conveyor spanning the distance from Earth to the Hub. Although slow, it offered safety and carried far greater numbers than the filament-traveling corvettes and did so far more cheaply. The travelers paused here before making the short transit to Terrica on smaller vessels, this time along a filament. The layover made for busy, crowded, noisy days aboard Pendra Station, swelling its regular population of less than five hundred to three times that or more.