Star Runner Book 3: Gravity Well

By Mark McDonough

Book Three of the Star Runner Series – an adventure in the depths of space.

The crew of Star Runner have faced space battles, pirates, interstellar junkyards, black holes and The Bubble. But if they and their Mamoan allies are to reach human space, they must cross The Barrens – a vast unmapped region where stars are few and far between. No one knows what’s out there, the dangers they’re about to face. Will the resources of an entire fleet be enough for them to survive?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark McDonough
• Release date: Dec 17, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310587177

Mark McDonough

Mark McDonough has lived his whole life in Queensland, Australia. After growing up in Ipswich, he lived for a short time in Brisbane while attending University. Work then took him to Far North Queensland for a number of years before he moved to his current home of Toowoomba. For as long as Mark can remember, there have been characters clamouring to have their stories told – everything from the depths of time when dinosaurs ruled the Earth through to the vast reaches of space where only the bravest spaceships dare to fly and everywhere in between. Most were written in secret until, one day, those characters demanded that their tales be spread far and wide. Thus, was born Stargon Books. When he's not sitting with laptop or notebook in hand, he can be found at work, with his family or out on the football field where he not only plays but also referees and Coordinates an entire competition. Ultimately, Mark dreams of the day when he can write full time but until then, as he says, "I'm a wordsmith, it's who I am; if I didn't write, I wouldn't be me".

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The Star Runner Series

Book 3 – GRAVITY WELL

By Mark McDonough

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Mark McDonough

Current Edition 2019

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it to http://www.smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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The Star Runner Series

Book 3 – GRAVITY WELL

Chapter One – Here There Be Dragons

Nothing.

The board was clean.

Perhaps, he thought, if he delved deeper.

A level one diagnostic of all systems might do the trick, he mused.

Pete Daniels, Chief Engineer of the merchant vessel Star Runner, leant back in his chair and frowned. If the diagnostic reported all was finally as it should be, well …

Tapping the appropriate buttons, Pete set the computer to its task. An icon blinked and he activated it. Sixteen hours. Then, he’d know.

Snatching up the pad resting on his console, Pete scrolled through its contents. Five items. That’s all that remained on his ‘To Do’ list. Five items and Star Runner would be fully operational – every system, every component of the ship would have been repaired.

A far cry from the ship that he and his brothers, Alex and Nick, had first seen almost two months ago.

Back then, Star Runner had been an abandoned hulk. Powerless, crewless, adrift. Just one of the many dead ships that the Bubble had captured in its endless journey. They never did work out exactly what the Bubble was. Some sort of strange energy field the size of a small planet, flying through space, inadvertently trapping spaceships inside after draining them of all power.

Pete knew that he and his brothers had been incredibly lucky to make it out alive. Not that they should have been there anyway. The black hole should have crushed them into something smaller than the size of a pinhead.

But instead, when O’Lochlin, the traitor intent on selling the research gathered by Space Station Cygnus, had cast them into the black hole, they’d found a wormhole.

The first one ever seen by humans.

And that wasn’t the only first. To his left, Zheen, the purple-skinned alien from the planet Arania, sat beside him. She’d quickly become one of his best friends. She and her father Holas were the first aliens that humans, represented by the Daniels brothers, had ever come across.

They’d been trapped in the Bubble as well. As Tran had also been. Pete still wasn’t sure how the Bubble had snared the tailed, black-furred alien. Holas and Zheen were incredibly talkative and friendly. Pete had heard more tales of their life as traders than he could count.

Tran, in contrast, was incredibly tight-lipped about his past. He seemed to have more secrets than anyone could guess. Not the least of which was the contents of the twelve containers strapped to the walls of Cargo Pod One. And why the Brenog had been chasing him.

The Brenog.

Pete shivered at the thought of them. They’d been one of the first aliens that they’d encountered after Pete and his brothers, Holas, Zheen and Tran had salvaged Star Runner and escaped the Bubble.

All in all, Star Runner had been in a fair condition before their fight with the Brenog. That space battle was not one that Pete liked to relive. He’d been stretched to his limits keeping the ship together as his brother, Nick, tried to fly them to safety. It’s only been Alex’s brilliantly insane plan that’d saved them and destroyed the Brenog by forcing them into a black hole.

At least they’d been able to get a lot of the supplies that they’d needed to repair Star Runner on Dramazan. Along with an extra friend and crewmate. The tall, gangly Sfolan had fitted right in and his prowess in the galley was amazing. It certainly beat the bland fare that they’d been enduring before that.

And then there was Danal. Their newest crewmate was finally starting to come out of her shell. Pete’d been amazed to see her just a day ago working beside Sfolan in the galley. Her long dark hair was brushed back and tied behind her head. And she was laughing.

A massive difference from the small, cowering figure that she’d been when Nick had first brought her on-board. But Pete assumed that living through a pirate attack, having your ship become part of a space station and having to survive for months by yourself in fear of being discovered and killed would do that to a person.

Danal hadn’t been the only good thing to come from Krashnoa’s Spaceship Graveyard. Almost every part that they needed to repair Star Runner, including six escape pods and a shuttle, had been procured there.

Now, there were only five things left for him to do. Assuming, of course, that the diagnostic didn’t find anything. And those five repairs wouldn’t even take them half a shift to complete.

Pete wondered what was wrong with him. He knew that he should be pleased that Star Runner was finally running the way that she should be. But a part of him wanted something else to be wrong. Some engineering challenge that he could sink his teeth into.

He swung his chair around and looked at the main view screen. There, he knew, was part of the problem.

The stars weren’t travelling past anywhere near as fast as they should be. Or could be. Star Runner was slowed to a virtual crawl. She had a type four faster-than-light drive, but it was barely putting out any power at all. Not that she couldn’t. Just that they wouldn’t let her.

Star Runner had been reduced to match the slower pace of their new allies.

The tiny, red-skinned Mamoans.

They’d been left homeless after a ruthless species, the Croshzak, had detonated a bio-bomb on their home world. Now, they were searching for a new planet and Alex and Nick had known where dozens of possible ones were – in the isolated section of the galaxy that also housed Earth.

Now, they were travelling together. Pete and his brothers were going home. It was just going to take them longer to get there than they’d originally thought. A lot longer.

Nick, sitting at helm, caught Pete’s attention.

Pushing that errant lock of fringe that Pete always wanted to cut out of his eyes, he gave a sigh that could be heard all over the fight deck. Pete grinned to himself. To someone with the nickname of ‘Ace’, someone who loved nothing better than flying faster than most people would call sane, this slow pace must be driving him crazy.

A beep issued from Zheen’s communications console and Pete looked around to see a purple finger pressing the communications stud tighter into her ear.

"Father, Commander Grogan of the Mamoan flagship Red Eagle for you," Zheen reported.

Holas looked across at his daughter. Put it on the main viewscreen.

The image of stars streaking towards them was replaced with the face of Commander Grogan. He was sitting in his command chair, a buzz of activity behind him.

Pete shook his head as he once again marvelled at the way the technology masked the Mamoan’s true nature. If he didn’t know better, he would have assumed that the person on the screen was the same as anyone else, albeit with red skin and yellow hair. Not a person half the height of the average human.

Captain Lornicaan, Commander Grogan greeted.

Commander.

We’re almost there. Are you ready? Commander Grogan asked.

Holas nodded. That we are. Our sensors are set for maximum and I’m assured that our computer banks are ready to sift through the data.

On the opposite side of the deck at the science station, Alex give a sharp nod.

And you? Holas asked.

We’re ready, Commander Grogan replied. Admiral Reab’s reorganized the fleet into six wings of twelve to take advantage of the emptiness of the space we’re going to be travelling in. The science departments on all ships are already conducting their long range sensor sweeps.

Any idea exactly when we’ll pass out of the Known Worlds? Holas asked.

Alexander stepped forward, shaking his head to answer this.

There’s not an easy answer, he said. "The maps of this region of space are very imprecise. Because there are so few stars or other space phenomena in this sector, it hasn’t been charted well at all. There’s no real boundary between what is known and what is just guessed at. Either way, I’d say that we’ll be in completely uncharted space within the next hour."

Here there be dragons, Pete muttered to himself.

Feeling Zheen’s eyes on him, Pete turned to look at her. The questioning look on her face let him know that the universal translator had found another idiom that it couldn’t make sense of.

Here there be dragons, Pete repeated quietly so as not to interrupt the two captains. It’s an old Earth expression. Centuries ago, when our world was first being explored, people used to write ‘here there be dragons’ wherever there was an unexplored part on their maps.

What are dragons? she asked, head cocked to one side.

Old creatures from myths and legends. Huge reptiles with wings that could breathe fire, he explained.

Zheen nodded slowly. They sound very dangerous.

Definitely, he agreed.

Then let’s hope there aren’t any ‘dragons’ where we’re going.

Chapter Two – Shadow Ship

Nick’s head itched. He brushed his hand through his