Cascade Point: The Ghost Fleet, #1

By Joshua Guess

Grant Stone and his crew just want to be left alone. They fly at the edges of Alliance space, surveying new systems far from the problems that brought them all together. Some are former military, while others have more colorful pasts. Everyone aboard the Fallen Angel has a reason for staying on the fringes. It's a good life, but a chance discovery will change everything.

Confronted by an enemy powerful enough to threaten all of human civilization, Grant and his crew are forced to choose between confinement or joining the Ghost Fleet, a hidden network of ships recruited and run by the Alliance Navy. Faced with an existential danger, Grant will lead his team into the far reaches of unknown space to keep the brewing conflict from exploding into all-out war. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joshua Guess
• Release date: Aug 16, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386748151

Book preview

Dedicated to Randy Monaghan

Beloved uncle gone too soon

You were a dreamer, an inventor,

and always made time for me

You taught me it was always okay

to take a moment and look up to the stars

1

Staring out into the vastness of space as he orbited the planet below at a perfectly comfortable eighteen thousand kilometers a second, Grant Stone decided the view was worth getting kicked out of the PA Navy.

At thirty-five, he was five years without the need to press his pants, bow his head, or take orders from anyone without having a say in the matter. Twelve years of making coffee for senior officers while being ignored because he didn’t have any desire to play the political games needed to climb higher was a small price to pay for where he was now.

Cap, you okay out there? said a gravelly voice over the comm. Readout says your suit’s soaking up a lot of radiation.

Grant toggled the switch nestled between the thumb and forefinger of his EVA suit’s glove. I’m fine, Batta. Coming in.

Grant amended his earlier thought about taking orders. Fredrick Batta might be his engineer, a subordinate, but the husky Indian still managed to mother Grant into doing his bidding more often than not.

He triggered the automatic recall and let the suit do the work. The tether connecting him to the ship contracted, a tiny electrical charge making the carbon polymers shrink and pull him back into the airlock.

Grant keyed the mic again as air rushed in around him. How’re we looking, gang?

Relaxed though their small crew might be, practice had taught everyone in his command what to expect. Grant might not sit on formality, but that didn’t mean he was sloppy where it counted. Each member of the crew knew to have status updates ready at a moment’s notice, and unlike most small independent vessels, the Fallen Angel had considerable overlap in crew specialties.

When you ran stupidly dangerous operations varying wildly in parameters, it wasn’t really an option.

Engineering is green, said Batta. Which shouldn’t come as a shock since we’ve been orbiting this moon for two days with no problems.

Grant smiled. Only Batta, more interested in the newest biocircuitry breakthroughs than space itself, would call that behemoth a moon. Technically it was one, of course, but the damn thing was fifty percent larger than Earth. It orbited an ice giant nearly the size of Jupiter, just a few hundred light years closer to the Core.

No radiation problems? Grant asked. I know the planet was cooking my suit pretty thoroughly.

Batta snorted. "Nothing short of a laser fired by one of the gods themselves would hurt the Angel, cap. You know that."

Yeah, yeah. I just like to hear you say good things about my girl. Ops?

Bit-Na Cho, his first officer, cleared her throat. We’re solid here, boss. The boys are locking down the drones right now. We’ll be ready to break orbit by the time you hit the bridge.

Thanks, Crash, he said. Cho hated being called by her first name, preferring her call sign. I’ll be up in five, unless anyone has exciting news to pass on.

There was a click on the line, someone opening their mic. Uh, sir? I have something here. I’m not sure what I’m seeing.

Grant broke out into a cold sweat as he squirmed out of the bottom half of the EVA suit. That was Dex Chaplin talking, Batta’s apprentice. The kid was smarter than anyone Grant had ever met, but meek. He never spoke up without a damn good reason. If he was injecting himself into the check-in, something was weird.

I was hoping that bit about exciting news was rhetorical, Grant said, trying to keep the mood light. What do you have, Dex?

It’s the telemetry, sir, the kid said, his voice creaking at the edges. I started copying over the drone memory as soon as we hauled them in, and I noticed some weird data spikes while I was glancing through.

What kind of spikes?

Dex took a deep breath, noisy enough for the mic to pick up. That’s the thing. There was a one-point-two-second blip where a section of space nearly a kilometer across registered bursts of electromagnetic emissions and gravitational distortions. I’d have to look closer, but first glance seems like a correlation in power between the two.

Shit, Crash said over the channel. Did someone else Gate in here without us noticing? This was supposed to be a nice, easy survey mission.

And it had been. After eight months of taking the Angel through highly profitable but dangerous supply and escort missions between a warring planet and its moon, they’d taken this job at the edge of explored space as a kind of vacation. A way to make money without being shot at.

Ah, no, Dex interrupted again. No one used a Gate. The readings aren’t consistent with the sort of energy you need to open a hole into the Cascade.

Then what the hell is it? Batta said.

This too was probably rhetorical, but Dex answered because, well, he was Dex and that was just what he did. In practical terms, it’s impossible. Square sections of space/time don’t suddenly give off flares of microwave radiation and register gravitational shimmies for no reason. Everything I know about physics tells me this isn’t possible. Even if this weren’t an order of magnitude below the threshold for gating into the system, we’d still be seeing a ship, right? Our drone was looking right at this patch of sky when it happened, full visuals, and it captured nothing.

Grant closed the locker holding the pieces of his EVA suit and slipped his feet into his boots. The boots tightened as he moved, though he almost didn’t give them enough time to react. He darted to the tube set in the rear of the port bay. Bridge, he said.

Gravity in the tube shifted, launching him upward and slowing him down with feather lightness to avoid splattering him against the ceiling a few seconds later. Grant stepped onto the bridge, tugging the hem of his rumpled shirt down over his belt.

Crash began to rise from the captain’s chair, but he waved her back down. He stood with his gaze fixed on the massive display set in an arc. I assume you already ordered Spencer to do a sweep?

He could almost feel Crash smile when she spoke. Of course. We’ll have returns in a few seconds.

Good, he said with a nod. Dex, are you still there?

Yes, sir.

I want you to drop whatever else you had on your agenda and start drilling through the data. Abby Spencer is going to shoot you a real-time pipeline from the main array, so keep one eye on the display at your station.

Understood, sir.

Grant couldn’t help smiling. Dex had only been on the crew for a year, so the preconceived notions accrued from watching too many dramas about starship captains hadn’t yet broken. For the kid, calling him sir was the most obvious way to show his respect. The rest of the crew demonstrated it in countless other ways. Dex would get there.

Of course, Grant had done Dex an enormous favor, so maybe he’d keep on regardless.

Okay, kids, we’re getting out of here, Grant said over the ship-wide comm. The board is green, so no one should have to hold on to anything, but we have an unusual sensor return. Could be nothing, but strapping in is probably a good idea.

We’re ready down here as soon as you give the word, Batta’s voice said in his ear piece.

Just waiting for the main array returns, Grant said.

The screen lit up with a complicated field of information stacks imposed over the bit of space being scanned. None of the scrolling readouts were abnormal, from what he could see at a glance.

Looks fine to me, Crash said. Maybe the drone malfunctioned.

Grant shook his head, still scanning the information. Dex did the diagnostics and programming himself. You think he made a mistake?

The kid isn’t infallible, Grant, Crash replied, but sounded doubtful.

No, he isn’t, but I think it’d be much more likely that he would have made a mistake with all eight of them rather than just one since the same software package was loaded onto each.

Crash blew out a breath. Instrumentation failure, then. I don’t see—

The sensors went wild. This time it wasn’t just microwave bursts, but the whole EM spectrum lighting up space like a Christmas tree. The stars in the view screen wavered and rippled as if he were looking at them through a pool of water.

It was only then that he realized what was happening.

We’re idiots! Grant shouted. We almost never see it from this side!

Crash rushed to her feet and stood next to him. What—oh. Oh, shit. That’s a ship gate.

Space travel through the Cascade, the weird underspace the universe sat on top of like floating pond scum, required a specialized set of equipment: Gates. These were usually sets of high-energy capacitors and energy collectors loosely tethered to each other and the gate mechanism itself by precision gravity generators. Gates were uniform in size, and the portals they created were as well.

The maelstrom in front of them was much, much larger than it should have been.

Certain ships were equipped with their own Gate generators, however. The physics was beyond Grant, but it had something to do with the ratio of mass to energy output of the ship in question. Mostly it was capital ships, giant lumbering things with enough heft and fusion power to pry open a hole into the Cascade.

Those Gates were whatever size they needed to be to let the ship through, and this knowledge was what sent a cold chill over every inch of Grant Stone’s skin.

Get us out of here, now! he shouted toward the helm station.

The low hum of the Fallen Angel’s own gate pylons extending filled the ship, then grew in intensity until the moment they discharged into space.

Except they didn’t. There was no crackle of energy, no halo of writhing plasma wrapping the hull. Instead the capacitors wound down, dumping their power back into the main system.

Helm? Grant tried very hard to keep fear out of his voice, with questionable success.

I have no idea what just happened, cap, replied Bastian Krieger. It’s like something just shut off the system. I got no override message, no errors, just a shutdown.

Do we still have conventional drives?

A few seconds of frantic tapping. Yes, sir.

Grant sighed with relief inwardly. Okay, then. Get us as far away from that patch of sky as possible.

Next to him, Crash sucked in a sharp breath. Too late.

Just as Grant had feared, it was the other end of a ship gate. The readings, already hovering on the edge of what the system could make rational sense of, pegged out as space itself flared visibly. A roiling torus of plasma appeared and expanded as the energy within the Cascade met real space, growing as it hugged the exterior of the ship emerging through the opening.

It was, as Grant thought, a kilometer across. They watched the thing slide from the space beneath into the universe proper, and it just kept coming. The only construct he had ever seen that came close in scale were space stations, and none of them had the raw mass of this beast, which just kept on coming. Whatever it was, one thing was obvious.

It was made, just not man made.

2

Grant threw himself into the Tactical Control Array and let the interface slide itself around his upper body. Crash, you have command.

Yes, sir. Orders?

With a humorless chuckle, he said, Keep us from all getting killed by whatever that thing is.

The few passengers who had seen the bridge in combat invariably commented on the strange division of labor. It was unusual for the captain to give up overall command during times of crisis—unheard of, actually—but circumstances required it. Cho was the executive officer, and as XO she had Grant’s full faith. Since everyone was forced to wear several hats, and there were only three former military on board, it fell to one of those three to interface with the TCA.

Batta was busy making sure the ship kept working, and while Cho and Grant both had the necessary implants in their brains to control the military-grade defensive and offensive systems, only Grant’s actually worked. Cho, as a heavily trained and experienced fighter pilot, would have been ideal as a gunner had the Navy not scrambled her implants before dishonorably discharging her.

As Grant’s field of vision faded into a view of the outside, he sub-vocalized commands at the computer. Give me a passive channel of the entire ship, with volume spikes for combat presets. The computer played a tone, indicating the program was live. It would play live audio from every duty station in a low background hum, but bringing anything to his attention that fit with the predetermined key words he’d programmed in. Give me an active link to Dex. I might need to ask him questions.

Another soft tone of acknowledgment, then Crash cleared her throat.

Yes, Commander Cho?

Crash’s voice was muffled—the headset had completely covered Grant’s face but for his mouth and nose. I’m linking into your channel with Dex.

Yeah, of course. Why wouldn’t she? God knew she probably needed the kid’s take on what they were seeing more than him.

Then he realized his mistake. He’d prioritized a communication after handing over command. Which was sort of like telling Crash she was in command but, you know, not really.

He’d apologize later.

Data rolled in across the TCA. They were currently moving away from the new arrival at ten gravities, or about a hundred meters per second squared, but Grant had his doubts it would matter if the megaship decided it didn’t want them in its sky. It had finished coming through its gate and revealed itself to be a monstrously huge but weirdly thin vessel. Readings told him it was just over a kilometer in diameter, slightly elliptical in cross section instead of round, and fifteen kilometers long.

It was accelerating, and while the lack of a drive trail wasn’t shocking since even relatively small ships like the Angel had gravity drives, the other sensor data certainly did catch him off guard.

For one, the damn thing was emitting no heat. Oh, their sensors bounced off it just fine. They could see it, but despite the titanic amount of power it took to operate a gravity drive and especially to open a gate through the Cascade, the thing radiated virtually nothing. It was colder than the background radiation of the universe.

Why, though? Grant muttered to himself.

Dex’s voice crackled across the line. What’s that, sir?

I was just wondering out loud why that thing isn’t giving off any heat.

The good news was that the thing didn’t seem interested in them; the Angel was moving off at an angle to the megaship’s direction of travel. It was the way the nose had been pointed, the fastest and easiest vector available.

My first reaction is to say it’s to prevent anyone from knowing how much power they’re producing, Dex murmured. But then any race capable of space travel will look at that thing and understand it’s going to be a lot. So if I had to guess, I’d say it’s a heat reclamation system. They’re recycling every joule of energy through capture.

Grant’s mouth dropped open. That’s crazy. Impossible. Even if they could do it...I mean...

Yeah, Dex said. One of the hardest things to design spacecraft around is how to vent enough heat to keep us all from cooking. Looks like they’ve solved that problem somehow.

The ship continued accelerating, its course popping up on the tactical display. Assuming there were no major adjustments, the thing was heading directly for the local sun. At twenty solar masses, it shined with a brightness old Sol could only envy, if stars were only capable of it. Gravity drives allowed ships to ignore the stellar dance of falling in a wide circle, which the alien ship was taking full advantage of.

Speaking of which.

Dex, is that thing alien? I mean, it has to be, but how sure are you?

That the kid would assume it was alien was beyond doubt; humanity had never built anything like it.

Absolutely certain, came the reply. Circumstantial evidence aside, that ship is made of something our sensors can’t identify. It’s also scanning us with...huh.

What? Grant said after a few silent seconds.

Dex cleared his throat. They’re bombarding us with free protons.

Grant frowned in confusion. A weapon? Are they using, what, a particle accelerator as a weapon?

He could almost hear Dex’s shrug. We use miniatures for conventional propulsion, so I guess it’s possible, though this isn’t doing any damage. It’s unfocused.

Grant watched the ship move purposefully toward the nearby sun, the gap between them growing more vast by the second. When it became clear the Angel wasn’t in danger, Grant began to feel a little stupid.

It was nearly an hour before Krieger gave them a confirmed Cascade rift.

I’ve been running the test cycle on the gate pylons ever since the shutdown. Whatever that ship did, it wore off. Or we’re out of it, he added. Low-power tests are green. We should be able to open a full gate on your command.

Instead, Grant had the ship continue on its course. He wanted to be as far away from the alien vessel as possible when they finally left the system, saying as much to the crew.

Grant motioned for Crash to follow him, then turned to Spencer. Abby, you have the bridge. Cho and I are going to talk with Dex and Batta, decide if it’s safe for us to slip into the Cascade.

Yessir, Abby said, though she stayed at her station. Gone were the days of uni-tasking control boards; now every system could be accessed and controlled from any station, even the TCA. Without the specialized interface it was less efficient, but the distributed design was magnitudes better than the old design ethos. Over the decades tens of thousands of people had died from the inability to access critical controls.

Unsurprisingly, inaccessible consoles were pretty low on Grant’s list of things he was worried might kill him just then.

*

Grant had a hard time looking at the group when he gave them the bad news. We’re going to have to gray flag those drones. Our whole mission, actually.

Obviously, Crash said. It’s not like we can just hand over the data to our broker and go about our business.

Batta sat with fingers laced together in front of his mouth, covering much of the thick black beard framing his angular features. It will be expensive, you realize. We’ll have to wait for the Navy to show up, question us, and clear us.

I think they’ll cover our expenses, if for nothing else than to keep us quiet. Grant didn’t add that the other option was to lock the ship down and throw the crew into a hole so deep light would never penetrate it.

I’m sorry, Dex said, cutting in. What’s a gray flag?

Grant held back a smile. It was easy to forget that for all his education and brilliance, the kid had limited experience out in the world. Looking at him, you might not guess it.

Dex was average height, and though it was hard to tell through the coveralls serving as a uniform, he was densely muscled. Not bulky at all, but what he had was solid. His skin was a light brown with reddish undertones, most of it was covered in markings of one kind or another. His arms were heavily tattooed up to his shoulders, his legs from ankles to hips, his torso branded with complex designs and tattooed over in places.

It was all in the personnel file. The secret one, the real one, Grant had burned after deciding to help the kid out. Cho and Batta knew the deal, of course. Batta was his immediate supervisor, and was brilliant in his own right. He’d have figured it out eventually. Cho was in charge if Grant was killed or captured, so she had to know.

It’s a universal security hold, Grant said. It notifies the Navy that we have something too dangerous or important to share with our broker. It means putting ourselves under Navy lockdown until they see fit to release us.

Grant saw the quickening of the kid’s pulse on his neck, his pupils contract to pinpoints. In most people these were signs of fear, and Dex wasn’t different in that regard. It was what came next that Grant was a little concerned about.

Dex, to his credit, got himself under control. Is my story going to hold up? If the Navy looks into my background, I mean?

Batta chortled. Oh, son. They’re going to look, likely with a comb with teeth so fine they’re single chains of molecules. But we’re not going to let them take you.

It was a statement, delivered with Batta’s usual mundane certainty. Grant had learned through years of working with the man both in the Navy and after that when Batta said a thing was true, it was as reliable as the expectation of