Dreadnought (Lost Colonies Trilogy Book 2) by B. V. Larson Read Free Book Online Page A

you?”
    “Immediately, madam.”
    She left with poor grace. I returned to my seat and Rumbold rolled his bulging eyes around to land on me.
    “That wasn’t diplomacy!” he exclaimed. “You spat at each other like two alley cats.”
    “Two cats from rival houses, you mean,” I said.
    “Why would they assign such a person to the task of playing ambassador? You might as well give Zye the job.”
    I chuckled at the thought. Zye’s concept of diplomacy was limited in the extreme.
    “Appointments of this sort are rarely based on merit,” I admitted. “She’s well-connected, and she wanted the job. I doubt anyone had the guts to refuse her request.”
    “She wants to go into space,” Rumbold said thoughtfully, “but she can’t handle an extra half-G of acceleration…? This doesn’t bode well.”
    “No,” I agreed, “it doesn’t.”
    The hours went by quickly, as did the inner planets. We passed the orbit of Mars, tilted above the plane of the ecliptic to miss the asteroid belt, and soon thereafter Jupiter was looming.
    We’d traveled an amazing distance in a short time. The full power of Defiant ’s engines was startling. When I’d flown her home to Earth nearly a year ago, she’d been a limping wreck. Now, she was in prime condition.
    As we approached Jupiter’s orbital lane and passed it, we came into the region of space where the ER bridges lurked. The existence of these channels into hyperspace had first been proposed by Einstein and Rosen in the early twentieth century. They’d later become popularized with the term “wormhole.”
    As in so many cases in theoretical physics, the practical realities didn’t match the theory exactly, but the bridges were close enough in nature to warrant the naming credit. Rather than being a warped connection between two points in space and relating to a black hole, the entry points were more numerous and less deadly. They appeared as fractures in space, rather than holes. They did, however, operate to connect two spots in normal space.
    Once entered into, a given ER bridge led the explorers on an exciting journey, during which they had to locate and pierce the exit point. The bridges were called bridges because they operated in two directions, with fixed entry and exit points in normal space.
    The only difficulty came when one explored a new bridge for the first time. There was no known way to detect ahead of time where the exit might lead—or even where it was, exactly. In most cases, the other end was located near a large gravitational force. After all, there had to be something big enough to cause the fracture in the first place—but even this detail wasn’t always dependable.
    “Guardsmen,” I said, engaging the ship’s public address system. “This is your captain speaking. We’re about to embark on a dangerous mission. No one from Earth has activated an ER bridge in a hundred and fifty long years. It’s time that changed.”
    All over the ship, people stopped what they were doing and listened. I couldn’t blame them. It might be one of the last things they ever heard.
    Defiant thrummed under our feet and hands. We could feel her power. Thus far, she’d flown with eagerness, never seeming to reach a speed she could not surpass. She was a fine ship, and I was glad to be her captain.
    “We’re about to enter an ER bridge into the unknown,” I continued. “Throughout time, humans have sought to push their limits, to explore new places no one has ever seen before. This opportunity awaits us today. With luck, we’ll find a friendly colony on the far side of this bridge and establish a positive relationship with them. It’s time to cross your fingers as we have only minutes left.”
    “Sir,” Zye said suddenly. “I have a security alert on my boards.”
    I spun my chair around and faced her. “Explain.”
    “There’s someone in the aft hold. The entrance is unauthorized.”
    My mind raced. The aft hold? That was hardly a critical portion of