Redemption Protocol (Contact) by Mike Freeman Read Free Book Online

leisurely four hundred kilometers per second. It looked, to human eyes, like a medieval painting of hell. Glowing clouds of hydrogen provided layer upon layer of red. It was a fluid kaleidoscope of smeared blood, spilled wine, stolen rubies and raging fire that created dark and sinister shapes in the negative spaces between the clouds. Stars provided random points of brilliance, like diamonds scattered on the canvas.
    An infinitesimal point appeared at the chosen location, increasing in luminosity and building in energy. The point built to a blinding brilliance then exploded outward. Bolts of fierce energy struck out like magnesium arcs in all directions, repeatedly bifurcating as they desperately sought some mass to grab hold of in the instant of their existence.
    And then the ship was there, blinking into existence, traveling at great speed and already detaching from its Main Drive as its journey began – six months of continuous deceleration to the binary star system Vela-721.
    The Main Drive decelerated much faster than the ship it had stewarded through hyperspace and launched on its way. Inside the Main Drive its red hand, Cents, completed the dispatch and decelerate process. Afterward, he would settle in to wait the six years for the return of the Alliance Vessel Intrepid .
    It would never return.
    Cents, more than human but not privy to the future, diligently attended to his work.

 8. 
     
     
     
     
    On board the AV Intrepid , the precious cargo of twenty six crew dreamed on, drifting through the icy caverns of cryofrozen sleep. Around the ship, dim lights illuminated empty corridors.
    The ship was state of the art and of the eponymous spindle design. Sheltering behind the umbrella of the bow was a stack of six discs, each two hundred meters across and thirty meters deep. The discs were skewered on a long central spindle that provided the spine of the vessel. The main drive system was situated over a kilometer behind the discs, although auxiliary drives adorned the ship like baubles on a tree.
    The bow was a squat cone, slightly larger in circumference than the discs behind it, that comprised the Intrepid’s primary shields and a phased array called the Hel. The Hel was the Intrepid's primary sensor and weapon system. If the crew had to fight the ship they would orient it so the bow faced toward the main threat and thus shielded the rest of the vessel. They couldn't shield everything, of course, it would mean shipping too much mass.
    The front two discs were primarily for crew habitation, both living and working, and each comprised a chain of twelve habitation modules, or 'habs', linked in a circle to form the outer edge of the disc. The habs could be individually rotated to face against the direction of thrust or the entire disc could be spun like a wheel to simulate gravity as required. For the moment, the habs were rotated so that their floors were oriented toward their destination, against the ship's continuous deceleration, ready for when the crew would be roused in six months time.
    The ship decelerated through space with its security utterly compromised. The crew slumbered on, blissfully unaware of the spies, saboteurs and separatists amongst their number.
    On arrival, the Intrepid was designed to be self-sufficient for at least seven years.
    It wouldn't last three days.

 9. 
     
     
     
     
    In Havoc's world there was nothing. Then out of nothing there was a pianissimo tremolo of violins, a spacious horn, a mellow flute and a gentle trill on a cymbal.
    His first thought: this cannot possibly be what death is like. His subconscious knew what was coming next and his conscious was fast catching up. The strings grew a little louder and more imposing, but he could still sense their restraint. The flutes played point-counterpoint with the strings, enjoying their mutual seduction as they teased and weaved together. Unmistakably an der schönen blauen Donau op. 314. On the Beautiful Blue Danube. The prelude