Cosmic Thunder (Sentinels Saga Book 3) Read online

  COSMIC

  THUNDER

  Linn Schwab

  Book #3 in the Sentinels saga.

  The characters in this book are fictional.

  Any resemblance to actual persons,

  living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by B. Linn Schwab

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced

  or distributed in any manner without

  permission from the publisher.

  Mystic Winds Publishing

  Kalamazoo, Michigan.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  SETBACK 073

  SALVATION 074

  COMPASSION 075

  PRESENCE 076

  SUSPICIONS 077

  SURROGATE 078

  REUNION 079

  CASUALTIES 080

  TRIVIAL RECALL 081

  HIDDEN MEANINGS 082

  PERILOUS MANEUVERS 083

  CAPTIVE 084

  WAYWARD FATES 085

  NEW PERSPECTIVES 086

  ORDNANCE RUN 087

  ALTERNATE OBJECTIVES 088

  DANGEROUS GAME 089

  ILLUMINATIONS 090

  DEPARTURES 091

  ARRIVAL 092

  IMPRESSIONS 093

  FLASHPOINT 094

  SETBACK 073

  Valhalla welcomed her new residents with several straight months of cooperative weather. Rains arrived to water the freshly scattered seeds almost as soon as they touched the soil. Within weeks, the beginnings of a vegetable garden sprang up near the outskirts of Base Camp One. In widely dispersed plots on the nearby plains, a patchwork of grasses soon sprouted and took their first steps toward blanketing the continent. Sapling trees emerged in carefully spaced plots, or in rows that were meant for transplanting in the future. On land everything appeared to be going smoothly for the colonists. But in the ocean they were vexed with a serious problem. One that threatened to derail all their well–‌crafted plans.

  Eleven months after first setting foot on Valhalla, Jüergens found himself standing near the makeshift laboratory, waiting anxiously for the latest update from Lena. The sun had set more than five hours earlier, and a majority of the colonists had long since retired to their tents. But Lena was still working in the early morning hours while a handful of scientists peered over her shoulder, awaiting her results with dour expectations. The fate of their efforts to terraform Valhalla could very well depend on the outcome of her analysis. While all of them hoped for a positive outcome, they realized their chances were slim at best. What would happen in the wake of a negative assessment was something none of them wanted to consider.

  At long last, Lena held up a flask of water and swirled it around to observe the results. She probed the jostled water with an analyzer wand. Within seconds, she frowned and lowered her head. “It happened again,” she said to the others. “More than ninety–‌eight percent mortality this time. It seems to be getting worse with each successive occurrence.”

  Jüergens pulled both fists up to his forehead and let out a lengthy groan of frustration. “This can’t be happening,” he complained. “I can’t believe something as simple as this is going to chase us off of this planet. This world just has too much potential for us to give up on it so easily. There has to be something we can do to make this work.”

  “Too good to be true,” Gustav said, in a somber tone of “I told you so.”

  “Apparently so,” Jüergens conceded. “Looks like I should’ve heeded your warning from the start.”

  “Believe me,” Gustav said, “I wanted this to work as much as anyone did. I don’t exactly relish the thought of spending several more years cooped up inside a spaceship. But in this instance, it seems as if we don’t have much of a choice. Perhaps this world wasn’t meant for us after all.”

  Jüergens gazed up at the stars overhead as he contemplated the arduous task of transferring everything back up to the Livingstone. The prospect of moving to another solar system was not something any of his team would be fond of. “Lena,” he said, hoping there might be an alternative, “is there any chance we could manage to get by without them?”

  “Perhaps,” she cautioned, “but I wouldn’t recommend it. Phytoplankton are a critical component to creating a healthy marine ecosystem. We can’t even introduce zooplankton until a viable phytoplankton population is established.”

  Jüergens turned to Anders now. “What do you think, Anders?” he said. “Do we have any chance at all of getting by without phytoplankton?”

  “No, she’s absolutely right, Jüergens. You’re talking about the very base of the food chain, not to mention their importance in sustaining the planet’s atmosphere. If you really want to create a self–‌sustaining, Earth–‌like planet, phytoplankton have to be a part of the equation.”

  “And we still have no idea what’s causing these die–‌offs?”

  Lena shook her head. “All we know is that it seems to happen at fairly regular intervals, approximately every sixty days or so. And even if we could find out what’s causing this, it’s occurring on such a massive scale that it’s doubtful we’d be able to compensate for it.”

  “What about the two percent that survived?” Jüergens asked. “Is there any chance they’ve adapted to survive this phenomenon, and will pass on their genes in high enough numbers to eventually result in a healthy population?”

  “Without knowing what the problem is, I can’t really say. The specimens that survived may have just been lucky. The next occurrence could very well finish them off.”

  “Well, I guess that pretty much settles it,” Gustav said. “We might as well start loading our gear in the shuttles. Hopefully we’ll have better luck in the next solar system.”

  “Just a minute, now,” Anders insisted, “there’s one possibility we haven’t discussed yet. There may still be a way to establish phytoplankton on this planet, if we’re willing to take a chance on an untested concept.”

  Lena looked over her shoulder at him with a glint of irritation in her eyes. “What untested concept? What are you talking about? Why didn’t you mention anything about this to me before?”

  “Because,” he said, “I know you, Lena. I know how you think, and I know how you feel about your work. And to be honest, I’m reasonably certain the biologist in you is not going to like it.”

  SALVATION 074

  >>

  A slumbering sentience slowly awakened as it emerged from the depths of a cosmic dust cloud. For nearly two hundred years he’d been a prisoner of the dark, mired in an ocean of ever–‌shifting sands, deprived of even a trace of sunlight. Held captive by the whims of fluid dynamics. Over time, the internal movements of the cloud had pushed him ever closer to its outer perimeter. Meandering flows of drifting sand had carried him along at a glacial pace, like a bubble submerged in a slow moving current. Shrouded for so long within a cloak of total darkness, his energy reserves had long ago expired, his sense of awareness fading to a cold gray nothing. But now, as the sand slipped away from his exterior, sunlight kissed the surface of his solar collectors, and photons began to dance across his long dormant circuits. One by one, his bio–‌cells began to reawaken; his thought processes stumbled in fits and starts. He searched his memory banks for some sense of meaning: Who am I? Where am I? Why am I here? As energy reserves built up inside him again, traces of his past gradually began to resurface. Remnants of a long held priority directive lingered in the depths of his cognitive functions:

  —fol ow ST L

  —d cume t d sc veries

  —tr nsm t l0c tion

  His memory had become degraded over time, forcing him to overlay fragments
of data gleaned from redundant storage locations, all of which suffered from some degree of corruption. After careful analysis of all the most likely permutations, he interpreted the persisting directive as:

  —follow Stanley

  —document discoveries

  —transmit location

  He scanned his immediate surroundings for a Stanley, but found nothing that matched any fragments in his memory. The area that lay beyond his scanner range was vast — much more than he could possibly hope to search, even if given an eternity to do so. A feeling of loneliness crept into his thoughts now, escalating quickly to sorrow and despair, and fear that he was doomed to eternal isolation. In an act of desperation, he extended his antenna and sent off an omnidirectional plea:

  —Stanley, where are you?

  —???

  —I’m lost.

  Hope faded as the hours passed with no response, his brooding sense of loneliness growing ever stronger. But at last his receptors detected a reply, bearing the vaguely familiar call sign of a long lost companion:

  From: STN–‌LV

  To: JSPR

  Message: —I’m here.

  Jasper immediately triggered his thrusters and set off to follow the signal to its source. Fifteen months later he arrived above a world with vast blue oceans, continents smothered in lush green foliage, and a well preserved spacecraft circling in orbit. He took up position alongside the Livingstone, aimed his antenna at a distant point of light, and fulfilled the requirements of his long–‌standing directive ... to the best of his ability.

  * * * *

  Jared awoke in his bunk on the Livingstone and stifled the alarm that had jarred him from sleep. He rubbed his face and swung his legs out of bed, then headed for the galley to brew a cup of coffee, and snack on whatever was available for breakfast. This was the third morning of his maintenance tour aboard the Livingstone — an eighteen day visit to the orbiting starship to ensure that its systems were functioning properly. The work could be tedious and exhausting at times, but he considered it an honor to be chosen for this duty, and volunteered for it on an annual basis. After all, preserving the legendary ship of the ancestors was an important aspect of honoring their legacy. Gwen Allers herself had penned an impassioned plea that the Livingstone should be preserved and maintained for the benefit of Valhalla’s future generations. In fact, so fervent had she been in making this request that an excerpt from her writings was scripted in stone on the monument which marked her final resting place:

  … and endeavor to take care of our Benevolent Friend as he has always cared for us …

  Much had changed in the years since the founders’ arrival. Many challenges had been overcome along the way. Although life was now abundant and flourishing on Valhalla, there still remained a vast number of species which had yet to be reconstituted. Many samples were still safely stored on board the Livingstone — reason enough to ensure it remained in good repair. But the people of Valhalla also cherished this ship, and were keen to honor the founders’ wishes in whatever meaningful ways they could. The story of their ambitious journey from Earth formed the very heart of the population’s cultural identity. The founders were revered and much admired by the populace. And so was the ESS David Livingstone — or “The Ark,” as many had come to call it, in reference to a story from Earth’s ancient past. Acting as more than just an orbiting storage facility, it also functioned as a space–‌based laboratory, playing host to small groups of scientists and students performing a variety of botanical experiments. The “benevolent friend” Gwen Allers had mentioned in her writings remained mysterious and eternally elusive. But the ship itself was well cared for nonetheless, and remained at the ready should a need for it arise.

  After grabbing a mug of hot coffee from the kitchen, Jared headed to the Livingstone’s bridge to retrieve his daily messages, which almost always consisted of additional work orders, news updates from the planet’s surface, and a note from his wife, with a few random photos depicting the antics of their children. When he arrived, he found two of his co–‌workers near the helm, staring out at something through the starboard bank of windows.

  “Mornin’, boys,” he said to them both. “What’s got you two so captivated?”

  “Jared, you’ve got to see this,” Kirk insisted, waving him closer to the starboard windows.

  When Jared laid eyes on what they were staring at, his jaw immediately fell wide open. Floating thirty meters off the Livingstone’s side was what clearly appeared to be a functioning space probe. He’d never seen anything like it before, and knew right away that it had not been created by the people of Valhalla. It bore no resemblance to anything currently in use there. “Where the hell did that come from?” he asked.

  “Don’t know,” Kirk said, “but it’s not one of ours.”

  “Obviously not,” Jared agreed. “How long has it been sitting out there?”

  “Not sure about that either. We just walked in a few seconds before you, looked out the window, and there it was. What do you make of it?”

  “Definitely some kind of deep space probe. From the looks of it, it must’ve had a pretty rough journey.”

  “You think it poses any threat to us?”

  Jared studied the object’s design and decided it most likely had come from Earth. There were certain familiar characteristics that matched the Livingstone’s outer hull. “It looks harmless enough to me,” he said. “But I’d sure like to know how it ended up here.”

  >>

  Morale was running low among the employees on the sprawling corporate campus of Practical Solutions. After many decades as the world’s most powerful company, its reign was finally coming to an end. A deluge of lawsuits related to one of its technologies had succeeded in bringing the former juggernaut to its knees. The battle to remain an independent entity had dragged on in the courts for nearly a decade now. But a host of desperate measures to keep the company afloat had failed to revive it from the throes of bankruptcy. Now, with its prospects for survival looking bleak, this once proud corporate behemoth was on the verge of being swallowed by one of its rivals. With all reasonable alternatives seemingly exhausted, an early afternoon meeting had been scheduled to discuss the details of the looming takeover.

  Chairman Keith Ross, the current CEO of Practical Solutions, was only minutes from the start of a conference call with his counterpart at Voorling Worldwide Industries. The impending transfer of controlling interest was a bitter pill for him to swallow. The fact that three centuries of corporate dominance was coming to an end under his watch left him feeling defeated and humiliated. Upon being confirmed as CEO, he’d been tasked with the challenge of reviving the company before it became too weak to recover. But all of his best efforts had resulted in failure, and its fortunes had hovered ever closer to the brink. There would be no recovery for Practical Solutions. His name would soon be forever linked with the downfall of the greatest corporation in history, even though the beginning of his tenure at the company hadn’t come until it was already on the path to decline.

  What a way to go out, he thought, as he paused to remember his appointment to the job. Hopefully, history will recognize the fact that the deck was heavily stacked against me from the start.

  * * * *

  Several floors below the chairman’s office, in a basement–‌level corporate records room, a pair of technicians sat idly at their desks as the minutes before the conference call ticked away. Everyone on the campus was aware of the meeting, and most of the employees would be listening in to see if they could decipher what the future held for them. The takeover was certain to result in lost jobs as part of the consolidation process. There was much anxiety and speculation among the personnel as to which positions might end up being cut in the merger.

  “Four minutes to armageddon,” Tyson said, drumming his fingers on the desktop in front of him.

  “Don’t be such a pessimist,” Conner chided him. “We’re corporate records. They have to keep us.”

&
nbsp; Tyson smirked and shook his head. “You don’t think Voorling has their own records personnel? I’m tellin’ ya, once this deal goes through, our days of employment here are numbered. I can feel the axe coming down on my neck already. Now I’m wishing I would’ve gone ahead with that transfer to genetics. There’s no way Voorling is gonna cut that department.”

  Behind them against one of the room’s inner walls stood a towering achievement from the company’s past — an enormous, metal–‌skinned mass of circuitry, long ago dubbed ‘Socrates’ by its designers. In years past, it had played an integral role in the day to day operations of the company. But of late, it had seemed to fall out of favor, and was seldom if ever consulted anymore, if not completely ignored or forgotten. For the most part, it just remained eerily silent, like a brooding colossus whose time had come and gone, waiting for someone to finally decide to pull the plug. So it came as quite a shock to both Tyson and Conner when the idle giant suddenly beckoned to them:

  “Incoming message,” Socrates announced. “Priority communique from off–‌world source.”

  The two technicians spun around in their chairs, exchanging quick glances of surprise and confusion. “Off–‌world source?” Tyson wondered aloud. “Why would it be coming through here? Our communications center usually handles those calls.”

  “The message is addressed to me,” Socrates replied. “It’s a response to a corporate directive that pre–‌dates the communications center’s existence.”

  “What?” Tyson said in bewilderment. “That center’s been in operation for decades!”

  “I’m aware of that,” Socrates calmly replied. “This directive pre–‌dates it by more than two centuries.”

  “Two centuries!” Conner exclaimed, exchanging a dumbfounded look with Tyson.

  “What’s the message?” Tyson asked. The thought of a centuries–‌old directive intrigued him, conjuring images of a corporate time capsule in his mind.