Nepenthe Rising (Stars in Shadow Book 1) Read online

  Books by John Triptych

  Wrath of the Old Gods series (in chronological order)

  The Glooming

  Pagan Apocalypse

  Canticum Tenebris

  The Fomorians

  A World Darkly

  Eye of Balor

  Mortuorum Luctum

  Expatriate Underworld series

  The Opener

  The Loader

  Dying World series

  Lands of Dust

  City of Delusions

  The Maker of Entropy

  Ace of Space series

  The Piranha Solution

  Virago One

  Alien Rebellion series

  Wetworld

  Grotto of Silence

  Blood Horizon

  Stars in Shadow series

  Nepenthe Rising

  Copyright© 2018 by John Triptych

  All rights reserved.

  J Triptych Publishing

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and events either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, and/or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover by Deranged Doctor Design (http://www.derangeddoctordesign.com/)

  Interior formatting by Polgarus Studios

  For Robert Heinlein, who made me a optimist,

  and Harlan Ellison, who made me a pessimist.

  Author’s note:

  Dear reader, I would like to thank you for purchasing this book. As a self-published author, I incur all the costs of producing this novel so your feedback means a lot to me. If you wouldn’t mind, could you please take a few minutes and post a review of this online and let others know what you think of it?

  As I’m sure you’re aware, the more reviews I get, the better my future sales would be and therefore my financial incentive to produce more books for your enjoyment increases. I am very happy to read any comments and questions and I am willing to respond to you personally as quickly as I can. My email is [email protected] if you wish to contact me directly. Again, thank you and I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it!

  Please join my exclusive mailing list! You will get the latest news on my upcoming works and special discounts. Subscription is FREE and you get lots of FREE books! Just copy and paste this link to your browser: http://eepurl.com/bK-xGn

  I’d like to thank:

  Matter Beam’s Tough SF blog, for giving much needed advice on the possibilities of more realistic space warfare and spacecraft designs.

  Atomic Rockets, for superb articles on real-life science and how to apply them in a speculative fiction setting.

  Table of Contents

  1 Relief of Sorrow

  2 Her Motley Crew

  3 Belief

  4 Qualms

  5 The Culling

  6 Crossroads

  7 Novice

  8 The Aphid

  9 Practice and Prediction

  10 The Interlopers

  11 The Elite Class

  12 Surprise Guests

  13 The Getaway

  14 Commitment

  15 The Setup

  16 The Pupil

  17 Schemes

  18 Bonding

  19 The Dissenter

  20 The Impostors

  21 Travelers

  22 The Relic

  23 Last Heroics

  24 Hot Extraction

  25 Absconding

  26 The Machinations

  27 Marvels and Mysteries

  28 Betrayer

  29 Ambush at Mystic Mountain

  30 Skirmishers

  31 Battle of Attrition

  32 Day of Heroes

  33 The Unveiled

  Also by J Triptych Publishing

  The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.

  - Carl Sagan, Cosmos

  The night sky is only a sort of carbon paper,

  Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars

  Letting in the light, peephole after peephole—

  A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.

  -Sylvia Plath, Collected Poems

  Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires.

  -William Shakespeare, Macbeth

  1 Relief of Sorrow

  Resembling a radiant flower in the darkness of space, the luxury liner Tamaishi and her military escort had just entered the third quadrant of the Outer Reaches when the unexpected happened. Their astrogation charts indicated the next cloud of dark matter in the area was two days away at standard thrust, and the two starships wasted no time and immediately began a leisurely acceleration of one-gee. The zone they traveled into was hardly used by any faction and they did not expect an encounter, but nevertheless the crew of the USNS Memnon remained ever watchful as the heavy cruiser led the way.

  Inside one of the luxury staterooms of the Tamaishi, two humans stared out past the large windows and observed the glowing petal-shaped plasma radiators near the aft part of the ship. The one closest to the window was a girl of near sixteen standard years, and the other a tall, wiry woman with dark curly hair and light brown skin.

  The teenage girl turned and smiled with an innate curiosity at the older one. “Why do they glow like that?”

  “Our ship generates heat when the fusion drive is turned on, and from our own bodies,” Dr. Dhara Hayer said. “In space, heat doesn’t dissipate by itself—it must be cooled via those radiators, Maeve.”

  Maeve Lindros turned her attention back to the radiators, her shoulder-length auburn hair giving off a bright reflective sheen from the illumination of the external lights along the outer hull of the ship. “It looks so magical.”

  “They glow because of the tremendous heat being discharged. The energy this ship generates is almost as powerful as a small star’s.”

  “If we generate as much heat as a star, how do we control it?”

  “The plasma is held together by magnetic fields made of small dust particles,” Dhara said. “And we can shape these fields into many different forms. I guess the designers of this ship wanted to add a touch of aesthetics, and they shaped the radiators like flower petals.”

  “So the exhaust heat energizes the dust and that’s why they glow?”

  Dhara grinned while placing a hand on the younger girl’s shoulder. “Yes, exactly.”

  Maeve turned and looked at her once more. “Will we get to see some real flowers when we arrive on Earth?”

  Dhara stared deeply into the teenage girl’s violet eyes. Maeve was always polite and obedient, and Dhara regretted having to do all those tests on her since the day she was born. It was Dhara’s own guilt that drove her into volunteering to help bring Maeve back to the Science Institute’s headquarters on Earth, and she feared the decision would haunt her until she died.

  She placed her hand on the girl’s delicate chin. “Yes, I promise to take you to a real live terrestrial garden when we get there. No more holograms.”

  Maeve started to giggle as she reached out and hugged her. “I’d love to see all the plants and animals of Earth. I also want to stare up at the blue sky; it would be so wonderful to see them all for real this time.”

  Dhara wrapped her own arms around the girl’s shoulders while trying not to cry. She knew her directives, and Maeve would have to be turned over to the next research team when they arrived on the planet. It would be the last time they would ever see each other. How she hated having to lie to the girl, and her conscience was eating at her
.

  The sudden howling of the alarm startled them both. The succeeding voice blaring from the ship’s intercom system clearly belonged to the captain. “Attention passengers, please prepare for high-gee accelerations. Please make sure you are restrained safely and stay within your cabins and staterooms. Ship’s gravity will cease in one minute.”

  Gathering up her courage, Dhara led Maeve over to the acceleration couches. “Go ahead, sit down and I’ll help you buckle up.”

  Maeve was wild-eyed as Dhara secured the gravity restraints over her torso. “What is it? What’s happening?”

  “It’s okay, everything’s going to be fine,” Dhara said tersely while reaching up and taking a helmet from the emergency storage closet. “Tilt your head forward.”

  Maeve did as she was told. Dhara placed the helmet on the girl’s head and engaged the adjustable neck seal to make sure she could breathe in the event of a hull breach and subsequent loss of atmosphere. Taking a pair of pressurized gloves from the same emergency closet, Dhara gave them to the girl. Maeve didn’t need additional instructions as she dutifully put them on while Dhara started donning her own helmet and gloves. The flexible jumpsuits they wore would protect their bodies from the hard vacuum of space using mechanical counterpressure, so they needed to make sure their extremities would be equally safe.

  Within seconds, the ship’s cylindrical outer hull had stopped spinning before compressing onto itself, and Dhara now floated in front of the girl, her feet departing from the ground the moment the ship’s gravity ceased. As the section they were in began to imbed itself deeper into the Tamaishi’s superstructure, the once transparent windows were quickly shuttered, with only the interior cabin lights now illuminating the suite.

  The terror in Maeve’s eyes was evident. “What’s going to happen now?”

  Dhara tapped the girl’s helmet and smiled to put her at ease. “Stay calm, everything will be alright.”

  The sudden delta-V surge nearly caused Dhara to crash into her ward, but she was able to grab a nearby handhold that prevented her from being violently thrust sideways on the second, more forceful gravity pull. It was clear the Tamaishi was close to full acceleration now, and she guessed the whole thing was being caused by something they’d encountered.

  She needed to get to the bridge and find out exactly what was happening. Using the nearby bulkhead as a jumping-off point, Dhara used her legs to thrust forward while aiming her shoulders towards the door. The moment she got in front of the entryway, Dhara turned and gave a thumbs-up sign to her fidgety charge. “Maeve, I need to talk to the captain. Please stay here for now, okay?”

  Maeve’s eyebrows shot up. She tried to undo her restraints, but Dhara had locked them down using her com-link override. “Dhara, please don’t leave me here alone! Please!”

  Dhara raised her voice to make sure Maeve understood it was an order. “Maeve, I said stay there. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

  Maeve whimpered before looking away. She always did this every time one of their tests at the research outpost became too painful for her to stoically endure. The teenage girl closed her eyes, hoping the terror would soon pass.

  Resisting the urge to drift back into the cabin interior and comfort her, Dhara activated her remote override once more to open the door of the suite instead. Using her hands to push herself into the corridor, Dhara sealed the door behind her before she thrust herself into the space in between the passageway.

  The artificial intelligence implant at the back of her skull had a backdoor override with the highest command priority, and it even gave Dhara enough authority to take control of the entire ship if need be, though she had no skills or experience when it came to commanding such a vessel. Despite all the emergency bulkheads being closed in front of her, Dhara effortlessly opened them up again as she steadily made her way towards the bridge.

  Captain Hector Udeze sat in the center of the Tamaishi’s control room, surrounded by a dozen nervous crewmen looking at their personal consoles. He turned his head in surprise when the once sealed access doors suddenly opened, and Dhara floated into the vessel’s command and control room.

  The ship’s first officer, Karoly Barko, started to undo the restraints in his chair. He wanted to throw this unknown intruder out. “How did you get in here? You are not allowed!”

  Udeze held up a restraining hand to the vessel’s second-in-command. “Easy, Barko,” he said before turning to face Dhara. “You were told to stay in your quarters. As of right now you are making my job much harder, Doctor.”

  Using her arms to push off, Dhara slowly made her way towards him. “Since I’m the reason for this trip, I need to know what’s happening here.”

  The captain sighed as he tapped the buttons on his command console, allowing network access to her AI implant. The smartglass in Dhara’s helmet visor gave her a virtual view of the Tamaishi’s sensor readings and tactical displays.

  “The Memnon alerted us just a few minutes ago,” Udeze said. “They got a contact.”

  Dhara was stunned. She switched her com-link status to personal so only the captain would hear her words. “A contact? Out here? That’s impossible!”

  Udeze angrily shifted the display on his personal console so Dhara could see it for herself. Sure enough, a red blip was showing on the three-dimensional tactical map, indicating another ship of some kind was in the area. “She appeared almost out of nowhere, as if the vessel was waiting for us to get into the area in between the shadow zones of this system. We first spotted her heat signature when she suddenly fired up her fusion engines and engaged radiators.”

  Dhara bit her lip. The unknown ship must have jumped into the system using her tesseract drive, a faster-than-light engine using dark energy to jump from one dark matter field into another. Because of this peculiar characteristic, the t-drive could only be used within areas of dark matter, marking these places as natural highways in deep space. Ships regularly traveled across the stars using the t-drive, and would end up in each system’s dark matter clouds before using conventional fusion drives for traveling to and from the nearby planets.

  The two blue dots on the holographic map indicated their own ships, with the Memnon just slightly ahead of the Tamaishi. The red blip continued to close in, and she would soon be in battle range. Dhara knew the ship she was traveling in was a civilian liner, and would have no chance against a warship. The Memnon, on the other hand, was a heavy cruiser, able to overcome any other class of military spacecraft with the exception of the all-powerful, but ultimately rare, battleships.

  Udeze sensed what she was thinking. “She’s not returning our hails. If she’s a pirate ship, she’s moving too fast to be a battleship—she’s gotta be a destroyer or corvette class.”

  “I’ve never heard of pirates having a battleship anyway,” Dhara said. “Nobody except the Concordance and the Union could even afford to deploy such giant ships since—”

  Her words were interrupted when the ship commander of the Memnon began shouting over the com-link. “I think we’ve identified the unknown contact; she’s the Nepenthe!”

  The entire crew of the Tamaishi seemed to gasp in unison. Dhara was unfamiliar with such a ship, and she quickly activated her AI’s learning mode to see what she could glean about her. When the information she sought began to process itself on her helmet display, she drew in a deep breath.

  It wasn’t just any pirate vessel. The Nepenthe was the most dreaded marauder of them all. Both the Concordance and the Union had branded the ship and her crew as outlaws, but the Nepenthe had evaded destruction for over two decades, ever since she had burst onto the news when she successfully raided and nearly destroyed the Union colony world of Sparta. Despite being actively hunted by the major factions of the galaxy, this dreaded pirate ship continued her reign of terror without relenting.

  Dhara could hardly believe all the incidents the Nepenthe was involved in. The raid on Tanhauser Gate. The plunder of Xin Sheng colony. The destruction of numerous warships
sent against her, including the Union’s pride and former flagship, the Hyperion. Concordance intelligence even classified the Nepenthe as a pocket battleship, a design type no longer in common usage.

  With trembling shoulders, Dhara accessed the characteristics of what a pocket battleship could do. It seemed the Nepenthe was classified as such due to her speed, defenses, and armament. Pocket battleships had the acceleration of heavy cruisers, yet could outclass the latter type when it came to a stand-up battle. The only possible ship class the Nepenthe might have trouble against was a true battleship, yet her defeat of the Hyperion was legendary in the annals of military history. The Union Star Force had standing orders to engage this dangerous vessel only when its warships were deployed in fleets, for the Nepenthe reigned supreme when it came to a one-on-one fight against anyone.

  Dhara gulped. Their sole escort was the Memnon, and she was merely a heavy cruiser. Nevertheless, she figured their Union escort would at the very least do the pirate ship enough damage to enable the Tamaishi to escape. She turned to look at the captain. “How far away are we from the dark matter cloud we just came out of?”

  Udeze typed in the calculations on his command console. “At standard thrust, three hours.”

  Dhara did some mental calculations of her own. “So how long will it take for us to get back there at full thrust?”

  Udeze gave her a shocked look. “That’s almost six-gees of acceleration! We’ll be lucky to be alive by the time we get there in forty-five minutes.”

  Dhara looked around until she found a jumper seat along the sides of the room. Pushing off using the captain’s chair as leverage, she drifted over to the small accelerator couch and began to strap herself in. “Order the Memnon to engage the contact. Turn this ship around and head back towards the field we arrived in. Get us close to three-gee acceleration.”