Nexus Point

Nexus Point

  The Fall of the Altairan Empire: Book One

  Jaleta Clegg

  Second Edition: Copyright 2014 Jaleta Clegg

  (First edition copyright 2009 Cyberwizard Productions)

  ©2014

  Please do not copy or distribute this book without the permission of the author.

  A complete listing of works can be found at https://www.jaletac.com

  Praise for The Fall of the Altairan Empire:

  Jaleta has managed to create one of the strongest female characters I have ever read.

  Well written, with an unpredictable plot and well-rounded characters.

  Fans of science fiction novels should love this book.

  I enjoyed the Priestess of the Eggstone and would recommend it for anyone seeking a fun 'Indiana Jones' style adventure through space.

  This is a good adventure series with strong male and female characters.

  This was a fun Sci-fi read, and I will be looking for the other books to read as well.

  For Genny, because you believed.

  Table of Contents

  Author Bio

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 1

  "Dace? We really need to talk."

  I hunched my shoulders. I doubted Jerith wanted a discussion. He much preferred lecturing.

  "Oh, Captain?" He leaned over my chair; the stench of old sweat filled the tiny cockpit.

  "What?" I kept my back to him, choosing instead to watch the interplay of colored light across the viewscreen. I wrinkled my nose.

  "The ship needs a week in drydock. Everything is falling apart. See? The coolant levels are spiking again." He reached over my shoulder to tap the indicator.

  I pushed his hand away. "The ship is fine. That's just an air bubble. It will work itself through the system soon enough." Less than three weeks out and I wished I'd never signed his contract.

  "We need to put the ship in drydock, Dace." Jerith swung my chair to face him. "I'm telling you as your engineer that this vessel is unsafe. The whole hyperdrive system could fail at any moment. It needs repairs and adjustments. As the captain you should take responsibility. If you won't, I will."

  I ignored his juvenile attempt at intimidation. I could play that game better. "You can check the coolant on the ground at Thurwood if it will make you feel better. The hyperdrive system is fine. I checked it myself. I'm paying you to be the engineer, not some drydock tech company."

  "You haven't paid me anything. And coolant systems that old are not my job."

  "You said they were when I hired you." I suspected he just didn't want to crawl through the access conduits. If I hadn't been female and young besides, he might have shown me at least a little respect. But he'd probably still insist that I crawl into the conduits.

  He snorted, crossing his flabby arms.

  I was the captain. It was his job to fix the engines, not mine. "Scared of tight spaces? Or are you just incompetent?"

  "How come there isn't any soup left?" Flago smelled worse than Jerith. Neither cared much about personal hygiene. "All we got are two week's worth of breakfast cereal."

  "You ate the soup already," Jerith said.

  I rubbed my forehead. Tempting as it was, beating them into submission would only make matters worse, though the strategy had worked on the bullies at the Academy. "So eat cereal. It was the only thing I could afford on Beccurot." This wasn't what I'd envisioned two months earlier when I'd graduated from the Patrol Academy.

  Flago sniffed. He stalked all four steps to the galley.

  "Drydock, or I won't fly with you. This ship isn't safe." Jerith slapped my chair.

  "Feel free to leave anytime." I turned back to the controls as he left the cockpit.

  He muttered in the galley with Flago. I didn't care. Let them plot. When we made port, they were both getting off. Permanently.

  My board erupted in red lights. Sirens screamed. Alarms shrilled. The ship shuddered violently. I froze for a split second before the Academy training kicked in. The autopilot flashed. We weren't at destination. The engine whined as the temperature shot up the scale. I flipped the board to manual control and slammed the hyperdrive shutdown switches initiating an emergency downshift. Lost and drifting in normal space beat the alternative which involved exploding.

  The bubble of normal space generated by the hyperdrive collapsed. My vision blurred as three dimensional space twisted into seven. If we weren't close enough to a large gravity well, we were about to be smeared across the transect boundary of hyperspace.

  The ship lurched and shook. The universe flipped right side out. I sucked in a breath. Every indicator glowed red when the sublight systems tried to boot.

  Something in the engine room exploded with a loud bang. The ship started tumbling.

  "We just lost half the coolant system," Jerith shouted. "The core's redlining."

  "Where are we? Flago?" I barely heard myself over the screaming alarms.

  The ship rocked as an escape pod shot away. Flago was gone. I swore under my breath as I wrestled with the controls. I slammed switches like mad, trying to stabilize the ship.

  "The core is redlining, Dace!"

  "I know!"

  "Cut it loose!"

  I didn't want to. If I dumped the core, we would be stranded with only emergency power. It might be weeks before anyone found us. If ever. I hit the override buttons. It didn't help. The indicator crept closer to the red zone.

  Jerith reached over my shoulder to punch the button that should have jettisoned the core. Nothing happened. I slapped his hand away from the controls. He shoved me to the side, then slammed his fist into the eject button. The core didn't eject. Jerith scrambled out of the cockpit to the second escape pod.

  The ship shuddered as his pod shot away. I couldn't leave, not yet. Not until I'd tried everything. Star's Grace was my life, my soul, my dream. I hit the reset switches. Nothing happened. I cut all power, then sat in the dark and counted to five while the alarms screamed. I hit the switches to turn everything on again. Nothing changed. A new alarm hooted over the chorus of sirens. Less than ten seconds before the core overloaded.

  It was still a hard choice. I scrambled through the galley to the last escape pod. I pulled the hatch shut and sealed it, abandoning my ship.

  The pod launched itself automatically. I buckled the restraints, blinking back tears. The last time I'd cried was when I'd lost my first and only toy at the orphanage. Beido had been a scrap of cloth with a clumsy face, but she'd been my doll. The director had thrown her out when I made the mistake of showing I cared.

  The shockwave of my ship exploding spun the pod out of control. Everything vibrated. I clung to the webbing as it tumbled.

  The autosystem finally stabi
lized the pod and stopped the tumbling. I freed a hand to wipe my face. I'd just lost everything, every credit invested in my ship and cargo. I reached for the hatch release. Dying in vacuum would be quicker than dying slowly in a lost pod. I couldn't do it. The will to keep going was too ingrained, too many years of fighting everything and everyone. I slumped against the webbing. I'd just have to start over, wherever I landed.

  The pod's simple controls should have come on automatically but the guidance screen stayed dark and blank.

  I hit the power buttons again. The screen fizzed gray and white. I flipped the switches and adjusted the settings. The screen flickered to static before returning to black. I jiggled the frame. It cleared, briefly. I shouted curses at it.

  The profanity didn't help. I popped open the access hatch above it, then wiggled my hand through the tangle of wires inside. Everything seemed to be connected, although the wires were old and brittle. Insulation crumbled off, leaving bare metal. I accidentally crossed the wrong two. I yelped and jerked my hand free as the system shorted. Static filled the screen before fading completely.

  I'd have to hope the emergency beacon still worked. I reached for the small storage locker. It supposedly held a water supply and emergency ration cubes. They would never go bad, or at least never get any worse. The door of the locker stuck. I squirmed around to bang on it, twisting myself in the webbing.

  The controls beeped, a very insistent noise. I glanced at the dead screen. It hadn't magically started working. The lights flashed on the guidance system, indicating a planet close by. The pod was landing, whether I wanted it to or not.

  I tried to untangle the webbing but panicked and only twisted it more. The beeping increased in pitch. Atmosphere screamed past. An access panel banged loose. The pod shuddered.

  The pod's angle was too steep. I fumbled my arms free to hit the thrusters.

  The pod spun. I hit the controls again. The thrusters fired erratically. I had to think, not panic. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

  "I am Dace, I am strong. I can do this." It calmed my nerves enough so I could function again.

  I tried booting the screen one more time. Nothing happened. I'd landed a dead pod at the Academy, once, in a simulator where the worst that could happen was a bad score. I'd die if I messed up this time. I sucked in a deep breath of stale air, blowing out the panic that nibbled at my mind and tied my stomach in knots.

  "First thing, straighten it out. Left thruster, just a bit. Ease back, Dace. Nose up, but not that far."

  I talked myself through the procedure. The pod quit spinning. I feathered the controls, lifting the nose, keeping the tail down. Now I just had to wait. The braking thrusters should come on automatically. I stared at the dead screen.

  "No radar, no way to know how close—"

  I was beyond swearing. I closed my eyes and sweated. I guessed blindly and hit the braking thrusters when the pitch of air changed.

  The old fuel burned unevenly. The pod lurched, slamming me against the webbing. The pod fell like a rock. The thrusters kicked in, shoving me against the webbing. They sputtered a final time. Crash foam gushed from nozzles, partially filling the space.

  The pod slammed into the ground, hitting hard and rolling. I ground my teeth, fighting nausea and glad I hadn't eaten lunch.

  It finally crunched to a stop, tilted on one side, nose down. The controls died with a mournful beep. The lights faded, their power expended. I felt along the webbing for the release clasp, then shoved my fingernails under the release and pried up. I broke one nail before the webbing popped loose. I landed on the controls. The storage locker opened, dumping its contents on my head.

  I twisted my hands around the hatch release lever and yanked. The hatch popped free, landing outside with a dull clank. Wind scoured the inside of the pod, smelling of mud and animals and rain. I thumbed the heater on in my suit as I crawled free.

  I'd crashed in the middle of a muddy field, dotted with tangles of bushes. Clouds scudded across a gray sky. Rain spit in intermittent bursts. The ground dropped into a shallow basin. A line of trees marked a path at the bottom.

  I reached into the pod to gather supplies. I had no idea how long I might be stuck on this planet. No one would look for me. I had no family. Someone might look for Flago or Jerith, though after living with them for three weeks, I couldn't understand why unless they owed that someone money.

  I sorted through the jumble that had fallen from the storage locker, none of it what I expected. I found a bar of very old chocolate, two screwdrivers, a small wrench, and a nice set of lockpicks. Everything else in the pod was junk, not worth salvaging.

  My pockets contained my ship ID chip and an assortment of wire connectors. I dropped the connectors into the pod. I couldn't think of any possible use for them. I took the chocolate and slid my ID chip in my pocket along with the tools.

  The lockpicks posed a problem. They were illegal anywhere in the Empire. Toiba, the junkyard dealer I'd bought my ship from, had taught me how to use a similar set although admitting that would earn me a prison berth from the Patrol. I slipped the lockpicks into my left boot. I could always ditch them later.

  I nibbled on the chocolate as I picked my way across the mud towards the distant line of trees. I rounded a bush to find a huge creature munching the foliage on the other side. It caught sight of me and brayed, its eyes showing white all the way around. I dropped the chocolate. My heart thumped triple time.

  The creature lowered its massive head and brayed again, showing me lots of very big, very square teeth. I retreated a step. It snorted, blowing strings of mucus from its nose. I edged back another step. It stamped enormous feet, churning up the mud. I stared into its dark eyes certain I was about to be eaten.

  The animal tossed its head. I screamed and ran for the dubious safety of the trees.

  A whole herd of similar animals joined in the chase, tails high and hooves squelching as we ran across the muddy field.

  They chased me around a bush, barely missing with their square teeth and stomping hooves. I ducked my head and ran for the trees and the road. They brayed behind me.

  I slammed into a fence, knocking myself flat and sliding under it into a dirt path. The creatures stopped on the other side, flapping their tails and blowing bubbles in the green slime dripping from their noses.

  I wiped mud from my face as I crawled backwards away from them.

  Footsteps smacked on the muddy path as people ran towards me. I sighed with relief. They must have seen my pod and come to offer help.

  My relief died as they came closer. They waved the sticks and shouted at me, not the beasts.

  The lead man stabbed his stick my way. I rolled to the side, scrambling to my feet. The others circled, watching. I raised my fists, ready to attack. I'd lose the fight, but at least I'd get a few blows in.

  The rain picked up, drenching all of us. I wiped water out of my face. Movement flashed behind me. I twisted around. One of them whacked me over the head. Blinded by pain, I landed in the mud face-first and passed out.