Novum: Rubicon: (Book 3) Read online

  NOVUM: RUBICON

  By Joseph Rhea

  NOVUM RUBICON Copyright © 2015 by Joseph Rhea. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this eBook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the author, who can be contacted by email at: [email protected]

  Book cover by David Rhea

  (DaveRhea.net)

  Also available in print worldwide.

  Learn more at JosephRhea.com

  Contents

  Chapter 01

  Chapter 02

  Chapter 03

  Chapter 04

  Chapter 05

  Chapter 06

  Chapter 07

  Chapter 08

  Chapter 09

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  About the Author

  Books by Joseph Rhea

  Credits and Permissions

  Chapter 01

  Remember to breathe!

  Jake gasped and opened his eyes, startled by the strange voice in his head. He was still in the cockpit of his shuttle, still sitting inside his uncomfortable hardsuit, but the interior lights were off. Only the control panel in front of him was still lit, and one light in particular was flashing red. He could hear a woman’s voice faintly repeating two words, over and over. Low oxygen! Low oxygen!

  He bit down on the air intake inside his suit and blew hard, then tried to suck whatever oxygen was left in its tanks. The carbon dioxide scrubbers in his suit’s rebreather gave him half a lungful of air in return, but he knew it wasn’t enough. He was going to be dead soon, and there wasn’t much he could do about it.

  His memory of the past few days was fuzzy, but he knew he had been following the signal he had picked up earlier, when his ship, the Rogue Wave, finally ran out of power. Unfortunately, when he reached its point of origin, he found himself in the exact dead center of nowhere. No lost colony, no refueling depot, nothing but empty sea. As the shuttle’s thrusters used up the last bit of energy from the batteries, he had set his shuttle down on the sea floor to await the end.

  He turned and looked behind at the empty benches in the back of the shuttle, and wondered what had become of his crew. Were they still on the Wave? Were they any better off than he was?

  As he turned back and saw his own reflection in the forward viewport, his low-oxygen imagination made him see Stacy swimming towards him in the cold dark sea beyond the glass. She really was out there somewhere, he reminded himself, and he would soon be joining her. A fitting end, he mused, for the man who killed his future wife.

  You didn’t kill me, she said inside his mind.

  But I let you die, he thought back. Just like my crew. Wait! My crew? Stacy’s face outside began to undulate, just like the creature that attacked his ship a few hours earlier. Attacked my ship? Where are these memories coming from? What happened to my ship? My crew?

  Then he realized that it really was a creature out there, moving directly towards him. It was coming back for him. Coming to complete the job. He looked again at the displays on his dash and confirmed that he was, in fact, out of both power and air, and realized that there was nothing left to do but wait for his death. A part of him wished that the creature could have waited a few more minutes, let him pass out from lack of clean air before consuming him. Now, he would be conscious when it ate him, which again, maybe he deserved. Wait! Why do I deserve to die?

  As the silhouette of the massive creature passed directly over him, he imagined huge teeth piercing the shuttle’s hull, blood dripping from them as they cut the shuttle in half. The still-reasoning part of his oxygen-starved brain reminded him that any small crack in the pressure hull would trigger a sudden implosion at his depth, and that most likely, he wouldn’t feel a thing.

  He sat there in silence as the seconds ticked by, holding his breath, waiting for the end.

  Remember to breathe! the voice in his head repeated.

  Chapter 02

  Jake woke from the nightmare, gasping for air. As he fought to catch his breath, he tried to sit up and found that his arms wouldn’t move. When he looked down he saw that his wrists were strapped to his bed then realized that it wasn’t even his bed. He quickly looked around and saw that he was in the exact center of a small cylindrical room, not much bigger than his quarters but quite a bit taller. The walls were clean and white, like a Medical Bay, and had a number of control panels embedded in them.

  “Ash!” he yelled, realizing that this was some sort of cruel trick. The navigator had obviously carried him into the recreation room during the night and placed him inside a simulation. “Very funny,” he yelled to the empty room. “But we can’t afford to waste this much energy. You know my orders.”

  “I see you’ve decided to rejoin us,” a woman said as she entered the room through a door behind him. He didn’t recognize her, but she wore a white medical uniform and scanned a slate in her hand as she approached.

  Jake glanced at her and then turned away. “I don’t remember your face,” he said. “My rec room has a limited number of human models, and I know them all.” He pondered the idea that perhaps Jane was involved in this elaborate ruse. She could probably fabricate a new face. She had computer skills unmatched by any of the crew members.

  “You think you are inside a simulation?” the woman asked. Even her voice was original, which also pointed to Jane. Of course, maybe the whole crew was involved, and Ash’s sister, Jessie, could probably alter the voice database. She was an acoustics expert, so it wasn’t out of the question.

  Jake ignored her. “We need to get back to work, guys,” he said to the room. “I’m serious; you need to end this now.”

  The woman jotted something on her slate then asked, “Can you tell me your full name?”

  Jake tried to move his arms again then gave the straps a hard yank. “I’m really not kidding, people. End this now!”

  “Your full name,” the woman repeated.

  “Jacob Stone,” he said. “Is that the idea? I answer your questions, and then I get to leave?” It suddenly dawned on him that maybe the rec room was running on its own. Maybe something happened to the crew after they placed him inside. Maybe some sort of disaster was keeping them from letting him out.

  He yanked repeatedly on the wrist straps then looked up at the woman. “This is a priority override. End this program now!”

  The woman frowned then said, “Captain Stone, I realize you might have difficulty understanding this, but you are recovering from an extended period of oxygen deprivation. You are not currently inside the Rogue Wave. In fact, we don’t know where your ship is, and we’re hoping you can help us locate it.”

  Since he didn’t seem to have a lot of options, he decided to play along for the moment. “Okay, so where am I?”

  He heard a hiss as a door slid open and a second person entered the room. It was another woman, and as she approached and her face became visible, Jake’s heart nearly stopped. Captain Steele stepped up next to him and bent down, her silver-white hair reflecting the overhead light. “You’re right where you belong,” she whispered. “Under arrest for the abandonment of your vessel and the murder of your crew.”

  “Murder?” he asked, unable to believe wh
at she was saying. “What happened to them?” he yelled. “What happened to my crew?”

  “That’s what we are going to find out,” Steele said as she turned and walked back out the door.

  Jake lay there staring at the ceiling for what seemed like an hour. He finally looked up at the woman standing next to him. “Do you know what happened to my ship? My crew?”

  She shook her head. “We found only you inside your shuttle. No sign of your ship.”

  “How long?”

  “Have you been here? We found your shuttle two days ago.”

  His final memory of the creature moving towards him came back to him. That had to have been the Scimitar. He had thought he was going to die, but in fact, he had been rescued.

  The woman turned and pulled up a chair then sat next to him. “Listen, I’m not supposed to talk about the trial, but I feel you ought to know what we know before it starts.”

  “Trial?”

  “General Court Marshal. Captain Steele’s orders. Even though you are apparently not a member of the Shipper’s Guild, you are the captain of your ship, and that makes you responsible for your crew.”

  “Of course I’m responsible,” he said. “But…” Images in his head flashed by but were just as quickly erased. “I’m having difficulty remembering how I got here, or what happened to my crew. We were on a course due west from the colony and travelling for several weeks. Now I’m here.” He looked up at her. “There’s nothing in between.”

  “Prolonged oxygen deprivation damages brain tissue,” she said. “I’d say you are lucky to even be alive. If we had found you a few hours later…”

  “How did you find me?” he asked. “We left the Scimitar on the other side of Civica’s border.”

  She pulled her chair up closer. “Again, I’m not supposed to be talking to you, so if they ask…”

  Jake nodded. “I understand.”

  “Apparently they recorded the signal you used to disable the border defenses. It took over a week to decipher the code, and then we were able to cross the border ourselves.” She paused and, after glancing around the room, continued. “Captain Steele was ordered back twice, but she ignored them. Seems that she was bound and determined to catch up with your ship.”

  Jake nodded. “Then where is my ship?”

  She shrugged as she stood up. “As I said, we didn’t find it. We only found you, sitting alone inside your shuttle. Out of power and out of air.” She glanced at him. “What was it like? Sitting all alone in that shuttle, waiting for the end?”

  “It was horrible,” he whispered.

  “Thank you, Doctor.” Steele’s voice issued from the overhead speaker. “That’s all I need.”

  The woman looked at Jake with a frown on her otherwise kind face. “I’m sorry, Captain Stone. I had my orders. Your trial will begin in the morning. This will help you sleep until then.” Before he could protest, she injected something in his neck, and darkness fell over him. Just before he lost consciousness, he heard those words again, whispered softly in his ear.

  Remember to breathe!

  Chapter 03

  Jake woke with a start, bolting out of his bed and striking his head on the wall of his quarters. This is my room, he said to himself as he rubbed his head. The weird dream was already fading from memory, but there was something about it that hung in the air; Captain Steele following him out of Civica, or being accused of killing his crew, or maybe both. None of it made sense, but that was probably to be expected considering what he had eaten for dinner the previous night.

  They were ten days into what could very well be a month-long journey into the unknown, and rationing had forced them to be more creative than usual with their meal choices. Last night it was Vee’s turn to cook for the crew, and whatever his helmsman put in that corn casserole gave him horrible gas the rest of the evening. No one complained about the meal, because everyone knew things would be getting worse before they got better, but you could see the unhappiness in their eyes as they ate. At least they still had clean water, so it was easy to wash the mouthfuls down.

  He dressed in his workout clothing and headed out the door and down to C-deck. The Rogue Wave wasn’t a large ship, only fifty meters stem to stern, and the inside livable portion was much smaller. But, like most Shippers, he had learned to make do with what he had, especially when it came to working out.

  He turned left, as he always did, and headed to the starboard lockout then jogged in place while it slid open. All of the doors on the ship were closed when not in use for safety reasons, but considering that he had never in his life heard of a ship suddenly losing pressure in one section and not the other, it seemed like an unnecessary precaution, especially when he had to wait the three seconds for each one to open. When it finally opened, he stepped through then turned left again and headed through the second door then forward along the tube-like observation corridor. Through the elongated viewport on his left, he could see the upper torso of the Walker silhouetted against the dim glow of the wall lights in the cargo bay. He jogged down the steps at the end and then turned and passed through another door leading to the forward section of the cargo bay. Once inside, he ran ten circles around the bay, high-fiving the Walker’s left arm each lap. Finally, he entered the identical corridor on the port side and headed aft to the staging area where he had started.

  He circled the staircase twice to burn a little more distance then headed aft past the doors to the Medical Bay and dive locker. At the rear bulkhead, he passed through another door leading to crew quarters then took a sharp right turn, sharp left, and then down the short dead-end hall. Both quarters on the port side were vacant, a reminder of the Rogue Wave’s distant past when she had a permanent ten-member crew. He spun around at the end and then ran past the bulkhead door to the starboard side. This hall was nearly identical to the other side, except that it had two extra doors on the inside wall, one leading to the shuttle lockout chamber and one at the end of the hall leading to another lockout chamber for the ship’s recreation room.

  He jogged to the end, and as he was spinning around, he noticed that the lockout door was slightly ajar. Normally, that would be impossible, since it was part of an automated system that insured that the utility fog particles that drove the simulations could never escape the room. However, Raines had pulled the plug on the room at the beginning of their journey to conserve power, much to the irritation of the crew. rec rooms were obviously important for maintaining crew morale on long and lonely trips, but having power for heat and light, not to mention water and air purification, was far more important.

  Realizing he could use the extra floor space of the rec room for his run, he stepped into the chamber, opened the inner door, and jogged inside. He was more than a little startled to find himself inside what looked like an ancient library. It was said that in the years before the Fall of Man, humanity’s distant ancestors visited these buildings to stare at ancient paper and cloth versions of modern-day books. This simulation had a number of interesting details such as a pair of oversized stuffed red chairs on a fuzzy gold carpet. One of the chairs was facing away from him, and the combination of a bare leg hanging over one armrest and a mop of red hair visible over the top told him who was in there.

  “Please tell me you didn’t override the rec room’s security again, Jane,” he said. As one of the ship’s only two passengers, the other being Dr. Arik Wood, the medical researcher who stowed away onboard just before the start of their journey into the Blue, Jane had an unusual background. He and his crew had discovered her living like a wild animal inside an abandoned zoological garden near Civica’s northwestern border. And while she had no knowledge of her past or even her name when she came on board, she quickly proved to be inherently smarter than everyone else on the ship. She also had a special knack for unlocking supposedly unbreakable security locks.

  Jane didn’t turn around but wiggled her bare toes at him. “I didn’t override anything, and this,” she said as she pointed a long, del
icate finger at the ceiling, “this was Norman’s idea.”

  Jake was taken aback. “You’re telling me that my chief engineer is running this program against my orders? I find that highly unlikely.”

  She stretched her toes wide and then leaned around the corner of the chair to look at him. “This is not an active simulation,” she said as she stroked the arm of the chair. “He programmed this and then cut the power. The nano-scale particles will remain in their configuration until entropy defeats the locking mechanisms that bind them.”

  He knew Jane was trying hard to simplify her explanation of utility fog, and it was a little irritating, coming from such a young person. “You’re telling me that he set up one final simulation and then froze it. I get that, but why an old library? You do realize these places never existed, don’t you?”

  “Why do you say that?” she asked.

  “Well, it’s like you said about the rec room particles. Entropy basically breaks everything down over time. In other words, anything that is really from the past has to be better than what we have today. There is simply no way something this rundown could have existed in the Pre-Fall era.” He looked around the room. “More importantly, if you’re going to build one last simulation, why not make something more practical, like a weight room, or maybe a Guild-style bar?”

  He was joking, but as usual, she didn’t get it. “A weight room would be redundant as we have plenty of heavy objects in the cargo bay to lift in order to build muscle mass, and a bar would be impractical since you can’t drink utility fog particles when they are powered down.”

  Jake walked over to one of the bookshelves and surveyed the titles. There were books by Faulkner, Mooney, Howey, Wells, Tolstoy, and a hundred others he had never heard of. He pulled down one book that had giant mechanical spiders on the cover. When he opened it, he saw nothing but page after page of thick, tan paper. “You’re telling me that this is more useful? A room filled with empty books?”