Beyond the Shroud of the Universe Read online

  Beyond the Shroud of the Universe

  Book Two of the Codex Regius

  By

  Chris Kennedy

  PUBLISHED BY: Chris Kennedy

  Copyright © 2015 Chris Kennedy

  All Rights Reserved

  Discover other titles by Chris Kennedy at:

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  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

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  I would like to thank Linda, Beth and Dan, who took the time to critically read this work and make it better. I would also like to thank my mother, without whose steadfast belief in me, I would not be where I am today. Thank you. This book is dedicated to my wife and children, who sacrificed their time with me so I could write it.

  I would also like to thank Jim Beall for his assistance with several aspects of the physics in “Beyond the Shroud of the Universe.” Any remaining errors are mine, in spite of his expert aid.

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  Cover art by Brenda Mihalko

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  Author’s Notes

  Note: When more than one race refers to a planet or star, the same name is used by both races in order to prevent confusion. Also on the topic of planet naming, the normal convention for planets is to add a lower case letter to the name of the parent star (i.e., Tau Ceti ‘b’). The first planet discovered in a system is usually given the designation ‘b,’ and later planets are given subsequent letters as they are found. In order to prevent confusion in this book, the closest planet to the star in a star system is given the letter ‘a,’ with the rest of the planets given subsequent letters in order of their proximity to the star.

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  “For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

  ― Alexander Pope, “An Essay on Criticism” (1709)

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Epilogue

  1st Platoon, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion of the 1st Regiment

  1st Platoon, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion of the 1st Regiment

  Excerpt from “The Dark Star War:”

  About the Author

  Titles by Chris Kennedy

  Connect with Chris Kennedy Online

  Excerpt from “Scrapyard Ship:”

  Chapter 1

  Excerpt from “Discovery of the Saiph:”

  Chapter One

  Throne Room, Planet Utopia, MOA-2007-BLG-192L System, September 27, 2021

  “You told me our ships would not have to worry about the Aesir,” High Lord Sarpedon said, “and yet, the Agnostos has been destroyed with its entire crew.” All four eyes turned to glare at the emissary. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  The emissary of the Jotunn Empire, Skrogg Ottarson, knew he was on dangerous ground. Sarpedon was not known for his patience with people who failed him, regardless of their status in court. He usually didn’t just shoot the messenger who brought him bad news, he usually ate the messenger, as well. “The ship that destroyed your vessel wasn’t an Aesir vessel,” he said; “it was a Terran ship.”

  “Terran?” High Lord Sarpedon asked. “I am unfamiliar with this word. What is a ‘Terran’ ship?”

  Ambassador Ottarson breathed an inaudible sigh of relief; he would get to keep his head a little longer. “We don’t know,” he admitted. “We haven’t seen this race before, so they are either new to our area of space, or they recently achieved space flight. Their ship looked like it was from a class that existed 3,000 years ago. We believe the Terrans must be a client race the Aesir hired to find out why their ships were disappearing; they are probably nothing more than expendable underlings.” He paused and then added, “We are still trying to determine exactly who and what they are.”

  High Lord Sarpedon’s eyes narrowed. “So, an Aesir client race with a 3,000 year-old ship annihilated one of my new, front-line destroyers? How exactly did you let this happen?”

  Perspiration began flowing again; he wasn’t out of the woods yet. “We did nothing to allow it to happen, my lord,” Ambassador Ottarson said. “The reports I received indicate the Terrans were barely able to scratch your ship; however, when the Agnostos transferred into our universe, it did so on top of one of the Terran’s fighters. The fighter happened to hit the Agnostos’ armory, which blew up, and both the fighter and your ship were destroyed in the blast. The loss of the Agnostos is nothing more than bad luck.”

  “There is no such thing as luck.” The high lord sat back on his throne. “I read the same reports. My crew was sloppy. After easily defeating three Aesir vessels, they took the Terran ship too lightly.” He leapt to his feet and turned on his military advisor. “That will not happen again!” he roared, pointing both of his right arms at the military advisor. Sarpedon’s anger was a palpable force in the room, and Ambassador Ottarson was overjoyed it was no longer directed at him.

  “Yes, my lord,” Admiral Rhadamanthus replied, showing no outward sign of fear. “Since he is not here to account for himself, the family of the Agnostos’ captain has been put to death as an example of what happens for such incompetence; in fact, I believe we will be having his wife for lunch today. It will not happen again.”

  The high lord glared at the admiral for another few seconds, looking for weakness, but Admiral Rhadamanthus met his unblinking tetrahedral gaze without flinching. Mollified, the high lord took a slow breath and returned to his throne.

  “Ultimately, I care little for how it happened, Admiral Rhadamanthus,” High Lord Sarpedon said; “I only care that it did. The Terrans destroyed one of my ships. They must be destroyed.”

  “It shall be done,” the admiral replied. “We will find and destroy th
e Terrans. They will be annihilated.”

  “Good.” The high lord’s eyes returned to the ambassador, and the high lord nodded once.

  “Ugh—”the ambassador said as the breath was driven from his body. He looked down to see a spear point and two feet of shaft emerging from his stomach. The guard behind him was far shorter, and the tip of the spear pointed up at him as if in accusation. He dropped to his knees, his life fading quickly. The wound might have been survivable on its own; however, he knew the guards’ spears were poisoned. His life was over. “Not…my…fault…” he said as he fell forward onto his face.

  “Of course it’s your fault,” the high lord said as four of the guards dragged the ambassador’s body toward the door to the kitchen, leaving a green smear behind. “Your people should have advised my ship’s captain better. And besides, we needed dessert.”

  Chapter Two

  President’s Conference Room, Terran Government Headquarters, Lake Pedam, Nigeria, September 27, 2021

  “That concludes my report,” Lieutenant Commander Shawn ‘Calvin’ Hobbs said from the podium. “Are there any questions?” He looked around the room and involuntarily cringed. While he had known there would be some questions; he hadn’t expected that everyone’s hand would go up.

  The president’s conference room was unlike any other Calvin had ever been in. At its center was a table which could easily seat 20 people to a side. The floor of the room sloped upward on all sides, with 10 rows of stadium seating.

  The leaders of the Terran Government sat at one end of the table, with the president seated at the head of the table in her customary chair. The vice president, the secretary of state and the speakers from both houses of parliament filled the chairs closest to her. The rest of the seats at the table held members of the Terran Republic’s Security Council; their staffs and other interested representatives filled the audience seats, as well as most of the aisles. The place was packed.

  The people at the table had brain implants which translated any Terran language; every seat in the room also had jacks that allowed users to plug in and get a running translation of the conversation provided by a small artificial intelligence (AI) which had been replicated for that purpose. The AI also kept notes and logs of all the conversations within the room, unless specifically told not to.

  Seeing the forest of hands, Calvin sighed. This was going to take forever. With a mental shrug, he pointed to the closest representative.

  “We have only just finished the war with the Drakuls,” the senator from Japan said, throwing her hands up in the air, “and now this…this…soldier has gone and involved us in another one. Who is he to think he has ambassadorial powers or the right to speak for us?” She looked around the enormous room for support and smiled when she saw most of the heads in the audience nodding.

  “I certainly didn’t intend to get us into a war, ma’am,” Calvin said. “We were helping the Aesir, as we were ordered, when the Efreeti vessel appeared and fired on us unprovoked. We didn’t even know it was there before then, much less do anything to cause them to attack us. And actually, ma’am, I’m a naval aviator, not a soldier.” Although Calvin currently led a space fighter squadron and a platoon of Terran Space Marines, he still considered himself a naval aviator at heart. It had only been a couple of years since the aliens had shown up on Earth and drafted him to be a janissary in their wars; until recently, a Navy F/A-18 pilot was all he ever wanted to be.

  “Not only has he involved us in a war with the Efreet, but also a war with these Jotunn frost giants?” the senator from Romania asked. “Both of these are creatures out of myth and legend. And new universes? What’s next, vampires? How are we supposed to fight things that don’t exist in places our best scientists say are impossible?”

  “The Jinn Universe does exist, sir,” Calvin replied. “My men and I have been there several times, and in a number of different systems. Their universe is just as real as ours. I lost a lot of good people there.”

  One of the senators from Domus raised her hand, and he pointed to her. The planet had been discovered on one of Calvin’s first missions to space, and their society had joined the Terran Republic the year before. The world was home to two races; one of these was humanoid in appearance, while the other, the Kuji, looked like 6-foot-tall Tyrannosaurus Rexes. Having been recognized, the Kuji princess stood.

  “Unlike the rest of this august body, we are less focused on what is already done and can’t be undone,” said the princess, nodding to the other Domus senator, the humanoid princess. “We are more worried about what will happen next. Lieutenant Commander Hobbs has already shown these races inhabit a number of stars and planets in their universe, most of which are also inhabited in our universe. How do we know they won’t all of a sudden pop up on our planet or jump into our system and start dropping bombs on our cities?”

  “I’m sorry,” Calvin said, “but the bottom line is that we can’t know whether they are there until we go into their universe and see. Even then, there is no way to protect against them; we can’t stop them from jumping into our universe. The only thing we have going for us, we think, is that there aren’t any stargates in the other universe. The Jinn have to transfer into our universe to use our stargates if they want to move around quickly. They don’t have faster-than-light space travel in their universe, so it would take many years to go from one system to another.”

  “So the only ones we really have to worry about would be the ones already there, or those that come through the stargate into our system?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Calvin said. “At least, that’s the way we understand it now. There may very well be creatures that inhabit your planet in the other universe; in fact, I would bet there are. It seems like most of the planets that support life in our universe are also inhabited in the Jinn Universe.”

  “A follow-up, if I may?” the princess asked. Gaining permission, she continued, “It is necessary for our continued security to determine if they exist on our planet. How do we find out if they are there?”

  “There are a couple of ways to find out, ma’am. If we want to do it stealthily, we can use one of the transportation rods we brought back to send a few people to their universe and look around. Unfortunately, we only have a few of them, so it will probably be a little while before we can do so. We are working on making more rods, but there is a substance we need that is only found in the other universe. In order to make all the rods we need, we are going to have to find a supplier in the other universe.”

  “What about the friendly race you met? The Sila?” Terran President Katrina Nehru asked, happy to be headed back in a positive direction.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Calvin replied. “We have had contact with the Sila on a couple of occasions. They all left a common planet when its star went nova, and they now inhabit several planets we know of, but they don’t have contact with each other. Most of their planets have been conquered by the Efreet and ruled by them ever since. We helped one planet throw off the Efreeti yoke; I’m sure they would help us against the Efreet.”

  “How big is the Sila Navy, exactly?” the Russian representative asked.

  “Almost nonexistent,” Calvin admitted. “The Sila only have a single destroyer; however, they have been artificially held back in their technological development by the Efreet. If we give them a boost, I think they’d make great allies.”

  “Oh, so now you are qualified to give us treaty advice?” the French representative asked. “After involving us in a war with two previously unknown star nations, you are going to tell us who we should have as our allies too?” He spread his arms as he looked across the entire auditorium. “Honestly, I don’t see the need for this body to exist since we already have you to determine who our allies and enemies should be.”

  With that, many of the representatives began shouting their own comments and criticisms. As the moderator struggled to regain control of the meeting, Calvin opened up his in-head calendar display and began cancelling his othe
r appointments for the day. This wasn’t going to end any time soon.

  The Situation Room, Fleet Command HQ, Lake Pedam, Nigeria, September 29, 2021

  “That concludes my report,” Calvin said for the second time in three days. “Are there any questions?”

  Unlike the chaos that followed this question in the governmental headquarters building, the mood in Fleet Command was somber. Everyone in the room could see the magnitude of what the fleet had been tasked with. How could you defend an entire planet, much less its individual cities, when aliens could emerge anywhere, at any time, and attack? What did they have that could stop an Efreeti ship from appearing and conducting an orbital bombardment of Earth before any of the Terran forces could stop it?

  Nothing.

  It could happen in the next five minutes, and the military would be completely unable to prevent it. Everyone knew it, and no one had a solution. All the eyes in the room turned to Fleet Admiral James Wright, the head of the Terran Navy, who sat at the head of the table.

  For his part, the admiral looked out the window at the Terran Governmental Headquarters, visible across the lake, deep in thought. Finally, nodding to himself, he returned his gaze to the podium. “So Calvin,” he said, “you’ve had the longest to think about it, what are your recommendations?”

  Although the question might have seemed out of place to some of the non-American members of the staff, Admiral Wright had a long, personal relationship with Calvin, going back to the Sino-American War of 2018. Although their working relationship had been strained at first, the admiral had come to count on Calvin’s decision making. That trust was rewarded with a string of Terran victories across a number of systems in two universes. And, more to the point, Calvin had more off-world fighting experience than any other Terran officer.