Silver Arrow
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ILLEGAL RACES, THE HORRIBLE DEATH OF A CADET, AND THE DISCOVERY OF A MYSTERIOUS SHIP LOST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS BEFORE ARE THE INGREDIENTS OF JIM STREAMER’S SECOND EXCITING SPACE ADVENTURE.
DON’T MISS IT !
When the body of a senior cadet is found in the outer waste disposal area of the Space Academy kitchen, Admiral George Bellamy sends Captain Jorgens-
son to investigate. Notwithstanding her skills, the captain is however un-
able to determine if it was an incident or a murder. Thinking of infiltrating Jim as an undercover agent, Bellamy contacts him,
starting him on a new crazy adventure that shall take him to enlist in the Silver Arrow—a legendary and illegal race between cadets to elect the best pilot ever—and to uncover the horrible destiny of a spaceship lost twenty-five years before. The Minnie Maru.
It’s a military space opera of about 225,000 words.
Available from June 26 — Preorder now at 3.99 instead of 4.99 !
KOBO
“Mayday. Mayday.
This is the EFS Minnie Maru speaking,
please respond—we missed the rendezvous with the Neptune Base.
We have just awakened from hibernation—we are lost in space
and we cannot get back. Please respond—we need help.
This is the EFS Minnie Maru speaking…”
SILVER ARROW
(A Space Adventure)
PROLOGUE
Cadet Ruiz
The godforsaken region of space tore up with a vertical slit that shone with a rippling and eerie light; it expanded into a round opening, through which the inside of a fully formed wormhole could be glimpsed. The mouth was large enough to deliver a juggernaut, and yet, only a small and solitary spacecraft was jettisoned.
The stylish design of the Valiant M-27 was a sign of the civilization it came from, but the fighter looked weirdly out of place in the forbidding emptiness surrounding it, as if it were lost, or stranded. With the frantic urgency of a chase, its afterburners ignited at once; the white-hot plumes of its twin engines’ exhausts lit up like blowtorches, pushing the fighter onward—until it was swallowed by darkness.
Senior Cadet Diego Ruiz sat at the pilot’s seat of the Valiant, efficiently checking the instruments on the control panel in front of him. His jet-black crewcut and short sideburns framed a straight nose, a square jaw, and the piercing eyes of a hound. Ruiz looked cocky with the bold confidence of a fourth-year space cadet—he couldn’t be more than twenty, though, and that was a damn young age to already be a pilot.
Clutching the control wheel of the Valiant with his left hand, Ruiz reached out with his right for the navigation screen, tinkering with the map displayed. He enlarged it, revealing—outlined in red—the fighter’s route. Thick as it was with sudden changes of direction, curlicues, and turnarounds, it looked more an intricate obstacle course than a regular flight plan.
On the map, the Valiant was represented by a green dot, traveling at a steady pace along the leg of the journey marked with the roman numeral V, a segment enclosed amidst the blue circles of two wormholes. Beyond the second wormhole, the path returned—after so much wandering—to the satellite of a planet marked with the word EARTH.
Ruiz checked the empty mouth of the wormhole he had just come out from—still visible in the distance, it was rapidly shrinking away—then he turned to glance at the reassuring red bar, filled to the brim, of the engine thrust gauge. Only then did he ease up, looking forward to reaching the journey’s concluding leg, and the well-deserved medal that awaited him—
At once, with an unexpected blare, the alert of ENGINE FAILURE went off on the control panel. Ruiz gasped with dread, but by the time he had set his eyes on the yellow indicator, it had switched off again: he tapped it, but it stayed off. Ruiz shrugged—damn circuits, he thought. Right then, the onboard radio blipped on, and a cheerful voice rang about in the cockpit.
“Hey, Ruiz!” it said. “You did them all in with that maneuver of yours on leg three—where did you learn to fly like that? You nearly gave me a heart attack. Domingo is still scratching his head!”
“For once, he isn’t scratching his ass,” Ruiz commented dryly, almost to himself, as a smug smile appeared on his lips. “That’ll teach that gasbag a little humility. What’s the gap, Garcia?”
“Abysmal!” Garcia said. “Domingo has just started leg four, but the bulk of the cadets is still stuck at Saturn’s rings—you’re ahead of everybody. This year, the Silver Arrow has gotta be yours!”
“I really hope so,” Ruiz said. “How are your readings for the re-entry leg—is the route clear? I’d hate to come out from the last wormhole to run into the Space Navy’s watchdogs.”
“So far,” Garcia said, “the alerts from our satellites are negative, but the heat is still on from last year, so you had better keep your eyes open. Commodore Frey said he’ll put an end to our daredevil business: until now, it’s been hot air—there just is no way that he can catch us, and by the time he gets savvy, we’ll be back in our bunks already! And now let’s cut the cackle—how’s the Valiant doing? It looks like Monkey kept his promise, that drunkard, after all.”
“Yeah,” Ruiz said. “The engines are running as smooth as silk. I got an alert a minute ago, but it went off—I reckon it was a short in the damn circuitry.”
“Well, good luck!” Garcia said. “See you back on the Moon Base for a little celebration—I’m glad I bet on you!” The radio switched off, returning the cockpit to the surreal buzz of the Valiant’s twin engines.
Ruiz licked his lips, anticipating the moment when he would close his fingers around the Silver Arrow and the money prize that came with it. Technically, space cadets were not allowed to fly solo until they got their license, and that would only happen on the day of their graduation from the Space Academy—up to that long-craved-for moment, they would always fly accompanied by their instructors. Although infringing such rule was a surefire way to get expelled from the academy, some junior and senior cadets were just too rowdy and effervescent to wait for the graduation day. If possible, they would have flown whenever they had the opportunity, and certainly wouldn’t have frowned upon racing each other in illegal competitions. The Silver Arrow wasn’t just the golden chance for skilled cadets to earn a prestigious trophy—and some money as well—but, above all, to prove their adroitness to their classmates.
Ruiz considered himself the best pilot of his year. Domingo did have his moments, as Murillo did, but they were both junior cadets, and hadn’t yet mastered all the tricks of the trade required from a flying ace. His high hopes for Parker and Robbins, from his same year—as well as for Zanetti, a third year—had been crushed by Domingo, who had managed to leave them all behind. And yet, not even Domingo possessed Ruiz’s gift: a perfect sense for spatial relations, including a natural feeling for pushing a fighter an inch from its physical limits—that gave Ruiz the edge over any other cadet and made him a born-winner, the ideal racehorse for bettors to put their wages on. Because bettors and bets were the complementary side of the Silver Arrow—one of the reasons for its extreme popularity.
Ruiz came to from his reverie. Even if he was this close from winning the fabled medal, he hadn’t yet cut the finish line, so he had better sober up and focus on bagging the race first.
On the navigation screen, the wormhole at the end of the leg approached at mind-boggling speed; soon, Ruiz would be able to see its gaping mouth with his very eyes—there it was, in fact, its unmistakable blue halo. Ruiz opened his hand, stretching the numb fingers, and then gripped the control wheel with renewed strength, pushing it forward, ready for the return trip to the Moon Base.
The rippling mouth of the wormhole dilated to fill the horizon—a few more seconds, and the Valiant would dive into it. Ruiz smiled to himself, because he was almost there… and then, to his astonishment, the blue inside the wormhole was overcast with a massive shadow. Ruiz frowned. Wondering if it was a trick of the light, he blinked—but when he reopened his eyes, the shadow was still there, larger than before, about to emerge from the wormhole. It took Ruiz a moment too much to realize it was not an interference in the electromagnetic anomaly, but a physical object so big it dwarfed the diminutive Valiant.
“What the hell…” Ruiz said. He needn’t turn to the navigation computer to know what that thing was—in fact, as the object came out from the wormhole, it revealed the telltale white-and-blue livery of a Space Navy cruiser.
The onboard radio crackled.
“This is the EFS Barracuda,” a sharp voice said. “Pull over into the docking bay of this unit for inspection. Repeat—pull over into the docking bay of this unit for inspection. Comply immediately, or you shall be destroyed.”
At a glance, Ruiz saw the bright lights in the Barracuda’s landing strip; he also glimpsed the black muzzles of the gunnery batteries in her bow, aimed at the Valiant. Cursing and forsaking for the moment any attempt of escape, Ruiz slowed down.
“I’m coming in,” he said into the radio. Approaching the Barracuda, he dived under the massive keel of the cruiser, aligning the Valiant to the ship’s landing strip.
Since Ruiz didn’t want to be cannonaded, he was doing exactly what the Space Navy expected from him… his brain, though, was looking hard for a way out of that deadlock. If they caught him red-handed in the middle of an illicit race, flying a fighter he wasn’t even supposed to touch, he could say good-bye to his glorious career in the Space Navy.
Ruiz focused on the still-open wormhole beyond the cruiser. He thought he could yet make it; it was going to be a close call, but he was willing to go for broke—he would’ve done anything to get out of the clutches of the Barracuda. Ruiz pushed a button in his console, lowering the landing gear into position—he also set the throttle lever to flank speed, hearing the twin engines of the Valiant surge to an earsplitting howl. He didn’t engage them yet. He sat back in the pilot’s seat instead, bracing against the explosive acceleration that, in a few moments, was going to knock him off his feet—only then did he ram the control wheel, locking it to its end stop.
The energy harnessed inside the core reactor of the Valiant was unleashed at once with a huge fireball that flung the fighter under the entire length of the Barracuda—and then out to the other side, speeding toward the wormhole.
Ruiz was too busy withstanding the crushing acceleration that blurred and distorted his sight to notice the shells going off wildly around the Valiant in one last attempt to stop it. The wormhole was now closer than ever, the blue of its rippling mouth beckoning to him, while the Barracuda had turned into a dark, rapidly shrinking smear behind him.
Not daring to let go of the control wheel, Ruiz rocketed toward the electromagnetic anomaly, about to slip into it. By the time the Barracuda was going to reverse her course and set into a pursuit, he would be back to the safety of the Moon Base.
The wormhole had filled half the horizon. Ruiz focused on covering the last few clicks as fast as possible, bucking up at the thought that luck was again on his side. Soon, the Silver Arrow was going to be his for the win, making him the best pilot of the year—that would’ve taught the other cadets a hard lesson to reflect on. God, Ruiz thought, how much he was going to enjoy that…
And then, out of nowhere, the ENGINE FAILURE alert went off again—this time, it stayed on. Ruiz barely had the time to read one last message from the onboard computer: LEAKAGE IN HYDROGEN LINE DETECTED IN STARBOARD ENGINE—SHUTTING ENGINE DOWN.
However, before the computer could complete its own directive—the starboard engine of the Valiant blew up!
The Discovery
Ruiz awakened two hours later, feeling sick, with a mighty headache, and absolutely no recollection of what had happened. When eventually it came to him, he was happy to be alive. Somehow, the cockpit had withstood the blast, and was still pressurized despite the odds; half the control panel was fried, though, releasing curls of an acrid, black smoke that rolled heavily about the cockpit; on the subsystem panel, the starboard engine was a black disc. Ruiz checked the radar, wondering what had been of the Barracuda, but the cruiser was gone from the sector—luckily, the wormhole hadn’t moved, albeit it was now very far from where he last remembered seeing it. Coughing and spitting, Ruiz reached out to the onboard radio.
“Garcia?” he said. “Do you copy?”
The radio was dead. Ruiz tinkered with the half undamaged control panel, scrolling through the status menu of the Valiant. Wondering if he could make it to the wormhole on one engine alone, he returned the thrust lever to the first notch. Crossing his fingers, he then grabbed the control wheel—and gave it a tentative nudge.
The Valiant whirred back to life, inching forward. And yet, there was something wrong with the flight attitude: the fighter pulled to the right, with a definite tendency to spin clockwise—it wouldn’t go far like that. Ruiz ran the auto-trim program, but if failed halfway through. He needed to perform a manual alignment of the left engine, but where the devil was he going to find a place to land, out there?
Ruiz groaned in frustration both for losing the race and for being stranded, when the rest of the pilots had probably returned to the Moon Base. Hating to sit on his hands until Garcia—not seeing the Valiant—would send a rescue mission, he lifted his eyes, peering disconsolately at the darkness beyond the cockpit window… when he saw something.
He enlarged the view on his navigation monitor, framing a round shape—an asteroid, perhaps. Ruiz wondered how come he could see it, while the radar detected nothing. The only answer was that even the onboard computer was failing. Oh well, Ruiz thought to himself—land is land—and started the complicate maneuver that would bring him on the heavenly body.
The more Ruiz approached it, the more he estimated it was too big to be a mere asteroid: with a diameter of about six hundred miles, it was, in fact, a planetoid at all effects.
Sharp ridges and deep valleys rolled beneath the Valiant as, with its unsteady gait, it sought a suitable spot for landing. Ruiz found a long canyon plowing, like a scar, the surface of the asteroid—he followed it in meandering twists and turns, locating a gorge wide enough to lower the Valiant into. Ruiz touched down with a soft jolt. Switching off the left engine, he unstrapped himself from his seat and shut his helmet visor; as he punched the pressure button on his spacesuit, it sealed with a hiss.
Looking at the ashen desolation surrounding him, Ruiz opened the canopy and leaped to the ground. What a strange place that was, he reflected. The gravity indicator on his wrist reported a very small fraction of a gee; still, it was way more than he had expected—the majority of the asteroid must be made of iron, he concluded. Ruiz focused on the task awaiting him, dislodging from the side of the cockpit the box containing the emergency tools—he then moved to the back of the fighter.
The bay which had previously lodged the starboard engine was a blackened pit; the explosion had almost torn up the port engine as well, which now hung precariously from just two of its four brackets—no wonder Ruiz had had a hard time at steering the Valiant.
Ruiz switched on the portable arc welder from the emergency kit; with orange sparks that flashed across his visor, he first soldered together the uprooted struts. He then stepped to what was left of the right engine bay. Remembering the alert in the control panel that had signaled a leak, Ruiz located the charred hydrogen line. Using his helmet lights, he inspected the pipe, noticing a few suspicious scratches where it fed into the now-destroyed reactor chamber—he looked them up from close, realizing the metal had been sawed into, although not completely.
At the thought that someone had sabotaged his Valiant, Ruiz felt the blood go to his head—he could call himself lucky if he was still alive. The first thing he would do when he was back to the space junkyard would be to have a few words with Monkey—since he had worked on the Valiant most of the time, he must know something about it.
Livid with anger, Ruiz kicked a pebble—he watched it soar off the ground, flying on and on, disappearing into the pitch-black darkness of the canyon… only then did he register the cleft in the rock face. Curious, Ruiz stepped to it.
The cleft concealed a passage. It connected the canyon the Valiant had just landed in to an adjoining valley Ruiz, in his grazing flyover, hadn’t noticed. Barely seeing where he was going, fifty yards later Ruiz emerged into the next valley.
At first, the ship’s hull didn’t look any different from the surrounding darkness; but then, when Ruiz lifted his head and his helmet lights framed the massive, overhanging shape, he froze—huge as she was, the spaceship must have at least been a cruiser. She looked completely motionless, covered in thick layers of dust that told a great deal of her long permanence in space. From the outdated design of her hull, there was no doubt it came from Earth; and yet, never in his life had Ruiz heard of a lost ship—how old was that thing?
Ruiz advanced under the immense keel, coming out on the other side, looking up. On her bow, visible despite the dust and the discolored paint, the capital letters of the ship’s name could still be made out: MINNIE MARU.
[ … ]
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