Dead Heroes – Excerpt 5

This excerpt is the introduction of the fourth major character in the Science Fiction book Dead Heroes. It's live now for Kindle. Free for Kindle Prime members. Print edition coming early next year.

In the inner sector

Commander Gerren Simsun stood very still and studied the data banks. Nothing seemed amiss. Gerren and his Chief Medical Officer had been the last to enter the timeholds—those cylinders of stasis. The doctor had seen to Gerren's comfort, set dials and checked calibrations. As the CMO closed himself away, Gerren had used his telekinesis and easily changed his own wake up settings. So now he was out of the coffin-like pod. Just as the other times he had done this, neither the computers or the robotic attendants in the timehold bay had reacted to his early emergence.

His crew and those on the other ships would remain in stasis for most of the trip—nearly two months—until this fleet of five ships reached the space station and readied for the critical traverse of the solar fault.

Silent corridors. Only steady, faint vibrations of the motors and mechanisms sounded. Gerren bypassed the lift and cautiously opened a hatchway that would allow him access to the upper levels. On every deep space flight, he had avoided long-term stasis, yet he still expected an alarm to sound—something to announce that he wasn't where he was supposed to be. Years of being under surveillance had taken its toll, although the last decade had not been as insistent as the previous fifteen. He would, nonetheless, check everything.

An effective command comes from a broad base of knowledge, Edgar had taught him.

Gerren had said those words to the head of government, Supreme Wills Ruchina, before he departed to the ship. He wasn't certain why they had come to him. It had been years since Gerren thought of Edgar Jahn. But now he clearly remembered the symmetrical face, swarthy skin and chiseled features. Edgar's eyes, under smoothly arched brows, were the shade of quiet lagoons.

"You must be a reasonable person, Gerren," Edgar had instructed him. "No matter what you learn or how it makes you feel, always analyze actions. Don't merely react to your emotions."

He had been "reasonable" ever since Edgar left without him. Died, Gerren had eventually been told, but he felt something else had happened and that he was somehow responsible for Edgar's disappearance. So he had been reasonable, with no more outbursts like the one before Edgar seemed to vanish; he was "reasonable" and acquiesced to everything the former Supreme, Tyus Derkson, expected of him. Derkson always told him he would be a great leader. Derkson had groomed him to be such and Gerren was already the Supreme elect; he would be installed as the fourth Supreme of Yiven when he returned from this important expedition. Gerren's deep thoughts, however, weren't on the government position he would have. This expedition fulfilled his longtime hopes to one day go back to the outer sector. He needed answers about his parents: the mother he didn't remember, and the father who never tried to get him back. Even Edgar had left him. Gerren had to find out why.

A sheen of perspiration marked his hairline when he finally exited the shaft at bridge level. He strode down the hall and stopped at a service panel. From the back of the compartment he withdrew a small scanner he had secreted there; he closed the panel and proceeded to his door. This scanner was his own device, set to locate any surveillance bugs that other units would miss. He wasn't sure what to do if the scan proved his room was, even now, monitored. He tabbed the scan switch.

The door was clean.

Once inside, he moved around the three-room suite searching out any snoopers that might have been activated after he left for the timehold. Nothing. He gave a wry smile, relishing these coming months when he wouldn't have to pose, pretend, or be "reasonable." Other deep space flights he had commanded hadn't afforded him nearly so much time to be completely on his own.

He carried the scanner with him, left the room and walked along a short hallway to the command bridge where he strolled among the banks of various colored sensors, dials, screens and work stations, checking for bugs along the way. Nothing. Gerren chuckled and activated the forward visuals. Deep space seemed to have form, with caverns of blackness stretching from one weak force to another; it encompassed huge voids of unstructured matter. Misty comet tails, cascades of bright dots, and points of light pierced the distance and grew steadily larger as the ship rushed along. He was a master scholar in astrophysics, yet he marveled at the binding energies and pulsating rhythms that held the galaxy together, as if groups of matter were hooked to the rays that streamed from the sun. Revolving. Running their patterns in time.

He could faintly make out the distinctive coloration of the solar fault and looked beyond that, wondering which bright star was Tal. Soon that vagrant body would be concurrent with their own sun. Yiven would be in an aphelion position and would experience few effects, but the outer-sector planets would be between both suns. He couldn't imagine how the outer sector people would survive the heat, the loss of crops and the years of discomfort from the effect of two suns. He still wasn't certain why or how Tyus Derkson had made negotiations with the outer sector. An exchange of grain for that phenomenal fuel, tocris, was the official word. True, the Yivenese could use tocris. The small stockpile that had been stored in the original city pods had long since been depleted, and nucleonic propulsion utilized in spacecrafts was costly. Having tocris would be good. Toward that end, the ships' interiors had been altered to carry the huge amounts of grain they were trading. He had helped to design the system that would discharge the grain and then be reversed to take in the crystalline ore from the outer-sector stockpiles.

The cool temperature of the ship began to chill him. No need for heat when the crew wasn't about. He returned to his quarters and pulled out of the thin body suit he had donned before entering the timehold. He took a quick shower, ridding the chalky sensor-heightening film from his body. Stepping out, he grabbed a towel, but when he flipped it open he stared at the embroidery in the center:

Long Sleep, something is amiss.

Security officers wouldn't have recognized the Yivenese glyphs, but Gerren knew several aborigine dialects. Long Sleep was the name Yivenese used for him because of the decades he had spent in the timehold. He dropped the towel and opened another. Nothing there—just a towel. He checked another: it had decorative swirls, but no glyphs. With the water cooling on his skin, he examined his bedding. Nothing. Returning to the bathroom, he unfolded the towel with the message. While drying with another, he studied the glyphs, as if some answer would appear.

Why this message? Who initiated it?

Senator Elite Marta Tovich flashed to his thoughts. Respected by old and young alike, she had been an honored attendee at the launch facility before Gerren went to the ship. And she had said something to him...No...She had communicated something: Timaht give you courage to endure. As he did then, he thought, Timaht?

Was that strange event related to this Yivenese message secreted in a towel?

He pulled into gray leggings and a turtleneck, and as he slipped on his shipboard boots, he thought he saw a flicker of green at his desk. He went there and studied the console that monitored bridge functions. He had developed the small unit for ship commanders. The system was standard issue on all ships. Nothing showed now. Perhaps he had imagined it—his innate paranoia creating problems where there were none.

An effective command comes from a broad base of knowledge.

"I don't want this mission to go awry because of lack of information."

He headed to the bridge to do a complete check of the ship's systems.