The Alpha Protocol: Alpha Protocol Book 1 by Duncan Hamilton (free ebook reader for iphone .TXT) 📗

concern. In the past, more than one space explorer had ended up somewhere other than their intended destination as a result of bad calculations. Many had spent too long in the Current, and were never seen again, the energy trace that had once been them and their ship speeding its way across the universe for eternity. Samson had no desire to meet that fate.

The Nexus computer was intended to take care of the difficult calculations, all but guaranteeing him of his exit location. Samson still recalled the day his instructor at the Academy had used that language: ‘It’s all but guaranteed.’ Margin of error was a wonderful thing, and across the vast distances of space, it became pretty substantial very quickly. Samson had never seen a Nexus computer as old as the Bounty’s. While the underlying technology had not changed that much in over a century, the reliability and accuracy had. Giving the order to discharge the agitator on the Bounty felt like rolling a die—a die with a billion potential numbers, but only one that was correct.

When the agitator charge indicator finally reached the desired level, no matter how many misgivings he might have, there was nothing to be gained by delaying.

‘Mister Vachon, discharge the agitator,’ Samson said.

‘Aye,’ came back Vachon’s voice on the intercom.

There was an audible whine as the agitator spooled up—another thing you would never expect to hear from the bridge on a better-appointed ship. He had to admit there was something pleasing about the more visceral experience of operating a basic ship. It was as though the distance between him and the endless void of space that he sought to navigate was lessened.

The viewport flashed brilliantly bright, then dimmed as instantly, leaving a swirling ball of purple energy that grew and enveloped the ship. The stars blinked out as the Nexus swallowed the Bounty whole. Samson checked the Nexus computer to make sure it was processing the myriad calculations needed to make sure they ended up where they wanted to. In this instance, their target was a sphere of hopefully empty space in the Capsilan system, approximately one and a half million kilometres in diameter—the best accuracy the Bounty’s computer could manage. They could end up dropping out anywhere within that sphere, all being well. The far edge would put them less than a day from Holmwood and the depot, while the near edge would mean a voyage of almost a week through the Capsilan system to get there—cutting things far finer than he would have liked.

That done, Samson sat back down to enjoy watching the mysterious, psychedelic swirl of the Nexus. It didn’t take long for other thoughts to intrude on Samson’s momentary sense of calm. There was a ship out there somewhere with the potential to destroy a naval vessel almost instantly. If that wasn’t worrying enough, the fact that it had done exactly that was terrifying. If it could disintegrate the Sidewinder, the Bounty wouldn’t stand a chance. He didn’t have the headspace to allow himself to dwell on the possibility that it might be alien.

Then there was the fact that part of his crew had just mutinied. Vachon was cooperating, but he couldn’t forget Harper and Kushnir still languishing in their cabins.

To top it all off, there were the artefacts they had found. What the hell were they? It was a great deal to take in, and there were moments when Samson feared it might overwhelm him. Every instinct he had screamed the word ‘alien’. That thought unnerved him most of all, leaving him with a nauseated sensation in his gut.

‘Mister Vachon, how’s the reaction matter holding up?’ It was one of those questions that reminded him of the saying ‘Never ask a question you don’t want to know the answer to.’

‘So far, so good, sir,’ Vachon said. His voice was crackly over the intercom, but interference and small system glitches were the norm in the Nexus, and not a cause for concern. Of course, on a ship like the Bounty, the potential for a large system glitch was substantially higher, but he had enough problems to deal with as it was.

‘Keep a close watch. We won’t be in the Nexus for long, so hopefully it’ll hold up.’

‘Aye, sir.’

Samson looked back down at the nav computer, counting off the minutes until they would drop out of the Nexus. The shielding the agitator provided looked like it was stable. It was a simple technology that had been in use for almost as long as the Nexus had been accessible, and he didn’t expect it to let him down. It was essentially a Faraday Cage, without the cage. They did what they stated on their installation plates—Nexus protection up to however long it was rated for. Go past what it stated, and you were a fool. Usually, a dead fool. Unfortunately, someone had removed the Bounty’s plate, so Samson was flying on the assumption that if Arlen had made this journey from time to time, the ship was up to it. Nevertheless, even if he had known the shield’s competence down to the second, he had never been able to relax whilst in the Nexus, even on a capital ship, and reckoned he never would.

11

Dropping out of the Nexus was far less interesting—and potentially dangerous—then getting into it. There was no massive discharge of energy to go awry, nor the potential for a system to fail under the bombardment of Nexus energy. One moment there was the purple swirl, then nothing but inky, enveloping blackness. It took a little while for the stars to reappear—for reasons an astrophysicist could explain but Samson could not—and it was only then that the nav computer could start triangulating their position to give a definitive answer as to where they had ended up.

Of course, there was always the chance that the Nexus computer had made an error, and miscalculated a planet’s position. The only good thing about dropping out of the Current into the centre of