Frontier's Reach: A Space Opera Adventure (Frontiers Book 1) by Robert James (beach read TXT) 📗

own when Althaus regained consciousness on the chair in front of her. His eyes were like daggers for Jason.

“What the hell did you do to this ship!” Althaus wailed.

“I don’t know what you were watching, but it was that vortex—”

Before he finished his sentence, Tyler’s head lifted from the arm of his chair. “I ordered you to pull away from that vortex,” he said groggily.

I was too late to push the button.

He’d frozen.

But I never freeze.

He went to say something, but Kevin cut him off over the speakers.

“Infirmary to bridge.”

“Tyler here.” His brother activated the intercom from his console, still very much incensed. “What’s going on down there?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing.”

Tyler stood and helped Petit who was also coming around. “We’re all fine up here.”

“Okay, I’ve got the Marines coming into the infirmary now. I’ll see how they’ve fared.”

“Bridge out.” Tyler turned to Aly. “Have we got scanners?”

“Coming back online now.” She studied the readings. “Well, we’re certainly not in the Orion system anymore. You might want to rotate the ship one hundred and seventy degrees to port.”

Jason fired the starboard thrusters and a beautiful green sphere lay before them. On it were three large continental land masses and vast blue oceans in between. Outside of Earth, he’d never seen a planet so spectacular.

“Stunning,” Aly said.

“What about the Seeker ship?” Jason asked.

Petit shook his head. “There’s no other ships on the scanners.”

“Could this planet be their homeworld?”

“There doesn’t appear to be any structures on the surface or space stations in orbit.”

“Then it’s uninhabited?”

“More than likely. The planet itself has just the one natural satellite. Going over the numbers, it’s about three quarters the size of Earth, and the moon about twice the size of Luna.”

Jason checked the helm, but it was the chronometer that caught his attention. “Has anyone else had a look at the time?”

Everyone stared at him blankly.

“Seventy-nine hours have passed since we entered that vortex.”

“We were out cold for over three days?” Marquez said, rubbing his face. He had stubble all over it. As did Althaus, Tyler, and Petit.

The operations station beeped.

“The navigation computer has calculated our position based on the surrounding stars and constellations.” Petit’s eyes widened at his readings. “In that time, we’ve traveled three hundred light-years.”

“That’s impossible,” Althaus scoffed. “It’d take the Argo fifteen years to make a trip of that length.”

“While I don’t dispute that, we are where we are. In three days we’ve traveled at twenty-seven thousand times the speed of light.”

“It’s a far cry from the Argo’s top speed of twenty times the speed of light,” Aly said.

“Indeed.”

“So where exactly are we?” Marquez asked.

“The star maps have it designated as the Psi-Aion system. We’ve well and truly journeyed beyond Frontier’s Reach.”

“No one has ever come this far before,” Tyler said.

“Tritonium-fueled engines,” Jason mumbled.

Tyler raised his eyebrows. “Jason?”

He met his brother’s eyes. “We travel interstellar distances by using engines that require a tritonium-plasma reaction to reach faster-than-light speeds. Without it, we’d be confined to our own star system. The Iota particles have been wherever the Seekers ships have been. They obviously have something to do with the vortexes, so it stands to reason that the Seekers don’t use tritonium to travel at FTL, they traverse space through these corridors. And by doing that they cover space farther and quicker than we can.”

“Trans-space.”

Everyone looked at Petit while he pondered. “About fifty years ago, a scientist by the name of Walter Ransom came up with a far-flung theory that beneath normal space there was another plane of space. One that undulated with currents that moved faster than that of the normal vacuum of space. He called it transient-space, or trans-space for short. He theorized we’d never again need to use FTL engines and instead ride currents to our interstellar destinations.”

“It sounds fantastical,” Tyler said.

“Doctor Ransom’s theory made him a pariah. It was one among several very different concepts he’d come up with. For the rest of his career, he was perceived as nothing more than a crackpot. But with all things fantastical, they have a way of coming true.”

“What about the blackouts?” Marquez asked.

“When humanity broke the FTL barrier, we needed to develop gravity stabilization technology on our vessels so our bodies wouldn’t liquify whenever we jumped. Trans-space is something different. The speeds we’re dealing with are monumentally faster. At twenty-seven thousand times the speed of light and six hundred and fifty times faster than that of our newest Mark V engine, I would assume our bodies struggled with the stress.”

“Can we replicate these conditions to take us back into trans-space?” Tyler asked.

Petit shook his head. “From what I can tell, the vortex is gone, but for a small concentration of Iota particles, which are continuing to dissipate. This technology is centuries if not millennia ahead of our own. I simply don’t have the expertise. Unfortunately, we’re going to have to make the trip home the old-fashioned way.”

A hush went around the bridge. Jason let it sink in. Fifteen years aboard the Argo. That was if the old cargo ship could handle a journey of that length and if they’d be able to continue to replenish their supplies and tritonium. He figured it could’ve been worse. They could be dead.

Or be Nash.

The operations station beeped again and Petit studied it, curiously.

“What is it, Professor?” Tyler asked.

He ran his hands over it, and noises played from the speakers. It was a series of loud and soft beeps. Jason knew what it was straight away.

“That’s an automated Defense Force distress beacon,” Marquez said.

“All the way out here?” Tyler asked. “What’s its location?”

Petit checked the readings. “It’s coming from the surface of Psi-Aion. The western continent.”

“What do we know about the planet?”

“Mostly subtropical in nature. Heavy concentrations of vegetation and several freshwater bodies. It is viable for human life.”

“Can you pinpoint the signal within five kilometers?”

“I believe so.”

Marquez walked to Tyler’s side. “We’ve already asked a hell of a lot from your ship and crew, Captain, but if there is someone down