The Wars of Zegandaria by Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov (find a book to read .txt) 📕

- 'Then why is it so well guarded?,' stammered Richwater, even though he knew that with the current situation they had his life completely at their disposal.

- Because even a cover needs guarding. You can see for yourself that we need to keep him safe from prying eyes.

- 'Captain, you're explaining too much,' the man with the growling voice dared to object, 'what business is it of his to know all this.'

- 'Nothing, Linus,' Captain Penrose took up quite calmly, 'this information can't help him much. Let's satisfy his curiosity.'

Richwater couldn't help but agree, however, that the transport shuttle was moving amazingly fast. As a man of the fleet, he was obliged to admit that even the Ensoria would be hard pressed to compete with such a craft.

- 'We must be moving at second space speed,' he added naively.

The crew that was the room laughed. The Adjutant felt awkward and foolish, for he still wanted to salvage some of his dignity in the face of this 'scum' as he mentally referred to the Captain and the others.

- 'These are supermodern tachyon engines, my boy. The speed you mentioned is well below the capabilities of this machine. For your information, we're going almost a thousand times faster,' sneered Penrose.

- 'Impossible,' Richwater was dumbfounded. 'So not even Killer war cruisers are capable of doing that.'

- 'You seem to be stuck in a world you don't understand, and it confuses and depresses you.,' the Captain laughed again. 'Wait until we reach the colony. You haven't seen anything yet.'

^^^

The hyperspace jump was successful, but Kenji was busy with important thoughts. ‘Where was Richwater sunk?’ Because of his high rank as a military man, he couldn't just go wandering around the cruiser and leave the command room unattended. That thought was downright unnatural. Besides, the gravitational field of the ship outside, the officer's bay, and the prisoner's cell that Richwater had unwittingly witnessed was quite weak, and one could quite easily start hitting the walls like a rubber ball if one wasn't wearing a spacesuit with prograveton boots. On the other hand, he didn't have another trusted person to send looking for the adjutant either. Kenji knew, however, that whatever had happened, it was unlikely to have been due to mere coincidence. No, things like these were much deeper and serious. Everything had to have some logical explanation, of course, but on the other hand, to the most discerning eyes, this logic seemed somehow too logically lost and seemed to lead to nothing. Today, for the second time, his thoughts were focused on that very question, and that was no coincidence either.

In that instant an ingEnnious thought flashed into his mind. Sure, a random walk around the ship for a man of his rank would be absolute madness, but not if he checked Richwater's gauge. In the advanced future, special tracking sensors had been added to these ultramodern counters, and if someone had ingested a higher dose of radiation than usual, the signal sent by the device still had to be registered. Hyperspace jumps may have allowed two points in space to be distorted and so people could travel vast distances, but on the other hand against cosmic radiation mankind had got no further than the lead screens used in the past, which reduced the radiation dose, but not completely. The tricky part in the plan was in one minor detail, which had to do with the provision that no crew member should turn off his gauge counter while on watch.

Leaving aside the technical side of the matter, the majority of the ship's crew was between twenty and thirty years of age. Personally, Kenji was twenty-nine, and had just about made himself a grandfather among all these youngsters. He knew that this elementary trick could be of great use, because if something did happen to Richwater, there was obviously a chance that he would be next.

Now there was the second part of the plan, which was how to leave the command room on some pretext.

Clearly the crew members were busy with their work and absorbed enough to keep an eye on the various holographic indications of the ship's speed and course.

But they still had to exercise at least a little caution and attention to detail.

- Erengales, stand in for me while I'm gone. Engage thrusters at full power once we clear the asteroid belt. Be alert for any ambushes or surprises. Put the energy shield at thirty percent. Plasma machine guns stand by. Prepare the on-board photon cannons just in case, but only the main ones - to the aft bay and main deck. Live! We're falling behind!

Hilda was probably the most ambitious member of the crew, she had come this far by tooth and nail and was probably the only one who wasn't a native of Zegandaria but one of Zegandaria's companions, Elonto Sibu. A small asteroid that couldn't even develop space farming in the true sense of the word due to the lack of sufficient surface area. But it was bold and stubborn and wanted to break through at all costs.

Hilda Erengales took command of the ship as soon as Kenji left the hall. Suddenly she had the power to run the cruiser, at least for a little while. As second adjutant, she hadn't had a chance to prove herself in that regard yet, and her qualities had always remained in the shadows. Now she was going to do her best to catch up in that regard.

Kenji left the command room, followed only by his personal guards. But he wanted to be left alone, at least for a little while, and not because he couldn't wait to check his adjutant's gaiger counter. He wanted to be sure if the ship was captured, but the conquerors were still somehow cunningly hiding, and behind the false calm all around, disaster would strike at any moment. Of course time was running out...

^^^

Kenji was gripped by fears for his own safety. And decided to look for Richwater. But after not finding him, he realized that the situation was even worse than before. Passing through the corridors, he encountered absolutely no one. ‘Anyway - I'm not going to risk going to the bay with the prisoners. I'll check the escape shuttles first!’ He groped his way down the corridor, trying to maintain some dignity. This was his last chance to survive! ‘Let Hilda enjoy the power entrusted to her!,’ he thought again. ‘Her reign will not last long!’ Then he slowly made his way to a part of the ship known only to him. Behind the command room, were the service corridors, and below the lower bridge, a sintered hatch that no one would have noticed with the naked eye. It was so nondescript and hidden as to be simply expensive. Kenji turned the valve carefully, and the hatch slowly opened. He pushed himself in rather deftly and closed it. Everything was falling into place as there was a weapons cache hidden in there somewhere. As he crawled through the gut-like tunnel of the squadron, he could definitely imagine the food going through the man's body to its exit on the outside. A moment later he was in the corresponding cache the size of a small room. There was a particular kind of weaponry in there. Some of them were quite interesting in both form and function. He put on a special combat suit that would protect his body when he was forced into the space capsule. He then retrieved his weapon and checked the charges on the plasma blaster. Everything was accurate. Everything but one. It was best not to find out he'd left the ship at all. He had to be careful. He did his best to erase all possible traces. Every movement was well measured. There was no room for improvisation. Then he mentally prayed that the shot would be successful and somehow get through the ship's shield. Two things were necessary for that purpose. First he had to shut it down. He had to go back down the gut. And to go to a different bay, but one that was heavily guarded. He was under no illusions that he was unlikely to stop the guards with some sort of blaster. These were trained ghost warriors who were better than even him. But not smarter. Or so he hoped. He was going to show them what a rear admiral could do!

He had picked up the first special weapon, which was called a thermoflon torch. He was going to melt them with it. The entire corridor was under video surveillance, so he used a special nanosuit to hide it even from the infrared sensors.

He went back and walked rather boldly through the cruiser's stores. What was his surprise when he found absolutely nothing and no one! That puzzled him even more. As crushed as he was, he went back to the command room. Wasn't this some kind of hoax!

He tried opening the massive triple hydron door. No result! He tried again! Same again! The door seemed to have twisted and wouldn't budge. He placed his palm on the touch reader. Nothing!

Decided to use the burner! The strong fiery blast of the powerful weapon washed over him! He could just feel that he was in the midst of some kind of maroon as the door came down in layers like some kind of half-hardened slag. He definitely wanted to give up, but he couldn't as the sudden change in temperature could be dangerous and even cause an explosion. He stood at such an angle that the slag passed by him. It took quite a while. But in the end Kenji had to admit with pride that he was more of a test than the door. At least in theory. Fifteen minutes had passed. The hole in the middle of the door was medium-sized, but he could squeeze his athletic body through it. With an excellently practiced leap, he dove and went through the opening, aiming the torch in his direction. It was an idiotic contraption! There could have been a whole platoon of warriors on the other side. But again there was no one!

Too strange! He looked around! The sensors and nano-screens were off, and nothing could be seen through the huge hood of reinforced endosian. It was also clouded over.

One thing was certain - the ship wasn't moving! Or so it seemed to him!

- 'Echo, is anyone there?,' he called out shortly.

No reply followed. Kenji understood. They had kidnapped the crew. Only he had miraculously escaped. But where had they gone. Now he was alone on the ship.

- 'Hilda, always dreaming of taking my place. Here now she has taken it!,' he joked, with rather caustic black humour. Pity there was no one to hear him!

Kenji walked round and looked round every corner. There were no scratches, no plasma marks, let alone blood or explosions. Just in case, he turned and looked through the hole again. Naturally, there was absolutely nothing. No footsteps could be heard from the clattering nanobots. It had just been a storm, and he had saved himself. The crew of nearly two hundred seemed to have evaporated.

But the question remained, where was the ship actually? And who had hijacked it? Kenji had his suspicions that it might not have been the Elohyns exactly. It wasn't their style to act quite so precise. Was it another race? Or some sort of superbeing?

Were they stuck in some sort of space-time anomaly? He knew very well the properties of the so-called gravitational singularity that was so characteristic of black holes. There, the continuity of space-time was broken. But there was nothing like that here. It should by that logic no longer exist, along with the whole ship.

That was obvious.

After his brain kept jumping from one hypothesis to another, he was in agreement with