Galaxy's End: Book One by LeRoy Clary (pdf ebook reader txt) 📕

a near whisper, “It made the turn right after us instead of continuing ahead as it should have.”

“Permission to launch into the next wormhole?” Fang asked.

“Granted.”

Time lingered and gave me time to think. I had never asked Bert about my origins, but now wished I had. I wanted to know more about Prager Four, too.

Since his background was as unknown as mine, had Bill also come from the same planet? If not, or even if he had, how had we managed to arrive on Roma? If Bill was a native of Roma, someone had paid for my passage, but who? My parents? Probably. That made sense. It also meant they were either government employees or wealthy enough to afford three tickets. That said a lot, but what it meant beyond that they had the means to buy starship tickets that cost more than most houses—a ticket for each of them and one for me—I had no idea that was possible.

Like all adoptees or children who find themselves alone in the universe, thoughts of my parents being a king and queen, therefore I was a princess, flitted through my mind. But there were other reasons families traveled between stars. Commerce, military postings, trade, and . . . well, the ideas beyond those were thin.

If the three of us in my family had arrived on Roma together, as seemed reasonable, where were they? My parents. What had happened to them? Why was I left on my own?

“Executing wormhole shift,” Frog said, sounding like the helmsmen in vids.

Not only did he sound like one, but he had also taken control of the ship. He knew his way around the bridge, the terminology, the commands. He had done service time on at least one ship’s bridge.

I glanced at the red dot on the screen and watched it wink on and off. The ship following us was in a different wormhole when we transitioned. And then it was not. It had instantly exited the wormhole we had been in with us and moved to another instead of continuing in the first.

It was still following us. Without thinking, I said, “It can’t do that.”

Captain Stone nodded as she said over her shoulder to me, her attention still on the readouts, “Not until today. I wouldn’t believe it if someone told me what we just observed.”

“It’s getting closer?” I asked.

“Yes, but it is far behind,” she said. “At least, two days to close on us at present speeds, but that may not be true inside the wormhole transition.”

“Then what?” I heard myself ask, wishing I hadn’t spoken the question out loud.

She said, “We don’t know. The Dreamer can’t outrun what’s behind us, whatever it is if we are in normal space. The only thing we know for certain is that it is following us during transitions in wormholes, and that’s supposed to be impossible.”

Bert made a gentle pinging sound on the overhead before talking. It was a slight warning that I liked. It seemed to show politeness. “Before you ask me to investigate the wormhole transitions, I have already been hard at it. I may have found a clue.”

“Tell us,” Stone ordered so sternly that it sounded like a rebuke.

“There is nothing new about traveling in wormholes on any information outlet I can locate. However, there is a bit of indirect news that may be inaccurate or misleading, however, it is worth repeating. At the far rim of our human colonized sphere, there is a world newly discovered. Its indigenous race is amphibian, upright, and vaguely crocodilian in appearance.”

Captain Stone said, “Stop with the background, get on to what you’ve found.”

“Nothing directly linking them to the pirates or who is chasing us, but there is an oddity I’ve observed. I have three reports that show a habitat in their section of space has sold black market items matching those being transported by ships that have gone missing while in transit via wormholes. It seems the cargo survived.”

“What else?” she snapped. “So, they have a fence working for them. What are you saying?”

“A quick search of insurance claims for missing ships shows an increase of nearly a hundred percent in the last solar year. That’s still very few ships, but there is no indicated reason. All the ships but one was in that quadrant of space where the newly discovered race controls all commerce.”

Captain Stone said, “Why aren’t the insurance companies screaming their heads off and increasing premiums?”

Bert said, “They are just beginning to figure it out. The first hints are still being organized into an overall assemblage. Since each ship disappeared while in transit, inside wormholes, there should be no stolen property for fences to sell.”

“I see,” Captain Stone said as her fingers stroked her chin. “I didn’t think of that.”

Fang said, “The one behind is losing distance if the relative locations are accurate as we transitioned to another wormhole.”

“It came closer so it wouldn’t lose us when we took a few jogs, always at the very edge of its sensors—and where it believes it is out of ours. Now it’s going to follow again in normal or warp space, where it thinks it is just out of range of our sensors.” Captain Stone added for Fang.

All that was exciting, the chase and pirates along with the discoveries. But my mind kept returning to Chance and the remarkable coincidence of his mental abilities aligning with ours. Three of us on the same small ship from one small planet. All with empathic abilities. It wouldn’t stop irritating me. Like a song that I couldn’t stop humming.

I had always hidden my abilities and assumed that others did too.

My mind tried to be reasonable as I thought about the beginning of this venture. We could have booked passage on any other vessel. The only reason for taking this one was