Prologue

Welcome! This is the prologue of Sector 36, my upcoming military sci-fi novel. The novel is a gritty exploration of a dystopian future where artificial intelligences rule the world, corporate power exceeds government authority, and human life is expendable.

---

00: Code Words

Viridian Shroud Nebula, Sector 36, soon after the Tauran War

Doctor Linton plots the interstellar course on the tiny skimmer, muttering “oh my God” over and over again. He knows a secret. A terrible secret. And now he must flee.

Most scientists are not secretive by nature. Doctor Linton would know – he is one. The more military vessels amassed around Eureka Base, the more boots clacked on the tiles and echoed down the lab’s hallways, the more nervous the scientists got. The more nervous they got, the sloppier their data handling became. He snooped. He did it slowly, quietly. He wasn’t greedy – he played the long game. Strange things are happening in Sector 36; he wanted to get to the bottom of it all. And then he did. Oh my God, he did.

His day job, like that of all the other scientists at the research lab, was understanding the cause of the gravitational anomalies around the dim NS-36-A neutron star. The unimaginative designation stands for “neutron star – Sector 36 – first one we care about.” From their vantage point on a remote moon, orbiting a small planet about half an AU away from the dead star, the scientists gathered data, analyzed it, and came up with theories. Theories explaining the cause of the FTL, communications, and quantum compute disruptions. Linton was sure they were on the verge of some kind of breakthrough when the Taurans attacked, promptly redirecting everyone’s focus.

The skimmer is almost ready to go, its onboard computer running through the pre-flight checklist. Linton is working fast, sweating in the cushioned pilot seat as he plots a course to his getaway destination and another, much shorter flight path to fool the systems keeping watch around Eureka Base. He pauses, wipes his brow, sighs, says another “oh my God” and dives right back into the digital. Almost there. He needs to get out of here – needs to let the world know.

As humanity spread throughout the Milky Way without encountering any other intelligent life, the consensus veered towards being all alone, Fermi paradox or not. Linton himself had plenty of conversations on the subject with his fellow physicists. His long-held belief was that if the galaxy harbored any intelligent life, we would’ve run into it by now. He was convinced of this. That is, until the Taurans showed up.

They came into Sector 36 with guns blazing, ready to fight rather than talk. The doctor and his colleagues spent a few tense weeks watching the alien armada heading imminently towards their lab, in their strange stuttering flight pattern of FTL jumps mixed with stretches of subluminal flight. The human military repelled them with equal force and more determination. Eureka Base was ultimately untouched as the Taurans retreated. Unlike Echo Point – a settlement obliterated by a strange Tauran weapon.

As the aliens left the sector, the lab personnel started to relax. But their fears came back as they realized they ended up under some form of martial law, the panic of imminent attack replaced by an uneasy tension and menacing secrecy.

The war is allegedly over, but more and more heavily armed ships arrive in the system. Some of the civilians were able to make their way rimward, to the Gateway Ring, to translate out of the sector. Some of the top scientists were asked politely to stick around. By heavily armed marines. He is one of the latter.

As time went by, rumors started spreading throughout the lab. Some were saying Tauran bodies were being autopsied in the lowest underground levels. Others were saying live prisoners were being questioned there. Or subjected to experiments. Some were saying Tauran tech is being reverse engineered. Doctor Linton heard it all.

He poked around, he asked questions, he read studies. He read some studies he is pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to read. He learned codewords. He discreetly searched for them, kept pulling on the strings. Some led to dead ends – access restricted, locked down knowledge bases. Some shed a tiny bit of light. He kept at it.

He kept busy. Talked to colleagues, brainstormed, found passwords on desk notes, tried them out. And finally, revelation. World-turns-upside-down, everything-makes-sense now revelation. Not what he was looking for, not what he was expecting, but oh my God what a revelation! An explanation for everything! Changing everything! The world must know! But he can’t speak.

He’s on a research outpost, effectively under martial law, surrounded by military personnel, overseen by an Omega class AI who is most certainly “in” on it. If he yells what he learned into the ether, it would go nowhere. They would know. They have the capabilities to intercept and filter him out.

He has a plan though. This plan was worked out months in advance. When you can’t trust your encryption, when hyperintelligence helps develop your algorithms and promises you it’s uncrackable but you don’t take its word for it, when you can’t out-math it, you need to go back to basics. Primitive cryptography. Your signal can’t contain valuable data, it will be intercepted, read, used against you. You need the human connection. Your signal is just a codeword. It means only “I have something to tell you, let’s meet up.” All pre-arranged.

Yesterday he sent a message to his friend, complaining about his shoulder. He injured it playing sports a couple of decades ago, and it tends to flare up from time to time. All on medical record. Nothing to see here.

The message means “Pick me up from Verdant, I have vital information.” His friend is a Spark contact; he won’t be the one picking him up. He will just relay the message, get help, get him out of the sector. No decryption could tease the meaning from the payload. The Doctor will deliver the secret, in person, to someone who can make best use of it. If he survives. If they don’t nab him before he leaves the system.

His exit strategy hit a snag. When all this was worked out – his hideaway spot on Verdant, the codes, the plan – there was no Tauran threat. Travel through the sector was easy. Now it’s not. No ships are leaving Eureka Base for the foreseeable future. More military coming in every day. The unexpected war, the aftermath, the display of force, all of these made the scientists sloppy, aided his snooping, but it also made his departure next to impossible.

He needs to get to Verdant – fast. He will risk it all. He has world-shaking knowledge. Not what Spark was expecting. Not what he was expecting. But more vital than either imagined.

{Control, this is Sunhopper. Requesting permission to takeoff. Transmitting flight plan} he sends. The moment of truth. Will his plan work? Will all his secrecy help get him out of here? Or are they going to drag him out of the skimmer, throw him in a cell? He sits frozen, waiting for a reply. The small cockpit of the skimmer seems to shrink around him.

{Sunhopper, repeat your authorization.}

He swallows hard. His throat tightens. This was a mistake, he thinks. They’re on to me.

He spent days restless, feeling the burden of the information he managed to steal. Trying to figure out his next step. Should he wait? Make a run for it? He’s no spy, no cloak and dagger type; just a PhD in physics who believes in a cause. He lacked the tradecraft to vanish, but he couldn’t sit on what he knew. He doubted anyone on Eureka Base would make it out alive if he waited any longer. So, reluctantly, he decided to flee.

{Replaying authorization, Control} he sends, then holds his breath. The moment of truth. Seconds pass. He doesn’t dare breathe. Then, after what seems like forever…

{You are clear Sunhopper. Stick to your flight path, we have frigates incoming.}

The Doctor allows himself an exhale. He wipes his brow again, whispers another “oh my God”, then takes off, clearing the small landing pad and rising fast through the moon’s thin, nitrogen-rich atmosphere.

Space is big. Centuries of darkness between stars. FTL makes the distance bearable – but never short. Skimmers are capable of superluminal flight but are still slow compared to larger vessels. It will take him multiple weeks to reach Verdant at full burn. That’s if he makes it through all the security that is now surrounding the system. But there’s no other way. He has to try.

The barren moon’s orbit is chock-full of military vessels of all shapes and sizes. Some as small as the Sunhopper, some way larger than what Eureka Base’s modest landing pad could handle. Some seem as large as the compound itself. Frigates? Cruisers? Destroyers? He can’t tell.

He is watching the small above-ground part of the lab recede as he gains altitude. The many blinking lights, graviton detectors, and rotating antennae converge into a small dot, then disappear. The huge ships grow even larger as the Sunhopper glides closer to them, closer to their glinting weapons.

He maintains a respectful distance; sticks to the flight path he submitted – for now. A joyride – just a change of scenery for a scientist cooped up in a lab. Nothing that would raise suspicions.

He burns a bit further out than the planned flight path. He waits for admonishment, but none comes. He burns a bit further out still. The sky is dotted with military ships, bristling with digital eyes – but they’re watching for Tauran warships.

By the time a system flags his deviation and reaches out, Doctor Linton punches it to full throttle. He is a speck of dust on a black-and-green backdrop, moving at relativistic speed. The incoming message doesn’t reach him. He’s out of comms range, alone and afraid, carrying with him the answers to everything.

Next chapter:

01: Ingress