Chapter 1
It turned out that folding space and time was just as insane as it sounded. I held on for dear life as the sheer force of traveling at that speed through the universe pushed me back into my seat, as though some giant, invisible hand had me in its grasp. My whole body felt practically flat as we shot through space, and I could do nothing but stare forward at the unexplored universe unfolding in front of my eyes. I couldn’t help but smile, both out of utter wonder as well as the fact the skin on my face was pulled backward by the drag of the jump. I watched as stars turned into long beams of light and shot past me like race cars whipping past my spaceship.
Brightly colored gasses and nebulae went past, too, and a rainbow of different hues blemished the blackness of my surroundings. It was as though all of the stars and glowing planets that we passed turned into a tunnel of light as the folding engine brought two sections of space closer together. A moment ago, I had just passed Mars, but now I knew I definitely wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
I had no concept of time as the jump continued on, though I was literally traveling millions of lightyears in one go, so who was I to judge how long it took. Still, it felt like both an age and just a second had passed until I was spat out on the other side.
I imagined that it was a similar feeling to landing a plane in the middle of a hurricane. The spaceship equivalent of the brakes were slammed on, and instead of being pressed into the seat, I was now thrown forward against the heavy-duty seat belt harness that I had across my torso. Outside the ship, the stars shrunk back down into tiny, glittering dots in the distance, and the tunnel of lights that had been around me dispersed back into the dark, endless backdrop that I had only just grown somewhat familiar with, since I’d only been a visitor in space for a few hours at most. A few Earth hours, anyway.
It took a few moments for the folding engine to shut down and for the ion engines at the rear of the ship to regain control of the direction we drifted in, and for the minute or so that the ship floated in space, suspended only by the lack of any gravity in the infinite vacuum that I found myself in, I realized that there were some strange things going on inside my body. My organs felt like they had fallen back into the right place, and a feeling of nausea filled my abdomen for a moment, before I swallowed it down. My head felt fuzzy, my eyes felt enlarged, and my limbs ached from being tensed for so long, so I took a few deep breaths, and allowed the after-effects of the jump to ease.
Once the ship was steady, I stood up and stretched, and it was the most satisfying stretch I had felt in a long time. Then, I paced around the small cockpit in order to wake my legs back up, and thankfully, the sick feeling in my stomach disappeared. I put my hand to my chest to steady my breathing, and as I did so, my hand brushed over the sliver of technology in the chestplate of my protective suit.
The technology was a piece of the alien AI that had fallen into my backyard just a couple of months ago. The alien creation had been encased in a meteor which it had used to hide itself from government satellites and nosy neighbors in order to reach me. Francine’s appearance in my life had turned everything upside down, but I didn’t regret it.
The AI had given me a mission to complete and turned back the clock so that I was once again young and felt indestructible. In return, I’d named it Francine after my first truck and helped it build the spaceship we were now in. In fact, the rest of Francine was now inside my spaceship as a control and power source, for which I was grateful since I wasn’t sure I was up to flying the ship just yet. And then there was the fact that Francine was good company, and I was happy to have the AI along.
“Damn, Francine,” I said to my alien AI companion. “Does it feel like that every time?”
“You will get used to it, Will Ryder,” it replied, and its mildly feminine voice echoed around my head as it always did, since I was the only person who could hear it.
“That’s not the answer I was hoping for,” I chuckled. “At least it doesn’t last very long. I feel a lot better already.”
“That is good to hear, Will,” Francine said. “So does Bob.”
Bob was a little robot that I had bought and then adapted to help me construct the spaceship, but who had become a treasured sidekick of mine. I looked down at the yellow machine, which beeped happily and wiggled his mechanical arms to mimic how I had stretched mine.
I sat back down in my pilot’s chair and stared out at the unfamiliar territory before me. It didn’t look all that different from where I had just been, since the view in front of me was primarily just darkness speckled with stars and other space objects, but I knew that where the jump, courtesy of the folding engine, had taken me was somewhere that humans had never been before. I felt honored that I was the first human being to witness new parts of the universe, though it was sort of funny that an ex-trucker from Kansas was the first person to make it to this point.
“So…” I said, “where are we now? If we’re gonna be spending twelve hours here while the folding engine recharges, then I’d like to know where I am.”
“I will show you on the Heads Up Display,” Francine replied, and a moment later, the front window was covered with a map made up of green lines that showed me the layout of the planets and stars that were near to my location. “Locally, this system is known to its inhabitants as the Xerillian System. External travelers often refer to it in short as the X System for short in their own respective tongues, and each planet is labeled based on its relative location to the main star. So X-1 is the closest, then X-2, and so forth.”
“So, this system gets a lot of different aliens coming through it all the time?” I asked.
“That is correct,” Francine replied.
“So, if we stop anywhere, I’m less likely to attract any attention?” I said.
“Hopefully, yes,” Francine replied. “Most species, even those that frequently travel across space, accept that they do not know every lifeform in the universe because of its infinite nature. So, you might get a few looks as they realize you are a different life form that they have not yet come across, but I do not think you will draw any unwanted attention.”
“Good to know,” I replied. “So, are we just gonna float here for twelve hours while the engine recharges, or is there a reason you chose to take us to the Xerillian System?”
“Well, there is a reason, yes,” Francine said. “To put things lightly, our spaceship is extremely basic, especially when compared to the spacecraft used by other travelers from different planets.”
“How is this basic?” I scoffed. “It literally folded space and time just now.”
“It has virtually no weapons or decent shields, it is slow in comparison to most other spaceships, and it was built entirely with substandard materials from Earth, which had limited resources available to do it.” Francine replied.
“So, it could do with a few upgrades, then,” I chuckled.
“Just a few, yes,” Francine replied with an amused tone in its voice.
“So, we need to work on the shields, the weapons, the hull, and the engines,” I said. “That’s basically the whole ship.”
“We are working from an excellent starting point,” Francine said. “This is really a very good ship for what we had to work with.”
“Have you considered being a politician?” I asked. “You talk like one.”
“I think I would be good at leading humans,” Francine said.
“How Ex Machina of you,” I said. “That would have been a scary sentence if any AI other than you had said it.”
“I will take that as a compliment,” Francine replied.
“Each to their own,” I chuckled. “So, I’m guessing that there are a lot of resources in this system that we could use to make these improvements?”
“Correct,” Francine replied. “It was also an ideal location for the first jump since this system is neutral.”
“Meaning?” I asked.
“Meaning there are no wars here,” Francine said. “Unrest is not only common on Earth, but in most places in the galaxy, unfortunately. However, Xerillian is neutral, so any species can come here and will not be turned away.”
“I wish everywhere was that progressive,” I replied. “It would save so many lives.”
“Yes,” Francine said. “But the Xerillians have also been lucky. They have abundant natural resources and a willingness to share. Greed is uncommon here.”
“Money is the root of all evil,” I murmured.
“It is often a factor,” Francine replied. “But some species seem destined to cause chaos and destruction wherever they go.”
I nodded as I was reminded that I wasn’t just out here in space for a fun time, or even for exploratory purposes. Another alien race was headed toward Earth for the sole purpose of claiming it for themselves and killing billions of humans in the process.
I was supposed to protect it from that fate, and to do that, I needed my ship to be top of the line. But I only had a few months in Earth time to get my little vessel ready to fight a fleet of ships that had already seized control of hundreds of planets, so it made sense that our first stop would be a place where we could add a few upgrades.
“So, where’s best for us to find all those supplies?” I asked.
“I would suggest planet X-8,” Francine said. “Known locally as Ahgoa, it is located in the center of this system, and there is a space station in orbit around Ahgoa that is used as the main point of confluence for all travelers in Xerillian territory. Needless to say, it’s also where most of the trading is done, so we should have no problem finding what we need.”
“How far is it to X-8?” I asked.
“About two Earth hours,” Francine explained. “The ship is fine on autopilot for a majority of the journey, but you will need to be on the controls when we dock at the space station. It’s a local rule. Apparently, they do not trust AIs.”
“No problem,” I said. “In the meantime, I could do with a coffee.”
“And I would like to make some alterations to your suit,” Francine said. “Not all of the planets we visit will have a suitable atmosphere, so I would like to ensure that you have an oxygen supply available.”
“I’ll just slip into something more comfortable then,” I laughed.
I stood up, stretched my back again, and then headed for the hatch at the rear of the cockpit. The door slid open when I pressed the small button next to it, and I walked into what was my living area on the ship. It wasn’t very large, but there was enough room for a bed, a small area to cook, and most importantly, my coffee maker. It was also filled with boxes of supplies at the moment, since I’d filled up most of the storage compartments, but since I had no idea how long it would be before I could refill anything, I wasn’t going to complain.
Bob trotted after me, and while Francine could control him, she’d started to give the little robot more autonomy, especially since we’d finished building the ship. Personally, I was glad to have Bob along for the ride. It was sort of like having a dog, but one made of plastic, metal, and wires instead of fur and flesh, and that could also be controlled by an alien AI whenever Francine needed something done.
I made a beeline for the coffee machine, added the water and the coffee grounds, and then waited for it to work its magic. While the machine perked and bubbled, I quickly took off my protective suit so that Francine could work on it, put my regular clothes back on, and then took the suit into the cockpit.
“Where should I put this?” I asked.
“Here,” Francine said as one of the control panels slid back to reveal a dark hole underneath.
“You really did think of everything when we built this,” I said as I put the suit into the gap.
“Of course,” Francine replied. “I will start to work on that immediately.”
“Thank you,” I said. “And in the meantime, I’ve got a coffee that’s calling my name.”
I walked back into the living area and found that my mug was filled with the glorious liquid. I blew on it for a moment and then took a sip. The caffeine flooded into my body as the coffee warmed me up from my very core, and I felt instantly at home again. I looked over at Bob, who had hopped onto my bed and was gently bouncing on it. I chuckled as I watched the little bot hop around, and for a moment, I totally forgot that I was inside a tin can flying through outer space.
I spent the next couple of hours making myself at home in the room I was going to be spending a lot of time in over the next few months. Despite my sensitive stomach after the jump through space, I made myself a sandwich with some of the food I had brought with me and reminded myself to appreciate having the fresh stuff now, since it was possible that at some point I would end up eating the ration packets I had with me, which contained dried, uninviting-looking versions of my favorite meals.
After I had eaten, though, I realized that I didn’t want to just sit around doing crosswords or reading. I was in space, for goodness sake, and I was going to enjoy it.
So, I made my way back into the cockpit and sat back down in my pilot’s chair. I watched the stars drift past as the ship zoomed through the darkness, and I admired the beauty of it all. I would never be able to get my head around the concept of infinity, but now that I was looking at it, it seemed to make at least a little bit more sense.
About an hour later, Francine was finished with my suit. The compartment slid open again, and I pulled out the dark gray protective suit that had become my second skin. It went on easily, as it always did, and as soon as the bulletproof, knife-proof, and almost everything-proof material touched my skin, it clung to it closely without being uncomfortable.
Once I had it on up to my neck, I pressed the chestplate, and the back of it sealed me in seamlessly. There were places, on my wrists and by my neck, that I could press in order for gloves and head-covering sections to extend from the suit, but for now, I left them open. The padding and indents in the suit were very flattering for my body, and since Francine had injected the nanobots into my fifty-five-year-old body, every part of me had been made fitter and healthier than I’d ever been, so I wasn’t against a form-fitting suit.
“So, how does it help me breathe now?” I asked.
“If you reach just under the neckline of the suit, you will feel a small tube,” Francine said.
“Okay,” I said as I did as I was instructed.
My hand closed around the tube, and I pulled it out so that I could get a look at it. It was thin and black, with a gray section in the middle. Two smaller tubes came out of the gray section and bent inward at the end. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to work out what to do with it, although technically I sort of was a rocket scientist these days, so I put the two tubes into my nostrils and tested it out. Fresh air filled my nose as soon as I drew a breath.
“How is it?” Francine asked.
“Perfect,” I replied as I put my black cargo pants, a gray T-shirt, and my trucker hat back on over the suit.
“Good,” it said. “And for your peace of mind, the atmospheric pressure on Aghoa is the same as on Earth, so your head will not explode once we step out of the ship.”
“Okay, uh, I wasn’t worried about that until now,” I laughed. “Thanks for that.”
“You’re very welcome,” Francine quipped.
“Since we still have some time, maybe I should get some practice in,” I suggested. “I mean, I appreciate all the information you downloaded into my brain about flying, but I’d like to actually make sure I can do it.”
“Of course,” the AI agreed. “You may take over whenever you are ready.
I strapped myself back into the seat, took a deep breath, and then grabbed the joysticks with my hands. It wasn’t the smoothest transition, but after ten minutes or so, I was sailing across the void as well as any pilot.
As we got closer to Aghoa, we started to pass some of the other planets in the solar system. All of them seemed to have pastel hues to them, and one of them was entirely lilac without a hint of any other color at all. It was like an enormous, light purple marble.
“That is X-15,” Francine said. “It is a gas giant, like Jupiter in your solar system. However, the atmosphere is primarily argon, which gives it the lilac coloring.”
“I see,” I replied. “I’m guessing it’s uninhabited then.”
“Yes,” Francine said. “Its atmosphere is far too harsh for any life to exist there. In fact, many of the planets near the Xerillian System are uninhabited.”
“Maybe that’s why it’s so peaceful around here,” I said. “Though humans seem perfectly capable of having wars with ourselves.”
“As do many other species,” Francine said. “And here’s X-14.”
I turned to my right and found myself looking at a dusty, red planet with a rusty appearance, not unlike Mars from what I could see, and I knew that firsthand because I had flown past Mars earlier that day.
“The lifeforms that live there require only minimal amounts of water in order to survive,” Francine said. “They export large amounts of metals, such as iron and nickel, so it is one of the wealthiest planets in this solar system.”
“I can imagine,” I replied.
Francine talked me through the next few planets, such as the one with a bright yellow surface and green seas, or its tiny cousin, which Francine told me exported more food than any other planet in the known galaxy, because it grew crops that any lifeform was able to consume.
“That’s good to know,” I said as I watched the lush green planet drift by.
Finally, we reached X-8, Aghoa. It was a planet not unlike Earth, with oceans, polar ice caps, and green land. However, the way the land was arranged was very similar to how Earth had been millions of years ago when most of the land had been connected together in one large continent. I spotted a few islands in the vast ocean, but that was it for dry land.
Two moons sat on the other side of Aghoa. Both had craterous, gray surfaces and, as I moved to a better vantage point, I saw that they were actually connected on one side. It looked as though the moons had crashed into one another in the distant past and now moved around the planet together, connected at the hip like some sort of planetary level Siamese twins. A gigantic amount of debris followed the two moons’ trail, and I assumed that the free-flying rocks were left over from the collision. I imagined that eventually gravity would force the two bodies to form one single body in future.
The space around the planet itself was extremely busy, and the line for the space station was long. I joined a queue for smaller ships, which at least kept moving, unlike some of the cargo ships, which seemed to be parked permanently in space.
I could see the station as we got closer, and I watched various ships dart off toward the vast array of ports when it was their turn to dock. The thing was massive, and I wondered how much of the Aghoa population was even on the planet and how much was on the station. But the line kept moving, and we slowly inched toward what I’d come to think of as Walmart in outer space.
“I can’t believe I’m in a space traffic jam,” I laughed as we edged forward.
“Yes, it is amusing,” Francine said. “I did warn you it would be busy.”
“Yeah, but still,” I replied. “I can’t believe there are this many people with spaceships.”
We were nearly to the station when I realized that the whole thing was tethered to the planet below. It made sense, I supposed, since that would make it easier to send goods and people back and forth to the surface, but I wondered what they did during a bad storm. Or maybe they didn’t have bad storms on Aghoa.
I was so lost in thought about storms and transports to the planet, that I nearly missed Francine’s warning that I was drifting too close to the ship in front of me. I pulled my attention away from the tethers and looked at the station itself.
The only way to describe it was a giant tower, though it was taller and wider than any tower or skyscraper I’d ever seen. Small ships zoomed around the outside of the building, and I realized that those ships were probably needed just to get to the different parts of the space station. The space station itself was clean and gray, with slits where small robots crawled out to work on the external walls of the station to fix whatever was broken.
There were clear sections of the station, and it was obvious where each part had been added on as the station expanded. Far below, I could see that it was tethered to a rocky piece of land, which stuck out from the otherwise green and verdant continent.
I looked over at the horizon, though, and I could just about make out some rolling hills in the distance that looked like something out of a fairytale. Part of me wished we could explore the rest of the continent, but I was here for a reason, and I needed to collect whatever useful materials and weapons I could find for the ship.
“Will,” Francine said. “We have been cleared to land. Just follow that black ship ahead of us. We’ve been assigned the spot next to them.”
“Got it,” I replied.
We dipped through one of the holes in the side of the station, through some sort of blue shimmering field, and emerged in a giant hangar. The ships on this level were about the same size as my vessel, though they came in a variety of shapes and levels of disrepair. There was a sleek, shiny ship that looked like it had just rolled off the showroom floor, while at the other extreme was a giant box that literally had paneling peeling off of it.
The black ship we’d followed started to slow down and eased its way into its assigned spot. I took a deep breath and started my own descent into the next spot. We landed with a loud thump, but since it was my first time landing the vessel, I told myself it was a good job.
Once the ship was down, I peered out of the window. Spaceships were landing and taking off from various spots, and somehow, they all managed to avoid crashing into each other. Obviously, there was some sort of control tower somewhere that Francine had talked to, but it was still a scary sight to watch the ships dart about like it was no big deal.
“That was a good first attempt at landing the ship,” Francine said.
“Thanks,” I replied as I got out of my seat.
“Would you like me to direct you to the main entrance?” Francine asked.
“Hell yeah,” I replied. “I can’t wait.”
“Then let’s go,” Francine said, and the door on the side of the cockpit slid open.
For a moment, I froze. This was my first time stepping out of the ship and onto a planet that wasn’t Earth. Well, okay, a massive space station, but it counted. I made sure that my oxygen tube was firmly secured to my nose, just in case, and then I edged over to the doorway.
Outside the ship, the air was warm, probably from all of the ship’s engines that were cooling off in the docking bays. After a moment right on the edge of the doorway, I stepped down onto the metal floor and took a deep breath.
I had done it. I was on Aghoa, another planet in another solar system. It was incredible. I couldn’t quite put into words how I was feeling at that moment, so instead, I just smiled and turned three hundred and sixty degrees as I took in all of the different spacecraft that surrounded me, as well as the sheer magnitude of the structure I was inside. I had never been inside a building this large, and that included some of the largest buildings that existed back on Earth. This was next level.
Despite the fact that there were a lot of spaceships in the hangar, I couldn’t see many people, or aliens, walking about. However, I had a feeling that would change once I entered the main area of the space station.
“Turn left, Will,” Francine said, and the AI’s voice quickly ripped me from my thoughts.
I followed Francine’s direction and began to walk past my ship and down the row, but I stopped when I heard a quiet beep behind me. I turned around and realized that Bob had managed to sneak out of the ship before Francine closed the doors, and he had clearly decided that he was going to be joining me on this new adventure.
“You’re a crafty little thing, aren’t you, Bob?” I chuckled. “Come on, then.”
Bob beeped happily and caught up with me, and together we made our way toward an enormous set of doors at the end of the hangar. There was a sign above the doors that I couldn’t read, though the raised shapes reminded me a bit of Braille.
“What do I do?” I asked when we reached the doors.
“Just wait there for a moment,” Francine replied.
“How do I open them?” I asked. “Is there a handle, or--”
I stopped talking when a bright orange light shone down on me from a small, half-dome above the door. It looked like one of those sensors for automatic doors, but this one had some sort of scanning technology as well. The light moved up and down my body for a moment, and then switched off.
“What now?” I asked.
My question was answered when a tablet seemed to grow out of the wall next to the door. When the tablet was about a foot from my face, it paused, and then the same raised writing style appeared on the surface. Below the writing was a flashing light next to an empty box.
“What is all this?” I asked.
“They have no record of your species,” Francine said. “You have to enter what planet and solar system you are from.”
“Why?” I asked.
“So they can identify your needs,” Francine said. “The lifeforms on Aghoa are very welcoming, and they attempt to make every alien’s stay comfortable. For new species, that may require answering some questions.”
“I see,” I said as I studied the tablet. “Do I just write it in English?”
“Yes,” Francine replied. “Their AI can translate from there, and I will be able to assist it if necessary, though I would prefer to minimize my contact with the local AI.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “Their AI is nowhere near as advanced as yours?”
“Of course not,” Francine sniffed.
I used my finger to write ‘Earth’ onto the touch screen tablet. I wrote ‘Sol System’ underneath it, and then added ‘I am a human’ below that to clarify which Earth species I was. As soon as I finished, I heard a clunk from behind the door. The tablet melted back into the wall, and then the doors slowly started to open.
Bob beeped excitedly as he took in the view on the other side of the door, and I couldn’t help my jaw from hitting the floor as I gasped at the sight before me.
“Welcome to Aghoa Intergalactic Space Station, Will Ryder,” Francine said.