Authors: Ralph Kern

Erebus (41 page)

BOOK: Erebus

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LAT activated. Resolving images.

Even the Linked crew were shocked by what they saw from the large aperture telescope. The cloud wasn’t composed of gas or particles—it was made up of ships…thousands, even millions, of ships. The vast majority were insect-like craft smaller than work pods, but interspersed through the cloud were much bigger craft, the largest of them dark, spherical behemoths that would dwarf any human vessel.

Sheehan’s Hope, Unity. First Contact Situation. Standby but monitor.

Something’s jamming the signal.

Go to laser link.

With deceptive speed, the cloud front surged, enshrouding
Unity
and blocking out the light of AD Leonis, the stars, and the ship’s laser link.

Laser link blocked. No response to First Contact Protocol greeting. Retreat? Yes, retreat.

Ponderously, the ship began to turn. Dumping heat frantically,
Unity
strived to get her A-drive back to operational temperature.

The ships, drones, or robots—whatever they were—had paused briefly, completely surrounding
Unity
in a bubble, leaving a small void around the vulnerable ship within. The pause was brief—then the cloud swarmed
Unity
.

Within seconds, the huge explorer ship and her crew were pulled to pieces by innumerable drones. The parts, both hull and human, were efficiently conveyed back to the larger lumbering vessels. Hungrily, they absorbed the material, and moments later, they excreted even more drones.

As one, the dark cloud descended next on Sheehan’s Hope, a world a mere sixteen light-years from Sol, so very far—and yet much too close—to Earth.

The Watcher was coming.

Author’s Note

I hope you enjoyed reading
Erebus
, a sidequel to
Endeavour
, as much as I enjoyed writing it. This has been a different take for me, wanting to explore people who aren’t necessarily the top-of-their-game operators that the crew of
Endeavour
were yet are nevertheless thrust into the Sleeping Gods universe.

One of the things I’ve tried to do is incorporate elements of my day job as a police officer into the story. There are long tracts of procedural stuff that has to be done and frustrations with bureaucracy. I’ve tried not to bog things down too much with all that, but I did want to give an impression of what future police might face.

It’s been enjoyable combining my two passions: policing and sci-fi. I’ve wanted to throw a few tropes out of the window; for example, cops don’t go around growling at each other melodramatically all day like the TV would have you believe. We have a slightly warped sense of humor (which I have definitely had to reign in a touch!), but most of all, we have a certain idealistic nature tempered by a touch of cynicism, which seems to be common across the board—and is something I doubt will change in the next twenty years or, indeed, the next two hundred. Sure, we can be grumpy, prompted by the occasional bad guy wanting to do bad things to us. And yes, we can seem arrogant at times. Because we don’t have all day to make a decision, sometimes we just have to quickly weigh up facts, hope for the best, and say, “Things are going to happen this way, and I don’t have time to explain why.” These are some of the characteristics that I have instilled in the main character, and I hope any colleagues reading this will feel I have done our profession justice.

Once again, I have tried to use existing or potential technologies and apply them to what I consider a fast-paced thriller. I firmly believe that one day soon, humanity will start to augment themselves—and not just the simple contact lenses, prosthetics and medical devices we have now, but elective enhancements. For example, it seems logical that rather than carrying around a cumbersome mobile phone, we will simply implant them in our bodies along with countless other apps.

There are countless stories about space combat, from WW2 in space such as Star Wars to the massive Dreadnaughts of David Weber’s Honorverse. All of them are great to read or watch, but I wanted to try something a little different. Even in modern fighter-plane combat, the winner of an encounter tends to be the person who “sees” the other first. I figure that the vast distances and the “geography” of space would give lots of opportunities for competing ships to jockey for that first-look position—slingshotting around planets, coming at an opponent from an unexpected direction. So in
Erebus
, I’ve played with this to offer something a little bit different than the norm.

Sadly, sometimes the pace of research outstrips the pace of writing a novel. An error in the book is that the black hole, Sagi, is actually now believed to be much farther away than the 1600 light-years originally thought. While I could have made up a new black hole, Sagi originally filled my requirements for the overall story arc. It was about the right distance away and was a devourer (which means it would provide a beautiful back drop for the final scenes). As much as it galls me to say as someone who prides himself on being as accurate as he can be with speculative fiction, sometimes one has to shrug and accept that dramatic license has to prevail.

Anyway, once again, I hope you enjoyed this book, and I’m setting to work on the third in the Sleeping Gods universe: working title—
Endings
.

I also have another project on the go, which is more of a contemporary thriller/mystery. Fear not. It will still entail a lot of sci-fi elements—I think you’ll all like it. And don’t worry; I won’t let it delay
Endings!

Please leave a review (positive and constructive negative ones are always welcome) and feel free to add me on Facebook for updates or email me with any questions.

Email: [email protected]

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