INFINITY LENS

  SINGULARITIES BOOK 2

  ANTHONY JAMES

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Infinity Lens

  Also by Anthony James

  © 2022 Anthony James

  All rights reserved

  The right of Anthony James to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed upon the subsequent purchaser

  Illustration © Tom Edwards

  TomEdwardsDesign.com

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  ONE

  The interior of the Void class warship New Beginning was cold and claustrophobic, with blue lighting just a little too dim, and a feeling of emptiness that could have become overwhelming for those unused to space travel. A constant background drone of engines was a reminder that the vessel was currently travelling at unimaginable velocity along a lightspeed tunnel of its own making.

  The New Beginning, with its propulsion system boosted enormously by the Galos singularity on Cornerstone, was on a twelve-day voyage, with its destination being a place unknown, far beyond the extents of the Human Confederation’s star charts. The coordinates for this destination had been discovered more or less by accident, and extracted from a tiny module on the containment shielding of the Galos module.

  Not long into day one of the journey, the warship’s commanding officer, Captain William Lanson, received some unusual news.

  With the New Beginning at lightspeed, the vessel was safe from enemy attacks, allowing him an opportunity to explore the interior of what had once been a member of the Sagh’eld fleet.

  Once Lanson had familiarised himself with the warship’s interior, he set himself the task of learning what kind of replication facilities were available. An earlier conversation with Sergeant Evander Gabriel – the commanding officer of the New Beginning’s contingent of ten soldiers - had revealed that the warship was fitted with both human and Sagh’eld nutrient stations, the latter presenting an intriguing challenge.

  All ten of the soldiers were in the mess room when Lanson arrived. Since it was the Sagh’eld who had constructed the New Beginning, the metal furnishings – fixed benches, chairs, and long tables sufficient to accommodate no more than twenty personnel in total – were designed for a species with an average height of approximately eight feet. Consequently, the shorter members of Gabriel’s squad were sitting with their legs dangling.

  “Is anyone able to give me some instruction?” asked Lanson, stopping at the Sagh’eld replicator. The device was little more elaborate than a screen, a pad of mechanical buttons, and an output tray.

  “I can do that, sir,” said Corporal Catina Hennessey, sliding out of her seat and heading over.

  Hennessey was average height, with dark, curly hair, green eyes and an easy-going manner that contrasted with her battlefield competence. Like all the other soldiers, she was dressed in a suit of matte grey GK-3 frontline combat armour. Hennessey wasn’t wearing the suit helmet, but it was on the nearby table along with her gauss rifle.

  “What should I choose?” asked Lanson, tapping the replicator screen with the knuckle of one hand. All of the text was in Sagh’eld and, though his suit helmet had a script translation facility, he was currently holding that helmet at his side and anyway, he preferred to hear some personal opinions about the fare on offer.

  Hennessey gave a mock grimace, lowered her brow and rubbed her chin in thought. “Well, sir, I guess that depends. Do you prefer your food green, purple, red, or brown?”

  “Green sounds healthy,” said Lanson.

  “In which case, push this button here, then this one, and confirm your order by pressing here,” said Hennessey, mimicking the actions as she recited them.

  “Let’s give it a try,” said Lanson.

  Once he’d followed Hennessey’s instructions, the replicator hissed faintly. A clunk followed and then a tray appeared in the lower slot. Lanson reached in and withdrew the tray, interested to learn what the Sagh’eld ate to sustain them on their murderous rampage through Human Confederation territory.

  In the middle of the tray were sixteen glistening, one-inch cubes of bright green. When Lanson moved the tray from side to side, the cubes wobbled slightly.

  “You’re gonna love them, Captain,” said Hennessey.

  “I’m sure,” said Lanson. He placed his tray down on the closest table, and noted that Sergeant Gabriel wanted to speak with him. “One moment, Sergeant,” said Lanson.

  A human replicator – installed by the Cornerstone technicians – was neatly installed into the far corner wall. Lanson vended himself a cup of juice, reasoning that a single gamble on the Sagh’eld replicator was enough for today.

  “What is it, Sergeant?” asked Lanson, sliding his tray along and sitting opposite Gabriel. Private Rocky Chan and Private Mitch Davison made space.

  Gabriel’s expression was conflicted. “I haven’t mentioned it to you yet, Captain, because we haven’t had time for that full debrief you mentioned just before we exited Lorimos local space, but Private Chan broke his pinkie when the Ex’Kaminar battleship fired one of its Thak cannons into the warehouse we were travelling through.”

  “I’m sure you’ve survived worse, Private,” said Lanson, turning his gaze briefly in Chan’s direction.

  “That’s right, sir,” said Chan. “I once listened to one of Private Damico’s jokes and lived to tell the tale.”

  “Enough,” said Gabriel mildly. “Tell the Captain about your finger.”

  “Yes, sir.” Chan raised his left hand and flexed the pinkie vigorously a few times within his combat gauntlet. “I broke it and now it’s better,” he said.

  “Private Teague gave him a bone-fusing shot a few minutes after the incident, sir,” said Gabriel. “The drugs work fast, but not that fast.”

  “Is it definitely fully healed?” asked Lanson.

  “Yes, sir,” said Private Ashley Teague, who was sitting on the end of the opposite bench. “I plugged my med-box into Private Chan’s suit and it gave him a clean bill of health.”

  “In truth, sir, I stopped noticing the pain in my finger not long after we first boarded the New Beginning,” said Chan.

  “I take it you’ve had some thoughts on this, Sergeant Gabriel?” asked Lanson, already with ideas of his own.

  Gabriel came right out and said it. “The Galos module created an acceleration field, and it modified the atomic structure of the New Beginning’s engines. You told me that the effects of those modifications to the propulsion have lingered, so what if the Galos did something to us as well?” He leaned forward earnestly. “I think we’re healing at an accelerated rate because of the Galos, sir.”

  “We are healing?” said Lanson, catching the unspoken words. “Have you done some other testing?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Gabriel.

  He reached down and withdrew a short-bladed knife from somewhere on his person. Without preamble, he unfastened the clips holding his combat gauntlet in place, and then wrenched it free with a twist. Placing his hand palm up on the table, Gabriel ran the blade gently across his skin. Blood welled and he laid the knife to one side.

  “Pass me a bandage, please,” said Gabriel, looking across to Teague.

  Teague fished out a square piece of white cloth and threw it along the table. Picking the bandage up, Gabriel rubbed it against his palm and then showed the outcome to Lanson.

  “The cut’s still there,” said Lanson, noting that the blood had dried up and crusted already.

  “Give it a moment, sir.”

  Over the course of the next few seconds, the narrow cut in Gabriel’s palm vanished. The soldier clenched and unclenched his fist, giving Lanson a demonstration that the injury was well and truly gone. After that, Gabriel picked up his suit gauntlet and put it back on.

  “We haven’t run any more extensive tests, Captain,” he said. Gabriel pointed at several other members of his squad. “Most of us have done the same thing as I just showed you, and we’re all healing at the same increased rate.”

  Lanson was carrying a folding knife in one of his leg pockets, though he couldn’t remember ever
needing to use it. Removing one his suit gloves, he pulled out the knife and unfolded the blade. Realising he couldn’t hesitate for too long in front of this audience, Lanson drew the sharp edge across his palm. The pain nearly made him wince, but he managed to keep it from his face.

  “Let’s see,” said Lanson, watching the line of blood on his skin.

  Within moments of making the cut, he felt an itchy, tingling sensation in his palm. Without being asked, Private Teague placed another square of bandage on the table and Lanson picked it up. A couple of wipes took away most of the blood and produced no pain. Soon, there was no sign of the injury.

  “Would you look at that?” said Lanson in wonder. “If I was affected, my crew must have been affected as well.”

  “We were all exposed to the Galos when it turned batshit crazy,” said Private Teague.

  Gabriel didn’t lift his gaze. “How long until the New Beginning’s engines return to normal, Captain?” he asked.

  From his periphery, Lanson noticed that everyone in the room was watching him closely. The soldiers had evidently been discussing the same question before he arrived.

  “I’d like to give you all a straight answer,” he said. “Before we took off on this journey, Lieutenant Abrams had some predictions. Now, he isn’t so sure.” Lanson took a deep breath. “In those first couple of hours after the Galos imploded, it was looking as if the New Beginning’s propulsion would fall back into its usual atomic alignment within the next twenty-five to thirty days. Now—” Lanson shrugged. “Now, Lieutenant Abrams is starting to wonder if the engines are doing something different entirely.”

  “I guess the underlying question is how long are our bodies going to keep healing this fast?” said Gabriel. “And what else might the Galos have done to us?”

  “Two questions I can’t answer,” said Lanson. He turned to look over his shoulder towards the passage heading aft from the mess room. “I saw a medical bay along there,” he said. “Maybe the Cornerstone techs tied in the Sagh’eld equipment with one of our own medical computers.”

  “I already had a poke around, Captain,” said Teague. “The only kit in there is Sagh’eld.” She gave a regretful smile. “Besides, I’m a squad medic, not a hospital surgeon. Even with the right equipment in that bay, I wouldn’t know how to work it and I wouldn’t understand the output.”

  “We’re dealing with plenty of unknowns,” said Lanson. “And it sounds like that situation isn’t going to change anytime soon.”

  “Unknowns are a fact of life for me and my squad, Captain,” said Gabriel. “We’ll accept this one the same as all the others.”

  Lanson nodded. The conversation was over, and he turned his attention to the uneaten cubes on his tray. He pinched one between his thumb and forefinger, and stared at it for a while, aware that the soldiers were still watching him expectantly.

  Not wishing to disappoint, Lanson put the cube into his mouth and chewed.

  “Tastes like cheese,” he said. “Maybe.”

  This particular example of Sagh’eld cuisine wasn’t entirely terrible, and Lanson stolidly ate another eight or nine of the cubes. Abruptly, he realised he’d had enough and drained his cup of juice. The taste of alien cheese, or whatever the hell it was, lingered.

  Now that he was done in the mess room, Lanson rose from his bench and headed for the exit. Already, his feet knew the way. They led him past the corridor leading to the officer’s quarters, and towards the bridge.

  As he walked, Lanson’s mind turned. The strange behaviour of the New Beginning’s propulsion, along with the revelation that everyone onboard was now healing at a vastly increased rate, made him wonder if the effects of the Galos device would be more far-reaching than he’d first imagined.

  Like he’d told the soldiers, this was a situation of unknowns and Lanson did his best to accept the reality.

  Perhaps the coming mission would reveal some answers.

  TWO

  The days at lightspeed went by with the usual monotony that Lanson had become accustomed to during his many years as a warship commander. Although twelve days wasn’t nearly the longest journey he’d undertaken, this one seemed to drag more than the others, and he was sure this was because he was so much on edge. The Sagh’eld attack on Cornerstone had demonstrated a new level of ruthlessness and brutality from the aliens, and Lanson was fearful of what this escalation would mean for the Human Confederation.

  Aside from the ongoing war, his thoughts were also occupied by the Galos. The device’s implosion had brought catastrophic destruction to planet Lorimos, and yet Lanson was left with the feeling that it could have wrought far greater devastation had it been properly utilised.

  “Still thinking about the Galos, sir?” asked Commander Ellie Matlock from the station to the right.

  Lanson and his crew had talked the situation to death over the last few days - speculation upon speculation that led nowhere and served only to create frustration.

  “I can’t stop,” Lanson admitted. “The New Beginning’s original Sagh’eld hardware could translate the alien symbols from the data cube Sergeant Gabriel recovered from the Galos, which means our enemy are ahead of us in understanding—”

  Lanson cursed and shut his mouth, unwilling to be drawn into another fruitless discussion on the subject.

  “Four more days and this lightspeed journey will be over,” said comms lieutenant Becky Turner. “We’ll find something at our destination – I’m sure of it.”

  “But we still haven’t found out if the New Beginning is transmitting its position to a Sagh’eld base,” said Lanson. “So let’s hope our lightspeed multiplier is high enough that we have plenty of time to explore before the enemy arrive to see what we’re up to.”

  Just thinking about it threatened to turn Lanson’s mood sour. The Sagh’eld had shown up entirely unexpectedly at the Cornerstone base to steal the Galos module, and the top-of-the-list suspect for how the enemy had located the secret facility was the New Beginning itself.

  Lieutenant Turner believed it was possible the Cornerstone techs had failed to spot the presence of an emergency transmitter somewhere in the warship’s hull – a transmitter that was sending regular signals back to the vessel’s home base. If the techs had overlooked this hypothetical comms unit, it would explain why they’d failed to tie it in with the HC consoles, thereby making it effectively invisible to the crew.

  Unfortunately, it was all conjecture and, while Lieutenant Turner and Lieutenant Perry continued hunting for this supposed comms hardware, they had so far turned up only blanks.

  Lanson rose and stretched out the muscles in his back, feeling them crackle. Then, he turned and surveyed the bridge, the floor of which was strewn with thick cables. These cables linked the Human Confederation control consoles with the Sagh’eld originals, which were lined up against the port and starboard walls. Lanson stepped carefully over to where Lieutenant Gus Abrams was sitting.

  “What’s the latest on the propulsion, Lieutenant?” he asked.

  “I still haven’t got to the bottom of what’s happening, Captain,” said Abrams, vaguely indicating the dozens of charts and output readings on his console screens. “Like we discussed yesterday, neither the Sagh’eld hardware nor our own has been programmed to understand the changes in the propulsion. It’s possible our output is higher than it was at Lorimos, and equally it might be significantly lower – the only way to find out will be to run some practical tests when we arrive at wherever we’re going.”

  “At least we figured out that the Sagh’eld are using similar engine tech to the Human Confederation,” said Lieutenant Joe Massey. “The New Beginning has a Rodos drive, just with a tighter and more efficient atomic structure than the Human Confederation equivalent.”