Code Breakers: Alpha (20 page)

As he settled inside and the engineers got him set up, he turned to face the onlooking group. “I’ll be sure to keep you updated on the status of my task.”

“Safe journey, my love,” Amma said. “And thank you. We look forward to welcoming you, and Petal, back to the station soon.”

Gerry nodded and turned to the engineer. “I’m ready to go.” The young woman in the grey coveralls radioed to the dock controllers and stood back from the shuttle as the door closed.

A voice came directly into Gerry’s mind via his transceiver. “I’ll be your liaison during the flight, Gerry,” Jachz said. “Just relax and listen to my instructions, and you will be on the surface within a few hours. Are you ready?”

“Let’s get this bird in the air, Jachz. I got a woman to find.”

Chapter 23

T
he shuttle left the station with the grace of a swan. It pitched away in an arc towards Earth, leaving that great, long metal structure of the Family’s home behind. For a moment Gerry held his breath at the majesty of space before him. Unlike being on the planet’s surface, where pollution and clouds obscured the stars, here everything was sharp and clear and infinite. For the past couple of weeks he’d stared out of the porthole and watched the stars, but having this wider vista through the shuttle’s holoscreen, he felt like he was right in the middle of a great void.

Jachz’s instructions had finished. Gerry was told he would be flying silent for the next hour, unless he required anything. But he didn’t. All he wanted was the quiet to enjoy the awe-inspiring views. It also brought into perspective the significance, or lack of it, of his life.

Out there on an endless number of worlds there must be other life, other people, creatures, types of life forms, all thinking they matter. But individually, they, including himself, those on the station, and those on Earth, amounted to so little. And yet that smallness mattered so much. A tiny blip of life on a dust fragment spinning through space had all the meaning in the universe.

It was during that journey towards the planet that he realised just how much he missed Petal. She’d sacrificed so much for him and kept him alive in numerous situations. There was no way he could betray that loyalty, or his feelings for her, by returning to the Family.

His mind was still at work unpicking the code that made up the connection to the Family’s communication satellite. They had a whole collection of them in a low-earth orbit, providing various functions. It was the largest network he’d ever seen.

Despite his skills and his recovery, he couldn’t get into the code, but he could at least program a roadblock to prevent them spying on him from within. As he sent his mind more fully into the communications satellite, he discovered a flow of data from a specific node. He guessed that was the satellite. It appeared to him as a massive data store, with other stores connected to it.

Unable to resist looking closer, he dove further in and analysed the data.

Within a split-second he knew it was a mistake.

His entire body tensed, and a deathly chill shrouded his soul. A force gripped his mind and dragged him further in.

The tendrils, he thought. A flash of code came to him, paralysing, probing. He tried to leave the data stream, bring his mind back to his body, but it was too late. The entity he’d briefly seen during his diagnostic approached. A massive, dark intelligence reached out to him.

Gerry screamed, squeezed his eyes shut, and spun a set of defensive code patterns. The entity swatted them away as if they were harmless flies. To Gerry’s horror, he was aware of a change in the trajectory of the shuttle. Snapping his eyes open, still half in that data-state, he saw the Earth spinning away from him, to be replaced with the darkness of deep space.

The arcing stars caused a blurring flash before the shuttle stopped its change of direction. The thrusters engaged and sent him hurtling away from Earth, away from the Family’s station. And worse: his communications were down.

The shuttles controls wouldn’t respond. Even his desire to scream had been covered in an all-encompassing blanket of darkness as the great entity wrapped its digital will around Gerry’s mind.

The station and Earth shrank behind him as he continued to hurtle into deep space. He let out a silent scream and battled to free his mind. A new enemy had found him.

Reborn, but under threat, Gerry once more faced a fight for survival.

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About The Author

Colin F. Barnes is a full-time writer of science fiction and thrillers. He’s a member of both the British Fantasy Society and the British Science Fiction Association. He honed his craft with the London School of Journalism and the Open University (BA, English).

Colin has run a number of tech-based businesses, worked in rat-infested workshops, and scoured the back streets of London looking for characters and stories—which he found in abundance.

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