The Outer Worlds: Book One of the Epherian Chronicles

THE OUTER WORLDS

BOOK ONE OF THE
EPHERIAN CHRONICLES

E J GILMOUR

The Outer
Worlds: Book One of the Epherian Chronicles

Smashwords
Edition

E J Gilmour

ISBN:
978-0-9944105-3-5

www.ejgilmour.com

The Outer Worlds: Book One of the Epherian Chronicles by E J
Gilmour is subject to copyright. All rights reserved. This
publication must not be altered, printed, resold, shared, copied or
redistributed without the written permission of the author or Hero
Pages Publishing. This publication is a work of fiction. All
characters and situations in this novel are products of the
author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real people or situations
is coincidental.

Cover image: © depositphotos.com/molodec

CHAPTER
ONE

The sound of
an explosion rang out. Michael was thrown against the wall and
crashed heavily to the floor. The ship shook violently as he
staggered to his feet. The lights were flickering in the corridor.
He made his way toward the front of the ship, trying to keep his
balance as he progressed.

‘
What in the galaxy is going on?’ he asked, entering the
control room.

‘
There is an automatic plasma cannon,’ shouted Sara.

‘
Why didn’t the scanners pick it up?’ he asked.

‘
Your scanners are twenty five years old!’ she growled as the
ship lurched to the left to avoid another blast.

Michael
stumbled from the sudden adjustment in the artificial gravity. He
looked out through the viewing panel. An enormous space station
occupied most of the visual field and dwarfed his small cruiser. A
heavy-duty plasma cannon had been mounted to the outer hull of the
station and was unleashing in their direction. Several more bright
flashes sped by.

Sara brought
the ship into an evasive maneuver. She focused her full attention
on avoiding the incoming attacks. Michael took the co-pilot seat as
she angled the ship toward the opposite side of the station and out
of range of the plasma cannon.

‘
We are clear,’ she said, releasing a sigh.

‘
What’s our status? Did we sustain any damage?’ he
asked.

She checked
the control console and the system indicators. ‘The ship is fine,
Captain. The electronic shield absorbed the majority of the blast,
but the outer armour may be a little scorched.’

Michael nodded
and lifted his eyes. He stared through the viewing panel at the
huge space station. The station was abandoned in a distant corner
of the Triangulum Galaxy. It was floating in the loneliness of
space near a giant star called Elgar Domus. A few solar powered
lights on the outer hull were still operational, but scans were
showing minimal electrical activity inside.

‘
What’s the name of this station?’ asked Michael.

‘
The identity signal is dead, but the outer panels are reading:
EP712674.’

‘
It’s Epherian; just as I suspected.’ His eyes lit up and a
smile crossed his face. ‘Check for alien activity.’

Sara’s eyes
narrowed. ‘I already checked, Captain. The scans have detected some
minor droid activity inside, but no humans, bracers or aliens. They
could be service droids, but I think it’s very likely that the
previous occupants left some security droids behind. Life support
and artificial gravity systems are still operational throughout the
space station.’

Sara was a
capable pilot. She was physically fit with shoulder length blonde
hair and sharp blue eyes. She had once been a fighter pilot in the
fleet owned by the House of Gazarian. Gazar Prime, which was Sara’s
home world, had been in the direct path of the alien expansion. The
Gazarians fought a tough battle, but like many other worlds they
had fallen beneath the mammoth power of the alien fleet. Sara had
witnessed the destruction of her planet and the end of her ancient
civilisation. She had been working on the Out Drifter for nearly
eighteen months, and Michael knew he was lucky to have such a
talented pilot on his crew.

‘
Droids,’ he muttered. He lifted his wrist-com. ‘Ajax, there
could be some unfriendly droids waiting for us.’

‘…
Yo, Cap, don’t you worry. We won’t let a few robots spoil our
day…’ replied Ajax’s deep voice over the wrist-com.

‘
Remember what happened to Clive’s team when we came up against
those security droids on Marshall 86.’

‘…
Yeah, I know; let’s not forget we have the right gear this
time…’

‘
Make sure you pack the electromagnetic pulse gun. I don’t want
to lose anyone on this mission.’ Michael lowered his wrist-com and
returned his attention to the space station. ‘This must be one of
the last Epherian stations in the Outer Worlds. I wonder why they
didn’t tow it back to the Epherian Empire.’

‘
Epherians can afford to leave one or two stations behind,’
said Sara.

‘
I don’t think so; they wouldn’t abandon a station without a
good reason. I know how the Epherians think; when I was young I was
a citizen of the Epherian Empire.’ His voice revealed a hint of
nostalgia.

‘
I heard you were kicked out,’ she said flatly. ‘You’re still
dreaming about the Epherian Empire. You know the Epherians don’t
let anyone cross their borders. Their frontier sentry cannons fire
at every approaching ship. They don’t care about the Outer Worlds,
and they certainly don’t care about stopping the aliens. They’re a
cruel empire ruled by a ruthless emperor. You should forget about
ever wanting to go back.’

Michael cast
his eyes downward. ‘I have good memories of living in the Epherian
Empire. I can’t say the same for the Outer Worlds.’

‘
I don’t want to offend you, Captain, but the Epherians
betrayed us.’ Her face hardened. ‘When the alien invasion began
they were the first to leave. They left us for dead.’

Many people in
the Outer Worlds felt the same way as Sara about the Epherians. The
Epherian Empire evacuated their citizens and armed forces directly
after the aliens appeared, so he understood why the people of the
outer galactic regions felt the way they did. She glanced at him
out of the corner of her eye and gave a wry smile.

The ship made
a sharp turn for the space station and descended belly first toward
an external security door on the outer hull. Within ten seconds
they had landed. She reached out and pulled back a lever on the
control console. Several large magnetic clamps secured the
ship.

‘
Well done, Sara,’ he said as he stood up and entered the
corridor that led to the back of his ship.

Captain
Michael was a tall and robust man with dark hair, fair skin and
deep green eyes. His face was strong with angular features. For
most of his adult life he had worked with salvage crews in the
Outer Worlds, and he had learned everything he needed to know about
salvaging whilst working on a variety of ships. Eventually he had
progressed to captain his own ship, which was the end goal of
almost every aspiring salvor.

Michael’s
ship, the Out Drifter, was a Battle Class Armorstonian Cruiser. It
was built in the arrival year 12371, which made it twenty-five
years old. The Armorstonians were known for building solid ships,
and their cruisers were as rare as they were valuable. The battle
class cruisers were originally constructed to contest the first
incursion of the aliens into the Outer Worlds. Most of the
Armorstonian ships had been destroyed when Armorston Prime fell to
the relentless spread of the aliens across the galaxy. Michael had
been lucky enough to salvage the Out Drifter as a wreck beyond
human colonised space. How the ship found its way out beyond the
colonies was anyone’s guess, but he suspected it had been abandoned
and left to drift through space until eventually crash-landing on a
low gravity desert moon.

The Out
Drifter had been in his possession for nearly six years. He had
made various alterations for salvaging operations. The ship was 70
metres in length, averaged about 25 metres in width, and shaped
like an elongated triangular wedge. It boasted a modest cargo bay
with nine deep sleep pods (two were damaged and beyond repair), a
cramped engine room at the back, a small living room, an airlock
chamber with a space-door, four escape pods and a small
armoury.

He had
increased the flat line acceleration by forty percent whilst
travelling at sub-interstellar speed. Other alterations included: a
single 80mm charged particle cannon which was the main armament
affixed to the top of the hull, two 35mm heavy pulse laser guns
were attached to the underside, a gravitational harpoon, a high
quality Epherian electronic shield system, two advanced rocket
launchers, an external robotic arm and ten micro-bots which
patrolled the outer hull to prevent cloaked robots and other
unsavoury parasites latching onto the ship.

Michael
entered the cargo bay. He eyed his crew who were waiting beside the
exit door. Their names were Ajax, Ethan and Ivan. They were wearing
mismatched armour and carrying an assortment of weapons and gear
for the salvage mission.

Ajax strained
a smile and lifted up the oversized electromagnetic pulse gun.
‘This thing is way too heavy. You know I hate carrying it.’

‘
Don’t complain,’ said Michael sharply. ‘You won’t regret it if
we come across security droids inside the station.’

Ajax was a
huge man with dishevelled black hair, dark eyes and a big moustache
that dominated his weathered face. His bare arms were covered in an
assortment of tattoos. Ajax liked to think of himself as the muscle
of the team. He had been working on the Out Drifter for three
years, and Michael knew he was someone who could be relied on in a
difficult situation as he had proven his worth many times in the
past.

Ethan was
standing beside Ajax. He was the resident mechanical engineer and
an unassuming man who was slim, rather short, with a completely
bald head. He wore intelligent glasses which covered the upper half
of his face. The glasses allowed him to see in the dark, and they
also had an inbuilt scanner that constantly analysed the visual
field for any dangers or mechanical irregularities. Michael
couldn’t remember ever seeing Ethan’s eyes in the year he had been
working on the Out Drifter. Ethan had joined the crew after working
in a junkyard on Timber 5, and he was previously employed as a
smuggler. He was always reluctant to talk about his days working in
the smuggling industry, and Michael felt there was much in his past
he wanted to forget about.

Ivan was a
tall and handsome synthetic android. He was a highly advanced
machine and had been designed to appear completely human. He had
fair skin, blue eyes, short brown hair which never changed in
length, and he was exactly six feet in height. He had drifted away
from a space station that had been destroyed by the aliens, and
quite some time later the Out Drifter’s scanners had located him
floating in the depths of space.

Michael didn’t
have much time for androids. Robots that appeared human made him
feel uneasy at the best of times. To make matters worse Ivan had
accidentally been exposed to a radiation field that had scrambled
some of his internal programming. He was still functional after the
incident, but occasionally he would do something crazy like walk in
circles whilst questioning why the world was spinning. Michael knew
he would have to take Ivan to a robotics technician for repairs,
but parts for high quality androids were expensive, and money was
always short on the Out Drifter. Consequently, Ivan’s repairs were
low on the priority list.

‘
Are we ready for action?’ asked Michael.

‘
Ready, Captain,’ replied Ethan as he loaded a fresh magazine
into his plasma rifle.

Michael slung
his charged particle rifle over his shoulder as Ethan stepped
toward the exit door and lifted up a handheld code breaker. The
exit door of the Out Drifter slid open which revealed a locked
external security door of the space station. The external security
door of the Out Drifter had lined up with one of the many external
security doors of the gigantic space station. Most external
security doors throughout much of the galaxy were able to interlock
with each other. This made it easier for people to move between
ships and stations without the use of an airlock. Security doors
were often protected by quantum encrypted codes, which led to
quantum code breakers being an essential tool for a salvage
crew.

‘
The space station’s security codes are quantum encrypted with
a dual layer,’ said Ethan.