He'd gotten back to the Pegasus just in time to see the hangar bay she'd landed in erupt in a cloud of black gas. Letting the Chief deal with it, he'd boarded and headed straight for his quarters.
Then he'd let the computer pull the armor from his body.
John Doe had jumped in the shower soon after. Now he was lying flat on his bed, his ankles locked as he stared at the bank of windows above him.
Today had not been one he would chose to ever remember.
‘You could have saved her if you'd tried harder,’ he told himself out loud, his voice echoing through his room.
There was no one to answer. Flopping a hand over his head and resting it over his eyes, John blinked into it.
He was not dealing with this well. Why was he getting so involved? He hadn't know that woman. The most she'd ever said to him was to snap at him to put her down, yet here he was, ensconced in grief that seemed to be larger than him.
‘Pull it together,’ he whispered.
It wouldn't be that easy.
‘You've got to get your head set on your shoulders before you head into the Rim,’ he noted with a sigh.
Which was true. Orion Minor had only ever been a stopover. They were headed out to the Rim from here.
The bloody Rim.
Groaning slightly, John pushed his hand further over his face, not caring that it sat hard against his eyes and nose.
This mission was one of the most important any Union Forces ship was currently engaged in. If the Pegasus could bring back live Old Tech . . . hell, it would change the course of history, right? If they could find some device that hadn't shut down yet, they could use it to try and study the power source of the ancient ones. Try to understand what strange energy they had used. And if they could break that - the greatest secret of the ages - they could stop the inevitable.
The inevitable was war.
Or worse, the complete dissolution of the modern universe.
That was the nightmare that was pushing the Union Forces top brass. A nightmare that sat at the back of everyone's minds.
One day the universal transport system would shut down. It would run out of energy. It would leave every galaxy separate. Transport between them would be slow, almost unimaginably slow. And the resources it would take to push a ship through the vast expanses of nothing that separated galaxies would be too great for anyone to try it.
It would destroy the Union.
But that's not all. One day the ICN's would shut down. ICN's were everywhere from ships to worlds to clusters; all computer networks were based on that technology. It was sufficiently far removed that it could run connected to another power source. But at the core of the technology was still Old Tech. And at the core of that was still that mysterious energy.
It too would one day shut down. Then every single computer network throughout the universe would go dark.
It would take the universe from modernity back into the dark ages in the twinkle of an eye.
There were people, whole races even, that believed the threat of relying too much on Old Tech just wasn't worth it. They'd stripped the ICN's from their ships and worlds, and they were sure never to use the transport net.
But it wasn't that easy. They still relied on the protection of the Union Forces, they still sold their resources and bolstered their economy through trade that relied on the transport network.
You just couldn't get away from it no matter how hard you tried; Old Tech was so deeply rooted in the modern universe that it would take every ship and planet and life with it if it ever dried up.
‘And that, John,’ he spoke to himself in a faked brave voice, ‘is why this mission is so important. If you could find the key to their power source,’ he brought his hand off his face in a flick, ‘you could save the universe.’
He brought his hands up behind his head and closed his eyes with a wince. ‘So no pressure or anything.’
John took a moment to let out a bitter laugh. Then he rolled over.
It took a while, but soon sweet sleep claimed the Commander.