The Currents of Space - Prologue

Prologue:

            Stormwind struggled back to consciousness and tried to look around. There was something wrong with his vision, it was blurred and he could only see through one eye. He was in a hospital bed, with medical equipment surrounding him. Finally he focussed on a familiar face – Julia! She smiled and took his hand.

“Welcome back. You’ve been out of it for some time”

Stormwind reached up and touched his face, feeling the synthiplast patch where his right eye used to be.

“What happened? I don’t remember anything.” Julia frowned; then lowered her voice. “You were on an undercover mission to Corinth, something went wrong and you were shot at point-blank range. The back-up team pulled you out and you’re back here, on Gateway Station. You had serious head injuries, the surgeons tried but they couldn’t save your eye.”

“Thank you, Ms Carter, you saved me the trouble of explaining that”, came a voice from the door. “Of course, I assume you know that you should not have had access to any of that information?”

The speaker was a tall, grey-haired man wearing the uniform of the Gateway Scout Service. He closed the door; then moved to sit opposite Julia.

“Colonel Head”, said Stormwind. “Good to see you, sir”.

The colonel did not reply; instead he took a small object from his pocket and set it on the bed. It emitted a low, bone-jarring humming sound. “Sonic scrambler”, he grunted. “Need to be brief; this thing sets my teeth on edge, but it stops us being overheard.”

He suddenly rose, crossed to the window and closed the blinds.

“Something big is going on, quite what we don’t fully understand. Someone is stirring up unrest in the Trade Worlds against the Cluster; the Cluster in return is moving towards a war footing. Pirate raids are increasing along the Corridor and Vargr Corsairs are making bolder raids deeper into our space. In all of this, the Duke of Pavonis has kept a low profile and has said little; very uncharacteristic of him.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a PDA.

“Officially, because of your injuries, regrettably I have to terminate your employment with the Gateway Scout Service, effective immediately. You will receive the appropriate mustering-out benefits based on your service. However, I want you to act for me. I am releasing the Type S Scout ship “No Strings Attached” to you on a long-term loan basis. All the details are here on the PDA. I want you to act as my eyes and ears in the subsector. Travel around, trade, explore, be a traveller. Keep your ears and eye open; any information of use is to be fed back to me. “

He picked up the scrambler and rose to leave.

“Colonel. One question. Who did this to me?”

Colonel Head looked down at Stormwind. “Genuinely, I have no idea. Despite what your girlfriend says, you were not working for me whilst you were on Corinth.”