Gregor's Run: The Universe is too Small to Hide Read online

  Gregor’s Run

  The Universe is

  too Small to Hide

  Contents

  Books by Saxon Andrew

  Introduction

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  Books by Saxon Andrew

  The Annihilation Series

  Love Conquers All

  The Power of a Queen

  A Rose Grows in Weeds

  Tommy’s Tale

  Searcher

  Demon’s Sacrifice

  Finding Keepers

  (The Seven books above are audio books at Audible.com)

  Prequel-Psychic Beginnings

  Searching for a Hero

  Dahlia’s Deception

  Annihilation-The Complete Series Box Set

  Ashes of the Realm

  Juliette’s Dream

  Greyson’s Revenge

  Death of an Empire

  The Return of the Realm

  Lens of Time

  The Pyramid Builders

  Planet Predators

  Pray for the Prey

  The End of Time

  Star Rover-The Worst of Time

  Star Rover-Running Out of Time

  Lens of Time-Chosen To Die

  The Fight for Creation

  Life Warrior

  Scout Warrior

  Ultimate Warrior

  Star Chase

  The Lost Prince

  (An audio book at Audible.com)

  Nowhere to Run

  Nowhere to Hide

  Probe Predators

  Jesse’s Starship

  Mike’s War

  Joshua’s Walls

  Nemesis

  Revenge is Best Served Hot

  The Search for Orion

  Trapped in Time

  The Time Takers

  Taming A Planet

  Exinction

  Escape to Earth

  Running From Fate

  Fighting for Space

  Defending Holy Ground

  The Legacy of a Conqueror

  Living Legends

  Defending Earth

  The Sequel Series to Escape to Earth

  Searching for Death Feeders

  Discovery Means Death

  The Death Prophecies

  The Coming of the Prophet

  The Eyes of the Prophet

  The Unknown Enemy Will Kill You

  No Technology Is Invincible

  Survival is Never Free

  The Last Prophecy

  Stories from the Filament Universe

  Gregor’s Run

  Coming soon

  A Pirate’s Tale

  Introduction

  History doesn’t know what species first discovered the filaments. History is even vague about how long ago they were discovered. What history does know is that the discovery opened the universe for faster-than-light travel and it spread through the universe like wildfire through a dried out forest. Most historians credit Independent Traders with spreading the technology with the millions of planets they discovered but no one is really positive about that. One thing is certain, there were far more intelligent species in the known universe than anyone ever thought was possible. However, before the filaments could be discovered, someone had to develop the drive field that took physical objects out of normal space into the vast under space below it. Once that field was discovered, the filaments became visible and traveling them was an unavoidable discovery.

  Filament was not what the white misty lines filling under space were but the description fit and was used by all the civilizations that traveled them. Scientists discovered that every star in the universe possessed a flow in Under Space moving out of it at superlight speed toward other stars near it. That flow appeared to be a miles wide, white, translucent lane which was always in motion. The larger the star, the more numerous the filaments going out from it and the faster they moved in Under Space. It was the giant stars that created the major high speed superhighways in Under Space and travelers would use them to arrive at the particular filament they needed to move to their chosen destination. Filaments crossed each other in what was called intersections and travelers could change filaments at those junctions. Each filament had a forward flow and reverse flow on it. One side of the filament moved at super light speed toward other distant stars and the other side flowed back toward the star it originated from. The energy of the filament was like blood moving through a body sending energy out and returning to the starting point. Filaments were the circulatory systems of stars. Scientists never really understood what purpose they served but every star had them.

  A starship with a drive field could move into the filament and would be swept forward by it at superlight speeds through under space in the filament’s flow. Using fuel wasn’t needed, the flow of the filament provided all the propulsion needed to travel the universe at super light speeds

  However, during the early age of the filaments discovery, many civilizations saw this new technology as a means to go out and conquer other civilizations. Speed could be greatly increased on a filament with the use of boosters and many aggressive species used it for thousands of years to go out and attack other civilizations, until they began to run out of fuel and the cost became prohibitive to use boosters.

  It was during the Age of the Conquerors that Earth was attacked and blasted back into a primitive society. Earth made the mistake of attacking a civilization that was far more powerful and paid the price for it. Once the conqueror left, the planet didn’t fare well and hunger was a common companion for humanity. Over the centuries, traders would come to Earth and humans would leave Earth to work on commercial trading starships; mankind spread out through the universe by working for others.

  The trading civilizations quickly discovered that humans made excellent technical specialists to operate their starships. Humans were intelligent, adaptive, intuitive, and seemed to possess a unique understanding of how high technology functioned. Humans became a much desired species to work on the commercial liners. They were also extraordinary at working in the entertainment industries on many worlds that catered to tourists from around the universe. Humans became a valuable trading commodity and would be the center of bidding wars by traders seeking to improve their crews. The young humans would leave Earth but their families would be wealthy from the prices paid for their children. It was the heavy price to purchase them that gave humans a very high status in the civilizations that flew the stars. Many human terms began percolating among the stars and an extraordinary number of their descriptions were used by most civilizations. Eventually, some humans worked off their purchase prices and became wealthy enough to own their own starships. But for Earth, its day in the sun had passed and every day was spent fighting to survive from ever-present starvation.

  It took another two thousand years for the conquerors to finally realize the economy of conquest was a losing proposition. Building the necessary warships and weapons
needed to control other planets was an economic drain that could not be sustained over the centuries and most of the conquerors eventually gave their conquests their freedom and turned to trade. What led to the end of conquests and made the Age of Commerce possible was the final completion of the Filament Map by the Cartian Civilization. They agreed to share their map with the billions of civilizations that used the Filaments as long as they agreed to follow a set of traffic rules when traveling the universe. They also required that their language would be the only one used by pilots flying starships. It only took a thousand years for every species using star travel to start using the Cartian’s language as their first language. It was this development that brought the billions of civilizations together.

  The Cartians also made every civilization that used their maps agree that any species who violated the filament traffic rules would lose their rights to travel the filaments for a specified period of time; all those that accepted the terms agreed to attack any that refused to take their proscribed punishments. No one would run that risk. The age of conquests was over but that didn’t mean that civilizations were unarmed. No civilization could stand up to the billions that would force compliance of the punishments.

  There were always some that didn’t learn and aggressive civilizations still existed. Most species tolerated their stupidity and occasionally wars would break out. Most of them went unnoticed and life in the universe continued normally. Most civilized beings ignored when a disagreement broke out and didn’t get involved unless it interfered with their daily existence. That left the door open for thieves, crooks, criminals and pirates to increase in numbers and their activities, for the most part, were ignored by the universe at large as well. It was the victims of crimes that made the lawbreakers pay for their deeds. Bounty Hunters made a living dispensing justice to those who deserved it. It was during this commercial age that a human found himself in the middle of a fight to control the next great technological breakthrough. The entire event became known as Gregor’s Run and it’s still discussed to this day as one of the turning points in the universe’s history.

  Chapter One

  Gregor slouched in his chair and stared out of the view port at the wispy filaments filling space in the distance around his ship. His ship was currently connected to one of them and it was moving quickly in the flow toward the Damnoth Star System. He checked his console and notied a hundred other starships were close by that were traveling through under space on his filament toward the same location. He turned the brew can up and emptied the contents into his mouth. He swallowed the cheap liquid, burped loudly, and tossed the can over his shoulder into the corner, where it rattled down the large mound of empty metal cans as he wondered if Hogan still had a bounty hunter following his trail. He stared at the information on his computer screen and examined each of the hundred ships through blurry eyes. None of them appeared even slightly interested in him and he figured that the robbery of Hogan’s freighter had happened too long ago for the grudge to be carried on now. He had another five days of flilament coasting before he arrived at Damnoth and going over the data on the ships close to him would at least occupy his mind for a while. At least until he passed out from the five brews he consumed over the last hour.

  He wiped his brow and his dirty hand left a smudge in the grit on his forehead. He had just finished cleaning the boosters on a Genowith Freighter and was filthy from the grime he had scoured out of the giant tubes. It was the third cleaning he had done in three weeks and the brew fund was getting pretty large. It was time to use some of it!

  When Emmett was alive, they would go out and steal from starships traveling alone but after his death, piracy was next to impossible with just one person. He was forced to turn to cleaning boosters to provide the coins needed to live. It was a filthy job and not many wanted to do it; competition was really not an issue. All one needed was a strong back and an absence of intelligence. The less one focused on anything while scouring the insides of giant booster tubes, the better; the brews pretty much insured he wouldn’t be focused on much.

  He reached up and scratched the left side of his face and a small insect crawled out of his grimy beard. He saw it out of the corner of his eye and his right hand shot up and caught it between his index finger and thumb. It struggled to get out of his grip but he opened the cycling bin and tossed it inside. It would be processed and added to his ship’s food supply. It wouldn’t add much but every little bit of organic matter helped.

  He tilted his head and wondered where the insect had crawled into his beard. Ummm, he knew the ship was clear of them, so it couldn’t have crawled on him here; he opened the air lock once a month and allowed the vacuum of space to fill the vessel to remove any pests that managed to enter when the port was opened on a planet’s surface. Could it have been when he was knocked off his feet during a brawl in the tavern on Oily a month ago? Or could it have been…he vaguely remembered drinking too much in a bar on Jester and his head hit the bar pretty hard when he passed out. The knot on his forehead was still visible from hitting the bar. It’s possible it could have crawled in while he was unconscious, that bar wasn’t the cleanest he’d ever been in. He raked his thick fingers through his beard again but nothing else crawled out. He noticed that his dirty hands were darker from stroking his beard. The grit from cleaning out the boosters must still be clinging to it. Or it could have been from the previous two he cleaned out; booster grit was not the easiest stuff to remove, if he even thought about removing it. He ususally just ignored it.

  “Gregor, that wasn’t an insect, it was a bug.” Gregor ignored the computer’s remark and heard the computer say, “Did you hear me?”

  Gregor burped loudly, blew out a long breath, and said, “Insect, bug, whatever.”

  “Gregor, it was an electronic tracking device to transmit your location. It was a directional bug and it was pretty high tech. It looked like an insect to fool you and it had to be programed to only go after you.”

  Gregor sat up straight, felt vertigo hit him and he immediately fell back in the chair until it passed. He managed to say, “What? How long has it been on me?”

  “I’m not sure. It wasn’t broadcasting a signal on any frequency I can track and it was not your usual cheap bug. That one was highly advanced technology far beyond anything I’ve seen outside of military hardware. I had the cycler break it apart and send the pieces into our electronic parts storage for later use. Even the small pieces in it would cost a fortune.”

  “Who would use an expensive piece of technology like that to track me? None of the bounty hunters looking to kick my butt could afford anything like that. I thought most of them had just given up trying to find me since Emmett died.”

  “I’ve gone through my databanks and I’ve not been able to determine where you might have picked it up. However, whoever put it there now knows you’re riding the Damnoth Filament and are also aware that their bug has just stopped broadcasting your location.”

  Gregor shook his head and tried to think about who would have him bugged and could also afford a high-tech bug. He came up empty and the effort gave him a headache. He shouldn’t have drank the five brews over the last hour; his brain wasn’t cooperating. “Will you take a look at the ships riding the Damnoth Filament around us and see if any of them stand out?”

  “Gregor, one of them has just ignited their boosters and is picking up speed on the filament. It will arrive next to us in thirty minutes.”

  Gregor sat up straight in his chair and saw black and white dots fill his vision again. He moved back in his chair and lowered his head until the room stopped spinning. He pulled up a filament map and saw that eight filaments formed an intersection and crossed each other twenty minutes ahead of him. The number of ships crossing the intersection numbered in the hundreds. “If I use my thrusters to stay ahead of that accelerating vessel, it will see my gasses and know I’m headed toward the intersection.”

  “Yes, it will. They will also see which filament you
take at the intersection. I suspect whoever put that bug on you is in that ship that just boosted to high speed.”

  “I should drop off this filament and take one of the ones crossing ahead of us at that intersection.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s what they expect you to do and are hurrying there to see which one you take.”

  Gregor looked at the list of ships around him and squinted at his computer screen, “That large ship directly behind us, what is that?”

  “It’s a commercial freighter headed for Damnoth.”

  “I’m going to cross to the other side of the filament and move back toward it. When I draw even with it, I’m going to cross back to this side and land on the rear of that freighter next to its boosters.”

  “That’s a good idea; the ship boosting toward you probably won’t even notice you doing it if you don’t use your engines. Move back across to this side of the filament as the rear half of the freighter is even with you. I suspect the crew flying the freighter won’t be able to see you over the central curve of the hull.”

  “Crossing now. Do you think that pursuer will be able to see me make the change?”

  “Like I said, probably not. It’s too far away to visually see you and it’s moving too fast on the filament to receive data from its scanners.”

  Gregor hit the small side air thruster on the bow and his ship swung across the filament to the opposite side. The flow on that side was moving in the opposite direction and it caught the bow of his ship and pushed it around in the opposite direction of the course he had been taking. His closing speed with the giant freighter was fast but not so fast that he couldn’t cross the filament again and swing his small vessel on to the rear of the giant hauler. He landed on the freighter’s hull and activated the magnets in the landing legs. He felt the thump of his ship being pulled down to the freighter’s hull and he shut down his external power systems. He was inside the Freighter’s drive field and he saw the computer shut down his drive field a moment later. He looked up at his computer screen as he reduced the computer’s volume and saw a blip moving at high speed on the filament. Who could afford to waste that much fuel?! “Tell me what you see, Computer.”