Tagrale

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Jenna stared out from her starship at what looked like a massive grey tower, stretching above and below until it disappeared in the distance in each direction. The size of the structure was mind boggling. Her ship was slipping past it at a distance of several hundred metres but it still seemed endless in each direction.

Her mind tried to tell her it went on forever, but she knew that wasn’t the case. The section she could see was over three kilometres long and angled away from her at the top and bottom. It was just one of the seven sides. She knew that, she’d studied it intently for most of her life, but up close to the massive structure it was hard to remember that.

She still couldn’t believe she was really here. After so many years of working for it, and after so many months fighting in the war, she’d actually been posted to a role protecting the Tagrale. It was unbelievable. She was here! She’d been flying patrols near the Tagrale for two weeks now but her pulse still pounded every time she got this close to it.

“Hey mum,” she said quietly. “Hey dad. I made it! I reached the Tagrale. I think you’d both be proud. I think…”

She broke off, a lump in her throat stopping her from speaking. After a few seconds she shook her head angrily and focused on the Tagrale again. Those thoughts were for later, or maybe for not at all. She had a job to do right and she needed to focus.

One thing she’d never appreciated was the depth of the Tagrale. She’d known the sides were long, that was what gave the near-circular Tagrale its immense size, but she hadn’t appreciated how big it was from front to back. Every image of the Tagrale seemed to focus on it from the front rather than showing a side view, maybe because that was the profile it was famous for. Now she was learning just how unimaginably big it was.

This close the Tagrale no longer looked smooth. Its sides were thick measured from the inner section of the circle to the outer. Always at least fifty metres, but in places significantly more. It was far from featureless too. Many complex patterns dotted it, as did raised sections which in some cases were buildings and in others… well, no one knew. Maybe they were buildings too, but no one had managed to enter them.

The Tagrale was almost symmetrical. In many cases a feature found on one section would be found in the same position on all the others, but there were exceptions. Sometimes one or more of the sections would have a totally different feature. In other cases some of the sides would simply be flat in the corresponding location. Flat and featureless.

Why was the Tagrale so close to symmetrical without actually achieving it? What was the purpose of the areas which differed? Were they significant or just purely random? Those questions had generated endless debate and no answers, so far at least. They were just some of several hundred pressing questions about the Tagrale which the scientists studying it wanted to answer.

Her thoughts drifted as her ship moved further past the edge of the Tagrale. Now she could start to appreciate the vast area of space which the Tagrale bounded. The Tagrale itself was incredible enough, but it was the space within the heptagonal shape where the true magic happened. It was there that a gateway to the stars could be created, one that the largest ships now known to humankind would be dwarfed by.

Or so the legends said. The gateway would have to be active to achieve that. Every test the scientists had managed to devise showed that space within the Tagrale no different to space anywhere else, not where ships were supposed to travel. There were strange whorls of gravity near the physical structure but even those seemed to offer no clue on how it worked.

The Tagrale was dormant at best and damaged beyond use at worst. Scientists had dedicated their entire lives to finding out which… without success so far. Jenna still had secret hopes that she’d be able to help crack the problem, but knew the fact she lacked advanced training in the sciences made that pretty unlikely.

Jenna swung her ship in closer to the Tagrale, aiming to come in over the inward-facing surface. As she approached the ship suddenly lurched to the side… and towards the Tagrale. Her distance from the massive structure dropped from a few hundred metres to barely ninety in just a few seconds.

She would have smashed into the Tagrale if she hadn’t been anticipating the change and ready to fight against it. This was one of the reasons she was flying so close to the Tagrale, to refine her understanding of the strange gravitational effects that swirled around certain areas.

Those effects had destroyed plenty of ships and shuttles down the years. That was a fate she wanted to avoid if at all possible, so she was learning the subtleties while there were no other pressures.

She checked the map she’d been following and realised she was heading straight for a shear, and a bad one too. Her heart hammered as she threw the ship to the left, just avoiding it.

She took a shaky breath and fought the urge to bring her ship to a stop. She could do this. She just had to concentrate. She checked the map and confirmed there weren’t any more shears close by.

The one she’d narrowly missed wasn’t the worst she knew of but it would still have badly damaged her ship if she hit it too fast and from the wrong angle, and that’s exactly what she’d nearly done.

Shears formed where two different gravitational anomalies met and, for want of a better word, fought each other. The gravity a ship was subjected to could change massively in both strength and direction in the space of a couple of metres.

That would be bad enough if the change in gravity applied to the whole ship, but that didn’t happen. The ship would be subject to two different gravitational pulls in different places. Speed was like a lever, the faster a ship was going the more leverage the shear could apply, and the more likely the ship was to be ripped apart.

Jenna knew she was a damn good pilot, but even she couldn’t fly the areas safely just from studying the maps. That was why she insisted on coming out and learning to feel where the dangers were and how to avoid them.

She’d managed that for around two-thirds of space around the Tagrale since she arrived, and had done it without destroying her ship, even if it had been a close call a couple of times.

That was important as hers was the only combat ship assigned to protect the Tagrale. Not that the Tagrale really needed protecting. The Mercantile Coalition wanted to profit from the Tagrale, as they did from everything. They wouldn’t do anything that would risk damaging that potential. At least that was what the League had said when justifying only providing a single combat ship to protect it.

Jenna swung back over the width of the Tagrale, studying the strange surface below her. There were no shadows. There couldn’t be. The Tagrale was so far out from Sironus that the sun was little more than a slightly bright star.

There was no sunlight out here to see the Tagrale by, but she could still see it clearly. The Tagrale itself gave off a soft glow. It wasn’t much, but with nothing anywhere near as bright in the area it was more than enough to make the surface visible.

Jenna carried on until she reached the edge, then looped over and flew down the far side. She slowed as she neared the scientific outpost there, grimacing once again at the dull black structure.

Jenna wasn’t sure if someone had deliberately tried to make it clash with the surrounding Tagrale or if that had been bad luck, but it certainly managed it. Before she could contemplate the jarring clash further her comm came to life.

“How’s our guardian angel doing out there?” asked a man’s voice.

“Just admiring the views, Slav,” Jenna replied, a smile forming.

She’d never actually met the owner of that voice but Slav always made a point of chatting when she flew past if he was on duty. Most of the time those on watch on the station ignored her or spoke briefly. Slav actually seemed to welcome seeing her.

“Did you know there’s a bet running on how long it takes you to fall foul of a shear and destroy your ship?”

“No, I didn’t. What did you put me down for?”

He chuckled before replying.

“Ah, well, I might have put you down for five days. Not that I wanted to win, but it would have been rude not to join in.”

“Of course. Sorry to disappoint you!”

“No apology necessary! Having you swooping past brightens up the very boring shifts standing watch. There aren’t any transports booked to arrive for at least a week. Other than shuttles heading off to sites of interest absolutely nothing else is moving out here.”

“Sites of interest? Have they found something new?”

Jenna just managed to hold back on the final question… can I see? So far she’d been unable to persuade any of the scientists to take her along and actually see the Tagrale itself. She hadn’t even set foot on the science station. There was a small military station where she had the company of automated systems and the pleasure of pre-packaged food.

“I may have been stretching the truth with the word interest, to any normal person at least. My fellow colleagues can get excited about the tiniest detail. It’s not surprising when the subject of their research gives out so few clues.”

“And you don’t get excited over little details?”

“Of course not! My research is far more exciting and rewarding than any of theirs!”

Even without a video link she could hear the smile in his voice.

“Well then, I definitely need to persuade you to take me on one of your research trips.”

“You know, you actually sound like you mean that.”

“I do! I’ve wanted to explore the Tagrale since… well, since I was a kid. Getting to fly near it is amazing, but to touch it, to stand on it… even just once… that would be amazing.”

“Well, it seems we may have misjudged you. Many here thought you had wangled this post to avoid getting caught up in any fighting.”

Jenna couldn’t help but make a rude noise in response.

“Seriously?” she asked. “Have they actually looked at my record? I’ve spent the last twelve months fighting on the front line! I only left because there’s a medical requirement to rest anyone who’s been fighting in front line action for that long.

“When they told me I had to have a three month break I didn’t like any of the options they’d offered. So I decided to ask for something I knew I’d never get. I asked for something connected to the Tagrale, and they said yes! I was grinning for a day solid before I shipped out here and I’ve been loving every minute since I got here.”

“So we were wrong. You aren’t here because you’re scared to fight?”

“No!”

Even as she answered she realised something was different about his last question, something was off somehow. Before she could work out what he spoke again, his voice heavy.

“That’s good, because seventeen ships have just appeared on the long range sensors and none of them are broadcasting IDs.”