The Tesserene Imperative (Book Two of The Imperative Chronicles)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

 

History of Space Exploration: Tesserene—Before mankind can escape the shackles of Planet Earth and expand into the cosmos, it must locate an abundant source of TESSERENE.

Tesserene is the most potent power source ever discovered by mankind, capable of warping space and enabling starflight. A few kilos are enough to power a starship for months. However, tesserene’s power is matched only by its rarity. Even after decades of searching, little tesserene has been found in the SOL system and not much more in nearby star systems. It is in such short supply that most of the known reserves are used in the search for more tesserene.

— Excerpt from Encyclopedia Solaris, 2194

 

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I reached down to secure my safety tether to the guy wire anchored to the rock when something struck me from the side. My boot slipped on the thin layer of asteroid dust and I missed the wire.

I froze.

I was an old hand at this; I should have just relaxed and tried again. Instead, I overreacted and scrabbled for purchase in the microgravity. I grabbed for the wire, but my wild lunge did nothing but push me in the opposite direction.

Within seconds, I was meters from the rock and drifting away.

Stifling a fast-growing sense of dread, I triggered my suit’smaneuveringthrusters.

Nothing—the thrusters were dead.

Shit!

“Sparks!” I hollered into my radio. He was only a few meters to my left, facing the other way.

“Sparks!” I hollered again. No reaction. Why didn’t he hear me?

“Sparks!” Again nothing.

I checked my radio. It should have been working, so why no response from Sparks?

All the while, I continued to drift ever farther from safety. I started to panic. The only thing standing between me and the primary of this system was 134 million kilometers of cold, dead, stark, nothing.

“Sparks! Cap! Tom! Guido! Anyone!” Still no response.

It dawned on me that whatever fleck of high-speed space debris had smashed into my backpack and knocked me off my feet must have wrecked both the radio and the thrusters. I checked the gear in my EVA suit pouches, but there was nothing that would help me get back to the asteroid. Nor was there any way to fix the radio on my back.

I knew I was taking a chance, but I pulled a wrench from a pouch and threw it at Sparks, hoping he’d see it and look back.

I willed the wrench to fly true. “Come on, come on!”

No joy.

The wrench glanced off the rock, well to Sparks’ right. Out of line-of-sight, and in a vacuum, he couldn’t see, hear, or feel it strike. Worse, my throw had sent me tumbling.

“Sparks!” Why didn’t he turn around? Couldn’t he sense me behind him?

Sparks and the asteroid flashed in front of me, over and over as I tumbled, like some flickery old black-and-white silent film. I continued to drift farther and farther from the asteroid and any hope of survival.

“Sparks, goddamn it! Turn around. SPARKS!”

It wasn’t long before the asteroid dwindled to fist-sized, and then marble-sized. Finally, it merged with the other remains of a planet that existed once, but no longer.