The Pavonis Insurgence
THE PAVONIS INSURGENCE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Alastair Mayer
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed, electronic, or other form without permission. E-book editions of this book are available wherever fine e-books are sold.
T-Space is a trademark of Alastair Mayer
Cover © 2020 by Mabash Books
Image credits:
planet [spaceship] © lurii - Depositphotos.com
Jungle © kamchatka - Depositphotos.com
Images used by permission.
A Mabash Books original.
Mabash Books, Centennial, Colorado
First printing, March 2020
Amazon Kindle edition
Hardcover: ISBN-13: 978-1-948188-19-7
Trade Paper: ISBN-13: 978-1-948188-20-3
Acknowledgments
First, thanks to my readers, whose enthusiasm for the series keeps me going. As originally envisioned, the events following The Eridani Convergence were to be covered by a single book, titled The Pavonis Insurgence, but not this one. It was soon obvious that that book would be twice as long as originally planned, and far more complicated, so I split the events from the point of view of Carson, Roberts, and Rico into The Centauri Surprise , (adding detail in the process), and events from Burnside’s point of view into this one (again, adding more details), and merging both plot threads together in Part III of Pavonis. All of which meant this book took a far longer to finish than I expected it would, and so I apologize to those of you who have been waiting patiently (for the most part) for it. I think you’ll find it worth the wait.
Burnside’s parachuting scene in Chapter 1 is partly based on my own few parachute jumps, a long time ago. My thanks to Joe Chow, my instructor and jump master, who never got me caught in any trees. The reentry pack is based on a 1960s concept called MOOSE, for Man Out Of Space Easiest (later renamed Manned Orbital Operations Safety Equipment). No flight units were ever made.
Thanks to my son Robert, the paleontologist, for suggesting multituberculates as a possible ancestor for Verdigran mammals. Thanks too to Jill and the other Robert, for their comments and corrections. Any remaining errors are of course mine.
-- Alastair Mayer, Colorado, 2020
Glossary
Chara: G type star 27.5 light-years from Earth, also called Beta Canorum Venaticum.
Delta Pavonis: G type star 19.9 light-years from Earth, approximately 16.5 light-years from Alpha Centauri. Home star of the planet Verdigris.
Gliese 784: red dwarf (type M0) in the southern constellation Telescopium, 20.2 light-years from Sol.
Gliese 832: a red dwarf (M2) star 16.2 light-years from Earth, in the southern constellation Grus. Known (as of 2020) to have at least two extrasolar planets.
Kakuloa: Alpha Centauri B II - terraformed planet orbiting the second largest star (B) in the Alpha Centauri system.
Kapteyn’s Star: a red dwarf star about 12 light-years from Earth. It is known to have at least two planets, each larger than Earth, and orbiting in or near the habitable zone.
Kesh: Aliens encountered by Carson, Roberts and Marten at Zeta Reticuli, possessing advanced technology. They neither confirmed nor denied that Zeta Reticuli was their home system, but it is currently (so far as Carson knows) uninhabited.
multituberculate: An extinct (on Earth) order of Mammalia, with an incredibly long fossil history. Similar in appearance to rodents, and noted for a massive blade-like lower premolar tooth.
omni: Short for omniphone - compares to today’s smartphones as smartphones compare to walky-talkies. (Look for “Nokia Morph” on YouTube for a nearly-there concept video.)
omniphone: See omni.
parsec: A distance of approximately 3.26 light-years.
pykrete: a very strong composite material made of water ice and sawdust, invented during WW II.
Proxima: Also called Alpha Centauri C, a red dwarf star which slowly orbits the two main stars of the Alpha Centauri system at a distance of roughly 0.2 light-years.
Sapphire: A class of small interstellar ship (S-class), capable of sleeping about six if they’re close friends, with a range of just over 20 light-years on full tanks.
Sawyers World: Alpha Centauri A II - second planet orbiting the largest star (A) in the Alpha Centauri system, the first extrasolar planet settled by humans. (See the Alpha Centauri trilogy.)
Tanith: 82 Eridani IV - fourth (hypothetical) planet orbiting the star 82 Eridani. In real life, this star is known to have at least three planets, all larger than Earth.
Taprobane: Epsilon Indi III - Third planet orbiting Epsilon Indi, home world of timoans.
thruster: High-efficiency reaction drive, a kind of fusion-powered arc-jet.
timoan: (Analogous to “human”) The sentient natives of Taprobane. Descended from the ancestral species of terrestrial mongoose and meerkats the way humans are descended from the ancestral species of monkeys or lemurs.
T-space: Terraformed (or Terraform) space - Usual term for “known space,” a spheroid of stars centered on Earth and about 50 light-years in diameter. So-called because many of the sun-like stars within it were found to have planets that were not merely Earth-like, but deliberately terraformed.
Unholy War: A nuclear war which took place in the first half of the 21st century, involving primarily the smaller nuclear powers, purportedly for religious reasons.
Union de Terre: Union of Earth, the successor to the United Nations formed because of and immediately after the events of the Unholy War. Typically abbreviated UDT, since the English “Terran Union” has an unfortunate acronym.
Velkaryans: Church of Divine Stellar Providence. A group with both political and religious ambitions. A core belief is that God created the terraformed planets specifically for humans.
Verdigris: Delta Pavonis III - third planet orbiting the star Delta Pavonis, so named for its greenish hue and the heavy jungle covering the habitable areas.
warp bubble: The thin shell of highly-curved space surrounding a ship in FTL flight. Based on Van Den Broek’s lower-energy configuration of an Alcubierre warp metric.
Zeta Reticuli: A pair of G type stars separated by about 0.1 light-year at a distance of 39.2 light-years from Earth. (Technically, Zeta 1 and Zeta 2 Reticuli.)
Zeus: A gas giant planet orbiting Delta Pavonis, similar to Jupiter.
PREVIOUSLY....
(Note to readers: The following synopses are to refresh the memory of those of you for whom it has been a while since you read the earlier books, and necessarily contain spoilers for those. If you haven't read the previous volumes, you will get more enjoyment out of The Pavonis Insurgence if you start first with volume one, The Chara Talisman, and continue from there.)
In The Chara Talisman, archeologist Hannibal Carson discovers a broken talisman in a stone tomb on the planet Verdigris, circling the star Delta Pavonis. Its slightly radioactive interior turns out to be a technetium betavoltaic battery –impossible technology for that stone-age culture. A similar, complete talisman had been found at a dig in another star system. Homeworld Security is interested, and Ducayne, head of their office on Sawyers World at Alpha Centauri (where Carson is based) follows up.
The markings on the talismans resemble a star map. Star-pilot Jackie Roberts, owner-operator of a small ship, determines that the intact talisman points to a star at the edge of T-Space, Beta Canum Venaticorum, also called Chara. Following that lead, Carson and Roberts discover a pyramid on the planet Chara III (aka St. Jacobs), which appears to contain a technology teaching museum, and, in a concealed chamber, a high-tech alien artifact.
After a run-in with the Velkaryans, a xenophobic quasi-religious faction who claim terraformed worlds were intended for humans, they return to Sawyers World. Ducayne informs them that more talismans have been located.
In The Reticuli Deception, Jackie Roberts correlates the star maps to a point-of-view somewhere near the Zeta Reticuli system, across T-Space from Chara. Carson and Roberts pursue that lead, where they find an abandoned planet whose cities have been devastated by war. They meet an alien, Ketzshanass, who warns them away from the system with a tale of attacks by the degkhidesh, a term translated as “enemies of the Kesh.”
A Velkaryan ship, commanded by a man named Vaughan, has pursued Carson and Roberts to the Reticuli system. While there, his ship is damaged by a particle beam of unknown but presumed degkhidesh sentinel origin, but ultimately both he and Carson and Roberts escape.
Meanwhile, inspired by the possible connection between Zeta Reticuli and a legendary UFO incident on Earth in the 1960s, where an abductee later recalls, under hypnosis, a star map she was shown by the aliens, Ducayne sends Rico and another agent to Earth to acquire the original UFO report documents. The Velkaryans are also interested, and their man Reid apparently kills Rico in a shootout at the spaceport just as the other agent escapes with the files.
In The Eridani Convergence, another high-tech alien artifact is up for sale to Jordan Burnside, the agent-in-residence on the planet Tanith. The Velkaryans get wind of this, and Vaughan, who stopped at Tanith for repairs after leaving Zeta Reticuli, makes several attempts to get to it before Burnside does. However, he is recalled to Verdigris to resume supervision of Velkaryan starship manufacturing.
Burnside acquires the artifact and hands it off to Carson and Roberts, and then, curious about Vaughan’s sudden departure, follows him to Verdigris. This novel (The Pavonis Insurgence) picks up Burnside’s story here.
On their way back to Alpha Centauri, Carson and Roberts stop briefly at the site of the crashed ship where the artifact was found. Other than the crash damage, they recognize other damage apparently caused by a particle beam similar to that used to attack Vaughan’s ship at Zeta Reticuli.
In The Centauri Surprise, Carson, now back on Sawyers World, receives an anonymous package of undocumented artifacts, part of an illegal collection inherited by a donor who wants to be rid of them. One of the artifacts is yet another talisman, whose star map seems to point to Alpha Centauri. There is a mysterious, roughly pyramid-shaped hill which has been classified as a volcano remnant (see Alpha Centauri: Sawyer’s World), but now Carson is convinced that it’s a buried pyramid and wants to investigate.
Meanwhile, Reid (the Velkaryan who shot Rico on Earth) has returned to Sawyers World. It turns out that Rico was not killed, but recovered by the local police and put in a traumapod while they traced his identity. That traumapod was spirited away by Sawyers World security agents and eventually Rico recovers and is released. Reid, meanwhile, has raided Carson’s excavation of the local pyramid, but is foiled as Carson turns the tables, and Rico shows up to assist. Reid is wounded in a brief shoot-out but manages to escape before the local authorities round up the other Velkaryans at the site. Carson gets the pyramid open, but it appears to have been not only deliberately buried, but deliberately filled in.
In light of recent events, Ducayne wants Carson to both visit pyramid sites on other planets, especially where there is Velkaryan activity, and, perhaps more urgently, re-contact the Kesh and ask them exactly what they’re up to. There is evidence that they were responsible for trying to conceal the pyramid in the first place. He also wants Roberts, along with Rico and xenoanthropologist and part-time agent Avril Boutelle, to go to Verdigris, contact Burnside, and follow his direction from there.
This book picks up Burnside’s tale as he arrives in the Delta Pavonis system at the end of The Eridani Convergence, then rejoins Carson and Roberts as of the end of The Centauri Surprise.
Contents
Acknowlegments
Glossary
Previously....
Carson and Roberts
Part I: Verdigris, Two Months Earlier
Chapter 1: Burnside
Chapter 2: Vaughan
Chapter 3: Arrival at Verdigris
Chapter 4: Verdigris City
Chapter 5: Safehouse
Chapter 6: Hansa Astrospace
Chapter 7: Fayettesville
Chapter 8: Burnside's Encounter
Part II: Carson and Roberts
Chapter 9: Leaving Centauri
Chapter 10: Velkaryans
Chapter 11: Departure
Chapter 12: A Slight Detour
Chapter 13: Reid
Chapter 14: Carson Makes Plans
Chapter 15: Gliese 832
Chapter 16: Dean Matthews
Chapter 17: Base 832
Chapter 18: Trouble with the Dean
Chapter 19: Secret Identities
Chapter 20: Carson Attacked
Chapter 21: A New Woman
Chapter 22: Carson and Ducayne
Part III: Verdigris
Chapter 23: Vaughan
Chapter 24: Arrival
Chapter 25: Burnside Undercover
Chapter 26: Carson and Proxima
Chapter 27: Approach
Chapter 28: Signal
Chapter 29: Landing
Chapter 30: Heading for Rendezvous
Chapter 31: Louisbourg
Chapter 32: Up the Creek
Chapter 33: Velkaryans
Chapter 34: Leaving Louisbourg
Chapter 35: Burnside Again
Chapter 36: Rendezvous Point
Chapter 37: Waiting for Burnside
Chapter 38: The Hunt for Sophie
Chapter 39: Encounter in the Jungle
Chapter 40: Moby Dick
Chapter 41: Side Trip
Chapter 42: Louisbourg, and then to space
Chapter 43: Looking for Relays
Chapter 44: Vaughan
Chapter 45: Back at Alpha Centauri
Chapter 46: Busted
Chapter 47: Company
Chapter 48: Vaughan
Chapter 49: Gliese 784
Chapter 50: Operation Gunnerside
Chapter 51: Chaos
Chapter 52: Home Again
Epilogue
Next
CARSON AND ROBERTS
Sawyer City, Sawyers World
Hannibal Carson woke from a pleasant dream, not immediately recognizing his surroundings. He was alone in a strange bed, but the sheets were warm, and the other pillow rumpled. There were doors—hatches—abutting the wall facing the foot of the bed in the small cabin. Then he awoke fully. This was the captain’s cabin on a Sapphire. Jackie’s cabin, on the Sophie. But where was she?
Just then the door on the aft bulkhead slid open and Jackie Roberts stepped out of the fresher, pulling a shirt down over herself.
“Come on, sleepy,” she said, far more chipper than was normal for her before coffee. “Rise and shine. You have work, and I have a briefing with Ducayne later.”
Carson looked at her and smiled. “And I thought you were a slave driver last night.”
“You weren’t complaining.”
He got out of bed and stepped over to her. Between the bed and the desk, the cabin had not much floor space, and clothes littered what there was. “I’m still not,” he said, hugging her.
She kissed him, but broke it off and gently pushed him away. “Neither am I, but now’s not the time. Get dressed while I go fix coffee.”
Carson sighed, but backed off. “Aye, Captain.”
∞ ∞ ∞
Coffee and an omelette-like meal waited for him on the galley table when he came aft. Jackie was already most of the way through her mug of coffee and what looked like the remains of a cheese danish.
“Sit, eat,” she said, gesturing at the food.
Carson sat. “About last night,” he began, but Jackie put her hand up to stop him.
“I enjoyed it, and I don’t regret it, and if you do, I don’t want to know.”
Carson shook his head, surprised that she would think that. “On the contrary, I—”
She cut him off again. “This isn’t the best time to talk about it. We had something once, back before what happened at Raven’s Rift—”
“That was—” he began again.
“—and for whatever reason, we both seem to have come away thinking that the breakup was the other’s fault. Maybe that was all just a stupid misunderstanding, if last night was anything to go by. But we need to have a serious discussion before either of us assumes anything going forward, don’t we?”
Carson thought he would rather grade papers than have the kind of serious discussion Jackie meant, but he knew she was right, and told her so. “Now?”
“No, that’s just it. You have to be at work—”
“I don’t have classes to teach until this afternoon.”
“—and I have a meeting with Ducayne. He has a charter for me. I’ll be off-planet for a while.”
“Ah. So you want us to chill until you get back, is that it?”
“It’s not a matter of what I want, not right now, but it’s the smart thing to do. We can have that talk when I get back. Maybe over dinner?” She smiled at him. Dinner was how last night had started.
“Okay, but I can’t promise Rick’s Cafe again. Where’s the charter to?”
“I probably shouldn’t say, and I don’t know all the details anyway. But you’ll recall we were supposed to bring someone else back from Tanith, and didn’t.”