Chapter 1
No One
Patreus III looms into view in the view screen of the small ship as I make my final approach towards the colony. Run by StarTech, the corporate colony lies at the border of both the Tyreesian space and the The Human Confederation.
“What’s your status?” says the harsh, ratty voice coming through my ship’s comms. This is all still weird for me. I’m not accustomed to working without the overbearing principles and procedures that plague the Terran Armada.
I’m still getting used to not being addressed with my designation, which I’ve shed off for the Terran Separatists. That designation only brought me pain and suffering. Working for the Armada Intelligence always made me live with a target on my back, but now I’m free.
I’m free to do as I please.
I’ve always seen the Armada Intelligence as my life. After all, I joined when I was still a kid, thanks to the Director of Operations Command who found me just after my family died. As you can imagine, growing up in the Armada was all I’ve ever known. Leaving—or rather betraying the trust reposed in me in all my years of hard work—seems like an impossible eventuality.
However, after the events on Sonali Prime, it no longer seemed impossible or unthinkable. It became a reality. Freedom. That’s how it felt like on the day I went to work with the Terran Separatists. Freedom.
Freedom.
Who would have thought that I could have a life other than what I was used to in the Armada? Especially a life that went against everything I stood for with the Armada Intelligence?
I breathe in a lungful of the cold air in the cockpit of the small FTL-capable spaceship. The beeping instruments and slight hum of the vibrating hull and sub-light drive create a background din that I’m all too accustomed to at present. I’ve been with the Terran Separatists for a while, and the Terran Armada hasn’t come looking for me. How poorly they consider their officers. Pity.
“I’m beginning my final descent into the colony,” I tell my team leader on the other side.
“Have you made contact with them yet?” comes the immediate reply.
There’s hesitancy in his voice that’s coupled with impatience—all the terrible qualities you could ever find in a non-spy who tries to do spy work.
The Terran Separatists have been so ineffectual within Terran Union space until I came along. When I joined them, their guerrilla warfare began to pay off because I brought my wealth of operational experience to the table.
I wasn’t called No One in the Terran Armada Intelligence Operations Command for no reason, I would tell them. When they realized the scope of my involvement in the Sonali-Earth war, the formation of the Galactic Council, and the kerfuffle on Sonali Prime that made the intergalactic headlines (crazy fucker wanting to destroy Sonali Prime and all), they immediately committed me to working with their ‘A’ team to get things done.
And get things done, we did. I’ve led them from victory to victory. From conquest to conquest, our trail was littered with the bloods and bodies of men who have chosen to serve the Armada, officers with families to go home to and mouths to feed. We killed many of those who stood in our way. I didn’t like it, but it was necessary.
Nevertheless, these guys don’t want to learn the finer details of spy work—not that I want to teach them everything. One of the greatest rules of working with a group with an institutionalized penchant for disregarding human life is to always remain relevant. Ergo, I won’t be teaching them everything.
Still, there are some things that I need them to learn for my job to be easier; to make our collective jobs easier. I hate having to come to the rescue of someone just because they were too impatient to get things right.
Patience and endurance—these are the two cardinal virtues required for a successive spy work. Not necessarily a badass fighting ability. Not even brute force. No. Patience and endurance. If you’re impatient, you’ll most likely get shot in the head or miss something you shouldn’t have missed, and get your team into trouble.
There’s a word for that. Fucked.
I know because these guys have been getting themselves into trouble over and over again. What would they do without me? Nothing. Where would they be? Fucked.
“Have you made contact?” the man asks again. This time his impatience is obvious.
“Be patient,” I speak back to the man several kilometers away beyond the radio reach of the planet’s scanners.
“I’ll make contact after re-entry. There are some worlds that do a thorough scan of your ship, especially small ones before you even get within range. This appears to be one of such worlds.”
“But how are you sure?” he asks. “I don’t need to remind you of the importance of this mission, do I?”
The man begins to speak in a chiding and patronizing tone. I wish I was close to him so I could kick him in the balls—okay, maybe I wouldn’t do that. I don’t want to blow everything up.
But I almost growl at the man’s immense stupidity.
“No, I understand perfectly,” I say. “In fact, it’s because I understand perfectly that I’m going to enter the atmosphere and wait until I’m hailed. My sensors already show that I’m being scanned.”
“Won’t they recognize the transporter signature?” asks another voice. It’s in another language that I am all too familiar with, but the onboard communications translator translates it for me to understand.
I tense up. I don’t know why, but every time I hear the Tyreesians talk, I get tensed. I have to think long and hard about what they’re saying because these bastards can be very tricky. A simple sentence can have as much as a hundred veiled meanings, each of which can be the intended meaning or even an entirely different meaning.
I’m not alone, because even my Separatists friends feel the same way.
They’re a necessary evil as long as they get what they want, which is to purge the Terran Union of its extreme preoccupation by tainting the human society with the blood of foreign species—by all and every means necessary, of course, including working with foreign species.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t think so, but I can’t be sure. I don’t think they’ve developed the technology so well. I don’t see a reason why they should be able to detect its signature.”
“Get down there fast,” the man says. “We can’t afford to delay any more.”
I feel my face frown before I interpret it as it is. Delay? If anyone has been delaying this, it’s been him all the while. Now he wants to put the blame on me?
Fucking asshole. Go suck Sonali cock.
I’ve always known that he hated my meteoric ascension through the ranks of the Terran Separatists. I’ve acquired immense importance since the day I joined them. I intend to maintain my position—by all and every means necessary, of course. Hell, how else?
‘By all and every means necessary’ is how we roll.
“Roger that,” I say. “Stand by. I’m beginning atmospheric entry.”
The atmosphere of the planet grabs my ship like a sex-starved man grabs his lover. I push the control downwards, plunging the ship into a nose-dive for the planet. Through the view screen, I see the tip of my kite-shaped vessel catch fire, which spreads after covering the entire view screen with a sun-like glare.
The screen shields compensate, reducing the amount of light that’s making its way into the cockpit. The atmosphere of the moon is thin. Seconds later, the resistance to my re-entry ceases and my ship picks up speed ground ward.
I plug in the coordinates to Star Tech’s base, which is south of my position.
“Computer, take over.”
“Complying…”
I feel the control stick jerk as it shifts into auto-pilot.
“Take me to the coordinates,” I say.
“Confirmed,” replies the computer.
Suddenly, my proximity sensors begin to beep. I glance at the dashboard, particularly at my scanner and see two fighters approaching me. I look out my view screen and then my side windows. All I see are thick dark clouds.
I am about to glance down at my scanners when I catch movement. I look again and see an armed fighter flying parallel to my ship. There’s a twin jet on my other side.
“Warning,” says the computer, “you are being targeted. Engaging evasive maneuvers.”
I hold my breath.
“Negative,” I bark. “Maintain current course and bearing.”
I know StarTech’s protocol all too well. Or at least, I think I do. It’s been a while since I’ve dealt directly with these folks.
The warning beep keeps on going for a few more seconds. Then, it ceases and the fighter jets peel off, flying away.
I exhale.
StarTech’s assessment protocol for single piloted ships has come under intense scrutiny, especially from the Terran Council. StarTech, who has spent a lot of money in terms of legal fees and lobbying, has maintained that their protocol is necessary to prevent corporate espionage.
In their opinion, someone who has something to hide, or has some nefarious purpose on one of their corporate colonies, would evade or fire upon their ships just at the sound of warning.
I don’t agree with them, but since it’s working for them, great.
“Unidentified vessel, this is security command at StarTech Beta Research Complex, come in,” says a voice through my comms.
“Go ahead, command.”
“Maintain current bearing and course and land on the landing pad,” says the command. “An officer will be there to check you out.”
“Roger that, command,” I reply. “Please confirm pad number.”
“No pad number,” replies security command with a chuckle.
“It’s the only landing pad we’ve got. As you can imagine, we’re a small base. We don’t get many visitors.”
“Roger that, command,” I say, “I’m just here to deliver my goods and I’ll be off.”
“I hear you,” he says. “Security command out.”
I decide that I like this man at security command. I hope he doesn’t have to die.
The complex is a five-story building that is shaped like a star with five tips that correspond to five quadrants. It is located on a grassy stretch of land that’s bordered about five kilometers out by barren lands. There are several outlying buildings, but none as large as the main complex.
The landing pad is right beside the complex. It’s in a fenced-in area at the west of the complex, with a path that connects it to the complex’s side entrance. On the edges of the fence are floodlights to dispel the darkness.
The computer lands the ship square in the center of the landing pad and powers down the engine.
“Unload cargo,” I command.
Thankfully, this ship is equipped with a function that allows it to unload its cargo outside it without human intervention. I don’t want the customs officer snooping around the ship and finding out something they shouldn’t find out.
“Computer, power up the transporter,” I command again.
“Powering up, transporter,” replies the computer. As the computer speaks, I see a tall man saunter into the landing pad, a security guard behind him. The guard pauses at the entryway, while the man continues towards my ship. He spots my cargo on my right and heads in that direction.
“How long?” I say.
“Five minutes before transporter can be turned on and ready to receive,” the computer replies.
“Open a channel to the team.”
The computer doesn’t respond. Instead, I hear the team leader’s voice again.
“Are you in?” he asks impatiently.
“Yes,” I reply. “Get ready. Five minutes.”
The man chuckles sinisterly. “Oh, we’ll be ready.”
I manually cut the transmission and go out of the ship. I walk down the entry ramp to where the man is examining my cargo beside my ship.
“What’s this?” he asks without giving me a look.
“Seyshallian fruit,” I reply. “I’m delivering them here.”
“Really?” he says, reaching out to physically examine the cargo.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I say mildly. “These things are dangerous if you get too close. That’s why we keep them in stasis. Predatory mega flora.”
The man withdraws his hand comically, even doubling back. He glances between me and the cargo, then withdraws his tablet from his pocket to tap in some information.
“Welcome to Patreus III,” he says and walks away, the security guard following him. I watch the man saunter back and out the entry-way without giving me another look, leaving me mystified.
Chapter 2
No One
“What a fucking lousy customs officer,” I mutter to myself.
I return to the ship.
“Computer, status on the transporter?”
“Ready to begin transport,” it replies.
“Activate transport. Destination is the landing pad.”
There is a slight hum from the Tyreesian-made transport, like a whirling blade. I walk back outside in time to see numerous shafts of light appearing all around the fenced-in landing pad. The shafts can be measured to about three yards in length and they’re hidden by the fence of the landing pad. After ten seconds, the shafts disappear, leaving a company of men with high-particle assault rifles.
I shake my head to myself. Ever since the Tyreesians developed this technology, the other powers have been trying to catch up. For almost a year.
Unsuccessfully.
This is just yet another instance of a border world that’s being subjected to a Tyreesian inspired raid using the matter transport. Only in this case, they’re using the Separatists because the Separatists are a bunch of dumb fucks. They send us in, then transport in, take what they want, and get the fuck out.
Sure, one day the Terran Union is going to figure out appropriate countermeasures.
Not today, though.
They’re all dressed in thick garb with all manner of secondary weapons attached to holsters or pouches up and down their bodies. Their clothes are themed black, brown, and red; they wear boots on their feet, and some have bandanas tied across their faces to hide their features.
There are about a total of twenty men—and yes, I’m the only woman in this mission. They aggregate themselves silently, speaking in hushed tones into two groups. The man I’ve been talking with approaches me after giving orders to the two groups of ten men.
He’s holding a heap of clothes in one hand and an assault rifle in the other. As much as I hated it, the plan I agreed to was to come to the planet without any weapons. I didn’t know how well I was going to be searched so we didn’t want to risk me coming in our full regalia with an assault rifle slung over my back.
I’m actually dressed to evoke lust, in case the line about the fruit didn’t work, because there’s nothing in that cargo that resembles a fruit.
I take the clothes and the rifle.
The man looks up and down at me with incredible vileness. He towers over me, and has an imposing figure. A scar lines his right face, wrinkled with stress and not old age.
I know that the man is barely fifty years old. He isn’t the most brilliant of fighters in the Terran Separatists. Nevertheless, what he lacks in intelligence, wit, and creativity, he more than makes up of in in his brutish nature and boundless brutality.
I return to the ship and quickly change into some new clothes. I check the charges on the weapon. It’s at maximum charge. I draw a quick breath, and then let it out slowly.
“What are you doing?” comes the familiar harsh voice.
I’m standing in the corridor, with my back to the entry ramp. I turn to see Scar Face.
“Getting in the right frame of mind is what I’m doing,” I reply, walking towards him. He leads me back on the landing pad, where the two groups of armed, deadly terrorists are lining the two sides of the entry way.
They are silent, their weapons primed. Each has their finger on the trigger and ready to execute the carefully crafted plan—a plan crafted with the help of the Tyreesians. If we follow everything in the letter, we will run this colony to the ground and take what we need in the thirty minutes that we have left…but of course, nobody knows if we have thirty minutes left.
“You’ll lead the first team to take out the security force,” he says, showing me the floor plan of the base. He points at the security complex/armory, which is on the other side of the complex.
“That’s the security building. This base has an estimated strength of seventy guards. At least fifty are stationed in the security room, while twenty are in the complex.
“Your team will take out the people in the security building, while my team will raid the complex and steal all the equipment. I’ve already briefed them. Stick to the Ty’s plan and we’ll be good.”
“Since when did we start sticking to their plans?” I whisper back to him, putting on my façade of sincerity. “Isn’t that the purpose of this movement? To purge ourselves of the scum aliens?”
The man smiles at me. I know how to pull his strings and press his buttons.
“You’re right,” he replies. “This is just a necessary evil. Once we get what we want, we’ll deal with Ty.”
“It may not be that easy,” I say. “The Tyreesians are very dangerous. They almost brought the Galactic Council to a halt.”
“Don’t worry about them,” he says. “When the time comes, we’ll figure out a way to handle them. Now are you clear on the mission?”
I nod. “Take down the security office. Give you time to get in, steal the FTL 6 data that they’re working on. Get out. Who engages first?”
“I think you should,” he says. “That way, you can draw out some of the operatives in the complex to give us more chance at success.”
“Okay,” I reply, even though it doesn’t make any sense. I’m contending with fifty trained guards and he’s contending with only twenty. We both have equal men. And he wants me to face more bogeys?
I join my team at the front by the wall. I peer out the entryway. There’s an open field between the landing pad and the complex. There aren’t any guards patrolling the grounds, so that’s an advantage to us. Why would they patrol the grounds? They are the only ones on the planet.
There aren’t any CCTV cameras as well. The security force is in the case of an invasion–ready to give the scientists here enough time to destroy their data and get the hell out of Dodge. Also to keep the peace, and prevent anarchy or insubordination, and to enforce StarTech regulations.
Hence, no patrolling guards and no cameras. This means our journey across the grounds should be hitch free, except if some motherfucker comes out to take a leak and sees us hightailing it across the night.
“I don’t see anyone,” I whisper. “Let’s move.”
“Stay on comms,” the man says to me.
I nod in response and, in a crouched position, I walk out into the open. Without looking back, I break into a slow run for the building. I only glance back once to ensure my team is following behind me.
We move in one straight line for the complex, which is alight with internal lights. There aren’t any floodlights on the grounds, except light bots that line the external walls of the complex. These bots only give off soft lights, which adds to the beauty and nature of the complex.
Once we get to the complex, my team and I break right, while the man and his team break left. I lead my team all the way around the complex until we spot the security building ahead of us. It’s a boxy three-story building that houses office spaces as well as accommodations for the operatives.
The building is almost as big as the complex, but not quite so. It’s about a hundred yards to the security building and we’re moving cautiously through the night.
Ahead, a door in the complex to our left opens and a guard comes out. I don’t pause, as I should have. Instead, I keep running until I’m within range, before leaping like a normal person should, and crashing headlong onto the guard.
I motion for my team members go past me and not wait. I hold the man down with more than the usual strength. I punch him on the face to subdue him some more before I snap his neck. I drag his body into the corner of one of the five tips on this side of the complex, where his body won’t be found for a long time.
By the time I’m done hiding his body, firefights begin all across the grounds. At first, it starts in the complex before continuing in the security building. Screams and panicked yells escape from the complex.
I break into a run towards the security building. Ahead I see a litter of bodies strewn about the main entry way. So much for stealth. The guys are already inside, but I know they don’t stand a chance. Still running, I suck in a deep breath and blink twice, activating my network of nanites. I feel a surge in my legs, but I restrain.
I pull up a heat scan of the building and identify a forward room in the last floor, where a lot of people are aggregating. I also detect a lot of signatures in the room—the armory, I conclude.
“Here we go,” I mutter, then engage full speed.
It’s like I’m shoved from behind. My speed peaks up, allowing me to cover the distance in seconds. A few yards to the building, I leap—more like shoot—into the air. I blast up to the third floor and crash through the window into the room. I land on my feet and one hand. Thirty men, my nanites show, all of whom are currently in shock at what has just happened.
I lift off into the air, rolling three times and letting loose blast after blast of my weapon. When I land on the floor again, the men are grabbing weapons from the racks on the walls and trying to fight back, but there are only twenty left. I run to the nearest cluster, then fall to my knees and slide through into their midst.
I slam my ankle into the back of one’s neck, killing him instantly, while I send my fist into another’s chest, cracking through and puncturing his heart. I pull out my bloody fingers and flick them at the eyes of the nearest soldier, who screams and goes for his eyes. I grab him and use his body as a shield, while I spray the remaining soldiers on my side of the armory with blaster fire. They all fall dead.
There are five reaming on the opposite side of the armory. I pull out a grenade from the one I’m holding in a tight fist and lob it over to the five. Before it lands, and while they’re still tracing its trajectory, I pull up my rifle and fire.
It explodes over their heads disintegrating them.
I snap the neck of the one I’m holding. He falls to the ground, dead.
Thirty dead.
I hear a sound behind me and immediately swivel on my heels, bringing up my gun to shoot. The man raises his hand in surrender.
I exhale softly, cursing.
“I could have shot you,” I say to the man, who’s on my team.
“I just got word from team leader,” he says. “Terran Patrol is coming. They’ll enter the system shortly. We don’t have time to steal the data. We need to leave.”
I nod.
I blink twice to deactivate my nanites and following the man back outside. We meet up with the team leader’s team on the grounds.
“How did they know we’re here?” I ask.
The man shrugs. He keeps silent. I look at the other men. They were able to get some equipment out, but it’s far less than what we expected.
We make it back to the ship and lift off in time. We are shooting out of the atmosphere when, at the same time, three Armada heavy cruisers drop out of FTL space. Before they can begin firing, we engage our FTL drive and slip into the safety of interstellar space.
Chapter 3
No One
We pop back into normal space twenty minutes later at the outer edge of a neighboring system in Tyreesian space, where a Tyreesian war ship is waiting. The large vessel is shaped like a bullet with wings. One end houses the control center, while the other end houses the engines, the thrusters, and the FTL and sub light drives.
As we make our approach to the thirteenth deck of the behemoth of a ship where we are to be received into shuttle deck number ten, I wonder why the Tyreesians make such powerful vessels. They are so cunningly twisted that they can probably win a fight against three Mariner class cruisers (the most powerful arsenal in the Terran Armada) with a frigate. Yes, they’re that smart.
“Tyreesian vessel, this is the away team,” the team leader says in the co-pilot’s seat beside me, interrupting my train of thought. “We are approaching.”
“Proceed with approach,” replies the Tyreesian in charge of the comms.
I take one good look at the vessel again and think, so why build such massive ships?
I realize a fundamental problem the Terrans have faced since our first contact with an intelligent species. We’ve always been overpowered and overwhelmed. First, it was the Sonali, whose ships were so large we couldn’t even comprehend how such things could be capable of traveling at a speed faster than light. I mean, those guys’ ships ran for as long as five hundred yards, which at the time was a technological wonder.
At the start of the Earth-Sonali war, it took about three to five ships to destroy a Sonali cruiser. And about ten to twenty to bring down a dreadnought (thank God they only built a few of those fuckers). Sure, there were a few exceptions, but more often than not the Sonali were too much for anyone to handle. They were a big leap ahead when it comes to upgrades on equipment and ships.
Terrans were dying all across the galaxy, from Sarelia II to New Sydney. I led the team tasked with obtaining Sonali technology to be studied, reversed engineers, and applied to our ship design process with expediency.
Once, I recruited a space pirate to help me destroy a Sonali cruiser that had laid siege to a planet. The space pirate succeeded in getting a bomb aboard the ship, which led to its destruction. After sending the pirate off on his way, my crew swept in to salvage all we could. There were many more missions like that, and all the while corporations suspiciously seemed to become very productive and very profitable.
The space pirate brings a smile to my face. Jeremy and I had a deal and I need to find him. It’s been too long since he held me.
Of course, my contributions during the war went unnoticed by the greater Terran Union. All I got was a commendation, secretly awarded by the Council of Admirals at Operations Command. After the award was handed over to me, it was then taken back and kept in a vault classified above top secret.
Many people see Captain Jeryl Montgomery as the one who ended the war. They don’t know that if I hadn’t done all I did behind the scenes, Captain Jeryl Montgomery would long since have perished and the Terran Union would be under Sonali rule. Earth would probably have been glassed. And there would be no Galactic Council.
Then came the Omarian Gambit the Tyreesians had played during the formation of the Galactic Council. When the ship appeared out of its hiding place behind the sun of that Nova Corporation colony, Jeryl Montgomery, who was then a Vice Admiral and was commanding The Seeker alongside Ashley Gavin, the Captain of the ship that time, had to fire a proton bomb into the sun to cause a mini thermonuclear explosion that incinerated the ship. That’s when the Galactic Council was started.
Of course, they paid him by demoting him from Vice Admiral back to Captain. Before I left, I even got whiff of another ploy that was brewing to take him down for good. Those fuckers back at Armada Command seem to wallow in their own stupidity.
I heave a sigh. It feels good to be outside the Armada. No oversight. Nothing to worry about. No reports to file. No one to suck up to. I hated doing all those things—but it was a necessary part of my job.
Well, not anymore. I’m free.
I guide the ship through the shielded open entryway into the wide bay of the shuttle deck. We land safely and I power down the ship.
“We’re in trouble,” the team leader says, pulling off his mask. “We’re so in trouble.”
I shrug.
“We’re the ones running this op, sir,” I say. “Yeah, we may not have gotten everything out, but this is our show. The Tyreesians are only helping.”
“Do you seriously believe that?” He asks.
No, I don’t. But I don’t say it.
“These are Tyreesians we’re dealing with,” he says. “Their backup plans have back up plans of their own.”
And he walks out.
I almost admire the Tyreesians. I mean, I can be crafty sometimes. I can be cunning. In fact, being crafty and cunning is part of a normal day in being a spy. However, there’s a limit to how crafty and cunning one might be before it becomes a chronic psychological problem. It becomes an obsession.
The Tyreesians aren’t just past the limit, they are light years in excess. I wonder why they haven’t all gone mad because of this. Maybe it has something to do with their larger brain size than ours. Maybe they have higher brain power. That would explain how they’re able to build such great ships and the matter transport technology.
I follow the team leader out of the ship into the shuttle bay. Our men are milling around the ship, their guns slung on their backs. I count. There are about nine of us.
A few engineers enter the ship to check out the transport technology that was installed recently, while others go about the ship, performing checks.
The transport needs two platforms. One for sending. Another for receiving.
The shuttle bay is really large, like a small corvette may fit into this place. There are stacks of equipment on both sides of the bay, while ahead is a raised platform, where the exit and entrance into the bay is, and a ramp that leads up to the platform.
The entry way opens and a couple of Tyreesians walk in. They are all holding assault rifles, which makes me stiffen. I feel the urge to go for my gun, but I bite down on it. The last person to enter isn’t crating any rifle. And he’s dressed in white—immaculate white that glares under the harsh white overhead light.
“You blew it!” he roars as he makes his way down.
The team leader and I make our way through the retreating men until we are standing between them and the ranting Tyreesian.
He’s short before us, at only four feet tall. His silky skin glints as he gesticulates in anger. They might be small, but Tyreesians are thick and have a sturdy build, hence they are averagely powerful. Tyreesians have slits for eyes and ears, and a third eye on their forehead that is perpetually closed.
I heard that the third eye opens only at the point of death. The Tyreesians are a little guarded about that matter, so very little is known about it. It’s supposed to give them sight into the immaterial realm, to see thoughts, feelings, or to possibly peer into the future.
“Why did you blow up your chance?” he yells again, his gaze shifting from me to the team leader. “We put so much into this and you humans go and spoil it. The Terran Union is going to develop FTL 6 technology and it will make our matter transport look like a child’s toy! The balance of power in the galaxy will shift ever in your species’ favor, human!”
He calls humans like he’s calling ‘vermin’. I almost recoil at the voluminous amount of hatred that he spouts.
I look ahead. The rifle-totting Tyreesians on the platform are standing in a line, as if in a firing squad. I wonder if this is it.
I look over my right shoulder to a man that’s hanging on the edge of the milling terrorists. He meets my gaze. We don’t speak or make any motion, our eyes only connect, yet volumes are communicated.
I glance back at the ranting Tyreesian.
“Look, Commander, it wasn’t our fault.”
I’m forceful in my words, doing my best to create and channel anger into them.
“What do you mean?” he blasts back. “Half of your men are gone. You did not even get the equipment we were hoping for. You were almost caught by the damn Armada, yet you had all the time. You had the element of surprise. You had more men than you needed. You had our superior weapons and our transport technology.”
He waits for me to explain, but I remain quiet. How can I explain, when the evidence against me is overwhelming?
He’s about to continue his tirade, when I begin to think of something.
“Look, we didn’t plan for the Armada to show up,” someone says from behind. It’s the man I was looking at earlier. He leaves his position at the edge and comes to my side.
“And who are you?” the Tyreesian commander asks.
“I’m Zhang, Commander,” he replies. “I went with the team. Anyways, the alarm went off so soon I think the ship triggered something while it was landing that alerted the Terran Armada. By the time we were just starting to take up the equipment, Armada heavy cruisers dropped into the system unannounced.”
I jump in, “Right, the good news is that we have caused StarTech so much loss with what we took. They’ll have to reassess the cost of running that colony now, and I think they’ll pull out when they realize the cost.”
The Tyreesian seems pacified. “You know that StarTech is working on this world as a subcontractor to the Terran Armada on mining rare metals for the FTL 6 drive. I hope for your sakes you are right and the corporation pulls out. If it does not, you are the ones who will suffer.” he says.
Without another word, he turns and leaves the shuttle bay, his squad following him out.
Chapter 4
No One
“Well, that was intense,” I say with a smile. My face and chest are both balmy and it isn’t because of the thick layers of cloth I’m wearing. It’s because we may have come too close to fighting with our Tyreesian friends.
I would have had to engage my nanites openly—which I’m not ready for these guys to know about. They’d prefer me as a lab guinea pig than as an asset they can use on the field.
“Yeah, no kidding,” Zhang says, his hands on his hip and panting loudly.
The team leader doesn’t turn away from the open entry way for a while. I glance at him.
“Boss,” I say, “is everything all right?”
He doesn’t reply.
“Boss?” Zhang says.
I hope he doesn’t order that we take the ship. You may think that only someone that has gone bananas would give such foolish orders. Well, that’s our team leader. I have listened to him give more useless orders than the one I suspect he wants to give.
Another part of his character that knows no bound aside from his brutality is his anger. The guy can hold a grudge like his life depended on it.
I step into his front, pulling his eye-sight. In my periphery, I can see Zhang tense. I have to keep this team together and in the Tyreesians’ good favor, otherwise my coming here would be in vain. All those lives lost would be in vain.
“Boss, we still got work to do here,” I say. “We can’t go making trouble with the Tyreesians.”
There is a jerk that heralds the FTL drives coming online. The shuttle bay door slides down and clamps shut. Then the vessel vibrates and we enter into FTL space.
“We need to remain calm,” I say. I almost lay a calming palm on his shoulder, but I stop in midair when his gaze turns brutish.
I take a step back, though I don’t fall into a defensive stance because I know that’s just going to get him all riled up.
“You don’t have to fucking explain to me all that,” the man says. “I know perfectly well. But these guys need to be taught that the agenda that’s important right now is our agenda, nothing else.”
Oh, it may seem as though they are pushing our agenda, but the Tyreesian agenda is what’s being pushed. I don’t say this, but I know it for a fact. When dealing with a Tyreesian, you just have to make do with what you get. Work with them and hope that their own surreptitious agenda doesn’t get in the way of yours.
“Yes, boss,” I say. “Now isn’t the time. Maybe when we rejoin our brothers and we’re more than eleven tired people?”
He nods. “You’re right.”
He turns to address the others. Zhang comes to join me behind the team leader, but I motion for him to remain where he is. By coming to my aid and answering the Tyreesian commander, it already looks suspicious. I don’t want it to be too obvious that I have developed some sort of connection with him.
“We lost good people today,” he says to the men, his expression forlorn. “But this is for the greater good. This is for our cause. And where we lost one, the unholy Union will lose one hundred times more.”
The men mumble their agreements. Some remain quiet. Frankly, I don’t think they’re interested in any pep talk at the moment. They just want to rest up and maybe get some sleep. They aren’t in the mood to be talked up. But trust the team leader to be inappropriate and insensitive to the obvious plight of his people.
“The Tyreesians may not see this as a victory,” he continues, “but I tell you, we are not here for the Tyreesians.”
I look around. The engineers around aren’t paying us any heed.
“They are here for us,” the team leader cries on. “And I say we were victorious. Our brothers did not die in vain. Yet, we will avenge them with the fury of a hellish beast.”
He pumps his fist into the air.
I look at him, aghast. What the fuck? Really? Hellish beast?
I throw a questioning glance at Zhang. He shrugs. The men don’t respond like they’ve actually been inspired. They mumble and some just nod.
The man puts his hand down and says, “Alright. Get some rest. I’ll let you know when we are assembling.”
The men disperse out of the shuttle bay quickly.
Zhang comes to my side and whispers, “Was he shooting for funny?”
I chuckle, which draws the team leader’s attention to me. I wipe the smile off my face. The man looks from me to Zhang and back to me.
“Isn’t he too short for you?” The team leader asks.
At first I don’t understand what he means. Then when I look at the lustful way he looks at me, his eyes devouring my slender body and ample chest, it dawns on me. I’ve never been one to shy away from my…physical and sensual attributes. If anything, I use them to my advantage every single time it presents itself to be used in such a way.
I cling onto Zhang and I see the greed and anger explode in the man’s eyes.
“He may be short, but he’s tall down where it matters,” I reply to the man.
His response is immediate and instinctual. His eyes flicks down to Zhang’s pants and then comes back up. He’s embarrassed by what he just did that he walks away from us.
I chuckle again. “I think he was shooting for inspirational. Come on, let’s go to my quarters.”
We leave the shuttle bay and head for the nearest elevator. The corridors are dingier and more Spartan than what we have on any Armada vessel. Armada vessels are well lit and paneled with a beautiful, attractive material.
Once in the elevator, Zhang says, “Do you really think I’m tall down where it matters?”
I burst out in laughter.
“Really?” I glance at him.
He looks away, smiling.
“You tell me. You know what it was like hearing you say that? I felt like I’d won the lottery or something.”
“Yeah, well, if it makes you feel good, I’ll say it every time,” I say, rolling my eyes. Zhang and I haven’t actually fucked. But it keeps the attention off of me from the rest of the crew.
We get to my quarters, which is the tenth from the elevator. We are in the officers’ quarters’ deck, where even the ship commander has his quarters. As a show of good faith that we are equals in this partnership, the commander had allowed the team leader and me to have large quarters in this deck. The rest, including Zhang, stayed in the lower decks, where most of the crew members of this ship have smaller quarters.
Once we arrive in the quarters, I lock it. Then I retrieve a small bag from underneath my bunk bed and pull out a black cube the size of two fists. I press the power button, and it blinks blue twice before turning a deep red. No one can listen in now.
I look up at Zhang. “We can talk freely now.”
Zhang remains standing, while I sit on the bed, beside the cube.
“Did you use your nanites during the mission?” he asks.
“I didn’t realize that was the question you’ve been itching to ask me since we returned from the colony,” I reply.
He shrugs.
“I didn’t want to be too direct and I didn’t want you to accuse me of having a holier than thou attitude."
“Yes, I used my nanites,” I reply. “It’s how I was able to take out twenty security operatives.”
“Twenty?” he exclaimed. His eyes bulge out in shock.
“I had to,” I say.
“If I didn’t, they would have killed me. Look, I can’t take the chance of having to knock them out, when they are out to kill me with weapons. I can’t continually do this without my team beginning to suspect that I haven’t really cut ties with the Armada.”
“Still, isn’t this too much of a price to pay?” Zhang asks. “I’m not comfortable with this, No One. We are going too far. These are our guys for god’s sake. How can we look at the director in the eye when we finally report in?”
“I don’t really think about that when I’m out in the field trying to stay alive,” I say. “Look, we’ve come so far to be deterred by emotions...”
“Emotions?” he claps back. “You’re killing innocent people and you’re saying I’m being emotional?”
I calm down.
“I didn’t mean it like that…”
“Then how did you mean it?” he says, cutting me off again.
I stand to my feet, rising several inches above the smaller man.
“No one understands that more than I do,” I say.
“But you have to understand that a few casualties, while regrettable, are sacrifices that have to be made for the greater good. Our overall mission of recovering the secret to the Tyreesians’ teleportation technology is paramount.”
“It’s been a year since the faceoff between the Tyreesians and The Seeker. The Armada is fast-tracking weapons and defensive development to match the Tyreesians in the eventuality of an all-out conflict. The same thing is happening with other Galactic Powers. But we all have been unsuccessful at cracking the final components of the matter transport devices that the Tyreesians are using to wreak havoc, like they have on Patreus III.”
I pause for a few moments to ensure Zhang is following me. Then, I continue.
“Even if the Armada closes the gap soon, resources are spread too thin to focus on the matter transport at the same time. So we in Armada Intelligence need to help in any way we can.”
I’m done, so I sit back down and wait for Zhang’s response. He sighs aloud and looks up at the ceiling for a moment.
“I don’t like it, but I agree it’s necessary,” Zhang says. “I also realize that it’s important to maintain our cover. I just hope this gets over soon so we can stop killing our own people.”
When I was called upon to infiltrate the Separatists’ ranks, I knew I would have to make sacrifices. I just didn’t know my fellow undercover agent would question my every move.
“We are not Separatists,” I say to Zhang, “I know that very well. We are Armada Intelligence Operatives who have been sent to infiltrate them. But, if this is going to work, we better behave and act like them, otherwise we’d have lost even before we get close enough to our prize.”
Zhang looks at me again.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you didn’t care about the people you kill.”
“I don’t have to care or not care, Agent Zhang,” I quip back. “I just have to do my damn job. This is bigger than me. This is for the Terran Armada. And the future of the Terran Union.”
Chapter 5
Zhang
“Of course, and that goes the same for me” I say, “but you don’t see me being comfortable going on a killing spree.”
I really disagree with No One. I mean, she killed twenty StarTech soldiers. That’s absurd, and no mission—or technology is worth that price. If she killed so many in this mission, how many more will she have to kill in the future?
That’s not even what mainly bothers me. It’s the fact that she doesn’t seem to care that she kills the people we took a vow to defend without scruples.
There is a very thin line between what’s good and what’s amoral, and No One is threading a little too close to the latter aspect. I believe that there are times a man has to kill another man. Nevertheless, when you have to kill and not feel sorry or some form of remorse or even second guess your decision to kill, then that’s a serious problem.
Imagine littering the ground with bodies of twenty fine men and women with families, whose only crime was to fight for a corporation in the Terran Union, whom we’re goddamn affiliated to. This is outrageous! The Terran Council Committee on Black Ops of the Terran Armada Intelligence Operations Command will not look the other way.
We may succeed in this covert mission, but I’m sure that our actions will come to bite us in the ass one day. Oh, they will. Our superiors may overlook it at the moment, we may brush it aside, but someday, when our missions are being reviewed, we will have to answer for the things we did in the name of peace, prosperity and the Terran Union.
“Zhang, you misunderstand my expressions from what I feel on the inside,” No One replies.
She’s relaxed on her bed, her jet-black hair streaming down to her shoulders. Her cleavage shoots out even in the thick clothing of black and red. I’ve been attracted to her from the start, like any other man would be. Her legs are crossed before her, and her palms against the sheets of the bed.
“We are spies,” she says, now speaking in a patronizing tone, like I don’t know this fact. “You have to learn that even with you, even though we’re working together on this case, I won’t let the contents of my heart reflect on my face.
“I won’t show emotions, regardless of who you are. I put on my poker face on and off the field. It’s how I got so good. You know, some agents only practice their craft on the field. They don’t when they are off the field. That’s why a lot of them end up dead.”
“So, you’re saying that you feel bad about what you did but you are just not good at showing it?” I say, trying to understand her drift.
And yes, I’m one of those agents who leave spy craft for the field and out of my personal life. I may not be as good or laureled and awarded as the legendary No One, still I am good and I like where I am. We can’t all be the best, can we?
“No,” she replies with an exasperated voice. “I’m not bad at showing it. I’m just not showing it.”
“So, you do feel some form of sadness for butchering those officers?”
She flashes me a dismayed look.
“What do you think I am? A psychotic gun-toting bitch with no control and heart?”
Well…yes?
I don’t say it. I don’t want to be kicked out of the force yet.
Her eyes widen with realization. She must have read the expression on my face and may have deduced my thoughts.
“I’m not a dispassionate, gun-toting bitch, Zhang,” she says. “I do have a heart. And I feel very sorry for those agents I had to kill. But I had to do it. We’re just going to take it as one of the losses we endure for the greater good. And when I appear before a Council subcommittee, I will answer for it. For now, I have a job to do and I intend on doing it.”
Even if it means killing more innocent humans? I don’t ask. I’m actually exhausted by this conversation. What am I trying to achieve with this, anyway?
“Are you convinced now?” she asks.
“Convinced of what?” I return.
“Convinced about me?” she asks, and I almost think she’s making an overture at me. I’ve never really thought of No One as anything more than my senior and a superior intelligence operative. But now that I look at her on the bed, I begin to realize for the millionth time just how fucking hot she is.
I hold back my breath as I become self-conscious.
“About…you?” I ask, hoping that it is what I want it to be.
She smiles. “That I’m not dispassionate…”
“Oh,” I reply with an arched eyebrow. Bummer!
“Yeah, sure. I’m convinced.”
Of course I’m still not convinced. Still, I look at No One as if I am. If I don’t, it’s just going to get me in trouble with her, and she’s my commanding officer in the Armada Intelligence.
No One is known to be cruel and clinically efficient in the way she handles her informants and recruits. It’s been part of her since she was recruited by Admiral Shane at Operations Command, whose early records are littered with questionable actions. His actions yielded great results, but they were questionable nonetheless.
Trying to change No One’s actions or trying to get her to see the errors of her ways would be as hard as trying to move a starship that is grounded on a planet with your bare hands. It’s completely impossible.
To be sure, I admire No One. When I received the message that I was going to be working with her on this case, I was ecstatic.
I’ve followed her for quite some time. Now, getting to work with her is a great boost to my career. I’m sure that after this mission, I’ll become a station chief on one of the most prestigious colony worlds or maybe get bumped to Captain and lead one of the new Armada Intelligence starships with hundreds of intelligence operatives onboard. That is my dream posting, and I’m sure to get it after all this.
I hear a beep. I roll up my sleeve. The wrist device, which Armada Intelligence gave to me, has turned from a standby red to green. It usually does that when there’s an incoming message. I operate the wrist and realize that there’s no message. That only means one thing—Operations Command wants to talk.
I look up at No One, but she’s already ahead of me. She picks up her box and activates the jamming signal. This will prevent the onboard communications officer from picking the signal that comes into and goes out of this room. It essentially creates a black well in this room—nothing will show up on the onboard communications console. That is, if they are actively looking for something.
I tap in the secret code and the wrist device sends a coded message to Operations command via slipstream, telling them that we’re ready to talk. Less than a minute later, the wrist device broadcasts a holographic image into the air.
I snap to attention as the three feet image of Admiral Shane appears before me. No One doesn’t do such a thing.
“At ease, Zhang,” he says. “No One.”
“Shane,” No One replies.
“Okay,” Admiral Shane says. “You are still aboard that Tyreesian vessel, correct?
“Yes, sir,” No One replies. “Same warship. We jumped the moment we left the Patreus system. I don’t know what our current bearing is. We may be heading towards Tyreesian space or somewhere else to foment trouble.”
“Anyways, the reason I asked is I have new orders for you,” he says.
“Go ahead, sir,” I say.
“I need you to extract a Tyreesian defector,” he says. “It’s a Tyreesian scientist who will be part of a diplomatic attachment addressing a summit between The Human Confederation, The Tyreesian Collective, the Kurta Colonies, and the Terran Union in Perseus.”
“Perseus?” I ask, racking my brain. “Where’s that?”
No One is the one who answers.
“Perseus is a remote and pastoral farm planet near the border of these four powers.”
I don’t know if it’s her nanites enhancement that enables her to remember such details or if she just looked up some Armada secure files. It’s against protocol to do so in a different territory, such as where we are, but it’s No One. She gets by with virtually everything.
“Yes,” Admiral Shane says. “The Terran Union is trying to pursue a dialog in this volatile region of space in hopes of greater harmony, technology transfer, and agreements to build technology together to get the missing links in building our own matter transport device. The Tyreesians are running holy fucking havoc on the border outposts with their matter transport technology. So we’re holding a summit and involving the Human Confederation as a way of talking about potential assistance in FTL 6 from us for matter transport for them. They’re also sending some military liaisons to talk to us. We’re hoping that with diplomacy we can shave off at least a year in research. As a backup plan, in case that doesn’t work, we need to help the defector escape.
“In fact, this entire summit has been planned with this defection in mind. The defector has done her part to attach herself to the delegation. Now, we must do our part to get her into Terran Union custody without arousing suspicion.”
“So, is our initial plan to get the teleporter still on?” No One asks.
“Yes,” he replies. “Actually, both missions are critical to our plan of getting the technology, so they must run concurrently. I’ll leave the details up to you. But we need both the actual teleporter devices as well as the scientist to ensure that we have everything needed to produce our own teleporters. No teleporter and no scientist will set us back right where we’re at—which is nowhere.”
A knock comes at the door.
“We gotta go, sir,” No One says.
Admiral Shane nods. “Get the job done, and then you can come home.”
Another knock.
“Roger that, sir,” I say, then cut the signal.
No One grabs the black cube. After deactivating it, she shoves it under her bed, while I go get the door.
Standing in the doorway is the team leader who clearly doesn’t look happy.
Chapter 6
No One
“What are you two doing?” the team leader asks, pushing his way past Zhang into the room. He looks around, then stops at the center.
Zhang walks over to me with a smile on his face and kisses me on the lips, lightly yet passionately. My whole body comes alive, tingling. My eyes are still closed when his delightful lips pull away from mine. Somehow, I don’t want it to end.
In fact, I want to remain with my eyes closed, but I know I have to keep up appearances. I open up my eyes with a smile. I lick my lips and use my eyes to travel up and down the team leader. He leers at me. I know he wants me and I bat my eyes in an enticing fashion. Not even the Trinidek Red Light pleasure girls can tempt as good as me.
Zhang pulls me to himself, his right hand across my shoulder.
“Any more questions?” I ask the man, my voice filled with sarcasm.
The team leader’s face descends into anger. He glances between Zhang and me. Then he frowns.
“Do you two have no fucking decency?” he asks.
“How does that concern you?” Zhang replies.
I pinch him from behind, but it’s too late. He’s already speaking. Shit. Now he’s going to invite a shitload of questions and possible suspicions. Not suspicions about our link to Armada Intelligence—these guys are too daft to make a connection to that—but suspicions, nonetheless.
And suspicions of any kind are detrimental to every covert, undercover work. I would know. I’ve been doing this for a long time now.
The man takes a few step towards us. He doesn’t stop until he is within arm’s reach. The man is huge, way bigger than both of us. His buff hands are folded across his barrel chest. His visage is still marred by anger and it’s as though the scar lights up.
The next time he speaks, it feels like sharp metal grating another sharp metal.
“It concerns me because you guys are members of this crew. And if you guys are members of this crew, then you guys report to me. And if you guys report to me, I can’t have you questioning my orders if the other person is in danger.”
I sense that Zhang wants to spit off a reply. I poke him from behind. I know his response would be half-baked as he’d be trying to find a remedy for the situation he’s put us into. The best thing would be to keep quiet and think through first–for him, of course.
For me, I know the perfect response.
“Yes, sir. You’re absolutely right.”
Then I keep shut.
The man holds our gaze. I can see he has many more questions to ask us about our “relationship”, so I just answer them for him.
I pull out myself from Zhang’s embrace.
“Look, Zhang and I won’t let some off-mission fucking get in the way of anything. A girl has needs and when a girl wants those needs fulfilled, a girl goes to a boy.”
I motion to Zhang, while smiling at my wittiness.
“That’s all?” the man asks, hope glinting off his eye.
I smile at him suggestively. Anything to get the fucker off us.
“Of course. I mean, it doesn’t always have to be him…”
The man draws up to his full length.
“I can invite more than one man to my bed, or choose another entirely,” I purr. I see his pants bulge at the thought.
Good. I want him to think about me like that. It keeps him from thinking about any potential inconsistencies.
“Whatever,” the team leader says with a growl, trying to suppress his desire. “We’re being summoned by the Tys. Meet me in the CNC. We’re using the war room.”
“Roger that, sir.” I wink.
The man leaves the room, throwing one last shady glance at Zhang’s way.
“That was intense.” Zhang says, once we’re all alone again.
I smile at him, remembering the kiss.
“Yeah, you can say that.”
I retrieve the cube from beneath the bed and return it to the bag, where it’s secure. No one should be able to break into my bag without my permission. Otherwise, it’ll self-destruct, consuming everything within in laser fire.
“Wait for me outside,” I tell him. “I want to get off of this outrageous outfit.”
Zhang leaves the room. I change into a black tight pants and a black vest. I grab my leather jacket and throw it over my body, zipping it up to my neck. The jacket hugs my body very well. Just the way I like it.
I grab my utility belt, holstering a laser blade on my left and a blaster on my right.
When I join Zhang outside, he whistles.
I laugh. “What?”
“Are you planning on killing anyone?”
“Not if they plan on killing me,” I reply.
We find the elevator that takes us straight into the CNC. When we get there, a Tyreesian pulls away from his station and leads us into a small corridor to the side, which deposits us in front of a small doorway.
“They’re in there, Terran schtika,” the Tyreesian says using a native slur and returns to the Control Center.
I look at Zhang. He shrugs.
We both enter the war room.
I’m taken by the magnitude of the place. It’s twice the size of a Terran CNC, with an elevated battle console that’s about ten yards across. The battle console projects up into the air, filling a large section of the room with a galactic map. It’s almost beautiful.
The team leader and the remaining nine of us are already in the war room. There are about five high-ranking Tyreesians in the room, including the commander. The commander is on the other side of the war room, talking on the phone with someone who’s on the Tyreesian home world, probably his admiral or some other superior officer, whatever the chain of command is in the Tyreesian Collective.
Zhang ambles to where the other nine were in a knot, while I march up to the team leader.
“Nice of you to join us,” he mumbles, keeping his gaze on the battle console. He and I are on the elevated platform, while Zhang and the rest are down behind us. On the other side, the commander takes his place on the platform, while two other Tyreesians join him.
“What’s the mission?” the team leader asks.
The commander converses with his two lieutenants for a while, before looking up to us.
“We have a new mission for you.”
Then he pauses.
No kidding, I thought. In these meetings, I prefer to allow the team leader to actually take the lead.
“Yes, that’s what you said,” the team leader says.
The Commander continues, “No doubt, you’ve heard of the Four Powers summit. If not, you soon will. What you don’t know is that the Terran Union is using that planet of that summit to develop FTL 6. Patreus II only supplied a portion of the data. They are doing the main research on this planet.”
My interest is automatically piqued. I got whiff of such research, but I never really did seek out more information. Not that I couldn’t. It’s just that I don’t bother myself with what the Armada Science is currently researching on. What I’m more interested in is what they’ve been able to create.
“As you may or may not know,” the lieutenant to the right of the commander speaks up. “All known races currently have the same capability when it comes to faster than light travel. Though we have different names for our drives, our speed capability ends at FTL 5. We believe that the Armada is very close to achieving FTL 6 and we believe that this research is being conducted on this planet we are sending you to.”
I’m about to ask a question when the other lieutenant, the one on the left of the commander, begins to speak.
“Since we couldn’t steal the data, then destroying this will be a great boost to us and to your Separatist movement. We will be providing the bomb that you will plant to stop the progress on the upgrades. This bomb is relatively minor and localized, but we need you to attach it to a power conduit in the Terran Union building that the summit is being held at because that’s where the researchers and main offices of FTL 6 development will be. Once tied to a power source, the bomb increases in power exponentially and will destroy the entire Terran Union building. Also, doing this at such a time when there is a summit being held will cause the talks between the Terran Union, the Kurta and The Human Confederation to fail. This will be greatly to your advantage.”
And to yours, I think. Such an action by the Separatists will not only disrupt the talks or the summit. It will lead to war if Earth sees the influence of the Outer Colonies. A direct attack on an Armada or Union installation is an act of war—the kind that can’t be overlooked.
It has become obvious to me now that the Tyreesians want war between the Outer Colonies and Earth, which I suppose will draw them more into the Tyreesian orbit. How ingenious! This summit would have been a veritable ground to establish a cooperative agreement. Instead, it may be a prelude to another war
Bastards, I mutter. Talk about corrupting good intentions.
The Tyreesians are not Sonali. If they come to the defense of the Outer Colonies, this could be a much bigger blood bath.
“As long as the Terran Union suffers from this, we’ll plant the bomb,” the team leader says. “What is that planet again? I’ve never heard of this summit.”
The commander taps a button on the ledge of the battle console and the projection of the galaxy in the air zooms into a portion of the border between the Terran Union and The Human Confederation.
As soon as I see the small farming planet, my heart skips a beat. I need to pretend this is new info despite everything I know.
“The planet is Perseus,” the commander says. “Also, you must know that at this summit that representatives from the Tyreesian Collective and the Kurta Colonies are going to be present.”
“Wait, what?” the team leader says. “You want us to bomb your own people, too?”
The commander says, “Will that be a problem for you?”
He shrugs. “If that’s what you want, no problem.”
I want to turn to Zhang to see what he’s thinking. I hold myself in.
“One more thing,” the commander says. “Our intelligence service has received information that one of the Tyreesian delegates intends to defect to the Terran Union. We don’t know who. But we know that Terran Armada Intelligence is going to try to help them. Watch out for this defector and take him or her out.”
As soon as he’s done talking, I feel a cold terror slide down my throat. If these guys know of the defector, then our intelligence instrument is compromised. There’s a spy in the Armada Intelligence.
The commander dismisses us. The team leader and I hang back to discuss the finer details of the mission. Even though I’m following the planning of the mission, in the darker part of my mind, I conclude that my actual mission is three-fold.
One, to obtain the teleporter and the defector.
Two, to plant the bomb.
Three, to find that fucking mole and take him out.
Chapter 7
No One
The next day, the warship drops out of FTL space about half a day outside of Perseus. While the warship has been sent by the Tyreesian government as part of the diplomatic convoy along with half a dozen other ships and soldiers carrying the Tyreesian flag, the captain doesn’t want to risk the chance of the Terran Armada discovering our true mission. He tells us that, according to Tyreesian delegates already on ground in Perseus, the entire place is crawling with Marines and Armada officials.
There’s a hovering spaceport around the planet, where all vessels must present themselves for checking before being allowed to land in the main ports on the ground.
“That’s a lot of security for some blasted summit involving aliens on a fucking farming world,” the team leader said afterwards, when we were going through the final details of our plan.
I reply to him. “Don’t forget, this planet isn’t just a farming colony. It’s actually the base of a high-level Armada research facility. And if they’re researching about FTL 6, then you better be sure that there will be serious security there, both on land and in space.”
“How can you be certain?” he asks.
“Because I’ve worked for the Armada before,” I reply. “I know how they work. I know how they function. I don’t think they’ve changed much since I abandoned them.”
He then sighs.
“So, we're basically going against a fortress?”
I don’t answer that question.
Now, I’m in the shuttle deck, where another small corvette is waiting for us. I’m the first to arrive, while a few of the men arrive later. They are dressed to the teeth with all sorts of weapons. Zhang comes in next, after which the team leader. They are all equipped and ready.
The team leader points to Zhang. “You.”
Zhang looks up and stiffens.
“You will be piloting the ship.”
“Ok, sir,” Zhang replies.
The team leader addresses us.
“This mission is going to be very dangerous. Stay sharp and shoot straight.”
He pauses. “Let’s go do this.”
Zhang leads the way into the corvette. It’s the same corvette we used at Patreus III, only the Tyreesians have changed almost everything. The color, the signal sign, the model number and everything that can electronically tie us to what people are calling the massacre of Patreus III. Yes, we have become the most wanted galactic terrorists in the entire Terran Union.
Zhang, the team leader, and I take up positions in the cockpit, with Zhang taking the pilot seat. The rest of the team strap in, in the small den outside the cockpit.
I lean forward and say, “Boss, I have a bad feeling about this mission.”
“Why?” he replies. “You helped plan it.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t plan on using the same ship that’s tied to our work in Patreus III,” I say.
Zhang fires up the engines, and the vessel trembles alive. He begins his preflight check, communicating with the warship’s communications and navigations officer and downloading required data for the trip.
“They cleaned up the ship,” he replies, “at least that’s what they say. Zhang, can you confirm that this is in fact a different ship from what we used the last time…electronically?”
Zhang mutes the comm and says, “It’s different.”
Then he returns to the comms.
The team leader looks at me.
“I know it’s different,” I say, “but it’s the same frame of vessel. It’s the same class of vehicle. Those security officers will definitely take a liking to us because they know that everything we’ve done to this vessel can be done. They may not want to discount the possibility, considering the fact that this is an inter-species summit.”
“We have no other choice,” he says. “It’s either this or we don’t go at all. We didn’t have time to refit the matter transport platform onto another vessel.”
I shrug.
“I just don’t like it.”
“You don’t have to like it,” the team leader replies with a finality in his voice. “You just have to get it done.”
I lean back into my seat.
Zhang says, “We’ve gotten permission to take off.”
At that moment, two things happen. The door of the shuttle bay begins to open and the vessel lifts off into the air. There is a containment shield at the exit way into space that prevents the vacuum from sucking out all the air in the shuttle bay.
Zhang guided the corvette out. The moment we go outside, he engages the FTL drive and we vanish into space. We spend the most part of the twelve hours we have poring over our plans. We weren’t able to get a detailed floor plan of the facility in the planet, so we were basically planning for eventualities rather than working on a particular plan.
The Tyreesians had provided us with the bomb. It’s shaped like a cylinder and is roughly two feet from end to end.
It’s small, but they still maintain that if attached to the power generator for the building, it will bring down the entire superstructure of the Terran Union building where the summit is being held, and it's one massive building. I doubt that such a device can actually destroy anything much larger than a single building. This one probably does it by burning through the power conduits. Simple and effective with localized destruction.
Just like the Tyreesian way.
“So, get ready folks,” the team leader says at the end of our final planning session. “We are going to arrive in about an hour. It’s going to be the early afternoon. People will be alert, so we have to be hyper alert.”
“Roger that,” I say amidst other similar replies.
I return to the cockpit with Zhang. We don’t talk to each other, even though we are alone. Thirty minutes later, the team leader comes into the cockpit and takes his seat in the copilot’s chair.
I am lost in my thoughts in the silence of the cockpit. I think about the mission and what I must do. I don’t like killing innocent people. More so, I hate killing Armada operatives. The guys I killed on Patreus III were just security guards, who were working for Star Tech.
But now, it’s different. Now I’m going up against an Armada base. These guys are officers of the Armada. They are my comrades in arms.
For a moment, I struggle with myself.
“We are coming out of FTL space,” Zhang says. “Now.”
On the view screen, we sort of appear in a star system, with a small planet ahead of us. There are about seven star ships orbiting the planet at different angles. There is a small ring—the spaceport, I realize, that maintains a very wide angle around the planet. In fact, I suspect that the angle is so wide that the ring isn’t affected by the gravity and has to use its thrusters to orbit.
Zhang maintains his bearing, which brings us into orbit in three minutes.
“Unidentified corvette,” says a bold voice in the comms. Zhang has it on speaker so we can hear. “This is Captain Bran of the TUS Twilight. Identify yourself and your purpose on Perseus?”
Zhang clears his throat silently.
“Hi,” he says in a youthful, nonchalant voice, “Hey, so me and my friends are tourists. Our friends back at New Washington suggested this pastoral world as a great tourist destination and we came to give it a look.”
“All eleven of you?” asks the Captain with a hint of incredulity.
“Yes, sir,” Zhang replies with an ebullient zing. “All eleven of us. You know what they say, the more the merrier.”
After a thoughtful pause, he adds, “Say, what’s with all the Armada ships? Is something going on?”
No response.
“Please proceed to the orbiting space port,” the captain says. “Officers of Armada Security from the planet will come and inspect your ship. If your story checks out, then you can go down to the planet. Enjoy your stay. Captain Bran out.”
The line goes dead.
In silence, Zhang guides us to the orbiting space port. The port is a small one and has only six ports, three on both sides. Each ports are connected by a transparent tube that serves as a passageway between ships. One ship docks in one side, while another ship, usually a security pod, docks on the other side and then security officers pass through the tube to your ship to inspect.
It was designed for small vessels, especially when no one is expecting you.
Zhang docks perfectly. Ten minutes later, a security pod from the planet docks in the opposite pod.
“The pod has weapons,” Zhang announces.
“All security pods have weapons,” I reply. “We just have to convince them we aren’t trouble.”
“And how do we do that?” the team leader asks.
There is a sharp hiss as the tube harmonizes our atmosphere with the atmosphere of the pod.
“We take them out,” I say, then tap for Zhang to follow me.
In the den, where the men are on alert with their weapons outstretched, I say, “Remain here. Zhang and I will take care of this.”
Zhang follows me to the hatch. I pull out my blaster and set it to kill.
Zhang gives me a bad eye.
“What?” I whisper.
“Is that really necessary?”
I roll my eyes and set the gun to stun, and hide it behind myself.
The hatch opens up. Four officers step into the corvette, three of which are armed with rifles, while the fourth is carrying a tablet.
“Where are your occupants?” the leader asks.
Zhang motions in the direction of the den.
“Right this way, please.”
He leads, while they follow. I bring up the rear. I shoot the guy in my front, and then the next. They crumple to the ground. Zhang leaps backward into the lead, knocking him out. The remaining soldier is about to take a shot, but I leap onto him and tightly grip his neck. He slowly falls into unconsciousness.
“See?” Zhang says, looking up at me from the four knocked out officers. “We didn’t have to spill blood.”
“The pods are aiming at us!” the team leader asks.
“Must be linked to their vitals,” I say. I run for the hatch.
“I’ll stop it,” I yell for the benefit of everyone.
I run across the tube, fighting the feeling of dizziness that besiege me due to the vastness of space all around me. Inside the security pod, I can see the countdown on the dashboard.
I blink my eyes, calling up my nanites.
“Computer, interface with this pod,” I command.
“Interfaced,” the reply comes in my ears.
“Deactivate targeting sequence,” I say.
“Negative,” replies the computer. “Authorization required.”
“Authorize,” I say, “Commander Anika Grayson.”
“Confirmed,” the computer says. “Targeting sequence deactivated.”
The countdown stops.
I deactivate my nanites and return to the corvette to see that the four officers have been stripped. The team leader, Zhang, and one other guy are dressed as Armada security personnel.
“Ready to go?” Zhang asks me and I nod. The corvette disengages and enters the activation codes for safe clearance. A minute later we’re given coordinates to land.
Zhang hands me the fourth uniform.
“You can’t go down there looking like an assassin,” he says.
I take the uniform and shrug.
Time to play ball.
Chapter 8
No One
Once inside the atmosphere, Zhang makes a beeline for the main space port, where we know the TAIOC has offices. The space port is a triangular structure that has a main shuttle port smack in its center. We land in one of the several terminals.
Zhang, the team leader, the other guy wearing the uniform who's leading the team, and I file out into the launch pad. The others are not dressed like we were when we attacked the StarTech facility earlier. They are dressed like actual tourists and their weapons are well concealed.
The entryway into the terminal opens up and a man strolls in casually. We are all surprised by this that we turn to look at him.
He stops short at first, looking at us in confusion. We look back at him. Then he marches boldly to us.
“Who the fuck are you guys?” he asks.
Zhang begins to say something when a Separatist reaches across the space and stabs the man in his jugular.
Terror appears on his face as he grabs the knife, crumpling to his feet. The blood pools around his body and we all watch as he dies before our eyes. Zhang gives me a troubled look. I subtly shake my head. There’s nothing we could have done about that.
Zhang isn’t satisfied with my nonchalance, which isn’t really nonchalance but wisdom. He says to the Separatist who stabbed the officer, “Why did you do that?”
Everyone looks at him as though he had committed an unpardonable sin.
“What?” the man who stabbed the officer asked, genuinely befuddled. He looks between me and the leader, wondering if he’s done anything wrong.
I say, “Killing him will raise suspicion. You’ve just reduced the number of minutes we have to plant the bomb. Once they realize this guy is dead, they’ll come looking for him. They’ll know he came to check out our vessel. They’ll come here and they’ll see he’s missing. Then they’ll realize that the agents sent with this security pod to check out our ship…Hey, you see where this is going, right?”
The man now looks forlorn.
“Let’s just hide the body,” Zhang says, “and hope no one comes looking for him.”
Zhang and I drag the body into the security pod.
“We need to put a lid on this as soon as possible,” Zhang whispered to me in anger. “We can’t let these guys indiscriminately kill our people.”
I have just about had it with Zhang’s fussing.
“In case you haven’t noticed, we’re undercover. We have to remain in the act for as long as necessary. Now, I understand about refraining from perpetrating acts of terror ourselves, but you can’t stop them from perpetrating these acts.” Zhang is silent and I continue.
“One day they’ll stop and think about how, since you came along, they haven’t killed any Terran Union infidels and all. Then they’ll start looking into you and find loopholes in your cover.”
“My cover is perfect,” he says.
“No cover is perfect,” I reply. “There will always be loopholes. That’s why we have to constantly maintain our act at all costs.”
We return back outside and lock the security pod.
“Is he secured?” asks the team leader.
“Yes,” Zhang replies. “Hopefully, they’ll think something other than he was murdered.”
“Good, let’s get this done,” I say. To Zhang, I say, “Stick to the plan.”
Zhang and I lead the team into a network of corridors and concourses that twist in and out of the massive superstructure. There are a lot of people, Terran and otherwise, moving about. There are also security agents in visible sight everywhere. No one gives us any second glance and we don’t keep our gaze lingering for too long.
I follow the signposts that lead out of one section of the spaceport to another, where the offices are. A vast courtyard separates one wing from another. There are several walkways and driveways for small conveyor carts for people to move between wings.
The courtyard is filled with people moving about their businesses. There are small carts dotting the courtyard, where food is being sold. I can see Tyreesians, Sonali, Kurta, even Reznak. When I see a Reznak food seller, I stiffen.
“Come this way,” I say, leading the team farther away from the Reznak. When the team leader asks me for explanations, I motion for the Reznak about a hundred yards away in the courtyard.
“That’s a Reznak,” I say. “They have telepathic abilities.”
“What, they can read minds?” the team leader asks, incredulously. Then he burst out into a hearty laughter. Some of the other men join him.
I don’t laugh, neither do I smile. Once he sees me keeping a straight face, he shuts up.
“You can’t be serious,” he says, now a little uncertain.
“I’m very serious,” I reply. “They can read minds. Of course, some have more power than others. I don’t know how strong that Reznak's ability is. I don’t know how their ability works. I don’t know if the thoughts are like stray words that move about their heads.
I don’t want to find out. If he picks up on our intent, he may raise an alarm.”
“Then we’ll just kill him,” says the same man who stabbed the officer.
I’m not sure why, but I feel anger burst into my heart. I glance at this man. He’s a short and sturdy man with a strong upper build. His bare hands look weathered. I wonder if he’s worked in the military before because he marches along with a powerful gait. I take a good look at him. I’ll be sure to kill him before this is over, and I’ll make sure it hurts.
I fake a smile and say, “Great. And create more problems for us.”
Then I hiss aloud. The man wipes the smirk off his face.
What is wrong with these people? I wonder. So trigger happy. I wonder how they’ve lasted this long without me. I frown deeply.
We make it to the end of the courtyard, where there are three lines of people waiting to get into the TAIOC office. The entry way is a wide open space, and three officers are scanning the badges of people entering.
I stop several yards from the line. The others stop as well and hang around, looking about so as not to look suspicious.
I lean towards the team leader.
“We need the exact coordinates for where the Terran Union building is located that’s hosting the summit. It’s inside the office.”
“How many Terran Union buildings are there on this fucking farming colony?” the team leader asks me.
“Usually about three to four per city,” I say. “You’re dealing with a massive bureaucracy. We have to pick the right one.”
“Right,” he says. “Go ahead.”
I look at our crew. They are trying their best to not look conspicuous, but it’s not working so well. I can tell that we’re together. And if I can tell, the security officers at the entryway can as well.
I say to the team leader, “Tell them to disperse more. People can tell that we’re together.”
He nods in agreement. I walk away from him to the last person in the middle of the line. I notice two things. One, most of them are carrying food packs. Two, they all have badges.
This can get tricky, I think to myself.
As soon as I join the line, a few other people join the line up behind me. The person in front of me is an ensign. She’s wearing a blue jumpsuit, her attention fully focused on her tablet. I read her badge which she has in her other hand in clear view. It says Brenda.
“Excuse me, Brenda,” I whisper into her ear.
She turns in surprise. I flash a smile that disarms her immediately.
“Hi,” she says with a smile. “What can I do for you?”
Her voice is chirpy.
“I’m sorry, I was wondering why we’re all lining up here,” I say. “Isn’t the Terran Armada Office supposed to be open to all?”
She smiles even as she shakes her head.
“This isn’t just any Armada Office, honey,” she says, eyeing my security uniform. “You just joined up? This is the Operations Command of the Intelligence Arm of the Terran Armada. Entrance is highly restricted even for us staff. I’m sorry, but you won’t be allowed in.”
I make a sad look on my face, slumping my shoulders.
“I was really hoping I’d get in to see some cool stuff, you know? I’ve always admired the Armada. I’m hoping someday I can join and go from enlisted to an officer and do great things in the galaxy.”
“Yeah, I’m really sorry about that,” she says.
“Do you figure I could maybe ask the security officers to let me in? Maybe if I explained myself? I just transferred here.”
“I doubt they’d let you in,” she replies. “Hell, they may even detain you.”
Then she pauses and looks around to see if we are being watched. When she has ascertained that we aren’t, she leans onto me and whispers.
“Hey, so on a normal day I could take you in and the guards wouldn’t mind, but today isn’t any normal day. A hush hush summit is being held on this planet and security is on top gear. If you don’t want to spend an unpleasant afternoon in an Armada cell, I suggest you don’t beg your way in.”
I nod once. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
I leave the line and return to the team leader. Once I meet him, the rest gather around us. I tell them everything I’ve learned. The line has become so much longer that our gathering is no longer suspicious; there are other officers gathering, too, waiting to join the line so they can go into the office.
“Let’s join the line,” I tell the team leader.
We join the line. I stay in the line in the middle, while the team leader on the line to my right and a little to the front, just where I want him.
If I could avoid the line, I’d do it. But Zhang and I are too deep cover to surface just yet.
By the time we are about five persons away from the entryway, my line levels up with the team leader’s line and we are side by side. The team leader leans onto me again..
“So how do you plan on getting us inside?”
“Don’t worry,” I say, winking my eye. “I have a plan.”
Three minutes later, there is only one person before us. The three officers checking the badges aren’t armed. They’re merely tech officers. The armed security operatives are around and about. As soon as the person in front of me is clear, I pull out my gun and shoot the team leader in the skull.
I shout, “Terrorist!”
Panic erupts as people begin to flee everywhere. There is now a mass exodus inwards the TAIOC office wing and I’m swept along by the flood. Seconds later, the whole station is put in lockdown, with klaxons blaring into the air.
I wonder if Zhang will roll his eyes at me for killing again. At least this time I can say it wasn’t one of ours.
It’s baby steps after all.
Chapter 9
Zhang
No One’s action is quite bold. I’m liking it because if she’s got to go into death machine mode, she took out a Separatist. It’s a long way from redemption anyways—fuck, we aren’t even at forgiveness.
The powerful wave of fear and panic present in the stampede sweeps us into the TAIOC wing.
Well, that’s one way to get through the line and into the building. There is literally no order present.
I try to stay afloat because the force pushing against me from behind is so strong that, if I don’t constantly maintain being upright, it’ll drown me and then a hundred and something terrified men and women will trample over me. Well, at least I’ll get the death I deserve for all the terrible things I’ve helped No One do.
The entry way leads into a wide hallway that cuts through the entire floor of the wing. The walls are made with a special kind of glass that shows a blurred image of the other compartments of the floor. Overhead, there are light bots flashing a mix of yellow and red while the sirens are still going.
I hear running boots that are so unionized that I have to look over my shoulders. I’m not so far that I can’t see the entry way and even a portion of the courtyard. I see that the entry way remains open and people keep pouring into this wing. The officers checking for badges are now nowhere to be found.
The Marine detachments assigned to this wing are pouring into the corridor from an opening in one side of the wall. This opening wasn’t there when we passed. It’s wide enough to allow two men marching shoulder to shoulder, which is how the Marines armed with assault rifles arrive into the commotion.
They head past me to the direction of the courtyard, where there seems to be a firefight going. Despite being in a state of shock, I try to look deeper into the courtyard. I’m tempted to activate my nanites so I can see farther. I resist this urge since I’m in the Armada Intelligence area and they’ve probably got all manner of scanners running through the corridor. Plus, my limited nanites can only do so much. Nothing like No One. It wouldn’t help as much.
However, I realize that I don’t need nanite enhancements. I can see a couple of ratty-dressed humans firing off laser blasts at the Terran security force.
What the hell?
The Separatists without a leader—they’re going crazy.
It’s a little fortuitous that, just when we need a diversion created so we can go pass the security, the perfect opportunity presents itself.
I get to the other end of the corridor, where the people begin to exit the space port into a wide area without fence. It simply merges with a network of roads that go in all directions. I look around the heads of the people pressing me from all sides, trying to get away from the sharp crack of automatic projectile weapons and the supersonic report of disruptors and blasters.
I can see the fear in the eyes of the Separatists. Some are even bleeding sweat. I look for No One but I don’t see her. However, I see a couple of my Separatist mates. Seeing them brings two emotions into my heart.
The first one is joy over the fact that No One finally killed one of them. The second one is anger over the fact that many more of these deadly killers still live and how they need to be dispatched off with immediacy.
The moment I make it past the entry way, a hand grabs me and pulls me out. I don’t see who it is, so I immediately go for my gun that is secured underneath my guard’s uniform. A hand grabs mine and locks it in place to my surprise. I’m pulled out of the stampede to the side of the massive building.
“Cool your horses, Zhang,” No One says to me, her face balmy with perspiration. She’s looking furtively around for the remaining terrorists. “There was a panel that we passed with all the Terran Union installations on the planet. I was able to find out which one we need to go to. Now we just need our Separatist friends.”
“Do you think they made it out?” she asks me.
“Yes,” I reply. “They’ll be making it out any moment from…”
Then I spot one being pushed by the running crowd out of the complex.
I pull out of No One’s hold and run into the stampede again, only this time it has thinned as people are dispersing into the grounds. I grab the terrorist and he immediately goes for his weapon. Then he sees me and cools down.
“When the others come out, signal them to meet us there,” I say. I motion to where No One should be standing but she’s nowhere in sight again.
I pause, wondering where she has gone to.
“Okay,” the man replies.
I leave him and return to the side of the building just outside the entryway. I look around for No One. I don’t see her. Ten minutes later, there are nine angry Separatists looking at me as if they’re about to take a crack at someone—and I can tell that someone is No One. She did kill their—well, our leader. I begin to think of how she’s going to get out of this one.
The area around the space port is a no fly zone for air cars. Only shuttles are allowed to fly by and that’s when they’re landing. There are five major depots around the space port, three of which are in view and on this side of the complex..
In fact, access to the part of the spaceport that gives you admission to the depot is restricted. These three depots lead into the main city, where the Terran Union administrative buildings are. That is where we need to go. – once we know which one
There is an aircar hangar just outside the grounds of the space port. It’s wide enough to park about a thousand air cars, and it has special antigravity stubs that keep the air cars above the ground. The vast setup has a lot of aircars parked.
Above and ahead, behind the depot, which is comprised of small structures with waiting lines and small bays for air buses to park, there is a stream of aircars coming and going to and from the aircar hangar, while a few larger air cars go past the park to the depot.
I see one of the aircars rising from the car park instead of joining the stream. It swerves off lane and shoots towards us.
The Separatists begin to scatter, but I grab a few of them.
“It’s her. We need to leave.”
The aircar screams to a stop at our side, sending a blast of air at us. Some of the guys are knocked off their feet, but a few others and I stand our ground.
The door opens. No One, who is in the pilot seat says, “Get in!”
We pile into the car and she takes it into the air.
I wait for the accusations and anger to start, reaching for the bulge of laser weapon by my side. I can feel that No One is tense. There is bound to be some complications. Someone is bound to say something incendiary. Question our motives. Doubt our loyalty.
Fire off a weapon.
I wait, prepared.
Nobody speaks up for a long time. They’re all dazed and exhausted from that episode back at the spaceport. I don’t begin to relax until No One is piloting the aircar into the capital—Perseus City. She’s headed for one of the larger Terran Union buildings off to the edge of the city. I sit back, wondering how she was able to keep her cool and get this information in the chaos of the spaceport.
“How are we going to get into the Terran Union building?” asks the stabber. I’m calling him that so when time comes, I'll be angry enough to murder him in cold blood. He doesn’t deserve a fight; he deserves to be shot in the head.” I thought the plan was to use the official TAIOC clearance to get inside the building. But we sort of fucked that up.
“Terran Union protocol requires that if any facility is attacked, all nearby facilities are to activate lockdown protocols,” No One replies.
She doesn’t say more as she’s trying to keep the air car on the normal route and drive at the normal pace so as not to draw the attention of the numerous security pods patrolling the air lanes. It’s almost as though the President of the Terran Union is in town.
When I see the confusion on their faces, I explain. “Armada Intelligence back at the space port was attacked. Where we are going to is nearby, so it’ll be under lockdown That’s where our security uniforms hopefully come in handy.”
“But not all of us have security garb,” replies the stabber. “And these uniforms are for customs up there in space.”
“No problem,” No One says. I know she’s doing this on the fly. “Since you’re with us, people won’t most probably consider you a threat."
After a short while, the stabber says, “Why did you kill the team leader?”
“Fuck you, too,” No One spits.
The reply dazes both me and the stabber. I stiffen, expecting him to react brashly. I’ve seen it before, what with his stabbing propensity. However, he doesn't. Rather, he frowns and keeps quiet.
I glance back at No One, amazed. How the fuck does she get away with things like this?
No One guides the aircar off the air lane and makes a descent for the Terran Union building. It’s a huge building that stands seventy three stories into the air. The building also has a no fly zone, so we park outside the grounds by the main gate, where other aircars are parked.
We jump out and No One leads a march towards the main gates. There are security personnel there, all of whom have gone into high alert. There are a multitude of people as well who are standing outside and waiting to go in. A lot of aliens, from Kurta to Drupadi to Sonali—the lot of them.
Stabber, who is behind me, mutters super racist comments. No One apparently hears it because she glares at him.
“Do you want to get us noticed?” she says with a harsh tone. This shuts up Stabber for a moment.
No One makes a path for us through the crowd.
“Let us through!” No One yells until the people path a way for us. “We’re from the spaceport on a priority mission.”
The security personnel at the gates see us and open it. The crew members who aren’t wearing guard uniforms are sandwiched in the midst of our train so it doesn’t appear that they are strays following us from behind.
I’m the last to go through into the expansive grounds of the building. One of the security men says to me, “How bad is it at the space port?”
I put on a horrified look on my face.
“Very bad,” I reply. “Very bad.”
Then I leave.
I’m shaking my head over the fact that we’re able to get in without being stopped. Then I realize that No One has nanites.
That’s it! She used them to communicate to ensure we got let in. Fuck.
We make it into the building, which is themed with plasters and banners of the summit. Everything hails the noble notion that the Outers, the Tyreesians, the Sonali, and the Kurta, which represent the several of the races in this area of space can co-exist peacefully. I laugh, knowing that this is all a ruse. The Tyreesians are playing a game. The Outers are playing a game. Even the Union is playing its own games. I wonder if the Kurta have an end game, too? I don’t know much about them, so I can’t tell.
There’s a wall that splits the entrance floor into two. At the front of the wall is a large front desk that hosts thirteen attendants, out of which only five are Terran.
On the left side is a bank of elevators and some doors. On the right is a string of security officers and a special elevator. There are also several doors. A sign says: This Way to the Summit. Beyond the security perimeter, there’s a drove of aliens moving towards the elevator.
As we head into the same direction, Stabber starts again with his racist comments. This time it’s different. I can feel his hatred and anger for all things non-Terran.
“I think it is okay to start shooting once we are past the security officers,” he says not really to me or No One, but to the rest of the group.
I wait for No One’s rebuttal, but she doesn’t say anything. Thinking she didn’t hear his statement, I open my mouth to speak up. However, we’re stopped by the security officers.
“Where to?” asks one from the first knot of officers.
“Here to provide support,” No One says.
The officer nods, “Roger that. Please proceed.”
He gives way for us all to pass. He sees the other men who aren’t dressed like us, but he doesn’t ask questions.
“Now!” Stabber roars and, just like that, the nine Separatists pull out their blasters and begin to shoot, not into the air, but into the bodies of the aliens.
So much for fucking incognito.
Chapter 10
No One
It happens just as I’ve calculated. The assortment and high number of aliens within the building has the Separatists feeling irritated. Knowing how brash they can be in their thinking, I had no doubt that they would do something utterly stupid, like start shooting into the crowd with Armada Security everywhere.
When one of the guys began to speak in derogatory terms about the aliens at the gate, I spoke harshly to him. It was too early. I didn’t want him to start a fight outside the gates when I needed to get in so I could at least accomplish one of my missions. Then, he began to speak again inside. This time, I don’t stop him.
Right on time, he shouts like he has some sense in his brains and the result is immediate. The terrorists begin to shoot into the mass of aliens around us.
I dive into the ground the moment they begin shooting, rolling off and coming to my knee at the side. Screams fill the air. The bullets whiz by, ricocheting across the metal paneling and hitting anything in their path, destroying things and killing aliens.
Zhang stands aghast for a few moments, looking at the main Separatist instigator with fury. Once I see this, I calm down a little. I know Zhang will make short work of the fucker now. The security operatives have engaged the separatist so I, still crouching, move slowly in the direction of the front desk.
I have to go past the middle of the fight between the security personnel and the separatists, both of which know me as being on their team. I know I won’t have problems with them shooting at me directly. However, I will have problems with being shot by a deflected bullet.
My nanites enhancements are top notch, so I won’t be dying from bullets. But being shot is just as painful as it should be, nanite or no nanite. I get to the bloodbath and quicken my pace. I catch the look of surprise in the eyes of the terrorists, but I get no response. One of the security personnel on the front line looks at me with wariness. Seconds later, he gets a bullet in the eye and collapses to the ground.
His gun flies out of his grasp and slams into the ground, letting a bullet out. The bullet slams into the panel inches from my face, causing me to freeze in horror. Headshots are instantly fatal.
I shoot to my feet and make a dash for the front desk. Thankfully, no one shoots me or shouts me down. I look back at the carnage behind me. All the security personnel lie dead before the Separatists.
Also, the entire corridor is trashed—it’s no longer a corridor, it’s a horridor: a corridor filled with horror. Blood of different colors is splashed across the metal paneling, forming different styles that one would be poised to think of as macabre art.
I wonder why the Marines haven’t mobilized—and then I get my answer the moment I continue around the front desk. The main entrance way has been locked, since the building is already in lockdown mode.
Outside, I can see a company of Marines ready to come into the building. Then it hits me that the Marines on this planet are stationed outside the building and not within it.
The doors are being cut through, since the computers won’t refresh for another thirty minutes. That’s thirty minutes for the Separatists to find the aliens and slaughter them. Thirty minutes to plant the bomb. Thirty minutes too long. Within thirty minutes, this will all be over.
I pause at the mouth of the corridor on the left side. I wonder if I shouldn’t go back and help Zhang take these terrorists down. If he fails, then this building will go down. If this building goes down and all the delegates die, then we can kiss the summit’s intentions bye-bye. Not that they had such noble intentions in the first place. The whole thing was designed to turn over a defector.
Besides that, the Galactic Council may come under threat because all this happened under the Terran Union’s watch. Suspicions will begin to go around. One thing will lead to another and, before you know it, the Terran President is issuing a declaration of war. That’s if the Tyreesians don’t invade first or if the Outers don’t do something foolish, too.
We can’t afford to be drawn into a galactic war on three fronts. We won’t survive it.
For a moment, I take a break from this train of thought to muse about how the fate of the Galactic Council rests on the actions of Zhang and I at this moment. No, wars are not won with ships and cruisers. They are won with men and women, like Zhang and me, on the ground making decisions that can snowball into either something catastrophic or victorious.
I decide to allow Zhang to stop the bad guys from planting the bomb. He’s nanites-enhanced to a lesser degree so he can take care of a couple of bozos. I have bigger fish to fry, namely: the fucking traitor that is selling us out to the Tyreesians.
I start out into the hallway on the right. It’s totally deserted and silent. I find out why the moment I cross the threshold. There’s a containment field at the mouth of the hallway that stifles any noise from going in or out. Even with that, the hallway itself is silent.
The floor is rugged with a subdued red rug that’s padded and feels soothing to walk on. To my right, just after the threshold, is a bank of five elevators, all of which are paneled with gold—real gold.
Someone wants to impress the aliens, I think to myself.
I walk past the elevators to a set of double doors. The doors are sealed with heavy metal that can withstand any attack. There is an access panel to the right of the doors, with a palm reader and a mic to speak into.
The door is also in lockdown but, unlike the main doors, this door will open once the right access is granted. However, I know that according to protocol, there should be a complement of Armada Intelligence security behind the door, waiting for any intruder.
They’ll shoot on sight if someone tries to break in. They won’t shoot if the door is opened the normal way. This gives me about five seconds before they realize I don’t work there and arrest me or take me in.
“Computer, open the door,” I speak out loud for the access panel to hear my voice.
“Lockdown is activated,” the computer replies, a soft sound yet loud enough in the silent hallway. “Access denied.”
“Override lockdown and open the door,” I continue, “This is Commander Anika Grayson.”
“Voice confirmed. Commander Anika Grayson, Special Deep Cover Operator in Division 51 of the Terran Armada Intelligence Operations Command. Please place your palm on the scanner,” the computer spouts.
I do as I’m told. The palm reader warms up, flashes a red light, then cools down.
“Confirmed,” the computer says, “granting access.”
The moment I hear the door’s mechanism begin to move, I back up to the other end of the hallway and tear off the guard’s uniform, revealing my black outfit and weapons. It’s show time.
I blink twice to activate my nanites, then run for the doors.
Halfway there, I fall to my knees, my forward momentum moving me onward and sliding across the ground. I pull out my blaster, which is set to stun, and aim even as the doors slide out of the way and I slide through.
There is a short arch of five Marines with weapons at a standby in the small semi-circular antechamber. I shoot even as I get to their middle. Three fall to the ground, leaving two standing. These two begin to bring their guns up, but I’m way faster. Before I come to a stop at the feet of the standing Marine, I push against the ground, shifting my weight to the right.
I’m lifted into the air by this exertion of force, swinging around the Marine so fast that when I get behind him, he doesn’t even realize it yet. I grab him from behind. The other standing Marine hesitates, and I shoot him in the chest.
The Marine I’m holding struggles with me. The urge comes upon me to snap his neck. I resist and push him forward and shoot him in the back. The door slams back together. It takes the door about ten seconds to open and close; the same time it took me to take down five highly-trained Marines.
With a sigh, I realize that I’m getting rusty.
The four doors before me have signs on them. Communications, Room 101, Room 102, and Room 103.
I enter the communications room. The room is dark, only lit up by the screens of the computer. It is a narrow room, with the workstations on the right hand side, operators sitting on chairs, and a narrow walkway on the left.
I aim my gun at the three operators, who are all backed up against the other wall.
“If you do as I say, you’ll live,” I reply. I aim at the one at the back and fire. He crumples to the ground, stunned. His friends think he’s dead.
They scream. I aim again, and one jumps in front of the other and yells, “Don’t kill any one again. We’ll do what you ask.”
“Sometime this month or last month, a call was made from this planet to the Tyreesians,” I say, watching as the eyes of the operators widen. “I want to find out where in this station the message came from.”
“That’s not possible!” the operator in the front replies. “We closely monitor all communications. I think we’d have been able to tell if there was a communication from this office into Tyreesian space.”
I flash a dry smile. “Except, of course, if you are in league with the traitor.”
“No!”
“Then I suggest you get looking,” I bark. I look at the operator behind and say to him, “You, too!”
They stumble upon each other to get to their computers. I take a position behind them that’s close enough so I can see what they’re doing and far enough so I can respond to threats from outside the room and from them.
“Don’t try anything stupid,” I mutter. “If you do, I’ll just kill you and that’ll be it. And then I’ll kill whoever comes storming into this place, too…”
“What the hell…?” mutters one of them.
I pause, trying to figure out if he’s referring to the computer or to me.
“Is that what I think it is?” says one to another.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” say the other. Then he looks at me with total disbelief and says, “You’re right. There was an unauthorized communication that came from this office aimed into Tyreesian space. I have its location.”
My mind begins to race.
The game.
It’s fucking afoot.
Chapter 11
Zhang
The moment I see No One heading away from the chaos zone towards the front desk, I realize it’s my task to take down these Separatists. I know this because aside from the fact that I’m the only one left behind with aliens falling all around me either dead or dying, No One and I are a team.
I’m not sure where she’s going, but I know that wherever it is, she needs to be there. I know that wherever she’s going, it’s for the sake of this mission. I know this because I believe it, not because I have hard evidence.
It takes a certain amount of trust to do what I’m about to do, which is taking on a bunch of Separatists without any backup from my superior. Many thoughts begin to lay siege to my mind. What if No One is running away? The summit is not in the direction she’s going in. It’s in the other direction as the carnage and chaos. So why is she headed away?
My mind begins to present several reasonable and logical reasons why she may be going in that direction, one of which is the fact that it’s safe there. She can easily escape through there. There’s no one dying there.
I swallow hard. I’m crouched on my feet and bullets and laser fire are streaking around me. The screams are almost deafening. The air smells of charred flesh and ozone. Smoke rises from almost every dead body, filling the corridor and reducing visibility.
The security personnel are incredibly outgunned, outmanned, and outmaneuvered. They can’t shoot indiscriminately at the Separatists because of the aliens who are still alive.
The Separatists have no such restriction and they scatter and spray the area ahead with laser fire and bullets, melting walls. I wonder when the cavalry will arrive. Isn’t there supposed to be a Marine detachment to every Terran Union facility? Where are the Marines in this installation?
My heart begins to pound. I have to do something about this situation before it escalates.
Some aliens are still alive and they manage to go into the elevator. There are about twenty of them remaining and they’re all scrunched up against the closed door of the elevator.
While the rest of the terrorists face off the remaining guards, the stabber begins to approach the remaining aliens. He isn’t shooting them yet. He’s taunting them. He begins to call them derogatory terms.
Amidst the racket of gun fire and regardless of the smoky hallway, he shouts at them, insulting their species and calling them inferior and evil. As he makes each step and speaks each word, my anger builds and mounts.
I’m crouched by the left wall between the aliens and the approaching stabber. Opposite from me is a wooden door. I lift myself up until I’m resting on my haunches, getting ready to strike.
“You fuckers need to leave us humans alone!” he roars as he approaches, his gun primed on the thick mass of Sonali, Kurta, and Drupadi.
“Your disgraceful breeds need to crawl back to the slimy, dirty world where you came from.”
He fires a warning shot to their right, causing them to tremble and scream some more.
“We are The Human Confederation,” he says as he approaches. “We don’t deal with inferior creatures. We only deal with humans. Your deaths will prove the point that we will no longer tolerate your kind to pollute our perfect genetic pool.”
He stops right in front of me.
I reach for my gun and find my holster empty. My heart climbs to my chest.
“Die, fuckers!”
Without thinking, I blink twice and launch myself into the air at the stabber. In midair, my nanites, which I’ve not activated since I started this mission, come online, adding speed and power to my flight.
I slam onto the stabber, feeling one of his bones break. He’s lifted like paper by my forward push and we both smash into the door. The door is torn off its hinges by the force and we come into a stadium-like theater with a podium at the base.
We land on the steps of the aisle and I roll, holding him in my tight grip as though he weighed less than a pound. I come to my knees and then fling him with one arm.
The stabber flies all the way across the room, the entire twenty seven yards stretch, and slams into the edge of the podium. The metal edge bends on impact. I don’t hear it, but I know the impact would have shattered all the bones in the stabber’s body.
I come to my feet, nanites surging through my veins. I look at the limp body as it’s interposed in the small bend it’s made on the podium. The stabber looks dead, his gun lying on the ground, his eyes closed, his chest rigid. One action and he’s dead. While I won’t beat up myself about killing the stabber, I do beat up myself about using my nanites.
I was operated on and enhanced at a very old age, when I was eighteen. I’m not as powerful as No One, who received her nanites implant when she was way younger than me. But I’m powerful nonetheless. At first, it felt cool to be able to do stuff without the aid of something external. It felt cool to have your own personal computer in your head, speaking to you and analyzing things for you as you go about.
However, when I realized that I’d been turned into a machine of death and carnage, I began to hate it. Seeing people die so easily at my hands and realizing how it makes me feel even more powerful scared the shit out of me. I decided if I couldn’t appreciate the worth of a human life, then I had no business wielding such power.
Men were like paper in my hands. Things that people thought impossible was a walk in the park for me. Yet, instead of becoming better with it, it made me think, feel, and act worse. This brought me to the conclusion that toys, gadgets, and trinkets don’t make a person good. It’s more of the inner stuff—how people let their mind control their actions, how they make decisions…that’s what makes a person good.
I swore to never use my nanites for any such purposes—up until now. Look what I’ve done.
I turn away from the sight of the stabber’s immobile body.
I sigh, my heart heating up with anger. Anger at the Separatist for being such an ass. Anger, because he made me break my vow. Anger, for not acting earlier with my nanites, knowing I was eventually going to do so.
And most importantly, anger, for the people who died today. All of them my conscience.
Then, I hear movement behind me. I swivel on my feet just in time to see the stabber flying towards me at an incalculable speed. I bring up my hands to block him just in time, before he slams into my shoulder first.
The force of the impact knocks the wind out of my lungs. I’m jolted into the air. The forward momentum sends us out of the theatre, through the opening in the wall, and back into the hallway.
He slams me into the wall on the opposite side. The impact sends a powerful and painful wave across my body, causing my bones to quiver in their fleshly cast. The hallway trembles at the force of the impact.
I shake off the impending unconsciousness and shoot off the stabber into the floor. Then we go back through the opening. I stop to kick him in midair. He tumbles into the aisle several yards down, but comes up again.
“Traitor!” he yells.
I’m still confused.
“You’re nanite-enhanced?”
“Just like you,” he arises. His eyes have taken a blood red configuration. His muscles are buffed up, stronger than usual. The veins on his face are slightly visible and flashes with red light.
I swallow hard when I realize that his nanite enhancement is over the top. He’s more powerful than I am. But they were done much later in life. And most likely unauthorized. His mind has been affected. I look beyond him and see his weapon lying just by the podium.
The stabber sees my gaze, but doesn’t follow it.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I won’t have to use it.”
He zips towards me.
I run towards him as well. We reach each other in the fraction of a second. He dodges my punch but I can’t dodge his in time. He slams a fist into my abdomen, causing me to sputter blood. He lifts me into the air and smashes me against the chairs. I crash into them, destroying an entire area of chairs, all of which are metal.
Pain wreaks havoc in all my bones.
“I’ll skin you alive,” he roars as he walks towards me. “When I’m done, I’ll kill you slowly. I’ll make you suffer…”
I roll unto my feet and lunge for him. I feint a punch, which he tries to deflect with his hands. In the last second, I bend, pushing all my energy into my front momentum. I slam into his abdomen, hearing the air gush out of his lungs. The impact carries us about and through the air.
We smash into the wall, then slide down to the floor. I’m hardly down when the stabber slams his two feet onto my chest, sending me tumbling all the way across the theater. I hit an exposed shard of metal that pierces me in my side.
A scream escapes my mouth. I am about to pull myself out of the metal shard so my nanites can heal me, but then the stabber lands by my side and smashes his feet onto my body, sending the shard deeper into me. I hover on the brink of shock, scream upon scream escaping my mouth.
Up his leg, I see a small holster.
I lunge for it, grab the gun, and aim. The stabber’s eyes widen. He can’t respond in time. I shoot the man in the head. He crumples to the ground before me.
This time, he’s dead for good.
Chapter 12
No One
I stun both operators after they tell me where the communications came from. They collapse in their chairs, limp and with a look of surprise plastered across their face. I couldn’t have them alerting the whole workplace that an invasion is underway. Shooting them is better than risking using a shackle or something that they can easily come out of.
I exit the communications room. On the floor, one of the marines begins to wake up. Stuns usually last at least an hour. The only way someone can revive from a stun so early is if they are nanites-enhanced, or if they got shot in any of their limbs and not in their head or major organ.
As I can’t have any of these guys recovering and then looking for me, I stand over the marine, aim, and shoot him straight in the head. His head jerks like I’ve dropped a very heavy load on it. Then, he goes limp again. I look around at the other unconscious marines. No movement at all.
I proceed into room 103, where the communications operators told me the signal came from. I open the door and slip into a narrow corridor. There are many doors leading into different parts of the office. I walk through the corridor, my hand clenching my weapon.
I’m nimble on my feet because I’m now in the core of the Operations Command center. Any one of the agents behind these doors can come out at any moment and raise an alarm.
Armada Intelligence agents aren’t knock-offs of Marines or Armada officers. These guys are specially trained to kill. They may not be Division 51, but they’re way more skilled and powerful than your run of the mill Marine or starship security officer.
I know I can fend off three or four, but more than that and I will be taken down—nanites or not. So, I have to be very quiet.
I get to the fifth door on the right. I stand back and prepare to smash in. I hold off on that course of action and think for a moment.
I don’t want to make any rash decision. Counter intelligence was as fine a field of operations as intelligence. As agents, we weren’t only trained in the art of intelligence, we were also trained in the art of counter intelligence, for the purpose of evading it. Then, we were trained on special skills to nab people who try to evade counter intelligence.
I stand by the door, keeping my back to the wall and think for a moment. What if the officer behind this door isn’t really the traitor? What if he’s just a victim?
I begin to imagine a scenario, during lunchtime, when this officer goes out and the real traitor comes from three doors down to send an encrypted communication to the Tyreesians telling them of the defection. Then the traitor slips out just in time before he’s caught.
If this scenario were correct, then I’ll be knocking down the wrong door and confronting an innocent officer. He or she will definitely make a fuss and others will come in. I’ll have to reveal my identity and make them back away, but by the time they listen to me and the innocent officer explains that he knows nothing about it, the real traitor will be gone.
On the other hand, this could be the actual traitor. Maybe the Tyreesians gave him a special device that allows him to send messages that the communications officer can never detect or decipher. Maybe that’s what gave him the temerity to use his workstation at the office.
I wonder what they promised him. Why would he be working for the Tyreesians? Did they promise him money? Women? Power?
I know the Armada doesn’t pay the best wages in all of the Terran Union. Hell, even corporations pay their security chiefs way more than the Armada Intelligence pays its top operatives. But you don’t do this job for money. It’s doing what’s right and the patriotism to the Terran Union.
It’s not about whether the government pays you well or not. For some, it’s about the thrill. It’s about the power and authority. No matter how rich someone is, there are still certain things money can’t buy. But as an intelligence officer, there’s virtually nothing you can’t do. We change the galaxy as officers of the Armada. That’s the motivation, not money.
So what did they offer him?
Power? What kind of power? Physical enhancements?
Nanite technology is very rare. In fact, it’s so rare that it’s considered a myth by some civilians. Sure, you can get it on the black market. But you’re probably going to go crazy.
Nanite technology is greatly coveted to say the least. I don’t have a problem with mine. The only reason I’m not publicly known to be nanite-enhanced is because of my status as an intelligence officer. The less people know about me, the greater the chances of my missions being a success will be.
Maybe the Tyreesians have discovered nanite technology and have perfected it. Maybe they’re planning on giving this traitor the technology. Maybe this is what they offered him.
I seriously doubt a poorly-paid Armada Intelligence officer can resist the chance to have nanites coursing through their veins—nanite technology can make you virtually indestructible. It can make you powerful. It can make you a superhuman…a super hero or super villain.
“So, what’s your deal?” I mutter to myself.
I hear a muffled, almost imperceptible loud thud. I look at the direction of the sound, which is in the direction of the entrance. The Marines have gotten the door open. Another firefight is about to ravage this floor. In no time, they’ll be sweeping every room, and they’ll come in here and take me down, if I don’t find this traitor and escape.
I look ahead. I hope there’s another way out of this place other than through the entrance.
I heave a sigh and open the door.
The door opens to an office floor with desks spread across a wide expanse. Desk jockeys are everywhere. At first, I’m dazzled. I slip into the room, the door closing behind me. I slip my gun into my holster and stand in the corner, watching the officers work.
There must be close to thirty agents, all of which are poring over information from their workstation. Some of them are on headphones with their different contacts, all working cases for the Armada Intelligence. The room is filled with silent chatter and the occasional bursts of laughter. The atmosphere in the room is not expressive of the chaos outside. It’s as though they don’t know they’re under attack.
I shrug unconsciously. Works to my advantage.
Nobody seems to have noticed me. The door is at the far right corner of the space. It’s the only entrance and exit that is visible, unless there’s a secret or concealed emergency exit. The door opens directly into a side walkway. At the center of the walkway, another walkway perpendicular to this run cuts the room in half at the perpendicular axis.
As I slowly move among the midst of the workers, examining their workstations for anything that screams ‘traitor’ (it’s a long shot, I know), I think back to my conversation with the communications officers.
I remember the operator saying that not all workstations in this office have a hard wire connection to their transmitters. I also remember him saying that the workstation that sent the communication had a hardwiring. The hardwiring was old and redundant, but it functioned nonetheless.
I blink twice to activate my nanites.
“Computer,” I mutter, “scan these workstations and tell me the one that has a hardwiring.”
“Complying…”
Seconds later, it says, “I have identified four that have hardwiring.”
“Where are they?”
“The workstations at the four corners of the office space,” replies the computer.
I look at these workstations. Two are vacant. The other two are occupied, one by a man and the other by a pretty blonde woman. I stare at the direction of the man, who I assume to be the traitor, when I stop short.
“Computer, are there any communications being transmitted by either workstation into Tyreesian space?” I ask.
It takes a full minute for the nanites to process and verify before replying.
“Yes,” replies the computer. “The workstation in the right corner is actively communicating and receiving an encrypted communication with a signal originating in Tyreesian space.”
Caught right in the act, I think, marching straight for the pretty blonde woman. She’s wearing a black suit over black pants. She’s a little on the chubby side and she’s positioned her body over her workstation so only she can see its content.
I grab her chair and yank her out into the hallway. She slams onto the ground with a loud yell, her chair slamming against the wall.
The entire office comes to a standstill, many of them standing to see what’s happening. I’m about to explain when the door tears open and a string of five Separatist terrorists barge into the office, their gun aiming at me.
“Stand fast!” they yell, heading straight for me.
They don’t need to speak again. I stand fast.
Chapter 13
Zhang
The stabber is dead for good, but I might be just as dead as he is in a few seconds. I’m delirious as I’ve lost a lot of blood. The pain is still almost as sharp as it was when I was first pierced.
In my head swarm images of all my past deeds, both good and bad. I see the time when I was approached by the Armada Intelligence to work as an operative. I see how, at first, I thought they had sorted me out because of my brilliance and attention to detail, only to find out later that they had wanted me for my psych profile.
I think back to just before Armada Intelligence put the nanites into me.
“Do you know how many people in this galaxy have sanctioned and official nanite enhancements?” my handler had said to me before the operation.
“No,” I replied.
“Less than one thousand,” he said. “In fact, we believe the number may be a lot less than that, maybe around five hundred. That’s how rare and precious what you are getting is.”
I was about to say something terrible that would have probably cost me my commission.
“Don’t look so scared, Zhang,” he replied. “We bring in people a lot greener and they grow up to become star agents. Ever heard of No One?”
At that time, No One was a ghost story to us intelligence types. Her cases were so damn redacted and secret that many of us thought she wasn’t real. We thought she was just something the top brasses at the upper echelons of the Terran Armada liked to use to inspire us to be greater.
Now, I believe otherwise, having worked with her and probably would die working with her.
“Is she real?” I asked back then.
“Yes,” he replied, “I’ve even had the opportunity to work on a few cases with her. Damn near impossible to defeat that one. She’s sexy as hell, too. Anyways, do you know how she was brought into the fold?”
I shook my head.
“Commander Shane, well, back when he was just Captain, responded to an Outer attack on a border colony,” he replied. “Terraformer drop. Those Outer fellows were nasty. Anyways, her entire family perished, but she was able to get off. Taking pity on her, Commander Shane practically adopted her. See?”
“No, I don’t see,” I replied, even though I understood. I just didn’t want to give the man the satisfaction of knowing that he had won me over.
The man saw right through me and smiled.
“She came in because of pity, not because of some skill set she had or some powers she possessed,” he continued. “But did she allow that to stop her?”
I’m pulled out of my swoon back to my present state by a sharp pain that electrifies my entire being. I stifle a scream. I try to move my hands, but they respond sluggishly. It’s as though they weigh a ton. I crane my neck to look at my abdomen. The shard of metal from a wrangled chair tore through my back and now pokes out of my tummy just beside my navel.
Seeing the copious amount of blood on my skin causes a flood of fear to sweep through my system. I close my eyes for a moment. It’s difficult to think through the pain.
If I were a normal person, I would have died. I’m currently lying on a pool of my own blood. The only reason why I’m not dead is because of my nanites.
My nanite enhancement isn’t as powerful as that of No One’s. She’s one of the very few whose nanite enhancements are top notch. Not disgustingly so, like the stabber who now lies dead beside me (eyes glazed over, tongue loose and all). So, there’s only so much it can do. I certainly don’t think it can keep me alive long enough to make it out of this situation.
As I shut my eyes and I fall into another memory…
I’m running the death track at the private resort and training center for the Armada Intelligence Operations Command operatives on Sarolis IV—the Dome, we called it. It’s sunny and the lush green land spreads before me. It ends before a tumultuous forest besieged by what looks like a storm displacement—having sunny and rainy at the same time in the same place.
I’m about to head into the storm, when an aircar glides in front of me, causing me to dive out of the way because I can’t stop my forward momentum in time. I rise to a sitting position to see a tall, sexy-as-hell lady wearing all black and black shades standing over me. Her seductive form causes my heart to stop for a fraction of a second. Even the way her blaster hangs from her jutting waist complements her entire appeal.
She was the perfect combination of deadly and sexy—dexy?
“Zhang?” she asks as though it was an accusation.
“Yeah?”
I respond like I wasn’t sure.
“My name is Anika Grayson,” she says, “but that’s classified. Call me what others call me.”
“Which is?” I asked, curious.
“No One,” she said.
That was when my heart really stopped.
I jolt back to consciousness by a muffled explosion. My mind shifts back to the present. My breath stiffens as pain wracks my body. Before long, I hear the familiar sound of automatic fire and laser shots.
I put one and two together and figure out what’s going on. The Marines must have gained entrance into the building. The Separatists or what was left of them, anyways, are trying to fight them back. This is when I realize that my time is up. I either have to get out of this place to find the defector or I die here or at the hands of the Marines.
The way I’m dressed, I doubt the Marines would want to ask questions.
I take another look at the wound. In my mind, I can feel the dark coldness of death reaching out its icy hands.
I have to yank my body out of the metal shard. I have to put all my strength to it. I have to do it at all cost.
Even as I psyche myself, I can imagine the massive amount of pain such venture will bring to me. This deters me from taking such actions.
I inhale and exhale loudly and fast.
The gun battle intensifies outside, and it’s closer to the main entrance. The separatists probably have them pinned at the entrance. I know it’s not going to be for long.
“On three,” I mutter to myself.
One. Two. Three…
I push against the floor. I slide clean through the shard of metal, screaming all the way. Then I land on my face in the aisle, my mind slipping into another memory.
We are deep in the Outer Colonies. Our vessel is the legendary TUS Phantom, which is now being piloted by someone else…someone with a curious name; Captain Amanda “Coma” Grayson. We are planning how No One and I are going to be grafted into the Separatists ranks so we can accomplish our mission of stealing the matter transport from the Tyreesians.
I noticed some sort of chemistry between the two women. They were both powerful and highly trained. Coma isn’t nanites-enhanced, but she commands a detachment of Marines that are loyal to her even to death. Aside from that, she’s highly skilled and deadly, as deadly as No One herself.
I just learned about Division 51 to which No One belongs, as well as Coma. I also learned from Admiral Shane, who recruited Coma right out of the Academy at the start of the Earth-Sonali war more than seven years ago, that Coma’s intelligence works have been classified above top secret, even above No One’s works.
The two women have chemistry…some sort of sisterly chemistry, though it seems restrained like they don’t want to be caught dead together. There’s also tension and a power surge between the two alpha females. And I’m caught in between them.
My position is a dream for most men—to have the attention of two extremely powerful, hot-as-hell, highly successful, and deadly skilled women. However, I’m not feeling particularly lucky because I know any one of them can really fuck me over if I say or do the wrong thing.
Nevertheless, my apprehension doesn’t preclude me from fantasizing about having a threesome with them—shameful, yes, but what choice do I have? Hot-as-hell, remember?
The sound of nearby automatic fire brings me back to consciousness. The pain is still screaming out. I’m still leaking blood, but my nanites have managed to close up most of the entry and exit wound. It’s going to take about a day to get me fully patched up. Even so, I’ll still have to see a doctor in order to fully recover.
I don’t know just how powerful No One’s nanites are. I think she may have mentioned to me that her nanites can completely heal her of almost any injury with time, such that she doesn’t need to get checked by a doctor.
I struggle to my feet, my hand on my stomach. I stagger to the opening and look around the corner.
There are about two separatists left in this area. They have their backs to me and are near the front desk. I wonder how they’ve kept the Marines away for so long.
I limp into the hallway and stagger to the elevator. Thankfully, it’s still working. I enter.
“Destination?”
“The Tyreesian Delegates’ lodge,” I reply.
I know most of the delegates would have been in the conference hall by the time the firefight started, meaning they would be locked down there. I’m hoping that the defector may have stayed back. If most of the delegates are in lockdown elsewhere, this is my best first bet.
I am deposited in the penthouse. There’s a small foyer and an archway to the right. I pass through the archway and into the entrance of a heavily decorated living room large enough to fit ten people.
There’s a nervous-looking Tyreesian woman sitting on the couch. I can tell she’s nervous because she has her knees together and is playing with her fingers. A nervous habit for humans, but I suppose it’s a universal trait. Her slits widen the moment she sees me.
I look back at her, surprised at first. I look around to see if there’s someone else in the room. There are several doors going into other rooms in the penthouse, so I can’t tell if she’s alone.
“Are you alone?” I ask.
The Tyreesian rises to her feet.
“Not really,” she replies. “But it might rain and then I’ll be alone.”
I stare at her, confused for a moment. Then, it kicks in. That’s the pre-established protocol. I had asked her the question genuinely, forgetting that they were the exact words to establish contact.
“You no longer have to be alone,” I say.
I stretch forth my hand slowly.
“I’m Zhang. I’m with the Terran Armada. I’m here to get you to safety.”
She takes my hand in hers. Her palms are sweaty.
“Call me Ann,” she replies. “It’s a lot easier to pronounce than my true name.”
“Alright, Ann. Follow me,” I say.
I’m about to leave when I catch movement ahead. There’s an open door there.
I bound in that direction. It leads into a narrow hallway that culminates in another room. I pull my gun, knock the door down and aim.
“Put it down!” I say.
The Tyreesian doesn’t listen.
I shoot. The Tyreesian crumples to the ground, dead, the wrist communications device falling out of his hand.
Ann comes into the room. Her eyes are filled with horror.
“He’s dead!”
No, he’s only taking a nap.
“I don’t know if he was able to send a message to the Tyreesians or not,” I say. “Let’s get out of here.”
I don’t want to find out.
Out of the frying pan.
Into the fire.
Chapter 14
No One
Who still says stand fast, anyway? I wonder.
I chuckle in spite of myself.
“What’s funny, you dirty Unionist whore?” says the lead racist.
My countenance changes from amused to upset.
“Why don’t you come close and I’ll tell you,” I say to the fucker.
There are five of them. Four of them have their guns aimed at me and the traitor at my feet. The other has his gun trained on the office staff, all of whom have their hands in the air, clueless and terrified.
What do they teach these guys at the Academy these days? I think to myself.
The leader is an average height Hispanic-looking man with a tattoo on his knuckles. He has an earring on one ear and a partly-sliced right ear.
“What happened to the right ear?” I ask, my hands in the air. “Did you one day walk out of your house and thought to yourself, ‘Hey, why’s my right ear this long?’”
I laugh out loud. I fall to my knees, holding my stomach, and then I continue to laugh as hard as I can.
Tears begin to fall out of my eyes. Still excitable, I look up at the dismayed racist.
“And then maybe you walked back into your house, took your cutlery and cut your ear off?”
I continue laughing. A few officers to my right are now laughing along with me.
“Shut the fuck up!” the man screams, more to the officers than to me.
I look up at him. His head veins are throbbing with anger. Good. I know these separatist guys. They don’t think before they act, and they act rashly when they do. They always make mistakes when they’re angry…always.
I know I’m walking a tightrope, getting a man who has a gun trained on me angry, but I can count on his stupidity. That’s definitely something I can count on with these guys.
“Why?” I say. “Or did it go someplace else that’s even more stupid?”
Some of his men behind him chuckle at that one.
The man swivels on his heels to glare at them. I watch as the smiles disappear from their faces, being replaced by hard-looking expressions. I can tell that such expressions are extremely difficult for them to keep up.
I start to move for him, but then he looks back at me and raises his gun with a knowing smile.
“Not so fast,” he says. “We’ve got unfinished business.”
I try to rise to my feet.
“Slowly,” he cautions.
I shrug, reducing my speed.
Now on my feet and my hands to my sides, I say. “What do you want?”
He smiles, revealing the most horrible set of teeth.
“Oh, come on!” I say, raising my hands to shield my eyes. “Now, how am I suppose to get that horrible sight out of my memory? Dude, shut your trap!”
The office explodes into laughter. Even the traitor at my feet and the men join in.
They’re all laughing, but I’m stalling for time.
I’m waiting to see if they’ll make their third mistake. Their first mistake was not to have killed me the moment they walked in. Their second mistake was not to have asked me to pull out my gun from my holster and slide it out of reach.
The leader raises his gun up and shoots into the ceiling. The office falls into a deadly silence. The leader’s face is now marred by anger.
He’s seething, I realize. Good. I’m closer to getting him to crack.
“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” he asks. “Because I’ll oblige right here, right now.”
I fold my arms across my bust, noticing him flinch at my carelessness at the sight of four barrels trained on me.
“Sorry, I must have misread the signs,” I say. “Didn’t you come in here to kill me? Or was the whole barging in like you’re worth a damn all a joke?”
The air simmers with anger.
He takes a step towards me, bridging the three-yard distance. I measure the distance mentally to see if I can make the leap before he fires off a round into my heart.
I can’t. I need him a little closer.
“I know what you’re trying to do,” he says, his voice so low I can barely hear him.
“You’re stalling for time. You’re hoping the security officers will come in here to save you. Well, I have news for you, you fucking cunt! No one is going to save you…”
“You’re right,” I say.
I glance at the officers to my right and say, “No One is going to save you all.”
Then I wink my right eye and watch as their eyes light up with realization.
“That’s right!” the man says. “No one is going to save you because the moment they walk into this place, we’ll kill them. We’ll blow up this building with everyone in it, including the aliens in this building. And then I’m personally going to make you suffer for what you did to the Boss.”
“There’s only one flaw in your plan,” I say.
“I know you’re probably too stupid to see it, but since today is stupidity day, I’ll help you out. How do you suppose you’ll get out of here if you bomb the whole place? Do you have some powers that you’re not letting on?”
The man doesn’t reply at first. He scans me, skimming past my laser weapon like it was of no consequence. His mistake.
“You think you’re smart?” he asks.
“Yes,” I reply with certainty. “I think I’m a pretty smart young woman.”
“Well, we’ll see about that,” he says.
He tightens the grip on his weapons.
“You’re going to tell me all I need to know or I’ll kill you and your allies, you lying traitorous bitch.”
I shrug.
“Go ahead. I really don’t care about these people.”
“That’s a lie,” he replies. “I can see right through your lies. You’ve been lying since Day fucking One.”
“Uh, I disagree with that,” I say, raising a finger.
He squints his eyes.
“Yeah, because if that were true, you would have known I was working for the Armada Intelligence way before I shot the team leader in the head,” I say, then chuckle.
“Man, you should have seen just how much pleasure it brought me to kill the bastard.”
“He was our leader!” the man roars, his knuckles turning white.
I hold my tongue in. The man is on the brink of losing it. I just need to tip him over, not push him. If I push too much, I’ll just end up getting shot.
I blink twice, then I feel the familiar flow of nanites coursing through my being.
The next time I speak, I speak with seriousness.
“He was not my leader,” I reply. “He was a racist terrorist who deserved to be put down like a dog. You all here are racist dogs and I’ll put you down like the dogs you are.”
“Tell us how long you’ve been working as a spy,” he roars, “or I’ll kill you!”
I stare him down, my hands clenching into tight fists. Any moment now…
“Tell me!” he roars.
I don’t respond.
He lowers his aim and fires off three laser shots. There are a couple of clipped screams to the right, while there’s one to my left.
I look to see the traitor slump dead by my side.
Fuck! I would have preferred to interrogate her for more information, but no huge loss.
I shrug.
“Is that the best you’ve got?” I ask.
Then I point to the officers.
“Want to start picking them one after the other and see if I’ll crack?”
Gesticulating can be a very powerful tool; you’ll learn it in your first class at the Academy. Are you trying to get people to look away? Point away.
It rarely works for people trained in intelligence or people who are smart enough to know they’re being played. But these are your run of the mill uneducated thugs who’ve found a cause to kill and die for, though greatly cruel.
All five of the terrorists look at the terrified Armada officers.
I move at the speed of light. I pull out my gun, which is on my right, and my laser knife, which is on my left. I slash across the man’s throat even before he realizes what’s wrong. Then I kick him.
I fire off three shots, even as the man’s body flies across the air and slams into the fifth terrorist who’s aiming at the officers.
Five men now fall to the ground. One is dead by a slash across his neck. Three are dead by laser headshots. The fifth is dazed because a body slams onto him at the speed of an aircar.
I leap onto the fifth man and pick him out of the heap of bodies with one hand like he’s weightless. He’s still in shock. I slam him onto the ground to separate him from the others so I can interrogate him.
I look at the officers. They’re all looking at me in shock.
“Don’t thank me all at once,” I say.
At that moment, another set of armed men barge into the room, aiming and yelling for everyone to get on their knees. The Cavalry has arrived, much to my chagrin.
I immediately fall to my knees, dropping my weapons on the ground, raising my hands into the air and lacing them around my neck.
Five Marines surround me, giving me a wide berth, their rifles aimed at my head.
“Don’t you fucking move or we blast that cute ass to kingdom fucking come!” The lead Marine yells in my face.
Yeah, it’s just another day at work.
Chapter 15
Zhang
I lead Ann into the elevator. I push her in and stand in front of her, using my body as a shield, in case we’re stormed on our way to the ground floor.
“Computer, take us to the underground escape tunnel,” I say.
“Access denied,” replies a voice in the elevator.
“Shouldn’t we be going out through the front door?” Ann asks. “Don’t you work for the Terran Armada?”
She’s behind me, mumbling some gibberish and biting her nails. I turn to face her, which stifles her. I can see raw terror in her eyes. I understand that she’s not just afraid of what is happening at the moment, but is also afraid of me.
For all she knows, I may be a Terran spy working for the Tyreesians, who’s leading her to the chop shop to have her head chopped off.
I place my palms on her shoulders in a calming way and put a small smile on my face, just how we were taught back at the Academy.
“I know this is a lot to process,” I say. “Believe me, I understand. Defecting between sides in one’s species is heavy enough. Defecting to another race is something else. I can’t even begin to imagine how you’re feeling.”
Ann nods, her eyes mellowing.
“Just relax and take deep breaths,” I say. “I’ll get you to safety. We have an Armada Intelligence facility near here. The moment we’re outside the Terran Union, I’m going to call them and have them send someone to pick us up. Don’t worry. You’re going to be safe. Once you’re in proper Armada Intelligence hands, no one will be able to harm you. Okay?”
She nods.
I look away.
“Computer, take us to the underground escape tunnel,” I say again, this time forceful like it’s going to make a difference.
“Access denied,” it replies.
“Override,” I reply.
“Override code required,” the computer informs me.
“Voice identification, Agent Zhang Wilberforce,” I say out loud.
“Processing…” it says. “Checking…”
I growl. I know elevator computers can be very slow.
“Confirmed,” the computer says, “proceeding to underground tunnel.”
Then, the elevator trembles into life and begins to move downwards.
I turn to look at Ann, who looks back at me, silent.
“A lot of Terran Union facility have these tunnels built beneath in case of an invasion or an attack,” I explain to her. “We want our people to be able to escape the building without leaving through the front doors or the helipad.”
“Like a fire escape?” she asks.
I smile, nodding my head.
“Yes. Like a fire escape. They have one of those on Tyreese?”
She chuckles. “Not Tyreese.”
“Oh, where then?”
“I mean, my home world,” she says. “It’s not called Tyreese.”
“What then?” I ask.
The elevator jerks, cutting down on its speed.
“Warning,” the computer says, “attempted boarding on Level One. Armada Security. Access granted.”
We’re currently at level ten.
“Computer, deny access,” I say. “Override upon my authority.”
“Confirmed. Access denied. Proceeding to underground tunnel.”
We fall past level one and continue descending for a full one minute before coming to a stop.
I draw my gun and lead Ann out. We come into a vast space with a very low headroom. There are pillars everywhere that supports the building. The place is dimly lit by tiny bulbs overhead. The signs says to head on straight until we find an exit ramp back up to the surface.
We follow the directions until I hear a loud scream. I push Ann away quickly, but I don’t get out of the way in time. I plant my feet in the ground and raise my hand to block the flying kick. The man bounces off my hands, while I skid back a few yards. I still haven’t recovered, so my body still feels a little out of it.
Standing before me is the shitty stabber who just won’t die. In his hands is the bomb that according to the Tyreesians can blow up the entire building if put next to a power generator. Well, we’re not close to a power generator here. But I don’t want to see how much less powerful it is. It’s blinking green, which means it’s already armed. The detonator is in the Separatist’s other hand. He has his finger set over the trigger.
“You should be dead,” I say.
“Why, because of a lousy headshot?” he replies. “Your headshot went right through the nonessential parts of my brain. It took the nanites a lot of time, yeah, but they fixed me back up. I had to kill a lot of Marines to retrieve my bomb and make it down here, but I enjoyed doing it.”
The stabber looks behind me to Ann. His face descends into a deep frown.
“I should’ve known you had gotten into bed with her kind,” he shrills.
Then, as stupid as he can be, the stabber drops the bomb and the detonator.
“I’ll kill you first—then her. Then I will bomb this whole building and kill them all.”
I fall back into a defensive position. “You mean you’ll try?”
I blink twice, feeling the power of the nanites reinforce my body.
He leaps in front of me, his right hand stretched forth to punch my face. I lean back, a little out of reach. Then I grab his hand and yank him deeper. He loses balance and falls forward. I raise my knee and it reaches his abdomen. He jerks, then convulses, spilling out goo and blood.
He begins to retch, and I lean into him and whisper, “You should have kept the bomb.”
I grab hold of him and fling him as far away as my nanites will allow. He flies through the air over a distance of fifty yards before smacking into the ground, bouncing three times before coming to a stop. Everywhere he bounced off from has a small crater.
I grab the bomb and the detonator and begin to run in the direction of the sign. I look over my shoulder to see if Ann’s following, but I don’t see her. I skid to a stop and turn. She’s rooted to the ground, right where I left her, looking at the racist, who’s beginning to recover. Seeing the man turn on the floor brings fear to my heart.
I run back to her and grab her hand. She jerks, trying to pull loose, until she sees it’s me and stops.
“We have to get out of here,” I say. “He’s too powerful for me. I can’t fight him and defend you and the bomb.”
We begin in a jog towards the ramp. We’re barely one minute into our jog when Ann begins to question me.
“How were you able to throw him through that distance?” she asks, her eyes peeled on me. I can see her curiosity through my periphery.
“I’m nanite-enhanced,” I reply. It’s technically not classified information since there are nanite-enhanced individuals in the galaxy. However, I’ve been ordered not to reveal this aspect of my physiology to anyone so as to maintain the element of surprise and capitalize on people who underestimate me.
However, in this situation, I know the best way to assure Ann and make her follow me would be to be honest with her.
“AAHHHH!!!!” booms a voice through the subterranean.
My heart quakes beneath my chest.
“Computer, contact the Terran Armada,” I say. “Priority intelligence message.”
“Complying,” says the tiny voice in my ears.
“Zhang, this is Armada Intelligence station chief for Perseus,” says a voice in my ears, “I understand you and No One should be delivering a Tyreesian defector?”
“Wait, No One isn’t with you yet?” I ask.
“No,” he replies. “We lost contact with her since the attack on the Terran Union administration building.”
Shit!
“I am with the Tyreesian scientist,” I say. “I need you to come pick her up. I am giving you access to my location. This is urgent because I’m carrying a Tyreesian’s cobalt bomb, and pursued by a nanite-enhanced Terran Separatist.”
“Head south,” says the station chief. “Those areas are less populated in case the bomb goes off. I’ll meet you in less than five minutes.”
“Roger that,” I say. “Computer, maintain a connection to the station chief to track my location.”
“Confirmed,” the computer replies.
We arrive at the ramp and run up onto ground level into the edge of Perseus City. I immediately lead Ann down south at a breakneck running pace. I’m holding the bomb and detonator in my hands. I’m impressed that she’s able to keep up with me.
“Computer, Contact No One,” I say.
“Contacting No One…”
Before we set out for this mission, our neural networks were linked via the nanites, making it easy for me to communicate with her over short distances, like within a planet. The reason for this was so that in the case we lose contact via slipstream or conventional hailing, I had an unrestricted access to her.
“Access granted.”
No One, I think in my mind. I listen hard. Then, I hear her voice.
Zhang! Great, you’re alive, No One says. Are you running?
Yes, I reply. I have the bomb and I’m being pursued by the stabber.
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” No One screams, my ears almost exploding.
Who is that? I say. Separatists or Armada?
Armada, she replies. Can’t talk now.
I hear the whoosh of a rocket propelled grenade launcher first. I stop and grab Ann’s hand to keep her from running ahead.
There’s an explosion about ten yards ahead. A parked aircar goes up in flames. The concussion hits us square in the chest, sending us to the ground. The bomb and detonator flies out of my hands, and unto the ground. I watch it roll until it stops at the feet of the stabber, who’s now recovered and i
s smiling with a rocket launcher over his shoulder.
Out of nowhere, an aircar descends to the ground. Someone leans out and begins to shoot at us. I roll off the floor onto my feet, even as the stabber dives off the ground.
“Zhang!” screams the shooter. The aircar comes to stop near Ann, who’s still dazed on the ground.
The shooter jumps to the ground and carries the Tyreesian scientist into the car. One down, the bomb is next.
I run for the bomb, but the stabber gets there first. He grabs the bomb and the detonator and begins to run down the deserted street.
“Zhang, you coming?”
“Go on ahead,” I reply. “I have to stop that bomb.”
That’s the last I hear of the station chief as I feel rather than see the aircar ascend with their prize.
Good. At least that mission is accomplished.
Putting all the energy I can into my legs, I jump ahead and crash into the back of the Separatist. The bomb flies out of his hands, landing several feet away. But he still has the detonator in his hands. He pushes the button.
“No!” I cry.
“See you in hell, Unionist scum,” he spits.
There’s a blinding flash of light. An unbearable wave of heat.
And then nothing.
Zhang…
Chapter 16
No One
I scream at the massive explosion I hear in my ears, pushing my head between my knees and jamming my ears shut.
Well, the building is still standing. Looks like the Tyreesians were wrong about how strong it was.
Zhang, I think, even as I feel a massive wave of panic, both from myself and from Zhang. Then nothing.
My eyes water with tears.
Sirens start wailing. Alarm klaxons go off.
Zhang.
I gasp and feel the weight inside my chest.
Zhang is gone.
“What just happened?” The interrogator asks me. “That felt like a bomb blast.”
I’m still in a shock.
“Screaming is not going to help your case woman,” says the interrogator to my ears. “So, if I were you, I’d start talking.”
I look up. I’m in a small interrogation room in the TAIOC section of the building. The room has a table in the center, with chairs on both sides. I sit in the prisoner’s side, while my interrogator is standing in the corner, classic interrogator style.
The interrogator works for Armada security—not a contract staffer, but an actual officer. As early as when he started questioning, I knew that he didn’t have the necessary clearance to know about my work. Hence, I had to maintain my cover. It sucks to be held prisoner by the very organization that you’re working for.
As what his name pin says, his name is Chuck. His shoulder patch tells me he’s a lieutenant. Definitely not cleared high enough.
“Look, Chuck, I’ve told you that I’m not saying anything until my lawyer shows up,” I say. “Because all I’ve done is protect your officers from being butchered by Separatists. That bomb would have killed you if I hadn’t been here.”
The man is tall and handsome. He has saltpeter hair that gives him that rebellious look that charms a lot of women. If I weren’t already in love, I may have been charmed.
There’s an overhead light bulb that barely lights up the room. The edges of the room are in partial darkness. The door is black and is on the right corner of the room. There’s a window ahead of me where I can see armed Marines standing guard.
If I didn’t know Terran Armada security protocols in cases such as this, I might have been scared as shit. Everything I can see, feel and touch and hear in this room is designed to get me to break.
I know that the rules prevent anyone from harming me. Torture is an illegal means of interrogation, so I know I’m not going to be broken.
I’m not afraid of being tortured—heck, I’ve been tortured a few times. Once, deep in the Outer Colonies. Another time by the Sonali, during the Earth-Sonali war, though that was in a Sonali occupied Terran base. I had been sent in to spy on troop’s movement on the base. The only way I could get the information we needed to mount a take back mission was if I got inside.
Ergo, I had to get caught.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t get out soon enough to not be interrogated. But fortunately, I was able to get the information the Armada needed to invade. Long story short, we took the base, I was set free, and got yet another award for bravery as well as another sharp rebuke from Shane for recklessly putting my life in danger.
I wonder what he’d think now if he found out that the mission he sent me on had landed me in Armada custody as a criminal. This mission sure is full of ironies.
So, no, I’m not fazed by the black door, or the darkness designed to disorient, or the cool air designed to accentuate feelings of depression, and hopelessness or the claustrophobic space partnered with the marines on sight deigned to convey the sense of imprisonment. It’s meant to tell you, “Hey, you are our prisoner and you can’t escape; get ready for prison time if you don’t talk.”
And the tall, handsome officer offers you a way out if you’d just talk. Well, he’s been at it for quite some time. I’m not going to give him even a sliver of information.
The man sits on the chair. “Look, we have you on assaulting a Terran officer. We have you on murder. We have you on treason. And I’m pretty sure we can tie you to the Separatists. That’s more than a hundred years imprisonment, and trust me with the latest advances in correctional facilities, you will serve your time to the full.”
I keep my face straight.
“So, help me help you,” he says in an entreating tone.
“I am not after you. I am after the murderers that killed the Marines and other security operatives in the hallway and all those aliens. For whoever is responsible for that blast.
I’m looking for someone to hang for this.”
He speaks as though he’s talking to a co-conspirator.
“The Terran Union needs someone to hang for this. I wouldn’t want for a pretty girl like you to be it.”
He pauses to see if I’m following. I nod my head innocently as though I’m honestly following his drivel.
“I can get maybe sixty or seventy years shoved off your probable sentence,” he says in a low tone. “And if you’re well behaved, you can get out after maybe fifteen, twenty years. What do you say?”
“What do I say?” I ask.
He nods expectantly.
“What do you say?” he says.
I sigh and shake my head in pity.
“I say you’re a dumb fuck for thinking I’ll eat that shit you’re selling.”
I watch as his face turns a deep shade of red with anger. He gently gets up to his feet and comes over to my side of the table. He sits down on the table, facing me.
“You think this is funny?” he says.
“I think I want to speak to my lawyer,” I hiss.
He leans into my face and says, “You fucking cunt, I’ll—“
I blink twice, then slam my forehead into his face and then onto his chest, sending him flying across the room and smashing into the glass ahead.
I slide the pin I’ve just sneakily snagged off his shirt into my mouth, even as the marines burst into the room and head butt me with their weapon. They don’t stop. The kick me and punch me and smack their weapons onto my body, until I’m sputtering blood.
“Enough!” Chuck says.
I’m convulsing on the ground, doing all I can to keep the pin in my mouth.
“I said enough!” Chuck roars.
They stop.
“Get out of here!” he shouts.
They snap to attention and march out of the room, banging the door behind them.
Chuck helps me back to my seat. I avoid his gaze, feeling my nanites get to work on fixing my body. I begin to feel an analgesic agent pooling in my blood, dulling the throbs of pain.
Chuck says, “Allow me to apologize for my colleagues. They lost a lot of good men today, trying to quell the terrorists’ attack. You will forgive them.”
I turn to flash him one of my deadliest glares.
“Your team just assaulted an innocent woman on Terran Union soil. I’ll have your asses!”
Then, I spit in his face.
He doubles back, anger fleeting across his face. I can see that he wants to clap back at me, but he hesitates and pulls out a handkerchief and wipes his face instead.
“You’re many things, woman,” the man says, “but you and I know that innocent isn’t one of those things.”
The moment he walks out, I relax with a soft exhalation.
The effects of the narcotic agent working in my blood begin to lull me to sleep. I doze off a couple of times until another man enters the interrogation room.
This man is a smartly dressed officer of the Terran Armada, wearing a clean white ceremonial garbs.
I look at his face and my heart skips a beat.
He smiles warmly at me, the very air of his presence causing the hairs on my nape to stand on end.
“Captain,” I say, reverence filling my voice end to end.
“Commander,” the man replies with a curt nod. He looks from me to the glass window to the splutter of blood trailing the ground.
“Rest assured, I will have those marines court-martialed.” he says.
“That won’t be necessary, sir,” I reply. “They were only doing their job.”
“Like you, I guess,” he says.
I’m about to reply in the affirmative, before I catch my tongue.
I smile.
He smiles back. He’s as handsome as the stories go. His soft features are nothing to match his nerve-of-steel reputation.
He sits on the chair.
“In case you’re wondering, I’m here for the summit, but then I was called due to a security breach. Then the bomb that just went off in the south tunnels. Right as soon as Armada Intelligence informed me they had a high value defector heading to The Seeker for immediate shuttle to Earth. Imagine my surprise when I’m informed immediately after that by the Terran Armada that one of the leaders of the terrorists responsible is a highly-decorated intelligence officer.”
I don’t reply. I merely keep my gaze straight. I know my mission is off the books. This means I can actually go to jail.
And the bomb went off, so I probably am really going to jail. After all, I did help terrorists gain access to the Terran Armada Administrative Building.
“So,” Captain Montgomery says. “Are you ready to talk?”
Chapter 17
Jeryl
As I walk to the holding cell of Anika Grayson, I realize that I'm pissed.
Pissed and puzzled.
When I got the message that my presence was requested I took the liberty of perusing the prisoner's service record—well, the few sections that weren’t confidential anyway.
And I'm puzzled. Ms. Grayson has clearly been an asset to Terran Armada for years.
In fact, the oddest part is that apparently six months ago, she uncovered a plot by Pro-Ascension Sonali to frame Terrans for an assassination of one of their leaders. It sounds like that was one class-A cluster fuck.
I see a few notations about disciplinary action taken due to "overzealous" conduct. To some, that might raise a red flag or two but not to me.
The war may be over, but now I find myself navigating the equally dangerous waters of diplomacy.
And in both circumstances I've found that making "the right" decision is not as black and white as most people would like to believe.
No, I've been through too much, made too many bad calls myself to judge someone else for making poor decisions.
Besides, something doesn't smell right about this. How do you go from a dedicated Terran agent to a traitor in a few short months?
No, I'm not buying it; I call bullshit.
The deadly attack in the lobby and the bomb blast in the tunnels is now being treated like an act of war.
But something else is going on here, something just under the surface. Call it a hunch, but I have a feeling there is going to be more than meets the eye and Ms. Grayson is involved.
I'm two steps away from entering the prison block when my irritation flares again. I'm here for the Summit but I'm getting called over to look into today’s attack. I'm not sure what they expect by sending me here, but as the "Avenger of the Mariner," I'm the new mascot of the Terran Armada.
I heave a sigh.
So, my "job" is likely to make an appearance so that security can say they were visited by the Great Captain Jeryl Montgomery. Well, let's show them what this figurehead can do.
I take the last two steps bringing me inside the security room where the prisoner is being held.
There was a headshot of Ms. Anika Grayson in her file; however, seeing her in the flesh takes me off guard. She's beautiful, but that's not what gets me. It's her eyes.
They watch me with predatory calculation.
She's not scared. Not even a bit nervous.
Most people in interrogation would be fidgeting, worried, stressed. She's not even breaking a sweat.
What I'm seeing tells me there’s a lot more to Ms. Grayson and the reason why she's here.
I approach the cell.
“Captain,” she says as she sees me walk in.
“Commander,” I reply, looking around the room and cocking one eyebrow at the trail of blood I see on the floor. “Rest assured, I will have those marines court-martialed.”
“That won’t be necessary, sir. They were only doing their job.”
“Like you, I guess.” I let my words sink in before I continue. “In case you’re wondering, I’m here for the summit, but then I was called due to a security breach. Then the bomb that just went off in the south tunnels. Right as soon as Armada Intelligence informed me they had a high value defector heading to The Seeker for immediate shuttle to Earth. Imagine my surprise when I’m informed immediately after that by the Terran Armada that one of the leaders of the terrorists responsible is a highly-decorated intelligence officer. So…are you ready to talk?”
Silence.
"Ms. Grayson," I continue after a long silence, "As much as I'd love to crack a joke about a girl like you in a place like this, I think I should skip the banter and just get straight to it, don’t you agree? It’ll be easier for both of us."
She nods.
"Good, so may I ask why a decorated Terran officer—one who was a hero on Sonali Prime a mere six months ago—suddenly turns into a traitor?"
"Money," she says like it's a punchline to a joke. But I'm not laughing.
"Money?" I ask, arching a bow.
"Yeah," she says in a disinterested drawl, "is there a better reason?"
"Armada not paying you enough?"
"No, not really."
She puts her knees up, circling them with her arms. As I watch, she lays her head sideways on the crook of her arms. She closes her eyes.
I can't believe it!
Except that I think this is all part of her act. Her cover. She needs to play the role of the disinterested traitor, too mixed up in her own avarice to care what anyone thinks.
"So, what are the Tyressians paying you?"
She opens her eyes and sits up.
"Enough," she says, smirking. "Plus a bonus if I finish early, but looks like that part isn't going to happen."
She puffs, blowing a bit of hair from her face. Then, she resumes her position with her head on her hands. Her eyes close.
"Thirty," I say without preamble, my tone grim.
"What?"
"Ten Sonali. Seven Kurta. Three Drupadi. Ten Humans. All dead. All shot by your Separatist friend." I say, letting the moment hang.
"Is that supposed to mean something to me? Am I supposed to be sad?" She mocks.
But underneath her facade I see something that doesn't match her words.
Regret. Remorse.
She's a killer, I think, but then so am I. And even a seasoned killer can have regrets. I know this too well.
"No," I say, "Not sad—responsible."
I put on my best "dad's mad" disappointed face—and it works. She looks uncomfortable.
"I didn't pull the trigger, that wasn't part of the plan," she says, "It's not my fault that my associates got overzealous."
"Causalities of war?" I ask, brows up.
"More like the cost of doing business."
She smiles a cruel smile.
"And it's always nice when someone else pays."
My anger goes nuclear. Time to play dirty.
"I don't have children," I say, "Even if Ashley and I wanted kids, I don't know that we have time. We barely see each other as it is..."
"That's a beautiful story," she says to me and made fake snoring noises.
I take my personal tablet, which what I sometimes refer to as my "leash," given how it mostly seems like it’s used by Terran Armada to keep tabs on me. I tap on the screen until I'm satisfied. Then I hold it up so Anika can see it.
"Do you know who this is?' I hold the tablet eye level with her. The image on the screen is a young Sonali girl.
"Should I?" says Anika.
"No," I say lowering the tablet, "I don't think there's any reason for you to know her, but I thought you should. She's an orphan. Her mother died in the war and her father died—today."
Her eyes are wary, guarded, but there's a flicker she can't conceal.
"I thought you might relate to a young woman losing both of her parents, tragically and unnecessarily, at a young age," I comment casually.
Her gaze turns inward, contemplating the little girl's loss as she remembers her own. As I watch, she notices me and shrugs off this sorrow to transform back into character.
"Thanks for sharing," she smiles, baring teeth.
"But I think the real question is why is a big-time planetary hero here, dealing with me? I don't think security is short of personnel. So how exactly did you get this shit detail?"
"You must have a low regard for your self-worth," I quip.
"No," she smiles, "I just know that there has to be more pressing duties for Captain Montgomery—the war hero."
I do my best not to flinch when she says that. I'm not sure I'll ever been 100% comfortable with the idea of being a "hero" especially of the war. But here I am.
"You're right, I'm not sure why my expertise is needed. But I'm here, and regardless of what brought me here, I have a job. I wish you would trust me, Anika.”
I say, letting the weight of my sincerity shade my tone.
"Why don't you tell me what's really going on? I can protect you."
My eyes plead with her.
"Do I look like I need protection?" she scoffs.
"No," I say seriously. "But that doesn't mean you’re impervious to getting stuck in a shitty situation. We both know you're not a traitor."
My eyes hold hers. Neither of us blinks.
My tablet pings interrupting our face-off. I'm notified that the interrogator is on his way.
Shit, I'm out of time.
Anika looks like she's shaken off anything I was starting to tap into emotionally. Back in place is her cold, surly traitor persona. I don't think I could convince anyone else, even with my clout that she's legit, but I know I'm right.
The interrogator returns. He stops and salutes. "Captain Montgomery, sir."
I salute back. "At ease."
"I hope the prisoner has not troubled you, sir."
"No," I answer truthfully, "Though unfortunately, she refused to cooperate."
He nods like that doesn't surprise him.
"Well, we'll see how long she stays that way," he says smugly. For the first time, I notice the silver and black case he's carrying in his left hand. This isn’t going to be pretty.
As though reading my mind, he says, "Are you staying, sir?"
I nod.
I have a feeling this makes him a bit uncomfortable, but if it does, he covers it well. I watch as he instructs Anika to stand away from the force field as he deactivates it.
She turns around, face pressed against the wall as he puts the force field back on. He turns her around, yanking her down to a sitting position. He secures the cuffs on her wrists with magnetic locks. He locks her legs down too.
I'm impressed—he’s not taking any chances. Given what I've seen of her abilities as far as kicking ass, I think he's making wise choices.
Anika looks like a woman steeling herself to face a death squad. She's probably readying her body and mind for the interrogation. Torture is illegal, but we both know that the Armada sometimes rely on unsavory members from Intelligence to get to the bottom of things.
Doubt surfaces in my mind; am I really going to be able to stomach watching her tortured— especially when I'd swear on my life that she's innocent?
Chapter 18
No One
If someone asked me if I wanted to meet Captain Jeryl Montgomery, savior of the war, I would probably say yes. If they asked me how I’d like to meet him, I think I'd say over drinks or such.
What I wouldn’t say is "locked in a cell, cuffed and accused of being a traitor to the Terran Armada."
Nope, pretty sure that wouldn’t be on the list.
Unfortunately, life, as usual, has different plans for me. But though the circumstances are not ideal, I have to admit that I'm glad we met. I believe I'm a good judge of character. If not, I don't think I'd still be alive in my line of work.
My first impressions of Captain Montgomery are good ones. He's intelligent and clearly a man with a moral code. But I sense doubt and remorse too—a struggle within him. I don't want to, but I guess I could say that I can relate. Half of the time it seems we're all just trying to do the best we can to make the "right"
decisions.
Weary. That's another adjective I'd use to describe him. He's a man carrying a lot around—and it shows.
Despite my respect and empathy, I don't reveal my real mission. He may be a good guy, but I still just met him. Trust is earned, so
I keep my mouth shut about what's actually going on—making sure my "traitor" mask stays in place.
I'm feeling okay about keeping him in the dark—but then the interrogator comes back.
He’s holding a black and silver case I’m absolutely familiar with.
Well, shit. It’s the torture case.
I know I'll be able to handle whatever he dishes out; I've been trained to withstand pain. Also, my nanites are programmed to react to extreme duress by dumping drugs into my system to keep me happy and pain-free. I'll sweat a lot, but the pain will be manageable allowing me to focus.
My only regret is that it looks like Captain Montgomery is staying for the show.
It's silly, but somehow this embarrasses me. Like if Captain Montgomery found me puking in the bathroom…somehow, it feels the same.
But it's not like I have any choice.
Hey Mr. Torturer, do you mind coming back later? I know you need my secrets, but I fucking hate having an audience with the Avenger of the Mariner.
I almost start giggling at that thought. I must not be able to hide all of my amusement because the interrogator gives me a look.
"You won't be smiling for long, sweetheart," he says.
Now I really want to giggle, but instead I keep my lips sealed.
Nope, no talking. He's wrong. I'm wrong.
I do have a choice, based on about two and half inches of sharp metal tucked into my left fist. He may have locked down my wrist cuffs, but he did not check my hands. Bad move on his part.
I watch Mr. Torturer turn sideways away from me as he carefully, almost lovingly removes items from his briefcase. My guts squirm a bit. This guy seems like he really enjoys his job.
Time to get to work before he finishes unpacking.
My wrists are bound, but my fingers are free. Carefully, I grip the metal pin with my fingers, then bend my wrist inward until the point makes contact with my skin.
I sneak a glance. Neither Captain Montgomery nor Mr. Torture are looking my way.
The former is looking at his tablet. I have a feeling he's using it as an excuse to not see me.
Showtime.
I suck in a breath to steady myself. I have one chance.
I jab the pointed end of metal into deep into my wrist. I clamp my jaw shut so I don't scream. I think I hit a vein.
Good.
I’m rewarded with some nice red blood. It doesn't gush, but it does well up nicely until physics makes it start plopping on my leg. I try to whip my hand toward my other side to get some blood on that hand as well.
Thank goodness for my nanites—they've dulled the pain. But not my senses.
"Hey, Mr. Interrogator. I don't feel so good,"
I let my voice slur like I'm getting woozy.
"Oh my God," says Captain Montgomery as he sees the red splashes on me.
He looks at the interrogator. "Get a medic, now!"
The interrogator runs from the room. Captain Montgomery moves close to my cell.
"What did you do to yourself?" he asks, stunned.
Is that concern in his voice?
I consider laughing a goofy, drug-enhanced laugh, but decide that would just be mean. This man actually cares about my well being. That's nice, but I need to leave.
The interrogator rushes in with a guy in a white and blue shirt who I assume is the medic. The medic waits while the force field is deactivated, then rushes in.
"Take off her restraints," orders the medic.
The interrogator hesitates.
"I need to see where the wound is," says the medic in a tone that brooks no disagreement. As my restraints click open, I go limp pretending to pass out.
The medic immediately puts his arms around my back to help me sit up, just like I hoped. I raise my left wrist, the one with the metal still gripped in it and press the point into the side of his neck.
My eyes flick open as he stiffens.
"Get up slowly," I order. "And you Mr. Torture Fun Time, you're going to trade places with me."
The medic slowly eases up. I follow a step behind him, keeping the point against his neck and I nod toward the cuffs I just vacated.
"Put on the restraints on him." I tell the medic.
The cuffs click over the interrogator’s legs and wrists. I doubt that will hold him for long. I motion for him to sit down.
"But you're bleeding," says the medic, voice steady. "I can help you."
I'm threatening his life and he still wants to help me. Amazing—that or he's trying to distract me.
"I'm fine. Now open the door." I say.
What the doc doesn't know—or anyone else in the room is that I'm in no danger of bleeding out. My nanites are already working overtime to knit up the holes I made in my flesh. I'm not invincible; if I sustain serious damage I can lose blood faster than my nanites can work.
Right now, the blood on me is camouflaging the fact that underneath it, the wounds are already healing.
The medic says, "I don't know the code."
"Give it to him," I bark at the interrogator.
"I know it, " says Captain Montgomery stepping close to the panel. He pauses his finger poised above the panel.
"Do it," I growl.
"No," says Captain Montgomery. "Not unless you let the medic go."
I laugh.
"Oh, and I suppose you're going to guarantee I'll make it out safely without him?"
"In a manner of speaking," he says. "I'll let you out, but you have to trade him for me. I'll be your hostage. Do that and I can guarantee you'll get out of the building safely."
I think about it for a second. Normally, I'd be reluctant to do a hostage swap—too many things can go wrong for me. But Captain Montgomery has a point.
He can guarantee my safety. There’s no way in hell anyone in the Terran Armada is going to risk the life of the legendary Captain Jeryl "Avenger of the Mariner" Montgomery just to take out one traitor.
Plus, as far as I know, he has no nanite enhancements. He really is just a man.
Earlier, I wished we met under different, better circumstances. Now, I need to add more entries to my list of “Ways I'd prefer not to have met Captain Jeryl Montgomery."
Taking him hostage. Threatening his life. Using him to break out of prison.
For a split second, I wonder if this little move on my part is going to tarnish his reputation.
Then a sudden realization comes to me.
Tarnish his reputation? Ha!
More like build it even more. I can see the headline of the news now: "Captain Jeryl Montgomery, War Hero, Bravely Offers Himself Up for Hostage Exchange."
I bet a load of credits that Mr. Torturer and Mr. Medic can't wait to tell their friends how they were saved from an evil traitor by this legend. Well, I guess now I can add public relations to my resume.
Time to make use of this asset.
"Turn around," I order Captain Montgomery. He does what I say.
"Hands on your head."
He slowly complies.
I move up with the medic until I'm flanking him.
Now this is the hard part. I need to swap out the medic for Captain Montgomery. Before I do that I need to lift the point from the medic's neck. And since his life is my only leverage, those split seconds where he's not in jeopardy are going to make me vulnerable. I need to do this fast.
Time for some nanite action.
The world slows as I spin the medic away from me like a discarded dance partner. Faster than humans can move, I turn back and embrace Captain Montgomery.
My hand presses the cool metal against his flesh.
"Well, Captain Montgomery," I say. "You got yourself a deal."
Chapter 19
No One
Hostage-taking is not my forte. In fact, if it’s a toss up between taking a hostage and torturing one, well, the latter tends to go a lot quicker.
What people don’t realize is how much taking a hostage makes the taker vulnerable. And the part that makes you the most vulnerable is moving the hostage. It makes you real dead—real quick.
Basically, it’s just a big pain in the ass.
I’m just grateful that Captain Montgomery is being a fairly tractable hostage. He’s not screaming, crying or fighting me—yet.
Not that I believe we’re going to be get chummy, though at this point we’re close. So close that it’s plain
awkward. I’m close enough to Captain Montgomery to smell his aftershave. My breasts are pressed against his back as I hold the metal point to his throat, my other arm keeping his neck in a chokehold.
I have to walk us backwards and sideways so I can see where to go while keeping him close—c
lose enough to
kill. I need to make it look like I'm a shit-crazed traitor who just got her hands on the hottest hostage this side of the Mariner Nebula.
Actually, that's pretty close to the truth barring the "traitor" bit—shit-crazed seems pretty fair at this point.
Bottom-line: I need to make anyone who sees us believe that Captain Montgomery's life is in danger. Hell, I need to make him believe it.
“We’re going to the hangar?” he asks me, calm as a fucking cucumber.
“You got that right, Avenger,” I breathe into his ear.
What? You have to know this is a handsome war hero. A girl like me doesn’t get many chances with a guy like this.
I press the metal point a millimeter deeper into his throat. He doesn't make a sound. I figure after everything he's seen, everything he's been through, this probably doesn't even register a one on his shit-o-meter. I'm just glad he's not calling my bluff or playing hero, so far. I can see the inside of the hangar, just a few more steps...
"Halt, hands on your head, release the hostage!"
Yeah, well, now it's time to play my part.
I swing us around so I can face the security officer. He's alone, but I know that's a very temporary situation. The more people that show up, the harder it gets for me to get out of this unscathed. More hostages would improve my odds, but that's the beauty of my current situation; I've got a hostage that's valuable. And it's time I laid that currency down.
"You are going to be one famous guy, " I say conversationally to the security guard. I can tell my response confuses him. Good.
"Lay down your weapon, put your hands on your head and release the hostage," he repeats.
"Yes, sir, I mean I can see the newsfeeds now. ‘Security Guard, Responsible For Murder of the Father of the Galactic Council.’"
I grin at him when I finish, "What's your name? Wait, don't tell me, it doesn't matter, pretty soon everyone is going to know it. You'll go down in history as the man who got Captain Jeryl Montgomery, hero of the war, killed."
"Stop," says Captain Montgomery.
I don't know if he's talking to me or to the guy until he says, "Lower your weapon and allow her to leave."
"But sir—"
"Do it soldier, that's an order." He barks.
I watch as the guard reluctantly lowers his weapon.
"Put it on the ground and kick it over to me," I say.
He looks at Captain Montgomery who nods.
He lowers his gun slowly in front of him and kicks it toward me. It slides across the floor, coming to stop a foot in front of us. I start to bend down when the guard decides he wants to play hero. I guess that newsfeed bit really got to him.
Sometimes when the shit hits the fan it goes in slo-mo, like someone took a picture of the moment and started pulling the edges like it was melting plastic. My nanites tend to make the world slow down for everybody, especially for me when shit goes sideways.
But, the truth is no one slows down time because no one controls it. Time, events—we like to think we control them, but really, it’s out of our hands.
We don't have control, but we do have choices. And those choices have consequences.
The guard rushes to me as I lean down to grab the weapon.
Captain Montgomery yells "No!" though I don't know if he's talking to the guard or me.
But I do what I am trained to do. I have to.
Usually, when you see someone roll forward it looks like such a waste of effort, just showy secret agent bullshit, but for me this little bit of show-off does two things for me: it gives me momentum closing the distance between me and the guard. Fast.
As I tumble, I pick up his weapon, roll forward and shoot him with it. He falls.
I don't stop to check his pulse. I don't need to.
When I spin back, gun in hand, I face Captain Montgomery, but he's not looking at me.
He's looking at the guard.
"You didn't have to kill him," he says quietly.
I don't say anything. I just wait. I figure maybe he has more to say. He doesn't—not to me.
"I need to make a call," says Captain Montgomery, looking at me before pulling his tablet from his jacket. He taps on the comm.
"This is Captain Jeryl Montgomery—I want immediate access granted for hangar bay 0170 now on my authority. Also, do not send any security personnel. I repeat do not send any security. Montgomery out."
I'd thank him, but it's time to move.
"Come on," he says resignedly, "lets get you to your ship."
I open the hatch pointing my gun at him to get inside. I sense that a series of things is going through his mind including the idea of taking me down.
But that thought is transient—he's seen me in action; he knows I've got an edge that he can't beat.
His mouth forms a grim lie, but he nods and goes inside the ship.
“You got to know that ever since you’ve landed and begun your…theatrics, the Armada has its sights trained on this hangar. You try to leave and they’ll follow you. Once they got me, they’ll blow you out of the sky,” he tells me.
But I’m too busy. I’m taking stock.
All right: time to do a quick run-down of my mission.
One teleporter. Check. Still in cargo bay.
One defector. Check. Somewhere, but safe.
One high-ranking military hostage: check.
Not the way this mission was supposed to go, but then what mission ever goes according to plan? None. You’re lucky if you get 70% off without a hitch. Or less.
Shit always happens in some way. Too many unknown variables in a known universe, or maybe it’s the other way around. Either way, it’s time for me to get this show on the road.
I look at the transporter. And then to Jeryl.
“Who says anything about flying into orbit?” I ask him with a crooked smile.
It takes a moment and then Jeryl looks over at the cargo hold – and the one half of the matter transporter. Realization dawns and he nods to himself.
Time to talk to those brutish ass-hats.
The Tyreesians.
My bosses.
Well,
at least for a little bit longer.
Chapter 20
No One
I power up my comm to the Tyreesians.
“Hello gentlemen, no plans to leave me behind here to rot in a Terran prison—right?” I bark.
“Your cargo ship most likely has every Armada gun trained on it, Ms. Grayson. Your Separatists friends are captured or scattered. We’ve lost contact with one of our scientists who we assume is the defector. We believe she is in the hands of Armada Intelligence. Your compatriot Zhang is dead; he also failed in his mission and the bomb went off with minimal loss of life or property—you no longer have anything else in your possession that is of any value to us.”
“Now that’s where you’re wrong: I didn’t just spring myself out of custody, I took a hostage—” The Tyreesian cuts me off.
“We do not have time for diplomatic games Ms. Grayson, thus we do not have time for military hostages—”
“Not even for Captain Jeryl Montgomery, creator of the Galactic Council, and the man who ended the war?”
There is a moment of silence. Smugly, I wait while the Tyreesian to factor this into their plans.
“Very well, Ms. Grayson, we will allow you and Captain Montgomery aboard. Stand by.”
I’m feeling pretty smug that the Tyreesians took the bait. I know they can’t resist inflicting pain and anguish on the Terran war hero they hate. I find their hatred ironic; the Sonali fought five years with us, and now we’re on almost friendly terms—and that was with billions lost on both sides during the war.
The Tyreesians on the other hand weren’t even involved in the war; in addition, any conflict that’s arisen between them and Terran Armada has been of their own doing—like that shit that went down in the Omarian system. Hard not to find fault in a race that looks for trouble.
I guess I could admire their resourcefulness; they will use almost any means in order to inflict damage on the enemy. And they network with other factions that want extreme separation of species and use that to their advantage.
Right now, as far as they know, I’m an opportunistic ex-Terran Armada agent with a grudge. I laugh again at the irony; they’re pissed that one of their own betrayed them while they might as well be holding up a sign that says: ‘Do you hate other species? Are you looking for a permanent solution to this problem—well then join us for lots of death and destruction!’
The fine print would read: ‘Just don’t expect us to save your ass if you get caught.’
Though admittedly, I understand making the brutal choice to cut a loss. It’s not like there are warm, fuzzy feelings. Every agent knows they are expendable. Thinking expendable makes me think of Zhang. I liked him; he was a good guy, and now he’s gone. He sacrificed himself because he couldn’t stand to let the innocents die, not when he could do something about it.
I think about how he railed against me for killing—but you can’t afford to care in this business. Not the business we’re in. If you do, you end up dead. Case in fucking point.
Except that I’ve decided to drag Captain Montgomery along for the ride. It’s not fair, and I’m taking a big risk bringing him along for both of us, but I’m hoping this big risk is going to equal a big reward. I like to play poker and when you bet against the house, the house usually wins.
The big question I have right now is am I betting on the house or against it? Captain Montgomery seems like he would be the house. Terran Armada certainly has enough clout, and now they have two of the three pieces needed to control matter transport. Now that is clearly stacking the deck. I’m stacking the deck, and in my custody I have the King.
So, does that make me the Queen, the Ace or the Joker? Of those three, I think I’m the Ace. As for the other suits, I’m pretty sure that the Tyreesians have got to be the Jokers. So is it gonna be ace high or ace low? I suddenly laugh a bit at that thought. I’m an Ace. I’m a one.
No One.
The next steps of the mission are going to be crucial for me if I want to get out of this alive and take Captain Montgomery with me. Once I’m on the ship, I’m going to need to do a lot of improvising.
As I walk with Captain Montgomery toward the teleporter, I see the crate of Predatory Mega Flora that was the original cargo. This stuff is such bad news. It’s a vicious carnivorous plant capable of “walking” to find a host. I shudder at the thought of what it would feel like to have one of those things spear you, suck out your innards all while you’re still alive.
Gross. I guess I better warn Captain Montgomery.
Ha. Warning your hostage. That again, sounds ironic.
“See that,” I say to him, motioning with the nozzle of my gun away from him and the crate of “Seyshallian fruit” which the Tyreesians, in their zeal for having the worst things that can kill in the universe—organic or not, decided to include.
“The Tyreesians can’t be faulted for blood-lust, but in the brains department, I’m not sure they’ve evolved past Earth cockroaches.” I see him almost smirk.
“This fruit they have on board next to the mass transporter—well, it’s not fruit you eat. It’s fruit that eats you.”
I see him stop a moment considering my words.
“What are the Tyreesians going to do with it?” He asks.
“Shit if I know and shit if I care, but all that fruit needs to germinate is a host. A nice warm host, someone like you, me or a ship full of Tyreesians. These guys don’t even have this cargo area set at a cooler temperature. Right now, all it would take is a low-heat signature, say by a ship’s A.I. powering up this teleporter remotely and that’d be enough of a change in the ambient temp to draw this fruit over.
“And if the fruit comes through the teleporter. Well…that’s a nightmare waiting to happen.”
As the hum of the teleporter alerts us to its activation, I do a quick run-down in my head of the plan once I’m on the ship. No matter how I look at it, the odds aren’t in my favor. Well, fuck the odds. Zhang was a good guy and that got him killed. I don’t plan on making that mistake. I put on my best poker face as we step upon the teleporter.
Let's do this.
Chapter 21
No One
I step off the teleporter, shoving Captain Montgomery in front of me. The Tyreesian commander is waiting with another Tyreesian who’s carrying a flat black case. Why do torturers always carry cases? I guess they like having their toys nearby.
Their really scary, creepy, cutty toys.
I’m delivering Captain Jeryl Montgomery, the guy responsible for sabotaging their last attempt to throw a wrench in galactic peace and prosperity, right into their hands.
“Excellent work, Ms. Grayson,” says the commander.
I nod.
“Welcome aboard, Captain Montgomery, if you will come with us.” I see the commander give him a wicked smile.
I watch Captain Montgomery start to walk with the commander and the torturer.
I know that if I want to get Captain Montgomery out of here alive, I can’t let him out of my sight.
“I’m coming, too,” I say, closing the distance.
“Your services are not required for the interrogation.”
The commander looks directly at me. I can tell my request has him confused and not in a good way. He’s wondering why the hell I’m interested in Montgomery’s welfare. I need to think fast.
“Oh, not after all the trouble I went through and all the bullshit the Terran Armada put me through—if you think for one minute I am going to miss the opportunity to see the famous Captain Montgomery suffer, you’re wrong. Besides, do you have any idea how valuable he is? I’m not letting that asset out of my sight.”
I see the Commander nod accepting my requests and my reasons for it.
“Very well, Ms. Grayson, you may attend the interrogation; however, leave your weapon here.”
I shrug, handing the rifle to one of the Tyreesians. Then I follow the interrogator as he leads Captain Montgomery out the door and down a hall.
We don’t walk far.
The Tyreesian sits Captain Montgomery in a chair, locking down his ankles and wrists.
And then he opens his black box and selects a long thin rod. Not good. I’m familiar with this tool—I’ve used it a few times.
But the part that bothers me the most is that the only time you bring out this ugly bit of tech is when you’re not planning on playing with your guest for too long—
which tells me that I’m going to have to watch closely or Captain Montgomery isn’t going to make it out alive.
He turns the tool on and I hear it power up. I realize that the chair Captain Montgomery is fastened in is made completely of metal. A perfect electrical conductor.
“Where is the defector that carries the secrets of our mass transport system?” asks the Tyreesian.
“I have no idea and it wouldn’t matter if I did. If we have her, then you’re not going to be able to get her back,” Captain Montgomery states.
A slight groan escapes from Captain Montgomery as the torturer touches the tip of the picana to manacle on his left wrist.
“You know where they have taken her,” he presses.
“Shangri-La.” Captain Montgomery says through gritted teeth.
“What are the coordinates of Shangri-La?” the Tyreesian asks, not understanding the cultural significance.
“In the system next to Disneyworld,” he replies again, referring to the long dead amusement park on Earth that received one of the first direct nuclear hits of the Third World War. I mean, these Tyreesians think they have the market on brutality? We threw nuclear missiles at each other – at our own children, not less than 300 years ago.
The Tyreesian stands placing the picana to Captain Montgomery’s arm, holding it there until he starts to scream.
“Stop it! What the hell are you doing?” I exclaim.
The Tyreesian glares at me.
“If you don’t have the stomach for this, leave. You wanted to come, so shut up and let me do my job,” he finishes. Then, almost out of retaliation for my interruption, he presses the tip of the tool to Captain Montgomery’s other arm, once again holding it there until he’s satisfied with the level of screaming. He stops. Captain Montgomery is panting heavily.
“You know if you kill him, you’ll lose the most valuable bargaining chip you have now with the Terran Armada. They will do anything to get him back in one piece, so you need to make sure you can deliver him in one piece.”
I get another glare from the Tyreesian.
“Who cares about bargaining? We have everything we need,” he says to me.
I feel a jolt of panic, but I keep my voice steady.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“We don’t need anything from the Terran Armada except for its defeat. Until we annihilate them I cannot think of a more significant blow we can deliver than announcing to them that we have killed their war hero, the famous Captain Jeryl Montgomery. Not only did we kill him, but we made him suffer first.”
He smiles.
Shit, shit, shit. This is not going as planned. I need to think up something new.
“The only reason you have him is because of me,” I say.
“Really? And that changes what I am going to do to him how?”
I can tell I’m really getting under this guy’s skin.
Good.
Angry people don’t always think clearly. He’s getting irritated that a Terran is telling him what to do—especially a female Terran.
“Yes, because if you’re not going to use him to bargain, then I will.”
“How exactly is that going to happen? Do you think my commander will just let you walk out of here with him? You’re lucky that we are allowing you to continue breathing.”
Fuck.
The guy has a point. He laughs at the look of resignation on my face, then starts tapping on different parts of Captain Montgomery with the picana.
Each scream becomes a backbeat to my thoughts…
The defector is gone. She escaped.
Zhang is dead, but he completed his mission, just not the one the Tyreesian wanted him to do. For my part, I have one-half of the matter teleporter safely tucked away in the cargo hold we left behind that’s hopefully impounded by the Terran Armada.
Captain Montgomery is panting. The Tyreesian hasn’t asked him any questions for awhile now. It’s like what he said, there’s really no need for it. I was wrong when I thought their desire to use him to bargain would outweigh their desire for revenge.
The chance to hurt the man responsible for screwing up so much of their plans is too much temptation to resist.
If I don’t intervene, Captain Montgomery is never making it out of this ship.
I need to act quickly.
I have a sudden inspiration.
“Fine,” I huff, “but if you’re going to kill him and therefore deprive me of any benefits I might get, can I have some fun too?”
I deliver my most wicked grin.
“You ever used one of these before?” he says holding up the picana.
“Yes, as I matter of fact, I have,” I say walking closer to him. He appraises me anew; I think I see respect forming in his eyes.
“Here,” he says, “Just make sure you don’t finish him off too soon.”
I step up, taking the picana in one hand, careful where I place my fingers.
“Oh don’t worry about that,” I say holding the picana vertical to my body.
I take a deep breath. This isn’t the smartest thing I can do, but then again, the smartest thing isn’t always the right thing.
Oh well.
Hefting in my hand, I turn, smacking the Tyreesian full in the face with the rod. He goes back and down, hand coming up to his gushing nose.
“He’s not finished, but you sure as fuck are.”
I take this moment to get Captain Montgomery out of the chair. He’s hurting, but I pull him up.
“Can you stand?”
He nods, coughing, then straightens up as I step back.
I pick up the picana, walk over and yank the Tyreesian torturer to his feet.
“Now you’re the bargaining chip,” I say to him.
I turn to Captain Montgomery. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 22
Jeryl
I find myself once again confused by Ms. Grayson. She’s calm, cold and even ruthless, but that doesn’t entirely explain the reason she’s freed me…unless she’s going to make good on that threat to use me as a bargaining tool.
Right now I’m following her lead as we find our way back to the room with the teleporter. She has the picana inches away from the Tyreesian interrogator’s throat, just a bit below one ear. We’re making good time and before long we’re walking right back into the teleporter room. There are only two Tyreesian engineers in there now.
“Step away from the teleporter or this guy gets some electro-shock therapy,” says Ms. Grayson. Both Tyreesians look at her in horror.
“What are you doing?” demands one of them.
“I told you that Captain Montgomery was my asset and since rocks for brains here thinks its more fun to torture him to death, well, that’s not happening, not when I can get paid handsomely for delivering him safely back to the Terran Armada.”
Both Tyreesians begin yelling at the same time.
“—how can you?”
“You’ll die for this betrayal!”
“We won’t let you go!”
“Oh really,” says Ms. Grayson, as she casually presses the tip of the picana into the Tyreesian’s flesh. You can hear the tiniest buzz as it connects, and after what seemed like hours of torture—I can’t help but flinch a bit.
However, I also can’t help but take some delight in the torturer getting a taste of his own medicine.
The Tyressian begins to howl as the pain builds.
“Stop! Stop! We will let you leave.”
“Send us back through to the other matter transport. Once we—as in all of us—arrive safely, I’ll send him back,” says Ms. Grayson.
The Tyreesians look at one another and nods. The three of us squeeze on to the teleporter. I take a deep breath. Ms. Grayson is taking us on a crazy ride, but for some weird reason, I trust her.
I’d say I have bad taste in women, but Ashley is the proof that’s not the case. Besides, this isn’t romantic—though it is intimate.
I’ve had a chance to get close to her physically (can’t be helped when you’re literally being held against a person’s body and a part of me thinks maybe I’m figuring her out too.)
For one thing, I’m not buying the one-dimensional merc for hire bit. She’s more than that. Maybe, just maybe, there’s more to her than meets the eye.
The question is: whose side is she on?
Logic says she’s on her side. Who isn’t?
She released me and took the Tyreesian as a hostage instead; however, that could just be self-serving. As much as the term “war hero” makes me nauseous, she’s not wrong; Terran Armada is going to bring its best men and women to rescue me.
And that means it’s a big bounty for whoever liberates me.
So, if that’s her end game, then making sure I get out alive makes sense.
But like the first time I met her in her holding cell, something about that doesn’t ring true. Again, it’s just a hunch, but I think I have good instincts. Well, at best she hasn’t killed me thus far.
So my gut’s right about that.
Now the bigger question is given that I’m Captain Jeryl Montgomery, am I going to sit here and let her make all the decisions?
No.
Anika Grayson is clever and dangerous, but bottom line is, as a leader and as a commander, I need to use those assets to my advantage.
Right now, the Terran Armada most likely has the defector and a half of the transport device.
I need to convince Anika Grayson a.k.a No One that we need to go after the bigger fish while we’re still close to the pond.
“Ms. Grayson—,”
“Don’t call me that,” she says, narrowing her eyes at me like I should know better.
“Fine,” I say. “No One, we have a chance to come back with more than just a Tyreesian interrogator.”
She looks at me guardedly.
“What do you mean?” she asks.
“I mean, having a defector in our possession is one thing.”
The Tyreesian interrogator growls, “That traitor will die!” earning him an elbow to the face from No One.
“The conversation doesn’t include Tyreesian shit-for-brains,” she snarls, then looks at me.
“You were saying?”
Her casual brutality never fails to disturb, but I continue.
“So, we have a defector and we have half of one of the transports.”
No One nods.
“What if we had all three pieces?”
She looks at me seriously considering what I’m saying, but then she shakes her head.
I look at No One.
“I’m talking about taking the ship.”
She furrows her brows and I can tell she’s thinking about it.
“That sounds noble,” she says. “But noble doesn’t get me paid.”
“It can,” I say, smiling. “As you said I’m worth a lot to the Terran Armada.”
“So maybe I just take you and shit-for-brains here as my collateral for some nice treatment, nice credits and a chance to walk away. Why should I work harder, risk more when I can already offer you to the highest bidder?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do. But more importantly, you like to win. If we can get the Tyreesian ship, well, I’d call that a big win.”
She looks at me suspiciously then rolls her eyes.
“Alright,” she sighs quietly. So quiet, only I can hear.
And that’s the point the Tyreesian hostage decides he’s had enough.
Being four feet, his mouth is close to No One’s arm. He swirls.
And bites.
The momentary loss of control is enough to plunge the transporter room into total chaos.
The Tyreesian makes a run for it as soon as he sees an opening. No One fires, while other Tyreesians scatter. She turns to them and coldly fires again, hitting them in the back. I watch as they crumple.
She chases the interrogator, cornering him in a room down the hall.
“Hey!” says No One while she points the gun at the interrogator who just glares at us as he catches his breath. “How’re we gonna pull this taking over the ship thing off?”
I take a deep breath. “Here’s my idea: I fly the ship right within range of the Terran weapons on Perseus and signal Armada, then the Tyreesians on board will have to surrender and we’ll have the ship. It’s a win-win.”
No One stares at me with shock.
Yeah. That was probably not the best plan.
But it’s all I got.
It’s time to go all-in.
Chapter 23
No One
“You want to fly this ship—a Tyreesian ship, let me remind you—into the middle of the Armada?” I ask, incredulous.
“It’s daring, I admit.” Captain Montgomery replies.
“Daring?” I scoff. “I can think of more appropriate words. Stupid springs to mind.”
The torturer watches us argue.
“You’re not going to get out of this, you know,” he says. He draws a breath to say more, but subsides when Montgomery glares at him.
Taking my arm, the captain pulls me a few steps down the corridor with him.
“He’s probably right,” he mutters, once we’re out of our captive’s earshot.
“We’re bottled up in here.”
I brush his hand off.
“Oh, come on. We have a teleporter!”
“No, you don’t!” The Tyreesian fucker hisses, dashing to the teleporter and quickly running his fingers over the panel, tapping it in a frenzy.
“Fuck!” Jeryl whispers, moving fast and planting the sole of his boot on the torture’s back, kicking him back against the wall. Then, he looks at the teleporter, the lines on his forehead deepening. He goes down on one knee, running his hands over the small electronic panel with all the necessary information and coordinates. “Now we’re really boxed in.”
“How’d you ever get to be a hero with that defeatist attitude?” I soften the gibe with a grin and after a moment he grins back.
I blink twice.
“Call it a character flaw.”
He looks back at where the torturer sat against the corridor wall.
“I guess he’ll know how to readjust the settings, just as how he knows to screw it up.”
“If he does, he’s not going to want to tell us.”
“No...” He cracks his knuckles thoughtfully. “I wonder if he’s susceptible to his own methods?”
I nod slowly.
“Well, if you want to try to...persuade him, I can just kind of stand guard down at the end of the corridor,” I say.
“Yeah, I’ll have a word with him.”
He walks back to where our hostage sits and crouches down beside him. I don’t see what he does, but a moment later the Tyreesian yelps.
“So now we see what it comes down to,” I hear the torturer gasp. “Violence. It’s always like that with you Terr—ow!”
“As if you never did anything underhanded or violent,” Montgomery says. “You’ve got several more of those I can break if I need to.”
“You’re victimizing me!” the Tyreesian growls.
“Don’t make me laugh. You Tyreesians foment unrest wherever you go. Why do you do it? We know your influence was behind that whole Homefront debacle on Sonali, when the Noble Marshal was shot.”
“Surely you didn’t think the Sonali were acting on their own?” He sneers. “Those amateurs.”
“No, we didn’t think...but it’s good of you to affirm it for us.”
I hear distant shouts and the clanging of booted feet on metal flooring.
“We don’t have time for this,” I say, glancing around at the two of them. “We’ll be having company soon, and plenty of it.”
What I don’t tell him is that I have activated a portion of my nanite-infused brain and set it to work on the problem of readjusting the teleportation device. I’m no electronics genius, but my nanites have all sorts of interesting data stored away in their matrix, and what they lacked they can retrieve by remotely accessing the ship’s computer network. This they have been busily doing since my double-blink activation signal set them working.
The torturer, cradling his injured hand with his other one, grins at us. Perspiration courses down his face. I know he is in great pain, and that doesn’t bother me one bit.
“They’re coming,” he says with satisfaction. He nods at the teleportation hardware.
“You don’t know how to assemble that into a working...”
He trails off as I look down at the panel and press my index finger against the screen, following the best guesses supplied by my nanites.
“What do you think?” I ask Captain Montgomery once the screen lights up, Tyreesian characters flashing there.
“Looks like it might work, huh?”
The Tyreesian chews his lips.
“You’re just screwing around with it,” he says, not sounding convinced.
“Yeah, what do you think you’re doing, No One?” Montgomery demands. “You can’t possible have figured it out that fast.”
“Yeah, well, you better hope that I got it right, Captain.” I say.
“Why is that?”
Shouts; louder, nearer.
I switch on the power.
“Don’t do that!” our hostage yells. “You’ll kick us out into space!”
“I don’t think so,” I say, smiling sweetly at him. “Hope not.”
I calibrate the controls once more, double checking my work. Everything’s in Tyreesian, but I can read that quite well. The ACQUIRE subroutine pops up on the little screen.
Closest terminal, I think. Pick it up! I’m sweating now, too.
Come on, come on!
TARGET ACQUIRED, the screen reads. I sag back with relief, and aim the aperture at Montgomery. “Happy landings, sir,” I say, and pressed ENABLE.
A quantum weirdness of probability envelops him. He might be here, he might be there, he might be anywhere. He’d be drawn to the closest operational teleportation terminal, and that, I’m betting, has to be the one on my beat-up old shitbox of a cargo freighter, still in impound.
Along with its nasty cargo.
“Goddammit, Grayso—” His voice cut off as he vanishes.
I grin at the Tyreesian’s pale face. “Guess it worked, huh?”
“You were lucky,” he growled. “But that’s as far as your luck goes...you can’t use the thing on yourself.”
He grins nastily at me.
“Someone has to work the controls. You can’t do that and still be in range of the effect.”
“Oh, I know. I wasn’t planning on going anywhere just yet,” I say. As I speak, I put the teleporter carefully to one side and back away from it.
In a few moments, this Tyreesian and his friends, who are only a corridor away from us, will be too busy to be thinking about me or their stolen hardware—if Jeryl Montgomery has his wits about him.
Meanwhile, I’m following the captain’s movements in my mind. He has materialized near the transport unit onside my impounded ship...takes maybe ten seconds to realize what I’ve done, maybe another ten to fifteen to figure out what his only logical course of action could therefore be...and another minute and a half to put it into action. That gives me maybe thirty seconds, now, to prepare myself.
He’s leaving the transfer unit on...it’s warm...he’s giving the AI the orders now...
The Tyreesian guards appear at the far end of the corridor, weapons trained on me. I put my hands in the air and paste a disappointed expression on my face.
“Secure this cursed bitch!” barks the torturer.
The guards head confidently for us—and that’s when another cloud of quantum weirdness appears in the corridor, shapes moving around inside it. They grow distinct as the focus narrowed; and suddenly fifteen hungry Predatory Mega Floras pop into existence in the space between me and the Tyreesians. They mill around for a few seconds, obviously disoriented. Being essentially ambulatory seedpods, their nervous systems are primitive. But they’ll snap out of their fog in moments.
“Great Mother!” one of the guards yells.
Captain Montgomery, you are my hero, I think. The shouts attract the PMFs and I leg it out of there faster than a scalded dog. He’s done it: gotten the ship to release the clamps on the PMFs’ cargo container, freeing the voracious little bastards who, attracted by the teleporter’s heat, charged into its field and were transported here, to a Tyreesian vessel full of warm bodies.
The Seyshallian Predatory Mega Flora are blind, but their infrared sensory antennae make them every bit as capable as bats or deep-sea fish, and much more deadly to their prey. They leap for the Tyreesians, who open fire. I might have been hit but I’m already around the corner.
I have to get to the command deck before the PMFs finish cleaning up the Tyreesians and take a wider interest in other possible edibles—me, in other words.
The corridor I’m in leads aft, to the engines. Nothing back there will help me; I have to get to the command deck—and the PMFs are between me and it. They are fast and deadly, but I’m faster—if not quite as deadly. I kick into overdrive and shoot back around the corner, moving so fast that there is plenty of time for the gory scene before me to sear itself into my brain.
The PMFs, essentially immune to stunners and bullets even while being torn to pieces, have ripped through the unfortunate Tyreesians like razors through marshmallows. It isn’t a pretty sight.
The deck is slick with Tyreesian blood and I have to use my momentum to run up and along the corridor walls to avoid the mess. Once on the other side I slow down to attract the PMFs’ attention. For a moment, they don’t notice me.
I whistle.
“Hey, shitbags!” I yell.
That gets them going, and they shoot after me. I run, faster than an unenhanced human but by no means as speedily as I could manage on nanite-power, drawing them along toward the command center. I have to get that place cleaned out.
Chapter 24
No One
“Wow!” I blink twice, flipping my metabolism to hyperspeed. It’s comparatively easy, then, to extricate myself from the clutching vines and spiny leaves wrapped around my arms and legs.
Flashing a few dozen yards down the corridor, I drop back down to normal human velocity. The PMFs mill around stupidly, unable to process my abrupt disappearance.
I sigh.
“Hey, guys?”
I snap my fingers to attract their notice. “Over here.”
They give the fruit equivalent of a double-take, then charge after me as I lead them toward the nerve center of the ship.
With the PMFs a hundred feet or so behind me, I skid to a stop and pound on the command center door.
“Open up!” I scream in flawless Tyreesian, as hysterically as possible.
“The ship’s been boarded! We’re under attack!”
“Great Mother!” someone says as the door slids open. “What is going on out th—”
A blood-chilling scream follows as the PMFs behind me burst into the room.
I‘m already twenty-five yards away, doing my wall-running trick. I thud down to the floor and duck into a lavatory to catch my breath. Horrible squealing, slurping noises echoes down toward me from where the besieged Tyreesians fight grimly for their lives.
I can’t help but admire the doomed crew. They are my avowed enemies, but even so they’re no cowards. The PMFs, bristling with spines and thorns along their vine-like tendrils, come on in wave after wave.
I dash as far aft as I can, and come to a halt at the hatch leading to Engineering. I lean against it with one hand, panting. Sweat drips from my brow, spotting the deck plates.
Damn those stinking PMFs!
They saved my ass, but now the ship is infested. They have no ideological will against me, unlike the Tyreesians—but they are even more eager to kill me. At least the Tyreesians didn’t want to eat me. The PMFs are determined to spray me with their seeds, which would burrow into my skin and germinate, using my flesh as food for the next generation.
I shudder. I’ve seen and experienced a lot of horrible stuff in my line of work, but being parasitized by an ambulatory plant would definitely be a low point.
I cautiously make my way back to the place where I’d been standing when I teleported Captain Montgomery out of the ship. The machine is still stacked against the corridor wall. The rampaging PMFs ignored it in favor of warm-blooded prey. The priceless device is back in my hands once more, but I’m still stuck on the Tyreesian ship. I will have to fly it to the Armada and deliver my prize in person.
The Tyreesians are no longer a threat, although it is possible that one or two might be hiding in a cabin or a closet somewhere. I didn’t think they would be able to hinder me—but the damn PMFs could. As far as I know, they are ripping through the Tyreesians in the command center. And, like it or not, that is where I’m going to have to go if I wanted to seize control of the ship.
I can just make out my blurry reflection in the ceramic wall material lining the corridor. My hair is a mess. I tug it into place, because facing death or not, looks matter. I brush off my clothes as best I could and set out for the command center.
I can hear the PMFs chirruping to one another ahead of me. There are no Tyreesian sounds, so I assume the crew is dead. Moving cautiously and as noiselessly as I can, I inch my way to the cross corridor and slowly lean out so that I can catch a glimpse of what’s happening further along.
A puddle of blood pools on the deck outside of the door I’d pounded on not long before. The PMFs have obviously made short work of the Tyreesians, who’d been caught off-guard. I edge back into hiding and think about it.
As far as I can tell, all the damn things are in there, feasting on Tyreesian bodies. Every so often I can hear a rattle as one of their filthy seed pods burst, sending dozens of little crawling seedlings out in search of flesh. It’s the most gruesome sound I have ever heard, innocuous in itself, but nauseating because I know what it means.
I push the thought away and try to reason my way through my dilemma. I’m trapped on the ship with the PMFs, but the inverse is also true: the PMFs are bottled up with me.
All I have to do is to figure out a way to kill them without harming the controls I need to fly the ship.
“Yeah, that’s all,” I mutter to myself. “A walk in the park.”
The problem is, the fuckers are attracted to warmth, and the control room, with all its wiring and LEDs and computers and such, make a warm little nook for them. They won’t leave it, especially since they have a food supply in there.
Oh!
I slowly knock the back of my head against the corridor wall. That’s it.
I know how to incite them to move.
I slip away and find the nearest ventilator duct. I jimmy it open, and hey, presto; I have access to the ship’s utility core. It’s cramped and I can’t get far, but I don’t need to—there are control nexi everywhere in a starship’s utility core—built in redundancy, making it easier for routine maintenance and for repairs to be made. Accidents do happen, and when they do, you don’t want to have to crawl for twenty yards to get to a diagnostic terminal.
All I need to do is to hack into the ship’s environmental controls and change the thermostat settings to cold—very, very cold.
Thanks to my nanites, I’m able to whip through the menus, and in moments I hear the telltale sound of air conditioning coming online. The sweat dries on my face, and even before I crawl all the way back to my entry point I’m starting to shiver a bit.
Now, for the second part of the plan: a secondary heat source.
Best place for that? The galley.
As far as cooking goes, I’m good with eggs and that’s about it—but I do know how to put a pot of water on for spaghetti. I dash to the galley, yank out all the pots I can find, fill them with water from the ship’s supply and set them on the electric plates, then crank the temp all the way up. The PMFs will eventually sense the heat, but I need them to do it sooner rather than later.
This is the part of my plan that I like the least.
I open the door to the galley and zip out toward the command center—pausing only to grab myself a spacesuit from the shuttle deck and tug it on. I’ll be needing it soon.
Now safely insulated from the cold, I run for the command center. The PMFs don’t notice me right away. I switch on the suit’s lights and its external speakers.
“Hey, assholes!”
That grabs their attention. They boil out of the control room in pursuit. I easily outdistance them, making sure to peel off down a side corridor once they get in range of the heat pouring out of the galley. Unable to fight the tropism ruling them, they zombie their way into the galley and cluster lovingly around the stove.
Bingo: got ‘em. It’ll take them a while to break free of the heat’s spell. I go to the command center.
The place is a mess. I push Tyreesian bodies away from the controls, wipe blood off with my sleeve, and with my nanites to guide me, tap into the main computer. It takes me less than a minute to menu my way to the ship’s emergency systems.
There’s nothing more dangerous aboard a space vehicle than fire. This brutal fact goes all the way back to the earliest days of the space program, when three astronauts died when their Apollo capsule caught fire while it was undergoing testing. They were in an oxygen environment, and oxygen is very good at supporting combustion.
Lesson learned. It never happened again; and now, centuries later, each and every starship is equipped with tanks of compressed argon to smother any fire than may break out. They tend to be clustered in places with heat: the ship’s command center, for example...and the galley.
I seal the galley and flood it with argon. The PMFs can’t survive in a 100% argon atmosphere. It will take them a while to die, but they will. Meanwhile, the spacesuit will protect me if I have to venture anywhere near the scene.
Feeling rather satisfied with myself, I lie in a course and activate the ship’s engines. Acceleration pushes me gently back into my seat. Thanks to my nanites, I’m a decent pilot whether I’m at the controls of a Terran Union vessel or one belonging to the Tyreesians. All I have to do now is to get the teleportation hardware back to the Armada and hand it over, and my mission, or this part of it, will be completed.
But there’s something I’ve forgotten—and I’m about to be forcibly reminded of it.
Chapter 25
No One
When it comes to flying the Tyreesian craft, my piloting abilities aren’t in question. But having the ship’s helm and navigating are two different things; and when you factor in emergency conditions (like having a shipload of bloodthirsty super-carrots), stitches can get dropped. So here I am, guiding a clunky Tyreesian vessel on a course meant to converge with the Armada. Nothing suspicious about that.
There’s a time-honored tradition among terrorists having to do with what used to be called IEDs: Improvised Explosive Devices. These are often buried roadside bombs, but can also be delivered by vehicles that crash through roadblocks or perimeter fences and are then detonated by the driver. No base commander with half a brain lets an unauthorized or unidentified vehicle anywhere near base personnel.
Same thing for ship commanders. IDs are triple-checked and even then, unless you know the incoming pilot personally, there’s always a little residual suspicion. Especially in wartime. We aren’t currently at war, but a bad one ended relatively recently, and security remained tight everywhere in the Terran Union. Then you factor everything that just happened today.
It’s partly my fault; I’m distracted by the video feed from the galley. The PMFs are flailing around in there, knocking pots of boiling water off the electric burners and generally making a hell of a mess. This amuses me; I hope they cook themselves. But meanwhile I have forgotten about security.
I’m forcibly reminded when the inter-ship channel crackles to life.
“This is TUS Grace Marcus, Captain Lavakusha Sood in command, contacting incoming the Tyreesian collective ship. Identify yourself at once and state your purpose, please.”
A perfectly appropriate request for identification, from the Armada’s flagship.
“Um, this is Commander Anika Grayson from Terran Armada Intelligence in command.”
I remove my spacesuit’s headpiece so that he can see me clearly.
A pause, and I can hear Captain Sood’s surprised intake of breath.
“Who did you say you are?”
I lick my lips. “Anika Grayson, sir. Is this a secure channel?”
“Listen, Grayson, or whoever you claim to be, I—yes, it’s a secure channel. What the hell is going on here? I need proper identification from you. We have too much shit going on today for me not to blow you off the sky.”
I reel off my serial number. “Sir, I have been on a classified mission to acquire some extremely valuable experimental hardware for the Union. I need you to contact TAOIC right away—they’ll verify my identity.”
Sood, a handsome man with a fine head of thick silver hair, looks narrowly at me out of the screen.
“You’re sweating,” he says slowly.
“Well, yay-yuh...I have a ship full of dead Tyreesians and there’s carnivorous plants in the galley,” I say; then I wish I hadn’t.
“You have what? There’s what?”
Fucketty fuck!
“Sir, please, this is a critical. I really need you to get through to Intelligence Command, and tell them—”
He holds up a hand.
“I’m not telling anyone anything until I get this crazy story of yours straight,” he says firmly. “What was your serial number, again?”
Shit shit shit.
I see from my scanners that the Grace Marcus was painting me with targeting lasers. That isn’t good.
“Listen, Captain,” I say, “let me patch through the video feed from the galley. You can see the flora, and the Tyreesian bodies.”
I glance at the galley video, then go cold. The galley’s empty. The PMFs have smashed through the door and are roaming the ship, looking for prey.
“Uh, belay that,” I say. “Just check the general feed...the things are all over the place.”
“I want to know what the hell is going on in that ship!” Sood shouts, getting red in the face.
I say, “Tell you what—I know you have Captain Jeryl Montgomery there on the surface of Perseus. He teleported over not long ago. He’ll vouch for me. If you—”
“How could you know where Montgomery is?” he asks suspiciously.
Oh shit fuck fuck, how obtuse is this twod going to be?
I suck in a deep breath.
“I know he’s because I teleported him there myself,” I say in as measured a tone as I could manage. What I really wanted was to reach through the screen and slap the guy.
“You did what?”
He looks around at someone off-screen.
“I’ll need some verification of this,” he said. “Gibbs—where’s Montgomery?”
An alert beeps unobtrusively to my left. I glance at the sensor screen and gasp.
Tyreesian ships. Coming to the border.
Turning back to Captain Sood, I say, “Sir, I’m going to have half the Tyreesian fleet up my ass in about a minute and a half unless you let me make my approach.”
Another alert beep—and I see several Union ships moving to intercept me. I’m the object of affection of two squadrons, neither one of which has any love for the other.
Fucketty shit fuck shit with balls on top!
“You just hold on, ma’am,” he says. “Let me get this straightened out. I’ve got an expert here who was attending the Four Powers Summit, and I’ll consult him if you don’t mind.”
“Yeah, sure, call in whoever you want.”
Another figure comes into camera view at the Captain’s station: - oh for fuck’s sake. Another fucking Tyreesian!
I groan. What’s he doing there? On board an Armada vessel?
“This is Leader Khargona, of the Tyreesian Navy. He’s serving as a military liaison during the Summit,” the Captain of the Grace Marcus says.
“Well, well,” the Tyreesian says in his oily voice. “A human female, piloting a Tyreesian ship. Now that’s a serious infraction of the rules, I’d say, Captain Sood.”
“That’s what I thought, sir.”
Khargona scowls. “There is a fair bit of advanced weaponry on that ship. What are you meaning to do with it, female?”
“Bringing it in,” I say as evenly as possible. “This is now Terran Union property.”
“You are a common thief,” say Khargona. “I demand that you destroy that ship, Captain Sood.”
“But sir, that’s your ship.”
“Indeed, and the knowledge it represents is priceless to my people. Any attempt to hijack or steal it represents a violation of treaties now in place,” Khargona says smoothly. “I cannot allow that to happen. It would threaten the peace between our two great civilizations.”
The face of Jeryl Montgomery appears in a pop-up window to one side of the main screen. I can tell he’s talking from the communication room in the Terran Union Administrative building.
“Stand down, Capain Sood,” he says. “I vouch for Anika. She’s got a vital piece of technology that’ll be crucial to the well-being of the Union. You’ve got to let her dock.”
“Vouching for someone isn’t exactly SOP,” Sood says coldly. “I’m sorry, Captain, but I can’t do that on your say-so.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Montgomery says.
“For once I agree with you, Captain,” says Khargona. He spits out a string of syllables in a tongue I don’t recognize.
Immediately the Eskyuk Tushav’ch quivers and I hear a series of thuds as bulkhead doors snap shut, isolating the various sections of the ship from each other.
Fuckarama. What has the fucking Tyreesian done?
A voice comes over the freighter’s internal commlink: “Self-destruct sequence initiated,” says a calm female voice. “Five minutes and counting.”
“Captain,” Khargona says coldly to Captain Sood, who’s frozen in his chair, “I advise you to tell your ships to stand down. I have remotely activated the Tushav’ch’s self-destruct mechanism with an emergency override.”
My eyes widen. I know why he’s done it, of course; to prevent the second section of the teleportation unit from falling into Terran hands. That he’d sacrifice his own people, who are now on a final approach to the Tushav’ch in order to board it and take me into custody, matters not a jot to him.
I sag in my seat. Where’s the damned bomb? I know where such devices are normally placed on Terran ships, but not on this bucket. I blink twice and at hyper-speed access the sea of data in which my nanites swam, frantically searching for any and all references to Tyreesian self-destruct protocols.
My mind is now racing as fast as the digital net connecting the nanites. It’s a horrible feeling, and I feel my body kick into “fight or flight” mode, squirting adrenaline and cortisol into my central nervous system as the stress mounts. My endocrines will be out of whack for days after this—assuming I survive the blast.
If that bomb is anywhere in the ship, I’ll have to fight my way through the PMFs to get to it. Then my nanites flag an encrypted file, crack it, and project it onto my retinas.
The explosive device is outside the ship, buried in the outer hull.
I check the time remaining until the blast. Four minutes fifteen seconds. No worries; at hyperspeed, that is the equivalent of almost two hours. I’m sure I can disarm the thing in two hours.
Assuming the Tyreesians or the Terrans don’t start shooting at me.
I grab my head-piece and run out of the bridge at top speed.
I have to get to the outer airlock. The first problem is that the bulkheads are all closed, and I have to slow down to open them manually, one at a time, otherwise I’ll strip the runners and gears in the walls by yanking too hard on them. Slow and steady wins the race.
“Three minutes, forty-five seconds,” the computer says complacently.
“Shut up, bitch,” I growl, wiping sweat out of my eyes. When’s the last time these controls were lubricated?
Two doors, three doors. The outer airlock will cycle in thirty seconds; there’s no way to speed up the sequence.
“Two minutes, fifteen seconds until self-destruct.”
Last door!
Just as I finish turning the hand control, something whips into my peripheral vision and snatches my spacesuit’s head piece, which I’d put on the floor while working the door controls. A questing tendril from one of the PMFs! I turn to look, and see a dozen of them zeroing in on me.
“Give that back, asshole!” I yell, then dive through the opening doorway. The PMFs crowd into the gap, trying to get at me. The airlock is dead ahead. I blink twice and run for it.
The PMFs come to a relative halt, of course, as I shift into hyper speed. But they still have my headpiece: it’s somewhere in that twisted mass of vegetation. I shudder. I hate the things; I can’t bear the thought of digging into a pile of their slimy bodies.
I smack the airlock controls and watch as the thing began to close. At my current rate of speed, it will take ten relative minutes for that to happen.
Back in the “real world,” there’s a minute left until self-destruct.
People can survive in a vacuum for about 15 seconds before passing out from lack of oxygen to the brain. Being enhanced, I can do a bit better than that—maybe I can last a minute. At hyperspeed that will be maybe twenty relative minutes, which might be just long enough for me to find the bomb and disarm it.
I spend some time calming myself and hyperventilating, getting as much oxygen into my body’s cells as possible. The outer door cracks, and I feel the air being sucked out. At my rate of speed, it’s like a summer breeze. In real time, it would be almost explosive.
Explosive. Bad choice of words.
Outside the airlock I can hear—well, feel; I can’t hear anything now, as there’s no air to conduct sound—dull thuds as the PMFs try to hammer their way in. That isn’t going to happen; but I’m effectively trapped in here. The airlock has only one other exit, and that’s currently set to space. Even after I have the bomb defused, if I get the bomb defused, if I get safely back to the airlock and cycle it shut, I’ll still be trapped inside it.
That, however, is a problem for later.
The door is wide enough now. I step out.
Space is beautiful, in its way, if one has the luxury to enjoy it. By “luxury,” I mean sitting in a starship’s observation lounge with a stimulating beverage and a philosophical attitude in place.
Those things are in short supply just now. My spacesuit is magnetically charged, so I can use every part of it to stick to the ship’s outer hull. Plus, it has small emergency jets installed at the wrists and ankles, so if I accidentally come loose from the hull I can maneuver myself back into contact with it.
Space is also silent. Dead silent. I know that I’ll soon start bleeding from my nose, mouth, ears and eyes due to the lack of atmospheric pressure around me. Medically, I know precisely what will happen. They teach us well in the Academy, and Intelligence training is even more thorough. Sometimes being highly educated can be a disadvantage.
I inch along the hull toward the spot where the bomb is hidden. I know it’s just beneath the outer skin, with its charges aimed inward. Theoretically I can punch through the hull, grab the thing, and if I can’t disarm it quickly enough I can toss it far enough away that maybe the blast won’t kill me.
Maybe.
Five seconds, ten...forty seconds until self-destruction, my inner clock tells me.
There’s the spot! I kneel, bringing more of my “sticky” suit into contact with the hull, and dig my fingers into the metal. I can’t do this at hyperspeed because I’ll knock myself off the hull and into space and no one nearby will have a good day.
But the stars are smiling at me, because the thing is no bigger than a dinner plate and it’s right there, and I carefully extract it from its nest of diodes and look at it through ice-rimmed eyeballs.
Two buttons, one yellow, one blue. Beside them, an LED of strange blue shapes, each one getting smaller. Time ticking down.
Tyreesians use blue for danger. I push the yellow button.
The shapes on the display flash yellow and stop shrinking.
I’m cold, so cold...the device floats away from my nerveless fingers and ice closes in around my vision. I can’t breathe.
The darkness of space...
Chapter 26
No One
...and yet. there are dreams. Or, not dreams exactly, but impressions. Something, some consciousness, some spark of me is still receiving information from outside.
Some of them could be called memories: I hear my parents arguing, probably about money (that was the only thing they ever argued about) while I hid, afraid, in a closet listening. I’d been playing with my mother’s shoes. I could not have been more than three years old.
I loved her shoes, the different colors, the textures. The size alone of them was more than I could take in at that age. How could anyone have feet that big? It was impossible to think that my own feet might someday be that big.
And above me, her clothes: a Narnia of skirts, dresses, slacks...I loved being in Mommy’s wardrobe, being surrounded by all those things that smelled so comfortingly of her. But she and Daddy were arguing outside, and the air was closed...and cold, so terribly, bone-chillingly cold. And I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t breathe and it was after a school track meet. I had run my heart out but still came in third. The disappointment jabbed at me even through my gasps. I’d let the team down. We’d lost the regional. It was all on me. I leaned over with my hands on my knees and with the focus of exhaustion watched my sweat drip onto the dirt beneath my head.
The drops form the exact same pattern as when I’d shudder outside the bulkhead to Engineering. I stare down at them, wondering how that could be.
Strange radiation sluices through me, the outpourings of the star energizing a nebula not many light-years distant. Perseus’ atmosphere shielded the planet from the radiation, but out here in space—wait, what? Space? Yes, I am in space! Floating all but naked in space, and my nanites laboring to keep me alive, staving off cellular damage, trying to get oxygen to my organs, reducing my core temperature to slow my metabolism.
How long has it been? How many hours have I drifted helplessly out here, alternately lit and shadowed as my motionless body slowly rotated into and out of Perseus’ light? I’m dead now, or soon will be.
It is, I decide, peaceful. I no longer feel the cold. Like a mummy, I’ll be preserved here in space, desiccated, lifeless, drifting forever between the stars, a message to future space voyagers that my species existed once upon a time. They’ll wonder who I am, what I had been doing, how I had come to be floating sans protective headpiece here in the vacuum. Was I a criminal, tossed out the airlock? Was I a hero? Was I a careless idiot?
Shapes loom all around me. The gods of the galaxy, coming to harvest my soul. I never believed in them...never believed in a soul. Now all I know is the silence of space, a faint slug-slug-slug from my faltering heart, the brittle feel of the outer layers of my skin as they freeze and flake off.
All right, if this is it...if this is how I am to die...it ‘s okay. I can live with that. I would have chuckled at the feeble joke had I been able to. But the vast shapes around me loom closer, almost comfortingly, and I want them to gather me in and take me away to whatever unknown Valhalla awaited me. Even oblivion would be fine.
Everything slips away, and I’m dead.
* * *
Noises. Sounds, annoying sounds: rhythmic, a repetitive one-note beep beep beep worming its way into my awareness.
Go away, let me sleep. I’m dead, I don’t need this shit. Let a poor dead girl sleep, would you?
There’s a light out there. I swim toward it, slowly aware that there’s a tube down my throat.
Beep beep beep.
The tube is withdrawn. Surely they don’t mean for me to be conscious during the process? Thanks for nothing, nanites. You brought me back too soon.
Beep beep beep.
You can stop that now, please.
I open my eyes.
Mistake.
Harsh fluorescent illumination picks highlights off the fairings of any number of weapons pointed at me by a cadre of military-grade robots, all nicely polished gleaming steel with red and white carapaces. Numbers stenciled on them. Standard issue security iron.
Jeez, who did they think I was?
Someone steps out from behind one of the bots.
“No, don’t try to talk,” says Jeryl Montgomery. “Just relax.”
Seeing my eyes flick around, he says, “You’re in the TUS Seeker’s sick bay.”
He takes a seat on a plastic chair to one side. I am, I understand, lying in bed, hooked up to machines.
Guarded by military-grade security bots.
Beep beep beep.
“Nice work out there,” he says conversationally.
“You almost bit it, though...I’m sure you know that. You were out there for just over two minutes. A few seconds longer, and we wouldn’t have been able to save you.”
He smiles.
“As it was you were kind of a mess, Grayson. The docs don’t think there’s any serious tissue damage, but you’ve had a boatload of alveoli implanted into your lungs. That took a while, so they intubated you and kept you in an induced coma while they cleaned you up. Oh, and you lost a lot of skin. You’ll have full-body dandruff for a while, they tell me.”
He crosses his legs.
“So you’re under arrest.”
He tilts his head at the robots.
“Be a good girl—don’t give these things a reason to get tough with you. You’re in no shape to argue with them.”
I figure he’s right about that. I’m on the mend, but I won’t be running any races for a while...
I frown. I’d let the team down. We’d lost the regional.
Beep beep beep.
I try to access my nanites’ diagnostics to get a full run-down on my condition. I blink twice to get to the retinal menu.
A shock: nothing happened. I blink twice again. Still nothing.
They’re gone. My nanites are gone.
Montgomery watches me. He obviously understands what I’m trying to do, because he says, “Oh yeah. They had your little friends deactivated. You’re offline, Anika. You’re just too much of a threat with the enhancements.”
Beep beep beep.
This is going to take a while to integrate. I relax back into the pillow.
“I feel like hell,” I croak. “Under arrest?”
He nods.
“Crimes against the state,” he says. “I’m sorry. They think you’re a traitor. They intend to schlep you back to New Washington for trial, Anika. I’m sorry. They want to hang you out to dry.”
Then he smiles. “On the plus side, you saved my life—which they seem to regard as a good thing, I don’t know why—and delivered a fully integrated, working teleportation unit, not to mention a Tyreesian ship. And you have in addition embarrassed the hell out of the Tyreesians and made the Tyreesian delegation look like the festering deck-splat that they are. So there are points in your favor.”
“Good to hear,” I say. My raspy voice makes my attempt at sarcasm ineffectual, but Montgomery catches it. He reaches out and put a hand on my arm.
“I’ll do all I can for you,” he says. Leaning closer, he murmurs, “We’re not going to blow your cover. We can’t. But the Union is out for blood. They want a scapegoat for all the carnage at the summit, and you’re it.”
“That’s not fair,” I manage.
He leans back in his chair and sighs.
“You’ve worked for the government long enough to know that that word doesn’t exist in the official lexicon.”
True enough. I nod slowly. I glance at the security iron across the room. Without my nanites, I’m not going to get past those bots.
His pocket tablet beeps. He takes it out, reads the notice, and frowns.
“I have to go,” he said. “You’ve kicked up a lot of mud, Anika. I’ve got meetings all day about it.” He stands, brushes off his jacket, and steps past the security iron.
“I’ll try to look in on you later,” he says. “Take care.”
“Thanks.”
After he’s gone, I find myself exhausted by his visit and the brief conversation. They aren’t going to let me come in from the cold. Well, that’s no real surprise. It’s a risk we have to take as agents. There’s cover, and there’s cover.
Most of the Union pols will think I’m a traitor. It makes sense for them to be allowed to think that...if I’m caught and go down, they’ll think they’ve done some good. They can go home feeling proud of themselves, and brag to their constituents about what good little boys and girls they are. They’ll put on a nice show trial, convict me, and lock me up somewhere.
I’ll get time off for good behavior, no doubt; Jeryl’s people, who have to be in the know, probably won’t let me rot in jail very long...just long enough for the rumpus to die down. Then I’ll be paroled, and maybe given a new ID and sent off to live on some little planet somewhere out of harm’s way.
It makes me sick. I’m too tired to think about it. I cast a glance at the robots, who stand implacably. I won’t even be able to go to the bathroom without getting permission from the doctors, and even then, one of the bots would follow me in.
It’s too depressing.
I turn over and go to sleep.
Chapter 27
Terran Union New Report
TASH AVERY: Good evening, I’m Tash Avery. Welcome to the Solar Broadcasting System’s News Hour for Thursday, February 12, 2207. Tonight, Neo-Traditionalists win big in Maxia sector elections, promising big gains for investors. Allegations of meddling by agents of the Tyreesian meddling linger despite the resounding Unionist win.
We’ll talk with two Union officials about the election. Then, how thriving genetically modified wildlife could be a boon to tourism on Titan. In exonews, the Galactic Council pushes for economic intergrations, and the Drupadi roll out the red carpet for the Tyreesian delegation. All that and more, on tonight’s SBS News Hour.
* * *
AVERY: And now for the analysis of Ngano and L’blanc. That is Baldwin Ngano of the Solar Times, and syndicated columnist Harry Leblanc. Gentlemen, welcome back.
BALDWIN NGANO: Thank you, Tash.
HARRY L’BLANC: Thanks. Good to be here.
AVERY: So let’s talk about the Maxia Sector elections, Baldwin. Undercover work by Armada Intelligence seems to implicate the Tyreesians in a scheme to influence the election outcome.
NGANO: Well, it’s no secret that they wanted Sheila Simmons to be the winner. But I don’t think anyone expected they’d have the capability to hack into the Consolidated Party’s data network. But now it looks like...they did. It’s going to cause problems for them in the Council.
AVERY: (chuckles) That’s an understatement. Harry?
L’BLANC: It’s certainly given some context to other conflicts we’ve seen them involved in, for sure. But on the one hand—well, look, Tash. Whoever was going to win was going to be presiding over a ruined economy, with half of their population enduring a lowered standard of living after the war. You can see the economic justification for colluding with the Tyreesians. Simmons is known to be fairly outspoken on the subject of the Tyreesians. She’s said any number of times that we ought to bring them more closely under the Union’s auspices so that we can more quickly rebuild.
AVERY: But Terran Union officials don’t want that, do they?
NGANO: No. Nor do a lot of people on Earth and the colonies. We’re seeing a wave of dissent and unrest following the disclosures. And you can’t blame people for that. But you know the saying; ‘Tyreesian politics.’ Their own campaigns at home are so riddled with maneuvers and tricks and twists that it shouldn’t be a surprise that once they tried to tamper with the Maxia Sector election, the results would be almost unreal.
L’BLANC: That’s right, and it underscores, I think, Simmons’ naiveté. We simply can’t trust the Tyreesian Collective. We’ve seen them tampering in the Ascensionist issue on Sonali Prime, to cite only the latest example. I’m sure that next we’ll find they’ve been colluding with the Outer Colonies.
N’GANO: I don’t know about that, but I think it is clear that they’ve been working behind the scenes on Lomagon, fomenting dissent among the Kurta.
L’BLANC: You’re talking about the increased tensions in Kurta space?
N’GANO: I absolutely am, and if the Union doesn’t take steps to prevent it, it’s going to blow up into civil war. I believe we’ll see the Seyshallian Nation involved next.
AVERY: Harry, how likely do you think that the Tyreesian have been looking to manipulate the Kurta?
L’BLANC: Um, not very? (chuckles) The Kurta are a matriarchy, and we know very well how females are treated among the Tyreesians. The Kurta won’t allow themselves to be influenced by males of any species. I know the Collective has a lot of money to throw around, but if they think that’s going to help them, well...(chuckles again)
AVERY: They used human females to bomb the Lomagonian embassy on Irivani Prime.
L’BLANC: That was a one-off. They got lucky. It won’t happen again. I think we should make it clear the conflict between two interstellar empires is at its heart stupid and inglorious, a war that shows us humans, at least, as petty and spiteful.
N’GANO: And that whole thing on Perseus; that mess even roped in a Union intelligence operative.
AVERY: You’re talking about Anika Grayson.
N’GANO: I am, indeed.
AVERY: We’ll get to that in a minute, Harry. First, I want to ask you gentlemen about the disturbing allegations of sexual misconduct by the...
* * *
AVERY: Harry, Anika Grayson was sentenced this week to life in the penal colony on Kalselux. Some people are saying that’s overly harsh. Kaselux is just barely capable of supporting human life, with a frigid mean temperature and nearly three times the gravitational pull of Earth.
N’GANO: (scoffs) Not me. She’s a traitor. The name of ‘Anika Grayson’ is now as synonymous with treachery as Brutus from the Roman assassination of Julius Caesar or Benedict Arnold from the American Revolution. Or even Evan Chambers from the weaponized bubonic plague on San Diego. Even more so, I’d say, because she didn’t sell out her ruler or her country—she sold out her entire species.
L’BLANC: It’s hard to dispute the charges, but yeah—basically, exiling her on Kaselux is a death sentence. The prisoners there are forced to spend their entire lives inside sealed environment suits. They’ll never get out of them, because the things have been surgically melded to their flesh. Layers of skin, layers of metal, layers of organ tissue, layers of metal...they’ve become cyborgs.
I think it’s a lot of trouble and expense to go to just to punish someone when you could imprison them on Mars or even Venus and put them to work in a factory. So yes, I guess I do think Grayson’s punishment is a bit gratuitous.
AVERY: Even given that she allegedly returned some valuable information from her mission?
N’GANO: Tash, that’s hearsay, and I don’t know one legitimate source that confirms it. I think the only thing she did worth a damn was to rescue Jeryl Montgomery from the Tyreesians. Kudos to her for that, but she was working for the Tyreesians when she did it.
I don’t think she did it out of the goodness of her heart, but because she knew that if she didn’t we’d be looking at war again. And no one has the stomach for that now, not after what we had to live through with the Sonali not so long ago.
L’BLANC: Yeah I agree, but a lot depends on what other information comes out about that mission.
AVERY: You think there may be more disclosures, Harry?
L’BLANC: All I’m saying is, be on the lookout.
AVERY: Watch the skies, eh? Well, all right, we’re going to have to leave it there for now. Once again, you’ve been watching the commentary of Harry L’Blanc and Baldwin N’Gano, our regular Thursday commentators. Gentlemen, we’ll see you next week.
N’GANO: Thanks, Tash.
L’BLANC: Thank you.
Chapter 28
Jeryl
Viewed from orbit, Kaselux looks like it wants to be left alone. From here, it’s a long way to anywhere.
I sit in the ship’s command center, listening to the murmur of conversation among my crew. None of them wanted this duty. Hell, I don’t want it—but for different reasons.
My nose itches and I rub it. There’s a fine sheen of perspiration on my upper lip, which the gesture removes.
“It’s better than she deserves,” says the navigator, a tall African. He glances at me out of the corner of one red eye. I grimace but say nothing.
Kaselux is just about the most extreme environment in which a human can survive.
The air she breathes will support combustion, so she will be able to cook whatever she manages to glean from the land, but that won’t be much. Cooking will be a waste of time anyway, because all she has to do is to stuff any organic matter she finds on Kaselux’s inhospitable surface into the intake unit of her biosuit, and the suit’s systems will break it down and rearrange its compounds into ones compatible with human life. About as tasty as being on an IV drip, but it will sustain her indefinitely.
The planet has never undergone the evolutionary spasms common to most life-bearing worlds. There’s aquatic life, but nothing much more advanced than the sort of jawless fish that are common in the Silurian period on Earth.
A few species of arthropod-like insects have crawled out of the water. The few plants that have made the transition from the sea to the land hugged the coastline, forming tall, sculpted columns and mounds—stromatolites—comprised of layer after layer of cyanobacteria. The free oxygen in the air is the result of some four billion years of stromatolite survival.
Kaselux’s system is old, and located past the Rim, in what can almost be called intergalactic space. A red dwarf lights its surface with a wan light. Stars are visible in the Mars-like planet’s thin air even during the day. It is one of the most depressing worlds I have ever seen.
Grayson will spend the rest of her life here encased in a biosuit that will keep her alive and report on her whereabouts as she wanders the desolate world.
I swivel my seat around and stand. It’s time. Without a word to any of my crew, I leave the command center and head down to the sickbay.
Anika, disavowed by the TAIOC, has been shamed as a traitor and terrorist. In view of her having saved my life, I’ve volunteered to transport her to Kaselux personally, piloting a special small cruiser with a crew of only three others.
I pause outside the sickbay. I sigh. Condemned to endless solitude and silence, never to feel another human touch for the rest of her life...never to taste food, make love, smell a flower, pet a cat...never to feel the air on her skin...because she no longer has skin, simply a network of plastic sensors with a few patches of tissue here and there.
I shudder. It’s beyond imagining.
And her fellow exiles? The lowest of the low, the most depraved and unrepentant criminals in the galaxy, all, like her, sealed into biosuits and cast into Purgatory. Perhaps a dozen others overall, scattered across the face of Kaselux, isolated one from the other by electronic surveillance and proximity webs that will prevent them from even seeing each other, let alone conversing and perhaps planning an escape attempt.
Not that escape is possible from this place—unless it’s an escape into madness.
I stare glumly at the biosuit that’s going to house her. It’s bulky, insectile, the matte finish of its robotic carapace reflecting only diffuse highlights from the overheads. Staring blue-lensed eyes gaze unseeingly upward, and the suit’s “mandibles” are open.
The suit’s cranium is bare metal. Within it, her brain will endlessly review the crimes that have led her here.
. The door to the sickbay slides open.
“She will awaken in five minutes sir,” says the nearest bot. A medical AI is overseeing the process. I nod.
“Let’s get her to the shuttle,” I say quietly, not wishing to disturb the funereal atmosphere.
“At once.”
The medbot makes no move, but the lifters on the bed turned to green from amber and the bed slowly rolls out of Ops. I walk alongside it to the shuttle bay—barely more than a basement-sized space fully taken up by the small shuttle that will transport her down to the surface.
And a bloody good thing, I think, because if the teleportation tech she brought back was in general use the way it’ll be in about a year and a half, there’d be no way I could pull this off.
I watch the medical sensors on the bed reporting her gradual return to consciousness. That’s expected. There is, however, no way to know what her reaction will be when she finds out what’s going to be done to her. From what I‘ve heard, some people accepted it...over time.
Some don’t.
Unseen by the videos monitoring my progress with her unconscious form, I blink twice. Before leaving New Washington, I have been injected with a modified series of nanites that are capable of performing only one task. As soon as they accomplish this task, they break down into simple chemical compounds and will be flushed out of my body through my urinary tract.
The nanites now broadcast a coded message to the dormant receptors of Grayson’s own nanite enhancements. She will be awake now, and listening to a prerecorded file. All she has to do now is to follow instructions. I tense.
Her arm shoot out and grasps mine.
“Do what I say,” A voice says, “Or I’ll rip your arm off, see if I don’t.”
I know her nanites are back and she’s strong enough to do it.
“Okay, okay,” I say. “Calm down, Anika. I’m not going to—ouch!—do anything stupid. But you’re not getting out of this, you know.”
“We’ll see.”
We’re at the shuttle bay now, and I know that everyone on the ship can see I’m being held hostage. Suddenly she moves, releasing my arm and rising from the bed so quickly that she’s almost a blur.
The sickbay AI deactivated her nanites after we picked her up in space. But a few discreet conversations with Flynn got me what I needed to reactivate them.
“The medbots...they should have deactivated your nanites,” I say through clenched teeth. I hope it fools the Board of Inquiry when they review the security footage.
“Not enough. I still got them. Enough for me to take this chance.” She activates the shuttle’s airlock.
“It won’t work.” I feel perspiration break out on my forehead. “You’ve got nowhere to go, Anika.”
I watch her as she climbs into the shuttle and closes the hatch.
The shuttle’s speaker grates out a laugh. “I have a fucking spaceship right in front of me, Captain. With air, food and water. And again, my nanites have hacked your ship’s computers. You’ll find your weapons and propulsion systems are down for half an hour, long enough for me to get out of range.”
“Someone’s head will roll for this.”
“Maybe; but not mine, and probably not yours,” she replies.
“You better get out of the bay before the blast cooks you,” she says, and I hear a note of malicious cheer in her filtered voice.
I try one last warning.
“There’s nowhere to go except Kaselux! What’s the point? You were going there anyway.”
“Thanks for the tip.”
The airlock clangs shut and I hear the deep cough of the shuttle’s thrusters as they come online with their preliminary burn. I know that note; the mains will fire in less than ten seconds and she isn’t going to bother opening the bay’s outer doors. If I don’t want to be sucked out into space, I have to move.
And move I do, with moments to spare. The shuttle bay’s bulkhead clangs shut behind me as I dive through it, cutting of the roar of the mains.
I sag against the far wall of the corridor outside the bay. That was close. I get to my feet and am dusting myself off when the security detail burst into the corridor, weapons at the ready.
Shaking my head at them, I say, ruefully, “She’s gone. I want to know how this happened. I want to know who was responsible for programming those medbots. I want this followed right back to the manufacturer if need be!”
One of the guards is chewing his lips. He doesn’t look the least bit happy.
“What?” I snarl at him.
“There...” The man’s voice breaks. He clears his throat and tries again.
“A corvette—most likely space pirate,” he says. “Must’ve been cloaked somehow. Popped up right on the screens just now, and she slid into its bay, as slick as dammit.”
“She what? Holy jumping Judas!”
It’s all I can do not to burst out with a cheer. I can barely believe it. With a fake scowl pasted to my face I stalk back to my quarters, where I pour myself a shot of tequila and toast her successful getaway.
Sometimes things work out.
The Pax Aeterna Universe
Pax Aeterna is the name of the science fiction universe created by Trevor Wyatt. It explores humanity as it explores and grows in its journey into the stars, taking its place amongst other species in the universe. The series features around human conflicts, internal as well as those external.
Included you will find an excerpt from the Encyclopedia Aeterna.
Encyclopedia Aeterna Volume 1
Timeline of the Terran Union
2024: Formal treaty to set a 25 year term towards political integration between the United States, Canada, and Mexico in an extension of NAFTA. This was agreed to in the backdrop of The Accords of Expedition amongst member nation states of the European Union for greater political integration by 2040.
The first private spacecraft to carry passengers into space, and allow them to spend one week aboard a private space station operated and owned by the Taylor Corporation was launched. The passengers paid $3.5 million and there were 15. They were returned successfully to earth after a period of one week in space.
2025: Realizing that the integration between the United States, Canada, and Mexico would lead to a large superpower and with the addition of a greater political union between the member nations of the European Union the countries of Asia decided that only one course of action existed for them; a political union. The countries of China, India, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Malaysia decided to form a political union with the goal of full integration by the year 2054. The seat of power for the Asian Bloc sat in the city state of Hong Kong.
2026: The Asian Bloc began to exert its influence through a series of trade deals with nations on its periphery. The actions from the Asian block were opposed by the North American Confederation. Tensions rose over determining territorial waters as well as shipping routes. Trade embargoes were placed upon a series of Asian Bloc nations by the North American Confederation. Violence continued to escalate in the Middle East as the countries of Iran and Saudi Arabia sought to increase their spheres of influence within the region. These moves were opposed by both the European Union as well as the North American Confederation but were supported by the Asian Bloc.
An economic contagion spurred by cheap money caused by low interest rates and sustained by a high rate of inflation began to ravage the American industrial and lower skilled service industries. The United States government, in an effort to prevent widespread economic damage began to severely limit the ability of corporations to bring in foreign workers.
Economic hardship persisted in the European Union which saw unemployment rates at historically high rates of 15-20%.
2027: The United Nations sought to lower the level of discourse between the North American Confederation and the Asian Bloc. Negotiations and summits were set to discuss the issues that had caused one third of the world to be embargoed by the other two thirds. The negotiations failed to achieve any substantive results. The leaders of the Asian Bloc began to impose sanctions upon nations within the Asian continent and surrounding areas who were nonmember states in a bid to bring them into the collective sphere of influence. The countries of New Zealand and Australia were supported by the North American Confederation. Australia and New Zealand became a battleground for an economic proxy war between the Asian Bloc and North American Confederation. Foreign direct investment began to be tied to political cooperation by the Asian Bloc. The North American Confederation reacted in similar fashion. By the end of 2027, the economy of Australia had contracted 5% due to a severe financial crisis caused by tensions in the region.
The Russian Federation announced that by 2030 they would have a scientific and exploratory base on the moon.
2028: The advent of large-scale solar energy collection wreaked havoc on the oil-based economies of the Middle East. Two countries were poised to pivot. Saudi Arabia and Iran. From 2017 to 2024 these two countries had built an infrastructure designed to capture and harness the power of the sun. Their neighbors were not so fortunate and the Middle East long accustomed to funding and placating extremist groups through massive social programs and welfare spending now found itself cash-strapped and debt ridden. Unemployment and structural imbalances in the economy caused mass unrest. From 2025 to 2027 the region had been subjected to many droughts and extreme weather. Entire villages were abandoned as environmental refugees moved to the cities.
Severe environmental events including hurricanes and flooding led to the creation of millions of environmental refugees from Bangladesh and the western portion of the Indian subcontinent. Environmental refugees found very little welcome within the Asian Bloc considering that Bangladesh was not a member state. Massive storms, droughts, cyclones, and flooding in the Southwest regions of China led to a destabilizing influence that resulted in the Xin Pi rebellion. The brutal manner in which the rebellion was dealt with by the Asian Bloc received global condemnation and criticism. Warnings were sent by the North American Confederation and the European Union that the brutal manner of the suppression would not be tolerated. The two rival powers saw this as a means to delegitimize the Asian Bloc.
2029: One of the aims of the hardline nationalists in Hong Kong began to be realized in 2029 as American bases in Japan and Singapore began to close under pressure from local governments. However, the American presence in South Korea was nonnegotiable by the North American Confederation. The North Korean portion of the peninsula had been absorbed into the greater Asian Bloc in mid-2028. Now the leaders of Asia demanded the complete removal of American troops from South Korea stating that their presence at the doorstep of Asia was seen as an unnecessary provocation. The elections of 2029 brought to power a nationalist South Korean government that favored entry into the Asian Bloc. Within months entry was granted to South Korea into the member nations. On December 31, 2029, the South Korean government formally requested the removal of US forces from the Korean Peninsula.
2030: The Astra Corporation began to make plans to launch an expedition to Mars. Scientific advancement in space travel had been severely curtailed by 2030 from the governments of the Asian Bloc and the European Union as well as the North American Confederation. The exploration of space was left to corporations and private interests. The Astra Corporation announced that they would have an outpost in Mars by the end of 2031 and that they had been planning this endeavor for the last 12 years.
Tensions reached a breaking point on the world stage when a Chinese submarine was discovered off the coast of California. In a breakdown in communications the submarine was provoked into an attack that led to its sinking by forces from the US Navy and Coast Guard. The Asian Bloc demanded an apology as well as compensation while the North American Confederation demanded an end to incursions and territorial waters by forces of the Asian Bloc.
Tensions came to a head as unilateral sanctions were levied upon the North American Confederation by both the Asian Bloc as well as the Russian Federation. The European Union sided with the North American Confederation and the stage was set for a showdown between half the world against the other. While the European Union and North American Confederation sought to discuss these issues at the United Nations the Russian Federation and Asian Bloc refused to participate citing the archaic and dated hierarchy of the United Nations. They proposed a summit on neutral ground in Dubai which was roundly rejected by the governments in Brussels and Washington DC. Tensions remained high for the remainder of 2030.
Five other privately funded explorations were announced in 2030. The number of corporations who had begun mining and setting up operations in space had grown since the first privately funded space exploratory voyage in the early part of the 21st century. There were now multiple space stations-very utilitarian and sparse-that were being owned and operated by corporations.
The logical extension became the utilization of space for a measure of safety and security for vital assets and people within these corporations. By the end of 2030 nearly every large organization that operated in a variety of countries and economic zones of power had a contingency plan for moving manpower and material into space in the event of hostilities on earth.
2031: The first permanent colony on the moon was announced through a joint venture between the Taylor Corporation and the North American Confederation. The Taylor Corporation also announced a second joint venture with Pan Solaris. Pan Solaris was a company that had been founded through a joint venture between several large technology firms in 2020. The company’s mission was simple; to migrate people who wish to get away from planet Earth. The price tag was high. It was only affordable to the wealthy few. But by 2031 the first of several weekly launches from Pan Solaris was commenced. At its heart, it was an endeavor to build the first sustainable and independent colony on Luna. Construction was slated to be completed by 2033 but the colony was expected to be minimally functional by 2032.
2032: While 2031 had seen a reduction in the tensions between the great powers of the world there was no such luck in 2032. A series of economic upheavals in unaffiliated and nonaligned nations created a mass of economic refugees which strained the infrastructure of the European Union. The eventual solution that the European Union implemented was a complete and total shutdown of its porous borders.
Economic refugees attempted to migrate from Russia, most of the countries of Africa, the Balkans, and South America. By the end of 2032 the United Nations estimated that there were close to 1 billion refugees through either environmental or economic catastrophe. These refugees went from country to country attempting to find asylum and set down roots but they were turned away in most instances. At the same time there was a shortage of manpower in many countries including the United States and Japan. These economic powerhouses which had closed their borders to immigration now found that their native populations have begun to grow old and place a burden upon their social welfare systems. Taxes had become burdensome upon the working populations which led to a spiral of economic uncertainty and instability.
Further economic instability led to a seeking out of new sources of economic growth no matter how marginal they may be. Foreign direct investment was directed to nonmember countries in Africa and South America. Again, tensions arose between the Asian Bloc and North American Confederation in these two continents. The flashpoint for 2032 happened in South Africa where a dispute between the Sino mining conglomerate and the multinational mining operation known as ALPAC reached a head. ALPAC was based out of the North American Confederation. And after a protracted struggle between security forces for both corporations led to a stalemate the country of South Africa saw contingents of soldiers and Armed Forces lending and arriving from both member nations. By December 31, 2032, the United Nations once again sought to calm tensions. They were unsuccessful.
2033: Historians are unclear as to what the exact incident that prompted the engagement between North American Confederation forces and the Asian Bloc forces outside of the city of Johannesburg. However within a matter of 48 hours the conflict that escalated to the point where airstrikes were being carried out from North American aircraft carriers off the coast of South Africa. This led to Asian Bloc retaliation against American forces in South Korea. The American forces had not yet completely left the South Korean Peninsula and there was a token force left in the outskirts of Seoul and a very token US military base. This base was attacked in retaliation for the attacks that devastated the Asian Bloc forces in South Africa. On January 3, 2033 war was formally declared between the North American Confederation and the Asian Bloc. On January 4, the European Union acting on a unanimous vote condemned the actions of the Asian Bloc, recalled its diplomats, and declared a state of war. On January 5, the Russian Federation declared war on the North American Confederation and the European Union and began their invasion of Eastern Europe. On January 6, the president of the United States and the speaker for the North American Confederation warned against further incursions into Eastern Europe citing that the North American Confederation as well as NATO were committed to preserving the national sovereignty of the eastern member states. The president went on to state that no action was off the table. On January 7, European Union forces engaged the Russian Federation outside of the city of Warsaw. Within 24 hours both sides have utilized tactical nuclear weapons. Within two hours after the first nuclear detonation several intercontinental ballistic missiles were launched from Asian member states towards the continental United States. In retaliation several US Trident class submarines launched a nuclear attack against the Asian bloc. While most powers at this point had conceived of and executed a missile shield it was not wholly successful. The resulting nuclear devastation wiped out the cities of Chengdu, Shanghai, San Diego, Brussels, Washington DC, Hong Kong, Beijing, Moscow, Warsaw, St. Petersburg, New Delhi, Seoul, and Tokyo. Conventional forces from all belligerent powers continue to fight for the remainder of 2033. However, after the initial nuclear exchange the fighting was far from organized or effective.
2034: It was revealed in a series of articles and exposés the key government officials from all belligerent powers had devised a continuity of government strategy in which officials and certain key players as well as important citizens had been relocated into orbiting space shuttles as well as space stations and secret colonies on both the moon and Mars. Upon acknowledgment of this fact citizens and all belligerent nations sought to leave the devastation that surrounded them and seek safe refuge in space by the end of 2030. A booming market for shuttling refugees to Mars had opened up led by Pan Solaris.
2035: In the wake of nuclear attacks in an effort to destabilize the opposing powers a series of chemical and biological weapons were deployed against the civilian populations of each nation state. By the end of 2035 most of the crop yielding regions of the world had been made barren. The resulting famines killed millions. Food production was now vital national strategic interest which is now being targeted by hostile forces. No invasion of the US mainland occurred by any foreign power but the central valley of California and the Great Plains were made inhospitable for the growing of fruit. This resulted in massive shortages within the North American Confederation which led to retaliatory strikes of biological weapons upon the rice growing and other fertile areas of Southeast Asia and India. By the end of 2036 the United Nations had estimated that roughly 500 million people had died of famine, biological weapons, disease, malnourishment, and other associated factors. This coupled with the hundreds of millions of deaths from the nuclear exchange led to the final ceasing of hostilities and signing of an armistice in the neutral country of Switzerland. On September 5, 2035 an agreement was reached between all warring factions in the city of Geneva. The representatives of the powers acknowledged that they were severely depopulated, operating on crumbling infrastructure and unable to continue governing their large populations.
2036: With the official end of the war, now known as the Third World War, the war weary and bombed out populations of the world sought to rebuild their broken civilizations. However, by mid-2036 the governments of the Russian Federation and the Asian Bloc collapsed under the strain of too many refugees and too few resources. A desperate quest by self-interested parties led to a state of civil war through much of Eurasia.
The European Union suffered as well with the dissolution of the political union and the breakdown of most national governments. Ethnic cleansing and a deep xenophobia took hold and much of central and southern Europe. Governance had devolved to the local level as cities and communities struggled with intermittent power, radioactive fallout, polluted water, famine and disease.
In the North American Confederation much of the United States was under a thick cloud of radioactive ash with many refugees streaming towards the West Coast the South West corner of the United States as well as to Mexico and Canada. National government, in fact any sort of government had collapsed as officials attempted to size up the damage and prioritize reasserting control and bringing back law and order. The results saw numerous incidents of civil strife and sectional violence. Numerous governments attempted to bring order but each collapsed in a successive wave of violence. This was known as the post-atomic horror.
2037: The Taylor Corporation operating with Pan Solaris established an economic free-trade zone near the free city of San Francisco. There was no state government or national government and the Taylor Corporation began to provide basic services. Within months law and order had been restored to a minimum within much of northern California. Similar occurrences happen throughout the world as private enterprise began to step in to the void left by collapsed governments.
In one of its last acts, representatives of 87 countries out of the 185 and the United Nations voted to dissolve its body.
2038: By the middle of 2038 much of the hopes and dreams of the survivors of the Third World War rested on securing enough funds to purchase a ticket to move to a Martian colony. The end of hostilities did not mean the end of violence as terrorism and civil war ravaged many nations. But by the end of 2038 most of the nations that had collapsed governments had begun to achieve some modicum of control by reestablishing governments either in space or in alternate locations. The provisional government for the North American Confederation was set in Vancouver which had escaped the effects of the nuclear exchange and emerge stronger as a result. One of the first acts of the North American Confederation was to form a union with the European Union. By the end of 2038 the great powers of the world, the North American Confederation, the European Union, the Asian Bloc, and the Russian Federation agreed to a summit in Geneva, Switzerland.
2039: After one year of negotiations a provisional international body known as the Terran Council was established by the signatories to the Geneva Accords. The Terran Council was charged with pacifying and bringing peace to areas of the world that were still in unrest—large sections of Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia, western China, South America, Middle East, the southwest and central United States, and the Indian subcontinent. Member nations agreed to pool resources and reduce violence and instability in areas that had spun out of control during the war.
2040: By the end of 2040 large sections of much of the world had been pacified by joint operations between former belligerent nations. A measure of peace was brought to large segments of the planet. But this did not mean an end to suffering as famine and disease continue to ravage populations-the byproduct of technological, biological, nuclear, and chemical warfare from several years prior.
2041: The Terran Council launched the first joint space expedition towards Mars to set up a base colony that would act as a refueling point for ships headed for the asteroid belt. The ships would be crewed by workers who would mine asteroids for rare earth elements needed for the rebuilding effort. The Terran Council also began the long process of attempting to rebuild pacified areas. The destruction of existing power and infrastructure meant that in many instances the Council was funding projects that advanced growth in propulsion, solar energy capture, food growth, and the ability to fight disease.
2042: A formal signing of Accords between member nations of the Terran Council to work cooperatively to both colonize space as well as contribute resources from their endeavors towards rebuilding the planet was signed. A fund was created and officials appointed to oversee the men and material that would carry out this task. This force was known as the Terran Armada.
2047: The first Terran Council colony is set on the moon. Comprised of 35 scientists and technicians from 15 nations the colony is hailed as a steppingstone towards a greater unified humanity.
Severe environmental and ecological hardship continue for the majority of the world’s population. The view of space as an escape from the ravages of planet Earth are seen as but a glimmer of hope, one that is available only to the wealthy few.
The Astra Corporation announces the creation of several manned space stations and bases that are able to be supplied by a new form of power allowing colonies not just on Mars but as far away as orbiting Jupiter.
The Taylor Corporation announces the creation in five years’ time of a listening post and supply base on Pluto. The stage is set for humanity to leave the Sol system.
2048: the Terran Council announces a set of minimum guidelines and standards for each member nation in the areas of human rights, ecological preservation, rebuilding efforts, civil liberties, and rule of law. The participating countries include the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, India, China, Russia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Mexico, and Japan.
2049: the number of colonists on Mars now exceeds 10,000 people. Pan Solaris announces that by 2055 they intend to relocate over 50,000 people from Earth to Mars.
The Terran Armada is fully operational with a very small fleet that begins to patrol the area of space between Earth, the moon, Mars, and Jupiter. The first manned space flight to the edge of the solar system is conducted as results are reported back. Asteroid belt mining and energy collection is now conducted by over 50 corporations. Scientists reevaluate the length of time needed from 1000 years to 500 years for the complete rebuilding of the planet Earth to pre-World War III levels.
2050: The Taylor corporation begins the groundwork and the initial groundbreaking of the Pluto colony. In a novel public-private partnership the Taylor Corporation receives funding as well as assistance in construction from the Terran Council. The Terran Armada provide support to Taylor Corporation space ships that travel to Pluto and back.
The Terran Council membership grows to over 60 nations on planet Earth. Chief among the resolutions are covenants to lower trade barriers and eventually eliminate them by 2075 as well as greater political integration. Unlike prior attempts to do so in the past that have failed through other intergovernmental organizations the attempts this time are successful and not thwarted by ultranationalist groups who seek to preserve their own national sovereignty. Many current events observers speculate that the advent of the Third World War has raised the specter of human extinction in the eyes of the doubters of past experiments and global unification. What is key now is this war-ravaged planet’s survival. And the only way to survive at this point is for humanity to come together and work towards a common purpose.
2052: interstellar solar energy capture becomes a tried and true tactic for storing and supplying energy to planet Earth. The practice is pioneered and perfected and by 2052 in widespread distribution by the Minerva Enterprises organization. Granted exclusive contracts by the Terran Armada, Minerva Enterprises enters into a period of expansion where they provide solar-based power and fuel cells to Terran colonies on Luna, Mars, as well as orbiting space stations orbiting Earth, Mars, and Jupiter.
The Terran Armada begins active patrol of the solar system.
Terran Union
The Terran Union is the political union that represents the majority of humanity in the Pax Aeterna universe. The main political, cultural, administrative, defensive, and logistics hub of the Terran Union is located on the planet Earth.
The Terran Union is a constitutional republic as per its founding charter but has been described by many observers as a corporate republic. The Union is led by a president who is elected to a six-year term and must then vacate office after the end of that term. The president occupies the executive office and is the face of and representative of humanity to the galaxy. The president operates in a system of checks and balances with the Terran Council comprising the main legislative body of the Union. The Terran Council is comprised of representatives from colony worlds as well as representatives of member nations on the planet Earth.
Determine Union first achieved political consciousness as an outgrowth of the Terran Council as humanity began to expand into the stars and form colony worlds. The actual foundation of the political union occurred in 2063 as the final nation states on planet Earth joined into a unified humanity.
The Terran Union utilizes the Terran Armada for all military, diplomatic, exploratory, scientific, and cultural activities and outreach on behalf of the Union.
The Council of Corporations is an unofficial advisory Council to the office of the president of the Union. The Council of corporations is formed by representatives of the major corporations within the Union and number and 100 representatives.
The Union encompasses 45 billion people spread out over 198 colony worlds over 197 light years. The Outer Colonies form a political counterpoint to the Terran Union after having broken away in 2123 during a conflict known as The Schism.
One of the primary tasks of the Terran Union, indeed the task that was the primary cause of the Schism was the responsibility placed upon the Union and rebuilding the planet Earth after the Third World War. Rebuilding efforts to date have focused on extraction of minerals, ores, and other manufactured and natural resources from colony worlds for transport back to Earth. However, the Union also funds and develops scientific and technological breakthroughs that have greatly sped up the pace of the rebuilding on Terra.
The Union is also tasked with regulating the activities of the profit-making corporations that serve at times as proxies for the Terran Armada.
The Union operates a wide variety of social welfare and administrative tasks designed to raise the standard of living for humans within the political union.
Terran Armada
The Terran Armada is the exploratory, military, scientific, and engineering arm of the Terran Union. The Armada was first launched in 2050 by a declaration from the Terran Council. It has since evolved to grow into the method by which the Terran Union imposes law and order, patrol space, keeps the peace, and defends its citizens. The Armada consists of starships, star bases, planetary bases, deep space stations, listening posts, as well as administrative offices spread out throughout the Union. The two key administrative centers of the Terran Armada exist on the planet Earth as well as the colony world of New Washington.
The exact number of starships are not specified within the Pax Aeterna universe since over 150 years of shipbuilding, mothballing, and retrofit have occurred. However, the Armada has maintained a fighting force during that time that at first protected its citizens from pirates, as well as other stellar phenomenon that pose threats. During the time of the Schism between the Outer Colonies and Terra, the Armada was called upon to impose law and order in systems that were in open rebellion as well as to press the offensive and defend the core star systems. After the Schism the Armada was tasked with patrolling the border with the Outer Colonies. After first contact with the Sonali, the Armada was called to defend the Union as well as prosecute the five-year war that ensued.
The Armada is not just a military vehicle for the Union, but also an exploratory and scientific vehicle as well. It carries out a host of exploratory and scientific measures that include charting new star systems, studying cosmic phenomenon, as well as assisting colony worlds with either unprecedented or routine maintenance and upgrades. Chief among the notable accomplishments outside of the military sphere of the Armada include the mapping of space routes, the establishment of trading and shipping lanes through space, assistance in terraforming planets, protecting against piracy, and working with the various corporate fleets to ensure tranquility throughout the Union.
The Armada was weakened severely during the Earth-Sonali War. Approximately 25% of the fighting force was destroyed. It was the first nonhuman conflict that the Armada had endured, with prior engagements for over the last hundred years limited to border skirmishes with the Outer Colonies as well as preventing piracy.
The Armada maintains an Academy for officers on both the planet Earth as well as the colony world of New Washington. It maintains administrative offices that oversee several sectors on New Washington.
Those who wish to join the Armada can do so through two means. They can enlist to serve in a variety of capacities with the Armada. Those who seek to achieve specialized skills or servant leadership or positions of more responsibility must enter through the Armada Academy on either Tara or New Washington. The Academy is a five-year program with exacting entrance requirements of both a mental and physical nature. The Academy is widely respected for its teaching and its training of the next generation of leaders within the Armada.
The technological advancements of Armada starships were jumpstarted during two conflicts-the Schism with the Outer Colonies, and the Earth-Sonali War. The latter conflict saw significant technological breakthroughs in the areas of all offensive and defensive capabilities as well as other technological breakthroughs which have in turn been used for more peaceful endeavors including the rebuilding of Earth from the damage caused by the Third World War.
The Armada has in fact since its inception been credited with lowering the time required to rebuild the planet Earth from the ravages of the nuclear war in half. The scientific opportunities available through the exploration of space have been harnessed through coordinated efforts between the Terran Armada as well as other institutions within the Terran Union including the various corporations that have a seat on the Terran Corporate Council.
The Armada also has a diplomatic arm which works hand-in-hand with the Terran diplomatic corps.
The Terran Armada is generally at a significant advantage when compared to the decentralized fighting capabilities of the Outer Colonies. And while the first two years of the Earth-Sonali War saw the Terran Armada outmatched and outgunned by the Sonali, by the end of the conflict the fleet approached something close to parity with their opposing forces.
The Armada receives funding that is directly tied to the budget worked on by the president of the Terran Union as well as the Terran Council. As such the Armada has at times been subjected to the politics of the day running of the Terran Union. The Armada is one of the most respected institutions within the Terran Union with most citizens saying that it exists as a force for good in the galaxy.
While the Armada is comprised of a primarily military air the founding charter of the Armada as well as its core principles state that the chain of command reports directly to a civilian overseer who is the Commander-in-Chief of the Terran Armada, occupying the seat of President of the Terran Union.
The Armada maintains an intelligence department conducts intelligence operations both within the Terran Union as well as within foreign powers.
Encyclopedia Aeterna Volume 2
Political Maps of the Orion Cluster of the Milky Way Galaxy
Timeline of the Earth-Sonali War
Timeline of Earth-Sonali War 2197-2201
2197:
July Edoris Station stops receiving communications from TUS Mariner - a scientific vessel on a mission to explore the Anderson Nebula.
Captain Montgomery of TUS Seeker is assigned by Admiral Flynn of the Terran Armada to locate the whereabouts of the missing TUS Mariner.
August TUS-Seeker finds wreckage of TUS Mariner near the Anderson Nebula. Unique energy signatures of the remaining debris suggests a weapon of destruction previously unknown to the Terran Armada. First Contact: While investigating the remains of TUS Mariner, Captain Montgomery makes first contact with the Sonali. The Sonali are a tall humanoid blue-skinned alien race. Captain Montgomery speaks with Command Legate Ghosal of the Sonali regarding the destruction of TUS Mariner. Legate Ghosal says the Sonali are not responsible for the destruction of TUS Mariner. However, Legate Ghosal orders Captain Montgomery to leave or be destroyed. Facing superior firing power from the Sonali ship, Captain Montgomery retreats.
Admiral Flynn presents Captain Montgomery's report to the Terran Union regarding the destruction of TUS Mariner and first contact with the Sonali.
Despite the confidentially surrounding Captain Montgomery's report, word leaks to the public that TUS Mariner has been destroyed and first contact has been made with the Sonali.
September An official report is released to the public. Given the uncertainty surrounding the fate of TUS Mariner and the proximity of the Sonali to its destruction - public outcry reaches a fever pitch demanding answers and justice for the lost crew of TUS Mariner.
October Terran Union dispatches a 100-ship fleet to investigate the debris of TUS Mariner. The fleet makes contact with Command Legate Laloli of the Sonali. History repeats as she states that the Sonali are not responsible for the destruction of the Mariner and tells the Terran Armada fleet to leave or face attack. The Terran fleet refuses to leave. Legate Laloli fires on the fleet destroying more than half of the Terran ships including: The Maverick, The Aurora, The Iris, The Magus, The Lysander, The Griffin, The Mercury, The H.R. Wells, The Santa Maria, The Hornet, The York, The Wesley, and The Lexington. Surviving ships include: The Celestia. November Sonali war ships begin attack and invasion of Edoris sector settlements: Solange, Mavis, Zion, and Halcyon. Terran Armada begins to establish diplomatic relations with the other alien species.
December A fleet of Terran war frigates surround two Sonali ships TUS Malai and TUS Gre'nai. Concentrated fire by the Terran fleet severely damages both Sonali ships. However, Terran losses negate this as a true "win."
2198:
January Six months after first contact Terran Armada officially declares war on the Sonali.
Plans are proposed for weapons manufacture on Earth coupled with aggressive R&D to catch up to Sonali military prowess.
February Sonali expand their invasion in Edoris sector. Colonies taken include: Calypso, Gamma and Logan.
March Loss of TUS Terror to Sonali at Azukene colony. However, before the ship was swarmed by Sonali the crew murdered the captain in a mutinous move opposing the captain's plan to do a suicidal ram into the Sonali warship. The last moments of TUS Terror as well as the munity were recorded and delivered via automated slipstream log.
May After the incident with TUS Terror - Terran Armada instigates security officers to be posted on all ships to protect Captains.
June "Remember the Mariner!" becomes a unifying chant on Earth. Record numbers of Terrans enlist at the Academy in order to train and join the war effort.
July For the first time in 1,000 years Terrans return to nomadic roots, traveling in small caravans between settlements to avoid attack by Sonali forces. However, it is soon apparent that daytime exodus equals heavy losses as Sonali ships cut down fleeing Terrans indiscriminately. To avoid this danger some settlements near the border empty overnight.
August Sonali attacks on border colonies continues.
September A candle-light vigil is held by civilians in remembrance of TUS Mariner on the anniversary of the official announcement of its loss.
October "Sacred Vow" offensive is launched by Terran Armada in an attempt to halt Sonali encroachment in the Edoris Sector. Due to loss of half of the attacking Terran fleet to Sonali forces and overall failure the offensive is dubbed "Sacred Cow" in civilian circles denoting a loss of hope regarding the war effort.
November The Sonali continue to conquer and invade settlements on different planets. Despite Terran resistance, the Sonali maintain dominance on overall destruction and causalities.
December While on patrol TUS Shrike discovers a damaged, but intact Sonali ship. The recovery of this ship marks the first opportunity for research into Sonali technology.
2199:
January The vessel is delivered to Terran Armada for research.
February Sonali forces destroy the following colonies in Edoris sector: Nurtura, Cassis, and Bathory.
March Settlements lost to Sonali: Esme, Carlise, and Laront.
April Settlements lost to Sonali: Tamarin, Solaris, Calliope, and Ferris.
June Settlements captured by Sonali: Langley, Benedict, and Mathis.
July-August The Sonali begin a series of seemingly random attacks on a consistent basis. They become known as "death drops" because the Sonali would come out of FTL over a Terran colony and repeatedly drop firebombs until it was leveled. Then they would resume FTL back to Sonali space. The assaults were unpredictable and devastating.
September "Operation Quake" was a covert mission designed to capture Sonali communications relays in the hopes of determining the locations of future "death drops." Captain Wolf of TUS Exeter was sent on this mission with the directive to come out of FTL and take position behind a Sonali fleet to deploy the probes (the probes would be disguised as space debris). Once in place the probes would relay communications back to Terran headquarters. However, one of the engineering officers Yuang Fa was a Sonali sympathizer; he hacked the ship's A.I.'s and murdered a crew mate to sabotage the mission.
October-December Terran Armada launch "Operation Zodiac." Operation Zodiac (aka"Oz") - was a fleet of self-replicating drones deployed to form a blockade of mines in constant FTL orbit. In order to the fill the blockade area the drones were able to harvest needed materials in space to increase their numbers. A ship moving at non-FTL speed across the mine field would not be affected as it would phaze through at a different frequency than the mines. However, a fleet entering the blockade in FTL would trigger the mines. Upon detonation each mine releases a fusillade of shrapnel. The success of "Operation Zodiac" marks the first time in the Earth-Sonali war that Terrans are able to deliver consecutive blows to the Sonali without suffering immense causalities. This routing of Sonali forces by Terrans revitalizes the war effort at home and abroad.
2200:
January-March To counter "Operation Zodiac" the Sonali launch FTL drones into the mine fields to detonate and destroy the blockades. The Sonali are able to "punch holes" in the blockades using these measures. However, the first three months of solid success by "OZ" mark a turning point for Terran forces.
June Based on intel recovered by a group of mercenaries on Edoris -Terran Armada launches a second wave of self-replicating drones to form a blockade above New Sydney. This second offensive "Operation Xanthe" (aka "OX") creates an effective barrier allowing ground forces to evacuate civilians from impending attack.
July-August After three years of research and development (that included reverse engineering captured Sonali technology), the start of year four of the war finds Terran Armada military capabilities on par with both offensive and defensive Sonali weaponry.
Reactions to this new military equality vary on each homefront:
•Terrans, already accustomed to significant causalities, react positively to these new "wins" against their enemy. Chants of "Remember the Mariner!" resurge as does pride in the military.
•Sonali citizens begin to question the war and have concerns regarding their daily life now that the enemy has become a real threat. Spurred by this new perspective, Sonali Scholars begin earnest research into a species that can no longer be categorized merely as "primitive aggressors".
September-December Battles between the matched forces of Terran and Sonali military result in longer battles with significant loss of life on both sides.
Terran Ships Missing or Destroyed include: TUS Zenith, TUS Cyclone, TUS Hurricane, TUS Tornado, TUS Virgil, TUS Messenger, TUS Carolina, TUS Dynasty, TUS Eckard, TUS Franklin, TUS Claude, and TUS Marseille.
Sonali Ships Destroyed include: La'na, S'elal, M'alei, La'asi, Ka'era, S'hai, T'lan, M'hida, C'mei, F'ali, D'aie, and A'hai.
2201:
January After five months of dealing with a "stalemate of destruction", both Sonali and Terrans begin covert operations to discover alternative means of winning the war. Recovered paperwork and/or testimony from Sonali and Terrans are the only existing proof of such activities during the war. It should be noted that military on both sides refuse to comment and deny the existence of these projects.
February Omega Project: Designed to enhance Terran abilities due to the injection of a series of sophisticated nanites. One goal of the project was to increase Terran adaptability to extreme environmental changes, in particular the low-oxygen high argon atmosphere of Sonali. Test subject 01 results were found superior to all other subjects.
April Devanagari Project- Sonali project to create air-borne parasites queued to Terran physiology. Personal logs (original recordings lost) kept by Sonali scientists describe the creation of a parasitic entity designed to attack Terrans-only. Testimony by a scientist on the project said they successfully created the phage with plans to deploy it via introduction into the atmosphere of large Terran cities. However, the war came to an end before the phage was deployed on a wide scale (per testimony of scientist). Despite this testimony rumors persist that select Terran colonies met their demise via use of this lethal parasitic invasion.
May "Operation Zephyr" was a covert message system based on the American Indian language of Tuscarora. However, Terran Armada Counter Intelligence discovered that the coded messages were compromised. Terran Armada uses this opportunity to send out false messages regarding the location of a military convoy. Sonali war ships came out of FTL with plans to converge on a ship full of high-ranking military officials. Instead they find a "dummy" ship that detonates destroying the entire fleet.
June Terran Armada decides to carry out the "Wolf Offensive". This dramatic action involves 'glassing' Beta Hydrae III - a densely populated region of Sonali.
Captain Montgomery is tasked with leading a counter-offensive. However, he still has questions regarding the Sonali's role in the destruction of TUS Mariner. Poised on the brink of genocide, Captain Montgomery returns to the location of the debris from TUS Mariner to investigate further.
Instead of meeting the Sonali, Captain Montgomery meets and speaks with another species the Nakra who admit that they destroyed TUS Mariner all those years ago. Their reasoning was that this area of space i.e. the nebula is their homeworld and must be kept sacred and secret; any species that trespass are not allowed to leave as they would reveal what they found. Thus, TUS Mariner had to be dispatched in an attempt to stay hidden.
Ullian of the Nakra tells Captain Montgomery he regrets his next actions; however, he must destroy TUS Seeker as he did TUS Mariner to protect his people. A battle ensues where TUS Seeker eventually has the upper hand insofar as the aliens have suffered great losses. At that time Ullian of the Nakra accepts Captain Montgomery's promise to leave them alone.
Realizing that the Sonali are guilt-less and that the war should never have started, Captain Montgomery rushes to the location of the large-scale attack between the Sonali and Terrans. Captain Montgomery opens a communication channel between the two warring sides: he reveals that the Sonali were innocent of the destruction of TUS Mariner and that the war was "predicated on a lie."
July Terrans and Sonali agree to a cease fire under the "Mariner Armistice."
2202:
February Seven months later, after numerous negotiations and meetings between both sides, an official peace treaty "The Mariner Accords" between Terran Armada and the Sonali is agreed upon and signed putting an official end to the five-year war. In addition, a provision is made within the treaty to protect the nebula of the Nakra homeworld from incursion from any and all alien species.
The five-year Earth-Sonali War was the worst conflict either side had every experienced in history.
Terran Union: Lives lost: 4 billion Number of surviving colonies: 153 colonies out of 198 Loss of overall military force: 25%
Sonali Combine: Lives lost: 5 billion Number of surviving colonies: 102 Loss of military forces: 18%
Sonali Combine
Physical Description
Humanoid (two eyes, nose, mouth and two legs); however, they have facial slits instead of ears. Average height 6' tall. Hairless. Body color is a uniform pale blue with some darker gradients of blue on the face. Their lifespan is approximately 80-90 years
Anatomy/Physiology
Females and males possess the same sexual organs as Terran females and males. Sonali reproduce sexually; however, their path to reproduction is complex. The Sonali are sequential hermaphrodites – they are born one gender and at sexual maturity they switch. The process by is called "Ascension." At the age of 18 (Terran years) the Sonali are put through the Ascension ceremony. Although the specifics of the transformation are unknown to outsiders the following is known:
•Sonali are born gendered; however they are also born sterile
•It is only by going through Ascension that the Sonali become fertile
•By switching genders at maturity their bodies receive a signal to "turn on" the faculties needed to reproduce i.e. ovulation and sperm production
•Before the baby is born it is incubated outside the body until birth
•It is speculated, but unknown if this incubation influences the birth gender
Culture
The Sonali are a technologically advanced race especially with regard to weaponry. In first contact with Terran Union they had a much greater advantage when it came to combat. Although their society has no record of war amongst itself, the Sonali have devoted a great deal to defense due to their disdain for most other species based on the belief that many are not intelligent enough to warrant contact. In addition they guard their advances in medicine, science and other fields closely.
Interactions with Terrans were initially only within combat situations. However, once the war ended, the Sonali were willing to cooperate with the Terrans regarding establishing a galactic council.
Politics/Governance
A younger generation (pre-Ascesnion age) of the Sonali have formed the Origin Movement pushing for the end of mandatory Ascension. Their belief is that changing gender, or staying with your birth gender should be an individual choice. They also believe that this decision goes hand-in-hand with the additional choice whether to procreate or not.
Concerns for the future of the Sonali race are driving another group (Post-Ascension age) to argue for the continuation of Ascension both as a cultural tradition and as a necessity for survival of the species. This group called the Ascendents believes that the anti-ascension generation have been influenced by Terrans. They believe that the short-sightedness of Terran society with regard to its own survival and its condition of static gender have "infected" the young Sonali with these ideas. The Sonali population is steady; however, there is fear of its decline should large numbers of the young choose to remain sterile.
Sonali Caste System
The Sonali has a five-tier caste system based on vocation: Military, Religious, Scholar, Labor, and Merchant. The caste system was created to insure diversity and regulation of the Sonali workforce over time.
Sonali from different castes may marry; in this situation, the children may pick the vocation of either parent. However, some Sonali still feel oppressed by having to choose the mandated career paths that are inherited at birth.
As an example, a Sonali teenager born into a religious/scholar household may feel oppressed if he/she wants to be a merchant or join the military. Another issue with the caste system is the unofficial hierarchy it creates between each type of caste.
The Military Caste
The military caste is considered as the highest authority when it comes to matters of law enforcement, regulation of alien (Terran) occupation and other related policies. It is very common to see high-ranking military officials serve in political positions increasing military influence on planetary policy.
Members of the military caste tend to view themselves as the highest authority on all matters: period. Thus, other castes are often given grudging respect or approval when supporting matters that conflict with military decisions. While other castes may not share the military’s view that they are the “top”, they do afford them a great deal of respect. It should be noted that Sonali civilians give particular deference to military personnel that distinguished themselves during the Earth-Sonali war.
The Scholar Caste
Although they may focus on different areas of study, the goal of the Scholar Caste is the same: the acquisition of knowledge for posterity and the overall benefit of the Sonali race.
The Scholar Caste includes teachers, scientists, researchers and xenoarchaeologists.
Xenoarchaeologists tend to focus on finding evidence of the “precursor theory of origin” that the Sonali were engineered a long time ago by a superior race that no longer exists or has left this galaxy. Typically, they split their time between fieldwork to uncover new artifacts and researching and categorizing the artifacts they have already acquired. They often share their findings with scientists since working together they can achieve more, although not all are as open with their research and choose instead to keep their finds to themselves.
Scientists research a variety of subjects including Sonali biology, Psychology, the Ascension process as well as research into the precursor theory. Despite protests to the contrary, rumors persist regarding the development of parasitic weapons weapons during the Earth-Sonali war.
Teachers are less concerned with the acquisition of new knowledge or where the knowledge they have come from or by what means. They attempt to keep any personal bias out of their delivery of acquired information. All of the knowledge they are allowed to teach younger generations of Sonali must be approved and recorded. Once information is in written or digital form it is considered part of the accepted curriculum. Each year The Council of Teachers meets to approve any revisions or additions to the curriculum. A majority vote must occur for any changes/additions to be finalized. Colleges do not exist on Sonali due to caste system.
Once maturity is reached a Sonali youth receives mentorship in their new career from one of their parents. It is through this study that they attain position in their caste. Of all the factions within the scholar caste, teachers receive the most scrutiny from Sonali society and often the most criticism. Although the Council of Teachers may agree upon an acceptable curriculum, other Sonali (even some within the caste) may protest certain subjects being taught to young Sonali.
The subject of Ascension has historically polarized the religion and scholar castes. The religious caste protests the scientific process being taught; instead, they believe that only religious reasons exist for Ascension and therefore should be taught singly. Scholars argue for the teaching of both.
In recent years a new schism had developed regarding the belief that Ascension should not be a mandatory process. Therefore the teaching of it has come under even greater scrutiny from both sides of the Ascension argument that fear potential bias in how it is taught to students.
To rectify this situation The Council of Teachers has currently put a moratorium on any Ascension teaching, instead it is leaving the subject to parents to advise their children. Harsh criticism for this decision has many Sonali angry with The Council as well as the scholar caste in general; however, those who have welcomed the decision to teach their children their beliefs outnumber this group.
The Religious Caste
The Religious Caste mainly follows “The Way”, which was founded circa 1000 BCE by followers of a man named Xorrig, a post-ascension male who was known in his time as a poet, philosopher and teacher. During his life Xorrig lived outdoors as a shepherd and said he received visions from a supreme being. He composed poetry based on these visions and encouraged others to adopt his teachings to live simply and be kind. It is speculated that his visions may have come from a root he chewed frequently that had known hallucinogenic properties.
Xorrig died after suffering from exhaustion and starvation when he followed a vision into a wasteland.
His teachings had attracted a handful of followers, one particularly one named Aricanthas, who devoted herself to preserving his ideas, which became known as The Way, or Xorrigism. Xorrig himself was not revered as a god, but his status as a prophet was secure and his writings regarded as holy writ. The union of Xorrig and the supreme spiritual being he claimed to have been enlightened by was referred to as the Holy Combine. As The Way spread across the planet, growing in strength and influence, Temples dedicated to the Holy Combine were established in all major cities and in many villages. The largest one is located on Sonali Prime.
Xorrig’s teachings do not clearly state his stance or belief on the process of Ascension; however, Xorrig himself was a Post-Ascension male and Aricanthas his main acolyte remained a pre-Ascension female for the duration of her life.
There is a piece of poetry written by Xorrig that is thought to reference his viewpoints on Ascension:
Go forth into life with joy
and make simple choices
for The Supreme Being sees
and approves all actions
Origin Movement followers (anti-mandated Ascension) believe this poem speaks directly to the choice to Ascend or not to Ascend. However, others argue the poem is too ambiguous to assign a specific meaning.
The Merchant Caste
The Merchant Caste is considered to be the lowest caste. This is due to the belief that while commerce and trade are integral parts of society, the Sonali in this caste tend toward avarice. The merchant class denies that they do more than what is necessary to keep the business side of Sonali affairs thriving. Despite their low regard they are one of the few castes allowed to interact and move freely within other castes in the interest of trade.
It should be noted that there have been instances where members of this caste were able to gain information under cover of doing business with other castes. Any secret information they are able to gain under this guise of “trading” is turned around and put on an underground market to sell to the highest bidder. The merchant caste is also the only caste that does not have university courses that match its caste. Instead any young Sonali with a merchant parent is qualified to mentor under an existing merchant. Typically, this is a Sonali parent; however, in this caste more than others the young Sonali mentor with a non-family member. It is thought that this provides a more balanced view of the world and truly unbiased mentorship.
Another belief is that merchant parents wish to focus more on their own business transactions and see their children as possible future rivals. By placing their children with other Sonali merchants they are able to keep their trade secrets while likely using their children to uncover trade secrets of other merchant caste members. A mentorship is not required; however, having one provides the new Sonali merchants with a way to network and build his/her business more effectively than if they tried to do alone. Whether a Sonali mentor receives a wage during the mentorship is at the discretion of the mentee.
Tyreesian Collective
Physical Description
The Tyreesians are a humanoid race. They are naturally short, but strong. They are mostly four to five feet tall, with thin silky skins. The average Tyreesian male has a thick and sturdy build. They have slits for eyes and ears and a closed third eye on their forehead. They have four fingers on each hand and four toes on each leg. Their skin color varies widely, from coffee brown to sugar white. They are not an exactly hairy species, hence it is rare to see a Tyreesian possessing hairs (of any kind on any part of their body).
Anatomy/Physiology
Their entire anatomical and physiological system resembles that of Terrans. They also possess a beating heart and as well as sexual organs not unlike Terrans, both for male and female. Hence, interbreeding among Terrans and Tyreesians is very possible.
Culture
The Tyreesians are a patriarchal society, where the men make all the decisions and the women basically listen and do what they are told. There are no such things as women movements, and feminism isn’t even a word that exists in their vocabulary. They are a highly advanced race with a brain capacity that is naturally larger than Terrans. However, this increased brain capacity is one reason why they are naturally aggressive. The Tyreesians are also very cunning, and it is said that doing business with a Tyreesian is like doing business with a serpent. You don’t really know when they’re going to bite you in the back.
It is a taboo for a Tyreesian female to be unbound (what Terrans call unmarried). Marriage ceremonies are known as The Binding, where a Tyreesian female is bound for the duration of her life to a Tyreesian male. Because the Tyreesian female population is roughly higher than the Tyreesian males, it is not unusual to see a male Tyreesian being bound to more than one female Tyreesian. In fact, this is such a conquest that the more females you are bound to the more you are highly regarded in the society. Barbaric by many standards, especially Terran, but this is who they are. Politicians that will be very successful usually have as much as three females bound to them. Tyreesian female are unable to partake in any election, though they can vote.
Though Tyreesian females must be bound to a male (the lawful age for this to have happened is 25), Tyreesian males do not have to have a female bound to him. Usually, poor Tyreesian males find it difficult and as a result have a very low social standing.
Even though the females don’t have a voice, this does not preclude them from being major drivers of the entire Tyreesian society. A Tyreesian female can be involved in scientific research, trade, education, commerce—basically all spheres of the economy. However, the law forbids a Tyreesian female from occupying a position of power, such as Captain, Governor, or President. If she is appointed to such a position, as some can be because of their extreme aptitude, the female Tyreesian’s master (the male to which she is bound), will rule in her stead. In other words, she can only conduct her affairs by proxy. Of course, this is impracticable in positions that require quick reactions, like the Captain of a Ship or the Admiral of a Battle Fleet. As a result, the Tyreesian Army do not have a female Commander within its fleet.
Politics/Governance
The Tyreesian Collective runs a democratic system across their galactic space. They have a President and a Governor’s council. The governor’s council is the most powerful arm of their governmental system, while the President is really a ceremonial role—though, no one knows the true extent to which the President is powerful. The governor’s council is a council of all the governors within the galactic space and is headed by a chairman that is elected by the council and approved by the population-elected president. Every planet is sectioned off, and each section has a governor.
Elections hold every five years, and hence politics is a very active part of the Tyreesian Collective. In fact, because of their prodigious and seemingly unending ability to be cunning and sly, their political campaigns are usually riddled with maneuvers and tricks and twists that befuddle the un-Tyreesian mind. Many races have described this as watching a blockbuster movie—it’s almost unreal. This led some races to coin the expression “Tyreesian Politics”, which has become a galactic mainstay. Having a Tyreesian as a strategist, especially for peoples of other races, is most times seen as a harbinger of great and mighty success.
It is strictly forbidden for a Tyreesian female to contest for any public office, either for president, governor or lesser offices. It is also forbidden for a Tyreesian female to engage in political rallies, except at the side of her male master. Note that there is no law preventing them from contesting in elections. Many academicians have argued that if a Tyreesian female can head a governmental, interplanetary agency by proxy, why can’t she be president by proxy?
Some sociopolitical experts at the prestigious Tyreesian School of Social Science in the Central City of Zayon have theorized several reason why this is so. Basically, they believe that the cultural mind-washing that has been ongoing for centuries have relegated the females to a thinking that is weak and subordinative. Simply put, most Tyreesian females are unable to envision themselves as more than a male’s slave. These experts, however, predict an uprising that is most likely going to shake up the Tyreesian Collective and lead to the establishment of a new dynamism that may take centuries for the greater Tyreesian population to get used to. They believe that as the Tyreesians interface more and more with other races, the females will begin to think differently.
“Tyreesian Politics”: this is an expression that refers to the application of extreme cunning, tricks and sleights of hand to politics, much like what is obtainable in the worlds of the Tyreesian Collective.
Reznak Empire
Physical Description
They are a telepathic humanoid race with lightly furred bodies. They have a tail and two antennas on their forehead that resemble studs. They are tall and have a light bone mass, making them high jumpers, extremely athletic and very flexible. The females are distinguished by their whiskers, that many other species find attractive and in some cases arousing. The females also have a very powerful lower body. This is the major reason why Reznakian women are very highly priced as sex workers in some worlds. They possess well rounded eyes and mouth as well as a delicately sculptured snout.
NOTE: Though telepathic abilities vary, they are mostly very weak. There are some, however, who are able to exercise great telepathic powers.
Anatomy/Physiology
They have the usual systems: respiratory, circulatory, nervous etc. They have sexual organs much like any other humanoid race and hence are sexually compatible with them. The telepathic ability of the average Reznakian is weak and is only effective for a short range of a few yards. Also, any form of metal shielding can hinder this ability.
There are some Reznakians with telepathic abilities that are infinitely more powerful; these Reznakians form a secret order that answer only to the ruler of the society.
Culture
The Reznak Empire is very peaceful and peace loving. They are naturally calm and reasonable. They have an equal opportunity system that makes it possible for anyone, regardless of gender or social status to rise to any height within the Empire. Nevertheless, noble blood always gets priority.
The Reznak Empire has a very vast and powerful military. They are also a very prosperous people that have established trade programs with a number of other species. Most of the worlds within the Reznak Empire are beautiful and vacation destinations for many.
The Reznak Empire is also highly advanced in science and technology. They particularly have an expertise in matter transubstantiation, which is one major source of their extreme wealth as they have been able to produce in large transubstantiation facilities some of the ores and minerals that other races have to mine.
Till date, no other species has been able to replicate this technology. The Reznakians have not revealed the science behind this technology. It is said that only a handful of people actually know the science behind the technology—these are all members of the Royal Family.
Politics/Governance
The Reznak Empire runs a monarchial system of governance, with a monarch known as The Supreme, who rules in utter surety over the Empire. Each world within the Empire is ruled by a viceroy, who is a member of The Supreme’s Cabinet. Major sectors of the Reznak Empire are overseen by appointees of The Supreme. The Prime Minister is the one who directly oversees the different aspects of the day to day running of the Empire. The Prime Minister is the most powerful person in the Reznak Empire, second only to The Supreme. The Defense Minister is also extremely powerful and commands the entire military arm of the Empire, including all its internal security organs. Usually, the offices of the Prime Minister and Defense Minister are held by The Supreme’s offspring, which limits the distribution of power to within the Royal Family.
The Supreme may be male or female, depending on who is in the line of succession. A research conducted by the Royal Academy, the foremost, premier college of science in all the Empire, revealed that more Reznakian women than men have held the crown. This does not come as a surprise because the population of females is as high as four times the population of males. The current monarch of the Reznak is female and she is loved by all her people. Her first son is the Prime Minister, while her first daughter (the second child) is the Defense Minister and Commander of the Royal Fleet.
Irivani Hegemony
Irivan is a moon circling the gas giant planet Majriti in the binary Upsilon Andromedae system. It is the third planet of the F component star, Titawin, formerly Upsilon Andromedae A. Irivan is about 44 light years from Earth.
Physical Appearance
Physically the Irivani resemble tall (seven feet in height is not uncommon), thin apes with six limbs: four upper arms and two legs. Each limb ends in a hand: the upper hands and the “feet” have three fingers and a thumb, whereas the middle hands each possess four fingers and a thumb.
They have a pelt of short hair over a softer undercoat that serves to insulate them against the cold. They wear no protective clothing, save when they venture to the icy Irivani poles or out into space. They commonly wear belts bearing weapons, pouches or sporrans.
Physiology
The Irivani are warm-blooded oxygen breathers. They are triploid mammals, the three sexes being male, female, and irimale. Males and irimales are very difficult to tell apart because they comport themselves similarly. Each sex contributes one of three sets of chromosomes to the young, which are born alive.
World Geography & History
Irivan is a cloudy and rather cold world about the size of Mars, though extensively forested, with an atmospheric pressure nearly twice that of Earth. There are no seas, and only a few large lakes. Smaller bodies of water are common, however, and there are several long rivers.
The planet is not tectonically active; earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are rare, though there are major seasonal rain and snow storms.
Politics & Government
Civilization arose in several places on Irivan, always organized around a ruling king or queen who was often the most physically powerful member of a given tribe. Early societies based on hunting and gathering gave way to agricultural settlements, often in a feudal system presided over by a single monarch. Dynasties were common in certain regions, though some kings were overthrown in coups designed to establish proto-democracies. These experiments never lasted long; the Irivani have no taste for, nor skill, at democracy.
Irivani governments were theocracies for centuries. Although there were one or two exceptions of an essentially communist nature, most Irinavian states were headed by religious authorities, primarily Veddists (see below). Having pushed the theocrats out, however, liberal reformers have pushed the world’s governments to adopt universal Irivani rights. See below, Science & Technology and Society, for a more detailed discussion.
Society
Arboreal for most of their evolutionary history, the primitive Irivani descended from the trees following an asteroid strike that precipitated a worldwide catastrophe, killing off 99% of the moon’s forests. The pressure to survive in a post-apocalyptic environment set the Irivani on the road to intelligence.
Their religion was based on the worship of the Great Ved, who had created the universe and subsequently retired to live on Majriti (known to the Irivani as Veddash).
Though the distant stars—excepting Titawin itself—were only occasionally visible through rifts in the clouds enveloping their world, nearby Veddash was a constant presence in Irivan’s night skies. The moon’s forests returned slowly, but by the time they had returned to their original glory, the Irivani no longer wished to return to their primitive beginnings, although their mythology is full of pastoral tales. Instead, they established a thriving metropolitan culture in the trees, with outposts and settlements linked by a system of aerial roads and paths.
Fascinated by the flying abilities of the forests’ abundant avian organisms, the Irivani pursued their dream of flight until they perfected balloons, gliders and later, powered heavier-than-air flying machines. The moon’s thick atmosphere assisted in their efforts. Once able to rise into the relatively clear upper reaches of their atmosphere, Irivanian astronomy and cosmology began in earnest.
There had been clashes among the faithful for many years because fundamentalist Veddists would not relinquish their view of the stars. Even after the first expedition to Arrikiden returned to Irivan bearing rocks with strange devices embedded in their matrices, as well as the fossilized remains of alien creatures, the fundamentalists insisted that the fossils were fake, and that all reports of an ancient culture on the exoplanet were hoaxes. All members of the expedition were put to death.
This provoked a furious uprising of the Reformers, who massacred fundamentalist leaders and worshippers in their temples. A religious war exploded across Irivan, that did not burn itself out for nearly twenty standard years. When at last hostilities ceased, the Reformers were triumphant. From that time on, science and liberal thinking drove Irivanian life. However, the near-total extermination of irimales had lasting effects; the population plummeted, and the recovery to its vitality was slow. Irimale children were cosseted and protected, and often hidden away from public view by fearful parents. Regarded as chattels, a family’s irimales were forbidden to mix with greater society, and were jealously guarded and forced to procreate only with mates specifically chosen for them by family patriarchs.
Conservative forces have made great strides in the past century, however, with heads of state across Irivan becoming more beholden to Veddists ostensibly working for change but secretly working to return the entire planet to theocratic rule.
Science & Technology
Though there were no planets in the Titawinian system capable of supporting life like theirs, the Irivani were soon able to voyage to the binary system’s smaller component—an M-type red dwarf about 750 AU from Titawin itself. It is much farther than the distance from Sol to Uranus (just over 19 AU), but considerably less than the distance from Sol to Alpha Centauri (273,196.8 AU).
The first expedition found no intelligent life on the small, rocky worlds of Upsilon Andromedae B. But there were, to the astonishment of the expedition’s scientists, buried traces of an ancient civilization that had once flourished on one world—a now-lifeless rock named Arrikiden. This discovery energized the Irivanian scientific establishment, and spurred the development of technology that would enable explorers to journey to other, more distant, stars.
Moreover, the revelation that there had been other forms of intelligence in the universe, even if none existed now, provoked a backlash among faithful followers of the Great Ved, known as Veddists, many of whom were irimales. They believed that the Irivani alone were the pinnacle of creation. There could be no other advanced races; to suggest as much was heresy. Even to admit that there were other worlds beyond Irivan and Majriti was to invite scorn and approbation among the stricter Veddidts.
The holy writings of Ved—which were collected before the piercing of their atmosphere’s thick veil—taught that Majriti and its attendant satellites were the only other worlds in creation. The stars, glimpsed on rare occasions through rifts in the eternal cloud cover, were thought to be the sparks raised by the sacrificial fires lit by Ved on Majriti, as he slew his enemies by casting them into the flames. Soon, this belief was abandoned; the upper reaches of the atmosphere were explored by intrepid Irivanian aeronauts, systematically investigated by scientists and the true nature of the lights in the night skies were revealed.
Nonetheless, a schism developed between hardline fundamentalists and a more liberal group of scientifically minded Reformers, who were prepared to reconsider their position on the superiority of Irivani to all other life. Clearly, the fact that other intelligent life forms had developed a technological civilization hundreds of thousands of years before the Irivani even discovered fire meant that there could be other such races elsewhere in space. It was thought that there might even be beings whose cultures were far more advanced than the Irivani, and that these beings, could be receptive to evangelical efforts on the part of the Irivani.
Seyshallian Nation
Seyshall closely circles a non-variable red dwarf star, and has a year that measures less than a tenth of Earth’s. There are seven other planets in the Seyshallian system, none of which are capable of supporting life.
Physical Appearance
The Seyshallians are descended from cephalopod-like creatures. They resemble four-foot-tall lizards with four tentacle-like upper limbs. In form, they are similar to the Drupadi, though smaller. Some scientists speculate that the two races spring from a common ancestor, perhaps brought to both worlds as pets by the semi-mythical Precursors in ages past. Due to the low ambient light, their huge, tarsier-like eyes are particularly sensitive. On worlds with larger suns, they must wear protective lenses.
Anatomy/Physiology
The Sayshallians are cold-blooded egg-layers. The females are physically indistinguishable from males, save for the females’ ability to change their appearance through the use of specialized cells. Females have retained their ancestors’ ability to adjust the color, opacity, or reflectivity of their skin. They are prized as spies and scouts in battle.
Home World Geography & History
The Seyshallians’ ancestors were forced onto land when the oceans on their native world shrank drastically in the wake of a stellar cataclysm. The pressure to survive also kicked their intellectual development into high gear, intelligence being the key to their survival. Over a period of several thousand years the Seyshallians went from seaside-dwelling primitives, reliant on the ocean for their food, to sophisticated builders of monuments and tillers of the soil.
Politics & Government
Their primary form of government is feudalism. Each nation or state is ruled by a single powerful lord or king to whom lesser nobles swear fealty. These royal families are dynastic and can last for many centuries unless overcome from without or overcome from within. Many kingdoms are stable, while others are constantly under threat because of changing accords, often as a result of kinship or marriage. The line of descent is through the female.
Society
Seyshallians are naturally aggressive. After several disastrous early attempts to come together in large cities as their population expanded, their settlements never grew any larger than two or three hundred individuals. They have remained this size throughout their history. Consequently, their planet is dotted with many small villages and towns, in regions analogous to duchies. These duchies or principalities are overseen by rulers (see above) who scheme and strive and engage with each other in ever-shifting pragmatic alliances. Great lovers of ceremony, Seyshallians put on many festivals and have numerous holidays.
Having evolved into their current amphibious form, the Seyshallians live a partially land-based existence, with considerable time spent underwater. On land, they engage in mercantile and scientific pursuits, whereas beneath the oceans they hunt and grow their crops.
A Seyshallian rite of passage entails a young male venturing into the deeper oceanic rifts in search of a ferocious, sightless predator that lurks there. Many of these eager hunters never return. Those who do are rewarded with the girl of their choice from their native village. The females have nothing to say about this, and some are not happy to be thus chosen by the triumphant youth, who often comes back maimed from his trial and may need to be cared for. As a result, spousal homicide is not unknown, and the wild lands outside of some settlements have become a haven for females fleeing vengeful families. Determined males (or their families) will sometimes pursue the females even there.
They are also fanatical traders, and a Seyshallian is never happier than when he thinks he has wrangled a deal for himself.
Science & Technology
Masters of the biological sciences, Seyshallian sometimes attack enemy territory by means of engineered sea life, including flying jellyfish and specially grown carnivorous algae.
The Seyshallians, from the early days of their civilization, were fascinated by the possibilities of powered flight. Seyshallian scientists, through the pressures of war, developed powered rockets relatively early, when their overall culture was about on the same level as Earth’s in the Middle Ages. Though they never discovered the transistor, the Seyshallian nevertheless managed to claw their way into space using the computational power of a vacuum-tube-based technology.
A favorite saying among Seyshallian scientists is that their first great leap was on to dry land, and their second was into space. They discovered other star-faring species almost at once, through contact with the Children of Zorm and, through them, the Reznak Empire. Warned by the Children of possible negative effects on their psyche by Reznakian telepathy, the Seyshallians were prepared for withdrawal from contact but the oppressive mental emanations of the Reznakians had no effect whatsoever on the Seyshallians’ minds. Intrigued by the problem, the Seyshallians are conducting research into the effect.
Culture
Seyshallian are known to be skilled physicians and many find employment in the life and medical sciences. Some exiled females (see above) have even managed to win berths on starships, often at great peril to themselves, because it is not unknown for vengeful male relatives to follow them and even infiltrate a starship’s crew in order to kill the wayward female. These killings are regarded by the Seyshallians as purely family affairs.
Children of Zorm
This race of gentle bipeds is not based on a planet. The entire species--over two million individuals—live in a flotilla of ships and a swarm of hollowed-out asteroids circling 18 Scorpii, a main sequence G2 star about 45 light years from Earth. Zorm is one of only two worlds circling 18 Scorpii.
The Children of Zorm have resided in space for over a thousand years, while their planet, Zorm, a Mercury-sized planet with a thick atmosphere, undergoes an ice age. They plan to return to Zorm, however, when the ice recedes. In the meantime, they established themselves firmly in the asteroid belt, mining the rocks for metals and ice.
Physical Appearance
In appearance, Zormians are humanoid, with a small round head bearing a prehensile trunk, two gentle black eyes, a pair of huge ears; relatively thick, elephant-like legs, and long sensory whiskers, like those of Terran cats. Their bodies are covered with short, greyish-brown fur. They have long tails. Their stubby hands possess two fingers and a thumb
Anatomy/Physiology
The Children of Zorm are oviparous (egg-laying), warm-blooded oxygen breathers. Their skeletons are less bone than cartilage, and because Zorm’s gravity is only about a third that of Earth, they require physical augmentation such as mechanical exoskeletons on higher-gravity worlds. All Zormians are vegetarian.
Home World Geography & History
Physically delicate, the Children of Zorm achieved intelligence, as do many species, as a result of being preyed upon by larger, more savage foes. Before its ice age, jungle-like Zorm was home to a flourishing fauna of giant dinosaurian creatures. The Children of Zorm evolved intelligence to escape the marauding monsters. (See Science & Technology, below, for details.)
Politics & Government
The Children of Zorm practice basic democracy: one Child, one vote. Overall rule is vested in the captains of their ships and in the governors of the asteroid colonies. All Children participate in debates and law-making. Sitting out an election is frowned upon. Their economy is based on precious metals and organic compounds that they mine from the asteroids.
Society
The Children have two sexes, male and female. They are strongly family-oriented. The young is raised by their parents and extended families. The female lays one egg at a time, and can remain fertile for up to twenty years. Even so, small families are the norm, given the relatively limited space available on their flotilla and in their asteroid colonies. Certain families may be allowed to have additional children as a mark of respect or as a reward for service above and beyond the call of duty. Otherwise, reproduction is limited, with potential parents being chosen in a lottery on a yearly basis.
Science & Technology
They discovered steam power when their main civilization was technologically equivalent to ancient Greece on Earth. Using steam-propelled projectiles the Children were able at last to drive the dinosaur-like creatures menacing them into near-extinction. The use of these projectiles, as well as simultaneous advances in electromagnetic theory, soon led the Children to experiments in heavier-than-air flight—relatively easy to accomplish on Zorm, whose thick atmosphere is the result of constant outgassing from the planet’s interior.
The rate of outgassing, however, was found to be declining; the air was slowly beginning to leak away because the planet’s gravity was not strong enough to retain it. The Children are working to establish experimental domed cities on Zorm’s equator, and plan to move into similar cities when they return from space.
Strong believers in democracy, the Children have long had a love of political debate. Other forms of government rarely took hold in their society, though this may not always have been to their benefit; the discussion of whether or not to abandon their threatened world went on for nearly two (Earth Standard) centuries before they decided to collectively take up residence in the asteroids.
The Children of Zorm originally had little interest in trying to reach other stars, though they had successfully launched probes to the only other world in their star system, Haddi, further in toward 18 Scorpii. Haddi possesses plant and animal life but is too hot for the Children; they prefer their climate-controlled asteroid cities and space vessels. Although Zorm and Haddi both have moons, none are capable of supporting life.
The Children experienced First Contact when their system was visited by an expedition of astronauts from the Reznak Empire. The two races were similar enough in development, worldview and technology to have a great deal in common. The Children had long supposed that there must be intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, and were hugely excited by the visiting Imperial representatives. An exchange of information provided the Children with a great deal of knowledge and stimulated a belated debate among them concerning the practicality of visiting other star systems.
However, before the debate could proceed further, catastrophe struck. The contact between the Empire and the Children resulted to a sudden uptick in psychological disturbances among the Zormians. It was revealed, eventually, that the disturbance originated from the flood of telepathic energy from the Reznak. Mild though it was, this flow, which was involuntary on the part of the Reznak, triggered mental stress in the Children, and led to a wave of aggressive behavior and an increase in suicides. Shocked and dismayed that their mere thoughts could cause such a negative reaction, the Reznak withdrew from all physical contact They have, however, maintained electronic communication from a safe distance. Researchers on both sides continue to search for a way to solve the problem.
The Zormian fleet is larger than that of most other known space-faring culture, but their vessels are generally less of an offensive/defensive nature, and are oriented towards simple maintenance of the population. When the situation calls for fighting, though, The Children of Zorm have proven themselves to be formidable foes.
Kurta Colonies
Physical Description
Kurta are felinoid mammals. In height, the female averages up to six feet, and the males slightly over five. Their bodies are covered with short fur in one of several uniform colors. There are no splotches of additional color/patterns, as with Terran cats. Their hands have three fingers and an opposed thumb. Fingers, as well as toes, possess retractable claws. The Kurtan tail is slightly prehensile. The face looks pushed-in, as with a pug dog, but still has an obvious muzzle.
Anatomy/Physiology
The Kurta have an internal bony skeleton. Their teeth reflect their carnivore ancestry, but the dentition is somewhat adapted for chewing as opposed to simple biting and tearing. Being mammalian, they are warm-blooded oxygen breathers who give birth to and nurse their young.
The Kurta are more or less nocturnal in their habits.
Home World Geography & History
Lomagon has two moons, Keda and Pondak, and this fact had a great impact on their development as a species. Primitive Kurta believed that the universe was dominated by two warring sister goddesses, Haeia and Beloria, who lived on the moons. Both goddesses sought to destroy Lomagon because it blocked their view of the stars, but were kept from doing so by their mutual jealousy and enmity. Kurta mythology is filled with tales of mortals who were victimized or assisted in one way or another by the scheming goddesses or their underlings as they strove to gain ascendency over each other. The Kurta regard the enmity of Haeia and Beloria as the source of all earthly misery and woe.
Lomagon is an arid world with no oceans and only a few seas which are a bit bigger than large lakes—scattered here and there across its face. Even so, with two moons, the tides on these bodies of water can be sizeable. Kurta dwelling on their coastlines developed sailing in their prehistory, and soon established trading routes and thriving coastal port cities. Land-based caravans also spread Kurta cultures.
Other cities grew around desert oases. But given an innate distaste for groups and a somewhat paranoid world view, the felinoids rarely congregated in large numbers. This reluctance was also informed by the Kurtas’ rather piratical nature: settlements and caravans were often raided, with wealthy individuals being held for ransom by powerful brigands.
To this day, Lomagon remains rather sparsely populated, though wealthy Kurta have established many large estates around some oases. City-dwellers are looked down upon to some extent as less that self-reliant.
Politics & Government
Prehistoric Kurta lived in small packs to facilitate hunting. Over time, these developed into tribes, with complicated inter-tribal relationships. Each tribe was led by an alpha female and her immediate family, always including at least one male shaman. Modern-day Kurta retain the tribal structure, which is overseen in the planetary capital, H’eghdom, where representatives of all Kurtan tribes on Lomagon meet in a parliament to discuss issues and vote on laws.
Society
Endlessly curious about their world, the Kurta discarded their primitive religious beliefs relatively early in their development, while maintaining their temples and a ceremonial priesthood. Males, smaller in stature than the females, are thought to be unsuitable for more feminine pursuits like hunting and government. Great numbers of males are also to be found in the field of education. Kurta have occasionally experimented with patriarchy, but these experiments are always short-lived.
Kurta children, though born live as are most mammals, are placed in creches as soon as they are weaned (about six months after birth) to be raised by neutered males. The bonds formed between the children (especially the males) and their surrogate fathers sometimes last for a lifetime. Female children are turned out of the creches when they attain their third birthday, by which time they are fully capable of fending for themselves. Rather than being taken back in by their families, the children are expected to survive for two years in the wild, after which they are welcomed back into society and may take their proper place as adults. They have attained adult stature by that age and are capable of reproducing. A newly socialized female is responsible for establishing her own home with the help of males stolen from other settlements and put to work as slaves and/or consorts. This is regarded as normal behavior by Kurta at all levels of the culture.
The theft of males often results in a kind of traditional duel between houses, an ancient rite called St'ahanut. These duels, which are to the death, are fought with bladed pole weapons called trielluds, which are like spears. The victor retains ownership of the male (see Naming Conventions below).
Despite their technical prowess, Kurta are naturally very conservative in their thinking and are slow to adopt the fruits of scientific research. Male Kurta have traditionally been less reluctant to embrace change, especially in the social sciences. Often dissatisfied with their lot, males occasionally rise in revolt against their female oppressors and mistresses. These revolts, though sometimes successful, are always brutally put down with all male conspirators sentenced to public execution.
Science & Technology
Kurtan scientists delved deeply into astronomy and physics, and developed space travel some five thousand years after their culture founded their first cities. Their earliest space flights were to Keda (inner moon, rocky and airless) and Pondak (further away, but larger—almost a third the size of Lomagon, and possessing an atmosphere and lower forms of animal and plant life).
Three hundred years after becoming a space-faring species, the Kurta experienced First Contact on the planet of a nearby star. This happened to be a colony of the Tyreesians. The meeting between the two alien races was peaceful and resulted in regular communication between their worlds, but meddling in Kurtan politics by the Tyreesians have hurt the relationship.
The Kurtan fighting style remains essentially unchanged from antiquity. Their space fleets are comprised mostly of smaller, more agile ships as opposed to larger battle cruisers like TUS Seeker. These small vessels have the benefit of being easily maneuverable in atmosphere or in space. Kurta fight like lions on the hunt, in packs with quick surprise strikes to the jugular.
Kurta Naming Conventions
Consider the name of the space pirate da-Silantha Marenni Oleirónathiss, for example. The syllable da infers that she is a first-born, with the given name Silantha, belonging to the house of Marenni, of the Oleirónathiss tribe.
Alternately, the name ti-Caren Daghannelin Darienathiss, who could be called Tic or Tica for short, by her family, contains the information that she is Caren, the third-born daughter belonging to the Daghannelin house of the tribe of Darienathiss.
A woman named da-Fortori Beritren Holennadórathiss could be Dafo or Dafor or perhaps Berit for short. Formally, of course, she'd be da-Fortori.
Males are considered to have no tribes, and are essentially owned by their houses, or estates. So a male character name Heerbaga would formally be Heerbaga Marenni; the house name being appended to his given name.
Drupadi Regime
Physical Appearance
The Drupadi resemble other humanoids excluding two specific distinctions: their skin is pale white, almost translucent and they have a set of rounded appendages that narrow to the tips in rows straight back from their forehead in an approximation of hair. It is believed that these ‘tentacles’ are a vestigial carry-over from their cephalopod ancestor. It is also speculated in more than one Terran xenoarchaeologist journal that the Drupadi visited Earth centuries before first contact but only briefly – just long enough to inspire the Greek legend of Medusa. However, there is no physical evidence to support this theory. The Drupadi themselves merely shrug and smile when asked.
Anatomy/ Physiology
Unlike other two-legged humanoids, the Drupadi have a non-humanoid ancestor that most closely resembles a Terran octopus. However, the Drupadi have retained only a few traits from their unusual progenitor: skin with microscopic "feelers" over their entire body, the ability to produce air-borne pheromones to attract mates and rounded tentacle “hair”.
The microscopic feelers on their skin act like mini-mouths that give the Drupadi an almost 3-D ability to "taste" and "feel" anything they touch. The effect of this exotic ability is that their bodies are one big erogenous zone. This unique adaptation creates such an intense sensory touch experience for the Drupadi that any type of skin-to-skin contact is considered sexual. Interacting with other species can be awkward as just shaking hands with a Drupadi is considered a sex act.
Adding to this already potent sexual arsenal is another trait retained from their cephalopod ancestor: internal ink sacs that disperse pheromones to attract a mate.
Although the "ink sacs" of the Drupadi do not actually produce ink (that aspect has been evolved out), the glands do create a musk of peptide pheromones that are automatically released in the presence of potential mates.
The third trait: the ‘tentacles’ on top of their heads are not considered to be true tentacles as they do not move, but simply lay flat straight back from the forehead in neat rows. However, these hair tentacles are also covered by the same sensitive skin as the rest of their body.
Ironically, there remains one key mystery surrounding the sexual nature of the Drupadi: reproduction. Specifically, it is not known how the Drupadi reproduce or if there are even male Drupadi. A male Drupadi has never been seen and when asked regarding the existence of males or whether they reproduce asexually the Drupadi give only vague, evasive answers.
Planet
Drupadi Prime is small and covered with more water, mostly oceanic, than landmass. It is believed that this inverse of water to land ratio is evidence of their early aquatic origins. It is further speculated that the high humidity produced by the large amount of liquid surface area is necessary to maintain the unique sensory qualities of their skin. When Drupadi are off-world, which is often, they travel with large quantities of humectants to protect their skin from losing too much moisture.
Culture
The Drupadi are a highly sexual, sensual race devoted to pleasure. Their soft skin, intense touch stimulation as well as their pheromone attractants make them highly desired as sexual partners throughout the galaxy. However, encounters with the Drupadi have had reported side effects including permanent insanity (one suggested safety measure is to wear white noise earplugs so as to shield oneself mentally). They are a matriarchal society given the fact that there is lack of any males in their species. While they do not deny access to their planet, they also do not invite it. The Drupadi travel throughout the galaxy so that there is little cause for other species to make a trip to their planet.
Politics
The Drupadi are considered an influential race and are members of the Galactic Council formed by Captain Jeryl Montgomery of Earth. However, their interest in politics seems to focus on maintaining contact with other species in a bid for discovering secrets that they can then use to exert both influence and power in other political circles. An example of such a power play occurred when the Drupadi leader Marjda revealed information to Captain Montgomery regarding whom was behind the attempt to sabotage the formation of the Galactic council.
It should be noted that the Drupadi enjoy cultivating an air of mystery in all of their dealings whether in politics or scientific inquiry.
Any attempts to discover more about them are ultimately met with failure as any individuals (male or female) who attempt to ask them become distracted and lose their train of thought as well as their original queries.
Prolonged contact with the Drupadi can also result in a loss of motor control, speech, common sense, inhibitions, large amounts of credits and occasionally the failure to recall one's own name.