“Any second thoughts?”
Her head shook tersely. “We’re all traitors now.”
“It’s not traitorous to want to be free. ”
“Oh, God, you’re an idealist.”
He opened his mouth to argue, then stopped. Idealism wasn’t an easy outlook to maintain in his profession, but it kept him sane. “I suppose I am. It’s served me well enough so far.”
She opted not to challenge him on it, instead checking all the HUD screens for the Nth time. “We wait for Gianno, correct?”
“Correct.”
She nodded slowly, and together they stared out the viewport. It felt as if the fabric of spacetime itself had frozen, the universe holding its breath together with them as the decreed deadline drew ever closer. Every object in the galaxy was surely fixated on this point, eager to witness what transpired on the other side of the event horizon.
Thirty seconds of the five minutes remained when a new arrival emerged out of the glare of the sun, rising from beneath the demarcation line to take up a position in the center of the rebel contingent.
Like the craft he currently occupied, its hull was a muted bronze, though the sun’s reflected light painted it burnished copper. Also like the reconnaissance craft, it sported sleek curves and knifed edges.
It was, of course, far larger than the recon craft—around fifteen hundred percent larger in fact, and twice as large as the Alliance cruisers. It wasn’t a dreadnought, as hiding the construction of one of those behemoths would’ve been a doomed undertaking, but it was the next closest thing. Built from the ground up using Senecan materials, technology and weaponry, it was the flagship of what would hopefully become a significant fleet of Senecan Federation warships.
But that all depended on the outcome of this confrontation, here, today. Arguably it depended on the outcome of future confrontations as well, but those would never occur in the absence of a victory here.
Unidentified: “This is the SFS Thermopylae. On behalf of the Senecan Federation, I request all Earth Alliance vessels desist in their blockade of civilian traffic to and from Senecan space. Further, I request such vessels depart the Senecan Stellar System forthwith, as they are trespassing on Senecan Federation territory.”
Admiral Himura ( EAS Fuzhou): “There is no such thing as Senecan Federation ‘territory.’ You are all deserters and turncoats, and you will be treated as such. You need to be very, very careful what you do next, or you will find yourself with a war on your hands.” The Admiral’s voice bled barely controlled incredulity and rage.
Unidentified ( SFS Thermopylae): “We do not desire a war. As stated in the declaration transmitted to Prime Minister Ioannou, the leadership of the Earth Alliance Assembly and EASC Board Chairman Breveski, we intend to institute our own government, one based on legitimate self-determination and the principles of freedom the Alliance once adhered to but has now abandoned.
“We expect the Earth Alliance government to allow any colonies that wish to join the Senecan Federation to withdraw from the Alliance without incident. Our desire is to coexist peacefully alongside the Alliance, but we will not be subject to its rule any longer.”
Stefan’s hands trembled on the backrest; annoyed, he clasped one over the other in an attempt to subdue them. “Move into position.”
Her hands swept across the controls. “And by ‘position’ you mean approximately ten centimeters beneath the laser turrets of this Alliance cruiser here?”
“I do.”
“Got it. Piece of cake.” The reply was delivered through gritted teeth and a clenched jaw as they oh-so-carefully skimmed forward and rose toward the hulking shadow. Though they flew in a deliberate, cautious manner, the cruiser’s hull raced by overhead. It was a long vessel at three hundred and ten meters, and the weapons were located a third of the way down the underside.
“Careful—don’t crash into the hull!”
“I’m…not ….” A distinct growl had joined the gritted teeth and clenched jaw .
The large weapon housing hung beneath the frame ahead of them. They slowed to a stop less than ten meters behind it.
“Hope they don’t decide to move before we’re done.”
Stefan’s voice came out clipped as he leaned into the HUD beside her. Would a second chair in the cockpit have been too much to ask? “Hold us steady. I’m locking onto the target.”
The HUD screen directly in front of him became a reticle. It pulsed as he painstakingly maneuvered it until the center settled on the subtly gleaming bow of the SFS Thermopylae .
“What’s so special about this weapon?”
“We stole the Alliance schem flow and amped up the power so it mimics a cruiser’s weaponry. The targeting system works a bit differently as a result.”
Admiral Himura ( EAS Fuzhou): “I will say again: stand down now, relinquish all Alliance ships and materials in your possession and present yourself for court-martial proceedings.”
Unidentified ( SFS Thermopylae): “Negative.”
Stefan exhaled. Point of no return, come and gone. “Firing.”
The laser streaked out from beneath the viewport. The shot was larger and more powerful than those generated by the weaponry typically found on a recon craft. It also utilized the ytterbium-crystal pulse laser materials wielded by Alliance military weapons, so anyone looking in their direction would swear the fire had originated from the Alliance cruiser situated directly above Stefan and Lekkas.
The Thermopylae was in motion, denying the sieging warships a convenient target for the attack it had been likely to provoke. As it streaked across the line of blockaded ships, a large commercial transport emerged from beneath it headed in the opposite direction.
The laser struck the civilian vessel full-on broadside.
Lacking sufficient shielding, it ruptured into a ball of roiling white and coral as both the active impulse engine and the thankfully dormant sLume superluminal drive exploded .
The Thermopylae returned fire. Everyone returned fire, and space lit up in an infernal clamor of interweaving lasers and detonations. The cruiser above them accelerated to port, and bedlam unfurled in its wake.
Lekkas had fallen back in her chair, leaving their ship drifting and exposed. “You…you hit a civilian ship! How did you miss a bloody battlecruiser?”
Shock replaced horror as the dominant expression animating her face when she discovered Stefan’s gun pointed at her chest.
“Your psych profile indicates you respond to extreme stress with enhanced reaction speeds and sharper focus. So get us out of here in one piece, would you?”
Her mouth snapped into a thin, hard line as her pupils contracted. “Yes, sir .”
She seized the controls once more, and he re-holstered his gun. The floor pitched beneath his feet as they too accelerated, albeit away from the cruiser, and banked hard. He stumbled away from the dash and grabbed the top of her chair to prevent being thrown to the floor.
A fighter shot past their bow as they dove away, and in the next blink they were dodging two additional fighters and skimming the hull of a frigate. His stomach lurched, and if it hadn’t been many hours since he’d eaten, he would’ve vomited its contents.
The viewport briefly cleared—then another frigate was bearing down on their location. It didn’t know they were there, but it was moving far too fast to divert in any event.
“Shit!” Lekkas yanked the ship vertical, sending him thudding to the floor and skidding into the main cabin. His head slammed into the leg of a workstation as they finally leveled off.
“Okay back there?”
He massaged the back of his head and struggled to his feet. “That wasn’t funny.”
“You should’ve strapped in to the jump seat.”
“Given your certification scores, I expected it to be a smoother ride. ”
“Must have been the extreme stress affecting my skills.”
When he reached the cockpit, he was relieved to see the surrounding space beginning to thi
n in a more permanent fashion. They had soared above the bulk of the fighting and were now racing away. Their job here was done, and the campaign would be won or lost without their participation.
“Are you going to point a gun at me again?”
“No. I simply needed to short-circuit your tirade and refocus you on the task at hand.”
She swung her chair around and crossed her arms tightly over her chest. “Asshole. How could you miss? Do you know how many innocent civilians you killed?”
“Seventeen.”
“Are you kidding? That transport could hold four hundred people. Even if it wasn’t full to capacity—”
“There were seventeen people on the ship. A skeleton crew. And I didn’t miss. It was my target.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “Why? ”
He thought about Frannie, believing her husband was off at an engineering symposium planning a spaceport expansion and new levtram routes. He’d scheduled a series of messages to her to be delivered once the coup began so she didn’t worry. What would she think of him if she knew what he had just done, what he did for a living?
He met Lekkas’ furious stare with an equally cool one. “Because that was my mission.”
“Your mission? No. Your mission was to simulate an attack by the Alliance cruiser on our new warship, instigating the Thermopylae to open fire.”
“No, that was your mission. My mission was to hit the civilian vessel. It was specifically chosen since it would be all but empty, thus minimizing casualties, and Brigadier Gianno made certain the Thermopylae crossed its path at the pivotal moment.
“See, nobody will care how many people actually died. They’ll only care that the Alliance opened fire on a defenseless merchant vessel. Public opinion will be on our side, which means more colonies will offer support or even join the Federation. Money will flow to our cause so we can pay for the ships that are essential if we expect to prevail.”
Outside the viewport an amber burst flared. The sun was now behind them, and the eruption created a stark contrast to the space beyond it. Another ship destroyed, on and by one side or the other.
She shook her head as if to tangibly deny his point. “So that’s the real reason I wasn’t trusted to handle the shooting—and rightfully so. It wasn’t required. A shot at the Thermopylae would have been enough.”
“Possibly. Not my call to make, but I can’t disagree with the logic. We need every advantage we can create in these early hours and days if we’re to stand a snowball’s chance in Hell at winning this war. The Alliance military has nearly six thousand warships, and that’s before you start counting the fighters and support craft. We need them arguing over how to proceed instead of sending their entire damn fleet to Seneca. We need them doing what they do best: debating, prevaricating and creating a dozen committees to draw up rules of engagement. We need time .”
“Why lie to me?”
“I didn’t lie. I implied, you inferred.”
“Don’t play semantics with me. I’m not one of your marks. So….” She tossed her arms weakly in the air. “What now?”
“Now we follow the plan. We go home and go our separate ways. We keep our secret, no matter what happens—kidnapping, torture or a billion-credit bribe be damned, we keep our secret . Lastly, you stop having a nervous breakdown. You didn’t kill those people. I did. You sleep well at night because their blood isn’t on your hands, and I sleep well at night because it was…necessary.”
“Necessary . I refuse to believe that.”
Stefan shrugged. “Believe what you want. I believe their sacrifice will save far more lives in the long run—and that is our goal. If it helps, which I doubt it does, their families will be well taken care of. Our leaders will set a precedent by demonstrating the Senecan Federation honors its fallen war heroes.”
The burden of having started a war in which tens of thousands and perhaps tens of millions would die was a heavy one, but one he’d been prepared to bear. The burden of starting the war by murdering civilians…well, it wasn’t as if he hadn’t known it would be heavier.
He wasn’t a soldier, and dammit but he didn’t want to have been here.
The justifications stumbled over one another in a ragged loop in his mind. Lives would ultimately be saved as a result. War meant the spilling of blood. It meant death, and he’d be blindingly naïve to assert otherwise. But war also brought the prospect of a new world, a better world. He had to believe it was worth it.
Lekkas patched in to the Thermopylae ’s internal comms so they could monitor the opening salvos of the clash. The chatter provided a welcome distraction from the troubled ruminations of his conscience.
Brigadier Gianno ( SFS Thermopylae): “Elathan Seventh Regiment, your sole mission is to take out the Fuzhou. Cut the head off the snake, and do it now. Krysk Fourth Regiment, run interference and occupy the frigates protecting the Fuzhou.”
As they swung around on nearing the Lunar SSR Center, the full expanse of the battle spread out before them. The smaller, all-but-defenseless merchant vessels had vacated the area, leaving the military warships and armed civilian craft free to wreak havoc without fear of collateral damage. Most of the warships were outwardly identical, which made it difficult to judge the ebb and flow of the conflict. But it hardly mattered in an arena littered with debris and illuminated by incessant fire and explosions.
Once, humanity’s warriors had killed using swords and spears. Now they did so using weapons whose power approached the fury of a sun .
Brigadier Gianno ( SFS Thermopylae): “Let’s show them exactly what this ship can do. Don’t hold anything back for the next battle, or there may not be a next battle. I see an Alliance cruiser and frigate lingering too close to one another W 43° −6° Z. Also, they’re harassing Auxiliary Group Three. Make them regret it.”
The Thermopylae cut through the fog of war, aggressively engaging an Alliance cruiser as it maneuvered with remarkable agility through the chaos. Attacks from multiple fighters and a damaged frigate splashed off its defense shields like rain off a pitched roof.
It was a beautiful ship, quick and powerful. A ship worthy of a new federation.
Stefan hoped the people building that federation proved themselves worthy of it.
AFTERWORD TO APOGEE
INCLUDED IN THE GALAXY CHRONICLES
Space has fascinated me since I was a small child. When I was old enough to dream such things, I wanted to be the scientist who invented faster-than-light space travel. Alas, that wasn’t likely to happen, so instead I decided to write stories in which it had already been accomplished.
We live in a time of rapidly advancing technology. Revolutions in medicine and computer intelligence lurk just around the corner. People increasingly talk about strong AI, transhumanism and the singularity as foreseeable events. Meanwhile, the question of what it will mean to be human in the face of these developments hangs unanswered in the air.
So, what if we colonize the stars? What if we create true AI, and it doesn’t go Skynet on us? What if it DOES go Skynet on us, but we reign it in? What if we cure diseases, turn ourselves into cyborgs with synthetic enhancements and live for hundreds of years?
What if we do all these things, only to find that we’re still simply human, with all the same faults, weaknesses, foibles—and strengths—that we’ve always had? Can we ever grow beyond our fundamental nature, flaws and all? Should we, or are we stronger with them?
Underlying the massive space battles, alien invasions and random supernovas, I try to write stories that ask (and perhaps suggest answers to) these questions. Stories filled with characters who fight, struggle, love and betray, fail and triumph—and through it all try to do better, to be better. And a few who don’t.
Apogee is, in a technical sense, a prequel to my Aurora Rising trilogy, though the events in Apogee precede it by a quarter century. When Aurora Rising opens, we find a galaxy divided. People live under an uneasy détente among the mammoth Earth Alliance, the defiant Se
necan Federation and a handful of wealthy independent colonies. When a powerful force threatens humanity’s continued existence, their only chance to survive is to put aside their differences and unite against the threat. But despite the clear need to do so, the sins of the past…complicate matters.
Apogee shines a light on that past, telling the story of the fateful decisions and critical opening moves of a war whose repercussions will ripple forward across decades. The war is a story all its own, worthy of a far more fulsome telling…which is something I very well may do in the future. First, though, there are a few questions raised by Aurora Rising that need answering.
R ESTLESS II
**Restless II contains spoilers for the events of the Aurora Rising trilogy (Starshine, Vertigo, Transcendence)**
This is the only story that comes with a spoiler warning and the strong recommendation to not read it until you’ve finished the first trilogy, Aurora Rising. Why? Well, that would be a spoiler, too, right?
Restless II acts as a meaningful bridge between the end of Aurora Rising and the beginning of the first Aurora Renegades novel, Sidespace, so once you’ve read Transcendence , dive in and enjoy!
D RAMATIS P ERSONAE
* * *
Alexis ‘Alex’ Solovy
Starship pilot, scout and space explorer; Prevo.
Daughter of Miriam and David Solovy.
Faction: Earth Alliance
Caleb Marano
Former Special Operations intelligence agent,
Senecan Federation Division of Intelligence.
Faction: Senecan Federation
Valkyrie
Artificial. Prevo counterpart to Alex Solovy.
Faction: Independent
2323
(2 M ONTHS A FTER THE E VENTS OF T RANSCENDENCE)
Short Stories of Aurora Rhapsody Page 7