Short Stories of Aurora Rhapsody
Page 14
The light of the core sank above me as the ring bowed in to the void. The marker for the next-to-last location blinked urgently at me, and I readied the drop—
—and very nearly made a disaster of it. The tiny sips of oxygen I subsisted on were taking their toll, and when coupled with the pain in my arm and leaking suit, I was now less running and more stumbling forward from sheer inertia.
I tried to drop the slab while moving, slipped and kicked it toward the edge. I lunged for it in panic, overestimated the distance, and fell atop it. Please don’t detonate. Please don’t detonate.
One thing was certain: my weight had succeeded in sticking it to the metal. I crawled to my feet and rested my hands on my thighs. Dizziness—the real kind—blurred the periphery of my vision.
“Why am I doing this?”
The stars had no answer for me, but it was okay. I had my own answer. I would run and I would fly and I would die, but I would not be a slave. Not to the Idoni integral and its sadistic Primor. Not to the Anaden Directorate. Not to my anarch superiors. I wasn’t here because they’d ordered me here; I was here to be free.
I ran.
Possibly crookedly.
The journey passed in a blur, and suddenly the final location rushed up on me .
I placed the slab, knowing it had none but the slimmest protective layer, and flung myself off the ring into space.
Time’s up.
I twisted around to face the Gateway with a second to spare. A second to witness the staccato of explosions shine more brilliantly than the galactic core as my body atomized to nothingness, until not even stardust remained.
ANARCH POST ALPHA
M ILKY W AY S ECTOR 59
On the other side of the galaxy, deep in a sector the Directorate had long ago abandoned, I awoke with a gasp.
Sterile smooth walls and cushioned linens welcomed my transition. A fading echo of the flash of agony receded to a memory as I breathed in the oxygen-rich air of the restoration capsule.
My hand went to my shoulder, but of course the wound was gone. My skin felt cool, still moist from the gelatinous fluid it had resided in until needed.
Outside the capsule a Curative unit checked my vitals. A chime signaled all systems were nominal, and the protective cover slid away as the virtual image of my handler materialized.
“Welcome back, Eren. Congratulations on a successful mission. See to your personals, then report in twenty minutes for a briefing on your next assignment. Nos libertatem somnia .”
Q&A FOR RE/GENESIS
INCLUDED IN
BEYOND THE STARS: AT GALAXY’S EDGE
Re/Genesis features a fantastical, far-future world very different from our own. Where did the story come from, and how does it relate to your other works?
This is the first time I’ve ventured into far-future territory in my writing, but it won’t be the last. When I wrote the story, I was just starting work on the final trilogy in my Aurora Rhapsody series, Aurora Resonant , which is going to take place almost entirely in the world of Re/Genesis . The main characters in Aurora Rhapsody have known for several books now that another universe—the ‘true’ universe, as it were—exists alongside our own, but Re/Genesis is the first real look anyone’s gotten at it.
This story started out as a sort of test run, a chance for me to dip my toe into the waters of the worldbuilding I was going to have to do for the next trilogy. But I quickly fell in love with the character of Eren and completely embraced the story, setting and all. It got me legitimately excited to dive into writing Aurora Resonant .
Who are your favorite fictional heroes and villains?
I’m an avid video gamer (though I have little time to play since I began writing full time), so I’d have to say my favourite fictional hero is Commander Shepard from the Mass Effect video game trilogy. Favourite villain? Probably the motiles from Peter F. Hamilton’s Pandora Star/Judas Unchained space opera novels. He wrote a number of chapters from their perspective, and their way of thinking, their worldview, their entire essence was so foreign and, well, alien. It was fascinating.
M ERIDIAN
When terrorists carpet-bomb an Earth Alliance colony, killing thousands, the military must bring the perpetrators to justice.
Strangers thrown together by circumstance amidst a difficult mission, nobody expects Lieutenants David Solovy and Richard Navick to be heroes. In fact, their commanding officers would prefer they stay out of the way and out of trouble. But when the mission to bring the One World Separatists terrorist group to justice goes sideways, they must take matters into their own hands if they want to save the day, get the bad guys and live to tell the tale.
Set nearly half a century before STARSHINE: Aurora Rising Book One (Aurora Rhapsody #1 ), Meridian is the unlikely story of how one of the greatest friendships of Aurora Rhapsody came to be.
*
The newest story and an exclusive to this Collection, Meridian reveals how David Solovy and Richard Navick first met. This is an encounter I’ve wanted to recount for a long time—and one readers have asked for repeatedly—but due to larger plot considerations, it needed to wait until now to be shared.
This story is best read between Rubicon and Requiem, but so long as you’ve read the first couple of books (enough to feel like you know Richard and, through flashbacks, David), you should get full enjoyment out of it.
D RAMATIS P ERSONAE
* * *
Lieutenant David Solovy
Marine Special Operations, EA SE Regional Command.
Faction: Earth Alliance
Lieutenant Richard Navick
EA Military Intelligence.
Faction: Earth Alliance
Commander Frederik Becker
Marine Special Operations, EA SE Regional Command.
Faction: Earth Alliance
Captain Antonio Cassano
Marine Special Operations, EA SE Regional Command.
Faction: Earth Alliance
Second Lieutenant Troy Mendoza
Marine Special Operations, EA SE Regional Command.
Faction: Earth Alliance
Captain Eleni Gianno
Marine Special Operations, EA NE Regional Command.
Faction: Earth Alliance
Gannor Tai
Leader, One World Separatists.
Faction: Independent
“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical
substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”
— Carl Jung
2280
(42 Y EARS B EFORE THE E VENTS OF S TARSHINE)
* * *
AFS BRISBANE
S PACE, S OUTHEAST Q UADRANT
E ARTH A LLIANCE T ERRITORY
CLOUDS THE COLOR OF MOLDED MOSS roiled across the sky like thunderheads of a squall line, yet driven by some unnatural force. Scattered glimpses of the surface soon disappeared beneath the churning storm as it devoured the horizon.
Lieutenant David Solovy was hurrying through the breakroom when the dramatic scene caught his attention. He stopped in the middle of the room to stare at the news feed.
“These visuals are coming in to us from satellites orbiting New Marrakesh following a series of explosions in the skies above the colony’s largest settlement. They are minutes old, and the situation appears to still be in flux. We’ve thus far been unable to establish reliable communications with officials on the ground.”
New Marrakesh was a third wave colony, founded a decade earlier. Small, but growing fast. Quirky, in honor of its namesake—or so he had heard.
Someone jostled David’s shoulder, and he glanced over to see the room filling up with Marines eager to crowd in around the wall screens. The scattered murmurs were uncharacteristically hushed, however; no one wanted to drown out the reporters.
“We’ve received a communication relating to the events on New Marrakesh. It purports to originate from the One World Separatists terrorist group. ”
&
nbsp; Not them again. The bombastic group of thugs bearing the head-scratching title had been flooding exanet interest spheres with propaganda for weeks now. Their screeds quoted everyone from Plato to Mao Tse-Tung to rationalize their philosophy of…well, no one was really sure, other than it included an irrational hatred of the Earth Alliance government.
“The communication states the following:
‘The Earth Alliance was warned. You were all warned. The universe belongs to all and none, and it will not be debased by the filthy, clamoring hands of Alliance usurpers. Their contamination must be cleansed from the universe. It tried to spread to the formerly pure world you call New Marrakesh, but it will spread no farther. New Marrakesh is being cleansed, but it is only the first. The line is drawn here, today. World by world, we will reclaim the universe in the name of all and none.’ ”
“Bloody psychos.” Troy Mendoza, a Second Lieutenant in David’s regiment, gestured dismissively in the direction of the screens. “Point me to their hole in the ground, and I’ll show them what cleansing looks like.”
David muttered a vague commiseration, if only to shut the kid up. His zeal was commendable, but he was young and hadn’t earned his boasting.
David’s brow furrowed in growing concern as he took in the continuous stream of worsening visuals. What had the terrorists unleashed?
The death toll on New Marrakesh had surpassed 64,000 when military intelligence located the One World Separatists headquarters. No more than 109,000 people were on New Marrakesh the day of the attack, so the trend didn’t bode well for the balance.
Eighty aerial dispersal bombs had detonated an insidious, homebrewed chemical-radioactive mixture in the lower atmosphere of the planet, where New Marrakesh’s notoriously turbulent weather patterns were primed to pick it up, thus increasing the poison’s destructiveness while expanding its reach. Concentrated chlorine gas was ignited by miniature nuclear bombs to quickly become hydrochloric acid in the clouds then fall as radioactive rain to the surface. The chlorine that didn’t transform immediately sank to the surface to choke everyone in a ten-kilometer radius. Meanwhile, the volatile compounds saturated the clouds, transforming into a variety of deadly substances and spreading across the landscape. Standard dilution measures might sterilize the air eventually, but not before they made things worse.
Whatever the worth of OWS’ cause—and whatever OWS’ cause was— it could never justify indiscriminate killing of civilians. The people trying to make a go of it on New Marrakesh didn’t deserve to die, and they absolutely didn’t deserve to die in some of the most horrific ways imaginable.
So on hearing a strike against the terrorists’ headquarters was in the works, David reported to the briefing room of the EAS Brisbane displaying a level of enthusiasm he hadn’t felt of late. Not since the confrontation with Becker last month, anyway.
He snagged a seat next to the captain of his squad, Antonio Cassano. “What’s the word, Captain?”
Cassano smirked. “Word is, we’ve got them.”
Commander Becker cleared his throat loudly from the front of the room. “Marines, pay attention. EAMI agents have located a compound on Radavi believed to be the headquarters for the One World Separatists. Reconnaissance has captured the following visuals of the site.”
The screen behind Becker displayed a cluster of warehouse-style buildings on the outskirts of a town.
“This central building is thought to be the command center. The structures surrounding it house supplies, bunks and ancillary supplies. This building—Becker indicated the largest structure, located off to the side from the main cluster—is a chemical factory. It is operational. ”
Someone in the back of the room leapt to their feet. “They’re planning to hit other colonies?”
“Sit down, Cadet. Evidence suggests they are, yes. The suspected leader of OWS, Gannor Tai, arrived at the compound this morning. Most of his senior advisors are also in residence today, putting a total of thirty-one individuals on site. We will arrive at Radavi in two hours. An aerial strike is apt to ignite the volatile chemicals present in the factory and put the nearby civilian settlement at risk.
“Therefore, our mission is to infiltrate the compound, secure the factory and kill-or-capture Gannor Tai as well as all other persons present on the compound.” Becker entered a command on his control panel. “Your assignments are out to you now. Meet in the designated rooms for squad briefings in ten minutes. We are boots on the ground in two and half hours.”
David opened the incoming assignment file in eVi, scanned it and groaned. If Becker wanted to keep punishing him with crap assignments until this rotation ended, there wasn’t a blasted thing he could do about it. But sidelining him on a mission where success truly mattered? If people died while David was left twiddling his thumbs, words would be exchanged…inevitably followed by another reprimand. Possibly a suspension. Damn it.
RADAVI
E ARTH A LLIANCE C OLONY
S OUTHEAST Q UADRANT OF S ETTLED S PACE
Dry wind swept dust across David’s skin in waves of scorching pinpricks. The promotional brochures insisted Radavi wasn’t a desert, merely ‘arid.’ Two minutes on the ground, he was of the firm opinion that the sales pitch was chush' sobach'ya .
A blinking green dot on one of his two whisper virtual screens marked the location of his contact from military intelligence. His eyes sought and found the location on the terrain: seventy meters ahead to the northwest, in a gully rimmed by plants that were definitely not cacti. Because if they were cacti, this would be a desert.
In the valley to his left, the OWS compound bustled with furtive activity amid the encroaching shadows of dusk. The functionality of his cloaking shield didn’t merit the term ‘invisibility,’ but when tuned to the—wait for it—desert setting, he was confident it kept him from being from seen from the valley or picked up by sensors.
He moved carefully through the scrub grass toward the marked location. When he was ten meters out, he sent his contact a heads-up of his imminent arrival so nobody got shot or stabbed. A few seconds later, he dropped to his stomach and shimmied in beside the man, who lay prone on the high point of the steppe. He offered a hand. “Lieutenant David Solovy.”
The man studied one of three tiny holos arrayed in an arc in front of him while he absently extended a hand out to David. “Lieutenant Richard Navick. Since I do what I’m told, I didn’t question my CO, but now that you’re here, I will question you. Why are you here?”
David gave him a closed-mouth smile. “To acquire the latest intel on the situation at this compound here and relay it to my superiors prior to them moving in.”
Navick shook his head. “I can relay the information to anyone who needs it. I have been relaying it to my CO all day. Do they not trust my reports?”
“I’m confident they do. It’s not you, it’s me.”
Navick grimaced. “Is this a recon run or a break-up?”
David stifled a laugh on account of subterfuge. “The former, I hope. No, the assignment is Commander Becker’s way of punishing me today for a tiny insubordination incident last month—to be distinguished from his ways of punishing yesterday and the day before. Basically, I’m fucked for the remainder of my rotation. Alas, but let’s get this done. Tell me, Lieutenant, what do you see? ”
“A hornet’s nest of complications for our people.” He flicked one of the holos, and the image shifted. “The biggest problem is that the chemical factory is rigged with explosives, and, though I haven’t been able to put eyes on it, I suspect Gannor Tai is carrying the trigger in his pocket.”
“That is a problem.”
“Yes. We’ve also got four guards outside the factory, eight patrolling the compound perimeter and six on the command center, all armed with TSGs sporting black market mods. Everyone inside is armed, but only with Daemons, which is…better. The building on the far southwest is the armory, so it will need to be blocked off first thing. Tai’s office is two-thirds of the way through the co
mmand center. Our people can expect a gauntlet of close combat to reach him.”
“Fabulous. Well, let me put my extensive special forces training and experience to use and pass the information along to Becker.”
He did exactly that, then watched the resulting orders roll out to the infiltration squads on his second whisper screen.
“Can you pipe the feed from the cam you’ve got tailing Tai into the mission channel? A stealthed drone is going to drop targeted munitions directly above his office or, alternatively, wherever he happens to be when the infiltration squads are ready to move in.”
Navick punched in a few commands on the panel lying in front of him. “Done. I hope the drone is precise and the munitions powerful.”
“You and me both. Chemical burns are not on my social calendar for this week.”
Silence fell for a moment, so David motioned to the holos. “Are all those coming from bot cams?”
Navick nodded, reaching to his right and retrieving something from his pack. He opened his palm to reveal an orb four centimeters in diameter. He tapped on it, and it vanished behind a faint shimmer, no more noticeable than a heat shimmer, even from less than a meter away .
“Nice.”
“They are handy. They can be actively controlled, set to a pattern or tagged to a marker, including particular thermal signatures—bodies, usually. An internal power source keeps them running for up to three weeks at a time with constant video and audio transmission. I’ve got four of them roaming the grounds, one inside the factory and two inside the command center.”
“Smooth work.” David glanced around, tweaking the near infrared filter on his ocular implant to compensate for the deepening shadows as night descended. “And you’ve been lying here watching their feeds for…what? Ten hours?”