Battlegroup Vega

by Anders Raynor

  Suddenly all comms with the bridge were cut out.

  “What happened?” Adrian asked the officer in charge of repairs.

  The officer shrugged. “How’d I know? Malfunction, sabotage? This ol’ bucket’s falling apart. I’ll send any available personnel to the bridge to repair that.”

  “Captain Hunt, do you hear me?” Winsley called, but static was the only answer from the bridge. “Remembrance, respond. Can anyone hear me?”

  “Lieutenant-Commander Blaze here. I can hear you, admiral.” As Jason was confined to quarters, he wasn’t affected by the fault that had cut off the bridge.

  “Blaze? What the hell is going on?” Winsley snapped.

  “I don’t know, admiral. Captain Hunt confined me to quarters.”

  “I don’t care. You’re now in command of the ASC Remembrance. I order you to get to engineering, take control of the ion cannons from there.”

  “Aye, admiral.”

  Adrian’s heart pounded in his chest. Holding back a panic attack, he returned to the autopod and instructed the onboard AI to take him to engineering.

  When he arrived, Jason was already there, staring at the targeting screen, ready to fire.

  “Don’t do this,” Adrian shouted. “You can’t condemn twenty thousand civilians to death.”

  Jason turned to Adrian. Dark circles under his eyes indicated sleep deprivation.

  “You’re a hopeless idealist, Darus. Why don’t you understand—it’s over! We can’t protect our civilian population. Our entire civilization is lost. Revenge is all we’ve left. If you hadn’t destroyed the bioweapon, none of this would have happened, and my father would still be alive.”

  “Your father was a diplomat and a sage,” Adrian retorted. “Do you believe he condoned mass murder? I told him to evacuate Tethys, as I knew Raak’naar would sabotage the peace talks. Yet your father decided to stay. If there was the slightest hope for peace, he was willing to fight for it. Why? Because he believed in the future of mankind.”

  Adrian pointed at the targeting screen and added, “The people on those civilian ships, those kids, they are our future, Jason.”

  “What future?” Jason yelled. “Men, Taar’kuun, we’re all stuck in a never-ending cycle of violence. There’s no way out!”

  “That’s what Raak’naar wants the galaxy to believe. You want revenge? Prove him wrong.”

  “Blaze, why the hold up?” Winsley urged him. “Fire, dammit!”

  Jason held his hand above the control panel, paralyzed by inner conflict. “I’m sorry, admiral,” he replied. “I… I don’t think I can’t do it.”

  “Stand down, Blaze.” That was Vice Admiral Scar. “Hold your fire. There’s another solution. The ASF fleet can make it to the gate on time to jump with the civvies, if the Liberty stays behind.”

  There was a moment of silence. Winsley probably muted all channels to talk to Scar in private. Then Adrian heard the admiral’s voice again. “I confirm that order. Remembrance, hold your fire and escort the civilian ships to the gate.”

  Both Adrian and Jason sighed with relief. However, they both knew the loss of their only dreadnaught would be a heavy blow to the ASF.

  The chief engineer asked them to help with repairs. He needed a couple of extra pairs of hands to fix the problem that had caused the bridge to be cut out from the rest of the ship.

  While they worked, Adrian listened to the encrypted fleet channel. Scar ordered all non-essential personnel to evacuate the ASC Liberty and transfer to the other ships. Only a skeleton crew was to remain onboard the dreadnaught. That was still about a thousand personnel, including those who were working deep in the bowels of the ship and couldn’t be evacuated quickly enough.

  Once the transfer of personnel was complete, all ships accelerated at full throttle toward the emergency gate, except the dreadnought. Winsley was onboard a fast command ship, a pocket cruiser, while Scar volunteered to stay on the Liberty.

  The dreadnaught turned around and prepared for its last stand.

  Adrian didn’t see the battle, but he heard the voices of the officers via the fleet channel. He could only imagine the epic scale of the confrontation where a dreadnought fought to the death against several enemy battlegroups. He heard the booms of ACBs, the howl of missile launchers, the thunderous blasts when the colossus was hit by heavy ordnance.

  Warships of that size didn’t explode when they were destroyed. Adrian knew the temperature would rise until everything onboard turned to melted alloy. The crew trapped inside the ship would be cremated alive. A horrible way to go.

  Yet, when the ship was lost, it wasn’t screams of agony that he heard from the Liberty. It was a song. The crew were singing the anthem of the Alliance.

  Then the song died, and there was only silence.

  * * *

  Vice Admiral Scar had kept his word. The sacrifice of the Liberty bought the rest of the fleet enough time to reach the gate. When activated, the gate created a wormhole to a distant system at the edge of charted space, and all surviving human ships flew through.

  Adrian and Jason were still working in engineering, assisting with repairs. The comms with the bridge were reestablished, and Captain Hunt was in charge of the ship again.

  “I didn’t do this for you, Darus,” Jason said to Adrian once their task was complete. “I didn’t refuse to fire on those civvies ‘cuz of what you told me. I did it because I’m done taking orders.”

  Jason turned away, as if looking at Adrian was too painful, and continued, “I should’ve saved my father instead of you. He dedicated his entire human life to the Alliance. And you, what have you done to save mankind? You’re a selfish, self-righteous smartass, and you lost your daughter ‘cuz you don’t deserve her. I hope our paths will never cross again. Next time you’re in trouble, I won’t lift a finger to save your skin.”

  If you knew the whole story about Ophelia and me, you wouldn’t be judging me so harshly. There is more to this universe than meets the eye. Hidden forces are at work, forces we cannot fully understand. A bioweapon is not the key to the future of humanity—Ophelia is.

  But Adrian didn’t say that out loud. Jason’s words had cut him deep, and he didn’t want to explain himself.

  “Mankind will win this war. We’ll do this the hard way. We’ll do this the right way.” With those words, Adrian turned and walked quickly from the engine room.

  The song of the crew dying on the Liberty still rang in his ears. It would forever be etched into his memory. A song that would never die.

  Part Two: Dr. Talia Galen

  08

  Brave new mankind

  Two years after the Retroforming, Vega-IV

  Dr. Talia Galen spread her arms and took a deep breath. Light from the dawning sun seeped through the windows. She listened to the bird’s songs and the whisper of the breeze in the branches. Silk sheets caressed her skin as she turned to the man sharing her bed.

  “Good morning, handsome,” she murmured to him.

  He offered her a little smile mixing reserve with joy. “Good morning, Talia.” He chuckled. “Sorry, I feel like I’m supposed to say something else, but words don’t come to me easily. Not this early in the morning, anyway.”

  She returned his smile. “You don’t need to say anything else. I’m not uncomfortable with silence.”

  “Was it your first time?”

  “Yes, it was. As a medical doctor, I found the experience…interesting.”

  “As a male of the Homo sapiens species, I found the experience…delectable.”

  His eyes flashed with mischief, and they giggled in unison. His face grew more serious as he added, “As a scientist, though, I realize that sexuality has a clear evolutionary purpose.”

  Talia turned away from him and looked through the window. She never grew tired of admiring her garden; the morning light lit the tree branches and the flowers, a view she found enchanting. Seeing the world through human eyes was an exhilarating experience.

  “I k
now, but I think there’s more to this than just reproduction,” she said. “Love creates a bond between people, it makes them feel…special. The Taar’kuun don’t have that. They find comfort in the feeling of belonging to a collective, a hive.”

  “Here we go, this comparison with insects again,” Jon said with mock disapproval. “You know that the Taar’kuun aren’t related to insects, nor are they related to reptiles, contrary to what some people think. Their morphology bores some similarities with reptiles and insects, but this doesn’t mean there is taxonomic relationship. Convergent evolution we call that.”

  He paused for a second, then added, “Sorry, that’s the professor of genetics talking. But I have to agree, there are similarities between an insect hive and Taar’kuun society. Every Taar’kuun knows his place in that society; this knowledge gives him a sense of security and comfort. Every one of them was genetically designed to fulfill a specific role.”

  “I still remember how it feels to be a Taar’kuun,” Talia said. “But those memories are hazy, as if that life was just a dream. Sometimes I miss it, that sense of security, the sense that nothing will ever change. Those soft cocoons where we slept, and the music, I miss it too. I used to go to operas, where they combined singing, visuals, and scents in a complete multisensory experience. I loved that.”

  She sighed, trying to remember details of those multisensory performances. Yet her human brain could no longer appreciate all their subtleties.

  “Being human is more…challenging,” she added. “We’re all still trying to figure out what it means to be human. We downloaded everything we thought we needed to know about our ancestors into our brains: their history, their languages, their laws, their culture. All the data Dr. Darus retrieved from TGS secret archives. But do we understand humanity?”

  “Mnemonic imprint devices can do wonders, but downloading information into the hippocampus is one thing. Experiencing the human condition is another.”

  “I can’t even imagine how hard it must be for youngsters to decide what they want to do with their lives. So many uncertainties, but also so many possibilities…”

  “You never thought about having children?”

  Talia turned her eyes to Jon, raising eyebrows. “Children? No, I’ve never thought about that. My job is so demanding. I don’t have time to think about reproduction.”

  He gently squeezed her hand. “I’m not just talking about reproduction. I’m talking about starting a family.”

  Talia bit her lip, caught emotionally unprepared for such a conversation. “I’ll get dressed and prepare us a nice breakfast. Then we’ll continue this conversation, if you don’t mind.”

  She scrambled to her feet, slipped into a light overall, and padded to the kitchen. She’d been dating Jon for several months, and even telling him how she felt about him had required courage. Getting engaged, married, and starting a family was an even more daunting prospect.

  On one hand, she wanted Jon in her life; on the other, she feared her own feelings. They were new to her, and she didn’t know how to control them.

  While they were having breakfast, he said, “I love this place. It’s so peaceful here. War seems far away.”

  She nodded, sipping her herbal tea. “Yes, I love it too. The garden is so beautiful, so serene, therapeutic. Nature has a healing effect on the human mind, and we all have lots of wounds to heal.”

  Jon took a slice of bread from the toaster and started spreading butter on it. “Remember how it all started? At first, everyone thought it was an epidemic.”

  “Oh yes, how can I forget? The hospitals were overcrowded, and we medics had to work double shifts. The authorities tried to contain the spread of Darus’s retrovirus, but it was too late. Its incubation period was twenty-eight standard days, and by the time symptoms appeared, it had already spread to all major worlds in the known galaxy.”

  “I remember how scary it was. Our bodies were changing, and we didn’t know what was happening to us. It wasn’t that painful though, but very unsettling. The day I lost my retractable claws and realized I had four fingers instead of three, I was so panicked I wanted to kill myself. And then the troopers arrived and took me to an internment camp.”

  “That must’ve been a terrifying experience. I was fortunate; I didn’t have to go through that ordeal. There were so many humans on Vega that the TGS quarantined the entire planet. Then we rebelled and chased the Biozi from the system.”

  Jon chewed his toast, his gaze distant. He was probably reliving the horrors of the camps in his mind.

  “Let’s not talk about that today, all right?” Talia said with a smile that must have looked a bit forced. “We shouldn’t dwell on what happened, just enjoy our new life.”

  “Agreed. Especially as our life expectancy is now three times shorter.”

  * * *

  After breakfast, Talia and Jon packed up their suitcases and headed to the spaceport. They were both due to attend a scientific congress on Deneb Algenubi D, a world usually called Deneb. An autopod took them to the terminal in twenty minutes, racing through a maglev tunnel at a velocity just below the speed of sound.

  Talia’s twin sister, Clio, was waiting for them, dressed in a floral overall. She saw the couple getting out of the autopod and scurried to them, grinning.

  “You two look so fabulous,” she chirped in her high-pitched voice. “So classy in your suit! You know, you make a wonderful couple. No, no, no, I’m not saying this ‘cos I’m envious, I’m just happy for you!”

  “I know,” Talia said with a shy half-smile. “You look fantastic too.”

  In fact, she found her sister’s get-up a bit too colorful for a scientific conference, but didn’t say it out loud. Clio had never grasped the subtleties of human culture, maybe because she had her own ideas on how a young female should dress and behave. Talia wasn’t embarrassed because of how her sister looked though, but because she wasn’t comfortable with the idea of being in a couple. It felt odd.

  Clio continued jabbering all the way to the spacecraft. Jon pretended to listen with a polite smile, while Talia tried to insert a few words just to show she was following what her sister was saying.

  The ship was a brand-new Astacus-class light transport designed to carry a hundred passengers. It was a mechanical craft made of nanomaterials, not a bioship. The fact that human engineers had managed to design and launch the production of an entirely new class of spacecraft in just a year was a testimony to their ingenuity.

  “You booked us an Astacus? That must’ve costed you a fortune!” Clio exclaimed.

  “Don’t mention it,” Jon said. “You’re very special ladies; you deserve the best.”

  Tickets on a Hera-class liner were cheaper, but Jon had insisted on taking an Astacus.

  “Oh, thank you, a true gentleman!” Clio gave Jon a hug, then hurried to the security gate.

  Once on board the spacecraft, the trio settled into luxury seats that automatically adapted to the shape of their bodies, offering optimal comfort. The Astacus took off right on time and climbed so smoothly the passengers barely noticed it was moving.

  Clio ordered an exotic cocktail, while Talia and Jon contented themselves with still water. Vega, the green planet, was moving away, while its two moons were ascending above the horizon. In the background, a nebula shone like pearl dust. Talia admired the view, thinking that her native planet was the jewel of the universe.

  She knew, however, that it hadn’t always been so. A couple of centuries back, Vega-IV had been an abiotic ball of rock with unbreathable atmosphere. Taar’kuun bioformers exerted all their art to give life to this planet.

  The first part of the trip was uneventful. Like the vast majority of civilian spacecraft, the Astacus was a sub-light. Jump drives were considered too dangerous to be installed on passenger ships, as they drew energy from a micro-singularity, a miniature black hole. For interstellar travel, sub-lights relied primarily on black hole gates, that were large wormhole stabilizers that drew energy from a
star.

  Half an hour after departure, the gate was in sight. The gate itself appeared as a black dot surrounded by energy collectors that stretched for hundreds of klicks, eclipsing the sun. The ship slowed down, waiting for the green light from the flight control.

  Clio had put on a virtual reality helmet and was immersed in some romantic holo-movie. Jon was working on his laptop; Talia knew he was a workaholic. She was reading a novel on her pocket holo-emitter.

  After the jump, the crew served passengers a light lunch. Jon said he wasn’t hungry and excused himself to the lavatory.

  “I’ll eat your portion, if you don’t want it,” Clio said brightly, taking off her virtual reality helmet.

  Jon gave her a smile Talia found oddly wistful. Her intuition was telling her something wasn’t right, but she dismissed the idea and focused on her delicious-smelling lunch.

  Twenty minutes later, Jon still hadn’t returned to his seat. This time, Talia didn’t want to silence the inner voice telling her something was wrong. She went to the lavatories only to find them all unoccupied. As the craft wasn’t that big, she wondered where Jon might be.

  As she realized the cabin crew were also nowhere to be seen, her heartbeat sped up. The craft was flying toward another gate. Though Talia wasn’t an expert in interstellar navigation, she was sure that wasn’t the right way to Deneb.

  Her breath shallow, she pressed the button of the intercom and called the captain. No one answered.

  We’ve been hijacked. Talia forced herself to take a few deep breaths. Come on, think. What’s the first thing to do in cases like this? Call for help. Alert the authorities.

  She checked her cell communicator, only to find out that there was no signal. Maybe the radiation from the sun interfered with communications, or the craft was too far from cyber-relays for the signal to get through. Or maybe whoever hijacked the craft was jamming comms.

  Clio joined Talia, her face unusually tense. “What’s going on? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”