by M. D. Cooper
Corsia laughed quietly, shaking her head as she did.
Corsia felt a tension in her chest at the thought of Ylonda, momentarily surprised that her body would register a physiological response to unpleasant memories. The connection to her physical form’s nervous system was deepening in its complexity.
“Captain Corsia, message from the approaching IPE ships,” Comm announced. “They’ve assigned us an updated vector, and will be sending over a shuttle once they’re within ten-thousand klicks.”
Corsia nodded as she reviewed the vector. It was a small shift that would have them brake around Genesis before docking at Minoa Station. It also brought them closer to several other stations that Scan had identified as defensive emplacements.
No accident there.
“Helm,” Corsia nodded to the ensign at the console in front of her command chair. “Assume the vector. Ease into it, don’t give them the impression that we’ll jump at their every order. Scan, I want to know their armament as soon as possible. Weapons, keep the coils hot, I don’t fully trust these people not to take a pot shot at us.”
A chorus of acknowledgements came back, and Corsia’s bridge crew set to work under the watchful eye of Sephira.
Corsia sent Terrance a mental eyeroll.
Corsia deadpanned.
Terrance glanced over his shoulder at Corsia.
Terrance replied, nodding slowly.
Terrance snorted.
Terrance didn’t reply for over a minute, staring contemplatively at the display of the Trensch System in the holotank. Corsia began to wonder if she’d offended him, when he finally replied,
Corsia laughed.
THE LMC
STELLAR DATE: 09.02.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Aleutia Station
REGION: Cheshire System, Large Magellanic Cloud
“President Sera, Governor Andrews. Welcome to the LMC.”
“Sheeran?” Sera asked, a smile forming on her lips as she regarded the general standing before her.
General Sheeran grinned in response as he inclined his head. “In the flesh, ma’am.”
“Don’t ‘ma’am’ me,” Sera said, shaking her head at the red-haired man. “I still owe you one for saving Sabrina at Bollam’s World.”
“Just doing my job, ma’am,” General Sheeran replied. “Glad to see you’re still kicking.”
“More or less,” Sera replied. “Hard to believe we’ve not bumped into each other before now—though I guess now I know why you were nowhere to be found.”
Sheeran laughed as he gestured toward a dockcar that waited next to their pinnace. “Well, building a place like Aleutia doesn’t really make for a lot of vacation time. But the view is worth it.”
Jason nodded in solemn agreement. “I’ll say. Not every day you see…well…anything close to that.”
“Good ole Spaghetti Bowl,” General Sheeran chuckled.
“What?” Sera asked.
“Well…from outside, the galaxy doesn’t look like ‘the Milky Way’. It looks more like a really big mess of spaghetti.”
A scowl creased Sera’s forehead. “No, more like a pinwheel.”
“Well, blame your uncle.” Sheeran shrugged as he settled into his seat, and the car took off. “He’s the one that coined it. I mean, if I was asked, I would have just named it ‘Freaking Gorgeous’.”
“Good thing no one asked you,” Jason grunted, trying to sound serious, but Sera could see a smile on his lips.
“OK. Give us the lowdown,” Sera directed Sheeran. “What have you learned?”
Sheeran’s face lost all traces of humor, and his eyes narrowed. “We’ve done close fly-bys of four systems now; there are two more that have activity in them, and we’ll have scans of them soon, too. From what we can see, until very recently, the FGT was terraforming worlds, building rings, moving stuff around—their usual gig. However, our scans picked up a lot of defensive emplacements. Not new, either, so these systems were always intended to be defensive fallbacks.”
“Not surprising,” Sera interjected. “You don’t build out in the LMC because you want a corner on tourism trade.”
“Not that that would be a bad idea,” Jason said, a finger on his chin as though he were giving the idea serious consideration.
“Either way,” Sheeran continued
. “They’ve stopped all terraforming activity—other than stabilizing planetary orbits. Now they’re building shipyards. Some are already complete, and there are hulls under construction.”
“So which system looks to be the main one? First made, or most well defended?” Sera asked.
Sheeran summoned a holo that hovered in the space between the dockcar’s seats. It showed the five systems he’d mentioned, all of which surrounded a binary system that showed no indications of human activity.
He highlighted one. “This one is the most heavily defended.” Then he highlighted another. “And from what we can tell, this one was first to get underway.”
“What about that system?” Jason beat Sera to the punch, asking about the star in the midst of the ones showing activity. “Nothing there?”
“We’ve not done a fly-by of that system yet,” Sheeran replied. “But there is no activity visible in it—not that we’ve seen from five light years out.”
Sera lifted her gaze from the holo and glanced at Jason—who seemed to be on the same train of thought—before replying to Sheeran. “But that data is five years old. It’s plain to see that from this layout, they were going to create a jump gate interdiction web around that central star.”
“Perhaps,” Sheeran said with a slow nod. “But would Airtha have done anything with it once she took over? From what I understand, she’s not focused on building a fallback location, like your father was…or is she?”
Sera shook her head. “No, you’re right. But my father was a paranoid man. I think he’d have still built his fallback site there before the outer defenses were created. Our goal here is to get intel, not stop Airtha’s construction—well, at least not yet. Anyway, chances are that whatever he built is just sitting there, full of juicy data, waiting for us to come and pay it a visit.”
“Otherwise known as a baited trap,” Jason cautioned.
“Maybe,” Sera allowed. “Maybe not. Airtha has no idea that we’re out here as well. It’ll take two hundred years for them to see what you’re up to, here in Aleutia.”
“Do you want me to divert the next scouting run to that system?” Sheeran asked.
“You have…what? Seven ships capable of full stealth?” Sera asked.
“Six,” Sheeran corrected. “One of the stealth cruisers has been having issues maintaining concealment in heavily ionized plasma flows. Which is common out here.”
“Well, then,” Sera said, shifting her gaze to Jason. “Sounds like we have our strike force.”
“Wait, ‘we’?” Jason asked. “You’re not going on the mission to that system. You’re the Transcend’s president. They need you.”
Sera placed a hand on Jason’s knee, unable to miss how his brows rose at her touch. “We both know that I’m just a bureaucrat running the home front. Tanis is really in charge back there.”
Jason’s face was unreadable, and Sera wondered if she’d said something wrong. Then he snorted and shook his head.
“I know how you feel. I suppose we might need you. If we do find a secret base in that system, it’s possible that only you will be able to breach it—what, with your super-special presidential tokens, and all.”
“Glad to know my value as a lockpick is recognized.”
* * * * *
Less than a day later, Sera stood with Jason and General Sheeran on the bridge of the general’s flagship, a stealth-capable cruiser named the Helios.
The ship was a new design, based on the rail destroyers the ISF had fielded in the Battle of Carthage. However, instead of just two rings, the Helios consisted of eight rings, all meeting along a single axis point fore and aft. A central shaft ran through the ship, and at its center lay the bridge and main crew-areas.
The diameter of the generally spherical vessel was just over three kilometers. Given each ring’s capacity to house billions of rail-accelerated pellets, and fire them in almost any direction, the Helios was a formidable vessel, and a testament to the ISF’s determination to produce war-ending ships.
Sera had already put in a request for the class of vessel to be produced for the Transcend’s military.
Ahead of the ship lay the jump gate, but that wasn’t what Sera found herself staring at. Instead, she had a secondary holotank dedicated to the view of the Milky Way.
She’d never given any serious thought to what the galaxy would look like from this far away, but she didn’t think that anything could have prepared her for how beautiful, massive, and terrifying it appeared, hanging in space like an eternal storm that dominated nearly forty-five degrees of the ‘sky’.
But it wasn’t its size or luminosity that amazed her, it was the fact that everything she’d ever known, all her hopes, dreams—all of everyone’s hopes and dreams—all laid within that cluster of stars.
And that cluster was just one of many…so many.
Even though the war they were mired in spanned a significant portion of the galaxy, the view reminded her that humanity’s reach was still not even a trillionth of the universe.
Space had never made her feel insignificant. Sera had always viewed space as her home, as a playground of sorts.
But this, this make me feel insignificant.
She saw that Jason was staring at it as well, his expression one of pensive consideration.
“What do you see when you look at it?” she asked.
He didn’t reply at first, but then glanced toward her and said, “The past.”
“Yours, or the galaxy’s?” Sera asked.
“A bit of both.” Jason gave a small laugh. “In the view we see from here, homo sapiens aren’t yet walking about on Earth, and so far as we know, there isn’t a single spacefaring species. The galaxy we’re looking at…it’s pristine.”
“Do you think we’ve sullied it?”
“No,” Jason said after a moment. “I don’t think it’s possible for us to sully the galaxy. We’re a part of its evolution. That great big whirling ball of matter spawned stars, and around those stars formed planets, and on one, some four billion years ago, life as we know it came about. We’re a part of the natural evolution of a galaxy—of this galaxy, at least. Maybe we’ll last as long as it does, or maybe in a billion years there won’t be a single trace of us left.”
“That’s a morose and sobering thought.” Sera let out a small laugh, trying to lighten the moment, but it fell flat. “Granted, we’re out here in the LMC, now. We’re not a part of this galaxy.”
Jason shrugged. “Seems like we are now.”
“I see you’re engaging in the official Aleutian pastime,” General Sheeran said as he approached the pair.
“I take it that staring at that thing doesn’t get old, then?” Jason asked, jerking a thumb at the view of the Milky Way.
Sheeran shook his head. “Nope, not even a little. I wonder, though, given that the Transcend was already out here when we arrived, is there any place that our people can ever go to just get away?”
“Andromeda?” Sera laughed as she said it.
Though a jump to the LMC was something they could manage, the amount of antimatter it would take to power a jump to the Andromeda Galaxy was beyond staggering. Even CriEn modules would not be able to power such a leap.
“Wouldn’t that be something.” Jason’s voice sounded wistful. “A whole new galaxy.”
“Not happy with the one you have?” Sera asked.
“What can I say? Wanderlust is something I’ve always felt. You don’t spend centuries plying the black at sub-light speeds if you don’t like to travel.”
She held up a hand to forestall further argument. “I’m not knocking it. I don’t like to sit still, either.”
“That why you’re out here and not back on Khardine, ma’am?” Sheeran asked.
The honorific reminded Sera of the title and responsibilities she constantly carried around. She glanced toward the bridge’s entrance where Major Valerie and another of her High Guard stood, constant reminders of the job Sera had so foolishly taken on that in
sane day aboard the Galadrial.
At Tanis’s insistence, Sera had stopped trying to foist the responsibilities off on others—Finaeus and Tanis herself—but that hadn’t stopped Sera from privately wishing she’d never taken up her father’s torch.
Going on this mission to the LMC had been highly irresponsible—something that the disapproving looks from Major Valerie frequently confirmed—but Sera felt truly alive for the first time since she’d left Tanis and returned to Khardine.
Maybe I can figure out some way to effectively lead from the front, rather than hiding away in a fortress of stars.
“Jump in t-minus thirty seconds,” Helm announced, and Sera turned from the view of the Milky Way to the gate ahead. The negative energy emitters came to life, and the gate’s mirrors reflected the unfathomable levels of power into a roiling mass at the gate’s center.
The Helios boosted toward the gate, pouring on one last burst of power to give them a higher delta-v relative to the destination star system—designated ‘Hidey Hole’.
Then the ship’s forward mirror touched the mass at the center of the gate, and the Helios skipped forward across two-hundred light years, and into the unknown.
“Stealth systems engaged!” Lieutenant Aya called out the moment they re-entered normal space.
Scan collated data from the ship’s passive sensors, and a view of the star system began to appear on the main holotank.
At the center was a rather pedestrian G-Class star with a red dwarf on an eccentric orbit, currently placing it two hundred AU from the primary.
Over the course of the next hour, the other six stealth ships would enter the Hidey Hole System and take up parabolic trajectories around the stars, passing by major planets and moons.
Listening.
The Helios was on target for the planet deepest in the star system, a terrestrial world roughly half Earth’s mass. It orbited the primary at only half an AU, its surface hot and inhospitable, but protected by a powerful magnetic shield that kept the most damaging radiation from reaching its surface.
“Those are some powerful van allen belts for such a small planet,” Jason observed. “I’d be surprised if they’re entirely natural.”