by G J Ogden
“I’m always serious, rook. And it’s not theft, it’s salvage.” Griff’s lips parted into a conceited smile, revealing crooked, yellow teeth. “All above-board and legal.”
“And what will you do with any alien relic of value that we manage to scoop up?” asked Hudson. He already suspected he knew the answer, but he wanted to hear him admit it. “Declare it back at the checkpoint, like we’re supposed to?”
This time it was Griff that laughed, but his was a derisive, nasal snort. The sound of it made Hudson’s cheeks flush red with embarrassment and anger. It was like being humiliated in front of the popular kids at school.
“You really are the dumbest rook I’ve ever been saddled with,” Griff said, swinging his feet onto the dash. There was a sharp click as the strap securing Griff’s weapon was pressed back in place. Then he slid a cigarette out of a packet in his shirt pocket, and popped it into his mouth. “Scoop up the cargo already, so we can head back to base,” Griff added, before lighting the smoke. “Then I can finally get your sorry ass out of my sight.”
CHAPTER 2
The allure of space and travelling to other planets had always guided Hudson’s many career choices. Space was exciting. It was dangerous and terrifying. It was beautiful. And on some days, it was all three at once. Today had been one of those days.
Under Griff’s stern direction, Hudson had scooped up anything that looked like it might be useful or valuable from the wreckage of the relic hunter freighter. Griff had ordered Hudson to return to the main RGF outpost on the CET-controlled portal world, Vivaldi One. Then he had skulked off into the cargo hold to inspect the haul. There was no doubt in Hudson’s mind that Griff was siphoning off the choicest items for himself.
However, with Griff absent and Hudson alone in the cockpit, he had started to feel much more at ease. This was despite still being troubled by what Griff had done, and his part in it, however unwitting. That had been the dangerous and terrifying part of being in space. Now was the beautiful part, Hudson reminded himself, as he piloted the rudimentary, two-man patrol craft towards the Earth-like blue planet. I may as well enjoy it while I can…he thought, guessing that his time with the RGF would serve up few good moments like this.
Vivaldi One was one of thirty-nine habitable planets that had been found on the other side of the portals. This was the simple name given to the collection of stable worm holes that had been discovered over a century earlier. Hudson always wondered what must have gone through the minds of the crew that happened upon the very first portal, entirely by accident, all that time ago. He could never remember all of their names, but the name of the captain had always stuck in his mind. Captain Shaak, like shock… Hudson mused. I bet it must have been a shock too...
Shaak and his crew were hauling gear up from Earth to help build the first moon village, when a guidance malfunction veered them dramatically off course. One moment, they were heading out into deep space, desperately trying to fix the navigational glitch, and the next they had popped through an invisible wormhole. Like a cat pushing through a cosmic cat-flap, they ended up in a new star system, in some distant and unknown part of the galaxy. Even more remarkable was what they found on the other side. The discovery of an Earth-like, habitable, though curiously lifeless planet, would have been startling enough on its own. Yet crashed on the surface was something even more astonishing – the wreckage of an alien spacecraft.
Its discovery was arguably the most significant moment in human history. And it was one that would go on to have profound consequences for civilization. The alien wreck was colossal in scale, like a toppled skyscraper, half-buried in the sandy soil. And though it too was devoid of life, or even any long-decayed evidence of life, it was a goldmine of scientific secrets. Knowledge mined from the alien relics would accelerate Earth’s technological expertise by decades in a matter of just a few years.
Shaak’s discovery was only the first. Once he and his crew had returned back through the portal to the solar system, the finding was soon made public. The greatest scientific minds on Earth then began to study the wormhole with the principal aim of learning if more existed. Success came two years later when a PhD student in Canada discovered a unique radiation signature. This was later to be named Shaak Radiation, after the unwitting captain who made the first portal discovery.
The name of the PhD student, like the names of Shaak’s crew, had long since been forgotten. Hudson doubted that few people today would even know, or care, who Shaak was. All were victims of the passage of time, and the acceptance of wormholes and alien space ships as something that was commonplace, rather than incredible.
The existence of Shaak Radiation pointed the way to further portals. Soon many more were uncovered, not only around Earth, but around the portal worlds too. And through each new portal was found another sterile, habitable world, and another wrecked alien hulk.
The race to unlock the secrets of the alien technology initially led to tense confrontations between the global powers of the time. However, it eventually proved to be a great leveler. It elevated the status of all nations, and solved key issues, like providing cheap, sustainable energy production. Eventually, it spawned the first global united governing body. And as humankind spread to the moon and to new orbital cities, this grew into the Coalition of Earth Territories, or CET.
In the one hundred and twenty years since the discovery of that first portal and alien wreck by Shaak and his crew, the alien technology had made colonization of the solar system possible. It led to the formation of a new faction, split-off from the CET, called the Martian Protectorate, or MP. The Martian Protectorate had since grown to become a super-power in its own right. And unallied to either of these factions was the Union of Outer Portal Worlds, or OPW. This was a union of independent states that had chosen to live on the frontier worlds. All existed beyond the most distant portals – those which were far outside the territories of Mars and Earth.
All told, the discovery of the portals had furthered humankind’s reach into the stars by thousands of years in a single century. All of it was made possible because of the tech recovered from inside the labyrinthine guts of the alien hulks. And this was where the relic hunters came in.
In the beginning, the different factions had commissioned private firms to extract the alien secrets from the wrecks. However, corruption and black-market trades led to relics from CET portal worlds being sold for profit in MP territory, and vice versa. Tensions became inflamed and an incident between CET and MP military vessels that left three ships destroyed and fifty dead almost led to an all-out war.
Fortunately, an interplanetary Armageddon was narrowly averted and a summit was convened at the neutral Ceres space station. The objective was to resolve the issue of policing the alien relics, and ensure the fair distribution of tech and wealth. This led to the creation of two new bodies. The relic hunters were licensed privateers who were solely permitted to recover alien relics. And the independent Relic Guardian Force was set up to police the relic hunters and ensure fair play. That had been the theory, in any case. Though as Hudson now knew all too well, it was a far from perfect system. And although the summit had succeeded in preventing war, a bitter resentment still remained between the CET and the Martians. It was like the nuclear-era cold war of the nineteen fifties and sixties, but escalated to an interstellar scale.
Meanwhile, poets and scholars had continued to argue that humanity’s reach was exceeding its grasp. Many contended that homo sapiens simply weren’t ready to colonize the stars. They argued that while the alien technology had rapidly accelerated humanity’s scientific evolution, society had not advanced to nearly the same degree. Far from a fantasy utopia; the malignancies of crime, corruption and sin were still rife on Earth, Mars and throughout all the inhabited portal worlds. And the further from Earth one dared to venture, the more decadent, dangerous and lawless these pockets of human society became.
Eventually, the rate of discovery of new portals slowed, and then stopped altoge
ther. A new portal hadn’t been discovered in well over fifty years, and gradually the expeditions to uncover more tailed away. Instead, faction forces and relic hunters chose to focus their efforts on the many discovered worlds and wrecks instead. And, just as the desire to find new portals diminished, so did the interest in learning why they existed in the first place. Few now cared who or what the mysteriously-absent aliens were, where they came from, and why their crashed hulks were found always on sterile worlds. These were now questions that all but the most devoted academics, conspiracy theorists and mystery lovers bothered to ponder over. The wrecks, like the portals, had just become an accepted part of the world people lived in. They were no more fantastical than space travel itself or people living on the moon and Mars.
The significance of the alien wrecks and the relic hunting operations was why, indirectly, Hudson had chosen to join the RGF. Though it was far from his first career choice, or first career.
“Son, I wish you’d do something that you actually gave two shits about,” his father had lectured him once. This had been after Hudson had quit yet another gig, that time piloting sub-orbital shuttle taxis across the western United States. “It doesn’t matter what it is, just make sure it matters to you, okay?” The problem was, Hudson could never figure out what he cared about, other than flying. It had taken both of his parents to die in a transit accident to galvanize his resolve and sign up to RGF, as a thirty-eight-year-old rookie. Policing the relic hunting operations that had allowed humans to reach for the stars... that has to be important, right? Hudson had asked himself. That has to matter? So, in the stark absence of anything else to give two shits about, he settled on the RGF. Like a great many of Hudson’s decisions, it hadn’t panned out quite as he had expected.
The console bleeped, warning him that his entry angle and velocity were off. This was also apparent from the growing vibrations clattering through the hull of the ship. Griff re-emerged from the cargo hold and poked his head into the cockpit.
“Ease up, rook,” Griff said, “Landing this thing is the only useful thing you’ll do today; you can at least try not to screw that up too.” Then he disappeared back into the hold again, no doubt to continue lining his pockets.
Hudson was sure that Chief Inspector Wash, the head of their divisional HQ located on Earth, had assigned Logan Griff as his training officer out of spite. A latecomer to the RGF, Hudson had always seemed to find himself at odds with the core duties of the service. Officially, these were to police the portal worlds and alien crash sites to ensure that the licensed relic hunters all coughed up their share of their finds. The controlling authority took its slice, whether that was the CET, the MP, or the OPW, while the neutral RGF also took a cut to fund its operations. The problem was that the RGF was more corrupt than even the most despicable treasure hunter. This was something Hudson had naively believed to be mere rumor and hearsay before joining up. How wrong he had been.
Hudson checked his dials and readouts and reset the autopilot for atmospheric entry, before arching his neck back to call out to Griff. He considered not doing so, and simply letting the cantankerous beanpole bounce around inside the hold as they buffeted through the atmosphere. However, as much as that would provide him immense satisfaction, he knew Griff would get his own back, only three times worse. As much as it pained him to do so, putting up and shutting up was the best option when it came to Corporal Logan Griff.
“Hey, Griff, you might want to strap in, we’re about to punch through the atmosphere,” Hudson called out.
There was a short delay, while dull thuds of drawers closing and the chink of metal items clanking together echoed out from the hold. Griff then eventually emerged, cigarette hanging from his bottom lip, looking smug. Hudson could see the pockets of his black, RGF-issue cargo pants were now stuffed full, and he turned back to face his controls, shaking his head.
“Before you get all judgey on me, asshole, that lot back there is probably twenty percent of our quarterly quota,” said Griff. He had evidently noticed Hudson’s disapproving reaction to his petty pilfering. “I just take a little extra for my trouble, and so should you. The sooner you learn that the better.”
“Whatever you say,” Hudson answered, trying to come off as nonchalant, but instead sounding condescending.
Griff clicked the harness of his seat into place and then cast his eyes back to the rookie officer in the pilot’s chair. His long, wiry eyebrows were pressed together in a sharp vee. “If you hate this job so much, why the hell did you even join the RGF?”
Hudson shrugged, “I thought I would be doing something that mattered.”
Griff blew out an obviously faked, mocking laugh, “Making bank is the only damn thing that matters, rook,” he said, turning his attention to his own computer console. “You should have done charity work or joined a goddamn monastery.”
“Maybe I will,” replied Hudson, cheerfully, as flames engulfed the cockpit glass, which steadily polarized to reduce the intensity of the light now flooding inside the normally dark cabin. He didn’t want to give Griff the satisfaction of knowing how much his blood was boiling.
“Too late for that,” said Griff, as his console chimed an incoming alert. He looked down and read it, before continuing. “You don’t get to quit the RGF, not without consequences. That’s something else you should have learned before signing up. Like it or not, this is who you are now, so you’d better get used to it. There are far worse ways to spend your time in the RGF than flying a bucket like this.”
Hudson sighed, but chose not to answer. There wasn’t really any point; Griff’s obstinance was as certain as the movement of the planets.
The flames cleared from outside the cockpit and Hudson dove the nimble patrol craft below the cloud line, revealing a lush, yellow-green forest. It would have expanded out beyond the horizon for hundreds of miles, like a vast unbroken sea of leaves, were it not for two features that crudely ruined the otherwise unblemished landscape.
The first was the vast alien wreck itself, smashed into the ground. It lay at the end of a mile-long trench that the titanic vessel had carved into the planet’s surface during its final minutes. Set up all around the alien ship was the RGF checkpoint district. This was the border through which all the relic hunters had to pass and declare their finds, or ‘scores’ as they were known in relic hunter slang.
The second was the mini metropolis and spaceport that had evolved around the wreck, built in a deforested section about four miles square. Colorfully named ‘scavenger towns’, these settlements serviced the needs of the relic hunters and RGF personnel that were assigned to every portal world. However, in the decades since their foundation, many had become home to thousands more. They were havens for those who preferred life outside the confines of the stricter and more prudish core planets.
Both the scavenger town and the wreck were ugly, alien additions to the world below. And as Hudson watched them both draw closer, he couldn’t help feeling that they were like pus-filled sores, festering on otherwise pristine, perfect skin. And considering Vivaldi One was a relatively luxurious inner portal world, that was saying something.
Despite being one of the larger and more developed scavenger towns, Vivaldi One still contained all manner of seedy establishments, curiosity stores and ways to both entertain and get yourself killed. It resembled a large-scale military forward operating base and airfield. Except that outside of the razor-wired camps of the RGF and the CET, it was a debauched and near-lawless place where almost anything goes. Hudson had visited many of these scavenger towns, even before joining the RGF, and he knew Vivaldi One well. Nevertheless, compared to some of the towns on the Outer Portal World planets, it was practically a nunnery.
Hudson flipped the switch to open a comm channel and spoke into his headset microphone. “Vivaldi One, this is RGF patrol craft Scimitar, requesting permission to land…”
The reply was almost instantaneous, but when Hudson heard the voice on the other end of the line, his mood sa
nk even lower than Vivaldi One’s setting orange sun. It was the only person in the galaxy he disliked more than Griff – Chief Inspector Jane Wash.
“Patrol Craft Scimitar, permission granted. I’m eager to hear your report, Officer Powell…” said Wash, in a tone that was as sinister as it was threatening.
Great, what the hell is she doing here? Hudson asked himself, rhetorically. Then he caught Griff leering at him out of the corner of his eye. He waited for Hudson to take the hint and meet his gaze fully, before slapping the bulging thigh pockets of his cargo pants.
“Well, at least one of us has made his personal quota this week!” he boasted, and then the sound of the cockpit was once again filled with a cruel, nasal laugh. Griff then drew deeply on his cigarette, before blowing out a thick plume of smoke. “How about you, rook? How are your numbers looking?”
Hudson ignored the question and Griff’s smug, sanctimonious face, and focused ahead. His knuckles were white against the bare metal of the control column, and his face burned red hot. He didn’t care about consequences, he told himself. He had to find a way out of the RGF, before it drove him to murder.
CHAPTER 3
The sharp clack of Inspector Wash’s boot heels on the clinically-white tile floor was all it took to snap the briefing room to attention. As she reached the podium and turned sharply to face her squad, Wash’s eyes fell immediately on Hudson, sitting at the front of the room. The look on her face could have turned milk sour.
“So far the Vivaldi portal worlds are running at one hundred and ten percent of quota,” Wash began, her voice as sharp as the sound of her heels. She paused and her eyes surveyed the faces of the officers in the room. Hudson knew this was a test to see if anyone would be foolish enough to make any sound that suggested happiness or satisfaction at her announcement. Hudson, naturally, had made such a mistake during his first week on the job. He quickly learned that no matter what percentage over quota her squads were, it was never enough for Wash. “You need to do better!” she eventually screeched, to the surprise of no-one in the room.