Renegade Alliance

by J. N. Chaney

  I approved of McCabe being the other team leader. Having flown with him previously, I knew the man was qualified. It would be interesting to watch him and Chelanah match wits. All of the red points on the display winked out of sight, leaving what I assumed to be Chelana’s group. Since the teams were uneven, with Chelanah’s team at a disadvantage, I was eager to watch this play out.

  Chelanah muted herself and studied the holo with a calculating look. “This is a newer batch. They know the basics of how the Celestial ships work, but they need some experience with combat. I’m betting they either want to fan out or split up and go for the bigger pieces of debris. Personally, I would send two teams to the largest spots for cover and let one ship hang back as a secondary.”

  I spun the holo in a lazy circle, studying the layout. “That’s pretty good. Are you going to tell your team that?”

  She grinned. “They have to make mistakes if they’re going to learn.”

  The controls emitted a series of beeps. Chelanah opened the line again. “One minute to go. What’s your plan going to be?”

  A male voice answered. “The enemy is probably hiding out near the bigger pieces of debris. We’ll check them out as a group, one at a time.”

  “Alright, Team Leader, you’re clear to deploy when the five minutes are up. Remember, I’m part of your team but I won’t tell you what to do. Little Knife out.” She didn’t give him any indication of what she thought of the strategy, another smart move. They would have to rely on teamwork and communication to get the job done.

  She muted the comms again and turned toward me. “Close enough. Let’s see how they do.”

  A countdown began at ten seconds and Chelanah readied herself by leaning forward a little in her seat. When the timer hit zero, the team leader began issuing commands in earnest.

  “Check your holos for the first target,” he ordered.

  The group of five fighters converged on the first marker indicated on the display. This was a formation they’d clearly practiced and were comfortable with. The target was the biggest of the rocky debris, about the size of Titan.

  “Scanning for particle exhaust,” said another voice, this one female and designated Star Wing. There was a pause as the team lead waited to find out if his prediction had been correct. “Two possible targets,” Star Wing finally continued.

  “Star Wing and Little Knife, your objectives are marked. Activate pulse cannons,” instructed the team leader.

  Chelanah moved into position and opened fire. The invisible blast had the effect of revealing one of the enemy fighters, and their ship lit up as a red dot on the holo. Star Wing’s blast followed suit and another red marker appeared.

  “All fighters, engage!” said the team lead. That was his big mistake. He should have held some of his ships back because now they were all exposed with five unknown targets left hiding somewhere else in the field.

  Team B found this out the hard way. They took out the first two enemy ships easily, and a round of whoops and cheers came over the comms. Incentivized by their success, Team Leader sent his fighters for the next biggest piece of floating rock. “Repeat the scan,” he said.

  It came up with nothing.

  “Leaving our asses hanging out,” Chelanah muttered.

  “There’s no rule about staying still, right?” Alphonse asked.

  “Nope. The hiders can do whatever it takes to stay out of sight.”

  “So, technically, they could be coming up behind us,” the Constable suggested. I could hear the edge in his voice. It was the sound of disappointment, something I had plenty of experience with from my childhood teachers.

  The proximity alarm went off, answering Alphonse before Chelanah could. Suddenly, and from all sides, four separate quad cannons fired at once.

  10

  Chelanah managed to spin away and dove hard under rubble with immediate speed. The enemy ship followed as Chelanah came up on the other side, and a beam passed by close enough to set off more alarms. “Someone get me cover fire,” she snapped at me and Alphonse. “I’ve kinda got my hands full.”

  “Go ahead, Al,” I said. “I want to watch this play out.”

  Little Knife’s weapons system came online at his command, humming as they reached full power. Alphonse unleashed a blast that obliterated the oncoming target from the holo grid. Three of Team B’s markers winked out, leaving us and our team leader. Team A still had two ships, putting us level with them. Almost.

  “Still one cloaked,” Chelanah muttered, looping back around to flank the fighters advancing on her leader.

  He wasn’t going to make it. The enemy pinned him down between their cannons and a thicker cluster of space rocks. His beam punched out and eliminated one from the holo. The last of Team A, designated as Black Sun, returned fire and took him out in the next instance before racing off to meet Little Knife. Chelanah threaded the vessel around the labyrinth of broken planet. From her course, I guessed she was heading for a dense patch to get lost in.

  “That’s gonna slow you down,” I warned her.

  Chelanah grinned. “I know.” She slowed the ship to avoid colliding with a wall of rock and quickly banked hard to move through a tunnel-like opening. “Activate cloak.”

  Our marker disappeared from the holo, and Little Knife immediately maneuvered into a small opening to wait.

  “Smart,” said Alphonse. “They’ll just assume the signal got disrupted from the interference of that barrier.”

  “That’s the hope,” Chelanah said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and they won’t have the same idea.”

  It didn’t take long. Team A took their time, moving with the pace of an opponent that was all but certain of their victory. Their dot disappeared when their ship entered the giant asteroid. The cockpit was, meanwhile, totally quiet, with only the sound of our breathing to fill the void of silence. Black Sun finally nosed into view a few seconds later and Chelanah’s lips curved up into a smile.

  “Light them up, Mr. Malloy,” she ordered.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He waited for the rest of the ship to become exposed, its sleek body appearing meter-by-meter. Our quad cannons released their payload, erupting in a bright beam of purple light that crossed the bare distance between the two ships. Black Sun disappeared from the map and a cheer rose up from the comms.

  “Don’t celebrate yet,” Chelanah chided as she directed Little Knife back into the fight. “Still one unaccounted—”

  A beam speared into us from above, where the enemy had been waiting. The cockpit lit up again and the holo flashed red, telling us in no uncertain terms that Team B had been defeated.

  Chelanah sighed, dropping her hands on the dash and turning around. She looked a little irritated, but simply shook her head and shrugged. “Tried to tell them. Oh well. That’s why we do the simulations, right?”

  “They’ll get better,” I assured her. “Besides, this is all new to them.”

  That much was true. The new soldiers that she was training had never really seen combat. They were trained in hand to hand and weapons, not tactical open space warfare.

  “That wasn’t all that bad for an inexperienced group,” Alphonse said. “I’ve seen worse.”

  “I suppose I wasn’t all that good the first time out,” Chelanah said with a laugh. “Captain, do you want to speak to them?”

  Behind me, Alphonse snickered.

  “Gods no, lady,” I said. “Do I look like the motivational speech kind of guy? I’m sure you can handle that.”

  “Well, you could always offer to work with them. Run a few demos yourself.” She gave me a hopeful smile.

  I thought about it for a moment, but had to decline. “Sorry, Chel. I have some other things to check on. Another time, though. Alphonse and I can give you some pointers for the next session if you want.”

  “Definitely! Thank you, sir,” she said brightly. “Advice from the Renegade and a Constable is the next best thing.”

  After the training exercise, we left Chelanah t
o go over things with the two teams. From what I’d seen, the program was in more than capable hands.

  My comm beeped in my ear. “Captain,” said Carl. “I have some information regarding Hygeia.”

  Lex hadn’t woken up yet and I figured more information could only help. I instructed Carl to get Dressler on a holo and then ducked into the first room that would serve as a meeting place with Alphonse. As today’s luck would have it, the room lacked any kind of furniture, so I settled for leaning against one of the pristine walls.

  “Linking with Dr. Dressler now,” Carl announced, suddenly next to me. He flicked a wrist and her holo form appeared in the middle of the room.

  I nodded. “Hey, Doc.”

  “Captain,” she said, then looked at Alphonse. “How are things on Tartarus?”

  To the former Constable’s credit, he didn’t react except to tip his head cordially at her image.

  “What’s this all about then?” I asked, looking at Carl.

  Carl swept a hand out and turned the walls of the room into a virtual feed of a small city with smiling people, many walking and talking with one another. They strolled unhurried on immaculately kept walkways, mostly in groups, and their dress was more or less variations of the same thing: a two piece outfit that consisted of a white bodysuit under a black tunic. White hair, pale skin, and blue eyes clearly identified them as Eternals.

  “Is this Novo?” asked Alphonse, his arms crossed as he studied the feed.

  “This footage was recorded at the peak of Novo’s population. Almost 1000 years ago,” Carl told us. The view changed again. “This is 500 years later.”

  The scene looked dramatically different. I guessed that the image had half of the number of people as the last. They now wore jackets and trousers that reminded me of militant uniforms without any markings or patches. Some still smiled but there seemed to be an underlying tone of dread.

  “A sharp decline,” Dressler commented.

  “The last Novian died 150 years ago,” said Carl.

  “I assume the disease is responsible?” I asked.

  “That is correct. They referred to it as Degradation. The scientists tasked with finding the cure were successful, to a point.”

  “Don’t you mean unsuccessful?” Alphonse asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “No, Mr. Malloy. Gene therapy advancements did extend the average lifespan, at least for a time. It had one unintended side effect,” explained Carl. “Sterilization.”

  I whistled at the sound of that. “Did they know about that?”

  “Oh, they were fully aware,” Carl replied. “The risk was deemed acceptable. Confident that a cure would be found eventually, more than three quarters of the population underwent the procedure.”

  And, I speculated to myself, essentially signed their own death warrants. Poor bastards. “Okay, we know the ending, the people here died out. So how did Hygeia find herself a cure?”

  On the display, an extensive list of files began to scroll. “Hygeia continued her experiments,” Carl explained. “She refined them, processed the results, and grew ever closer to her final discovery.”

  Dressler frowned. “How? That would require specimens to study.”

  “She had them.” The Cognitive brought up a new feed.

  Hundreds of silver squares lined the walls of a large room. Dressler tilted her head. “Is that—”

  “Yes,” Carl said. “A morgue.”

  Alphonse let out an audible sigh. “I guess that answers the question of where the bodies went.”

  “It still doesn’t make much sense to me,” I said. “Why keep going if everyone was dead?”

  “It was in her programming,” said Dressler.

  “That’s right,” Alphonse responded. “She kept saying it was her purpose, her mission.”

  “But she’s a Cognitive,” I pointed out. “Wouldn’t she have the ability to stop if she wanted to? Doesn’t she have free will?”

  Carl nodded. “Hygeia continued because she had not completed her objective. I also believe she did it to stay busy. It became her sole focus and, later, her only obsession. Perhaps she believed that someday her work could fulfill its purpose and another group of Eternals would come to relieve her of it.”

  “Were the original Eternals still alive, perhaps they might have,” said Alphonse.

  “The history lesson is fascinating, but what does that have to do with us?” I asked.

  “Hold on, Captain.” Dressler shot me a look of mild irritation before turning back to Carl. “When did Hygeia find the cure?”

  Carl smiled at the doctor. “Yesterday in the early evening.”

  I came away from the wall. “That’s right around the time we started setting up camp.”

  “Hygeia obtained a fresh sample from an unrecorded specimen,” replied Carl. “Fresh blood, according to the log.”

  The previous day’s events cycled through my memory.

  “Didn’t Lex hurt herself?” asked Alphonse.

  I nodded. “She fell outside by the camp and got a cut. Some of it fell on the ground.”

  “She must have had a drone of some kind, or some other sort of retrieval bot,” said Dressler. “It gave Hygeia what she needed.”

  “Right again, Doctor,” said Carl. “The analysis of young Lex’s genetic makeup yielded information you will find most interesting.”

  The data he put on the screen next was all unreadable glyphs and lines to me. Alphonse shook his head, suggesting he didn't understand it either.

  Dr. Dressler had no problem with it, though. She made little noises to herself and bobbed her head as she studied it. Finally, she looked up, eyes wide. “Carl, are you certain this is accurate?”

  “It is,” he replied.

  “Then Hygeia spoke the truth. She cured Lex.”

  I felt my chest relax at the words. I’d hoped for them, but I didn’t realize exactly how much until this very moment. “Good,” I said as I exhaled. “Does this mean we can wake her up now?”

  “I don’t think you understand,” said Dressler, without any of her usual exasperation. “Lex’s genes no longer show signs of latent Degradation. They are, in a word, perfect.” She stepped forward, growing slightly larger on the holo before us. “She is, for lack of a better term, immortal.”

  Immortal.

  An hour later, the word still rang in my head. Abigail had been just as taken by the news. For now, we decided to keep the information within our crew. We had an alliance with the Union and the Sarkonian Empire, sure, but I hadn’t forgotten about the experiments Lex had undergone during her time in captivity. Treaty or not, I refused to take the chance that they’d come after her again if they found out she held the secret to eternal youth in her DNA.

  “Going in, Captain Hughes?”

  I managed not to act surprised by the voice, despite the abrupt interruption as it pierced my thoughts. Oscar stood at the door to the mobile armor bay.

  “I was just thinking of...strategy,” I told him as we headed inside. “You working on suits today?”

  He pointed at one in particular. “I heard Sigmond got into a fight with the defense system when he was planetside. "I kept running into a wall with this machine. I just couldn't get it to work and the program kept giving me an error, like it was missing something, so I took a break. That was right after I heard about the battle on the planet, and I couldn't get the suit out of my head. You know how that goes when you get a thought stuck, almost like an obsession. I sat here for a while just staring at it, and I remembered that the Celestial had been wearing one when he used the machine, so then I began to wonder if maybe there was a connection, you know?”

  “Quite astute, Mr. Herrera,” said Sigmond as he manifested next to us.

  “Thank you, Sigmond.” Oscar pointed to his data pad. “I’m going to get started. Let me know if you need something, Captain.”

  I watched him leave the room.

  Once he was out of earshot, I leaned in and spoke in a low voice. “I’v
e been meaning to ask about your little brawl last night. How did it feel, getting in there and getting your hands dirty like that?”

  Sigmond paused for a moment as if thinking it over. “While I have no wish to fight unless it is necessary, it was quite interesting to have a physical body with which to defend myself.”

  “I’ll bet,” I said with a wry smile.

  “A small singe mark,” he admitted. “One of the beams grazed me before I could phase.”

  I flapped a hand in dismissal. “Small price to pay for saving our asses,” I told him.

  The Cognitive smiled, humble as usual. “I do aim to please, sir.”

  Someone called my name, and I turned to see Oscar waving at me. “Must have found something exciting,” I said to Sigmond as we crossed the room.

  “It would seem so.”

  “That didn’t take long,” I commented when we reached Oscar.

  “No,” he said. “It helped that this was the first thing to show up on the display.” Oscar passed the data pad over to me and pointed at the top right corner. “See that?”

  I studied the screen and grimaced. It still looked like mostly foreign symbols to my unpracticed eye, but something about the sequence did seem familiar. “Isn’t that what you showed me in the transportation room?” I asked, handing the pad back.

  “Right. It’s not exactly the same, but it reads close enough. Same amount of characters. Two symbols, five numbers.” Oscar motioned behind him at the neat rows of mobile armor. “I checked a few of the other suits and found they had the same thing.”

  “What does it mean?” I asked.

  “It has to be an identifier for the armor,” he said.

  “Pardon me for interrupting, but I believe you are partially correct, Mr. Herrera.” Sigmond smiled kindly at the engineer. “I performed a search using the criteria you just mentioned. I found similar instances in the hard light blades that were removed from the Berserkers. What you’ve found is an identifier, certainly, but it isn’t for the armor.”

  Oscar worked his pad with a series of quick little taps that reminded me of Dressler. “Ah! I see it now. The sequence is encoded with a frequency signature specific to the individual Celestial,” he explained.