The Syn-En Solution

by Linda Andrews

  Ice washed down his spine. No! They wouldn't do such a thing. But what if they had? His fingers curled into fists. The data packets popped up like gift wrapped presents on the screen. Each was tagged with military codes.

  “Son of a bitch. That’s combat footage from the Syn-En Training Academy.” XO Penig’s abused joints creaked as he rose from the seat in the center of the bridge. Plowing his hands through the fringe of white hair, he limped to Bei’s side. “Who the hell would target a bunch of children?”

  On screen, Captain Petersburg swiped at the blood on her cheek. “As you can see, the citizen murderers started with the most helpless of us, our new inductees.”

  New inductees could mean anyone from a newborn to a ten year old. None had been substantially modified to have tech penalties that would allow a citizen to take their life without a trail. Bei’s hands trembled before his cerebral link compensated. Shock and disbelief coursed through him. What the hell was going on?

  Rage roiled through the WA and met with confusion from the other Syn-Ens not hearing the broadcast.

  Needing a clearheaded command staff, Bei ordered his avatar into the CIC to switch off the emotional turmoil. Individual emotions could be repackaged into productive energy, but once in the WA, strong feelings reproduced in a positive feedback loop, growing out of control with each second.

  On screen, fatigue bruised Captain Petersburg’s skin. “Thanks to your foresight, we instituted Operation Enduring Freedom after the student dorms at the academy were taken out and saved ninety percent of our people. Plus we gained a very nice ship in the bargain.” She patted the inlaid walnut console. “The children we took on board certainly appreciate the luxury.”

  Ignoring his roar for revenge, Bei grappled with the best way to handle the situation.

  Captain Petersburg shoved the black hair out of her eyes. “All of us owe our lives to your planning. Thank you, Admiral. No recruits or new inductees have been lost. But they need a safe harbor, one, hopefully called Terra Dos. Petersburg out.”

  Bei shook off the lethargy slogging through his veins and squared his shoulders. Turning to face the fleet’s senior officers, Bei felt the surge of purpose fill him. They would be returning back through the wormhole. If the America survived, she’d need a military escort. His fleet might be crippled, but they could still fight.

  His senior officers’ anticipation hung heavy on the air. The four crewmen returned to working on the disabled hubs, the ease and certainty of their movements filled with a new sense of purpose.

  Bei addressed Commander Brazil. “What is the status of the four Beagle class shuttles that were on the Starfarer’s stern?”

  With three officers flanking him, Commander Brazil jerked to attention. “We can be ready to leave as soon as we board our ships.”

  Bei noted that the officers near Brazil commanded the dart-like Beagles. The ships’ small size gave them superior maneuverability and stealth capabilities, but limited their ordinance capacities.

  “Did you have full weapons capabilities?” Bei knew that most of his ships had been stripped to minimal armaments before being deployed. He clenched his fists at the flood of rage. The United Earth Nations had deliberately disarmed the Syn-En. How long had the citizens planned this attack?

  Commander Brazil’s pride in his small ship was evident from the lines on his tan face. “Aye, sir. Short range energy and projectile weapons are available.”

  Tugging on his auxiliary fiber optic cable, Penig straightened. “It’ll take a week for your ships to travel beyond sensor range. Another two weeks to be within weapons’ range of the wormhole’s event horizon.”

  Shang’hai ran a hand through her short pink hair. “The Starfarer can donate torpedoes. That’ll add another two million to weapon’s range.”

  “Do it.” Through the WA, Bei authorized the CIC to release the complement of torpedoes. The Starfarer’s bulkhead groaned as the spiderlike wardens crawled over the hull to transfer the weapon from his ship to the Beagles.

  “We’ll be outside of sensor range in five days and be within targeting distance in sixteen days.” Commander Brazil glanced at the men around him. “We know our ships. The engines can take it.”

  Bei knew that with or without his permission they would push the ships to the limits. “I’ll send the America’s last known coordinates when we get them. Adjust your speed accordingly; you have a long trek ahead.”

  “Aye, Admiral.” Commander Brazil’s black eyes twinkled.

  Bei nodded once, knowing his men would tax their ships and themselves to the brink to save the America. Unfortunately, it might already be too late. The men needed to understand that they might be risking themselves for nothing. Bei clamped down on his mounting frustration. How many more would this trip cost him? “Use the travel time to modify your turrets. You’ll each receive two long range torpedoes and four short range. Launch LRT on hostiles at twenty-two million kilometers. SRTs at your discretion.”

  Shang’hai’s almondine eyes changed to black as she accessed the WA. “I’ve sent specifications to convert the conventional torpedo warheads to nuclear.”

  Bei nodded his approval to use the banned weapons. If the America didn’t survive, neither would any citizen on Earth. “Reinforcements will be a week behind you.”

  “Five days, Admiral.” A freckle-faced lieutenant stepped forward, followed by ten more officers. Each wore the insignia of the Beagle class ship on their lapel. “We can have a dozen more ships space worthy in five days.”

  In his mind, Bei’s avatar nodded and prioritized the repairs for the least damaged of the fleet. Too bad the bigger and more powerful warships would take another week to repair. “So be it.”

  “Aye, Admiral.” Commander Brazil saluted, turned on his heel and strode from the bridge with the other Beagle captains.

  The remaining senior staff crowded forward in a rustle of fabric. Bei knew that if the Syn-Ens had a God, like the citizens did, each person on his bridge would be praying to Him. Yet they didn’t. The Syn-En had only each other. Bei silently stepped forward, not far enough to blend into the crowd, but close enough to be a part of his senior staff.

  Although still entertaining thoughts of revenge, Captain Petersburg’s last words replayed inside Bei’s head. Terra Dos. Combat was no place for children or new inductees. They’d have to find the planet first, then plot their revenge. If the America and her escorts made it this far. He boxed up his negativity. Should the America receive any of Bei’s transmissions, they might be spared as many casualties.

  All eyes turned to Bei as the boxes on the screen remained unopened. Fear ticked along his equilibrium. The data contained within those boxes were time bombs he couldn’t diffuse. Yet, wasn’t imagining worse than actually seeing it?

  What could be worse than targeting children in a campaign of genocide?

  As if sensing Bei’s turmoil, XO Penig cleared his throat. “Until the admiral says so, whatever is inside those data clips does not leave the bridge. Neither will what we see alter our course. We owe those inductees a chance at life, not an existence measured by milestones of vengeance.”

  Bei’s lips twitched. Not for the first time, he wondered why XO Penig hadn’t been made Admiral of the Fleet. “Lieutenant Berlin, open the Academy data packets and display them side by side.”

  “Aye, Admiral,” the lieutenant answered. The gift box unwrapped itself and five files moved to the open screens, where they unzipped. “Data has somewhat degraded, but I’m buffering and compensating. There should only be a ten second delay.”

  Bei eased forward to stand next to his executive officer. Tension wafted off the senior staff behind him.

  Through the green tint of night vision lenses, three LCDs gave a bird’s eye view of the snaking Mississippi River to the East, the square fallow fields to the North and South and the landing pads on the West. The fourth screen was subdivided into quarters, each offering a ground level view of the campus and dorms, including the guarded
single gate. The time stamp next to the dark buildings showed two in the morning six weeks ago.

  XO Penig rested his elbow on the metal armrest and palmed his chin. His blue eyes focused on the dark screens. “When did you suspect the Council would turn on us?”

  “I didn’t.” Bei inhaled sharply as the cluster of rectangles comprising the Syn-En Academy flashed on the four screens. His heart pulsed with anticipation. “But from truncated conversations, whispers and requests for training by citizen police agencies while at UEN, I knew the Syn-En were an endangered species.”

  Penig drummed his fingers against his pointed chin. “There’s always been calls for the Syn-En to be decommissioned.”

  Headlights appeared on the road leading to the academy and the satellite imagery showed two dozen unidentified bogeys flying in from the west. The screen with the official news broadcast remained dark.

  Lieutenant Berlin caught Bei’s eye. “I’ve set them to sync so we will see their interpretation against our raw data.”

  Bei nodded. “It’s no secret that the citizens don’t trust our implants. They think we’re too much like machines. Too perfect to put up with human flaws and they’re worried because most of us come from, poorer nation states.”

  Jane’s identified the bogeys as UEN citizen Stellar class patrol ships.

  A muscle twitched in Penig’s jaw. His fringe of white hair quivered. “That explains why the alarms didn’t sound and why the money for the supposed cancelled Stellar program never appeared in the budget. The bastards kept the ships for themselves.”

  “That was two years ago,” Shang’hai’s soft voice cut in from beside Bei. “Beagles are away.”

  So now Bei knew when the UEN started counting down the days to the end of the Syn-Ens. The Council must have been shitting their pants to have the wormhole solve the dilemma of how to eliminate half the Syn-Ens without alerting others.

  Bei was surprised at how little the timeline actually mattered. They couldn’t go back to Earth now, not and live there. “Two years ago, the country movement started gaining political grounds in the UEN. The self-proclaimed Britons, Statesians, Canadians, Germans and Swedes wanted more say in how Council spent their taxes.”

  Shang’hai snorted. “Those fools? Remember the rumors circulating about a virus that could infect our cerebral interfaces, alter our programming so we’d assassinate the richer Citizens from AusAwk, Asia and South America member nations?”

  Bei shared a smile with his engineer over the absurdity of it all. “You forgot that we’d then distribute the wealth among the poor civilians.”

  His humor vanished as on screen the Stellar shuttles’ weapons went hot. Warning lights flared on the Syn-En satellites, indicating alarms had been sounded. A citizen command scrolled across the screen in ticker tape fashion and the warning disappeared. Heat sensors picked up minimal life signs in the buildings. All converged on the communications room. A larger heat signature registered in the training grounds, no doubt the inductees and recruits playing safely behind posted live ordinance warning signs.

  XO Penig shifted in his seat. Over a hundred armed missiles left the shuttles. “That’s madness.”

  A digital clock appeared on the bottom of the screens, counting down the time to impact. The land vehicles stopped their approach. Two teams climbed out. The satellite picked up surface to air missiles.

  The energy signatures of the Syn-Ens in the Academy’s com station split into two. A second later, all life signs in the training grounds disappeared. Showing on the ground level camera, RPG shot toward the four Syn-Ens climbing into land vehicles. The lens recorded a direct hit before the fireball took out the camera.

  Bei switched his attention to the satellite camera. “That’s why there’s been no upgrades for the Syn-En for the last year, and why the number of wards assigned to the service have decreased despite there being the same number of children turned over to the state.”

  Citizen override commands trailed across the screen of the satellite imagery, attempting to power down the system.

  Shang’hai tugged on her short pink hair. Her wide brown eyes fixated on the destruction playing out on the screen. “What did they do with the ones not taken into the Fleet?”

  “I don’t know.” But he now believed the rumors about the children being killed. Inwardly reeling at the injustice, Bei watched the satellites ignore the citizens’ shutdown command and issue a false compliance signal, explaining why four Syn-En had remained inside a targeted building. They’d been uploading Bei’s virus to stop an outside force from taking over their eyes in the sky while they’d disabled all but a few Syn-En ident signatures at the training facilities, hiding their people in plain sight.

  XO Penig sat back in his chair. Metal groaned and his muscles trembled a tight hold on the armrests. “How do the citizens expect to survive without us there to fix their problems?”

  The countdown stopped. Fireballs mushroomed on the screen, reducing resolution. The entire Academy disappeared in the flames. A concussive wave knocked down buildings on the training grounds and trees into the fallow fields.

  The news screen flickered to life.

  A round cheeked woman with bright red lipstick smiled out at them. “UEN News reports a horrible accident at the Syn-En training compound today.” The charred remains of the once white buildings blazed across the screen. “According to sources, an underground pipe exploded, taking out the soldiers while they were sleeping. Despite increases in the budgets, this latest tragedy underscores how necessary citizen management of the Syn-Ens has become. Some in the UEN have even called for the disbandment of the unit themselves, saying they were a bad idea that ran its course. In other news…”

  After the five second news blip, the screen went dark.

  Five seconds. That’s all the children rated? They were human, dammit. Bei took a calming breath. “The year before we left Earth, we spent much of that time training the new citizen corp.”

  XO Penig pounded his fist against the armrest. “We trained our replacements.”

  Bei nodded. It made sense at the time, after all, the Syn-En were going to settle a new world. Someone would have to look after the old one. “I figured with the last cohort, the Syn-En would be phased out, never hunted and slaughtered.”

  The second video opened. Three satellites showed Syn-En ground forces with yellow dots. They scrambled over the uneven terrain and entered what should have been an empty village. Com units switched off, blotting out the ground forces signature. The time stamp put it right before the Academy assault. The green tinted image wavered and other life signs appeared.

  Noncombatant civilians ident signals registered before the screen blank and reclassified them as hostiles to be neutralized. The Syn-En ground troops moved in. Red flares highlighted the bursts of energy weapons.

  From four clicks above, Syn-En Air combat received the green light. Their targeted battlefield overlaid the ground forces and the civilian village. Seventeen darts swooped onto the target. Live rounds took out half the buildings and their occupants. The next wave dropped down for their attack run. The death tally appeared on the screen, the numbers spinning as the computer compared the life signs to those from a minute ago. Seven hundred dead.

  Shang’hai whistled through her teeth as she inhaled. “The citizens used our ground forces to kill civilians then had our air corp blow up whatever remained.”

  Tension bit into Bei’s shoulders as the second wave delivered their payload. Even though only half the buildings had been destroyed, sixty percent of the ground forces were blown apart. God only knew how many civilians had died. Orange mushroomed across the screen indicating the air corp had switched from live rounds to simulated ones. Bei released his held breath. “After the first salvo, they were blanks.”

  They’d stopped the killing, but the damage had already been done.

  Using the WA, Bei brought up the assault force orders. Just as he suspected, the two training missions had been rescheduled a
t the last minute. A sealed rating had prevented the air corps from knowing they were attacking their own men on the ground. The third strike team landed their darts. Infrared marked them moving among the carnage.

  XO Penig dug the heels of his palms into his eyes. If only the images could be wiped away that easily. “What is Operation Enduring Freedom?”

  Bei watched the first two strike teams fly over the bombed area. The time stamp marked a minute past the attack on the academy. “When the first pictures came back of Terra Dos and the Syn-En were ordered to colonize the planet, I got to thinking. If there was one inhabited planet on one end of the wormhole, there might be another on the other side.”

  The satellite relay on the left LCD backed away, tracking the Syn-En darts as they moved to intercept the citizen Stellar vessels sweeping the grounds of the Academy over five hundred miles away.

  Shang’hai’s jaw dropped open. “The Op was to protect the Earth from alien conquest.”

  Bei shrugged. “In the months before we left, I had munitions stashed on abandoned asteroid mines and in Pluto’s low orbit. Commander Brazil, Captain Petersburg and several others worked on the best strategy to move troops to the wormhole. They planned to commandeer private vessels. Most ships would be used to evacuate populations but a handful would be positioned to guard the flank.”

  XO Penig grunted. “Instead we used the plan to save ourselves.”

  Bei hadn’t saved them yet.

  The third package opened. Two satellites recorded the firefight between the Syn-En and the citizen’s ships. Although the Stellar were newer and had, in theory, superior capabilities, they couldn’t match the experience of the Syn-En pilots. Every ship was shot out of the air, then the Syn-En chased down the citizen’s ground forces and plowed their remains into the ground.