by Gentry Race
Colin Fox’s hologram sat in the center of the polished, oblong table, with his hands clenched into white knuckles and his eyes looking tired in the early morning hours. Next to him, a largely built general held his cap under his arm, explaining the situation as Nathan and Hastings took the end of the table. Tang leaned against the wall in the back of the room under the dim track lighting.
“Hastings,” Colin said, stuffing a large muffin into his mouth. The holomap picked up the numerous crumbs that fell to the table, projecting in front of Sasha and her team. “I’m afraid the surface radiation had been a bugger to get communications through.”
“A ‘bugger’ situation, indeed,” Hastings said lightly, hoping the higher-ups had read the briefing she sent earlier detailing the events that had occurred.
“This is the second invasion attempt. They befriended us, and now they’ve thrown it back in our faces. This is a call for war, sir.” A pudgy general said, his name tag reading Anderson.
Another general, as slender as a stick, stood up and interrupted. “Against a newly discovered planetary system, General Anderson?”
“I propose we engage a S.P.E.A.R. Initiative immediately,” General Anderson said, slicing his hand down onto the table like he was segmenting an invisible battlefield division.
“S.P.E.A.R. is gone,” Hastings replied. The Psychonautz are all you have.”
“Psycho what?” General Anderson asked.
Colin Fox was quiet for a moment, studying Hastings’ eyes carefully. It was her moment to shine, and he knew she wouldn’t waste it by having her team get swept under the rug.
“I know what you’re doing,” Fox said.
“Well, I don’t know what you’re doing,” General Anderson interrupted. “Can someone please explain to me what these two are talking about? What the hell is a Psychonaut?”
“We’re the ones who destroyed the seed and its little invasion party,” Tang said, stepping into the light. “Then we had to burn it up, just like we’ll have to do to everything else in this place if you all don’t start making the right moves."
“What do you suggest, Starship Master Sergeant?” Colin Fox said skeptically. “Humor me.”
“A Doolittle Raid,” Tang said. "Use the obsolete S.P.E.A.R. ships to travel the Shadow World subspace. We just need to calculate the coordinates from the seed."
Sasha Hastings was caught off guard, not having heard the term since her days in the Academy. The Doolittle Raid was an ancient air raid carried out by the US against Tokyo in retaliation for Pearl Harbor. This tactic had demonstrated how the Japanese were vulnerable to an American attack. Furthermore, Tang was right about the old S.P.E.A.R. ships. Their capability could bolt them out of their cryoprison, but would anyone other than Nathan want to go?
“A suicide mission,” General Anderson said, shaking his head.
“We’ve been working on new voxel tech that would only need to be deployed in a strategic area,” Tang said.
“What new voxel tech, exactly?” Colin asked.
“NaN voxels,” Tang said matter-of-factly.
“NaN voxels?” Colin Fox repeated.
“Jesus, do I hear an echo?” Tang mocked. "Yes, NaN voxels.”
Hastings interrupted. “NaNs are used to represent the missing values in computations within our suits and down here in this can. For example, Ø/Ø is undefined as a real number and so is represented by NaN. The square root of a negative number is imaginary, and thus not representable as a real floating-point number. This is a NaN.”
The generals’ faces were blanketed with confusion.
“Basically, NaN voxels are used to fill the gaps in the processing code from the Voxel suits. This allows for new creations to manifest,” Tang said.
“Like what kind of new creations?” Colin Fox asked, leaning forward.
“Grey goo,” Tang replied.
“Seriously?” General Anderson rolled his eyes in disbelief.
Nathan looked at Tang and then at Fox in alarm. Hastings caught his action and joined, knowing something dreadful was on its way. Nathan had always had a good sense of judgment—a moral compass pointing towards the heart.
“What the hell is grey goo?” General Anderson asked.
“Grey goo is the result of a molecular NaNorganic tech gone awry," Hastings explained. "In this situation, out of control, self-replicating NaNorobots consume entire ecosystems, resulting in global ecophagy.”
“And we have this technology?” Fox asked.
“I’m working on a prototype version,” Tang said
Groans could be heard from generals around the table.
“I’ve used the NaN gaps and manifested a new weapon while only consuming voxel Æether-based material,” Tang said, glancing at Nathan with a sneer. “But there is one thing.”
“What’s that?” General Anderson asked.
“Most of our Æether crops were destroyed in the fire. We’ll need another source to fuel the Voxel suits. If we use the Syndicate logs to chart out possible potentials, we could find more,” Tang said.
The table was quiet for the first time, and Sasha could see Colin Fox calculating the plot in his head. He knew she was right. Sending in the Psychonautz was a win/win for the Army. The public couldn’t handle the classified experiments that had been performed on Reformers there. They’d be screaming genocide. And the Reform Facility was just a ruse to get the HOLE facility off the books. The operation was under the Army’s division and still pertinent, but if word got out that an invasion attack had taken place, as well as a breakout, it would be Fox’s ass.
“Alright, Hastings, we’ll send your team. Find a new source of Æether and run the bombing campaign,” Colin Fox said, now looking at Nathan and grimacing with uncertainty. "Listen, Nathan, I'm sorry about Richter."
Hastings watched Nathan’s uneasiness as he looked around the room at all the key players at the table. He was working out his strength.
“Sir, I only know three things—courage, honor, and commitment. Send us, and we’ll get the job done,” Hastings said with confidence, filling the awkward void.
Colin Fox smiled and gave a respectful nod. “Ready your team.”
“This one’s for Richter,” Nathan said.
16
Exhausted, Vorian Dumaga sat in his lushly carpeted chair. The room around him was musty and filled with random bric-a-brac that he’d been able to save from his family. He came to the Remembrance Room when he needed to evoke tradition, for that was all an Acedian could do—remember and react.
Being an Acedian Drækonian who came from a working-class family of miners, Vorian had a knack for getting his hands dirty; however, during the Alignment Festivities, it was the Acedian Moon's duty, along with his people’s, to produce the finest ore and deliver it to the Drækonians. That was the purpose of this ship—to act as a vessel of servitude, but right now its purpose was retreat.
Vorian glided his hand over the fiberoptic carpet, watching the tendrils turn on and off in a rolling wave of light. This was what he wanted for his system, for Acedia—a wave of change—but the solution was more clouded than a stellar nursery.
A blocky mass of dark material extended from the center of the room that matched the material the ship was made of. This was a Fountain. They were found throughout many parts of the vessel and were used to furnish Acedians with information.
Two small lights lit up, ending with a red one that was blinking faster. Vorian looked up and recognized the signals. Something was arriving.
"Central, give me a visual on the docking bay," Vorian called out.
A large, green-hued, two-dimensional hologram projected out of the Fountain, showing several crusted-over shells clumped together like a horde of caterpillar cocoons. Vorian recognized these cocoons as none other than the seed, returning so soon.
Vorian watched the docking arm pluck the hard-shelled vermin from space and gently place them in a container cube that was frosted with a pasty white acrylic. The tendrils of c
arpet just below his hand seemed to clump together now, forming an interface into which he tapped a few instructions. He watched as wires grew from the corners of the cube and connected to the hard-shelled organisms. This link immediately changed the interface into what looked like a fat bug. Vorian thought it was cute.
"Just full of ideas," Vorian said ecstatically.
As he navigated inside the bug's head, he could see a plethora of orbs floating around, all a different color of the spectrum. These stolen thoughts were the amalgamation of what this clump of bugs had been able to retrieve from the colony—Oyria, in this case.
One orb stood out as a dark crimson, pulsating with an electric fire from within. Vorian swiped away the light blue orbs, and his large eyes lit up. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
The laboratory of the Acedian doctor was now filled to the brim with discarded alien bodies and decomposing skulls. If he hadn't lost most of his auxiliary olfactory sense in the Great Uprising, he most definitely would have taken ill from the smell.
The doctor was pulling a small alien the size of a child along the floor. Its skin was red and spotted green like a present wrapped in a lizard-like skin. The small alien kicked hard, trying to loosen the shackles the doctor now had connected to a makeshift cinch.
"Doctor!" Vorian yelled, hurrying into the room. In his green, scaly hand, he held a clear stick of what looked like acrylic.
The doctor's cold facial expression didn’t change, somehow looking even more bored as he performed the torturous experiments.
"Doctor, I think we’ve found the answer we’ve been looking for," Vorian said.
"Yes? Let me see it then,” the doctor said, gesturing to a Fountain on the other side of the room.
Vorian inserted the long, rectangular acrylic stick into the Fountain and a two-dimensional, rectangular hologram projected at once. The doctor watched closely as a human was attacked by a bug.
"By god, a human is withstanding the latch? That should have melted his mind,” the doctor said with obvious surprise.
"I know, but look what we found in his mindsight,” Vorian said, pointing to another screen that appeared.
The camera zoomed in past the skull, and the doctor saw the familiar genetic code that was mostly the same for all organic creatures, but this DNA had one thing different. The doctor looked closely at each DNA link to see that it was bound together not by carbon atoms but by Æether itself.
"By god!"
"They’ve made a self-replicating substance," Vorian said with a smile.
They were looking at a small moon that was being infected with nanomachines, self-replicating endlessly and consuming it in its entirety. The playback finished, including a recorded dialogue from Tang's team, which mentioned the source.
"Interesting,” the doctor said, contemplating the potential.
"This could destroy the tendrils and free the moons, ending the fight against the Drækonians once and for all," Vorian said excitedly.
"Hold on. We need to test it in a series of trials first. You don't want the Drækonians to survive and find this weapon. That would be a disaster. It would empower them as well,” the doctor said, rationalizing his point of view.
Vorian hated hearing that they would need more trials and testing, but one of the results of having their cognitive risks eliminated was that no original ideas could be had by his species. If not for Vorian's rashness and eagerness, this ship would still be on Acedia, fighting to survive the punishing sanctions the Drækonians had implemented.
"Fine,” Vorian agreed.
"Well, then, we need more Æether, and then we can manifest it to reality,” the doctor said, smiling.
He pulled up a star map of the galaxy. Not far from them a stellar nursery resided in bright blues, reds, and oranges. As the color concentrated, the intensity grew hotter and glowed as if they were looking at plasma.
“You should be able to hijack a load of Æether heading to Tectonica,” the doctor mused.
Vorian knew that was no longer feasible. That had been attempted once before, and the Drækonians had beefed up security along the trade route as a result.
Though he had no better option, he shook his head. “We can't. The trade route is doubly enforced now.”
“The source…” the doctor said, remembering something odd he’d come across earlier. He spoke to young Vorian as if to rile him up and get him to find a new solution. "The playback mentioned it. Why don't you get it from the source? The Starcadians.”
Vorian's eyes widened as he shook his head. No one messed with the Starcadians—not even Drækonians. As a matter of fact, the Drækonians had pleaded with the Starcadians for their access to Æether. That moment of original conflict between the races had changed the way the moons of their system would develop forever. But it sounded just crazy enough to pull off—that was, if the Starcadians didn't kill them first.
"It's time to end this war," Vorian said.
17
The tight quarters of the flight vessels known as Cryoships were quaint and very accommodating, despite being obsolete on the ships S.P.E.A.R. and Cryonauts used for their intergalactic travel. But the advantage was that this ship had Shadow World capability, making the frozen topside passable. All the ship’s navigation needed to do was calculate the seed source coordinates and hit go.
Because the Cryoship’s hull had felt small in the large bay under ROAS, it had been painted a bright yellow metallic color with purple lights highlighting its contours, and the result was that the ship looked like someone had let Fery decorate it. In addition to a color theme that was little more than an eyesore, the ship's engines were dated and would move even slower in the Shadow World subspace, forcing the crewmembers to go into cryosleep for the one month journey.
Looking out the frosted window of the cryopod, Hastings imagined what lay ahead—the dangers that awaited them. Despite preparing to go to such an unforgivable place, she was more concerned about the cryopod technology. Having experienced a near-drowning in her family's home near Calistoga Lake as a teen, she’d never liked the ice much. So, when the general had handed them this half-ass excuse of a ship to use, she’d been less than thrilled to find they would have to use cryosleep. It was thoughts like those that reminded her of her favorite mantra—worrying was the misuse of imagination.
She picked up a small diskette labeled "Cryosuit" and downloaded the building instructions so the suits could be voxelized. Not having enough time to engineer the proper cryosuits into the Voxel suit had been a shame. Voxels, despite their power, were still made of matter and could be affected by any fundamental force in the universe, but the proper suits would have to wait. At the moment, the team was busy going through the arduous process of getting dressed to protect their fragile human skin from any potential excessive freezing.
Hastings slipped into the suit, almost having forgotten what it felt like to put on pants one leg at a time. For almost two years, she’d been synced with her Voxel suit, and since she could just change the material to a preset, there hadn’t been any need to take it off.
She pulled the suit up and slipped into the arms, noticing that the back was still open. A zipper? Why does anyone design zippers on the back where they can’t be reached? she thought. Though it was a small detail, it was actually one more thing that made Hastings feel better about what they were doing. The technology they were developing was going to make many aspects of human life better—as long as they didn't get annihilated first. She pulled the zipper as far she could but realized she needed to look for another way.
A short rapping sound came from the other side of the door, and she looked out the small porthole to see Nathan already suited up. She could make out his fit physique under the skin-tight suit.
"Hastings, are you ready?" Nathan asked, thumbing back toward the cryobay of the ship. "We need all crew on deck to start the cryoprocedures."
Hastings opened the door, giving a wry smile. "Would you mind helping me with something?"
Nathan paused for a moment, looking around like he was going to steal something. Hastings knew what he probably thought and rolled her eyes in response.
"My suit. I need help with my suit," Hastings said.
"I... I want this, too, Hastings, but Tang..."
"No, you idiot," she said and turned around, showing her back. "I need help with the zipper."
Nathan smiled, shaking his head as he closed the zipper. "I thought maybe you’d come to your senses."
"Don't," Hastings said, turning around and trying not to smile. "We have a long sleep ahead of us, and the last thing I want is the idea of you stuck in my head."
"Yeah, one month in heaven is a long time."
This time, Hastings couldn’t hide her smile.
The sleeping chamber of the Cryoship resided in the belly of the vessel but was still above the cargo hold, protecting whatever precious resources it had on board in the center. Seven pods extended out in open rooms from the center console like a heptagram star.
Hastings entered the room with Nathan close behind, ducking the exposed wires and pipes that hung from overhead, and she wondered yet again if this was the best they could have done. The ship had definitely seen its heyday, but she knew it was their only recourse. There was no chance that the generals would have risked any more for her division.
Switch showed the group standing before him the schematics of a star system that looked similar to Earth’s. Within that system, the screen highlighted a large gas giant. It was yellow, with thin green and purple striations slowly rippling on its surface. Seven moons surrounded it, locked in geosynchronous orbit by what looked like some kind of ravenous vine system.
"I did some research, cross-referencing the gift with the Syndicate logs. Seems this is an old star system called Kiatu. It has a large gas giant not too different from our very own Jupiter,” Switch said, swiping around the planet. "Entangled around it are seven moons, permanently affixed to certain locations."