by Darold Higa
Distant Children
BOOK 1: INVASION
Darold Higa
Book Title Copyright © 2018 by Darold Higa. All Rights Reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Cover designed by Lthika
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Darold Higa
www.projektmuse.com
First Edition: January 2018
This book is dedicated to my parents, for giving me the freedom to explore things, even those things that don’t actually exist.
Cover illustration by Lthika
Thanks to Matthew Foote. Special thanks to Christopher Scott Rider, for being editor and cheerleader.
Prologue
4561 January 08
Narthian Unified Forces Central Military Committee Grand Hall
Earth
Narthian Empire
Colonel Tsai was overwhelmed by the mix of pungent smells. The sweet smell of flowers blended with the smell of decay and countless other scents he could not hope to identify. He felt the thick humidity hanging in the air cling to his skin. As he walked through the tangled maze of plants his senses were overwhelmed by colors, sounds and smells he had never experienced. He had never been a religious person, but now here he was, before Mother Earth herself. All his previous concerns about the war he was about to trigger were lost in a torrent of alien sensations. No emotion or thought, just pure sensual pleasure. He had tasted the air of a hundred worlds, but none of them had the thickness, the feeling of being alive, like here on Earth. Mother Earth, Terra, Gaia; none of the names were satisfactory in describing the moment. He had become familiar with holographic projections and virtual reconstructions of Earth, but nothing, absolutely nothing came close to her reality. He purposely lost himself in the jungle, his logical, intellectual side left behind. All that was left was a primal, animal sensation, the desire to run deep into the forest, to escape from the binds of politics, intrigue and rationality. It was in that moment he truly felt the ancient, primordial power of this place, for Earth was the home to all life in the universe--and Humanity had returned home at last.
A gentle beep from his communicator startled him out of his reverie. Not attempting to hide his disappointment, he answered. Immediately the officer on the phone screen recognized his disdain and sympathy crossed her face. Tsai raised an eyebrow in surprise. She was a Colonel as well. In his world, colonels rarely acted as messengers. “I’m very sorry to interrupt, but the Central Military Committee would like you to return to give your briefing. Empress Lai will also be in attendance. Under any other circumstance I would not have used the priority band. Please accept my deepest apologies for interrupting your reunion with Earth.”
Colonel Tsai nodded. “Thank you, and the apology is accepted. If the Empress will be present at the briefing, then by all means, use of the priority channel was the proper thing to do.” The woman showed obvious relief as the communicator screen went blank. Colonel Tsai, with a final, wistful look at the forest, headed back to the compound. It was obvious his political capital had gone up quite a few notches for the Colonel to be so concerned with interrupting his quiet moment. His spiritual thoughts forgotten, he mentally rehearsed his presentation. He always knew that there were parts of his research that could be considered treasonous, so to be summoned to Earth to stand before the General Staff was quite unexpected. The additional presence of the Empress was even more surprising. In fact, to be on Earth at all was quite a surprise. For a thousand years humanity kept its promise to let Earth return to a natural state. The “Reunion” held such tremendous religious importance that clerics from the Federal Union, Spincora and the Margins were invited to attend. The occasion also served as the Empress’ coronation. Only a few of those in attendance were permitted to contaminate Earth’s holy soil. Since that ceremony, very few humans had been allowed back, and the new Narthian Imperial Administrative Center hadn’t even been officially opened. The Earthbound Lottery had a long waitlist, so for most Narthians, even of his rank, the prospect of standing upon the Earth was quite extraordinary.
“Presenting Colonel Benjamin Tsai, 7th Strategic Planning Services Division.” Colonel Tsai stepped into the vast chamber. Taken aback, he let out an audible gasp as the enormity of the place became evident: it was as if he had entered a giant clearing in a vast forest. The scale was difficult to judge. The trees soared into the sky, gently curving towards the center of the chamber. The sun peered into the room through a large opening at the top of the domed roof, casting a beam of light onto a sunken central reflective pond. In front of the pond arranged in concentric circles were seats made of stone, all facing a raised stage. Several attendants escorted him along the path towards the sunken pond, past the hundreds of seated admirals and generals, towards the stage. At the front ring of seats he paused to bow to the Empress. His superior, General Mohammad Ho, gestured towards him and motioned him to come up to the podium. All the neurocontroller drugs that he had taken in preparation for this moment still couldn’t prevent his stomach from being twisted into knots.
“Yes, Dr. Tsai is our foremost expert in long-range sociopolitical cognitive simulations. His breakthroughs in massive parallel cognition theory are at the heart of the Humantide Project.” General Ho paused for a moment, taking a more serious tone. “Despite the grim forecasts, this model also provides us with a means to formulate a manageable plan to forestall this crisis. Because of the complexity of the model, I felt it would be best for Dr. Tsai to present his results in person.”
Taking his cue, Benjamin cleared his throat and began. “For centuries, accurate long-range economic and political forecasting has proven to be beyond interactive dimensional modeling. The major problem, known as the Feedback Paradox, was that models could not accurately take into account their own effect on political outcome. Divergence in modeling outcome would in a matter of weeks completely destabilize parameter stability. As a result, work on long-range sociopolitical modeling was all but abandoned.” Glancing up from his notes he noted that he had already lost the attention of half of the generals. To his surprise, the Empress, however, was staring at him, nodding with interest. Unnerved, he fought his stomach and plowed on.
“In attempting to answer a completely unrelated problem, I revisited texts from before the Great Separation. The solution came by discarding conventional multidimensional math in favor of an ancient and obscure branch of adaptive emergence chaos theory. That approach was abandoned sometime in the 21st century, due to the inability of computational machines at the time to support autoevolutionary algorithms. Combined with modern multidimensional string computers, many of the problems created by the Feedback Paradox disappeared. Once we realized that this was possible we created long-range sociopolitical forecasts using this new modeling technology. To date we have been able to produce economic models that have, so far, created predictions that are at least 99% accurate for a period of roughly 100 years.”
The air in the room suddenly changed as everyone began to pay attention. “The results of our forecasts suggest that for the past 20 years Narthia has been in decline relative to the Federal Union and Spincora, despite appearances to the contrary. In roughly 20 years the Federal Union will equal Narthia in power, with Spin
cora following close behind. In 100 years Narthia will cease to exist as a major power, and will continue in name only.”
The room erupted. Generals all around him began shouting questions and comments. Even the typically silent virtual attendee projections were agitated. By now Benjamin was used to the response, and simply paused. Ever since his dissertation committee tore apart his first dissertation draft he had faced this opposition to his ideas. Expecting an angry stare, he turned toward the Empress. To his shock, she was nodding in agreement, in contrast to the chaos about her, her beautiful features and typically gentle expressions transformed by a stern look of determination.
Attempting to regain control of the situation, General Ho stood up and began shouting down the crowd to no avail. Abruptly the Empress stood up. A hush fell across the room, and the stunned General sat down. The young Empress gestured to Benjamin to continue. “Please, Dr. Tsai. Continue.”
Admiral Hsin, a member of the Military Central Committee, spoke directly to the Empress. “Please forgive this intolerable insult on the divine authority of the...” his words were cut off by the Empress. “Admiral Hsin, I am unsure if you have read the collective works of Dr. Tsai, but I have, and I wish to hear him continue. I have taken no offense to what he has said. He is here at my request so I ask you to treat him as my guest here.”
The now red-faced Admiral bowed meekly and sat down. Stunned, Benjamin attempted to regain his composure. He had never seen the Empress speak so many words at once. The fact that the Empress of a Thousand Worlds had decided to speak on his behalf was unthinkable. On top of that, if the Empress really had read most of his research, she would know the radical economic and political restructuring that his work suggested. Taking his research to its logical conclusion would lead to the dismantling of the Narthian Imperial System. Confused, he pressed on with his presentation.
“The only logical solution to this eventual loss of power is to make a bid to unify all of Earth’s distant children in a single swift military action.“ Benjamin glanced up from his notes quickly, he could see the anger transform into something different. If this crowd understood one thing, it would be war. “Because war is so complex and it involves the individual actions of hundreds of billions of people under atypical situations, exact predictions beyond the opening phases of the war are not possible. We cannot predict the outcome of a Narthian invasion of the Federal Union. However, it is clear that if Narthia does not strike now, Narthia's power will decline significantly, and the remaining political powers will move towards the partitioning of the Empire. Earth will no longer remain at the center of power in Humanspace, and from what the Humantide Program tells us, human society will permanently fragment into distinct cultures, precluding the possibility of unification for several millennia. If we are to remain true to the principles of unification, there must be war.”
His hands still shaking, Colonel Tsai closed the door to his room. It was obvious that the neurocontroller drugs had worn off and all the fear he had kept at bay was washing over him. As he sat down he could hardly contain himself. He momentarily contemplated a drink, but his body refused to move. Instead, he looked at the mirror on the wall. His face was pale, and sweat was beading on his forehead. Despite the sophisticated atmospheric controls, he felt incredibly cold. After delivering his speech, he knew that he ran the serious risk of simply disappearing. In this enlightened age he knew things like that rarely happened in the Empire, but some parts of his presentation would earn him quick enemies. Before giving his presentation he had mentally prepared himself for the possibility that he would be hauled away before being able to complete his speech. Perhaps, he had mused, an angry admiral might even take his life then and there, for making such statements in front of the Empress of a Thousand Worlds. Ironically, if it were not for the shocking intervention by the Empress herself, he was doubtful that the Old Guard in the Supreme Military Council would let him finish his presentation.
The fact that what he had said had been a surprise to so many clearly indicated that General Ho was a master of secrecy. Still, he only had the courage to continue because of his firm conviction in what the Project Humantide simulation results had indicated. While it was clear that Narthia was the preeminent military, political, economic and cultural power in Humanspace at the moment, Luna was already well into decline. Once the feedback paradox problem had been solved, it had been simple to verify the accuracy of the model. He took nearly a thousand years of data meticulously collected by the Pre-Collapse government and fed it into the simulation. He could run the data backwards and forwards. He even scoured Pre-Collapse archives to recreate data for Earth prior to the Great Separation. In all cases the model produced results with an amazing 99% accuracy. Even taking into account the chaotic and turbulent nature of socio-eco-political systems, the results were quite definitive. If Narthia did not act soon, its power would irrevocably erode, falling victim to the rising influence of Spincora and Renspa. The very cultural fabric of humanity would fragment, crumbling into a million sub-cultures. In a few thousand years, Earth, the birthplace of life in the universe, the mother of all life, would become a forgotten footnote. He knew he would not let that happen. He looked down at his hands. He fought hard to bring them under control. How badly will they shake when I have the blood of billions on my hands?, he thought to himself. The Humantide Program had shown that things had already been set in motion, long before he gave this speech. His own personal fate was impossible to predict. What he could predict was that war would happen. The Humantide Program was 99% sure that war would happen. That fact gave him a boost of confidence. He stood up and poured himself a drink. His hands had stopped shaking.
Chapter 1
Before the Storm
4563 July 03
Royal Spincoran Navy, 93rd Fleet (Provisional), HMS Relentless, Fleet Combat Information Center
Deep Space near Newport
Renspa Federal Republic
Acting Commodore Alicia Linodan was surveying the situation that confronted her, carefully studying the glowing icons suspended in the large data tank. The bridge of her flagship, the Relentless, was brisk with activity as the fleet command staff managed the vast quantity of information that streamed in from the eight-hundred ships of the assault task force. So far, her plan was working. By using her superior mobility and the sensor disruption caused by a large stellar flare, she had managed to evade two Federal Space Patrol fleets. Now the Renspa Federal Space Patrol's 7th Fleet lay in front of her, totally unaware. It was a risky maneuver that came with a price: she had left most of her own fleet behind. Even so, the gamble had paid off. The Renspa 7th Fleet was doing a deep space resupply and refit from a prior encounter with the Sokolov fleet. Not expecting such a daring raid so deep into Renspa space, Admiral Huffington had rushed his logistics support craft to dock with his heavy carriers, leaving only a thin picket line in defense. So far Linodan's fleet remained undetected, but if she got any closer she knew that deep space scanners would detect them. The relatively small number of ships she had with her was the only reason that they hadn't been discovered already.
I guess he is anxious to get his carriers back into the fight, Alicia mused. With Huffington's heavy carriers moored to his logistics ships, she estimated that she had perhaps 20 to 30 minutes to inflict as much damage as possible. After that, the heavy carriers would be able to launch their squadrons of FA-23 fighters. This fact gave her a moment of pause: by leaving so much of her fleet behind, she was left with limited options. The only firepower she currently had available was in her fast attack carriers and missile ships. Most of her heavily-armed ships were too slow for this operation. Of course that meant that her current situation required a certain degree of finesse, in that if she tipped her hand too soon her own Hurricane Mk 1A fighters would be wiped out. While discretion was key, her window of opportunity was also limited--she could not afford to wait around for much longer. The two fleets that were in pursuit would eventually figure out what she had done, a
nd if they arrived too quickly all hope of escape would quickly disappear. That left one option. It wasn't in any of the standard tactical manuals, but, she thought to herself, if she had gone by the book, she wouldn't have this golden opportunity to destroy so many heavy carriers either. She glanced over at Largo Bronsi, her Executive Officer. He could see clearly what she was planning. He smiled back and nodded, chuckling to himself. His tendency to treat everything as a game was particularly annoying given the gravity of the situation. Somewhat annoyed, she barked out a string of orders that set her plan in motion. One by one the squadron commanders acknowledged their orders and their command icons turned green. With her plans set, all she could do was sit back and watch the data tank as the battle unfolded.
"Admiral, the 2nd and 3rd fleets both report that they have lost contact with the Linodan fleet." Admiral Huffington, who was staring into his own data tank on board the battleship New Angeles, scowled. "Are you telling me that the Little Princess gave them the slip?" He thought for a moment. "Order Carrier Groups 2 and 3 to immediately disengage from resupply and launch combat patrols. I don't want to take any chan..."
"Admiral, detecting bubblespace distortion at bearing 4,700 by 3,740 mills, distance 23,000km!"
"Launch those fighters now!" yelled Huffington.
"Fleet signatures detected, 800 bubblespace distortions detected. Sir, they're launching missiles! The tactical AI has revised calculations. New estimates indicate a fleet size approaching 3,000 ships! 60 additional squadrons of Hurricanes have just launched!"