by M. D. Cooper
The man took advantage of her confusion to drive the blade into her chest where it slipped right through her shimmersuit and flow-armor. As it buried up to the hilt, her HUD showed that the blade was only a few nanometers thick, and was vibrating at a frequency that seemed to defeat her armor’s active defenses.
Pain radiated through her chest as it bisected her heart, but she suppressed the agony and backhanded the man before falling to a knee and fighting off waves of dizziness.
“Why is it that whenever I meet with the Transcend I end up with a knife through my heart?” she said with her head lowered, waiting for her auxiliary heart to restore her blood pressure.
She felt someone at her side, clamping a tourniquet around her arm.
“General, the president,” Usef said quietly, and Tanis raised her head to see the President of the Transcend Interstellar Alliance dead. The top of his head was gone, and a stunned Sera stood behind him, supporting the dead weight of his body for an instant before she let it drop.
She looked first at the man who had attacked her, but he lay unconscious on the deck, then her eyes flicked to Elena who stood with her arm extended clutching her flechette pistol.
On either side of her, a Marines stood with pulse rifle leveled, awaiting orders.
“Lower it,” Tanis ordered Elena as Sera cried out, “Elly! What did you do?”
Elena dropped the flechette pistol and Tanis nodded for the Marines to secure her. “I did it for you, Sera,” she pleaded. “So you wouldn’t have to kill your own father.”
“Blade,” Usef said and gestured to Tanis’s chest.
She looked down at the knife buried hilt-deep in her chest, and carefully pulled it back out before walking to Sera. “I’m sorry, Sera. I’m sorry about what I said before, I’m sorry that I didn’t get here sooner…I’m just sorry.”
“I…” Sera stammered before suddenly realizing why her face was so wet and began frantically wiping it with her hospital gown. Greer took off his jacket and handed it to Tanis, who passed it to Sera.
While she cleaned herself up, Tanis turned back to Admiral Greer. “You need to tell your fleet to stand down.”
Greer nodded and gestured to the console. “Your AI has locked me out. I’ll need access.”
“You have it, but you’ll have to do it manually. No Link.” Angela replied over the bridge’s audible address system.
Greer sat heavily and keyed in the commands for an all-fleet address. “All ships, this is Admiral Greer. The situation is under control. Take no action, I repeat, take no action against the ISF ships. Updates will follow.”
“And to the soldiers and sailors on this ship,” Tanis added.
Greer sent a ship-wide message for all forces to stand down and looked up at Tanis. “What now?”
Tanis let out a long breath.
Tanis glanced at Elena, who was embracing Sera, and pulled up the bridge’s visual logs once Angela Linked her with the command systems. She overheard Sera say something about this was just more proof of how Orion was evil and had to be stopped.
“Sera! Look out!” Tanis called out a second too late.
Elena held the blade Tanis had let fall to the ground. She slashed at Sera’s neck but Sera managed to leap back in time to avoid the attack. Elena charged, aiming the blade at Sera’s left eye and Sera blocked the blow, but not before they collided and fell to the deck in a heap.
By then, Tanis and the Marines reached them and pulled Elena off, Sera had several deep wounds on her torso, but Tanis couldn’t see the blade anywhere.
“My back…” Sera whispered.
Tanis gently rolled her over and saw the knife jutting from Sera’s spine.
“Don’t move,” she replied as she eased Sera onto her side. “We’re going need medics to get that out.”
“I’m sorry, Sar,” Elena said, her face a strange combination of sorrow, rage, and guilt.
“Why…how long?” Sera gasped through tears. Tanis briefly wondered if they were from pain or betrayal.
“Long enough,” Elena replied, her voice rough and filled with grief. “I loved you, Sar, I really did. I hoped I could convince you that Orion is the right side, but when you went back to Airtha…I could see how you were going to become just like your father. We could have saved the galaxy, but Garza was right, you’re going to destroy it—with or without your father.”
Sera’s face reddened and she opened her mouth to speak, but stopped and looked at the deck. “I can’t look at her. Can you put her in the corridor?”
Tanis gestured to the Marines, who marched Elena out of the bridge.
“So, who’s in charge of the Transcend now?” Tanis asked.
“We’ve never had a transfer of power. Her father has been running the show ever since he united the FGT worldships,” Greer said before looking down at Sera. “You have to take control, and quickly. We can’t have a power vacuum. Especially one that your sister will be all too happy to fill.”
Sera coughed up blood as a pair of medics rushed onto the bridge and settled down beside her, scanning her injuries to determine the exact location of the embedded blade.
“Andrea?” Tanis asked aloud. “I thought that she was on a penal colony.”
Sera shook her head. “No, my father had her released early. She’s not allowed back at Airtha for another century, but that won’t stop her once she hears that he’s dead.”
Tanis leaned against a console and looked at the holodisplay of the twenty thousand ships surrounding Roma. It was a tiny fraction of the ships they would need to fend off the Orion Guard. The Transcend must be united to face the threat ahead of them.
Angela reported and Tanis nodded for her to put it on the bridge’s main holotank.
Joe’s image shimmered into view and he smiled with relief at the sight of Tanis. “Angela reported that you were OK, but boy it’s good to see you in person—holy shit! You’re missing an arm! I guess things got intense.”
Tanis nodded. “That’s one word for it. Tomlinson is dead, and Elena was a Guard double agent.”
“Well, that’s just the start of it. Our perimeter scanning net picked up a massive fleet out past the heliopause, well over twenty thousand ships. It’s not Transcend—it took out four of their ships already,” Joe reported. “Our analysis puts it at eleven days from our location.”
“Greer, we’re going to have to mend our fences before then,” Tanis said to the admiral. “You have a jump-gate here—can you send for re-enforcements?”
“Yes,” Greer nodded. “I can maybe get five thousand ships here by then. Things are hot all along the front right now, but with your fleet of stealth ships, I think you may not even need more firepower.”
Tanis exchanged a look with Joe. “About those ships. Less than half are ready for combat, and of the ones that are, they’re running skeleton crews.”
Greer shook his head and exchanged a look with the Galadrial’s captain. “I told you she was wily, Viska.”
“New contact,” Joe reported. “Something just jumped insystem. Same arrival point as Elena used…. It’s Sabrina!”
Sera looked up, hope in her eyes. “Really? Do they have Finaeus?”
“No signal from them yet,” Joe replied. “Wait, what are you
doing?”
“We’re not doing anything!” Tanis replied, but the holodisplay of the TSF fleet positions showed otherwise. Every ship other than the Galadrial was breaking formation and boosting for Sabrina’s position.
She was cut off by a holo image appearing beside Joe on the main tank. It was a woman that Tanis recognized, though she looked subtly different than in the past.
“Helen?” Sera asked. “What are you…I thought you were dead!”
“I’m sorry, Sera,” the woman replied. “Helen is dead. I am Myriad, a shard of Airtha just as Helen was. I cannot let what Sabrina carries reach you. That ship and its passengers must be destroyed.”
The woman disappeared and Sera cried out in anguish from her position on the deck while the medics worked on her back. Her eyes cast about the bridge until they locked onto Tanis. “Why…why would she do that? My crew, Jessica—they’re on that ship!”
“Then we’re going to have to get there first,” Tanis replied and turned to Joe. “Get there and get Sabrina aboard the I2 before she’s destroyed.”
Tanis clenched her teeth.
THANK YOU
If you’ve enjoyed reading New Canaan, a review on Amazon.com and/or goodreads.com would be greatly appreciated.
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M. D. Cooper
WHAT’S NEXT?
The battle for New Canaan is just getting underway, and the war for humanity’s future in the Orion Arm of the galaxy will soon follow.
Book 3 of the Orion War, Orion Rising is available for pre-order now, and will be released on June 22nd, 2017.
Also, keep an eye out for another anthology of short stories, which will add to the events of New Canaan, and fill in the broader picture of what is happening in the Orion Arm.
Books by M. D. Cooper
Aeon 14
The Intrepid Saga
Book 1: Outsystem
Book 2: A Path in the Darkness
Book 3: Building Victoria
The Intrepid Saga Omnibus – Also contains Destiny Lost, book 1 of the Orion War series
Destiny Rising – Special Author’s Extended Edition comprised of both Outsystem and A Path in the Darkness with over 100 pages of new content.
The Orion War
Book 1: Destiny Lost
Tales of the Orion War: Set the Galaxy on Fire
Book 2: New Canaan
Book 3: Orion Rising (coming June 22nd, 2017)
Book 4: Starfire (coming August 2017)
Book 5: Return to Sol (coming October 2017)
Perilous Alliance
Book 1: Close Proximity (coming June 4th, 2017)
Aeon 14 Stories in Anthologies
Pew! Pew! Vol 1: Delta Team (An anthology of humorous space opera tales coming June 1st, 2017)
Touching the Stars
Book 1: The Girl Who Touched the Stars
APPENDICES
Be sure to check http://www.aeon14.com for the latest information on the Aeon 14 universe.
TERMS & TECHNOLOGY
AI (SAI, NSAI) – Is a term for Artificial Intelligence. AI are often also referred to as non-organic intelligence. They are broken up into two sub-groups: Sentient AI and Non-Sentient AI.
c – Represented as a lower-case c in italics, this symbol stands for the speed of light and means constant. The speed of light in a vacuum is constant at 670,616,629 miles per hour. Ships rate their speed as a decimal value of c with c being 1. Thus, a ship traveling at half the speed of light will be said to be traveling at 0.50 c.
Casimir effect – The Casimir effect is a small attractive force that acts between two close parallel uncharged conducting plates. It is due to quantum vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field.
CriEn – A CriEn module is a device which taps into the base energy of the universe, also known as zero-point, or vacuum energy. Unlike more common zero-point energy modules, which pull energy from artificial bubble dimensions, the CriEn module is capable of pulling energy from normal space-time, and can even do so while in the dark layer.
Cryostasis (cryogenics) – See also, ‘stasis’.
Older methods of slowing down organic aging and decay involve cryogenically freezing the organism (usually a human) through a variety of methods. The person would then be thawed through a careful process when they were awakened.
Cryostasis failures are rare, but far more frequent than true stasis failures. When true stasis was discovered, it became the de-facto method of halting organic decay over long periods.
Dark Layer – The Dark Layer is a special sub-layer of space where dark matter possesses physical form. The dark layer is also frictionless and reactionless. It is not fully understood, but it also seems to possess many of the attributes of a universal frame of reference.
Directions, Galactic Cardinal – While the galaxy is divided into specific directions, (some Sol-centric, and others centered upon the galactic core) most casual discussions use one of two methods of referring to galactic orientation.
The first is to use cardinal direction. The core of the galaxy has an agreed-upon north and south pole, and east and west. Cardinal galactic directions assume that the point being reference is at the surface of a sphere with the galactic core at its center.
Just like a location on the surface of a planet falls into a general cardinal location, so does a location on the imaginary galactic sphere. If you are travelling in interstellar space, then a line is drawn through in the direction of travel until it intersects with the sphere. That is the direction you are traveling.
Galactic cardinal directions are never used in actual navigation, and are only used for general reference.
Directions, Galactic Disk-Oriented – A common way to describe the location of a given star, nation, cluster, etc… is to describe it in relation to another known point. There are four directions used in this parlance. Each is related to the structure of the galaxy.
Coreward: This refers to any direction that is toward the core of the galaxy. It’s important to note that the galactic core and the term “core-stars” are not to be confused. “Core-stars” refers to the stars within 50 light years (or so) of Sol. The term coreward never reverse to the stars around Sol, but to the galactic core.
Spinward: The Milky Way galaxy spins. Viewed from the north (top) side of the galaxy, it spins clockwise. The vast majority of stars move in the direction of the galactic spin.
Anti-spinward: Like spinward, but moving in the opposite direction.
Rimward: Any direction toward the rim of the galaxy.
Note: Because these disk-oriented directions are two-dimensional, they are often combined with north/south galactic core directions. One could say that a destination is four light-years spinward, and three galactic north.
Directions, Stellar – Every star system defines its own cardinal locations, though most are oriented to the generally accepted galactic cardinal directions. In practice, these directions are used the same way as galactic cardinal directions.
Note: No actual stellar navigation is done using cardinal directions.
Deuterium – D2 (2H) is an isotope of hydrogen where the nucleus of the atom is made up of one proton and one neutron as opposed to a single proton in regular hydrogen (protium). Deuterium is naturally occurring and is found in the oceans of planets with water and is also created by fusion in stars and brown dwarf sub stars. D2 is a stable isotope that does not decay.
Edgeworth Kuiper Belt (EK Belt) – The EK belt is a circumstellar disk of dust, rocks, and small planetoids which extends from Neptune’s orbit to 50 AU from Sol (in humanity’s home system).
Many other star syst
ems possess belts similar to Sol’s EK Belt and the term fell into common usage to describe the first belt beyond the last major planet in a star system.
Electrostatic shields/fields – Not to be confused with a faraday cage, electrostatic shielding’s technical name is static electric stasis field. By running a conductive grid of electrons through the air and holding it in place with a stasis field, the shield can be tuned to hold back oxygen, but allow solid objects to pass through, or to block solid objects. These fields are used in objects such as ramscoops and energy conduits.
Modified versions also see use as ship’s shields where they are used to bleed off energy from beam weapons, or slow the impact of kinetic weapons.
EMF – Electro Magnetic Fields are given off by any device using electricity that is not heavily shielded. Sensitive scanners are able to determine the nature of operating equipment by its EMF signature. In warfare it is one of the primary ways to locate an enemy’s position.