Quantum

by K A Carter

  S’tiri had a profound coldness to killing. He always had it. Now, it was different. It served a different purpose. It was his own people he was slicing into. Something about the act tapered deeper into his thoughts, intertwined with an impulse to kill. He was an assassin now, before he was a soldier.

  “What now?” Garrek said, he stood at a thick terminal that took up part of the station hull. It was small and built for only one purpose to sit at. The space behind it was wide enough to fit four bodies comfortably with the necessities. Only focusing on the monitor of the traffic and defenses. The room caved in towards the cannon controls. It was automated from the look of it but a seat connected to the controls gave the impression of manual capabilities.

  S”tiri took to the seat and began running a diagnostic. The console requested a bio-scan in order to authorize any use of it. Nilus, with shear strength, held one of the fallen Irinan bodies up to the blinking scanner. It shuttered a laser like fog up and down until it began to blink in a violet color. Authorization confirmed. Nilus threw the body over towards the airlock door; he had collected the other two there.

  S’tiri took hold of the manual controls; a sphere like knob that rotated on an intricate joystick. The station was moving, and S’tiri was surely the cause of it. He didn’t bother to confirm what he was doing with either of the others, though he assumed while he was aiming down the nearly blinding sights, the mercs that accompanied him were gazing confused. Why wouldn’t they be confused? Although any job was as good as the next, to see a member of his own species launching amateur missions to attack his own people seemed unusual to say the least. Surely, they had seen terrorists and rebels before. None took to the enjoyment of it as much S’tiri did. That had to be the difference. S’tiri knew the money they would be provided with would keep their questions at bay.

  He had managed to center the cannon directives to the coordinates of the next defense station. A voice immediately rang on an open channel next to the controls. “Station thirty-six you are veering out of proper range. Are you experiencing malfunctions?”

  A torpedo to that location would cripple defenses enough to the point that a larger scale advancement would be overwhelming. With most of the forces still in battle, Mulaya would be taken over within a fortnight; given significant forces were thrown at the cause. From what S’tiri had seen back in Draul space, an armada masked by a rich nebula. Those were just the ships that weren’t stationed in war sectors. If a power such as the Iranans fell, the Terronda systems and the sectors it controlled would leave wide open gaps to many other civilizations. The Draul were likely the one driving force that, if ambitious enough – which they were – would manage to send the galaxy into a spur of chaos. Given that the edge of uncharted space rested on the far side of Moranthian space, and the next closest unreachable, all of the civilizations would be confined to a space that would only continue to feel smaller. And uncounted number of sectors. Enough that made up all known space. Approximately twenty percent of the galaxy by itself. The rest a solid mystery.

  The screen read a confirmation que that stalled, waiting for the finger press from S’tiri. He paused, a thin three fingered palm gawking over the control. He pressed the confirmation gently. Silence settled in right before a launch. A full torpedo arsenal. The end of Mulaya was just beginning.

  Chapter 21: Jericho

  It came quick. All of the memories resurfacing like water overflowing from a sink. Life back on Titan, trips to the Kuiper Belt in search for work. All of it. Bits and pieces of the past coursing throughout his brain in a sequenced manner. One in particular was more vivid than the others. One of his childhood. A woman holding his hand, leading him into a rusty building. He ripped away from her hand, scurrying to the edge of the connector bridge. It sat between two towers. He recalled the view. The most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. A front seat to an array of enigmatic colors dancing in the vanilla horizon. It wasn’t Earth, it wasn’t Mars. It was that which he’d always called home. Titan. Something about the horizon made the thought of home sweet. It wasn’t always sweet; slums are what held up the upper class of the outer planets. Those specifically, the rivals of the inner planets. Titan being one of them. The other economic hubs scattered. Ganymede back in the Jovian system and Oberon around Uranus.

  ∆∆∆

  A nudge was felt. It interrupted the pleasant memory. Another one came, this time with more conviction. Jericho’s eyes awoke slowly to where he had been hanging. He ached his head toward Anda as she nudged at him again with a fling of her boot. “Al” she said, her voice hoarse.

  Jericho smiled at her, only half of his face complied with the action.

  “Al” she said again. “Wake up.”

  Finally, his vision cleared. Anda swaying beside him, bruises and scars scattered her arms. Black splotches of soot where the torturer placed electric shock staffs.

  He grunted through a long breath he took. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  He gazed at her, Glancing down at her dangling legs. It was difficult to look at. Zael was nowhere in sight but was surely due to be back. Jericho could feel the darts of pain that riddled parts of his body. There was no knowledge of what happened prior or what preluded the torture, and how many times before that had consisted of it.

  It had to be the navigation charts that Gideon and Freya had mentioned. There was nothing special about them, so it seemed. The Icarus was more than just a ship. It was essentially a gateway to the other side of the galaxy. There had to be a reason for it. A reason why Joris died behind it. Something important was hidden within the charts. Jericho was sure of it. If he could ever get out of the shackles, he’d dedicate his life to figuring it out. It was without a doubt bigger than him, or the measly salvaging the crew had done in the past. Something he’d be willing to risk his life for. A purpose bigger than getting back to familiar ground only to continue on a path of petty illegal activity. He was risking his life though. Hanging up shackled made that abundantly clear.

  A thud preluded the large doors on the far end of the room opening. It was Zael, clenching something small in his slimy palms. A small rod, glistened with a reflective material as Zael displayed it in his hand beneath the only lights in the room. In some way praising its shape and contents. Jericho could only peer down to it, straining his eyes as he did so.

  “This is the key,” he said. Zael deposited the small trinket into a disguisable compartment of a wall panel and slid slithery fingers beside it. A display threw itself in between Jericho and the foreign enemy. It was the map that the crew had seen earlier back on the ship, only it was different in a way. Larger. The points on it were outlined and bright. It could’ve been anything. Likely, that of which he was following all along.

  “What do you intend to do?” Jericho said, he managed to force the grunt through the pain.

  Zael edged closer, his silhouette slicing through the holographic image. “Finish what was started so many years ago.”

  ∆∆∆

  The moments of silent dangling in between the periods of visits from Zael were worse than the actual torture. Bruises subsided enough that it didn’t hurt to speak. He wanted to see how Anda was doing. She didn’t look well, not by the blood red bags under her eyes or lack of movement from below her neck.

  “Alfred,” a voice spoke.

  Jericho looked over to confirm if Anda had awaken and was speaking to him, only she wasn’t.

  “Alfred are you awake?” the voice said. This time clearer than before.

  “Araime!” he shouted through his thoughts. “Took you long enough.”

  She was silent for a second. “We are going to break out you out. I managed to get to Scud.”

  “How?”

  “Through Zael’s weakness. He has blindspots”

  “How’s the crew?”

  “Fine, given the circumstances. Their morale is lower than I’d hope.” Araime’s voice softened with her following words. “Many are certain that we won’t escape.”

&
nbsp; “How do you know?” Jericho responded.

  “They believe you to be dead.”

  It wasn’t anything Jericho was surprised to hear.

  “Well why don’t you get Scud to tell them? It’ll make it that much easier to rescue us.”

  “That would be unwise, Scud and I intend to come for you.” She meant it to be humorous, though it didn’t at all come across as playful. “The others must focus on getting the ship back.”

  The eerie chamber the two of them hung in was unclean, not at all like the halls and hangar bay that Jericho had been drug through prior. A tactic likely used to persuade captives to give up information willingly long before torture began. Jericho hadn’t read into it soon enough.

  Zael used some sort of technique that left Jericho’s head throbbing. It felt as though he himself were in his head almost. He had feared that digging around enough would give him the information that Araime planned to rescue him. Not that he himself had anyway to stop him from finding it out. It only took a few minutes of the pain before Jericho thought it better to let him have what he was looking for. Before he found out more that he didn’t need to know.

  “It’s to guide us back home,” Jericho said.

  The pain stopped almost immediately. “Where is home?” Zael said angrily.

  “The other side of the galaxy,” Jericho responded breathily.

  All of the strife that the crew and Jericho had gone through up to this point had to be for a particular cause. Jericho intended on fulfilling that cause. It rested on the efforts Araime and Scud. That was the first obstacle that had to be dealt with.

  Anda awoke, coughing and panting as though air was in short supply. She instinctively struggled with the cuffs above her head, as if it were a plausible attempt at breaking them. Jericho’s wrists had swollen thick in between the constraints to the point where they fit snug. The bruising still throbbed but it hurt less without the room to move them.

  “Hey,” Jericho said. “You okay?”

  Bloodshot eyes glanced back at him. She nodded but it could barely show through the lack of room to move her neck. “Yeah,” she said finally. Speaking gave way to the hoarse undertone that had settled in her throat.

  There was certainty in the notion that she was hiding pain, although she looked as distraught as he was.

  “Scud and Araime are working on our escape,” Jericho continued. “We’ll be out of this soon.”

  She hadn’t responded, but she was coherent enough that she had to have heard him. The last of the waterfall from her eyes had dripped a vein of dried tears. She was tough. It couldn’t have been crying; probably a side effect of physical and mental exhaustion settling in. Jericho had barely managed through the pain Zael had inflicted. He could only imagine what had happened to Anda before he got there. It was worse to know they had probed her for information she surely didn’t have.

  ∆∆∆

  A dream had come, unlike the one before. Much more vivid and of a much more recent in time. It was of the first crew to board the Gilroy; back when it was still tidy. Anda was there, standing in the middle of the then less rusted bridge. She would say she hated him back then, he was ornery to say the least. A product of the past he had so carefully chosen to forget. That was before the two of them had fallen in love.

  Scud was there as well. A much less burly man than he became to be and younger in the face. He had dragged a couple others along with him. Mellor and Gideon. The dream felt as real as if he were reliving the past or watching it from an integrated immersion theatre.

  It was the first time he had others aboard the ship. He had spent the last of his units on it at a ship dealer in Duha City back on Titan. He didn’t miss those days. The days before the Gilroy. Each was filled with measly street pedaling and thievery in ways that made him sick in the stomach to think about. He once thought of himself as a righteous man. Slowly through the years he became less sure about it. Salvaging was about the only thing he put a lot of thought into. And he liked the quiet of space. The quiet of the void. Titan was all too noisy and it only ever thrived on the lingering news that was the inner planets delegating its power and pushing further into the brink. Everyday there was something new happening. Now, hanging in place, there was something that rivaled it all.

  A thick thud woke Jericho from the profound dream state he had been in. It continued, growing in loudness and frequency. Slowly, the doors ahead of him began to inch open. There stood Scud, prying a part of the door with a bar. He used his strength to widen them further but could only get them to half length.

  Araime darted through them, scurrying the room. She rushed in search for panels that were in control of the constraints and the automatic door.

  “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming,” Jericho said, tiresomely.

  “We almost didn’t,” Scud scoffed, bulging through the half open doors and glaring back out them to keep watch.

  “Shhh, we don’t have time,” the soft spoken Araime said. She stopped next to the pillar-like construction that held Anda and Jericho in place. A panel was merged on the wall. She held her hand toward it, the display of the panel cycling through options and discoloring itself. Slowly, the clamps lowered and the constraints began to untighten.

  Jericho’s legs failed him initially, he hadn’t used them enough in the past however long it had been. He had tried to keep count every so often but by not it was a guess. That brought his count to approximately two days.

  Anda couldn’t move much of her body below her neck. She muscled chilling grunts as she moved.

  Araime wrapped Jericho’s arm around her neck as he tried to get up. “No, help Anda” he said. His legs buckled moving but he mustered enough strength to stand. “How did you guys escape?” he asked.

  Scud moved to the outer part of the doors. “Your little princess is quite the sorcerer,”

  “Huh?”

  “A talk better suited for when we leave this place,” Araime added.

  The narrow hall was remarkably bright and stretched the eyesight. Cylindrical light fixtures riddled the top of the halls glaring down. Each of them continuing to walk proved difficult, and it didn’t help that the lingering thought of being recaptured kept Jericho watching every corner.

  At the main door of the hangar bay, Araime leaned Anda onto Scud and motioned behind them. “Go ahead without me,” she said. She opened the doors with a wave of the hand near the panel. “The rest of the crew is waiting on the ship”

  Jericho stopped as Scud proceeded to the ship, Anda frail in his arms. “What are you doing?” he said.

  “I kept them at bay until we could get you, but they are on their way now.” She turned her back to him. “Just go, I’ll explain once the ship is away.”

  Jericho wanted to probe her for an explanation, but he of all people knew that time and place mattered. He nodded and made his way to the ship.

  It felt relieving to see the inside of the Icarus again. The crew back where they should be. Most of them. The cold blue hull looking feeling almost comforting. Everything was still a mess and much of the area around the main ramp was littered with the supplies they had just gotten from the Vennokians.

  Freya sat in the cockpit, powering up each terminal. The displays springing to life from the shadows of the forward display. “I have to say I was a bit surprised finding out a princess was using some mind tricks and intended to rescue us,” Freya said. “Hm. ‘specially when she wasn’t exactly announced and all.”

  “I was going to say something at some point,” Jericho said, waving his hand. “I was a little indisposed.

  “No need to be all tight at the waist,” she said with a scoff. “Had she not been here we’d probably be fucked anyway.”

  Jericho nodded. “How do you expect we get out of here with a hangar bay door staring us down.”

  As he said it, the hangar bay opened into a stream of warp trails, and the force field that kept them from ripping the Ixorian ship inside out. “Araime said she ha
d that covered too.”

  “Wow, I guess she does.”

  “Powering it up,” Freya continued.

  Jericho grabbed for her arm. “No! We don’t leave without Araime.”

  Chapter 22: Nario

  “We are at the forefront of an accomplishment mankind has never reached before. We must proceed very carefully.” Vice Chairman Odessa spoke at the Federal summit. Nario made an effort to pay attention. Many of the attendees were high ranking officials; Odessa included. He had idolized him all throughout his military career. The now vice chairman was a common voice amongst the Federation and directly spoke with Erusha on a daily basis. “The Federation has come farther than any of our four fathers could possibly have imagined. It is time that we set our sights on the unprecedented challenges that lie before us.”

  The summit hall was a wide, cylindrical room with vaulted ceilings. It was traditional by modern standards. Maybe even antiquated. Much of the room was a solid satin color. Contrary to any other meetings, this was the largest Nario had ever been to.

  A summit had been called in light of a transmission from their new allies. A Zurian science vessel destroyed by an unknown ship. A big ship. Nario remembered the initial report. It couldn’t have been half a standard day after the incident, when Thoram had filled up Nario’s personal terminal box with unread messages.

  Something in his gut told him that this was it. The big crunch he always remembered his CO talking about. Only that was decades ago. This, here and now, sounded like the last supper. Thoram had spoken about scouting ships that ventured to confirm the attack and whom too were struck by an all-powerful force.

  Odessa was the voice of reason. A reason Chancellor Erusha didn’t want to come to terms with. A war was the last thing the CPF needed. If he had it his way, Nario would scold all of them in the room for forcing allegiant agreements with other civilizations, knowing they weren’t prepared for war if it called for it. A few dozen ships here and there couldn’t hurt. A long drawn out war would undoubtedly deplete Federal resources. Innermost planets supplied most of the ammunition supply loads, and mechanized armor suits. Routes had formed in between Mercury to Earth and through to Mars. The bulk of precious metals stemming from cities on Mercury. Earth had sustained itself as the agricultural hub. Though water levels had risen exponentially, United Nations of Earth threw trillions of units into sustained climate technology and renewable energy. Those investments would subsequently become the building blocks for what made so many planets inhabitable. It only took four centuries. A period of time where it was drought stricken with a climate crisis was shortly before Nario’s great, great grandfather had been born. That was the precipice that terraforming emerged from as quickly as it did.