Remember the Starfighter

by Michael Kan

  She placed her hand over the captain’s back.

  “The shield,” she said. “It won’t last. It can be broken. I know it.”

  Arendi bit her lip after saying the words, like she had accidentally slipped into a mistake. Even she had her doubts, although Arendi wanted it to be true, knowing how much it meant. In a wayward glance, she spied at the Endervar particle in the bridge.

  I will make it true, she thought.

  Julian lifted his head up, and gave a deep breath. It was then accompanied by a smile, as he straightened out his jacket.

  “How does it feel,” he asked. “To be back?”

  The captain asked the question, expecting a positive response. Perhaps he had remembered. The time when they had initially met. Arendi thought of that moment, and her cold insistence to return to Earth. Things had been different, when she had found herself plunged into a world she did not understand.

  She had been desperate, wanting to return to her creator as soon as possible. But it was not out of any nostalgia.

  Arendi was about to speak and answer his question, when he cleared his throat.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pry or anything. You’ve just been so quiet. I thought maybe you would be more... eager.”

  “No. I am,” she replied. But she wasn’t. It was a lie.

  “You should try to sleep Julian,” she said, changing the subject. “You will need it.”

  He squinted, shaking his head slowly.

  “It’s okay. I would probably just have some nightmare anyway.”

  “Nightmare?”

  Julian gave a long sigh. He scratched the back of his head, when finally the ship’s alarm went off. It was the sound they had been waiting for.

  He hurried over to the main controls.

  “Is it leaving?” Arendi asked.

  They both looked at the view screen, and saw that the single Endervar vessel orbiting Earth was indeed making a departure. Its new course: to Jupiter, where three other enemy craft were present.

  “As you predicted, the ship will join the others and warp out of the system,” she said.

  “To invade other worlds,” Julian added. “But it gives us we want. That’s our opening. Time to exploit it.”

  Julian estimated that they had at least 52 hours before the shield would begin spawning another Endervar ship. He reached in his pocket, and took the device out, placing the tile of alloyed-fiber over his left temple.

  “I’m alerting Alysdeon now,” he said, activating the implant with a two-fingered tap. The link to the bio-ship was established, his mind directly synced with the vessel’s telepathic mind. He cocked his head, ready to pilot.

  “We’ll do this as rehearsed,” Julian said. “Au-O’sanah. Let’s go.”

  ***

  The specialist joined them on the bridge to find the Endervar shield 100 kilometers away and closing.

  Outside of scientific research, there had never been any other reason to approach the enemy barrier so closely. Only until now.

  “Are we ready?” Julian asked, reading the holographic displays on the main console.

  Alysdeon, who stood by in her black jacket, firmly nodded.

  she said, speaking out loud through her implants.

  He then looked across at Arendi, and saw her lithe body at the console station. A day ago, she had changed her clothing for what the specialist had deemed would be a formal mission. Her new dress came in the form of a standard Terran Hegemony uniform, the tunic white and black, with a silver band at the waist.

  the specialist had told her hours ago.

  Arendi remembered the words and was ready to proceed.

  “I’ve finalized the coordinates,” she said. “Sending to you now.”

  It was dead ahead, the direction leading downward and hopefully past the Endervar shield. On the other end, was what would be the actual source of the shield, the area supposedly flooded with volatile energy, the approach just as dangerous, if not more.

  “It will be like entering into the Sun,” Arendi explained. “But with the Endervar particle, we should be able to safely make it though.”

  “Then there’s only one way to find out,” Julian said. “Au-O’sanah, prepare a descent.”

  The vessel charged its secondary engines, and put itself on the outlined path, the distance to the shield gradually closing. Julian began feeling the rumble, the spatial interference from the enemy’s barrier hitting the ship.

  “Activating,” Arendi said, inputting the sequence in the console. The Endervar particle went off, flashing in a burst of darkness.

  “50 kilometers,” Julian said. “Now 40. Is it working?”

  The shaking of the ship had yet to stop — the proximity to the Endervar shield had sent tremors throughout the hull.

  “Closer,” Arendi said. “We need to move closer.”

  She looked determined as ever, raising her hand to touch the holographic display, and make the adjustments. This would be much different than drilling a hole into a piece of energized armor, but Arendi was convinced it could be done.

  Julian, meanwhile, glanced at the view screen, and saw the barrier fill the entirety of the display. They were on top of it, and he could even see the Au-O’sanah’s shadow against the shield; the gloom was glowing larger and larger by the second. Under more normal circumstances, the path Julian had set would have been akin to a collision course. But there was nothing normal about this.

  “Proceeding with the algorithm,” Arendi said. “Commencing.”

  In that moment, the rumbling ended in it entirety. The warping of space around the Au-O’sanah had begun. The exotic energy had tunneled a path into the Endervar shield. Julian could see it, the opening in the barrier present.

  He tapped the side of his implant, and ordered the Au-O’sanah to accelerate. Powering its main energies, the bio-ship wasted no time, and shot through the breach in a trail of blue.

  Like that, the image of the shield was gone, replaced by what Julian knew to be the faint trace of clouds and ocean, all of lit in an uncharacteristic yellow glow. The opening behind them had closed, the surrounding space occupied by copious waves of radiation.

  Soon, he could tell why. The view screen recalibrated, homing in on the anomaly before them. It was the source of the Endervar shield, the phenomena unlike anything Julian had seen before. It appeared like geysers of energy, the waterfalls of light monumental in size, but spilling upward, and into the barrier wall above.

  He didn’t dare to stop. Arendi had given Julian the coordinates, and so he pressed on, ordering the Au-O’sanah to make a break for what would be the center of the anomaly.

  The bio-ship did not respond. The vessel was oddly silent to his call.

  “Are you there?” he said, tapping the side of his implant. “Something’s wrong.”

  What he heard next was not a friendly reply. It was a scream followed by a sharp blow that sent him to the floor, the sensation like hot needles stabbing into his mind. He fell to his knees, accidentally hitting the side of his face against the console platform.

  Julian was on the floor now, reeling in pain and wondering if the ship had been hit. His vision was a daze, the sound around him shrieking. “Status?” he yelled. Julian felt the burning anguish at the side of his temple, and reached for the telepathic implant, scratching it away with his hand.

  “Goddamit,” he gasped, ambushed by the excruciating pain. He felt his cheek, and the emerging bruise. But Julian was not the only victim. Still on the floor, he looked off at his side, and saw Alysdeon, collapsing in what seemed to be the same kind of pain. She had fallen on her back, and held her face within her two hands, moaning in an agonizing shake.

  Julian pushed himself off the ground and ran to her side. For him, the throbbing had begun to fade. But as for Alysdeon, it seemed to only grow worse — her body was squirming in a scream
.

  Julian held her in his arms as Arendi ran and knelt down at her side.

  “What’s happening?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. ...I really don’t know,” she replied, scanning the specialist’s body. “I don’t understand.”

  As Julian held her, Alysdeon was blinking rapidly, her disheveled hair covering the side of her face. She clenched her teeth, and held on to the side of his arm.

  “Julian!” Arendi shouted. “The ship.”

  He glanced at the view screen, and saw that the Au-O’sanah’s direction had abruptly detoured. The vessel had descended, only to rise back up, its course set for past the anomaly, and into the barrier wall.

  “Shit,” he said, watching as the ship veered dangerously off course. Julian reluctantly left the specialist on the floor, and went to controls.

  Whatever had affected the Au-O’sanah had scrambled the vessel’s systems. Julian eyed the manual controls at the center of the bridge, and noticed that engine power was accelerating.

  “It’s not responding,” he said, nearly hammering the physical switches with his fist. “I can’t slow it down.”

  With the acceleration climbing, the Au-O’sanah was moving so fast, it was about to collide into the very interior of the Endervar shield. Julian’s only resort left was to pull up the ship’s directory subsets, and manually control its mechanical systems. But even then, there was no time, the distance between the ship and the shield separated by only seconds.

  Julian thought the mission in jeopardy. Despite all their preparations, they had encountered something no one had foreseen, the mysterious sensation incapacitating both the specialist and the ship. He did not know what to do.

  Arendi, however, had found a stopgap measure. The Au-O’sanah’s engines continued to blast. And yet the ship’s position remained almost unchanged, the vessel held back by the fabric of space itself.

  “Holding,” she said. “It’s holding.”

  Using the Endervar particle, Arendi had warped the distance between the Au-O’sanah and the shield, not only extending the space in between, but exponentially increasing it. What had been the span of only a few dozen kilometers had been stretched into an area that could fill a continent. From the outside observer, the ship seemed to be barely moving at all.

  “Hurry, Julian,” she said. “Even with the modifications, the Endervar particle is degrading. I can’t extend the distance for too long. Otherwise, we’ll lose spatial stability and the space will collapse.”

  He nodded, somewhat relieved. Filing through the directory subsets, Julian identified the manual override, and activated the sequence. In another moment, the controls reverted to a basic format, as Julian reined in the vessel, ordering it to hold and maintain a safe position.

  Once clear, he then left the controls and ran to the specialist. She lay upon the floor, but was no longer in any noticeable pain.

  “Alysdeon,” he said. “Wake up!”

  She could not. She breathed rapidly, although her eyes remained closed. He looked across her face, and saw the angular implants on her cheeks flicker. Then, in another moment, they too had stopped, her consciousness falling apart. Julian shook her, finding only futility.

  Chapter 52

  The core of the Au-O’sanah was just as comatose, the activity almost nonexistent inside the living centrals of the ship.

  The neon liquid inside the container remained viscous, but the actual brain itself was silent, the only sign of life the occasional beat rumbling through its web-like veins.

  Julian was there, holding in his hand the implant between his two fingers. Grudgingly, he placed the thin fiber on his left temple, steeling himself for what might be another shock of pain.

  “Au-O’sanah, are you there?” he asked again, tapping the side of the implant in a cringe.

  He felt nothing, nor did he hear anything. He asked again, leaving the implant on his temple, before taking it off and nearly wanting to break it in his hand.

  “Dammit,” he muttered. “What happened to you?”

  It was obviously connected with the Endervar shield. The moment they had breached the barrier was when he had felt his mind nearly tear in two. The ship itself had screamed, and so had Alysdeon, who had been left to fall to the floor and wail in pain.

  Although he had raised the ship’s protective shielding, it had made no noticeable difference. Julian recalled the agony, and felt the coldness tingle across his skin. For some reason, he had been spared, the pain disappearing the moment he had removed the implant.

  He walked out of the room, ready to return to the medical bay, when he saw the window embedded in the ship’s hallway. Stepping closer, he noticed that behind the organic glass was the aurulent glow he had seen from the view screen earlier, the ship nearly surrounded in the exotic radiation.

  It was a foreign atmosphere, the light moving in streams, almost bubbling across in beads of energy. Within it all, temperatures oscillated between 5 degrees kelvin to 5,000, the energy levels unpredictable and randomly switching between the extremes, but still contained.

  The ship’s scans were clueless to what Julian was seeing, the results filled with more phenomena the databanks had never encountered before. It was not a surprise to Julian. Arendi had warned them that they would see things that they would not understand. In a way, they were no longer in the universe that they knew, but in a place the enemy had dramatically altered.

  “How is she? Did it work?”

  He saw Arendi approach from the end of the hallway, the stress evident in her worried gaze.

  “The commander is stable,” she said, having just left the medical bay. “But even with the prescribed neuro-drugs, she still remains unconscious.”

  “Maybe we should up the dosage.”

  “I’ve already done that and still nothing. I believe this may be self-induced.”

  “What?”

  “I know little of New Terran physiology, but she should be conscious, even without the drugs. However, the neurological activity is functioning in abnormal patterns. Her brain is active, especially at the tele-stem.”

  Julian suspected as much. The so-called “tele-stem” was an essential part all New Terrans possessed, the engineered organ designed for telepathy.

  “Damn,” he said, turning away. Julian was dispirited, and faced the swirling view outside, trying to think of what to do.

  “How are you feeling?” Arendi asked.

  “I don’t know. Fine I guess,” he said. “Whatever affected them, for some reason, hasn’t done anything to me. Did you feel anything?”

  She shook her head. “I only saw both of you in pain, but I detected nothing.”

  He reached into his jacket pocket, and pulled out the thin implant, holding it up to the light.

  “Alysdeon and the ship, they both possess strong forms of telepathy,” Julian said. “It has to be related.”

  She had also come to the same conclusion, but Arendi was still startled. Before she had left Earth, there had only been minute signs of something happening on the surface of the planet. All of it still ambiguous and maybe even unrelated. Nevertheless, they needed answers. Arendi knew where to find them.

  “Come,” she said. “I believe my creator will be able to help us.”

  ***

  With the Endervar particle providing passage and warping the space ahead, the ship crossed into the anomaly, or what was the source of the Endervar shield.

  The Au-O’sanah entered, flying in manually, as the spiraling jets of hot energy continued to flash and burn. It was like clearing a brush of jungle, the tangles of crackling light pulled back, only to reveal more of the same light, the mystery all around. Deeper and deeper they went, the ship slowly sliding into the anomaly completely intact, a feat no other vessel had accomplished before, save for one other.

  The golden geysers continued to burst forth, but now other kinds of energy had begun to appear, the globs of matter suspended in the air. They contracted and expanded, before exp
loding into more drops and drifting up into the ceiling of the barrier above.

  Julian watched this from the ship’s bridge, and knew that he was witnessing the inner-workings of the Endervar shield. The torrents of light provided an almost infinite supply of energy. But in the midst of it, was the other form of energy. A kind of transparent matter, capable of forming shapes and becoming Endervar ships. Spreading out across hundreds of miles, the alien technology was vast. Essentially, it was a factory, built for conquest and war, an aim that seemed constant.

  “There,” Arendi said, pointing at the bridge’s view screen. “It’s still there.”

  They were nearing the center of the anomaly, the yellow glow and the pearls of light scaling back. The change was sudden, the alien phenomena seemingly brought to a halt, forced at bay into an area devoid of any energy, or almost any matter at all.

  It was like staring into a solar eclipse, the spherical space black and empty, but trapped by the exotic environment that churned at its edge. Julian went to the scans, trying to understand it. For some reason, the area had been hollowed out, left to become an eye of the storm, the sole sanctuary inside what Arendi had called the “Endervar gateway.”

  As he read the scans, Julian found the only object within the void: the structure of human origin. It was far larger than the Au-O’sanah, an umber piece of mass that had once been two planetary vessels, but combined into one. Julian could see that it had been a forced merger, one ship forming the base, the other attached vertically like a tower. It was more mishmash, than anything aerodynamic; the facility’s windows were mostly darkened and cold to any activity. He studied it more, and recalled that this wasn’t just a broken-down ship. This was where Arendi had been born.

  “I’ve already initiated contact,” she said, sending the message through her own systems. Julian looked down at the display on his control panel.

  “DESIGNATION: S.S.F. ELION,” the communication hail read. “WELCOME. PLEASE PROCEED TO DOCKING SECTION A.”