Frontier Effects: Book 1

by Mars Dorian

  Tavio followed Eriksun and Chikara farther into the deep realm of the cluster. The doctor managed to fish more information about the race’s energy extraction—apparently, they leveraged the kinetic energy of planetary storms and absorbed the trillions of watts via mobile photon farms from the sun to power their society. But how did they ‘eat’, especially with no mouths? Or maybe they reached a level in their self-made evolution that had eliminated the need for consumption.

  Too many questions.

  Tavio allowed the doctor to take over the talking and focused on filming the surrounding with his retinal layers. He spotted various droids whooshing along the ceiling’s rails and noticed a couple of tiny bots creeping out of wall holes and sliding across the ground, acting like smart cleaning devices from Earth. These advanced bots had limited intelligence, unlike the race itself. He hoped to see at least one other member before the tour concluded. The Solar Alliance needed to know how many aliens they were dealing with.

  50//chamber cell

  For the first time since the mission begin, Bellrog acted on his own. He was separated by a force field from the corridor, separated from his team that now marched through the alien cluster without his support. He loathed the idea, but the captain called the shots.

  The soldier knelt next to the left wall where he could survey the entire room. Especially the mantis-like creature called Hōshi. Needless to say, he didn’t trust the pale stick figures. The look of their long arms and tiny appendages stuck to their torso, the way they talked, and more importantly—their odd behavior spelled trouble to him.

  Bellrog cooked up three emergency plans in case the captain and the doctor failed to sway the defense entity. He was about to scheme a fourth one when he noticed the alien staring at him from the chamber’s corner on the other side. She floated with her legs crossed and her void-black eyes peeking at him.

  Irises of the abyss Bellrog called them.

  “You keep looking at me like that, your eyes are gonna fall out.”

  “She finds him fascinating.”

  Bellrog still couldn’t get over their tendency to speak in third person. It was confusing because he never knew whom she addressed.

  “He is a warrior from the solar system.”

  “Me?”

  She extended her limbs, stood, and danced toward him. Bellrog shot up from his seat and instinctively pulled up his close quarter combat stance. Hōshi flinched and stopped midway through the chamber. “She means no harm.”

  “Then better watch your movements. You blitz around like that, I’m gonna expect a close range attack.”

  She cowered into fetus position but kept her eyes on him. “Is that more comfortable for him?”

  She started sounding like a service maid, doing whatever he ordered her to. “I guess.” He paused. At least she wasn’t fighting. “Besides, don’t call me ‘him’. I’m Sergeant Bellrog.”

  “Bellrog,” she repeated. “She cherishes that name.”

  He eased up but remained alert. The creature just sat there in the middle of the room, doing nothing but turning her coal eyes. An uncomfortable position for Bellrog, but discomfort bred strength. Besides, sitting around the chamber and waiting for the captain and the doctor wasn’t a productive use of his resources.

  “So, what do you call your… race? Using plural pronouns all the time is awkward.”

  “They do not use names, but she comes up with one she deems worthy and adequate.”

  She paused, almost as if to tease. “Yuugen.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “A concept she learns from watching humans. Yuugen— a profound, mysterious sense of the beauty of the universe… and the sad beauty of human suffering.”

  Sounded like the paragraph from a new age pseudo religion, but at least Bellrog could label the creature and her race. Definitions brought clarity. “Hōshi, a member of the Yuugen race,” he repeated to seal the label.

  The creature swayed her head like a flag in the wind. “She likes it very much so.”

  Making progress, Bellrog thought and sat down to keep the eye sight leveled. “So tell me, Hōshi, were you imprisoned for signaling us?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not too long ago, a drone flew over the jungle and hovered over heads, before it broke into atmo. Were you involved in that?”

  Hōshi hesitated but confirmed his suspicion.

  “What happened there?”

  “She mind-controls the drone when the defense entity finds her. Chikara resumes control over the drone and detonates it.”

  “You sent that drone so we could trace back the way to your cluster.”

  If the creature was capable of smiling, she would have done so. “Bellrog is a fast one.”

  He smirked. More and more puzzles completed before his mind. So the Yuugen not only communicated via minds, but also commanded their equipment and cybernetic craft through telepathy. Which meant that the drones, hovertanks and maybe their space-faring ships were unmanned and remote-controlled.

  Interesting.

  Bellrog stored the vital information in his memory cell and filed it under alien/Yuugen/military.

  “Hōshi, why were you the only one contacting us?”

  “The Yuugen Collective learns about the human intergalactic war. The exploitation of resources and territory. The infliction of harm and death. The Yuugen think the human race is not ready for the first contact.”

  She was hinting at the Colony War, Bellrog thought, which had happened over two decades ago. But maybe the Yuugen had a different concept of time, if they had any at all.

  “But Hōshi knows the Yuugen need the help of humanity. Bellrog has to understand; the Yuugen are a proud race. Ancient and ever progressing. They do not like asking for help, especially from a….”

  “Say it.”

  “Lower type civilization.”

  “You mean inferior race,” Bellrog corrected her with a smile. “Savages. Monkeys. Dirt crawlers.”

  She didn’t say anything, but her head tilting seemed to be the equivalent of a human nodding. Bellrog smirked and didn’t know why. Back in the sol system, the human race believed they were the pinnacle of intergalactic evolution. It was oddly relieving to see that other sentient races succumbed to the same illusion.

  “Bellrog is a curious one. An explorer, like Hōshi.”

  “Maybe,” he said, neither trying to deflect nor conform her assumption. Bellrog could feel his spit sizzling on his tongue. He somehow managed to build rapport with that creature and was debunking one mystery after another. It almost felt like an investigation where the target eagerly shared every secret. It was almost fun.

  “Hōshi, you gotta be straight with me.”

  “How straight?”

  Bellrog ditched the slang. “I mean truthful.”

  “She will be.”

  “What are the Yuugen hiding from?”

  She jerked and craned her head. Bellrog flinched, but the creature’s movement didn’t look like an attack; it was more like an epileptic seizure. “What’s the matter?”

  “Chikara makes contact.”

  Confusion lay siege upon the soldier’s face.

  “With who?”

  51//Cluster corridors

  Chikara dashed off like a sprinter bitten by a poisonous snake. The creature used all four of her slender limbs to burst into motion and race over the floor. Tavio and Dr. Eriksun could barely keep up, despite their exo attachments.

  “What’s going on, Chikara?” Tavio asked.

  “Humans go back.”

  “We want to help you,” Dr. Eriksun said, pushing the servo-mechanics of her legs to the max.

  Chikara ignored the two humans, but didn’t send them back either. Together, the trio entered the loop system of the cluster and propelled skywards through the structure. A second later, the transparent doors parted and Chikara rushed into the corridor where a round-shaped gate opened like an eyelid. Tavio and the doctor followed her inside and fe
ll silent. What they saw defied their expectations… yet again.

  52

  The new chamber resembled the giant dome of a planetarium melting into the eternal sky of E405. Tavio felt like a loose screw amidst the marvel of engineering. Chikara crawled toward the center where consoles stood out from the plasto-metal ground. They wrapped around her scrawny body and illuminated the circuit pattern on her surface.

  A connection established.

  Tavio and Eriksun stepped toward her, but kept a safe distance to avoid triggering. The ceiling of the dome became translucent and allowed a breathtaking 360 degree view of their surroundings.

  “Inconceivable,” Eriksun said in wonder.

  Tavio had to agree. They stood on the highest floor of the tallest scraper within the cluster. Tavio could spot every other structure in the vicinity along with the many tube rails connecting them. Farther away, he noticed the jungle which they had fought through. Beyond the green horizon roared the mighty mountains of E405 as their skewed and spiky tops faded into the alien sky. Spellbinding wasn’t the right word, but it was the first that came to his mind.

  Tavio eyed the defense entity shifting her body in awkward ways. Something disturbing must have happened. “What’s going on, Chikara?”

  “The human must be silent and watch.”

  Tavio didn’t like the tone, but he abided. Seconds later, the billboard-sized panels of the dome ceiling flipped into view screens showing the void of the universe. More and more hexagon-shaped plates featured different views from space until most of the front dome layer became black and impregnated with distant stars. Tavio believed it was the recording of a space telescope or the alien’s version of surveillance satellites. He passionately followed the process and scanned for anything unusual while at the same time searching for a visual hint of the SAS Moonshot.

  Chikara jerked inside her core terminal. Curiosity surged within Tavio but his stoic training allowed him to assume a casual stance. In the upper right of the dome’s view screen, he noticed a few stars disappearing as if being swallowed up by a shadow. A second glance revealed the cause—an elongated craft pushed itself into the void.

  The vessel’s front featured a double-bladed design which merged with an angular body. The unknown ship’s thruster system glowed from crystals protruding from the rear. Simplified, it looked like a crystalline, cybernetic blade tearing space apart.

  “They are here,” Chikara said through the comm. Her tone rang with accusation. “They find us. Because of the humans, they will finish their work.”

  Tavio glanced at the defense entity as she spun from her control position and jackknifed toward him. The creature flipped its long claw-like arm and grabbed the weakly-protected throat fiber around his atmogear. The captain lifted up the air like a puppet and stared into the black abyss of Chikara’s iris. “It is the human’s fault.”

  Dr. Eriksun intertwined. “Chikara, please don’t.”

  Tavio dangled in the air and tried to free himself. If the creature squeezed any harder, it would break his throat protection and flood his insides with the toxic atmosphere.

  “Whatever you’re accusing me of… we can talk about this.”

  The captain’s plead fired into the chasm. Chikara was either going to throw him around or choke him. Tavio instinctively seized her slim wrists but couldn’t muster up the strength to yank her arms away. Chikara squeezed with the power of a metal claw.

  Dr. Eriksun neared Chikara but seemed hesitant about stepping in. Without any weapons, the doctor stood no chance. “Please, Chikara. It is not his fault. We simply followed the signal you sent us.”

  “She does not send any signal.”

  “Someone did.”

  “The one they call Hōshi contacts the humans.”

  “She asked humanity for help. That’s why we came.”

  Chikara’s feline marble-face seemed devoid of emotion. Talking to a tungsten wall would get more response, but Tavio could feel the grip loosening up. Chikara let go off him and marched away.

  The captain clanked on the ground and instinctively grabbed for his throat gear. His HUD showed no sign of armor penetration, but Tavio was too mad to care. Every muscle in his body yelled for retaliation. He wanted to storm up to that creature inside the terminal, grab her head and smash it into the console with the force of a powerloader. He wanted to punch Chikara so hard her cybernetic armor would splitter into a thousand pieces. Dr. Eriksun blocked his path and stretched out her palm like a traffic controller.

  “I know what you’re thinking, and you have every right to be mad, but we can’t let this situation escalate. We have come too far, sir.”

  Tavio’s blood cooked. The adrenaline burned so high it clouded his thoughts like corrosive fog. And yet, something held him back. Maybe it was the soothing voice of Eriksun, or the sinister craft dominating on the view screen.

  Eriksun whispered as she looked at the image of the vessel. “Maybe this is the reason why Hōshi called humanity for help.”

  Tavio grounded his teeth behind the face shield and pierced Chikara with vicious stares. The creature seemed to ignore him as she remained inside the core terminal and continued investigating the visual findings. Reason and rage fought in the battlefield of Tavio’s body until a voice spoke up in his mind.

  C’mon, Tavio, remember the Lancer.

  The obstacle is the way.

  Chikara is the obstacle.

  Hence, Chikara is the way.

  “Sir?” Dr. Eriksun said in a deescalating tone.

  Tavio moaned and inhaled four deep breaths of the recycled oxygen. The nanobots in his blood stream would need minutes to dispose of the adrenaline, but his mind slowly but surely took control over his body. The captain shook his limbs and focused on the core of his being.

  Leave the old self. It doesn’t belong here.

  He approached the defense entity and kept a two meter distance.

  “Chikara, tell me what’s going on.”

  53

  The defense entity of the cluster projected the foreign ship on all panels of the view screens. A barrage of alien-looking symbols flashed on the projection and pointed toward different components of the vessel.

  Probably an analyzing scan, Tavio thought.

  He wanted to know more about the anomaly and, yet again, Chikara was one step farther ahead. For an alien creature, she excelled at reading his emotions. “The Collective calls it the Verge. A predatory lifeform hailing from another star cluster.”

  The Verge.

  The name echoed like a dark omen through Tavio’s already overwhelmed mind. But why did they call it the Verge? Some error in translation, or a characteristic of the new life form? Hundreds of similar questions fired up. Chikara connected with Tavio for the first time since the choking maneuver. Her voice seemed oddly leveled. “The Verge sends millions of nano probes into star systems of the galaxy where sentient life is possible. Once an advanced civilization is detected, the Verge dispatches spawn carriers.”

  A line that shook up Tavio’s limbs. “To destroy life?”

  She ignored him. Before Tavio could even follow up with another dumbfounded ‘how’, the defense entity must have guessed his thoughts.

  “It is possible a Verge probe orbits the planet the humans call E405 and detects their ship. That is why they are here.”

  The dome screens reclaimed Tavio’s attention. The Verge spawn carrier lurked in the exoplanet’s higher orbit like a dreadnought-sized rail gun. He noticed a thruster design at the rear of the angular, crystallized body leaving an energy signature. The two blade-like front structures that comprised two thirds of the vessel troubled him—they could have been a weapon of mass destruction. Tavio didn’t have the chance to find out; hundreds of windowless objects shot from the carrier’s rear.

  Rockets?

  Missiles?

  Fighters?

  The volley of streamlined pods pierced E405’s atmosphere like black needles of rain.

  Chikara froze
inside her center terminal. Without a discernible mouth, it was hard to gauge her facial expressions.

  “Bad news?” Tavio said, already regretting the pointlessness of his comment.

  He switched attention to the dome panels showing the surrounding view of the tower. In the far distance of the jungle, he spotted the barrage of black dots as they bolted down from the planet’s sky. If they were an orbital bombardment, the shots missed the cluster by dozens of klicks. But something in Tavio’s experience told him that wasn’t the goal. He watched Chikara swapping panel perspectives to the satellite coverage of the green landscape. The Verge pods drilled through the thicket and reappeared from the alien soil like metallic flowers in bloom. Alien machinery unleashed and seemed to construct something. Tavio hated standing around like a powerless civilian, but with no weapon and ship, he was unable to act. A quick glance at Dr. Eriksun showed him she shared the same frustration.

  “Looks like we’re entangled in an interstellar war.”

  54

  He and his crew had arrived as explorers and diplomats who hoped to engage with an advanced life form. They wanted to usher in a new age for the Solar Alliance and leave the bloody past of the Colonial War behind. But despite the purest of intentions, they couldn’t escape the conflict. Worse, they brought it to the very planet they intended to avoid conflict with.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “The Verge ground force is looking for the exact location of the cluster. The crawlers and satellites will seep through the environment until they make contact.”

  She sounded calm but Tavio could detect an intonational change on the faintest level. The defense entity said, “The Verge can find this location. The cluster prepares.”

  Tavio thought of the energy weapon turrets on the fringe wall, the drones, and the floating tanks. Their defense armada was hopefully potent enough to fight off whatever the Verge was going to throw at them. In the worst case scenario, Tavio and his team stood ready. “Maybe we can help. We’ve got infantry armament and our state-of-the-art frigate.”