Frontier Effects: Book 1

by Mars Dorian

  Some evacuation process, Tavio thought.

  The cybernetic crane descended again and hovered toward his eye level. “…..Gozzzzzz….”

  Frustration and panic etched into Tavio’s voice. “I can’t understand you. What the hell do you mean?”

  The crane hovered over Dr. Eriksun and pointed at her face shield. “Ssstay….”

  It swapped back to Tavio and Bellrog. “Gooozzz…”

  Eriksun translated what the captain couldn’t put into words. “It wants me to stay and you to go.”

  What an absurd suggestion.

  “No way,” Tavio said.

  The crane extracted its cybernetic claws and grabbed the soldier. Picked him up from the ground like a metal demon hand. “Bellrog.”

  The soldier’s exosuit couldn’t fight against the servo-mechanical power of the claws. Tavio unholstered his ion pistol and pointed the firearm at the crane. “Let him go.”

  Angular droids escaped from the hall’s bays and whirled around the trio. Tavio realized his chances of survival diminished with every passing second.

  “Captain,” Eriksun said when another impact shook up the interior. The salvos crushed the carrier. “I think the Verge wants me to stay so it can study our race. The life form wants to learn from us.”

  “Not going to happen,” Tavio said and channeled the soldier, who was still held hostage in midair. The captain’s gaze pulled a 360. The entire hall seemed to awake to mechanical life and moved against him. This ship acted as a single life form.

  The doctor raised her face shield at the crane and pointed at her chest plate. “I’m staying.”

  Comm silence and the moaning of the hall brought a morbid moment. Seconds later, the crane put the soldier gently on the ground.

  “Shay, this is absurd. I’m not letting you stay with this… thing.”

  Determination oozed from her maroon irises. “Since my childhood on the Moon, it had been my dearest wish to meet another life form. It was a selfish wish, but now it serves a higher purpose.” Her voice and movement calmed down. “We have the opportunity to engage with an advanced life form. We must use this chance, no matter the cost.” She spread her arms into a wide arch. “Besides, the Verge will never let you leave on your terms, sir.”

  Tavio flicked a helpless glance at Bellrog picking his scattergun up again. “Give me the go, sir, and I’ll vaporize this forklift.”

  “Then what? We’re two ants inside a massive alien structure. It’s going to crush us without hesitation.”

  “Better die on our terms.”

  Tavio licked his teeth as the vibrations increased on his exosuit’s display. Think, think, think.

  Dr. Eriksun shook her head with teary eyes. “Please go, sir. Take Hōshi back to the Alliance and learn more about this interstellar conflict. Humanity needs to know everything.”

  Instead of waiting for the captain’s order, she simply turned around and stepped away. Just like that.

  “Shay,” Tavio shouted. “I command you to come back.”

  The crane pushed itself into the way between the doctor and the two men. Bellrog was one itch away from releasing a wide-range pellet burst through its adaptive frame.

  “Don’t,” Tavio said with a defeated voice. “She’s right. She always was.”

  The drone creature from before ascended again and levitated to the entrance gate where the crew had hailed from. Tavio averted his glance from Shay Eriksun and charged toward the exit. The consciousness paralyzed his body like a stun shot.

  I can’t believe I’m leaving her. Have I lost my goddamn mind?

  He rotated toward the core’s entrance gate again when Bellrog’s strong grip held him back. “You were right, sir, she made her choice. Hate to say it, but in this territory, the Verge’s got the upper hand.” The men made eye contact with each other. “We’ll regroup and retaliate. Promise.”

  Another impact hammered the Verge carrier and shook up the corridor. Tavio clonked against the walls like a test dummy. Bellrog bounced against him and rolled sideways when his face shield hit the ground. Tavio came to his aid and grabbed the ground-pounder’s arm. The two maxed the magnetic power of their boots. The droid creature hovered in the air and echoed its sound patterns with greater intensity. “Goozzz…gozzz.”

  Tavio wanted to snap his ion pistol and pulverize the floating creeper, but he couldn’t allow his emotions to get in the way. Impulsive reactions had ruined too many moments in his life.

  No more.

  He grounded his teeth and pressed on. Pushed his limbs like metallic appendages constructed for brutal efficiency.

  Run, run, run.

  73

  The art of destruction.

  Quintan’s personal caption to the happenings on his view screens. Each ARC shell ripped through the Verge carrier’s hull and shattered the poly-alloy layers to space trash. The enormous thruster web fizzled out and disintegrated into some kind of semi-organic material. Wireframes curled from the layers and cut into pieces. Debris hit debris which shattered into more debris. A chain reaction of material murder splattered into every corner of the nihilistic void of the universe.

  Better than VR, better than life itself.

  “Keep firing,” Quintan said with rising intonation.

  He wanted to hit the Verge carrier so hard it was never going to recover from the attack. He eyed the schematic user interface of the tactical officer’s primary cannon control. The officer linked to the interface and seemed to disappear into the activity. Quintan watched the colored graphs surging. The operational temperature exploded into thousands of degrees whenever a new shell blasted through its accelerator rings. The color meter burst into orange and drifted into crimson red. Tavio balled his fist.

  Come on, don’t fail on me now. We’ve come sooo damn far.

  The Radar Intercept Officer broke the fire ballet. “Incoming fighter squadron is targeting our starboard. CCR reached in five minutes and twenty-two seconds by current acceleration.”

  Why the alien units targeted his cruiser in particular, Quintan couldn’t tell. Maybe they instinctively spotted the alpha leader in the division. He would wipe them out the same way he pulverized their mothership—with relentless force. Today, the stars of the universe aligned in Quintan’s favor.

  “Sir,” the comm officer said. “Brigadier General Del Rykan is hailing us.”

  Quintan sighed. “Put her through.”

  The Brigadier General’s voice boomed through the intercom. “Watch out for that interceptor squadron, Lieutenant Colonel. Apply your ADAM countermeasures.”

  She lectured him on 101 defense issues, unbelievable. “Already charging up the secondary beam battery, ma’am.”

  The secondary laser calibrated around the outer ring of the artillery cruiser. The second the fighters infiltrated the close combat range, each battery charged the petawatt beams with nano-accuracy. “Target one to five are taken down.”

  The other ships in the fleet division channeled their fire power and disposed of the swarm before it could cause havoc. Within a blink, the interceptor threat had been wiped out.

  “Pathetic,” Quintan said. “We take their carrier apart and they’re tossing pebbles at us?”

  The rest of his bridge crew failed to share his hubris. They dove into the menus of their consoles.

  The colonel watched as more ARC shells battered the secondary and tertiary hull layers of the Verge carrier’s rear. Alien tech or not, the vessel could not retaliate from its current vector.

  “Operational ARC temperature is critical, sir,” tactical said.

  He glanced at the schematics blinking in red. The accelerator rings of the barrel construction overheated and threatened to break apart. At least if you believed the overly cautious instruction manual which Quintan didn’t. “It’s Alliance engineering.”

  Quintan knew the cannons inside out. He had passed over a hundred and twenty VR simulations where he had pushed their operational time to the limit. The tactical of
ficer pressed his lips which could have been a passive-aggressive grimace of disagreement, but Quintan remained the highest ranking officer on board. “Our lives matter more than the material, officer.”

  His glance fell back to the Verge ship on the view screen. “That abomination won’t get a single nanometer into our sol system.”

  74

  Tavio believed his HUD played another optical trick on him. He remembered the corridor leading back to the dock where the Moonshot hopefully still awaited him. The Verge droid kept charging forward when the duo reached the final gate leading to the port station. The connection to the ship reestablished. The Verge allowed them to communicate again. Tavio yelled into his comm. “Srini, open the hatch, we’re leaving.”

  “Sir, is it the real you?”

  Seconds later, the outer hatch opened and Tavio and Bellrog rushed inside the decompression zone. The captain gazed one last time into the port corridor where the Verge creature floated like an ominous totem.

  “Wheee…. rrreturrrnn…” the strange object sounded before the exterior hatch slammed shut and separated the two from the Verge dock. Fifteen seconds of decompression and purification, and the inner hatch to the ship opened up. Tavio stormed straight to the bridge where chief Srini sprang from his console.

  “It’s a miracle,” Srini said.

  “Initiate the chemical thrusters, Srini, we need to bolt.”

  The engineers’ hasty eyes picked up Bellrog’s and spied for the empty space between the men. “Where’s Shay?”

  A foul silence escaped the captain’s lips. “She didn’t make it.”

  “Wha—?”

  “Later, Chief. Initiate the launch sequence. That’s an order.”

  He hesitated but planted his butt down to the seat and strapped on. With Aidos’ help, he calibrated the sub-thrusters and ignited the chemical-based fuel. Back in his captain seat, Tavio focused on the view screen where the void of the ramp greeted him.

  “All clamps detached,” Srini said. “We’re free to go.”

  Too good to be true. Tavio couldn’t breathe in yet—as long as they remained inside the Verge carrier, they faced danger.

  The SAS Moonshot steered away from the docking station and returned to the illuminated triangular ramp. And although the elongated corridor surpassed the Moonshot’s size by a factor of five, Tavio feared getting smashed by falling debris. The Verge carrier crumbled like an unstable star. “Outrun the light, Chief.”

  “I’m pushing the chem thrusters to their limits, sir. Swapping to fusion drive in one and a half minutes.”

  It sounded like a doomsday countdown.

  Tavio flicked a glance at the empty console where the doctor was supposed to sit. He still couldn’t believe they had left her behind, but she insisted on sacrificing her life for the team. What an incredible human being, willing to face a hostile life form. Her courage outmatched his.

  I’m sorry, Shay. I should have ignored your stupid request. I should have dragged you back to the ship and fought the Verge at all costs.

  Tavio cringed and averted his eyes from the empty seat. He focused on the escape tunnel in front of him. One more thought about Shay and his mind would go berserk from guilt.

  “She will survive. For now,” a gentle voice said.

  The ghost whisper seemed to permeate from the walls but actually arrived on his comm channel. That’s when he realized that Hōshi had remained on the bridge, strapped to her seat with the presence of a specter.

  Was she able to read his thoughts or did she simply watch his pain-ridden glance at Eriksun’s missing seat?

  Tavio swallowed his frustration and steered right into the Yuugen’s coal-black eyes. “Why do you know so much about the Verge?”

  “The Yuugen and the Verge share a history of conflict.”

  And it wasn’t the only thing they shared. During the march through Verge corridors, Tavio noticed a lot of uncanny similarities between the two species—right from the corridor surface patterns to the stasis tubes in the main core. Even the crane creature carried the mantis-like features of the Yuugen. Their race knew more about the Verge than Hōshi had admitted, and Tavio was going to find out what as soon as he and his crew escaped this catastrophe.

  “One thousand and three hundred fifty-four meters until the tunnel’s exit,” Srini said with a strained voice.

  The chief engineer maneuvered the ship with the course-correction help of Aidos. Tavio wiped his hands in anticipation and prepared for the acceleration. Shay Eriksun had given her life for their escape. The least they could do was to survive the flight.

  75//Alliance artillery division

  Quintan watched the destruction of the Verge carrier like a far-off fiction feed. Disappointment numbed his excitement. Something as raw and massive as the alien ship had to be a bigger challenge. But no—the giant vessel almost seemed to bathe in the long-range fire of the artillery shells. And instead of fighting to death, the alien scum had dispatched a petty interceptor squad that the cruiser formation took out with a single barrage of ADAM countermeasures. Could a sentient life form be so lethargic about its own destruction? Or was it a tactical measure?

  Maybe the Verge prepared a counter attack that defied human logic. Quintan lacked intel to form an educated guess.

  “Sir, another ship is leaving the Verge,” the Radar Intercept Officer said.

  Quintan scratched his temples. More scum leaving the falling carrier. The Verge’s reaction has reached a new level of wretchedness.

  “Sir,” the same officer said. “According to the readings, it seems to be… the SAS Moonshot.”

  It sounded like an out-of-place joke. Quintan broke his train of thought and observed the scans on the view screen. His officer spoke the truth—the SAS Moonshot shot out the ‘mouth’ of the Verge carrier. The trademark angular design with the ring form and its crisp blue metal armor-framing betrayed its origin. “Sir,” tactical said. “Should I cease ARC fire?”

  Quintan’s glance glued to the Moonshot accelerating away from the Verge vessel. Why in the world was the ship inside the alien carrier? It made no sense and bordered on the insane.

  “Sir?”

  The tension in the bridge surged. Blinks, display plops and the humming of the consoles turned into a mechanical orchestra. Amidst the artificial noise, the comm officer’s high-pitched voice beeped through. “Sir, the Moonshot is hailing us.”

  Quintan understood the words, but the meaning eluded him. He still couldn’t, or wouldn’t, believe that the vessel had escaped a hostile alien carrier.

  “Accept,” Quintan said as he found his voice again.

  A familiar sound reverberated through the speakers. An echo which seemed to transcend from another dimension. “This is Captain Tavio Alterra of the SAS Moonshot hailing the Alliance fleet division. Please cease fire.”

  All heads in the bridge cocked at Quintan. He stuttered in his seat. “Tav?”

  The silence crackled. Every second stretched the moment like torturous eternity. “Quintan?”

  The moment froze in time as the memories of the past shot back. Rykan’s command channeled through the intercom. “All cruisers cease fire. Repeat, cease fire.”

  The artillery cruisers stopped the ARC bombardment. Quintan realized that his ship had been the last unit firing.

  “Sir, something’s going on with the Verge carrier,” the Radar Intercept Officer said.

  Not again.

  Quintan wanted to change his priority and focus on his brother, but military discipline put him back into the situation. The Verge craft shifted. A vessel a tenth the size of its carrier dispatched from its core and shot into the void. “Escape pods?”

  The updated scans refreshed the new version. The vessel rivaled the build of an artillery cruiser. Its trajectory pointed away from their fleet division.

  “Vessel is accelerating rapidly,” the Radar Intercept Officer said. “It’s approaching sub-light speeds.”

  The unknown ship escaped, and
frankly, Tavio didn’t care. He had blown an alien carrier into pieces. More importantly, he had won his brother back.

  76//On board the SAS Moonshot

  Tavio couldn’t believe it. His brother commanded one of the new artillery cruisers and contacted him. Had Quintan come all the way from the sol system to bail him out? Like in the war, life turned like the wheels of karma.

  The captain acted on the occasion and ordered Srini to function as temporary captain. The chief engineer twisted his lips. “Where are you going, sir?”

  “I need to see my brother, Chief. I have to tell him what’s going on and clear any confusion about the Yuugen.”

  Something told Tavio that the Verge carrier wasn’t the only target of the Alliance division. Back on Earth, the news touted the artillery cruiser as the definite long-range attack vessel against slow and stationary targets like planet-side bases and outposts. And since Tavio had sent the coordinates of the Yuugen cluster with his last report, he feared the Alliance considered it as a potential target for its new war toy.

  Better not.

  The Alliance attack against the Yuugen would render all diplomatic efforts of the Moonshot crew useless.

  Tavio hurried to the shuttle bay and plotted a course to his brother’s cruiser after receiving permission. It took almost an hour but the sheer excitement kept Tavio’s limbs awake. The second he passed the decompression zone and entered the hangar of the Alliance military vessel, a sharply-dressed man and his key lieutenants awaited him next to the docking bay. Quintan Alterra stretched his arms.

  “Brother.”

  Tavio hugged him with the power of an exoskeleton suit. He couldn’t believe meeting his own flesh and blood beyond the solar system. It had to be an omen of fate. A wink that told him everything was going to be all right from now on. Tavio bathed in the naive belief and wouldn’t let go of his brother.

  “Jeez, Tav. You’re crushing my bones.”

  “I thought I was getting blown apart out there.”

  “You’re an Alterra. Our kind doesn’t get crushed unless we want to.”