Sacrifice:The Shenkar War

by Libby, Seth

  Spread throughout the room were several dozen groups of ten eight-foot-long white chambers standing upright with glass doors on them that were large enough for a human to stand in. Cables ran in and out of the rear of each chamber leading to a large central machine found at the center of each group, all giving off a low humming noise. If Liam were to guess, he would put money on it that there were 395 chambers.

  “Please come with me,” came a voice from Liam’s left.

  Liam turned to see a scientist standing there. As they followed him, Liam noticed that several tubes were already occupied and several men and women were in a state of undress. It looked like they were preparing to get into the chambers they stood next to. Finally, they arrived at a vacant chamber, and the scientist turned back to Liam and spoke.

  “Please remove all of your clothes except your underclothes and get into the enhancement chamber. Someone will be along to explain what will be taking place.”

  With that said, the scientist motioned for Evan and Crystal to follow him and walked to the next vacant chamber.

  Liam removed his uniform and got into the chamber. He noticed that while the chamber stood upright, the inside allowed the occupant to recline slightly. Leaning against the chamber, he waited a few minutes before a scientist came up.

  “Comfortable, Mr. Brennan?” Without waiting for an answer, he started to attach medical leads to Liam’s chest. “These are for monitoring your heart rate, and these will monitor your brain pattern.” The latter two leads were attached to either side of his head at the temple. After a few minutes, the scientist appeared to have finished. Liam’s curiosity got the better of him.

  “What am I to expect? Will this be painful?”

  “Actually, I can’t really say. You people are the first to undergo this procedure. All I know is that I am to make sure you are prepped and then I am to monitor your vitals.”

  “You have to have some idea of what I am to undergo?”

  At this, the scientist seemed a little uncomfortable as he looked to his left and right to make sure no one was around to overhear.

  “You will be sedated to a point close to death, at which time alien nanotechnology will be introduced directly into your cerebellum.” At this, he pointed to the base of Liam’s head where the skull met the neck. “Once introduced, the nanites will spread throughout as they integrate themselves with your body, becoming like a symbiont. They will enhance every part of your body: strength, sight, hearing, smell, reflexes . . . everything.” At this, he hesitated again as if afraid to speak what came next.

  “What is it? There is something you’re not telling me,” Liam demanded.

  Hesitantly, the scientist looked around again, then whispered, “Did they mention the negative effects at all to you?”

  When Liam shook his head no, the scientist grimaced, then whispered again as he spoke.

  “With the integration of the technology, it enhances your every being, including the ability to learn at accelerated speeds. Where it would take a normal person several months to learn a skill, you can learn that in mere weeks. When this happens, you will lose all of your past and present memories . . . or so they say.” The scientist looked with pity at Liam.

  “Well, that sucks. I guess it isn’t so bad, though; there are memories I have that I would like to erase,” Liam said somberly. After a moment, he forced a smile, saying, “Well, at least everything will be new to me.”

  “Uh . . . yeah . . . I guess that’s a positive way to look at things,” said the scientist, although he didn’t sound like he believed it.

  “There’s another thing I’ve curious about. What makes us so special?”

  “Well, you and the rest of the, um, volunteers are all suffering from severe depression. You see, any normal person’s natural defenses would fight against the nanites, essentially creating a battleground within their body. In the end, the person’s natural defenses would end up killing him or her. You, however, want to die. This creates a certain state of mind--if you want to call it that. By being in this state of mind, your body just accepts the foreign intrusion and allows the integration of alien technology.”

  After the scientist finished double-checking everything, he then had Liam lean back as he sealed up the enhancement chamber. Liam could hear the rush of air and almost immediately started to feel groggy. His last thought as he succumbed to sleep was of Leah and how he wished he would have told her that he loved her but now it would never be, and then darkness took him.

  July 1, 2012, 6:30 a.m. ESTHanscom Air Force Base

  Fire blazed through his skull, reaching out and downward throughout his body, burning its way through his veins and arteries, reaching outward to every capillary. Muscles contracted to the point where they felt like they would seize up, then released as his back arched when a fresh bolt of fire shot through his body again. He was aware of people around him yelling to each other, but he couldn’t understand a word. The pain continued on and on until he thought he was going to lose his mind. It continued like this for an immeasurable amount of time. When the pain became too much, the darkness would take him, but every time he regained consciousness, the pain would take him. Then, just as suddenly as it came on, it was over--pain receding in seconds. At this point, he could understand the voices he heard, although he couldn’t see them as at the moment his vision was blurred.

  “He seems to be stabilizing; all vitals are returning to norm,” said a female voice.

  “He is the first to react this way and survive; the others who did died,” said a male voice.

  “Yes, it is truly fascinating . . . we will have to follow this subject closely,” said a different voice that sounded male yet slightly metallic.

  Liam’s throat was dry; he tried to speak, and it came out as a croak.

  “Get him some water,” the female voice demanded.

  Someone pressed a straw to his lips and told him softly to drink. Cold water quenched his thirst as he sucked at the straw. When he was done, he pushed the hand that held the straw and cup away.

  “Where am I?” As soon as he said this, he realized another more important question. “Who am I?”

  “You are at Hanscom Air Force Base. Do you remember what you came here for? That part of your memory should still be intact from the nanites.”

  Liam’s memory was a cloudy murk, but soon thoughts came to his head that were clear.

  “I am a pilot with the 101st Aerospace Fighter Group of the Earth Defense Force.” More memories came to him. “I am Lieutenant Liam Brennan, First Squadron of the battlecruiser . . .” Liam’s voice trailed off, realizing that he didn’t know the name of the battlecruiser.

  “Don’t worry, Lieutenant; you haven’t forgotten the name of your ship,” said an amused male voice. “It simply hasn’t been named yet.”

  “When will my vision return? It’s all blurry, although it seems a little clearer now that I think about it. And why can’t I remember anything but my name, rank, and technical knowledge?”

  “Your vision will clear up in about an hour. Rest for now while we finish our examination of you. As for the lack of memory . . . well, it is a side effect of the enhancements. Sorry, but everything in your past is now gone. You are the last to come out of the enhancement process,” said the metallic voice, which Liam couldn’t place as male or female.

  Slowly, over the course of an hour, his vision returned, and he soon saw that three male scientists, one female scientist, and one whom Liam took to be one of the Meshtrell were the group looking after him. He looked around and saw that the other enhancement chambers were now empty. No one else seemed to be around. Remembering something one of the scientists had said, he spoke.

  “You mentioned others had died? How many died?”

  “We lost thirty-five men and women during the enhancement. We nearly lost you, but it seems your body fought through it. As for the others, it seems that their brain patterns weren’t as strong as they needed to be.”

  “Does th
is mean my brain pattern wasn’t as strong as the others?” Liam asked the closest scientist.

  “No, that would be incorrect. Actually, your brain-wave pattern registered off the scale. Why your body reacted in that way, we are not sure of, although preliminary tests indicate that your body’s integration percentage is the highest of all the test subjects.”

  Liam just stared, clearly not understanding what all that meant. I am sure I will eventually find out, he thought to himself. He had the strangest feeling he still had something he needed to do, someone he needed to talk to. But for the life of him, he couldn’t remember what or who.

  The examination finished, he was given a black jumpsuit to wear with black combat boots. The jumpsuit somehow looked familiar with his name and a sunburst on it. He had some difficulty dressing, as his muscles didn’t seem to want to respond at first, but after ten minutes of trying, he finally got the suit on. The scientists had left by the time he had finished, but the Meshtrell stayed behind and was just standing there, watching him.

  “Is there something I can help you with?” Liam asked as he finished tying his boots.

  The alien looked around, clearly surprised that it was being addressed. Liam had to think of the alien as an “it” because he didn’t know if it was male, female, or even if they had a sex. After finally deciding that it was the subject Liam had addressed, the Meshtrell turned to Liam and spoke in its metallic voice.

  “Oh . . . yes . . . fascinating, very fascinating!” the Meshtrell said excitedly. Then, seeming to realize by the look on Liam’s face that it didn’t answer the question, the Meshtrell spoke again as it extended a four-fingered hand as if to shake hands. “Hello, I am known as Reeta. I will be training you on how to manipulate your body’s natural defenses as well as personal combat training.”

  Liam shook the proffered hand as he spoke. “Natural defenses?” He looked down at his body skeptically, searching for something different but clearly finding nothing out of the ordinary.

  “Now I must take you to your fellow pilots. Please follow me, Lieutenant.” Reeta turned and walked off.

  Liam looked down at himself again to make sure nothing had changed, and then followed after Reeta.

  July 1, 2012, 8:10 a.m. ESTHanscom Air Force Base

  Reeta led Liam to a large auditorium where several men and women stood about conversing. As Liam looked about, he spotted a tall man speaking to a short blond woman. The woman didn’t look familiar at all, but something about the man he seemed to recognize. As he walked toward the man, something gnawed at him, as if he should know him somehow. The man and woman broke off the conversation and turned to Liam as he came up to them.

  “Hello,” spoke the tall man. “My name is Evan Maxis, and this pretty lady is Crystal McKenna.”

  As he introduced the woman, she smiled and nodded toward Liam.

  “Nice to meet you. I am Liam Brennan . . .” Pausing, Liam tilted his head to the side before saying, “You know, you look awfully familiar. I know we lost all our memories with the enhancements, but I feel like I knew you.”

  “You know, I have the very same feeling--odd isn’t it?” Evan said.

  Before they could delve deeper into the lost memory, a man spoke from a stage at one end of the auditorium.

  “Excuse me? Everyone, please take your seats. We are about to begin,” said the short stuffy-looking man in a suit.

  Once everyone had taken their seats, the man spoke again. “Thank you, everyone, and congratulations on making it through the process. Step one is complete, and now we work on step two, which we are here to explain to you. The best person to go over this is one of our esteemed Meshtrell, Driika.”

  The stuffy man turned to welcome a Meshtrell as it walked to the microphone. After a few minutes of trying to get the microphone stand to lower, the stuffy man turned and took his seat.

  “I am known as Driika. As you all know, you men and women will be the pilots of the battlecruiser being sent to fight a delaying action. You all know the mission will result in your deaths. We will not lie to you--one battlecruiser cannot stop what we call a Dread Fleet. A Dread Fleet consists of around one hundred capital warships and roughly four thousand fighters, with about ten million shock troops for planetary assault. Since the Shenkar believe that no being in the universe can stand against them, they don’t move their fleet as a large group. Instead, they spread it out as much as possible to maximize their chances to find sentient races. Their scout groups consist of fighter craft with light carriers, destroyers, and light and medium cruisers.

  First, one of their scout groups will come within range to pick up remnants of your radio waves that have been beamed into space over the past years. They will then start bringing in their other scout groups, and then last of all will be their battlecruisers. Once the battlecruisers arrive, it will be over for you. They will mass the fleet somewhere outside your system--where, we are unsure of. Once the fleet has been assembled, they will enter Earth’s system and launch a full-scale assault.

  “Your job will be to ambush their supply ships and any patrols or scout craft you find. Or if you have sufficient numbers, you can take out their destroyer or cruiser-class capital ships. Do not, on any account, try to destroy one of their battlecruisers. These shields on these ships can withstand the energy cannons from your fighters. Your battlecruiser could stand against one of these mighty ships, but the problem with this is they always travel with support ships. A screen of fighters precedes a line of a minimum of three destroyers and two light cruisers.

  “If it were possible to hide a squadron or two of fighters until the fleet passed, then a combined attack on their shields with antimatter torpedoes would bring the shields down. The only problem is that you would need to time it so all the torpedoes impacted at the same time, and you would need five of them. So needless to say, before you could destroy the battlecruiser, you would lose your own battlecruiser. That would leave you stuck in that area of space, as your fighters are only equipped with pulse drives and not the fold drives of the capital ship.”

  Next to him, Crystal raised her hand to ask a question. When motioned by Driika to proceed, she then spoke.

  “I don’t understand: what is a pulse drive and what are fold drives?”

  By the looks on many faces, Crystal hadn’t been the only one wondering that very same thing.

  “A pulse drive is what you will find on your light and heavy fighters. It is somewhat close to a fold drive, so let me first explain a fold drive. This takes a point in space and essentially folds the fabric of space to another point in space, and then pulls your ship through to that point. A pulse drive works much like a fold drive but over very short distances. It takes the fighter and creates very minor folds, essentially moving it in and out of normal space. It makes several very short jumps, giving the appearance of great speed. It is, however, very dangerous to engage your drive while in combat. The engine makes it impossible to use your shields. In addition, if you suffer any impacts from an energy cannon, the resulting energy will cause a chain reaction that will overload your engine, causing it to explode and taking your fighter with it.”

  A short, timid, mousy-looking man to Liam’s right raised his hand, waiting until Driika indicated for him to speak.

  “What is to stop the Shenkar from simply folding their entire fleet together where they first find evidence of us and then folding their entire fleet right to Earth?”

  “Fold technology is very sensitive in its uses. You can only fold a capital ship to an area that it has passed through before or at the minimum that its nav computer to has been before. Luckily, the battlecruiser you will be stationed on has already passed through the area where you will encounter the advanced elements of the Shenkar fleet, so while they have to slowly bring in their fleet, you will fold into the sector ahead of them and lay your ambushes.”

  Looking around for any more questions, Driika looked down at a handheld computer, touched the screen, and shook its head. Then appearing
to have realized that it wasn’t alone, it looked back up and spoke.

  “Today is the first day of training. You will be trained in space combat and eventually hand-to-hand combat.”

  Several hands went up, but Driika seemed to know what was on their minds. “The reason for the hand-to-hand combat is that in the event the Shenkar assault your battlecruiser, they will disable it and want to take captives. They have never run into you humans, so they will want to study you. Shenkar believe that to kill an enemy in personal combat is the utmost show of honor. In fact, a Shenkar shock trooper will stop whatever he or she is doing to answer an honor challenge--or to the Shenkar, it’s called Sheeata. Do not fear, for once you have completed training, the Shenkar will not match your abilities in one-on-one combat. However, one word of warning: specify who you are challenging. If you aren’t specific as to whom you are challenging, then any within hearing of Sheeata will attack. Consequently, in the midst of a battle, you could be facing dozens to hundreds of opponents.”

  Driika once again paused to look around for any more questions, then turned and walked off the stage without another word. Apparently, the stuffy little man wasn’t expecting this and jumped out of his chair and hurried to the podium.

  “Okay, everyone, please check the schedules in your left breast pocket to see where you are supposed to be, then proceed to that location after you stop at the table to pick up your laptop, which you will need for your studies.”

  Liam fished the paper of out his pocket. Looking over it, he found that he was to proceed to Building 216 for space combat training. The room emptied quickly; men and women moved forward to gather up a laptop and then headed off to their assignments. Liam soon became aware of two people standing near him. Turning, he saw that Evan and Crystal had remained behind.