by Brett P. S.
He peered around the conference room and examined the faces of his fellow mates while the engines hummed in the background noise of piping and exhaust fans. The conference room seemed to have shrunk in size since his last encounter, though it was likely the tension. Miss Dubois hadn’t expected it to come to this. Engaging a Ghost who sat on the Special Task Force … whatever could prompt the executive decision in the first place? Elijah was the crazy one, but Miss Dubois was sweating bullets as she held her posture in a clean vest and suit. She’d groomed her raven hair into a bun, though he could tell she hastily compiled the form.
To Elijah’s right, James stood with a somber expression, his arms and legs crossed as he stood silently. James tapped his expensive shoes and ran his fingers through his white hair. He hadn’t dyed it, as Elijah thought when they first met. James selected the prosthesis when he selected the surgery. Not everyone opted in for net access via his or her own biological neurons. While the outpatient procedure was practically painless and left little scarring, most civilians were fine with their tablets and smart devices, but James took an inch and ran the whole 100-meter dash. One might scarcely call him human at this point. Even Miss Dubois admitted she didn’t know how much of him was cybernetic.
“You’re looking at me again, boy,” James said, eyeing him from higher stature.
Honestly, he could have fabricated his height as well. A simple procedure could add a handful of inches to his shins and thighs, and a good surgeon would seamlessly integrate the piece into a work indistinguishable from God’s own hands.
“Sorry, sir,” Elijah said. He kept his head down.
James was nice enough in idle banter, but he took his ego and wit to the extreme occasionally in the short time he served aboard the Gallant. It didn’t help matters either that he drifted between highs and lows from the cacophony of meds he ingested to treat ailments caused by his plethora of biomedical implants. There was a reason most cyborgs hadn’t gone as far as him. Pain flare-ups and migraines caused by overused or malfunctioning equipment comprised some of the simple issues, a small portion of a long list of complaints a man shouldn’t have until his twilight years.
“Our point man did his job well,” Miss Dubois said. “I wish things hadn’t gone so far, though I suppose I couldn’t realistically expect a gentle stroll through Maiiar Station.”
Miss Dubois sighed and nodded as the doors behind burst open.
“Looks to be I’m late,” Abigail said, striding forward. “Almost had him too.”
“An apology would have sufficed,” Miss Dubois said. “And did you have to bring that apparatus with you?”
Abigail hoisted her signature rifle, a carbine weapon she called Knight, over her shoulder. The wear on the barrel showed in scuffed steel and notches she carved into it for each life she’d taken. Abigail was also a cyborg, though compared to James, she might as well have been a Full Blood. Strength augmentations and firing stabilizers wove around the muscles in her forearms and shoulders. Combined with the training of a former OTO operative, she practically had to try to miss a mark.
“Knight travels with me,” Abigail said. “I should remind you of our contract.”
“I’m regretting said document already,” Miss Dubois said. “Regardless, we have other issues right now we must resolve prior to letting you all go your separate ways. GU forces raised the station to high alert, and we’ll have to lose them in pursuit before I am authorized to drop you off.”
“I don’t get it,” Abigail said. “Why not drum up them Phantom Drives and jump?”
Miss Dubois gently rolled her eyes. “It doesn’t work that way. A thousand Vector traps orbiting Maiiar station activated via digital uplink. If we activate a space fold now, we’ll end up ten thousand kilometers away with charred engines and a busted hull.”
James smiled. “So you’re saying slow and steady is the way to win this race?”
“Yes,” Miss Dubois said. “It’ll take a few minutes to for the GU to organize, but once they do, we’re in for serious trouble. Our shields can’t hold against their salvos for long.”
“Fair enough,” Elijah said. “What do you want us to do?”
“You can’t do anything,” she said, glaring down at him with a stern expression.
She was right though. He’d completed his part and outlived his usefulness for now. Cyborgs such as Abigail and James were far better suited to assisting with turret fire and GU communication disruptions. Elijah glanced down at his hand. The condition of uselessness came around with being a Full Blood, good enough to fill an oddly specific void and discarded shortly afterward. He shrugged his shoulders and nodded.
Part Two
Plight of the Hunted
Chapter 5
Gallant Escape
SBG Gallant, Gemini Sector
“Shortly after contact with I’malar, the Old Terrace Order created a joint government with the I’malarian Consulate (IC), known as the Galactic Union. Suspicions clashed strongly against OTO’s official reasoning for the venture and whether the agreement was mutual or coerced.” – Old Terrace Order (OTO) Archives
Charlotte Dubois, Field Commander of the SBG Gallant and liaison between the Starlight Brigade and OTO’s own Logan MacConnell. The SBG was a guerilla organization secretly backed by a handful of OTO officers, MacConnell holding the largest financial contribution by far. The man accrued his due share of wealth and he, the same as many other centralists within the Old Terrace Order, ill obliged the idea of economic dependence on I’malar. Charlotte agreed with the notion, a probable reason as to how she ended up commanding her current vessel, adrift in starlight as the Gallant flew past Vector Traps.
Charlotte flicked aside a lock of her hair as she examined the various video panels held aloft in the bridge, connected to the ceiling and walls via contractible mechanical mounts. Debris struck the hull as the Gallant raced through a slew of plasma fire zipping through space behind them. The bridge, an area about ten meters by ten meters, grew livid as technicians below her plotted course corrections with their mechanical fingers, little devices much faster than ordinary human hands.
“Chandler,” Charlotte shouted, “How many?”
“More than we can handle, ma’am,” he replied over comm. “It will take time to break through their encryption. OTO uses predictable algorithms though. I might have their ships shooting each other before long.”
“Spare me the overconfidence. I want real solutions, not fantasies.”
“As you wish, ma’am. In which case, we’re out of luck.”
“Hey I got a question, captain lady!” Abigail chimed in. “When do I get to shoot stuff?”
“Not yet,” Charlotte said. “Range on the Gallant’s weaponry is limited. The armaments were designed for close hit and run tactics.”
“Groan,” Abigail said.
“For now, keep an eye out for missiles. Shoot them down if they get too close.”
Communications fell silent. Charlotte gazed out into the quiet space overhead, a slice of nebula home to Orion Sector. Orion drifted near the borders of OTO space, a place thriving with thieves and vagrants to name a few. They’d be safe once they made the jump, but the Gallant needed to perform the maneuver outside the effective radius of a standard OTO vector trap, and that was being generous. Curse Terrace for many things, but they knew ingenuity. In all the years I’malarians possessed their advanced technology, it took Terrace ten years to invent a method of interrupting Phantom Drives.
The video screens flickered and vibrated as they filled with noise for a brief second before returning to normalcy. The Gallant shook with a tremendous rumbling groan as titanium bent and swayed under the pressure of a deep impact to the outer hull. How did it get past their shields unless …
“Damage report, Chandler!”
“The last hit scraped off a chunk of the hull, but I sealed off the bulkheads. We’re fine, but you’re going to want it looked at.”
“It bypassed our shields, didn’t it
?”
“Yes,” Chandler replied. “Frightful things. I never thought we’d encounter them so soon.”
“What’s all this nonsense?” Abigail said.
Charlotte frowned. “Plasma weaponry hyper accelerated by specialized Phantom Drives. It’s beyond plasma and the material bypasses shields.”
“Well, that’s cheating,” Abigail said.
“And it ratchets up our time table,” Charlotte replied. “We need to move faster. Chandler, divert power from shields to engines.”
“Already halfway there, ma’am.”
The Gallant’s engines hummed in a soft loudness that permeated the bridge. Beads of sweat coalesced on her forehead, and the palms of her hands grew cold. She gripped the railing as she stood over the edge, staring down the slim odds of the crew’s survival. Charlotte came face to face with the unsettling reality that she’d done all she could. Like Elijah, she’d outlived her usefulness, if but for the moment. It was up to them now, though she remained alert regardless.
Curses and screams echoed through the static in her mind as plasma fire tore through the hull three more times, each a glancing blow slightly closer to fatality than the last. Their lives hung in a delicate balance. One stray shot could claim them completely. Charlotte held her head high and corrected her slouched posture as she waited patiently for the Gallant to exit the Vector Trap field.
The Gallant burned, molten metal tearing through the bulkheads and eating through the outer hull. How it even flew was beyond her. Luckily, no plasma fire had hit the thrusters in the rear of the craft, and the Gallant maintained its forward speed. Computer aided visuals plotted the field, and the moment they cleared the last Vector Trap, Charlotte yelled.
“Now!”
Chapter 6
Dreaded Debrief
SBG HQ, Orion Sector
“Ghosts operate one stage above a Full Blood in terms of mechanical implants. They rely solely on the transformative properties of a portable Phantom Drive. The device is painstakingly difficult to create and users require a healthy mount of mental training to operate. Ghosts use their personal Phantom Drives to accelerate their own molecular structures, granting increased strength, speed and healing factor. A lucky few are capable of straddling the line between physical form and the gaseous incorporeal state Ghosts are famously known for in the GU.” – Old Terrace Order (OTO) Archives
Elijah’s nerves faded hours after the incident. The feelings of helplessness that burned a hole in his heart quieted down, silent for a while. The SBG Gallant had arrived in Orion Sector, and Elijah stood in the decontamination chamber in which he hastily ended his flight away from the Ghost. Jaeger … now that was a name he wouldn’t soon forget. If he ever came face to face with the man again, he wouldn’t need to worry about retaining the memory for a second time.
“Pretty sweet ride, eh?” Elijah said.
James smiled and nodded. Abigail shrugged. Fair enough. She didn’t get to do much besides shoot down a missile or two, though she accomplished more than he did. Abigail held her own against a Ghost for a full twelve seconds without even one casualty. Her marksmanship definitely proved itself, but to calculate so quickly, she must have had some mental implants installed. It was normal for cyborgs to fib a little on their job applications, similar to the way people lie about their height or weight. There was a particular thing about cyborgs. Once a potential employer knew the brand and location of a particular implant, the power in the relationship tipped in favor of the other party, and that was something any good cyborg knew better than to allow.
“Quit staring,” Abigail said. She scoffed and tilted her head away.
He’d stared off twice now. Damn, if she wasn’t cute though. She appeared human enough. Long curly auburn hair, thick burgundy boots and a tattered old crimson OTO uniform with the insignias ripped off and replaced with her own signage. She still wore the metals and the tassels, though each piece of copper had a line carved into it. Abigail definitely wanted the world to know she hated everything about OTO.
“You’re clear,” Miss Dubois’s voice rang in through the intercom inside of the decontamination chamber.
The gasses and lasers subsided and the doors slid open, revealing the inner workings of the Starlight Brigade Headquarters. As some smoke billowed out, it crept along the ground and swept over Miss Dubois’s newly fitted shoes. She wore a loose navy blue uniform, an OTO military standard minus the crimson hues, though Elijah noted a couple design changes. OTO officers didn’t invest their time in pockets and zippers. Miss Dubois stood in perfectly retro attire with a stern expression on her face.
“Did we do something wrong?” Elijah asked.
“Follow me,” she said, gesturing deeper into the halls. “I’ll have your debriefing ahead.”
She didn’t seem happy to get rid of the crew. Usually that was how it went, though for some reason, Miss Dubois acted wholly different from Elijah’s previous employers. Guerilla organizations must not fit the mold, though they paid reasonably well compared to pirates and fractured militaries.
Elijah followed Miss Dubois and the crew though a series of halls in a station the size of a small town orbiting a dead proto planet in an Orion star system. Nothing but a pile of rocks and minerals looming below them in the dead of space, hardly worth the effort to establish an orbital station, though it worked well for the SBG HQ. They’d be safe from discovery for at least a decade, and they could move the station afterwards with a simple engine attachment.
It struck Elijah that the fact that she was showing the three of them their secret location meant something disastrous was about to take place. James must have realized it before the thought even poked into the back of his mind, and Abigail walked with a similar air of discomfort. This wasn’t a debriefing, not completely.
“I’ll debrief you all here,” Miss Dubois said.
She stopped in a compact chamber of a room with thick metallic walls all around. A video screen two meters across hung by an arm on the ceiling, operated by a console jutting out of the wall near Miss Dubois. Elijah tapped his knuckles against the material and sound came back weak, as if something thick backed the ordinary thin plating. He frowned.
“It’s lined with lead,” James said. “Best for keeping tidy secrets.”
“I don’t want any unauthorized communication,” Miss Dubois said. “It’s for everyone’s benefit.”
Abigail shrugged and set her rifle butt down on the floor, holding the dangerous end like the head of a walking cane. Elijah followed suit. It seemed the only one flustered by the predicament was James, but it made sense.
“The information in this debriefing is privileged, of course,” Miss Dubois said.
“Of course,” Abigail noted.
Miss Dubois turned and typed a few keystrokes into the console beside her. The video screen flashed as it powered on. A bright white flare faded to black and then slowly emerged into the optimized texture of the Starlight Brigade insignia.
“Logan, can you hear us?” Miss Dubois said.
“What’s this game?” Abigail said. “Where’s our debriefing?”
“I’m glad to know you all made it,” a voice boomed in through the video screen speakers. There must have been some filters running through it. “My presence for the initial portion of this debriefing is really more of a formality. Charlotte will secure all of you transports to the system of your choosing. You’ll find your pay has been credited to your individual accounts.”
“Glad to hear it,” Elijah said. “So what’s next on the agenda?”
Miss Dubois frowned. “It’s completely optional, but I want you to hear what our chief financial backer has to say.”
Chapter 7
Hopeful Request
SBG HQ, Orion Sector
“The Core Systems are an amalgamation of the three colonized Terrace Sectors and the I’malar Collective. The former includes the Solus, Gemini and Orion Sectors while the latter contains a loose cluster of worlds few outside hig
h-ranking officials of the OTO military have seen firsthand. Sparse photographs have leaked from proportionally infrequent encounters and pundits across the Sectors speculate on the true numbers of I’malar’s people.” – Old Terrace Order (OTO) Archives
Abigail Rothschild, age 26 and always hitting the mark. Abigail flicked back a lock of her cherry hair, the piece formerly hanging across her left eyebrow. She could do without the curls. Maybe another treatment was in order come next time she traveled to Gemini or Solus. She’d have to keep her head down for the latter, though few members of the OTO military could pick out her face at first glance. Her identity, for lack of a better phrase, no longer existed. Damn kingpins did more than that when they outed her.
“I should start by explaining what you stole,” Logan said.
Abigail nodded. The name sounded familiar, though the SBG would have used code names, so she paid it little mind. She eased her grip on Knight’s barrel and shifted more of her weight against the lead lined circular wall of the chamber.
The man continued. “I assume you are all aware of the squids’ monopoly on Xarconium?”
“It goes without saying,” James said. “Our neighbors don’t much favor sharing. Why would they, when they hold the best cards?”
“The SBG and several scientists I employ have been working on a Xarconium substitute.”
“The dreams of madmen!” Abigail said. “OTO’s been working on it for a century, and they’ve got nothing.”