Star Guild Episode Zero

by Brandon Ellis

quick shut-eye. She wanted to tell them it was only a fifteen-minute ride, but understood their long days, their short breaks, and their unfriendly schedules. Coming down to Lumus on a daily basis was never as ideal as the governance portrayed it to be.

  She picked an empty row in the back and by a window, staring out at the mountain silhouetted by the waning sun. It was gigantic, the biggest of its kind on Lumus.

  “Mt. Gabrielle,” she whispered to herself. The mountain that goes on forever.

  The ship trembled, then lifted into a hover. Then the front end pointed to the sky.

  The captain came on the horn. “This is your captain speaking and—”

  “Shut up!” bellowed the passengers, a ritual long past its prime.

  “Alright. Hold on tight,” responded the captain.

  The ship blasted forward, exceeding the speed of sound in a matter of seconds, then accelerated even faster until they were out of the atmosphere and into the exosphere for a moment. Then they they slipped into space and took their place among the magnificent brightly scattered stars.

  “We'll be at Starbase Matrona in—”

  “Shut up,” mumbled the passengers again.

  “Roger,” replied the captain.

  Crystal closed her eyes. Before she knew it, she opened them to find that they had docked inside Sphere 1 of the starbase and the door to the ship had opened.

  She felt a pat on her shoulder. “Time to wake, Chief.”

  “Hendricks, I'm awake,” said Crystal, yawning.

  “I'll save you a seat on the hovertrain, okay?”

  Crystal nodded and followed him out of the transport ship and to the hoverstation just a block down the road.

  They showed their cards to the hovertrain attendants and entered the next hovertrain to Sphere 2, the home of the Mechies and Techies, assistants, and managers of the Lumus warehouses.

  Crystal sat in the hovertain car and leaned her head against the window. She closed her eyes, and for a second time, opened them just as they arrived to their destination, drool slithering down her lip.

  She wiped her mouth with her sleeve. “I can't believe how tired I am.”

  “Well, get a good sleep, Chief. We have an early morning tomorrow.”

  She slumped. “Why do I do this again?”

  “Do what?” said Hendricks, standing. “Mining?”

  “Yes, why am I a Mechie?” She shook her head in disdain. “It's not the highlighted career I always wanted.”

  They stepped out of the hovertrain car, walking toward an elevator. “What career did you want, Chief?” asked Hendricks.

  Crystal pressed the elevator button and thought for a moment. “No idea.” The elevator opened and they walked in.

  “Maybe that's why you're a miner because you don't know what you want and you're taking something merely to pay the bills.”

  “Gee, ya' think?” She crossed her arms and leaned her hip against the elevator wall. “How do you do it? You've been going for thirty years at it.”

  Hendricks smiled. “I love it.”

  Crystal gave him a long stare, looking in his eyes for any sarcasm. There was none. “You're not kidding. Well, you should be Chief.”

  “Nah, I just do my stuff and get done. That's all I want.”

  They exited the elevator, bidding each other goodbye and walked in opposite directions.

  Ten minutes down the alleyways and crossing streets in an empty Sphere 2, where everyone was either fast asleep or doing who knows what, Crystal entered her apartment, took off her shoes, and completed her nightly ritual of turning on the vid channels, placing a glass of water on her night stand, and ate an apple. She then fell asleep and when she woke up, her lips were parched, her mouth was dry, and she was starving.

  She looked at the time. It was morning and there was plenty of time to get ready and get back on the transport and head down to Lumus for another mining shift inside her Mech. But, she was so tired.

  Another ten minutes of shut-eye.

  She glanced at her com link, seeing 36 com messages waiting for her. She usually only had one or two, but 36?

  She lay her head down on her pillow. She would get back to the messages after she snoozed.

  She suddenly sat up. “Thirty-six?” she said out loud.

  The com link also displayed a calender, indicating the time and date for each message. The first message was left three days ago. She sat up, checking the day's date.

  “I've missed three days...of work? I slept three days?” It can't be.

  But it had been three days. Three days since she ate that apple and filled up a glass of water to place on her nightstand where it still sat.

  It seriously can't have been three days. My com link is fucked up.

  She took a drink of water and looked at the time. Yes, ten more minutes of sleep will do. She took another sip, then downed the rest of the water in a few large gulps.

  The blue light of Mount Gabrielle then entered her mind, and she lay her head back down on her pillow and closed her eyes. Sleep soon took hold, and it would be another day before she woke up.

  One Month Before the Attack

  “Why do you want me to keep searching this sector? There is nothing relevant here, Admiral.”

  It had been a month of detective work, and nothing to show for it, at least in Connor's mind. He was in sector 166, and he wondered if all the bulvas he'd be receiving once he got back to the starbase would be worth it all.

  “It's very germane, Connor,” replied the Admiral. “So far, you haven't found an asteroid belt anywhere in the sector, or any remains of a massive starship that supposedly hit an asteroid belt when it jumped into this sector. What about that isn't germane?”

  Connor stared at his HDC, watching the admiral stare intensely back at him. “I'm getting a little homesick, I guess.” He swiveled his command chair around, staring at the open space behind him, seeing his perfectly made bed, his dirty folded clothes, and the shower and bathroom—spotless. “I'm starting to lose my mind in here. All I can do is work out, shower, shave, and eat. After I do that, I tidy up everything, just because I don't have anything else to do but fly around on auto-pilot, observing nothing but an empty planet here and there, or stars all around.”

  The admiral smiled. “You have to admit that it's beautiful.”

  “After a while, beauty gets mundane...if that's all you're looking at. It becomes...normal.”

  “So, nothing to report today?” asked the admiral.

  “Nor yesterday, or the day before, or the day before that.”

  Connor turned in his chair to face the admiral, and eyed space out of the cockpit windows surrounding him. A planet was off to his left, green in color with several moons orbiting it. It was a gas giant, and glowed against the backdrop of space.

  “I'm going to leave this sector and go to another one. Then, can I head home?” questioned Connor.

  “You read my mind. I have a sector I want you to check out. Among the many reports that we found from the lost data streams from Tech Quarters on Starship Hathor, they triangulated on several sectors. I don't know what they were triangulating on, but sector 166 was one of them, and 197 was another.”

  “Okay, I'll patch in 197. I'll search for a week, then head home.”

  “Deal.” The admiral smiled. “Until then, Connor, I bid you good luck and I thank you.”

  “No problem, sir.”

  The admiral's image blinked out and Connor pressed the numbers on his control panel. He buckled up, saying under his breath, “Here goes nothing.”

  He pressed the hyperdrive lever upward, and in a flash he was in sector 197.

  “What the Guild!?” He banked left, twisting away from a very large ship he'd never seen before and then pulled up to avoid another smaller craft, much the same looking as the other ship.

  “There are crafts in this sector! Are these Star Guild models that I don't know about?”

  “Connor, this is Shadow Watt. Admiral By
rd left the building.”

  “That fast?”

  “He had other business.”

  There was a pause on the com link as Connor moved his craft farther away from the two he had just encountered, the back of his craft to them.

  “They don't know I'm here,” responded Connor. “That's good.”

  “Can you move your craft's cameras toward the ships? I didn't get much of a look-see.”

  Connor pressed a few holographic buttons on his HDC, moving the cameras into better position.

  “Hmm,” pondered Shadow. “Those are new to me. I wonder if they are from our species.”

  “Our species? What the Guild do you mean, our species?” Connor stared into his HDC monitor, watching the screen closely, seeing very little movement from the other crafts, though there was some, meaning they were currently manned. Both ships were triangular-shaped, with a dragon's face at the pinnacle or the front of the craft. One was larger than any ship he'd ever seen, including Star Guild's starships which manned nearly 10,000 people. The other craft was twice his craft's size, but neither seemed to notice him. He was well cloaked.

  “I've always wondered if there were other species, but who knows.”

  “What do I do?” asked Connor.

  “Just monitor them. Watch their movements and report them here. Admiral Byrd will be very interested in what you have just found.”

  “This will be a huge discovery,” thought Connor out loud.

  “Maybe in time, but for the moment this won't be broadcasted anywhere. This mission is covert, top secret—meaning, you ain't going to see this on prime time news.”

  Connor shifted in his chair, then felt the tight restraints around his shoulders and belt. “So, I sit and watch.”

  “And record,” replied Shadow. “Can you intercept any communication on either one of the ships?”

  “I can do that?” questioned Connor.

  “Just find their frequency.”

  “Then they'll find me.”

  Shadow gave a short laugh. “No, they won't. I've got my ways. Your HDC has a narrow span in its copper tuners, making hacking another frequency very easy, but any frequency coming from you is scrambled. They may pick up something, but they won't know where it's coming from. But, again, I don't know what this species is or how advanced their technology might be.”

  “And, if it's a different species, they probably don't speak our language.”

  “Yeah, well still, it would be pretty badass to hear a different language.”

  A flash of brilliant light pierced through Connor's cockpit window, then faded a moment later. Accompanying that light came a small armada of starships, all pyramid in shape, counting six.

  “Do you see that?” asked Connor.

  “You bet I do. This is exhilarating,” shouted Shadow. “Can you go in for a closer look?”

  A panic hit Connor. “I...uh...don't know about that.”

  “Well, do something! Intercept their communications link.”

  “Again, how?”

  “I'll do it on my end.”

  The com link tuner started changing channels, bringing more static than anything. For an instant Connor heard something, and so did Shadow since he backed the tuner up a bit and captured the sound. It wasn't their language.

  “Do you hear that, Connor? It's fascinating. There are Beings out there that aren't human. Guild! There are Beings out there!”

  “And they have war ships, Shadow. That doesn't suggest anything good to me or you or humanity. I think—”

  Connor halted. For a second, he thought he heard someone speak in his language. “Did you hear that?”

  “I sure as Guild did,” responded Shadow, more enthused than his last statement. “I'm turning it up.”

  What came over the wire was quite astounding, and he could understand it.

  “...we'll bring in our own forces. Drakonis, my friends, you all sit back and watch our novice pilots at work. This is how we train.”

  The response was in a different language, one that Connor couldn't even come close to making out. It sounded quite odd.

  “I understand. We'll bring in a flood of new recruits and those that survive will continue to train until they are elite. That's how we do it. It will be an easy task, our ships outnumber them, but we will only bring in exactly what they have. They'll attack back, but this will surely be a surprise. We'll be tactical. We'll be ferocious. We'll exterminate them. Once that has been accomplished, we will bring in the next starbase and start the program over again.”

  “Starbase?” asked Connor.

  “Shh,” replied Shadow. “Let them keep talking. I want to hear it all.”

  “...won't work. I have it under strict orders from Lien-L that Nankuani ships are allowed to attack. Your Drakonis ships and personnel must stay put.”

  There was commotion of some kind over the com link, and whoever was speaking from the Drakonis race did not sound happy. Their ships then lit up with a brilliant light, then disappeared and the link went dead.

  Connor and Shadow both sat in silence until Connor spoke up. “Did any of that make sense to you?”

  Connor could see Shadow shaking his head over the HDC. “Not at all. It sounds like they are attacking someone, but who? Are we the starbase they were speaking about?”

  “My guess is that we are. I'm jumping back to let—”

  “Someone is here. No one should be here. How did you get in here?”

  Connor's eyes widened as he watched Shadow pick up a chair and throw it at someone off screen. “Shadow! What's going on?”

  Connor saw two big men, much like the men who had broke into his apartment back on the starbase, come into view.

  “Get out!” yelled Shadow, kicking at the two men.

  They were too big though, and easily held him at bay. One then reached into his back pocket and pulling out a bag, covered Shadow's head. Shadow writhed and struggled to break free. They pulled Shadow out of view and the HDC on Shadow's end blinked off.

  “Shadow! Shadow!” Connor frantically pressed buttons, hoping one of them would somehow turn Shadow's HDC back on. Nothing worked.

  Connor paced back and forth, pulling at his hair. “What do I do?”

  He dashed back to his command chair, plopping back down in it and searched for Admiral Byrd's com link line on his HDC, but no luck. Admiral Byrd was unlisted, and for good reason—everyone would call him.

  His ship convulsed and Connor fell to the side, landing hard against the floor. “What the Guild?”

  From the rear camera's position displayed on the HDC screen he could see an inbound starfighter, most likely launched from one of the six pyramid starships, heading straight toward him.

  “Did the guy shoot at me?” Connor exclaimed out loud.

  He strapped himself in and powered up full engines and ion thrusters. He clicked on his weapons arsenal, noting that both lasers and photon blasters were online.

  The enemy starfighter closed in, letting off a series of shots, and Connor blasted forward, causing the starfighter to miss by a mile.

  Connor swept his craft around, making a long wide turn, hoping to get behind the starfighter and get off an easy shot. The starfighter was too fast, and cut off Connor's turn by banking in and making a more narrow turn, firing rapidly at Connor.

  Again the starfighter missed, as Connor twisted and turned in the opposite direction. The good thing about that maneuver, thought Connor, was that it kept him alive. The bad thing was that it easily allowed the bogey to engage directly behind Connor. Not good at all.

  Connor dipped straight down, then up, twisting the craft as he did so, hearing toiletries and whatever he had left sitting out, slam against the ceiling and the ground several times. He hoped one of them didn't ricochet and smack him upside the head.

  Laser streamed past his flank. Another miss.

  How am I going to get behind this bastard?

  He thought about doing his break trick, which won him the S
GAG games, but it wouldn't work on such a fast starfighter and an elite pilot. He was going to have to do it the old-fashioned way and dogfight it out.

  He pulled back on his control stick, heading into a long arch, and the enemy followed. At the top of the arch Connor immediately banked hard to the side and spiraled down, feeling the restraints tighten against his shoulders. The bogey followed, but slightly overshot, and Connor quickly took advantage of it. And being the talented pilot he was, Connor instinctively slowed his craft just enough to let the bogey fly on by, then blasted his ion thrusters with all their might, then engaged.

  Two quick phaser shots and the bogey was taken out, splashing space with many brilliant colors of fire and sparks, then extinguished in the vacuum of space.

  A tremor shivered through his craft. He'd been hit, but by who? He scanned his HDC at the same time maneuvering away from his current position, as to not take any more hits. Too late, another blast erupted against Black's side and his control console hyperdrive display went blank.

  He tapped on it. “Where did you go?”

  Right about now would be a good time to jump back home, Connor thought.

  He pressed a few buttons on his HDC, punching in his home coordinates, but the console was blank. For all he knew it was dead, which meant that in time he would be dead as well. He couldn't hold off too many more starfighters. They probably had thousands of them on those starships; the two coming at him right now were just the tip of the iceberg.

  He tapped the control console again, and luckily it beeped on. Then Connor had another thought—a haunting thought. If these guys can see me when I'm cloaked, they probably have the technology to track where I jump.

  If he were to jump back into Starbase Matrona's sector, he would lead them all straight to his people, and his people were ill-equipped to fight anyone, especially since they'd never been in a war or skirmish of any kind.

  Where do I go?

  He thought of his most recent coordinates, but maybe they could even trace his route from there as well. Or, maybe not, but he couldn't risk it.

  He patched in 941, not for any reason other than it was the first numbers that came to his mind. It was far away from his friends and family, and maybe he could simply escape there and relax for several days before jumping back home—if these starships and starfighters didn't follow him.

  He had no more time for thinking. He had to do it.

  Pressing on the lever, bright white light surrounded him and in the blink of an eye he was near another planet in another sector, somewhere in his home galaxy. This one was purple in color, with swirls of black and pink, with some blues and browns mixed in.

  And, for some odd reason, he was staring at a starbase with starships almost identical to Star Guild's. The designs painted on the starships, however, were much different.

  He was staring at an almost identical picture he stared at most of his pilot life, but these weren't his people. His ship then jostled, and all the HDC blinked off, along with the control panel.

  He looked at his energy reserves. The jump had drained the craft of all power. All he had available was auxiliary. He would have to sit tight and wait for the solar mirrors to suck in enough light to feed his craft's engines and ion thrusts, along with everything else that needed power.

  From what his gauge indicated, it would take weeks to restore enough power to jump from