The Emperor's Daughter (Sentinel Series Book 1)

by Richard Flunker

  Kale looked at the boy, made eye contact, and they both smiled.

  “That’s kind of a sick joke, you know,” she said, turning around and walked towards the cabin doorway.

  “Oh, it’s not. He’s really not our father, more of a guardian, really,” Gheno pointed out.

  “The kid’s right. Don’t get me wrong, the old man’s a good guy, took care of me. But his career, his science, was first, no matter what,” Kale said, swinging his chair around to meet Ayia’s gaze.

  “Then why take you in at all?”

  “A promise. A regret.”

  Gheno stopped scanning the moons and turned to listen.

  “He lost his wife and children, his real children, a very long time ago. I think he blames himself. So we are his…penance,” Kale explained.

  “I never knew that,” Gheno said, looking away blankly, “Although, I think I had thought it was something like that.”

  “That’s sad,” Ayia looked away, as well. The loss of her father hit home at that moment.

  “No. Well, yes, that is sad. But what is more sad, well, it’s not more sad,” Kale stammered, “Ok, what I'm trying to say is that it’s sad that I think he took us all in, took care of us, but never allowed himself to get close to us, so much so that he encouraged us to think of him not as father, even though…”

  “We all thought he was,” Gheno finished.

  “Yeah.”

  There was a moment of silence. Each of them had suffered loss in their own manner. They also found their way, in their own time, to be united under the old man who lost his blood-born children. It was humanity’s oldest tale, the tragedy of loss.

  “Now I just feel bad for him. Makes me feeling bad for myself feel, well, pointless,” Ayia came and sat down on the seat behind Kale, facing him.

  “But that was the point,” Kale went on, “He felt bad, I'm sure he did. But, he was trying to make us all, those he took in, go beyond the loss. I think that’s what he wanted. His greatest achievement was that he took us all, lost souls, under his wing and turned us into…”

  “What’s the normal composition of a moon or small rocky planet?” Gheno interrupted.

  Kale turned. “How does that even make sense?”

  Gheno turned and pointed at the screen. “A moon. That’s generally what, iron, oxygen, silicone and some other trace things, right?”

  Kale looked at Ayia in confusion then turned to look at what Gheno was indicating on the screen.

  “Yeah, I think that’s the basics. Why?”

  “There is a very small moon around that large gas giant. It was too small for a good image during the scan but, the mineral analysis, it’s, different.”

  “How?” Ayia asked.

  “Look,” Gheno showed Kale.

  He picked the moon he was talking about, from a list of over thirty listed to be orbiting around the gas giant, and maximized its information on the screen. The display was very blurry. It was very difficult to make any form out of it but it didn’t appear to be spherical.

  “An asteroid?” Kale asked.

  “Look at those readings.”

  “Titanilloid. Chromioid. Somium. Ferresate,” Kale trailed off.

  “Even I know those,” Ayia jumped. She learned about those words in business school. They were some of the most expensive materials known to mankind. The reason they were was because each one of those minerals were manmade. None of them were found in nature, in those forms.

  “What are they doing out here?” she asked.

  “There are many uses for those materials, but the number one use, in space,” Kale started.

  “A space ship,” Gheno said quietly.

  “And by the size of this reading, a huge one.”

  Kale turned and faced Ayia. A large smile grew on his face.

  “Now we have something.”

  The ship was at least twenty hours away by sling. It was far enough away from the gas giant that, if needed, they could travel to it without having to use up too much power fighting off the gravity of the planet.

  “Is it a space station? At that size? It’s gotta be,” Kale stared at the blurry picture, trying to make any detail out of it, “When can we get a better picture.”

  Gheno had already figured it out. “It’s on the far side of the planet as were looking at it, but it should be within visible range in about seven hours.”

  “So twenty hours away but seven till we can see it. I like that. Can the AI get us going?”

  Gheno typed the commands in and the ship began filling its capacitors to make a sling shot to the planet.

  “What about the stars? Can we still test or look at the stars to figure out how to get out of here,” Ayia was concerned. There was a feeling of recklessness.

  “Oh yeah. It can still keep scanning,” Kale waved her off, “Besides, if that’s a station or a ship, that’s our ticket out of here. You didn’t pick up any nav points did you? Maybe we’re not so far away.”

  Gheno shook his head. “There's nothing out here. No com, no beams, no radio, nothing. That out there is the closest unnatural thing there is.”

  “I don’t like the way you said that,” Ayia said.

  “No, it’s just that I meant, not natural,” Gheno didn’t realize that he needed to explain himself.

  “I know what you meant. I just didn’t like it.”

  “Oh. Ok,” Gheno pursed his lips and turned back to the screen, “Am I reading this right? We’re slinging in three minutes?”

  “Yeah, you got it,” Kale studied the image, “There has to be something good here.”

  “You are oddly optimistic. You feel good at all the wrong times,” Ayia sneered.

  A small sphere began to form in front of the Midnight Oil. Three minutes later the ball of gravity drew the ship into itself and dissipated right before it hit. The force of the event sent the ship towards the gas giant and its mysterious moon. Kale got up and began walking out of the captain’s deck.

  “Where are you going?” Ayia asked.

  “I'm going to sleep. Seven hours is a long time. Just set an alarm.”

  “You're going to sleep now,” Ayia was rattled.

  “I'm feeling a lot better. There is no better time to sleep than when you think you're going to make some money.”

  Ayia turned and looked at Gheno. He was watching her reaction but quickly turned his face away when their eyes met. Ayia just sat back down into the chair.

  “Well, I'm not tired,” she stated.

  When Gheno looked back a few minutes later, she was asleep. He laughed quietly as he turned to look at the blurry image of the moon, their destination. His curiosity peaked at this moment. By that point, the AI had scanned seventy-three stars. None of them matched anything in the database. At their current whereabouts, the computer would likely need to scan over ten thousand stars. The scan’s progress would decrease, slightly, while they were moving. Even if they could scan all the stars, the odds were against them. He hoped they would have better luck with the enigmatic moon.

  Ayia woke up to find Kale back in his seat with Gheno kneeling next to him. The lights were dimmer than they were when she had fallen asleep, except for the blue haze of light that emanated from the screen they were both looking at. They were talking quietly and she strained to hear what they were saying. She sat up in her chair and coughed. They both turned around.

  “She’s up.”

  “Any luck? We have anything?” she rubbed her eyes in disbelief that she fell asleep on the chair.

  “Yeah, images started coming in just ten minutes ago,” Kale swung his hand, putting the display on the main screen above them.

  “We can’t quite make it out. There’s that large lump in the middle and all these other things around it. The light isn’t really that great from this distance. We thought maybe the middle part was the space station and the other parts orbit it,” Kale attempted to explain.

  Ayia knew what she was seeing. “It’s a wreckage.”

&nb
sp; Kale and Gheno turned to look at the picture again.

  “Oh,” they both said at the same time.

  “I remember my father taking me to the salvage yards where they brought all the wrecks from the wars to break down and recycle. It looks just like that,” she pointed out.

  “I guess I needed to step back and look at it differently,” Kale justified.

  “You didn’t see it?” she asked.

  “Nope.” Kale had no reservations in admitting to his oversight.

  “That would explain why there are no coms or beams,” Gheno brought up.

  Kale nodded. They were scanning the debris for positive readings on communications technology, laser beams, and gravcom, the short bursts of gravity that could be measured off in the distance to relay messages. There was nothing here.

  “Well, I feel a bit better now. At least nothing will be shooting us out of the sky when we show up,” Kale said.

  “Unless whatever shot them is still there,” Ayia stated.

  “Nope. You can’t dampen my mood. I'm looking at a possible salvage deal here,” Kale began whistling.

  “Are you trying to ignore me? Or just the realization of what might be out there?”

  “Yes,” replied Kale while he continued whistling, an answer intended to annoy and confuse Ayia.

  The ship continued on its sling headed towards the wreckage. Every few hours they would take more pictures of the debris, bringing it more legibly into view. As they neared, it became clear that this wasn’t just the wreckage of one ship, but many. It was the site of a former battle. Even Kale’s optimism was deflated. He had seen enough space battles to recognize the amount of destruction that ensued.

  He insisted on continuing with the plan to examine the remains. He was certaom there was no imminent danger.

  “Whoever did this is long gone,” he said, “Otherwise, we would have noticed something else.”

  The Midnight Oil powered up the Hausen reactor and drew the ship to a halt just outside of the debris. The gas giant, a myriad of colors, hovered beneath the rubble. Its storms churned in a mix of hues. The mass of twisted metal drifted around the central corpus that they managed to make out, even from the great distance from which they had first seen the wreckage. The whole mass of metal was very centralized. It was not scattered about, as was typically evident after a battle commenced and concluded.

  “It’s like it just fell apart here and got all twisted up,” Gheno indicated with his finger, pointing at the image on the screen.

  They moved the ship in closer to get within direct beam-sensor range. Kale was initially wary of getting too close but the wreckage was essentially compacted into itself. They were able to approach it with ease. Once within range, the ships sensors and laser beams began scanning the entire site. Results of the readings began to display, immediately.

  The many vessels, while largely unrecognizable, were of Dominion design and likeness. Around seventeen crafts, ranging from large cruisers to smaller corvettes and skippers, were scattered around the larger mass in the middle. It was a pile of solid ruin approximately ten miles long.

  “Why does it look like it was attacked by a wild animal?” Ayia asked, bewildered at the scene. There were no normal signs of a battle—scattered debris, random pieces of floating metal, evidence of shrapnel and war-torn constructs. Instead, the giant mass of space ship was twisted and ripped apart. Most of the smaller ships were intact, having suffered no explosions or burnouts. “What happened here?” she asked.

  “I'm,” Kale started, “I don’t know, I am at a loss. Are we getting a reading on that huge thing in the middle?”

  “It’s starting to come in now, taking a while. Is that some kind of tug?” Gheno asked.

  “It could be, but it doesn’t look like one, it’s not flat. I swear I’ve seen this before somewhere,” Kale said.

  The Midnight Oil stopped its motion to slowly follow the ruin’s orbit. This gave the crew a perfect view of the mess of ships in front of them. The readings began to pick up faint sources of power. Kale explained that it was most likely capacitors still charged from when the ships had power. They could easily take dozens of years to dissipate.

  Ayia put her hand on Kale’s shoulder.

  “You know, I’ve seen these before too,” she turned to look at Gheno, “Are you getting this familiar vibe as well?”

  Gheno shook his head. It just looked like an overgrown space ship to him, even if it was far larger and more grandiose than anything he had ever seen.

  Kale pointed at something through the window. “Look, there are the two rings, very large, floating just above and below it. That thing had its own drive.”

  Gheno’s rudimentary AI began identifying the smaller ships. The names of the vessels began appearing on the screen. Kale began to think harder. All of the names, as they began appearing on the screen, were scrambling his mind. Somewhere in his memory he had seen those names. He had a sense of either celebrations or funerals, but he couldn’t place them.

  He remembered a time when he was a very young slave on Urt. His mother told him to remain quiet. They were in a very large crowd along with thousands of other slaves. They were gathered together for some large announcement. It was something that was supposed to be tragic, but he remembered his mother. She was either happy or angry, he wasn’t sure which one. She was emotional, that much he was certain about.

  As the ship continued its scan, and more of the vessel’s names appeared, Ayia recognized the names as well. She remembered books and virutavids. She saw these names in a classroom. She felt detached from them but sensed that, at the time, these names were important.

  “You're the smart one here. You don’t recognize those names?” Kale asked Gheno.

  “No, I don’t, and now I feel like I should,” Gheno complained.

  The seventeen ships were named but the scan continued on the large one. As the scan finished its name was revealed, instantly. Ayia gasped as Kale drew a deep breath and then exhaled loudly. Gheno stared at the name, ashamed that he didn’t recognize it. He turned and looked at the shocked faces of his crew mates.

  “Magyo?”

  Kale was pacing around the cabin excitedly. He was ranting about money, DNA and more money. Ayia had to take the time to explain to Gheno the history behind the ship. It was created to be the spearhead of the Dominion and reaped havoc in wars against Earth. Gheno couldn’t understand why he had not heard of the ship. With it having been such an incredible feat of engineering, he thought he surely would have studied it. Ayia continued to explain that the Magyo and her sister ship, the Calca, were sent into the great unknown, after the wars with Earth, to explore outer space and bring great glory to the Dominion. The Calca had returned after just three years of exploration with no epic discoveries, just a few new worlds with no real promise or value to the betterment of the Dominion. In the depression that followed the galaxy after the wars, the Calca was decommissioned and disassembled. The Magyo, however, had never returned from its journey. Both of those incidents were a an embarrassment to the Dominion. They were removed from their recorded history and quickly forgotten. The Commonwealth University, where Ayia studied, had never forgotten. The accounts of a slave on one of the Dominion’s planets were taught there through a great story of the Three Spears of the Dominion. It was a cornerstone of their curriculum. The independent planets, however, did not care much for the wars between Earth and Coran.

  “There was a third ship like them as well. But after the wars, very little was known about her,” Ayia explained.

  Kale turned to them. “What they don’t tell you is that there is a treasure on the Magyo, something incredibly valuable to the Dominion,” he continued, “DNA.”

  Gheno’s blank stare remained intact.

  Kale attempted to describe the Dominar and his wives. He began by talking about babies, ‘but it wasn’t about babies,’ he said, ‘but about blood.’ Then he started to compare a cup of juice to a cup of milk before Ayia interjecte
d with a more elaborate explanation.

  “You’ve heard of the Dominars right? The bloodlines?” she started.

  “Yeah, they’re super human right? At least they’ve genetically modified themselves to be that way, from what I understand.”

  “How they first started that we don’t know. What we do know is that over the centuries the noble families of the Dominion have selectively bred and altered themselves. My father met with one once. He was ten feet tall, glorious and strong. How they’ve done it no one knows. But what we kind of know is that the Dominar, whenever he is born, is born from a selection of DNA, the best traits, of those nobles alive at the time. The Dominar doesn’t hail from the genome pool of one family. Rather, it comes from the best parts of them all. What made a family even more powerful was if someone from their family had their DNA account for more than half of the next Dominar’s blood.”

  “So they create their Dominars?” Gheno was very interested.

  “In vats of juice,” Kale interceded. Ayia waved him off.

  “That’s what the outside world understands. The most valuable thing you could have would be your own genetics.”

  “So what does that have to do with this ship?” As soon as he asked, he figured out the answer.

  “The captain of the Magyo was, at the time, and this was over twenty five or thirty years ago, one of the main donors of the next Dominar’s genetics. But he never made it back.”

  Kale jumped in excitement.

  “I think our captain here thinks he is going to find a body and make himself a Dominar’s ransom for the genetic code there. Ok Kale, so let’s assume he’s there. How are we going to find one body in ten mile long ship?”

  Kale looked directly at Ayia.

  “You are depressing, you know that?”

  He sat back down on his chair, pulled the keyboard out and began typing commands to the AI. Ayia asked him what he was doing.

  “I'm sure we have no schemes on the Magyo but I'm assuming, and if I’m thinking correctly, the captain is likely to have somewhere in the bridge. I need detailed scans of the ship so that we can try to locate where the bridge is. When we find it we’ll cut in, steal our DNA, and get out of here.”