The Omarian Gambit: A Pax Aeterna Novel

by Trevor Wyatt

  Eventually, with the Colonies being granted their independence—all 57 of them—tensions cooled and the long vigil across a border began.

  That was the last conflict anyone had ever fought.

  And like I said, all the research and all the exploration hasn’t uncovered any trace of alien life. Sure, we found moss growing on a rock on New Chrysalis. Signs of vegetation here and there, a sign that the universe isn’t asleep while the humans destroy themselves. But no sentient life.

  For as much as we believe, humanity is alone in the universe. Left to explore on its own. Left to fight amongst each other as we colonize the stars.

  So then if it wasn’t the Outer Colonies, and there’s no such thing as non-human life…what could be preventing The Mariner from responding to us?

  That’s the only mystery that makes this mission worth a damn. Solving that problem.

  A part of me is betting that because The Mariner is a deep space exploration vessel, with a small crew complement, that those egghead scientists are probably lost in their own little bubble, exploring some stellar phenomena of the month. Not realizing that we had to be pulled off our course to go rescue some scientists with their heads in the clouds.

  We’ll probably find them and they’ll realize they somehow turned off their communications grid. Or maybe they took it offline so that nothing would bother them with their research. I’ve seen it happen before. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  That’s when Ashley walks toward me.

  I can tell she’s coming up to me even though I’m looking down at my pad. I can smell the slight perfume that she indulges in every morning. The smell that I remember when I go to sleep at night. The smell that I breathed in when we were on shore leave in New Sydney. When we found ourselves accidentally at the same resort. Drinks and dinner. A bottle of New Sydney wine in my suite. Then a night of sex.

  And the next morning, replacing all of that with professionalism to cover up the awkwardness. To make sure we didn’t have to talk about what we had done together the night before.

  I feel the hair behind my neck rise as Ashley comes closer. Something is definitely up.

  She leans closer and whispers in my ear.

  “Captain,” she says softly so that no one can hear. “There’s something you should probably see. In private.”

  Ashley

  “In private?” Jeryl whispers, cocking one eyebrow as he looks at me. I stand straight, my lips pursed as I feel the palm of my hands growing sleek with sweat. That was a poor choice of words, no doubt about that.

  After the New Sydney incident, I’ve struggled to push my way past the ensuing awkwardness. I do my best to act as professionally as possible, but sometimes there’s a crack in my shell. I can’t help it; every time I close my eyes and remember those warm days back in New Sydney, Captain Jeryl just turns into…Jeryl.

  The Armada frowns upon their officers falling into the personal relationship trap, but everyone knows you can’t keep people boxed in a vessel for too long without something happening. Usually everyone’s sane enough to keep things professional while they're in outer space, but things change the moment they feel gravity’s pull.

  You adjust to the atmosphere, you grow accustomed to the slight variations in weight, and you trade your uniform for some expensive dress smuggled from one of the Outer Colonies. You drop the formalities, look at all that time off in your calendar, and inevitably you find yourself with a glass of wine in one hand.

  That’s what happened in New Sydney.

  Just a short break between deployments, but there was enough time for crass jokes, a bottle of wine, and a night between the sheets at The Oath, one of the landmarks of New Sydney. Jutting more than two thousand feet skyward right in the center of the metropolis, the expensive hotel provided the perfect setting for a weekend of drinking and forgotten boundaries.

  But this time there’s no glass of wine in my hand, and the soft sheets of The Oath’s suite are on the far side of the universe, at least as far as I’m concerned. I’m wearing my uniform, the First Officer badge clipped to my chest, and I have a job to do.

  “In private,” I repeat with a nod, nervously running my tongue between my dry lips. I ball one hand into a fist, and try to hold his gaze without allowing the First Officer mask to drop.

  “Okay,” he breathes out, reading the serious expression on my face. There’s no smile on my lips, and that probably helps put all the awkwardness to bed. How could I be smiling right now? Finding The Mariner and reporting the situation back to the Armada should be a simple enough job, but now I’m not so sure about that.

  I’ve been serving under Jeryl for a few years now, and I’ve learned to develop that quick intuition the Armada tries to impart on its officers. I’ve been in more border skirmishes (if you can even call them that) than I can count on the fingers of one hand, and I’ve lived through so many false alarms that I’ve already forgotten about half of them. But this is…different.

  This isn’t a pirate raid in one of the mining colonies, and it sure as hell isn’t one of the border confrontations. There’s no one trying to encircle The Seeker, and I haven’t heard the ship alarms for months now. We’re alone in the vastness of space, and still…there’s just something wrong about the whole situation.

  It feels as if I’m standing on the shore, my feet buried in the sand as I watch the ocean slowly recede away. The water just flows back, slowly crawling into the depths, and then the whole ocean rises up to swallow you. The readings I’ve just seen…There’s no way for me to be sure, but somehow I feel that there’s a tidal wave on the way.

  Turning on his heels, Jeryl marches across the CNC and I trail after him, that anxious tightness taking over my heart. Stopping for a second, he allows the biometric sensors to recognize him, and the door to the Captain’s private office slides to the side and into its metallic partition.

  Spartan and rigorous, his office is a reflection of the discipline that allowed him to climb through the ranks. His desk is uncluttered, and the chair behind it is so carefully placed that the whole office looks more like a set than an actual working space. If I didn’t know all about the ungodly amount of hours the Captain spends in here, I would assume he got his Captain rank by being an effective pencil pusher. The Armada is full of these types nowadays—the memories of war are distant and faded, and there are few men I’d trust to lead the way if shit hit the fan.

  But Jeryl…Jeryl I’d trust.

  Surrounded by bureaucrats from all sides, Jeryl somehow has managed to retain a certain ruggedness that’s a throwback to all those war stories you hear about with The Schism. Yes, if that tidal wave ends up being more real than I want it to be, I’m glad to have Captain Jeryl at the helm.

  “What’s going on, Ashley?” he asks me as the door closes behind us. His lips are a thin line, and his voice is clipped and terse. I look back into his eyes for a moment, the hard edge I see in there reminding me that right now I’m his First Officer, and not the woman sleeping next to him in some high-rise suite in New Sydney.

  “Take a look at this,” I start, walking toward the round workstation that takes over his whole office, a round metallic platform with a sleek surface, barely noticeable holographic projectors mounted all around its curved edges. It’s smaller than the central console we have in the CNC, but it’s still imposing enough to have a few officers around it.

  Placing my closed fist over the workstation, I spread my fingers and the whole surface lights up as the sensors pick up my fingertips. The holographic projectors heat up in a fraction of a second, and the main control dashboard appears in front of me, a see-through projection I could use even if I had my eyes closed. As complex as the dashboard may seem, the Academy drills their officers so hard when it comes to bureaucracy and logistics that the whole thing becomes second nature to a fast learner.

  Slowly moving my fingers in the air, almost as if I’m weaving an invisible web, I pull up the readings the Science Officer alerted me to. Afte
r the radar alerted us to the presence of debris in the area, I sent a small probe out so that we could have visual confirmation; I thought we’d just found a small asteroid field, nothing remarkable at all, but the visual readings quickly dispelled that notion.

  “What am I looking at, Ashley?” Jeryl asks me, placing his hands on the edge of the workstation and leaning forward, his eyes narrowing as he focuses on the images I just projected. There, a few shards of contorted metal seem to float freely in the vastness of space, just tiny crumbles of glittering debris in a dark canvas.

  Instead of replying, I spread my fingers wide once more and zoom in on the debris. Jeryl’s eyes narrow even more, a dark shadow taking over them, and I know that he’s trying to escape the inevitable answer. The Seeker set out on a simple reconnaissance mission, its purpose to retrieve a small crew of scientist that probably got too excited and went into uncharted territory, but all that is about to change.

  A deep exploration vessel turned into scrap right in the middle of nowhere? If Jeryl’s already fidgety about the whole situation, I can’t even imagine what the Admiral’s reaction is going to be. I can already see this mission’s folder stamped with a large red S, all this information turning into a slew of “on a need to know basis” facts.

  It just doesn’t make any sense. I doubt any of the Outer Colony fleets would be this deep into outer space, and even smugglers and pirates wouldn’t be venturing this far. So what the hell happened here?

  “Are you sure, Ashley?” Jeryl asks me again, looking up from the projected images and staring right at me, the lines in his face turning into deep trails of concern. “We have to be sure.”

  “I’m positive,” I nod, taking a deep breath as I feel the words clawing up my throat. “We’ve positively identified the debris as The Mariner—and it was destroyed.”

  Jeryl

  After staring at the expanded view for a few seconds, taking in the data readouts cascading down the side of the screen, I look back at Ashley’s face. Her lips are compressed into a thin line and her brows are knit.

  I clear my throat. “The energy signatures from that wreckage...”

  She nods. “No radioactivity. No CP beams. Something—”

  “Unknown,” I finish. Unknown. Alien. “But there’s no trace of any, uh, activity in this sector.” I don’t have to say that there’s never been a trace of activity in any sector. It’s a matter of historical fact that there's no intelligent life anywhere in the volume of space controlled by the Union. “What are we dealing with here?”

  She allows a small smile soften her mouth. “As you say, it’s unknown.”

  Several thoughts flit inside my head. Is this it? First Contact? No, I can’t buy that. Or have the Outer Colonies, despite me ruling out their interference, upped their game with weapons research and come up with an advance they’ve come a long way to test? Has a new player entered the game? But why would anyone destroy The Mariner, which was an unarmed research vessel?

  I draw a breath. “All right,” I say. “Let’s look at the facts. The Mariner is destroyed. We are ruling out something internal—sabotage, some experiment gone awry. Right?” I shoot Ashley a glance and she nods once. “So we assume an outside force. And yet—” I deliberately tap the top of my desk. “—there aren’t any. As far as we know,” I add quickly, seeing that she’s opened her mouth to reply. “It’s a big galaxy, but still.”

  What I don’t need to say is that there are only a few billion humans scattered across a couple of hundred worlds. There’s plenty of room for weird things to be lurking in unexplored places, even in systems we’ve colonized.

  She speaks anyway. “We have already agreed that it’s an unknown. Alien? Human agency? Or perhaps some sort of natural phenomenon.”

  “Natural?” I think about that for a moment. “Well, they were out here on an exploratory mission. Our records show they were to investigate the Anderson Nebula.”

  “That’s right,” Ashley says. The Anderson is a small planetary nebula, quite young, less than two thousand years old. It’s far enough from Earth that it was only detected by one of the more distant Union worlds. The Mariner was sent to investigate the neutron star spinning at the nebula’s center. It would be the closest neutron star to Union territory. Worth a visit, certainly.

  I cast another glance at the readouts. “Well,” I say, “if you’re suggesting they tangled with the Anderson’s neutron star, Ashley—mmm, I don’t think it parses. Given the position of the wreckage, it’s clear they never got close enough to the nebula to be affected by its collapsar. Sensors give no indication of anything else in the vicinity like, I don’t know, a mini black hole...which in any case wouldn’t have torn the ship apart. Nor would the neutron star. Either one would have sucked the ship in.” I shrugged. “Gravity being what it is. There’d be nothing at all here.”

  She sighs. “I know. But whatever it was, was more powerful than anything in our records.”

  I’m having a little trouble concentrating on the conversation. I keep thinking back to the time we spent at the Oath, when we—no, better not go there. I shake my head to dispel the memory, and she misinterprets my gesture.

  “There’s no use denying it,” she says sharply. “As you’ve said, it’s a big galaxy. Shit happens. Sir. Did you take a really close look at Lannigan’s report on the wreckage?”

  Without answering I do as she suggests, and spend a few minutes going over the abstract that Taft Lannigan, The Seeker’s Science Officer, has prepared. As ship’s captain, I don’t have the time or the inclination to wade through screen after screen of technical data when all I want is a summary. The skinny, as my grandfather used to say. Dr. Lannigan knows that, and knows better than to waste my time. He’s a good officer. But now, what I find in his report makes me frown.

  Unknown energy signatures, we already knew that. But the traces they have left behind indicate levels so powerful that it they’re not only unknown to Terran science, but also stronger than anything we've encountered before.

  I’m starting to wonder about the Outer Colonies again. When they split off, they took some of Earth’s finest—and most malcontented—minds with them.

  As though she was reading my mind, Ashley says, “It’s not the Outers. It can’t be them.”

  I stare at her for a few moments. “I think you’re right,” I say after weighing the possibility. “I think they’re too busy trying to stay alive.”

  “In which case,” she says, “what about someone else?”

  I scoff. “Who?”

  “One of the corporate fleets.”

  While it’s true that the corpers brag about having more advanced hardware and AIs than the Union ships, that’s a fairy tale we let them believe. You find me an example of a commercial enterprise anywhere in history that has a leg up over the military. Oh, I suppose there are isolated examples, but for the most part, more technical advances have come through military necessity than through corper blue-skying.

  Except genetics. And even there, I know for a fact that the Union has research facilities at least on par with the civilian stuff.

  But the bottom line? The corpers simply aren’t going to be found here on the fringes of known space. There’s no money to be made in undeveloped areas. The corps aren’t humanitarian outfits. They are motivated by financial considerations, and not prone to much speculative exploration. Sure, once a promising world is located, preferably something thickly forested, with lots of foreign vegetation that may be hiding compounds that could be used to cure diseases or prolong life...Then the corporations show up, glad-handing the colonies and dumping money into research for a cut of the gain. It’s politics—and business—as usual, and no one has a problem with it.

  “There’s just no reason to suspect any kind of corporate involvement here,” I say. “And what would they have to gain by destroying a Union starship?”

  “Because they’ve stumbled on something lucrative? Like, so potentially lucrative that it’d be worth killing
for?”

  I shake my head. “It just doesn’t make any sense, Ash.” I wince, because I’ve used her nickname, but she doesn’t seem to notice my breach in professionalism. “That would be, I don’t know, renegade behavior. No one could get away with that for long. And what could possibly be that lucrative?”

  She can’t answer that one. Instead, she says, “All right then, what about someone completely new?”

  I have to grin. “How long did you say you’ve been an officer on a starship?” She blushes. “There’s nothing. No one else. Look, excuse me for being obvious, but in 150 years as a space-faring civilization we’ve never found any other sentient life. Not even a trace. No ruins, fossils...zero. Zip. Nada. Not even radio signals.”

  “What if they don’t use radio?” Before I could object, she waves her hand. “I know, I know—you’re right. I mean, intellectually I understand perfectly well that neither the outers nor the corpers could develop whatever destroyed The Mariner. But something did.”

  “Undeniably.”

  “Have you ever heard of Sherlock Holmes?”

  I blink at the abrupt change of subject. “Uh, no. What ship does he command?”

  She smiles. “He’s a fictional character, Jeryl. A detective, created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the Nineteenth Century.”

  “Oh. Well, no, I’ve never heard of him.” I know she reads a lot, but I had no idea her tastes included pre-Union fiction. You learn something new every day.

  “Well, Holmes once said, when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. So, if we rule out involvement by corpers and outers, and other human agencies, and natural phenomena, we are left with...”

  She raises her eyebrows at me. I conceal my irritation.

  “I don’t know,” I say in a clipped tone. I see a telltale blink red on my desktop. “Look, I have to report to the admiral. He doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”