Cargo ship pilots who awaited their cargo holds to be loaded or off-loaded sat in restaurants, indulging in warm meals, or making arrangements to stay overnight in one of the many hotels nearby. The biggest surprise to the three as they continued to walk and tour, was watching a Rabuabin and Hashmedai couple embrace each other romantically. They were probably exiles, but still, it was a sign of hope that the conflicts between the Empire, Union, and Earth could finally be put aside. And all it would take was for people to stop acting like assholes to each other.
“Well, ain’t this somethin’,” Foster said as the three stepped into the market place.
“Remind me never to sleep-in again,” Pierce said.
“Yeah, no kidding, eh?” Foster said, and then stopped to admire her reflection in the polished tiles below, while taking into account the hundreds, if not thousands, of humans and aliens that strode across them every hour and still maintained its perfection.
The three pushed deeper into the markets. It reminded Foster of a shopping mall and, at times, she had to remind herself that she was on a space station. The forests, lakes, monorails, and sunlight raying down from the sunroof ceiling to her right outside the window, were quite deceptive.
“To think, this was all designed and built while we were MIA,” she added.
An escalator brought them to face a four-story tall floor to ceiling observation window peering out into the black and star-clustered realm of space. Ships of a variety of sizes came and went, some traveled to the planets within the system, others to the space traffic jam near the wormholes.
“So, Pierce,” Foster said to him. “Which one of these stars is home?”
Pierce shrugged and chuckled. “I couldn’t tell you.”
“Ain’t you supposed to be an astrophysicist?” Foster said, joking.
Pierce stepped closer to the thick glass that wedged space and livable atmosphere between them. “There was a time when I would look at the stars and speculate what’s out there. Now . . . I speculate how many of those stars have human-built colonies around them—”
A half second flash of light from beyond the glass startled him. From that light Foster saw a ship exit from an FTL jump with an eye-catching and sleek design. “Get a load of that,” she said, pointing at the newly manifested ship in the cosmos.
“It looks different compared to the other ships I’ve seen,” Pierce said. “Well, Earth ones at least that I’ve been studying.”
To Foster, every ship in service looked like a thing of the future, but the one that appeared before them . . . it was different, almost as if it came from the far future. Even the way it curved around UNE battle ships as it approached the military base arm, displayed a level of mobility she never thought possible.
Holographic lights flickered on as they walked past smaller market kiosks within another district of the market area. The projections listed items merchants had that were in stock and, or, on sale. Qirak’s owned many of those kiosks, humanoid ratlike aliens from the other side of the galaxy.
Qirak are still obsessed with getting rich, I see.
“Remember those things?” Pierce said, pointing to a Qirak selling wares to a Hashmedai buyer.
“Yeah, wonder who let them out of Sirius?” Foster said.
“Didn’t Norauk say something about their species having access to ships?”
“I think he did squeak somethin’ about that,” she said. “I guess when the UNE went to reclaim Sirius, they made formal contact.”
“And FTL probably made it easier for them to return to their homeworld . . . wherever that is.”
“FTL and Hashmedai-made MRF,” the Qirak said to them, much to the shock of the three, well two, Kostelecky’s apathetic body language continued to linger. “Sorry, our hearing is quite good; it’s how we detect possible chances to earn profits.”
Foster faced the Qirak and asked. “I’m curious, what do you mean Hashmedai MRF?”
“Ah, Hashmedai have figured out how to copy human MRF,” said the Qirak. “Lower mass means faster travel with their space bridge network. Hashmedai cargo ships teleporting within Qirak systems helped us amass great profits. But enough of storytelling, you came here to shop yes, yes?”
Foster shook her head no. “Just checking out the place honestly, we’s newcomers to these parts.”
“Ah, I see. Your uniform . . .” The Qirak eyed the three up and down. “IESA human space explorers yes, yes? You must have been in cryo for years exploring faraway systems not linked by the wormhole network?”
Foster grimaced. “To put it lightly . . .”
An hour had passed since their gawking, touring, and marvel at what had been developed during the years Foster and her crew went missing. Tired and overworked legs became relieved when the three sat at a monorail station and awaited a train to take them to the inner arm of the UNE habitat.
Foster looked at Kostelecky whom at times she forgot was with them, thanks to her silence for an hour plus. “Hey, Doctor, you alright?” Foster asked.
Kostelecky broke her silence. “I’m fine.”
“You’ve just been so tight-lipped since we got released by EISS.”
“I just miss the old life we had.”
Foster made a half smile and nodded. “I understand, I’m still havin’ a hard time keeping up with the changes.”
“Try putting yourself in my shoes,” Pierce said as his eyes remained glued to the green tree scenery beyond the raised station platform. “I was born in the late nineteen seventies . . . I grew up in an era where the internet and cell phones didn’t exist. Then that became a reality, and I had to adjust to the changes of the world, then the Hashmedai arrived. Then I had to adjust to those changes . . . now this.”
What Pierce said helped put things into perspective for Foster. She was eighteen when the Empire arrived and change life for the human race, forcing her life to change with it. Now she was on a space station the size of five small cities, one hundred and thirty light-years away from Earth.
She pondered what her life as a young girl in Nashville would have been like and developed, had things not gone to hell.
The monorail glided into the station without making a sound save for the steps of passengers stepping on and off it, all speaking the languages spoken on the planets they were born on. When the train departed, its commuters had been reduced almost exclusively to human. Only those with UNE citizenship were allowed to enter this particular arm of the station, similar rules applied to the Imperial and Radiance arms.
Kostelecky’s silence and emotionless face remained during the entirety of their voyage into the UNE arm when the monorail entered the multi-leveled city. It arrived at a district reserved for IESA personnel, a soft chime sounded, and the sliding doors made a quick exchange of human passengers along with the three in the mix. Pierce had departed at that point and ventured to his newly assigned residence while Foster and Kostelecky arrived at their new home, a small two-person dorm.
Kostelecky vanished into her room isolating herself from Foster as its sliding doors slid shut. Maybe she’ll be more talkative in the morning, Foster thought as it had been a long voyage for them since awaking from cryo.
The internal computers within their dorm notified them it was switching to legacy mode, as neither of the two had HNIs installed. An assortment of holographic displays and terminals appeared, giving them access to a computer, internet access, messaging programs, entertainment, and more.
Email had been replaced with qmail, as its messages traversed across the QEC network. A thirty-minute computer tutorial taught Foster how to forge a message and send it to her mother, currently living in the Sirius system. She was eager to see how TV had evolved in this day and age after the message had been sent. Her yawns, however, directed her to her bedroom and reminded her of the long day of catch-up learning she had awaiting her in the morning.
Foster shed the black dress she wore all day and rolled into bed.
16 Peiun
Rezeki’
s Rage
Dark Energy Maelstrom
August 8, 2118, 09:44 SST (Sol Standard Time)
There was one positive outcome as a result of the Rezeki’s Rage multiple-day entrapment within the maelstrom, working at your own pace. Peiun and his crew were cut off from the known universe on a ship undergoing what little repairs it had the ability to perform. He didn’t have to answer to anyone else but himself, and so spent an extra ten minutes bathing in his tub full of ice-cold water within his quarters.
It gave him the chance to collect his thoughts, relax his sore muscles now free from his uniform, conjure strategies, and perhaps uncover a way to earn the respect of older crew members. Namely those members on the bridge whose abrasive attitudes had created heated arguments since their arrival within the maelstrom. Younger and older generation seldom ever saw eye to eye due to the policies Empress Kroshka employed throughout the Empire, which were radically different than those of her mother, Y’lin, when she held the throne.
Peiun’s ears picked up rummaging sounds in his quarters, last time he checked, he was alone. He briskly flicked away the holographic screen he had been reading and sat up straight, allowing his bare and firm chest to rise up above the surface of the cold water.
“Who is there?” he called out.
“Oh, my apologies,” a soft voice called out.
The servant Careiah stood at the entrance to his bathing chamber with her hands folded before her. Peiun winced. “Why are you here?”
“I came to clean up your stay,” Careiah said. “I was under the impression you had returned to duty.”
“I should be there now but opted to remain here a few minutes longer.”
Careiah smiled warmly at him as she neared him with a towel in hand. “The former captain used to do the same.”
“You can return to your cleaning duties,” Peiun said, reacquiring his holographic screen.
“You are bathing; it is my duty to assist you now that you are captain.”
“It’s fine,” he grunted.
Careiah stood behind him ignoring his verbal wishes, while answering his silent desire for her body to be closer to his, now more than ever as he was unclothed. “I cannot turn my back on you like this,” she said.
“My hair then . . . if you do not mind.”
“Of course not,” Careiah’s voice became soft and pleasant as she draped his head with the towel to dry it.
“And nothing else,” he added, causing her fingers that had slid against his shoulders to pull away.
“You still do not wish to have my body?”
“It would still be dishonorable, there is no guarantee I will remain captain once this is over.”
Careiah removed the towel over his head and passed several strokes with a comb through his damp hair. “If you get us out of this predicament, I’m sure the admirals would see to it that it happens,” Careiah said, then asked. “Do you have a mate?”
“I do not,” he snorted.
“All the more reason why you should not resist. As a captain, this ship will be your life, your duty. You will not be able to have a mate, unlike low-ranking personnel who have fewer duties and therefore can afford time away from the navy.”
“I will worry about it when the time comes.”
“Do not put it off for long; our bodies require copulation to reduce stress and anxiety, especially at the age we force them to remain at. We don’t grow old anymore. Can you imagine spending an eternity at your age as a captain, without a partner for pleasure?”
It was time for a subject change, before her alluring voice made him change his stance, as the bed wasn’t far away, and his body had shed all his attire to bathe.
“You spoke of the previous captain and his habit of starting duties later,” he asked her.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Did he share any details with you about the mission of this ship?”
“He did not,” Careiah said as he felt the combing of his hair cease briefly. “Although . . . he had a particular interest in transports, and human technology.”
“Oh, please, do tell.”
“I frequently saw him viewing holograms of older transports used in the navy during the Celestial Order wars.”
“And as for human technology?”
“I was asked to leave his office when I was in the midst of cleaning it, when he called a meeting with the first officer and the shipboard psionic.”
“Alesyna . . .” he mumbled to himself. Alesyna, the captain and first officer in secret meetings? What is she hiding?
“I believe that’s her name, yes.” Careiah returned to attending to Peiun’s hair while he interacted with the hologram, and the reports that appeared on it. “You somewhat remind me of the captain, bathing while viewing reports.”
“These are the invader ships that brought us into this realm, this maelstrom,” Peiun said, pointing at an image of an invader capital ship. “One we have no idea how to escape from.”
“Perhaps we should seek out the charybdis.”
His eyes squinted at her comment. “The what?”
“Charybdis, it’s a human mythological figure, thought to be the creator of whirlpool maelstroms in the oceans of their homeworld.”
He brought up a new screen from the ship’s database in regard to human literature, namely the Charybdis. Though in reality he was stalling, for his bathing was complete. If Careiah was the trained and loyal servant she appeared to have been, then she would try to pat dry his entire muscular body once he emerged from the water.
Battling one’s burning desires was almost as complex as battling the enemy.
Peiun arrived for duty on the bridge half an hour late but possessed a more confident composure as he gathered the bridge crew to surround him at his post. Careiah’s gentle touches against his body undoubtedly played a major role in that.
“We all have theories on what has happened over the last day,” Peiun said to his bridge crew. “So, speak, let us hear them.”
“This maelstrom, as you call it, eats matter, yet we are still alive,” Louik said.
“Perhaps the substance coating the hull of the ship has something to do with it?” Manzo asked.
Peiun remembered the invader ship they destroyed and the strange goo-like material that splashed and coated itself across the Rezeki’s Rage. An invader ship of the same type also created the maelstrom into which the invader fleet escaped and pulled them in when they got too close.
There was a link.
“Perhaps,” Peiun said. “It would explain a lot, considering the cargo hold resides on the part of the ship which received very little, if any, of the substance.”
“It received none,” Alesyna said. “My mind has touched the exterior of the ship several times, none of the substance made it there.”
Peiun turned his attention to the view screen and the clouds and lightning bolts flashing on it. The viewer was partially obscured by the green substance that coated the ship including its external cameras. In the horizon was the invader fleet which came to a standstill and remained that way since he awoke, and the ship encountered it.
“Still no change, I take it?” Peiun asked, eyeing the dormant invader fleet.
“None, nor can I sense Paryo, the Imperial fleet, or other bodies within the system,” Alesyna said. “We’re not in normal space.”
“I meant the invader ships,” Peiun said.
Alesyna licked her lips and took five seconds to reply to his question while gawking at the spectacle of the fleet on the viewer. “There’s no doubt about it, the invader ships are organic. They are living breathing bio-ships with hulls made up of thick flesh and augmented parts, most likely cybernetics.”
“Living ships,” Peiun muttered. “Could they possibly be . . . sleeping?”
“Maybe, my guess is healing from battle,” Alesyna said. “They entered with plasma burns, now those burns are nothing more than small blisters, and shrinking in size.”
“Could this be a
ether space?” Manzo asked.
“No, at least not according to the book the empress wrote about it,” Peiun said. “You have to enter that realm with psionic powers, even then, only your mind goes not your body.”
There were other factors as well, but Peiun had skimmed through the book after learning that most Hashmedai had viewed its contents as fiction rather than fact. How those Hashmedai managed to keep their heads after uttering those comments was a mystery to all.
The crew returned to their posts, scanning, and navigating through the maelstrom, searching for a way out, and to collect any interesting facts that might have been overlooked. Apart from the clouds, lightning strikes, and unreadable energy signatures, they found nothing else.
“Help me understand this,” Peiun said to Alesyna.
She smiled and said. “You want my opinion as your psionic or the scientist that never blossomed due to the discovery of my powers?”
“Let’s hear it from both minds.”
“I think this maelstrom is made up of a substance humans call dark energy,” Alesyna said.
Dark energy, the human’s explanation for the expansion of the universe and theoretically contributes to 68 percent of all the energy in the known universe.
“Radiance has similar theories which involve ethereal energy,” Alesyna continued. “Hence the suggestion that we’ve entered aether space.”
“So dark energy and aether are the same?”
“No one knows for sure, Radiance has been harnessing ethereal energy as its primary power source for the better half of the last century. However, humans insist that the ethereal energy Radiance uses to power their ships, equipment, cities, and psionics is not dark energy, at least not in its refined state—”
“Captain!” Louik called out to him from the main helm
Celestial Incursion (Edge of the Splintered Galaxy Book 1) Page 17