Blackstar Command 1: Prominence

by A. C. Hadfield

  Floating above the island was a large holographic display, a cube, with each face showing different streams of data. One side had a video feed showing the inside of the cavern; another showed the dark skies above. From this position, they’d have a complete three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view in all angles, a sphere of vision.

  The general decor was mostly dark matte colors with crystal clear blue and white lights embedded into the metallic uprights, of which there were four—one in each corner. There was a pair of opposing doors on the left and right walls that Kai assumed led to the cabins, mess, and other necessary rooms.

  “I’ve never seen tech this advanced before,” Senaya said, looking back at Kai with a big grin on her face like she’d just been given the biggest birthday cake in the galaxy. “Look at this holodisplay—the resolution and scope are unbelievable.”

  Marella moved slowly, touching every surface, analyzing every last little detail.

  “Well?” Kai said. “What do you think of it? Does it live up to your expectations?”

  Much like Senaya, Marella had a smile on her face, although in her case it was more restrained; it was obvious she was as awed as either of them. "Yes! It truly is remarkable. I can see lots of their design cues in here that reference the few artifacts we have. This is truly a Navigator ship; of that, I have no doubt."

  “I guess we’re in the right place, then,” Kai said as he stepped out of the elevator and into the bridge area.

  A gantry led down to the central circular command area. Kai breathed deeply; the air was sweet and refreshing. He went to place his headgear on the floor when a floating disk peeled away from one of the walls and flew toward him, setting itself beneath the helmet.

  When Kai let go, the disk whisked the helmet away into a cubby obscured by an opaque holographic surface on the front wall.

  “Wow, that’s cool,” Senaya said, following the disk and poking her hand through the wall. “I’ve never seen a fully opaque hologram before.”

  “Be careful where you poke that hand of yours,” Kai said. “We don’t know enough about this thing yet.”

  The three of them continued their exploration of the ship, finding six cabins: three each side and located in two of the points. The mess, armory, engineer shop, and even a science laboratory filled out the space and the final two points.

  Artificial gravity made it seem as though the angles of the points didn’t exist and that one was walking on a flat level surface.

  When they had found all the rooms there were to find, they got out of their suits and made use of the mess, which was stocked with various food and beverage printers. Thankfully, the enzymes and proteins within the printers hadn’t spoiled, making Kai wonder if his father had been here recently.

  There was no sign of any other occupancy in any of the cabins to indicate he had, though, but it wouldn’t have surprised Kai if the ship had cleaned itself, given the way it swooped in to take his helmet.

  Kai, Senaya, and Marella, refreshed and eager to know more, sat down on the circular couches around the control island. Senaya studied the controls that had floated up from the floor when they had sat down.

  “It’s difficult to work out,” she said. “All the symbology is different to what I’ve used in the past. Marella, can you translate these?”

  The historian glanced at the transparent surface upon which the controls glowed. “I haven’t seen this before,” she said.

  Kai, however, looked at them and knew their meaning instantly. Without being entirely conscious of his movements, he moved his hands across the control panel in front of him. His fingertips glanced over the symbols at a rapid rate.

  The ship’s engine roared to life before settling to a quiet hum, thick with the promise of power. The holographic cube in the center spun, so one of the surfaces faced him; it showed him a rundown of coordinates that he realized was a list of commonly visited places.

  “It’s been to Zarunda,” he said, surprised at seeing his home world listed. “My father, he must have… but if he had, then why didn’t he meet with me?”

  “I’m sure there’s a good reason,” Marella said. “From the short time I knew him, he never struck me as the kind of man to do anything unless he had a logical reason.”

  “Does this thing have an AI?” Senaya said. “Hey, ship, do you hear us? Respond.”

  Kai sensed somewhere deep in his new memory that Senaya was onto something. A word bubbled up from the void, and he did his best to pronounce it. The holographic cube flashed once and spun to a different surface, upon which a face formed, the features pushing out of the flat plane to exist in three dimensions.

  “Whoa, that’s interesting,” Senaya said, leaning closer to the face. “Hey, ship, is that you?”

  The face was nondescript, with no discerning features. It was almost too perfect; a highly skilled facsimile of the idealized human face with everything in the right proportion and perfectly symmetrical.

  “I am Blackstar,” the voice said as the hologram face moved its lips.

  Chapter 25

  Blackstar, the ship’s AI, continued to talk, introducing them, as the new crew, to the main workings of the ship. Senaya, in particular, was interested in its propulsion and weapons systems. Marella, naturally, about its history.

  “It’s amazing to think this pristine ship is nearly a millennium old,” Marella said. “The technology is advanced right now, let alone all that time ago.”

  “I know, right?” Senaya said. “Think what we could learn from this. The Coalition government is going to go nuts for this thing. We could demand anything we wanted.”

  “It’s not for sale,” Kai said. “It belonged to my father, and until I see his dead body, it still belongs to him. I’ll take care of it in the meantime.” Turning his attention back to the AI, he asked, “Do you know of my father’s whereabouts? When was he last here?”

  “Your father is still alive,” the AI said. “He’s beyond the veil now. I can’t say any more than that.”

  “Can’t or won’t?” Kai said.

  “The former. My programmers have set certain parameters that I can work in, and the details of your father’s existence beyond the veil are not within parameters. I’ve been coded to aid you in any way that you see fit, but my knowledge of anything beyond the veil is limited.”

  “Why is that?” Marella said, leaning her long, lithe body forward.

  “The Ancients deemed it necessary to protect their existence.”

  A white light, a small tiny sphere, flashed on Kai’s console. “What’s that?” he asked the AI.

  “It’s a communication notification,” it replied. “It’s encrypted with a Coalition key. Would you like me to open it for you?”

  Senaya shuffled closer to Kai to see the flashing light and whispered, “It can crack codes, too? Kai, this is incredible. The Coalition encryption has never been broken. Do you realize what we could do with that kind of facility?”

  “We’re not hacking the government,” Kai said.

  “Ever since you became a Navigator, you’ve stopped being fun,” she said, teasing him with a gentle elbow to his ribs.

  “Blackstar,” Marella interjected, “please, let’s hear the communication. It could be important if it’s been encrypted. How did they know we were here? This ship doesn’t have a Coalition ID address, right?”

  “You are correct,” Blackstar said. “It was a wideband communication that I intercepted on your behalf. It is from a Captain Lopek of the Coalition destroyer the Spearhead. Would you like me to proceed?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “As you wish." The AI played an audio file. Kai recognized Lopek's clipped accent immediately as the head of the GTU informed him of the war now officially under way and also the infiltration of the capital system, Capsis, and the news that they were headed there immediately. More importantly was the news that his mother was fine after a ‘brief ordeal.'

  What that ordeal could have been, he had no idea. His mother ha
d gotten involved with all kinds of dangerous situations in the past; it could have been absolutely anything. Still, he was glad to hear she was okay.

  Even though he now knew she wasn’t his biological mother.

  It didn’t matter to him, however. As far as he was concerned, Brenna was still his mother and he’d always feel that way about her. His real biological mother’s identity was right now of little consequence. He’d cross that bridge if the time ever came.

  There was so much else to deal with that he couldn’t waste emotional energy on something he knew so very little about.

  “What do you want to do?” Senaya said, dragging Kai out of his ruminations. She and Marella stared at him, awaiting a response as though he were the captain of the ship, even though they hadn’t discussed it.

  “I don’t know about you two, but I want to go to Capsis and fight. If the capital falls to the Host and its allies, the war will be tough to win, let alone the potential number of casualties; there are trillions in the Capsis system. I wouldn’t put it past those bastards in the Host to kill as many as they could for the fun of it. If Lopek is to be believed, they’ve got the advantage.”

  “I agree,” Senaya said. “We can’t just stand by and watch the Coalition crumble to dust. We have to do something. And we were delivered a hyper-advanced Navigator ship. What’s the point of having all the best toys if you don’t get to play with them?”

  Kai looked to Marella. “And you? If you want to leave and take the cruiser, I won’t blame you.”

  Marella ran an elegant hand through her fur-like blond hair. Her eyes had changed from striking blue to a deep crimson. Kai knew what it meant when a Lantesian ‘saw red’.

  “I’m coming with you,” she said. “I refuse to stand by and watch the Coalition get ripped apart. I wasn’t active in the last war, and after spending time with your father, I vowed to follow in his footsteps if the time came. I just didn’t expect it to be so soon—and in a Navigator ship.”

  Kai gripped her shoulder. “Thanks, it means a lot to know you want to stick around. You too, Sen.” He looked back at the inscrutable holographic face of the Blackstar AI and said, “Do you have the coordinates for the Capsis system?”

  “They are in my astro database, yes.”

  “Good. How long will it take us to get there via subspace? Is this thing as fast as it looks?”

  Kai couldn’t tell if it was his imagination or whether the AI’s face projection smiled wryly when it said, “This ship is exceptionally fast when compared to all other ships.”

  “Now that’s what I like to hear,” Senaya said. “How many Q-cylinders has this got?”

  “No Q-cylinders,” the AI responded. “Navigator technology doesn’t use subspace; it’s too slow. The Ancients wouldn’t have been able to manipulate the galaxy in the way they did if they had to travel through subspace.”

  Senaya and Kai looked at each other with a quizzical expression. Kai knew somewhere deep in the data dump of his the answer to his next question, but he just couldn’t reach it. “So if you don’t use subspace, what do you use?”

  That weird wry smile again, then, “Gravity, Kai Locke. The Blackstar uses gravity to create a wormhole. We’ll be in the Capsis system within the hour. Are you ready to engage the gravity drive?”

  “Hit it,” Kai said, and within a nanosecond, the bridge went completely dark. Kai couldn’t move or speak, and all around him turned black.

  Chapter 26

  The thought that struck Kai as soon as consciousness returned to him was that this was all some mad dream. Perhaps he’d had a bad trip on one of the many Zarundan psychotropic herbs and spices freely available at the markets.

  Because if it weren’t a trip, then that would mean Bandar Trace was dead; the Coalition was losing a war with the Host before it had a chance to begin; his mother wasn’t his real mother; and to top it off: they had crossed many light-years of space in the Lasides Quadrant in less than an hour by manipulating space-time at the quantum level inside a ship built by an ancient race of missing aliens.

  That was as crazy as anything Kai could have come up with.

  Hell, it was crazier than the plot of most holobooks he’d read.

  Yet as his vision returned, as his awareness sharpened and he watched the video feed on the holocube before him, he knew it wasn’t a dream or a trip or some other bizarre effect of his mind.

  It was real.

  The Capsis system was under attack.

  The four main defensive stations situated in a geosynchronous orbit of their capital planet and its three moons were spinning out of control, heading for their respective planet’s surface.

  Over thirty Host ships, destroyers, fighters, and frigates swarmed just two Coalition warships, the Fang and the Trident, two of the best and most capable ships in the CDF fleet.

  Despite the superior numbers of the Host, the Fang and Trident would hold their own for a significant amount of time. For how long, Kai couldn’t be sure. Who knew what new technology the Host had got their hands on since the last fight a decade ago?

  The Fang and Trident were situated in a stable equilibrium zone to the west of Capsis Prime when looking at it from the sun, which was to the Blackstar’s rear.

  The host ships surrounded them in a hemisphere. Not only were the CDF flanked on the sides, but also from above and beneath.

  Despite that, however, the two massive Coalition ships were unloading their considerable firepower, holding the smaller fighters at bay and even damaging some of the Host frigates, forcing them out of formation.

  But the Host force seemed to click and, working together, fired in unison upon the two remaining Capsis guardians. Their shields and hull integrity wouldn’t be able to withstand that magnitude of attack for too long.

  “This is awful,” a voice said. It took Kai a while to remember he was here with Senaya and Marella. He looked around at them; they shared his expression of horror at the scenes before them.

  “We’ve arrived at your destination,” the AI said as though they had just pulled up to a restaurant or coffee house. “I await your orders, Kai Locke.”

  He hated already how the Blackstar AI used his full name. He was never a fan of formalities, especially in what might well be their last moments.

  “We can’t get involved with that,” Senaya said. “We’d be ripped to shreds.”

  “She’s right,” Marella added. “We need to be smarter about this. We may only have time to record what’s happening before the capital falls so that the intelligence services later can determine an escape or survival plan.”

  “Wait,” Kai said. “Look, reinforcements.”

  A few thousand kilometers away from Capsis Prime, the white light of a subspace exit opened up. A dozen more CDF ships arrived on the Host’s right flank. Eight of the ships were of the legendary Decimator-class frontline frigates, and the other four were paramilitary reservist fighters.

  Kai wondered if his friends were serving on one of them.

  Within seconds hundreds of ion torpedoes exploded from the Coalition ships and aimed for two of the Host’s largest vessels.

  The latter dumped bundles of decoys, but they hadn’t reckoned with the torpedo’s updated AI-driven targeting.

  The ordnance ignored the decoys and slammed into the flank of a Host ship, which pitched and rolled as fragments of its hull broke away, and hundreds of Host operatives tumbled out into the cold vacuum of space.

  That helped address the balance, but it was still twenty-eight versus fourteen in the Host’s favor.

  “Blackstar,” Senaya said, breaking the others out of their rapt attention, “what kind of weaponry and local engines do we have access to?”

  “The ship is fully equipped with both defense and attack protocols, multiphase shields, particle-rearrangement cannon, and a gravity-distortion array.”

  “That sounds great,” Senaya said. “But what does that all mean?”

  “Perhaps a demonstration?” the AI said.
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  “Wait,” Kai added. “We can’t risk going into the mess; there’s too many of them.”

  “I’ve detected three long-range fighters approaching our position,” the AI said. “Perhaps you would like to engage those?”

  “Shit, bring them on screen,” Kai ordered.

  The holocube spun around to another face and showed a feed tracking three of the smaller silver-colored Arrow-class fighters: arrow-shaped close-combat Host ships. They were faster and agiler than any ships the CDF had access to. The technology was pure Host from one of their specialized tech worlds. Using a system of thrusters, they were able to change course and use the drift to their advantage. This maneuver would be quite the challenge.

  “What do you propose we do?” Marella said. “I studied elements of the last war and can suggest a tactical maneuver.”

  “Go on,” Kai said and listened to Marella’s plan. The AI took notes and plotted the attack on the holoscreen. Its prediction models looked favorable, but Kai remained doubtful.

  “Are we going to do this or what?” Senaya said. “The Arrows will be in range any second.”

  Before Kai had time to respond, the lead Arrow launched its first round of ordnance: red-tip missiles—devastating thermonuclear warheads.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Kai said, then, “Blackstar, forget the plan. Evasive maneuvers now.”

  The ship increased its velocity on its current vector, matching the speed of the missiles, and then, applying a secondary thrust from the tip of one of its points, created an arcing drift. The missiles duly followed.

  Kai understood the plan. “Increase power and tighten the arc,” he said.

  “That’ll bring us closer to the Arrows,” Marella warned.

  “Indeed.”

  The AI did as it was ordered and the Blackstar’s arc tightened until they had completed a full loop and were heading directly for the trio of fighters.