“A trick?” Commander Shar’ran raised a heavily scarred eyebrow.
Falco shrugged at Shar’ran and looked to Ensign Holts who simply held his stare then turned and shot a questioning glance back to Commander Shar’ran.
“It’s not Robert Burns,” stated Lieutenant Wallace from the pilot’s nest in the bow.
“No, Lieutenant, it’s not Mr Burns, nor is it Walter Scott, Muriel Spark or any other Scottish poet.” Falco knew this could be his first victory since they left Station Luna almost five years ago.
“Van Gogh,” Ensign Sierra Holts stated. “The ancient and famous painter, Vincent Van Gogh.”
All Falco could do was stare back at his ensign then gently shake his head. How in the hell? “You are correct, Ensign Holts. Well done. Not many know that Van Gogh was also a poet heavily influenced by the great Walt Whitman.”
“My father often left for months to fish the South Atlantic. He was well read, loved poetry from any source…” Ensign Holts fell silent then continued, “As long as it was about the sea.”
“I believe we need a two-century historic limit to ensure relevance to our current circumstance,” mumbled Lieutenant Wallace without turning around.
“Fair enough, Lieutenant, but we are the ultimate sailors and explorers of our time. Van Gogh’s meaning could not be more relevant. Next time I promise to find someone from the Celtic realm.” Before Commander Shar’ran could jump in Falco added, “and of course I’ll follow that with a Yemeni poet from the old worlds.”
“We are beyond Station Pluto’s safety zone, Captain. The Anam Cara is in position and awaiting your order, sir.” Lieutenant Wallace rested his hand near the main engine controls.
“Opener up and let her run, Lieutenant.” Falco relaxed and let the rumble from the main engine kicking in, roll over him in blissful waves. He looked at each of his officers on the bridge and finally found Ensign Holts already focused and hard at work. For the first time since he lost Luciana and Ziza, a true sense of peace came over him.
Beyond Pluto, the Oort Cloud
the Territorial Border
The iron beast is nearing our borders. The territories must be protected. The thought was spawned in the heart of the ancient civilization cloaked in the Darkness. A protected area far from the edge of its shrouded borders where the warrior-clans waited amongst the rock and ice filled rings in the Void.
The orders flowed through the thought-stream. The warriors on the fringe received a single command, The Creators must be protected, your Oath fulfilled.
The thought-stream cleared and the clans answered in unison, a single purpose. Protect the Creators, protect the Territories, fulfill the Oath and reach the Realm of Warriors.
9
Days burn beyond Station Pluto
Bridge of the Anam Cara
“Captain, our scanners are picking up faint energy sources off the port side. Could be chunks of cooling matter that bounced off our shield during deceleration?” Ensign Holts continued to scan her feeds.
“And?” A crease formed on Captain Falco’s forehead. “Follow the protocol, Ensign.” He could see Holts immediately realize her mistake, as her expression slipped to what Falco had learned over the pasts few years, was Holts’s version of embarrassment.
“Enhancing visual magnification and running a deep scan, sir.” Falco was impressed by the less experienced science officer who knew the protocol, but often was taken by the excitement of the moment, and who could blame her? Falco waited as his rookie officer studied her screens and data feeds.
The outer solar system was unsettling to humans; the human spirit needed the brilliance of Earth’s sister planet Venus, the warm glow of Mars, and at least the ‘mysterious Mercury’ in the background to feel at home. Once you sailed past Mars, it reminded Falco of leaving his native New Sicily. Take the ferry to the mainland and all you knew and loved was gone. Palermo’s medieval Kalsa quarter ceased to exist, replaced by foreign oddities and masses of tourists. At least the tourist hoards can’t get out here… yet.
The BLACK was void of visual comforts known to humanity. It was a vacuum of gloom that hunted for any glimmer of life and destroyed it. Fields of it replaced the comforting pinpricks of distant light. Scientists called it dark energy and dark matter, but the reality was we still don’t have a clue what the hell any of it is, Falco pondered. It shrouds vast areas past Pluto in a shadow so devoid of light that you can feel the fetid decay, almost smell it, all the while it stares back at you through its dead eyes.
But the BLACK was much more, he learned en route to Station Pluto. Vice Admiral Hallsworth spoke of dark matter expanding towards their part of the solar system, an anomaly according to the UN’s brightest scientists. Dark energy represented sixty-eight percent of the universe and dark matter made up most of the rest. All that was known about it was that it is a ‘property of space’ within which the brown dwarf, Nemesis became lost. Case closed, let’s find some shit to dig out a few asteroids, and let’s go home.
Every few years a government attempted to drill through the wall of dark energy beyond Pluto with the newest and most tech advanced telescopes. They all came to the same conclusion – some type of energy field excreted during the formation of the universe is creating an impenetrable visual shield. Dark matter slows the expansion of the universe while dark energy speeds it up, possibly. Falco felt a little uneasy with that explanation, as he now knew this visual shield took up sixty-eight percent of the universe. The most advanced satellites sent to penetrate the dark energy disappeared in its mass and fell silent, never to be heard from again.
Human drama fed by imagination, he assumed as he squeezed his eyelids shut until all he saw was a red glow. Slowly, he opened his eyes and focused again on the task at hand. Faint energy sources in a sector so void of anything that it was considered worthless even to the number-crunching vultures back on Earth. And yet those number crunchers spent 9.8 trillion Yuan to build a space station out here. Falco waited for Ensign Holts to finish her assessment of the energy signatures.
He scanned the bridge of the Anam Cara, noting the underlying tension that contorted a lip here or eyebrow there. Watching the nervous tapping foot against a steel grate or the rolling of fingers on a fiber-alloy control pad, Falco had seen it all before. But this was different, pushing towards an infinite black zone… “Sailors of old,” he whispered, “pushing towards the precipice of a flat world. And I am now the captain.”
The light-sucking field felt like a two-way mirror in one of the old cop movies Falco had watched with his grandfather. The bad guy knew he was being watched, but could only see his own reflection. The BLACK was the two-way mirror and it comprised the second largest part of the known universe.
Even Falco had to fight the ridiculous sensation of being followed or observed out here. The need to turn and peer over your shoulder was intense. In a Cyclone Class patrol boat that would be a difficult feat.
Lieutenant Holts broke the silence. “The energy signatures are moving, now off the starboard side.”
the Darkness
Territorial Border
The clan structure was simple; Warruq clans were placed on the fringes of the territories, just outside of the Darkness and its protective mass. They were the first line of defense, the eyes for the Prox who lurked in the depths of the Darkness. Every sight, sound and feeling outside of the oily-smoke they floated in was fed to the Prox through the thought-streams of a single, rotating Warruq warrior who entered the Darkness, uploaded its data, fueled, fed and returned to open space.
As long as the Warruqs could process, there had only been the Oath to the Creators. An existence without history yet it spanned an eternity. They were one of the numerous clans positioned on the furthest part of the territories. Placed just beyond the edge of their claimed lands and the blanketing camouflage of the Darkness.
Waiting for something that only billions of cycles of evolution could answer. The five Warruqs could sense the presence of all the cl
ans from each outpost outside of the Darkness fading in and out of the thought-stream, keeping up-to-date by the fraction of cycles on what each clan was seeing and analyzing.
Waiting for the moment they were created for, the moment to fulfill their Oath. Waiting for something to destroy then travel to the Realm of Warriors to start their new existence. It was only a matter of time. The Creators and the territories must be protected.
Something was coming. Five separate pairs of optical sensors processed the alien object moving towards the territories that were safely shielded in the Darkness. This was something new, but comparable to other invaders that traveled the same path many cycles ago.
The first trespassers shared the same language as this one, but were smaller than a Warruq and only wanted to scan the face of the Darkness. This new intruder was larger than an entire clan of Warruqs and a swarm of languages emanated from its iron-based carapace. Sound waves bouncing sporadically off gas and dust, falling silent in the open only to return again when the waves entered the mass of the Darkness and echoed through the territories.
Fear bound the sputtering beast together, but there was something more. A whirring intellect that felt familiar to the Warruq on an ancient level. This newest invader shared a similar language with its smaller counterparts that attacked the edge of the territories every few cycles, one at a time – but this was different. The creature was searching, reaching out to the Warruqs using different waves of energy.
Another clan along the frontier had captured a smaller invader many cycles ago as the Creators had ordered it, but all the others had been easily destroyed by a single Warruq. Now it might be their turn to protect the territories and if they were worthy, they could pass into the Realm of Warriors.
Somewhere in the billions of cycles of record, there was a link to the language streaming from the iron beast. The Warruqs reached out to it, opened a direct thought-stream in an attempt to turn it from its hostile course. Send it back the way it had come, but only a torrent of unintelligible mathematical noise was its response. A mindless beast after all.
Intrigued by the invaders’ ancient language, the oldest of the five and leader of all the Warruq clans, studied the torrent of waves coming from the vessel. He had been appointed the position of LOR over all the Warruq clans millions of cycles ago by the Creators and still he had no chronicle of the language sputtering from within the beast.
These voices traveling in a beast with an iron-based carapace showed a basic level of intelligence, or at least the power to subdue and control such a creature, LOR thought. He uploaded the corresponding images and data to the thought-stream for all the clans outside of the Darkness to see and sent a Warruq from a nearby clan into the Darkness to upload the data to the rest.
The invaders must be turned or silenced, our purpose is clear. LOR and his small clan of Warruq warriors continued to float at the edge of the Darkness. Five matte-black beings created for one purpose. The Creators and territories must be protected.
LOR kept his own systems running at the base preservation level, which limited his physical outputs to almost zero. He sent the command to his four warriors to move into position. For the first time since their placement on the frontier over four billion cycles ago, his clan of warriors would fulfill their Oath and destroy another invader of the Darkness.
10
the Black Wall
Bridge of the Anam Cara
“Lieutenant Wallace, BRAVO 5 defensive maneuver, open a direct feed to Admiral Chen and 10th Fleet,” ordered Captain Falco, following standard protocol.
Commander Shar’ran closed the blast shields and checked his monitor. Slowly the thick, opaque plates moved across the windows of the Anam Cara’s bow, obscuring the faint glow of the surrounding stars, creating fuzzy halos around each bright speck.
“Ensign Holts, report,” Falco stated. He glanced toward her station, sure this was another of many ‘heat signatures’ amounting to the last gasps of something burning out and adding to the debris that surrounded them.
“Captain, the energy signatures simultaneously increased in intensity, although still faint,” Holts paused, “then disappeared.”
“Sir,” Commander Shar’ran cut in, “I am picking up some type of exhaust trails off the port side. They are dispersing quickly, but the traces are there.”
“Continue defensive maneuvers. Put a bit of space between us. Hot rocks colliding could end badly for the Anam Cara’s hull plating.” Falco looked toward the port windows now covered in rusted steel plating. In the initial design of Cyclone Class boats, windows were thought to be worthless, even ridiculous. Windows became necessary as the United Nations Space Administration (UNSA) realized the technological inefficiency of its scanners. Visual sightings of objects had saved many a crew. The Chinese recently developed the most advanced scanners known and made windows obsolete once again.
“Commander Shar’ran, flash our position and situational update to Station Pluto. We’re only a day out.” Falco was surprised the United Nations named the station after his favorite and former planet. After all, the data crunchers had replaced her name with a number and demoted her planetoid status to dwarf planet.
Pluto became a number – those who felt nothing for tradition called it a victory over cultural and historic influences by means of scientific reasoning. Falco called it a way of thinking spawned by desk jockeys in office corrals that have never been off planet. He also called it bullshit.
Pluto was ‘our’ frozen rock, the last thread of self-induced comfort before entering the great BLACK where strange, unexplained dark fields blocked out all light and formed vast expanses of dead space.
Holo-feeds and monitors lit up the bridge of the Anam Cara.
Ensign Holts’s hands came together in the center of her floating hologram feed and she slowly pulled them apart, expanding its three-dimensional scene over her station’s entire surface. “Captain, reading four faint heat signatures. Starboard side, stationary, twenty klicks out.”
the Darkness: Territorial Border
Warruq Outpost
LOR positioned his four Warruqs in a staggered line to the side of the raiding vessel. Matte-black armored carapaces hardened for battle. The plates facing the invading craft locked and thickened, simultaneously the plates on their back grew thin as their mass was transferred to the front and the oncoming threat.
Their small propulsion fins rolled and tucked under the armor, in another billion cycles the weak and little used limbs would disappear as the other worthless appendages did. All vital organs moved to the center of the Warruqs’ bulk, away from their carapace, furthest from a piercing blow from any side. Ocular sensors locked on the invaders, tracking, storing and sharing with the clan.
LOR had already deciphered the strange movements of the invading beast. At first it had appeared random, but after analyzing the moves in series, it was confirmed the beast was moving along a pre-planned path. Possibly an attempt to gain a tactical advantage, but only if they know we are here… and LOR was not sure they did. He was a safe distance in front of the iron beast that refused to turn back as it crawled closer to their territories. LOR kept his own power level at the lowest possible output, saving as much energy as possible for his final move. He opened a thought-stream to all the clans stationed outside of the Darkness in thousands of outposts.
Our path is clear. Our destiny is laid before us, we will protect the frontier and we accept this highest of honors. LOR ended his deliberations to the clans; closed the thought-stream and focused on his four warriors floating alongside the invader.
He sent the orders and readied himself to join them in fulfilling their Oath. This was his clan’s chance to reach the Realm of Warriors and the birth of their next existence.
The territories must be protected.
11
the Black Wall
Anam Cara
“Report Ensign.” Captain Falco studied his shared feed from Holts’s station.
“Sca
nners still reading faint heat signatures. Twenty klicks off starboard.” Holts continued to swipe across her data pads and manipulate her holo-feed.
Falco leaned back in his captain’s chair. “Could be anything or nothing. Well, we have found our first anomaly. Full stop, Lieutenant Wallace. Initiate ten percent bow thruster burn. Let’s create some room.” He looked toward his pilot and back to his commander whose gaze remained locked onto Falco.
“Battle-Net max range, 360-degree sweeps Commander Shar’ran. If there is a vessel hiding out here, I want to know.”
All scanners, sensors and sighting systems fed into the Battle-Net. It constantly made adjustments as new data poured into its massive processors. Falco believed it was the most important system on the ship.
The Battle-Net was the most advanced defensive system humanity had created. Which also made it the most devastating weapon and based on the LINK system hack, potentially the most vulnerable. It was the brain of every military vessel and able to control all firing systems and connect with other Battle-Nets on other boats. A fleet could become a single weapon controlled by one vessel’s Battle-Net, and its power scared the living shit out of Falco.
“Initiating full sweep.” Commander Shar’ran turned to the holo-feed that materialized over his station.
“Lieutenant, dust off the emergency beacon and flash the UN standard peace protocol.” Falco took a deep breath.
“Aye, Captain.” Lieutenant Wallace punched his data-pad and was already tapping away on the Emergency Beacon. “Hope my Morse code is up to snuff.”
Darkness: Book One of the Oortian Wars Page 6