by Mark Tufo
“What’s going to happen when the carrier comes out of the buckle?” I asked.
“Dagger squadron, full thrust away!” Captain Banks ordered. We were pulling what remained of the destroyer’s fighters with us, and now we had Saber squadron behind them. Shots from both sets of fighters were streaking past.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Cedar said as she pulled straight up.
“Dagger three, what are you doing!?” Captain Banks asked her.
“I’m no one’s bait” was all she said. I followed her suit. We were looping back around; two of the enemy fighters attempted to follow us and were cut down by Saber squad. We were just pulling out of our loop when the carrier showed, the hapless and helpless destroyer directly in front of it. Those who had still been clinging to life previously aboard the ship no longer were, as the Talbot severed what remained into two halves. The carrier was doing its best to bank away from the destruction.
“Destroyer Integrity, this is Commander Brigend. Surrender. You have nowhere left to run.”
The reply we got could barely be considered human. It was a guttural response that devolved into a rising and falling pitch, underlaid with a hissing. I thought perhaps the one trying to talk had been injured. By now, Lightning squadron was in position and it devolved quickly into a shooting gallery where nothing from the Integrity was going to escape. There was more hissing, but they never did stop trying to fire. In less than a half hour, we were sweeping past the front of the Talbot, looking for damage. The carrier had been traveling so fast and the structural integrity of the destroyer had been degraded so much that the damage to the Talbot was hardly more than superficial; the nano-technology was already at work.
Dagger squad had been ordered back to the hangar when we received the warning that an imminent arrival was incoming. We landed and Cedar and I headed straight for the bridge. Brigend had given up on us following protocol.
“Good job out there,” he said as we came aboard.
“One of ours?” Cedar asked, though we already knew the answer. We succeeded or we failed this mission on our own. There was no help coming, had we needed it.
“They could have got a call out for help,” I offered.
“They could have and probably did,” Brigend said. “But there is no way it could have arrived so quickly.”
“They’re meeting someone,” Cedar deduced.
“That’s what we’re figuring,” Brigend told her. “The question is who. Why did they have to come out to what they figured was the loneliest place in space to do this?”
“I think I know,” Cedar replied.
“Inform us.” Brigend was not humoring my sister; he’d come to respect her opinion, and unless I was completely misreading their interactions, he was totally infatuated with her, something she either consciously or unconsciously chose to miss. For someone who was so focused on what she did, I had a hard time believing she could not see it.
“We know the Others are rapidly evolving or devolving into Stryvers; however, you want to look at it. I think they hit critical mass. When you asked them to surrender, they were hissing—or what we thought was hissing; I’m betting it’s a lot like Stryver language.”
“Captain Felder, compare the fighters’ transmissions to Stryver language,” Brigend ordered as he turned to his comm officer. “Give me a translation, if there is one.”
It was ten tense minutes later when the captain responded. “Sir, it’s not a direct translation, but there are more similarities than disparities. It’s a mix of Human and Stryver. To use an old phrase, almost a pidgin language of the two. Makes sense, given the Others’ vocal cord restrictions. They wouldn’t be able to use the same dialect as the Stryvers.”
“What’s it say?”
“I’m not completely sure, but something along the lines of ‘death to all those that oppose us.’”
Brigend turned quickly. “Cedar, I’d like you to take me and a small group out in a shuttle.”
“Of course,” she told him.
“Major Retters, how much time until our guests arrive?”
“One hour, twenty-two minutes,” he replied.
“What are we doing?” Cedar asked him.
“We’re going to need a body. Need to see what has happened to them, why their physiology has changed so dramatically over the last three years.”
We were aboard the shuttle and doing the pre-flight check when Cedar nudged my shoulder. Tallow was up in the tower. He waved and I waved back. I knew this was driving him crazy, the waiting and watching, but there was nothing I could do about it. I told him that he should perhaps learn some skill in the control tower so that at least he could watch firsthand. He’d taken to that idea immediately. He was still in training but was getting better by the day. It was also nice to know he was only a radio call away.
We were navigating through the debris field left over from the battle. We were going much slower than anyone would have liked. Knowing there was a timer running made every minute we spent looking seem interminable. We’d come across a few bodies, but they had been so mangled or burnt as to be beyond recognition. Brigend was hoping to find someone who had the misfortune to have been sucked out into the vacuum of space relatively unscathed.
“How much time do we have?” Brigend was behind Cedar, looking through the front shield.
“Fifty-eight minutes,” was my response.
“We’re going to have to turn around soon.” I could hear the strain in his voice.
“There.” Cedar was pointing off to the left as she turned the ship.
I gulped; it was the upper half of a man. He’d somehow been cut neatly in half. We were staring at the wound, which had frozen completely. Twinkles of light radiated off his midsection from the frozen blood.
“It’ll have to do. Get ready,” Brigend informed the capture crew.
“He doesn’t look right.” I was straining to see his features.
“Other than missing his bottom half?” Cedar asked.
“No, she’s right. Magnify,” Brigend said, stepping closer.
It was difficult to make out as we moved closer, but there appeared to be thick, wiry hairs protruding from odd angles on his forehead, cheeks and chin.
“Damage from the battle?” I asked, more than hoping that was the case.
“I…I don’t think so,” Cedar gulped.
We got close to the body. The three-man team quickly retrieved it and placed it in a sealed bag. With less than twenty minutes to spare, we were back aboard the Talbot. The body was sent down to the lab.
“I want to know the moment you have anything,” Brigend told the tech taking the body.
Technically, Cedar and I were off duty, and I also wanted to hear about it the moment they had anything. “I’m going with them,” I told her.
“I don’t eat cahol chips, but right now, I’m going to see if anyone has any,” she replied. There was a disturbed look in her eyes.
I don’t know why I was so determined to find out what was wrong with the man. Maybe it was because I wanted them to be less human; it somehow more justified our fight against them. If any lingering doubt was left, it quickly vacated as the two technicians undid the seal on the body. They were wearing biological suits and were in a negatively pressurized room; I watched from the safety of a glass partition, yet we all still backed up a step when the man’s arm flopped out of the bag. It was a blue-gray color that could be attributed to the severe temperatures he had been exposed to, but that could not explain that pencil-thick hairs that protruded. Also, his pointer finger and middle finger were fused together; it could have been a birth defect, but I didn’t think so. As they pulled him free from his bag and clothes, the differences became more evident. The strange hair was haphazardly placed all along his torso and his jaw. It didn’t look right.
“Beginning of a mandible?” one of the techs asked as he hesitantly reached out to touch it.
“Get a blood sample,” the other one said as he lifted one side of
the man to look at the back.
Within five minutes, I had all the information I needed to know. The man was now more Stryver than Human, by two percent. Whatever was happening to them was moving at an accelerated pace. This new information was explosive; whatever alliance remained with the Progerians would be blown away like a fallen leaf in a gale. If we could get them the information, that is. We still didn’t know who was coming or why. I made it to the bridge with three minutes before arrival, but far after news of the Stryver-Man hybrid in the meddie center. Brigend looked grim, and most of the crew appeared as if dinner had not sat well.
The Others weren’t originally some hostile alien race bent on the destruction of all others; they had originated from the same place we all had. It was just that their ancestors had made some questionable decisions and now they were faced with the consequences. Brigend wanted to know why the change was happening so rapidly over the last few years when previously it had moved at a glacial pace. I heard phrases like, “tipping point” and “evolutionary markers,” or that the Human side was no longer able to keep the invasive aspects of the Stryver contamination at bay. That their immune systems had finally succumbed to the onslaught. Whatever the answer, it didn’t matter. They were Stryvers now.
“Wind up the buckle drive,” Brigend ordered with less than two minutes before the other ship showed.
“Coordinates, sir?”
“Get us close to the Bootes constellation.”
“Sir?” Major Rettings turned to look at his commander.
“I’ve got a feeling I know who’s coming, and I’m not bringing them back to our home.”
“Stryvers? He thinks it’s Stryvers?” I asked my sister.
“Makes sense, and since we know they can somehow track a buckle, it’s the right thing to not go home.”
That didn’t make me feel any better. If it was indeed Stryvers, they could follow us forever.
“Thirty seconds to arrival.”
“Release the drone. Have it send microburst transmissions. Set the self-destruct for thirty-five seconds,” Brigend ordered. “And get us out of here.”
“What’s he doing?” I asked as I felt the familiar pull as the ship was now traveling faster than the speed of light.
“Every second head start we get on those who would pursue us, the harder it will be for them to pick up our trail. Anything more than a minute, it should be theoretically impossible to find us. Now you’re going to ask: Why we didn’t leave, then?”
I nodded, wondering how she knew all this.
“The drone and the microburst message will only travel so far…”
“And if we left at a minute out, we’d never get it,” I completed her sentence.
“Look at you, getting all smart.”
“Funny,” I told her.
“Incoming transmission.”
“Put it on the screen,” Brigend said.
The ship that appeared was as menacing looking as it was huge. There was no definitive shape; it looked as if it had been lumped together by a variety of individuals with not a care for what the being next to them was doing. It was clearly not something meant for an atmosphere, as there was nothing even remotely aerodynamic about it. Somehow I didn’t think that would matter, as some of the larger arrays appeared to be weapons of some sort.
“A new Stryver ship?” I asked Cedar. She prided herself on being familiar with all the known ships. She said when decisions had to be made in an instant, it could be the difference between life and death.
“It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen, though it does share traits with a few,” she replied.
“If the Others’ outward appearance has changed, does it not make sense that they have changed inside as well?” I asked. The entire deck crew looked at me.
“You’re saying it is of Others origin?” Brigend asked.
“Makes sense, right?” I answered.
“Why meet out here? What’s the big secret?” Cedar asked.
“The big secret is what they’re turning out to be; maybe it hasn’t spread to the populace. If they unveiled this ship at their home, news of it and those that are changing would spread like wildfire.” Brigend replied.
“How could they possibly be hiding this?” I asked.
“Is it possible this is a faction?” Cedar asked. “That maybe they’re not all like this?”
It was boggling to think of what their nearest brethren might think of them. As if Brigend knew what I was thinking, he continued.
“This could be something we could exploit. Maybe there are those that don’t know.”
“How could they not? The resources alone to build that ship…” Cedar replied.
“Look what we’ve done undetected,” he answered, referring to our new home.
“Who do we tell?” I asked.
“Everyone,” Cedar and Brigend said in unison.
“Sir, we’re being followed,” Major Rettings said.
“Looks like someone isn’t quite ready to reveal their secrets,” Brigend said.
“Or they’re angry about what we left behind,” I said.
“There’s that. Either way, I don’t want to be around to see what that thing is capable of. Major, let’s move to the Berringer scenario; ultimate destination still the Bootes constellation.”
The major looked out of sorts with the entirety of what was happening.
“Cedar, can you tell me what’s going on in normal terms?” I asked her, trying to stay out of the way of all the activity.
“You want me to start with Berringer or Bootes?”
I looked at her like I had no clue, because really, I didn’t.
“Fine, fine, Berringer it is. Early on during the war, there was a famous general—umm, maybe infamous. Jury’s still out on that one.”
“Cedar.” I was trying to keep her on course. Sometimes she had so much knowledge in her head it leaked out in random bursts.
“Sorry. So Berringer was out on an unsanctioned raid, stumbled across three Stryver ships. He fought for a while, but only long enough to make an escape. Of course, the three ships followed him into the buckle; it was only a matter of time before they caught up, and…want to know why they were so angry?”
“Not really.”
“He was rounding up Stryver young for experiments, to find better ways to kill them, maybe to keep them from ever maturing or being able to reproduce. It wasn’t a popular position, especially with those ruling, who feared retribution.”
“Cedar.”
“Just giving context.”
“Less context, more facts.”
“Those are facts.”
“The relative ones.”
“They’re all relative because relatives are pains in the butt,” she mumbled. I gave her another look and raised my arm to punch her. “He knew he couldn’t outrun them, and because he was where he wasn’t supposed to be, there was no help—no help that could get to him in time. So he did something that had, up to that time, never been done. They rigged a shuttle to be able to ride the buckle. I won’t bore you with the incredible technical aspects they had to overcome; let’s just say it was a pioneering effort. As soon as they were ready, they launched the shuttle out at the same time they removed themselves from the buckle.”
“That’s not possible; wouldn’t the buckle have stopped without the ship driving it?”
“Like I said: groundbreaking.”
“What happened?”
“They got away. The Stryvers followed the shuttle. I figured that was evident; I mean, otherwise, how would he ever have had a maneuver named after him? Still, almost got court-martialed for risking the crew and the resources.”
“So that’s what we’re going to do? Launch a shuttle in the hopes the Stryvers follow?”
“No, that’d be a waste of a perfectly good shuttle and anyway, the Stryvers wouldn’t fall for it, not again. No, now it’s a machine that mimics the effects of the buckle so that their sensors won’t be able to tell when w
e drop out.”
“Won’t they know?”
“Most likely not. This is all new stuff. As far as I know, it’s never been done in a live situation.”
“Is it going to work?”
She shrugged.
“Okay, and the Bootes Constellation?”
“Really, Winter, you need to pick up a book.”
“I already live in space, sis. We ever get back to Earth, I don’t even think I’m ever going to look up again.”
“The Bootes Constellation is one of the strangest, remotest, and completely unexplored parts of the galaxy. It is a void that has never been traveled before.”
“A void like a black hole?”
“No, it’s somewhat different; there’s absolutely nothing in it, no visible light. It is so enormous, that if you were in the middle of it and only had your unaided eye, you would not be able to see any stars.”
I realized that the universe was vastly larger than I could even comprehend, but an area so large as to not be able to see anything past it was a staggering thought.
“And we’re going there why?”
“Because no one goes there.”
“I’m thinking with good reason.”
“Major, send out the word for everyone to get strapped in,” Brigend said before turning to us. “Both of you as well,” he said as he pulled a harness across his lap and chest. “The launch of the decoy, along with the abrupt exit from the buckling stream, is…” he paused, “jarring.”
We watched the countdown displayed on the screen. With thirty seconds left, there was a high-pitched whine, and I could feel the tightening of the harness. With twenty seconds to go, the force was so great I could no longer pick my head up to watch as the time ticked off. I tried counting in my head; if this went any longer, I was positive my eyeballs were going to be sucked to the back of my skull or I was going to press through the straps, pieces of me sliding to the far bulk. There was an intense shudder before the pressure subsided immediately. I gasped for air I hadn’t realized I needed until just then.