by Morgan Cole
The incredible emotions I was feeling looking down at Earth from orbit while riding in my own spaceship were a little bittersweet. The sight was awe-inspiring, but a very important part of my future plans had just been seized by refugees from a 50s sci-fi movie.
Down on Earth, the modified Ospreys arrived shortly after we left. Platoons of soldiers spilled out of each one, moving to secure the perimeter while a pair of squads entered the hangar and disappeared from sight.
"Brick, status report," I ordered.
"I was successful at purging the outpost's local data stores as well as transferring all materials stored in the outpost's array through the gate to Pax. I also took the liberty of loading the Redemption with supplies you might need."
"What?" I said, and turned around to look into the cargo bay.
Stuck to the wall was a familiar-looking Nanite Cluster container, and above that a line of four drones, two Scouts, and two beamers. They'd come in handy since I had lost one of my drones in the fighting and spares were nice.
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Nanite Storage Container
Energy: 100%
500/5000 Nanite Clusters stored
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In a corner was a one-meter cube of grey packing foam, the Union's answer to both cardboard boxes and bubble wrap. If you had to store or ship something, you could use the Union's handy device to encase anything in the foam. It was strong, light, and would crumble to dust at your touch if you willed it to do so. The Interface didn't give me a label for that one.
"What's in the cube?"
"Two of your Holemaker V2s," Brick replied.
I smiled. They were one of my favorite inventions, a ridiculously useful and powerful demolition charge that had served me extremely well in the fight to reclaim Pax. The V2 was my improved version.
"Nice!"
"Further, I left some of my bots behind and gave them instructions to disable the gate, rather than disassemble it. If the attackers have Union technology they would be able to rebuild the gate with the materials left behind from a disassembly, but if they do not, they will be unable to repair a disabled gate. It seemed the best option."
"That's good work. Speaking of the attackers, who were they?" I asked.
"Come on, Jake," Marty protested. "You saw what I did. Those were the Greys! And those soldiers are their lackeys in the government! Hell, there were even flying saucers! I wonder how long they've been here, living amongst us? Since that's true, I wonder if that means the lizard people are real, too?"
With the loss of the northern outpost we were down to just the microgate installed in my phone. If I ever wanted to set foot on Pax again I'd either have to capture a gate, or build a new one. If some government agency backed up by Grey aliens was squatting on my northern outpost, I was very much hoping the gate on Mercury was still intact. A problem for another day.
Before Marty could get too far down the rabbit hole, I interrupted him. "Regar, Kiril, do you know what species these guys are? They're not part of the Union, I take it?"
"No Seeker has ever survived to bring word of a species like this back to us, Jake. They are not part of the Union. I am examining the corpse to learn what I can and will inform you when I discover more," Kiril replied.
"I'm going over its equipment. It's strange," Metra said.
"How so?" I asked.
"Most of the gear is pretty standard," Metra said. "About what you might expect from a well-armed Earth mercenary, with the exception of the bullets in the magazines. The casings, powder, and primer are all normal. The actual bullets themselves are something else. They're not made of tier 1 material, and they're not Union tech. On impact they release a small plasma charge."
That made a lot of sense. Each one had done a tiny bit of damage, but it had added up, and now my Assault Armor was looking pretty rough, if still functional. The bullets of the soldiers guarding that black site hadn't even scuffed my nonexistent paint job.
"That doesn't make any sense," Marty said. "Why would the Greys be using Earth weapons? They're advanced aliens. You all saw what that saucer's weapon did. They should be using heat beams or disruptors or something. And what about that force field thing?"
"I don't see that here. Maybe it got left behind?" asked Metra.
"Regar, how about you? How are you doing?" I asked.
"The First is meditating in isolation," Kiril responded instead. "Even without his loss of control on the battlefield, the slaying of sentient life would weigh heavily on him."
I understood Regar's shame at going berserk, but the slaying part was confusing.
"Wait a minute, are the Seekers actually pacifists when it comes to non-Ferals?"
Kiril laughed, a light and high sound.
"Stars, no! Regar told you that our goal as Seekers is to preserve sentient life, that is true. As a whole. We are not naive idealists that think all life is good and should be protected. We will not hesitate to protect ourselves, or those around us."
That was a relief. For a moment I'd thought that somehow Regar's debt to me had forced him to betray his deeply held pacifist beliefs. The way he'd fought made it seem unlikely, but still.
"Good. I was worried. Are we ready to fly to Mercury, then?"
We'd made it into orbit, but Brick had said that he had fitted a "minimal" amount of propulsion.
"She's a lot slower than I like, but she'll get us there," Marty said. "We shouldn't get into any fights with her, though."
"Marty is correct, Jake. Connahr installations are well defended. You will need to be careful and never test their defenses. As capable a pilot as you are, Marty, the Redemption is a small and fragile ship."
"Sure, I get it. Don't let them hit me."
"No, Marty. Don't let them see you. It's unlikely you could dodge an anti-ship missile," Kiril said.
Our plan wasn't complicated. We'd go to Mercury and try to make contact with the base there. We expected it to be unmanned, and therefore it wouldn't answer us. Union defense bases like this one never had an AI. That would defeat the point, and was against Union policy anyway.
What they did have were automated defenses. Not smart, but automatic. They would simply fire on anything that came too close. People that were authorized to be there either had ways to deactivate them, or they simply gated in, bypassing the external defenses.
We had no good choices left. Without Brick's ownership of the Internet we'd be unable to find any more materials caches, and we couldn't go back to Pax. We had to get to the Connahr base and stabilize the field.
"All right, let's go to Mercury," I said.
"Come on, you've gotta say it," Marty said.
"Really?" I asked. Marty waited patiently, unyielding.
"Fine. Engage," I replied.
Earth rapidly faded into the distance. I could see it through the hull, using the Interface to make the substance of the ship fade away in whatever direction I looked. It quickly became Sagan's pale blue dot. We passed close by the moon, slowing slightly to take it in. I knew from our initial course plan that we didn't need to go by the moon, so this was of course Marty's doing.
After we passed it, he spoke. "We've just traveled farther than any Earth humans. At least the ones that weren't kidnapped by aliens."
"Yeah," I replied. "Weird. I hope this is going to be the way it goes from now on. I want humans to be spacefaring. I always have, ever since I was a kid. I wanted to be out here. If we can save the Union, or maybe just ourselves, maybe that has a chance of happening.”
"I believe in us,” Marty said. “We can do it—humans that is. Look what you've already done. You saved Pax. You rescued Regar and Kiril. Hell, I'd still be working for my uncle if it wasn't for you. If I haven't said it already—thanks, man."
"You're welcome. Honestly, I'm really glad you're here. Brick's great and all, but it's not the same. When I was on that station all by myself, it was lonely. I wish I'd had a buddy there. Hell, it's been a while since I had one. It's good to h
ave friends again."
"Speaking of which, when we get back let's get some more of my guys involved. Theoden and a couple of the other True Believers could really help us."
I thought about what he was asking. It made sense, honestly. It was still a small group of us, but it couldn't remain so forever. I thought of all the science fiction books I'd read, where a small group of plucky friends defends the Earth from alien invaders. Even in those novels, eventually they had to get the normal people of Earth involved. We'd have to do that too. There was no way we could do all this on our own.
"You're right. We'll bring him in, and anybody else who's trustworthy, when we get back. We need the help."
"What are we going to do about the Greys?" Marty asked. "We just got our asses kicked."
"Listen, I had some plans before today but they didn't involve having to deal with a different faction of hostile aliens. But really, it doesn't change that much. We just won't be able to bully them like we could have done with the US government."
"Let's hear this plan, then."
"You've seen the movies, same as me. We're not superheroes. Or, maybe we are, but there needs to be more of us. We need to get humans fighting for their own existence."
"And the Greys?" Marty asked.
"They're just another faction we have to deal with. Think about it like this—when we go public the US government is going to come down on us hard. They'll try to take our tech, capture us, send us an endless parade of Feds looking to infiltrate our organization, right?"
"That, and maybe they'll send tanks and troops. Attack helicopters. Cruise missiles."
I shook my head. "I'm not worried about any of that. If we have time to set up our defenses the government can't touch us. We can actually bully them, since they can't hurt us, and we can do whatever we want to them. It might take a while but they'll back off when they realize they can't fuck with us. Infiltration is a separate problem."
"And the Greys?"
"They're another group of people with different resources. They're not monsters like the Ferals; they've got goals. We just don't know what they are. We've got a common enemy, and we can use that. We'll need to make them take us seriously enough to back off. Maybe their losses on that raid will have done that."
"For the sake of argument, let's say you get everybody to back off. Then what?" Marty asked, leaning forward in his chair.
"We need to get Pax fully up and running. Get it cranking out weapons and ships for the defense of Earth."
"That's not going to work," Marty replied.
"What do you mean?"
"We can bootstrap with Pax, but really what we need to do is get a Union tech manufacturing base here in Sol. Massive orbital factories, mining operations out in the asteroid belt, that sort of thing. Pax is great and all but it's on the other side of a gate. We can't supply all of Earth through that gate, and we don't even have one right now."
It was obvious to me once Marty had said it. Of course we couldn't supply Earth solely with Pax. Even if we could it would be dumb to do so. It would take way too long to get up to speed.
"You're right. I don't know why I didn't think of that. We need a plan. We need to figure out the most efficient way to get Earth up and running with Union tech and manufacturing."
"About that," Marty said. "If we bring the seeds of a Union manufacturing base through the gate and set it up, what happens if we lose control of it? The Greys take it from us, or our government does? I can only imagine the stupid shit those idiots in DC would do if it suddenly had an insurmountable tech advantage over the rest of the world. If the aliens take it all bets are off."
I admitted to myself that he sounded correct. Politicians were a vile lot, and my experience with the Greys hadn't been that positive so far either.
"What can we do though? We are going to need to Induct people," I said.
"I'm remembering a science fiction book series I read once. It wasn't anything like what's happening now, but the gist of it was the heroes got ahold of alien tech and they didn't trust the government. So they set up their own space-based government and essentially cut Earth's governments out completely. They'd recruit people from Earth, but they wouldn't give any of the tech to the governments of Earth. I can't remember what the series was called, but it was great."
It itched at my brain for a moment, the plot sounding familiar. "Yeah, I think I've read those. They called the new government the solar union, something like that?"
Marty nodded. "Anyway, if we go that way we get to maintain control until we're sure our structure is safe. Until we're sure that stupid people aren't going to wreck everything."
"You know how this shit goes, Marty. Every single movement that ever comes from grassroots is instantly infiltrated by a dozen different Federal agencies. If we recruit people, they're going to be half Feds."
"It's a problem that me and my friends have thought a lot about. Theoden would have a lot to say about this particular subject."
I nodded. That did seem right up Theo's alley.
"Anyway, we'll figure it out. First things first. How long till we get to Mercury?" I asked.
I could've found out for myself, but it was a nice way to change the subject.
"Roughly eight hours. We could've made it there quicker, but it's on the other side of the sun from us right now."
"Great, we've got some time. Let's listen to some tunes," I said.
My phone had gone from an essential tool for everyday life to useless relic and was now back to being an essential tool since it had our only remaining gate in it. It did have one function that I hadn't yet re-created with Union technology.
Music.
"What have you got there? Your phone? The cabin's evacuated and it's not like this baby has any speakers. Now that I say it, that seems like a bit of an oversight. Want me to repressurize so you can play on your phone's speaker?" Marty asked.
"No, that would be horrible. Here, check this out," I said.
I walked over and stuck the phone to Marty's control console. I had spent a little bit of my downtime modifying the phone even further, giving it a more sophisticated conduit for the Interface to control it. I had also loaded it up with every bit of music I could find. With Brick's help that turned out to be just about everything. Storage capacity was no longer an issue when you had Union tech.
I pulled up the music player app and pressed play on my carefully curated playlist.
An Interface popup appeared.
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Music player wants to share audio output with you. Accept, Yes/No?
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I hit accept and the opening riff of Steppenwolf's “Born to be Wild” seemed to fill the Redemption's small cabin. The bass was rich, and the sound full and beautiful.
The Interface had me experiencing the music as if I were surrounded by topnotch speakers, perfectly tuned for the acoustic space we were in. In actual fact, there were no sound waves at all. It was all strictly in my mind. Even the illusion of the bass slightly vibrating my sternum. It was a smaller-scale version of the sound and image projectors we'd used to fake the saucer landings.
I could control the volume, and even when it was loud, I could still hear and understand Marty speaking. It was the best possible use of Union technology, and for some reason I'd had to invent it since it wasn't in the Common Knowledge Set. I guess when you're worried about surviving a Galactic apocalypse, you didn't tend to think too much about the proper way to enjoy your tunes.
"Holy crap, Jake. That's cool. I've even got my own volume control. Very cool. But seriously man, are you my dad? This music is ancient."
Marty looked down at the phone, scrolling through the playlist.
"What's the deal? Every one of these is at least thirty years old. Even your rap is from the early 90s."
I shrugged, not feeling the urge to defend my musical tastes. My father had always been playing music when I was young, and although I had picked up some of my own tastes
over the years, lots of his had rubbed off on me. He would listen to music from the 60s, 70s, and 80s. I would listen to those, as well as the techno, trance, and trip-hop that I'd grown up with. It made my playlists a little eclectic, but I wasn't going to worry about it.
"Oh pipe down. You can put some of your own tracks in the playlist if you want. We've got time, don't we?" I asked.
Marty nodded, and picked up the phone to start adding his own tracks to the list.
Ten minutes later he was finally done, and he turned back to me. He grinned widely as the track switched and a wall of distorted guitar sound smacked me in the face, followed by what I could swear was Cookie Monster singing a heavy metal song.
Chapter Thirty-Four: Arrived at Mercury
SIX HOURS LATER MARTY startled out of his Interface trance. He'd been deep into the design interface, and swiped windows out of the way frantically.
I muted the music that had been playing. The track was a Marty addition, heavy metal from Finland. It was loud, angry, and wonderful.
"What's going on?" I asked.
"We're still fairly far out, but I'm detecting a target lock."
"Can they actually hit us at this range?"
"No, not beam weapons. Missiles, sure. Think about it. When you've got propulsion as good as the Union you can make some nasty missiles."
Kiril had mentioned something about anti-ship missiles and how we had no chance of evading them. I was sure he was right. There was no way we could tank them either. We didn't have any point defense and our shield was—to be blunt—crap.
The Interface popped up a message.
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Incoming message from: Union Connahr base FW-2199880.
Accept? Yes/No
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I hit the accept button, and an audio recording played.
"Attention unidentified ship. This is Connahr base FW-2199880. You are entering restricted space. To authorize your approach, return proper identification codes after receiving our handshake on the data channel we have opened. A closer approach without authorization will be met with lethal force."