Into the Stars (Rise of the Republic Book 1)

by James Rosone

  One of the Delta soldiers came out of a small building holding Ambassador Nina Chapman. He called out to Hopper and Jenkins for them to come toward him.

  “Is she all right?” asked Jenkins as he approached, concern written on his face.

  Nina was looking pale, her skin sweaty like she was going into shock.

  “I think she will be. I’m going to carry her back to the transports so we can get her sent up in the first wave. But you need to see inside there, sirs. What they did to her assistant…” The soldier’s voice trailed off. Then, before either of them could ask him anything further, he started walking toward the transports.

  Now that the fighting had all but ended, some of the human-looking prisoners were starting to poke their heads out of the two buildings they had been held up in.

  Major Jenkins walked up behind Hopper. “Captain, why don’t you go ahead and take the lead on talking with them while I focus on things out here? I was just informed that Professor Audrey Lancaster is on her way over to meet up with us. She came down with the last transport. I’ll head inside that building and document what took place when the lead master at arms gets down here from the Voyager.”

  Hopper stood there for a moment, looking at the captives. Finally, he turned to face the major. “Copy that, sir. I’ll do my best to get us some answers while I’m at it. I still want to know who the hell these aliens are and why they violently attacked us. If you need any other help from my Ghost element, Lieutenant Crocker, my XO can assist you.”

  With nothing more to be said, the major walked toward the far side of the camp, where some of the humanlike prisoners had holed up. Judging by some antennas on top of the building, it was probably their coms rooms. As he walked toward the captives, they all ducked their heads back in their windows and doors and did their best to disappear.

  Making his way up to the front door of one of the large buildings, Hopper turned the external audio speakers on his helmet up and made sure his AI translator had the Chaldean variant loaded.

  Clearing his throat to speak, he said, “Hello, my name is Captain Jayden Hopper of the Republic Army. My soldiers came here in peace. We mean you no harm. Earlier today, our ambassador attempted to speak with an alien by the name of T’Tock. His group attacked our people; this is why we attacked this camp—to recover our ambassador, and to speak with you. Who among you is your leader?”

  Hopper had no idea if he had said the right thing. He hadn’t anticipated speaking to them. That was the ambassador’s job, not his. Just then, Professor Audrey Lancaster walked up next to him.

  She leaned in slightly. “That was a good start, Captain.”

  “Thanks, Professor. I’m glad you’re able to join us.”

  Hopper’s initial question was met with silence. However, after another moment, a lone figure emerged from the darkness within the building. He walked up to one of the windows.

  The man, who looked to be in his midfifties, sheepishly said in reply, “You speak our language?”

  Looking up at the man who was speaking to them from a second-floor window, Hopper just nodded. “With the help of a translator, yes. My name is Captain Jayden Hopper, and this is Professor Audrey Lancaster. Are you the leader of this group?”

  The man nodded sheepishly. “I am. My name is Hadad,” he replied as he turned and waved his hand in the direction of his building and the one next to it. “And these are my fellow countrymen.”

  Captain Hopper motioned for the man to come forward so they could speak as he took his helmet off. All of the Earthers had their helmets on with the exception of Professor Lancaster.

  Hadad made his way down to the front door and to them. As he approached them, Hopper pulled out a small box with a pair of earbuds in it.

  When Hadad reached him, Hopper handed him the box. “Do you know what these are?” he asked as the man took the small box from him.

  Hadad smiled as he saw the contents of the box. “I believe these are listening devices of some sort I should place in my ears? Am I correct?”

  “Yes. We call them earbuds. If you insert them in your ears, you’ll understand our native language, just as all my men understand yours,” Hopper explained.

  “Do you have many more of them?” Hadad asked, looking back at his fellow prisoners.

  Hopper shook his head. “Not here with us. But on our ship, where we came from, we have more. Let’s take a walk away from the others. I’d like to talk privately with you. As a matter of fact, we have some people from our ship who would like to talk with you and learn more about you and your people—but also how you came to this planet and who these blue aliens are.”

  As the captain, the professor, and Hadad walked toward the other building, the Republic Army soldiers started passing out some of their meals ready to eat or MREs to the prisoners, who looked skeptically at the packages. Once a couple of the soldiers opened them up and started eating the contents, the others did likewise. Soon, smiles spread across the group as they tasted food from a completely different culture and world for the first time.

  A few minutes later, Hadad, Hopper, and Lancaster walked into one of the buildings in the camp that hadn’t been shot to hell. There were two other civilians getting a table ready and some other equipment. As the trio walked toward the table, Hopper motioned for Audrey to take the lead.

  *******

  Audrey couldn’t believe what the camp and the entire area looked like when she was led into it. Trees had been shot to pieces, parts of the camp walls were missing, huge chunks of buildings were blown out, and nearly all the guard towers were smoldering ruins. She’d never been to a warzone before, but now she knew what one looked like. This place had been heavily fought over. There were dead bodies everywhere. Some human, a lot alien.

  As the three of them sat down, Audrey took the seat closest to the human-looking prisoner. The first thing she noticed now that they had had a chance to sit down was how dirty and disheveled the man named Hadad was. She wasn’t sure what to make of him.

  Just as she was about to say something, one of the soldiers brought in some bottles of water and opened a couple of MRE packets and placed them on the table for the three of them. Hadad looked at the bottle of water and food with the look of a man who hadn’t eaten a lot recently. Noticing his gaze, Audrey signaled that he should eat and drink.

  Hadad unscrewed one of the water bottles and drank most of it down. The prisoner then tasted some of the food cautiously until he felt sure it was OK to eat. Once he thought it safe, he dug in.

  While Hadad was eating, Audrey began her visual observations of him. The first thing she noticed was that he knew exactly what a bottle was and how to open it. That meant he’d probably seen something similar before, or his people had the same concept. Then she watched him as he ate. He didn’t devour the food like an uncivilized person, cramming as much as he could in his mouth. He took purposeful bites and chewed, taking sips of water as he did. He ate with a careful deliberateness that suggested he had been used to eating quality prepared food at some point in his life. He also knew how to eat it without sounding like an animal chewing its cud. His teeth and mouth looked just like any other human’s she had seen. Audrey didn’t need some machine to sequence the alien’s DNA. Hadad was human. She just didn’t understand how that was possible.

  “Hadad—you said your name is Hadad, correct?” Audrey asked cautiously.

  The man nodded but didn’t say anything, eying her and examining Captain Hopper’s face and equipment.

  “Now that you’ve had a chance to eat some food, I’d like to know if we can have a more substantive discussion.” Audrey looked him in the eyes as she waited for his response.

  Nodding as he used his sleeve to wipe the side of his mouth, he said, “Yes, Professor. That would be appreciated. I have many questions I’d like to ask you as well. Mainly, who are you and where did you come from?”

  Taking a breath before she replied, she said, “We are from another system. A planet called Earth.�
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  Not missing a beat, Hadad quickly replied, “Then that would explain why we have never seen your people before. Your soldiers’ equipment looks very different from our own. What are you doing here?”

  “We are explorers. We discovered this planet many years ago. We finally sent an expedition here to see if there was life on it,” Audrey explained.

  Lifting his head, he countered, “You shouldn’t have come here. This isn’t your world.”

  Audrey wrinkled her brow. “Is this your home world? Whose is it?”

  The strange man laughed at the question. “No, Clovis is a mining colony. My people are from a planet called Sumara. It’s a long way from this place. As to who owns this planet? This place belongs to someone else.”

  “The Zodarks?” she asked, head cocked to the side. “What are you doing here if this is not your home?”

  Hadad reached for the second bottle of water and took a couple of drinks from it before he responded. “This is a prison colony. This is where the Zodarks and those in our government send people they feel are a threat to them, to work their mines and eventually die.”

  Hadad paused for a second as he shook his head in disgust. “This is a place of misery and death, Professor. Not a place any of us Sumerians ever want to visit.”

  “So, this planet is called Clovis?” she clarified.

  Hadad nodded. “Yes, the mountains here are rich in resources called Trimar and Morean. We mine the raw ore from the mountains, then use those machines out there to refine it into blocks that are eventually picked up and shipped back to the Zodarks’ core worlds.”

  Captain Hopper interjected, “This T’Tock our ambassador talked with—he’s your taskmaster, then?”

  Hadad turned to look at the soldier clad in armor. “Yes, T’Tock is the leader of this camp. A brutal slave master if you ask me. We heard some commotion at the front of the camp this morning, but we had no idea what it was or what was happening. Then we saw him and one of his guards carrying two people we’d never seen before into one of their buildings, and we knew there was going to be trouble. The Zodarks ordered us to stay in the compound. Then, a handful of hours later, you people started attacking the camp.”

  “What else can you tell us about these Zodarks?” Captain Hopper asked.

  Audrey turned to him with an annoyed look; she was supposed to be the lead in this conversation.

  Hadad smiled at the exchange. “I can tell you are the researcher and he the ever-present warrior. Our planet used to have warriors. I suppose we still do in some fashion, just not like we used to.”

  Audrey blushed but pressed on with her own question. “What can you tell us about these Zodarks?”

  “Unfortunately, a lot. They are a brutish species, as you can tell. Aggressive and challenging to deal with. For hundreds of years, our two races have had a delicate relationship that has allowed us to coexist. In exchange for providing a yearly tribute, they largely allowed us to develop and grow on our own. We were even allowed to develop some spacefaring ships to explore our own star system, but nothing compared to what the Zodarks have. They didn’t want us to become too powerful and challenge them.”

  Captain Hopper interrupted to ask, “Are there any more Zodarks on this planet or nearby?”

  Hadad shrugged. “I couldn’t say for sure. I’ve never been anywhere on this planet other than here where the mines are.”

  “What can you tell us about their spacefaring ability?” Hopper asked next.

  Hadad leaned forward. “When we first started to explore space, it appeared the Zodarks might allow us to join them as a spacefaring people. They shared with us a type of power plant that ran on the refined Trimar mineral we mine from these mountains. It generates enormous amounts of clean power, unlike other fuel sources we used to use. Then, one day, using this enormous power source, our researchers discovered a way to travel from one solar system to another by folding space. It was an incredible discovery as it meant our people would be able to travel beyond our solar system just like the Zodarks are able to.

  “However, within days of our breakthrough in space travel, the Zodarks invaded our planet with their armies and seized the technology from us. That was probably close to two hundred years ago,” Hadad explained.

  He went on in greater detail, describing more of the history between his people and the Zodarks. Audrey, Captain Hopper, and the other two civilians sat hanging on his every word for several hours as Hadad told them about his people, his planet, and the Zodarks. The small video-recording drones hovered at different angles, making sure to capture the entire exchange from different vantage points.

  Before they dove into talking more technical mumbo-jumbo about this new means of space travel, Captain Hopper circled back to something Hadad had mentioned earlier.

  “Hadad, when our ambassador attempted to speak with T’Tock, why did he attack her and the rest of us? We had come here in peace, hoping to talk, not fight each other.”

  Hadad sighed and shook his head slightly. “You cannot reason or negotiate with a Zodark,” he countered. “Not unless you are coming at them from a position of immense strength. They probably saw your ambassador as weak and figured they could get her to answer their questions without having to give her any information in exchange. It’s just the way the Zodarks are. They are a brutal species, Captain. You will see in time, now that you’ve met them.”

  Audrey asked, “Hadad, you said the Zodarks asked you to pay a tribute to them. What was the tribute they asked you to pay?”

  Hadad turned and looked out one of the windows, afraid or ashamed to say what it was. Returning his gaze to the soldier sitting opposite him, he said, “Once a year, at the end of our winter solstice, the Zodarks came down to our planet with large transport ships and collected five percent of the people above the age of fifty. Then they took one in ten of our children under the age of three. What they did with them…none of us truly know. Some speculated that they ate them. Some said they were used to populate slave colonies or other slave worlds they control. Unfortunately, once a person or child was selected, they were never heard from again. I personally believe they may eat them. You saw how they dismembered and ate your soldiers they had just killed. They are barbaric monsters.”

  Audrey moved a hand to her mouth and gasped. She did her best to fight back the shock, horror, and anger she felt in that moment.

  Captain Hopper didn’t mince words as he uttered several curse words before muttering, “Damn animals.”

  Hadad shook his head angrily. “No, Captain. We…we are their animals! We are their cattle. That’s how it’s been for as long as our people can remember.”

  Hopper opted to change the subject. “Hadad, we know of at least five more camps. Are there more camps on this planet or other Zodark bases we need to be aware of?”

  The man shrugged. “I am not sure. It would appear you know more than I do. What I’m frankly surprised at, Captain, is that the Zodarks hadn’t detected your presence in orbit or once you landed on the planet. How long have you been observing us?”

  “We’ve been in orbit now for five days. To be honest, we hadn’t initially detected a lot of electronic transmissions emanating from the planet or anywhere else in the system until we did a more detailed spectral analysis.”

  Hadad wrinkled his eyebrows at the mention of electronic emissions. “What do you mean by that term, electronics? And what is this word emissions? It doesn’t translate properly into our language.”

  The Earthers explained what the terms meant and how their technology could detect that kind of thing. Hadad told them the Zodarks operated their communication systems on a very different type of microburst transmission technology that allowed them to send large amounts of data over long distances with little in the way of an electronic signature. He asked one of the soldiers to bring some of the Zodark equipment over to him, saying he’d show them how some of it worked and what type of frequency it operated on.

  Hopper held up a hand.
“We can do that in time, Hadad. Right now, a small group of Zodarks has locked themselves inside what we think is their communications room. We’re working on getting them to surrender right now.”

  Hadad suddenly looked very concerned. “If T’Tock and his people have locked themselves inside the communications building, then you need to take them out now. They have most likely been calling for help from the other camps, or worse, for a nearby starship to come to assist them.”

  “We’re working on that, Hadad, and we know they’ve already sent a few messages outside the system. We’re going to have to leave this star system soon, now that we have freed you and your people. Would you like to come back with us to our world, or would you rather we leave you here?” Hopper asked, hoping they’d agree to come with him voluntarily.

  Hadad nodded. “Everyone in this camp would welcome the chance to come with you. To escape this place is something we all talk about, but until you arrived, it was nothing more than a dream. Yes, we will go with you.”

  “Excellent. Then let’s head back out, and I’ll let you explain things to your people. We have transports heading down now as we speak to start ferrying you back to our ships.”

  Reaching his hand across the table to touch Hopper’s, Hadad added, “I would recommend taking as much of the refined Trimar and Morean with you as possible. There is much we can help you with, but some of it will require these two materials.”

  Hopper smiled and nodded in agreement.

  *******

  RNS Voyager

  Admiral Abigail Halsey didn’t know where to start. This newfound excitement about finding a habitable planet, a new home world for humanity, was suddenly turning into dread. While they had known there was the possibility of life on the planet, she was still in shock that one of the species there was apparently a group of humans. What really blew her mind was thinking about how this group could be speaking a variant of ancient Chaldean.