Hallowed Nebula

by Eddie R. Hicks

  “I suppose we’ll be entering cryo soon, then? If you don’t find the fissures, it will take years to reach Pria.”

  “The cryo chambers were damaged during the attack,” Odelea said with a wince. “We’ll have to remain active during the entire voyage.”

  “Do we even have enough supplies for that?”

  Odelea shook her head. “I’m afraid not. That’s what makes our current situation grim.”

  Not for Jainuzei, this must be exactly what he wants.

  The beeping noise of the heart monitor returned to her hearing. She was glad to hear it again. Karklosea stared up at sickbay’s ceiling once again after slipping into a new medical gown. The human doctor Kostelecky’s words sounded negative toward her, very frustrated as she administered painkiller drugs into Karklosea’s body.

  When the doctor moved away, she was approached by Foster. The two spoke when Odelea standing next to Karklosea’s bed listened in. Whatever it was Foster told the doctor, it got her worked up and her face flushing. The doctor spoke again when her emotions had simmered down enough to let her speak.

  “Oh, my Gods . . .” Odelea whispered to herself.

  “What is it now?” Karklosea asked her.

  “It would seem that Doctor Kostelecky is . . .” Odelea paused. “She’s pregnant.”

  Karklosea’s face went through a number of emotions, her hands held onto her belly that housed her womb that had long been sterilized by the Radiance Union. There was a time in Karklosea’s life when her womb held an unborn child. She was one of the few people in Radiance to have memories of that, as she was born and raised just before the old Linl republic joined the Union. When her species became part of the collective, they had to submit to all laws within Radiance, including forced sterilization. It was the will of the Gods to do so.

  As devoted to the Gods as she was, she envied exiles, humans, Qirak, and Hashmedai. They could experience the wonders of natural childbirth, a feeling she missed, and a feeling she’ll no longer be able to feel again, like her son whose life was taken away by Imperial forces.

  Had she believed in the will of the Gods at that time, he might be alive today.

  “Humans aren’t sterile like us,” Karklosea said. “Why is this a concern?”

  “Doctor Kostelecky was part of the original Sirius expedition.” Odelea looked away from the two humans. “She wasn’t pregnant then and had been busy once the Carl Sagan returned from being missing for those years. The crew can’t remember what happened during that time; many assumed they were trapped in cryo.”

  “If the doctor is pregnant, then they spent quite a bit of time out of cryo. Enough time for her to meet a man.”

  35 Foster

  XSV Johannes Kepler

  Hallowed Nebula, Divine Expanse

  November 2, 2118, 20:32 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  “How the hell did you get knocked up?”

  “I don’t fucking know!”

  Kostelecky threw her hands up, marching into her office, Foster followed behind. She sat at her desk, using its computer terminal to load a holo screen. It showed the distorted image of the growing fetus within Kostelecky.

  “I found out I was pregnant when EISS questioned us after the Draconians attacked Earth,” Kostelecky said. “That asshole Moriston was going to blackmail me with it, thinking that I was withholding information about our disappearance on the Carl Sagan.”

  “Blackmail you with that?” Foster crossed her arms. “What’s the big deal about it?”

  “Remember the medical exanimation EISS put us through? They didn’t just learn I was pregnant, they also discovered that the father, whoever he is, was Poniga. As far as EISS was concerned, I violated the protected world’s accord by playing doctor with a Poniga. He threatened to have my career terminated by revealing that if I didn’t cooperate.”

  “Well, Moriston is dead now—”

  “And I thank you for that, Captain.”

  “Why did you choose to keep it a secret?”

  “Because I have better things to do than admit I was getting off with a Poniga?”

  “While we vanished on the Carl Sagan at that.”

  “The Draconians took us and the Abyssal Sword away, and I’m the only person that found time to get laid? Come on, Captain; does that sound like something I’d do?”

  “No, which means we did more than just sleep in cryo during that time, a lot more.”

  “The data package Rivera had sent us from the Carl Sagan’s wreckage confirmed that I wasn’t pregnant at the time of my last medical check,” Kostelecky said. “Since our cryo pods are offline and we might be lost out here for months . . .”

  “Oh, that’s why you freaked out when I told you about our situation,” Foster said. And why you insisted some of us go into cryo during our return visit to Kapteyn’s Star.

  Kostelecky pulled at her white lab coat. It did a pretty good job at covering up the growing baby bump on her belly. “I won’t be able to hide the pregnancy, might as well reveal it now.”

  And if they didn’t find a means to resupply before they found a fissure, Kostelecky wouldn’t have the power to feed the child after it was born. Foster added that to her growing list of problems and sighed, rubbing her forehead.

  She left Kostelecky alone for the time being and returned to the top deck; looking for that bottle of Jack Daniels she had waiting for her in the lounge. She didn’t arrive.

  Foster returned to her quarters, stripped out of her uniform, and put on some workout attire, then smiled at her cat Starlet who was curled up in the corner sleeping. She strode into the Kepler’s gym and resumed her previous task at attacking the punching bag. There was nothing else to do while they searched for fissures while flying back to civilization. She was left with plenty of time to get in better shape, learn to fight for herself, and defend those that would put their lives on the line to defend her if she ever lost access to a weapon.

  The Jack Daniels could wait. She had, at worst, a year and a half to drink it.

  XSV Johannes Kepler

  Hallowed Nebula, Divine Expanse

  May 4, 2119, 09:03 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  The multi-month voyage proceeded without much incident. QEC transmission allowed the crew to send messages to friends and family, catch up on news, browse the internet, and even access new holo movies and TV shows.

  The crew kept secret about their location to avoid the rage that would come from Radiance. The official word was they had snuck out of the system during the drone attacks, and were en route to Pria, the Linl homeworld. That was only half true. While they were indeed heading to Pria, it was from the nebula. The months since arriving were spent scanning for fissures, and making brief stops in nearby systems, searching for habitable worlds. None were found.

  Much of the crew was fine about the fact they had been trapped within the ship for so long. In the end, they were traveling through space, which was what they signed up for in the first place, exploration. Nobody complained, except Maxwell, LeBoeuf, and Miles, they signed up to shoot the bad guys.

  Williams made a recovery as did Karklosea. Having two extra bodies helped speed up the repairs that needed to be made on the Kepler. Nereid had aged quickly, it reminded Foster that the Undine lived short lives and aged fast. She looked like a woman approaching her thirties, not the young girl in her early twenties when their voyage began.

  Jainuzei spent the last several weeks protesting about how far the Kepler was moving away from the barrier of the nebula, arguing they could have left by now if they found a way past, and discovered the beacon of the Gerard Kuiper. He wasn’t wrong with his argument, and at one point, Foster wondered if she made the right call. Had Jainuzei not been the shady person he seemed to be, she might have been in a more regretful mood.

  The Gerard Kuiper was still a mystery, however, one she forgot about as the months went by, as it was the least of her worries.

  She established a QEC link on her computer, as she sat in her office af
ter hearing Jainuzei complain about not returning to the nebula’s core for the twentieth time over the last six months. IESA’s data on the ship loaded on her holo screen. The Gerard Kuiper was originally built to colonize the Kapteyn’s Star system before it was suddenly added to the fleet of ships traveling to Sirius to search for the Carl Sagan.

  After it did its job in the system, it left, returning to its previous mission colonizing Kapteyn’s Star. It never made it due to the previously discovered reactor problems it had after leaving Sirius. Foster couldn’t find any link to that ship, Jainuzei, or the Hallowed Nebula. She went to view the Gerard Kuiper’s manifest, and then stopped when she heard jubilant cheers cry out from the bridge.

  Pierce had scanned and discovered a fissure nearby.

  They wouldn’t starve to death, a gateway back to Radiance space was minutes away.

  Foster shut down her search and ran back up to the bridge. The feeling of happiness made her forget the search she was conducting.

  Had she remained, she would have laid eyes on the name of the captain of the Gerard Kuiper, whose face and dossier flashed on her holo screen before she shut it off and went to the bridge.

  The captain’s name was Alisha Levesque.

  She looked like the same IESA captain Foster saw in her vision.

  36 Rivera

  City Limits

  Mindoji, Takarius, Hyalur System

  May 7, 2119, 21:32 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  The star in Hyalur system shined brightly when the space ferry arrived in which Rivera and Penelope remained in cryo. Like most systems in the Radiance Union, Hyalur was buzzing with hundreds of ships leaving or entering the system or traveling to the numerous planets and moons within it. A gas giant that was four times bigger than Jupiter attracted a lot of space traffic since it was home to hundreds of small moons, each one colonized, mined, or worked as a military base by Radiance.

  A fleet of Radiance cruisers made final preparations to leave the system and embark on a long voyage to the Luminous system to help bolster its decimated navy in the wake of the Draconian attacks. The ships would have left earlier, but the shipyards in the system had suffered setbacks in the production of new ships, as with the Inadrai system elsewhere in the Union.

  The Hyalur star itself was a G2 subgiant that was nearly double the mass of Sol, had a radius that was almost three times larger as was its luminosity. Hyalur was what Sol would be in the far future, meaning the system, planets, and moons within it were much older than those in Sol. The system had a long history to tell. Given the size and brightness of Hyalur, looking up in the skies on a clear day was a good way for a human to go blind, just like with Luminous. It was no surprise to many that the Aryile prioritized exploration of this system during their early space exploration days. The bright light was the right light for them.

  None of that was a problem for Rivera and Penelope. They both came prepared with shades, not that it was needed much on Takarius the Javnis homeworld. 70 percent of the planet was covered in rain clouds, turning its surface into wet and soggy marshes, where the land was often carved up by random rivers.

  Leaving the ferry was tricky. Its transponder was still deactivated by the time they awoke from cryo, and the ship itself had been reported missing by Radiance. Turning it on would be required for docking at any of the spaceports. That wasn’t something Rivera and Penelope wanted to risk. Too many questions would be asked. Bad enough local scanners and perhaps psionic ESP would be detecting them.

  The two ejected from an escape pod, landing on a remote colony at the end of the system. Penelope had to lead the charge from there, using her HNI hacking abilities to create fake HNI IDs for the two, siphoning random credit chit accounts for credits to pay for meals and various hotel stays.

  By the time the two made it to Takarius, two months had slipped by. There were a lot of transports and colonies they had to traverse to keep their journey under the radar, especially when word got out about an abandoned space ferry from Luminous that somehow drifted into the system and was missing an escape pod.

  Posing as a group of Linl girls only got weird from there. Takarius was a swamp planet, where every creature Rivera saw had four eyes, even the birds that hid under massive trees when it rained. It went to show how far in the line of evolution of the planet that concept was, right down to the evolution of the Javnis and their four eyes.

  Takarius being the Javnis homeworld meant its population, despite being a member of the Radiance Union, was heavy on the side of Javnis. Mindoji, one of its coastal cities at the edge of the northern hemisphere saw droves of the four-eyed lizard men and woman moving about with HNI holo screens following them.

  It was pretty easy to point out married couples, as Javnis women traditionally took on four husbands. One for breeding, one for gathering food, one for defense, and one for labor. Sometimes the men fought for mating rights, though that had become less and less as the years went on, since the Aryile made contact with their species.

  Somewhere on the planet was a shrine built to signify where the first Aryile ships had landed and revealed to the Javnis people that they had been studying their species in secret, teaching them how to build the same ships their Gods taught them years earlier. After that, the official groundwork for the Union was laid. The Aryile race started on Aervounis, was considered to be the founders of the Union, and made their homeworld its capital of the Union. But officially, the Radiance Union was born on Takarius, when Javnis entered the Union becoming its second member.

  Enormous, tall, wide trees blocked out what little sunlight the rain clouds above allowed onto the surface. They were taller than most of the city’s buildings, like the hotel Penelope checked them in to, with another set of fake Linl IDs and stolen credit chit money. The two were given a room to share on the fourth floor, and they entered a room on the sixth, thanks to an HNI hack and a wave of Penelope’s hand by the door’s electronic locks.

  The occupants of the room leaped up in fear, screaming, having watched Rivera and Penelope enter uninvited. Rivera was surprised to see who had been staying at the hotel, Penelope, not so much. According to her, she had this planned since they entered the system, Rivera could see why.

  “What? Who let you in here?”

  The occupants of the suite were none other than Eicelea and Vynei.

  Penelope grinned at them and spoke with her charming English accent. “I let myself in, love.”

  Eicelea pointed a finger at Rivera and Penelope. “Vynei! Do something about these intruders!”

  Vynei shrugged looking at Rivera and then smiled. She returned the gesture. “Boss,” Vynei said. “Isn’t that the IESA lady we met on Earth?”

  Eicelea waddled her dwarflike body to Rivera, looking high up at her, placing her hands on her hips. “You . . . if you wanted to tag along as my assistant, you could have asked!”

  “Oh, simmer down, you should be thanking us,” Penelope said, and sat cross-legged on the couch as if this was her place. “It was us that discovered the ruins you’ve been studying.”

  “The undersea ruins in the ocean to the east?” Eicelea said. “A Maraschino data leak unveiled them.”

  Penelope smirked. “And who do you think made that possible?”

  “It was you two, wasn’t it?” Eicelea groaned. “Why?”

  “We needed your brains figuring it out,” Rivera said. “Someone that wasn’t directly working for Radiance or the SOM.”

  “Ah, so you recognize my greatness,” Eicelea said.

  “We recognize your previous exploration of the Lyonria ruins in the Barnard’s Star system, the discovery of the first wormhole, and your escapades into the ruins on Jacobus,” Penelope said.

  Eicelea waved off her words with her tiny hands. “All of which have been curses the Gods failed to tell me in advance about!”

  “I’d imagine you’ve gotten here a few weeks before us,” Penelope said. “You’ve had time to poke around the ruins, yes?”

  “Yes, I hav
e.”

  Penelope spread her arms across the top of the couch. She really seemed to like its material. “Don’t you feel there’s something, oh I don’t know, not Lyonria about them?” she said. “Certainly not consistent with the other ruins in the system.”

  Eicelea facepalmed, shaking her head. “Oh, Gods please, don’t—”

  “This is it, Eicelea,” Penelope said. “This is your moment to discover another breakthrough in the history of our galaxy.”

  “No, this is my chance to walk away from this and let someone else do it!” Eicelea said. “I was lucky to survive Barnard’s Star and Kapteyn’s Star. If these ruins lead to more trouble, I will see myself out!”

  Rivera had nothing else to add. In truth, she had no idea they were going to encounter these two in this hotel, or how Penelope would get them onboard with their plan. That plan being gaining access to the ruins, and seeking out what Sarpanit, who was still locked away in Rivera’s HNI, knew about it and the connection to the nebula.

  Penelope’s hand waved in a circular motion, in its wake was multiple holographic files and typed reports written in the Radiance language. She pushed them to Eicelea. “Recognize these, dear?”

  Eicelea’s yellow eyes scanned the holo documents and then pushed them aside facing up at Penelope. “These are my unpublished reports from Earth . . .”

  “You have a lot of unpublished material in that HNI of yours,” Penelope said to her. “You know, I could sell it before you write them.”

  “You wouldn’t!”

  “You’re right, I wouldn’t, easier to delete it.”

  “Get out of my implants!” Eicelea yelled, holding her head.

  “I just infected your reports with ransomware,” Penelope said. “Take us to the ruins, show us what you found, and I’ll release them back to you. Deal?”

  “Oh fine! I accept,” Eicelea said. “But I warn you, there isn’t much to see once we get to the far chamber.”