Badlands

by Randal Sloan

  They were the cornered beast and the pack was about to have its revenge.

  "Multiple missile launches," Gabo told her. "I'm sorry, but I have no more defenses left. There's no way our shields will be able to stop them all this time."

  This really is the end, the thought went through Jarra's head. It isn't fair! There's so much I still need to do. I finally find the man I love and we'll never get to have that life together. At least I did get to tell him I love him.

  Without prompt she thought of her last talk with her father. She was supposed to be traveling to Borjon next, a mission critical to the future, he said. The words her father had spoken came to her mind, sent by the group of alien monks.

  When you are faced with the gravest danger of all, when there appears to be no way out, look deep inside of yourself. You must find the one path that leads to safety, impossible as it may appear to be.

  A crazy idea popped into Jarra's head. She could think of only one way out, as crazy as it sounded, but it was the only thing that made sense. It's too crazy, her mind told her. Mentally she sighed. It's not like we have anything to lose, do we?

  "Fire the beam," she said to Gabo.

  Gabo looked at her in confusion. "Where?" he asked, knowing it would do no good against the onslaught of the missiles.

  She told him.

  #

  The Relentless and her companion ship arrived at the battle zone just as the remaining rebel cruisers launched that last overwhelming missile strike. They watched in horror as those missiles honed in on the Katarina, helpless to do anything to stop it. As the missiles neared the ship, there was a tremendous explosion, an explosion many times larger than was possible for even that many missiles. An explosion much larger than mankind had ever seen from up close like they were. When that explosion died, the Katarina was gone.

  In her place was a swirling maelstrom of energy, energy that reached out and swept the rebel ships away like little toy ships. The rebels didn't even have delta level shielding, so in seconds all the ships of the once mighty armada disintegrated into their component atoms. On board the remnants of the monitor ship, those few survivors' ordeal was quickly ended.

  From their distance the Imperial super-dreadnoughts were struck by the storm and only their delta level engines and shields enabled them to escape. Even at that, it was a very near thing.

  In the aftermath, the Badlands were changed once again. That storm continued to grow ever larger, gradually once more taking over almost the entire area. Once again, man had an area of space that he could not navigate with his current level of technology.

  #

  The event that had just taken place did not go unnoticed. Across the galaxy in another galactic arm, in the galactic arm that mankind had never been able to venture inside, the portion of the galaxy the humans called the Octarian Space, a group of aliens gathered in their meeting place. If they had been able to compare their beliefs and the very purpose they had for existence as an order, they would have found themselves to be eerily similar to the Borjon monks. They too served the Prophecy and they too lived alone separate from most of their people. They had one advantage over their counterparts. Their version of the prophecy was the oldest and the most detailed of them all.

  The Master over their order was centuries older than even the Borjon Master. Their people were considerably more long-lived than the Borjon, but even for them, Master Barsyan was very old. Despite the intense interest their members had expressed in the events that were taking place, the Master had held his people back from involving themselves. The Prophecy was clear on the time they would be allowed to be involved and they were forbidden to become involved before that time, or all would fail.

  Master Barsyan had known enough about the signs from across the galaxy to know that it was an indication that something important was drawing nigh. He had believed the words of the Prophecy would be filled in his lifetime, something he had longed for his whole life, and he now had that confirmation. One generation in the fleetingly short lives of the humans. That was all that remained.

  With barely controlled emotions, he stood to address their gathering. The dialect he used was strikingly similar to that the Borjon monks used, because it was also taken from the words of the Forerunners.

  "The time has been drawing nigh. You were warned to be ready," he told the monks, speaking in a voice full of emotion yet with the reverence that was deserved. "My dear brothers, we have looked for the sign, the sign that will signal the time to begin our preparation for Unification."

  Then he let his excitement fill his voice so that it overflowed with the joy he felt. It was so intense, the Master's voice echoed across the entire arena both physically and emotionally.

  "The beacon has been lit! The Prophecies are now in full force!"

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  A Big Surprise

  No one in the Galactic Empire or the rebels knew the reason for the origin of the Badlands. The alien Aerstone race technically knew, but it was buried in their knowledge base so deeply that they had forgotten it. It just wasn't relevant, so their logic matrix lost the information to more important data. They had only thought to use the Badlands for their own benefits in the current situation with no knowledge or understanding of what they were doing.

  Millenia in the past, the ancestors of the Aerstone had first begun their crusade to wipe the biologicals from the galaxy. They had found no intelligent life of importance in the arm of the galaxy that would later become the realm of the humans, but they had stumbled upon a group of explorer ships of another alien race. Although explorers, the aliens whom the humans would later label as Octarians believed that a strong offense was the best defense against anyone that intended them harm, and they had already developed technologies that the Aerstone couldn't conceive of.

  Nevertheless, the small explorer team had been vastly outnumbered and they had realized their attackers weren't going to let them go. The Octarians had been experimenting with a new drive system that showed huge promise, but they hadn't perfected it yet. In desperation the Octarian commander ordered all his ships to engage the new drives.

  The plan worked to an extent, but it still had a flaw the Octarians hadn't known about. The drive made use of an even higher band of hyperspace humans would have called theta and the energies and frequencies were much stronger than any experienced before. If it had been a single ship, it still would have been safe. Even more than one shouldn't have been a problem, but the ship formation taken by the Octarian ships produced a harmonic signal within theta space that echoed to higher levels that not even the Octarians could fathom. To a ship, the Octarian reactors were overwhelmed and scrammed.

  When the Octarians next became aware, they found themselves many hundreds of light years away from their original location. The side result of their adventure in theta space was the creation of the Badlands, a swirling maelstrom that had taken many centuries to slowly decay to the weaker version that existed in the time of the humans.

  When Katarina fired her beam into the weakness left in the zeta wall from their rigged-up hyper engine, a weakness that unbeknownst to them extended up into the theta level, it was into the very center of the original maelstrom. The beam opened up the decayed but still powerful trail left behind by the Octarians and their unintended adventure. The Katarina was instantly sucked into that powerful stream.

  #

  Lieutenant Commander Jason Cauldwell sat in near despair in his quarters aboard the Imperial super-dreadnought Relentless.

  I can't believe she's gone, kept circling through his head. But he'd watched as the Katarina had been destroyed in that huge explosion. There's nothing left there but that monster storm, whatever it is. It has to be true.

  It just doesn't feel right. I swear, I thought the universe would feel different without her. It should. It should feel completely empty.

  Jason's musing was interrupted by a ping on his implants from the com officer. "I have a real-time connection for you fr
om several hundred light years away. It's preceded by high level Imperial command codes. Please stand by for the connection."

  Jason wondered who could be calling him with Imperial command codes. His father perhaps or someone else high in the Empire. Finally, the connection firmed up. He stared in disbelief.

  "Hello, love. I've been missing you quite severely. I still haven't collected on that Jason time and I'm going to be needing it soon."

  The tears flowed down Jason's face, but he didn't care. They were tears of joy. His love was alive.

  Jarra grew serious. "You're going to need a Fast ship to meet up with us. I'm making arrangements for that as we speak."

  He was so happy, her words didn't really register with him. He should have paid more attention. Jarra gave him a smile; he'd find out what 'Fast' meant. Then she dropped the bombshell. She let a little of her excitement slip into her voice.

  "We have a new mission to complete — we're going to Borjon!"

  Sign up here:

  http://www.randalsloan.com/farfuture/