“Cartwright Actual to Bucephalus, I am inbound.”
“Bucephalus Actual to Cartwright Actual,” came the accented English of his ship’s commanding officer, Captain Kim Su. “There is no urgent need for speed, Commander.” Jim continued to ride the atomic fire. The Fae had done an incredible job. If the previous times he’d fought the Raknar had been incredible, it now felt beyond words. He felt like a god! “Sir, you are coming in awfully fast.”
“Jim.” He laughed at their concern. “Jim!” It was Hargrave, his XO. “Damn it, slow down!”
He came partially back to himself. Dash was travelling at just over seven kilometers per second. Yeah, he’d overdone it a bit. Bucephalus was looming huge, 59 kilometers distant. He flipped Dash over, giving a slight five-G burst for a one second push off-center, then he was positioned feet-first toward the rapidly-approaching ship. Distance 45 kilometers, ETA six seconds. Calculations were performed in a split second.
The Raknar’s legs locked together, arms boomed as they aligned flat against its torso, and nuclear flame flared. Jim felt it this time, his world blurring into a red mist. Then, with a gasp, the thrust was gone, and they were floating almost perfectly stationary next to Bucephalus.
“Captain Su,” he said, “permission to dock.”
“G-granted,” she said, a stammer evident from the usually unflappable captain.
Jim used the Raknar’s attitude thrusters to maneuver over and attach to the side of his command ship. The formerly clean cylindrical shape of the Akaga-class cruiser was now a little lopsided. Splunk took her hands away, and he hurt.
“Ouch, fuck!” he hissed. It felt like someone had punched him in the back of the head ninety-five times. All the strap points holding him in the cockpit hurt, too. “What the hell happened?” He glanced at Splunk who looked a little worse for wear. Even in zero G, her long ears were drooping.
“Push too hard,
“I did?” he asked, thinking back to the red misty sensation. He hadn’t even thought about it; he’d just done it. I could have killed myself. She reached over and patted his head. It was a strange kind of thing for her to do, and for some reason came off to him as a little condescending. “Come on,” he said. “We better get aboard.”
A few minutes later the airlock cycled, and the inner door slid open. Jim began undogging his space suit. There was no direct connection between Dash and Bucephalus. That had proven impossible in the short time they’d had. He was about to step out when he realized there were three people floating just inside the ship. They all wore space suits, and two had bright red crosses on their suit’s shoulders. They looked just as surprised to see him as he was to see them.
“Hi?” he asked, and finished removing his helmet. One of the three slammed his helmet visor up, and he was looking at the furious face of Lieutenant Colonel Hargrave, his XO.
“How are you even alive?” he demanded. “And what the fuck was that all about?”
“Alive? What? I was just having fun.” The two others quickly ditched their own helmets and gloves and began helping Jim out of his suit like he was a combat casualty. “What are you doing?” he asked, trying to fend them off. Splunk chirped indignantly inside his suit’s torso as they struggled to get him out of it. “Would you stop it!” he finally yelled. “I’m fine.”
One of the medics had a test lead hooked to Jim’s neck and was checking his vitals. “No sign of major trauma,” the man said. Splunk got free finally, hopped over to grab a handhold, and glared at the medics.
“I guess I pushed it a little too hard.”
“Too hard?” Hargrave demanded. “Too hard?! Kid, you pulled more than 60 Gs on that approach.” Jim laughed at that, then saw the expression on his face.
“You can’t be serious; I’d be dead.”
“Exactly,” one of the other medics said. “You have a little damage.”
“Where?” he asked. The medic held up a mirror, and Jim looked at his face. Red splotches were all over his chin line, and the bottoms of his eyes were turning red. Holy fuck!
“Sir, I want to give you a general nanite treatment.”
“Sure,” he managed to say. The needle went in, and he gasped from the pain as the little microscopic robots raced into his bloodstream, looking for damage.
“Is he going to make it?” Hargrave asked.
“Sir, the fact that he’s floating here alive should be impossible. It looks like he might have been in a car crash. You know, took a quick 50-G hit from an airbag? But aside from that, the medical nanites aren’t finding anything more than some capillary damage.” One of the medics looked up at Splunk. She narrowed her eyes and showed pointy teeth, so he kept his hands to himself.
“Okay,” Hargrave said finally. “We need to get to the CIC. You two stand down.”
“We’ll monitor him remotely with the nanites,” the medic said. “They’ll remain active for a few more hours.”
“Come on,” Hargrave said and gestured toward the CIC. “We’re transiting out of the system in less than an hour. By the way, you might just wish you had turned yourself into strawberry jam.”
“Why’s that?” Jim asked.
“Because Captain Su is mad enough to piss plasma. You missed Bucephalus by less than 100 meters.”
* * *
“There they go,” Thorb said. The stargate flashed as the first warship went through.
“Yeah,” Walker said, sighing.
“What’s wrong?” Thorb asked. “It’s exciting, right? The biggest fleet humanity has ever assembled, going off to war against the great evil that is oppressing us. It’s like when a grahp is waiting outside your den, and a war party swims out from another exit to lead it away.”
“A grahp?”
“Yeah the big monsters you fought on my planet before we met.”
“Oh. Those.” Walker remembered the monsters, and having to fight them without using their CASPers because they’d died all of a sudden. One of the huge, multi-tentacled creatures had picked up and tossed a 1,000-pound CASPer into the ocean like a Human skipped a rock in a terrestrial lake. He’d never get that picture out of his head.
“It’s dangerous, but necessary for the group, right?” Thorb asked.
“Yes, it’s both dangerous and necessary. It appears to be a great opportunity, but they won’t know what it really is until they get there. Maybe we’ve been fed bad intelligence data, and Peepo’s forces are waiting there en masse to destroy that fleet.”
“That would be…bad.” Thorb paused and then added, “Sometimes when you toy with the grahp, the grahp grabs you instead.”
“What do you do then?”
“We merge our colony with another one and start over,” Thorb said. The ease with which he said it indicated that group wipeouts must happen all too frequently.
“If that happens to us, though, our resistance as a race is pretty much over. We don’t have other colonies to merge with—we’re about to lose what colonies we do have, and none of the other races have indicated they’d merge with us to stand up to the Merc Guild.”
“Then your forces should be careful not to lose. You need to send your best warriors…” His voice trailed off as he realized why his friend appeared sad. “You are distressed because the fleet is going off with most of your friends and allies, to fight a battle that could lose the war for you, and you are not able to stand with them.”
“Something like that, yeah.”
“You needn’t worry,” Thorb said with a smile.
“Why is that?”
“If they win, the war is not over, and our unit will be needed in order to win it. The time spent here, training us, will be an investment that earns many shells in return. We will be ready when we are called upon.”
“And if they lose the battle?”
“Then we will still be around to claim vengeance on the forces that killed them.”
* * * * *
Chapter Three
Winged Hussars Geek Central, Prime B
ase, New Warsaw System
Taiki Sato love his job, most of the time. As the youngest child of Hinata Sato, renowned Japanese physicist and owner of Sato Intergalactic, he’d struggled to find his niche on Earth. Despite the fact he’d succeeded at everything he tried in life, he was never allowed to go his own way. Japanese culture had evolved since the 21st century, and children were no longer required to follow in their parents’ bootsteps; however, they were required to pick a course for their lives at quite a young age. His problem was he didn’t want to pick just one career. All science captivated his incredible mind.
At the age of 16, Taiki obtained his first doctorate in chemistry. The day after his 18th birthday, he was awarded his second, in physics. He won a Nobel Prize at 22 in economics for his work on Earth’s integration into the Galactic Union economy. In the week before the award ceremony in Oslo, he obtained his CPA license in Tokyo. The Nobel Prize proved a watershed moment for him, because the award money had set him free. A month after receiving the award, he packed a case with a few personal items and left Earth forever.
The intervening decades saw him traveling to the far reaches of the galaxy. He made credits where and when he could, usually through odd jobs involving tech modifications. In just a few months, he’d mastered all the basics of Union technology and was quickly expanding his knowledge into less well-known areas. One of the first was pinplants.
Foremost among his skills was his ability to understand the way technologies interconnected and how to get them to work together to improve each other. He quickly realized how much pinplants would augment his own abilities, but he was just as quickly stymied, because pinplant technology hadn’t been adapted to Humans.
Of all the sciences, Taiki had realized early on that biology and medicine weren’t ones that interested him. While no science was beyond his ability, they were beyond his interest. He didn’t want to admit it was because medicine was just too…variable. The mind of Taiki Sato liked things he could lock down. Medical technology took him down a rabbit hole of variation. In a moment of rare clarity, he decided it was all or nothing. He either mastered medicine, or it mastered him. He won out in the end.
He worked in exchange for services with a small bio-pharmacy firm on Earth called Avander and a technology development company off-planet. The latter was operated by a staff of three—two elSha technicians and a Wrogul he gave the nickname Nemo. The Wrogul had some fascinating abilities, which almost caused Taiki to question his decision not to study medicine. It took a few years—more than a few years, actually—but he finally got what he wanted. They perfected the biological interface for cerebral implant technology in Humans.
Armed with pinplants, he delved even deeper into the sciences. For years, he chased every hard science subject being researched in the corners of the Union. Everything from particle physics to starship engineering. Everything he studied led him closer and closer to the ultimate temple of science—the Union Science Guild.
Unlike every other guild headquarters, the Science Guild wasn’t on Capital. It was on a small moon in a different star system, with the entire planetary body hollowed out into a catacomb of data storage devices, warehouses with unique developments, and laboratories. By the time he got there, he’d built it up in his mind to be sacred ground. Finally, he’d test the limits of the universal knowledge. Only, that wasn’t what happened.
When Taiki left in disappointment less than a year later, he wandered again for a brief time. He almost returned home to Earth, getting as close as Karma. It was there he was recruited by, of all things, a mercenary company.
“You do scientific research?” he asked the recruiter.
“Of course,” the woman said, “if you have the cred.” Taiki bowed slightly and offered his Yack. An hour later, he was hired and whisked away to the hidden base of the Winged Hussars. There he’d stayed ever since, given most of the latitude he wanted to pursue whatever science interested him. Mostly. It frustrated him when they didn’t. Like now.
Sato hurried into the commander’s office only to find it empty. That brought him up short. “Where is she?” he asked Alexis’ assistant.
“Commander Cromwell deployed a few hours ago.”
“Well,” he said, shaking his head, “that’s terribly inconvenient.” The assistant stared at him. “It’s this order,” he said, holding out the slate.
“I’m aware of the order, Mr. Sato.”
“She can’t limit me like that,” he complained. “It’s not…reasonable.”
“Would you like to talk to Commander Kowalczy?”
“He’s even less reasonable,” Sato said darkly. She shrugged, and he barged back out.
Sato wandered around Prime Base for a while, dedicating all his considerable mental capacity to his dilemma. The commander had ordered him to do no more than examine the systems on those curious ships. He wanted to do much more than examine. This was the part of his job he hated. Bosses.
“Hi, Sato!” He looked up to see one of the Hussars’ medical staff, Dr. Gorge Ramirez, walking toward him. “You’re a long way from Geek Central, aren’t you?”
“I wanted to see Commander Cromwell,” he mumbled.
“She left with most of the fleet a few hours ago,” Ramirez replied. Sato ground his teeth. “Took most of my staff with her, too. Is there anything I can help with?”
“Can you override her orders?”
“No,” he chuckled. “I’m in the chain of command, but not that high. You’d have to talk to Commander Kowalczy.”
“Yeah, I know that.”
“Why don’t you come in and have a cup of tea?” The doctor gestured, and Sato realized they were right outside the Hussars’ medical complex in Prime Base. He was momentarily confused, because Commander Cromwell’s office was three rings up.
“What?”
“Tea?” Ramirez gestured again.
“Oh, yeah, sure,” Sato said and followed him in. They passed through the general waiting area, where a few people were waiting for routine care. With the fleet deployed, there were a lot fewer than there would have been normally. Sato didn’t really notice; he just followed Ramirez into the labs further back in the medical center. In a lab, the doctor held out a chair for him, and he sat. A glass of tea was put on the table, and he drank. It was Japanese tea and quite good.
“What’s the problem, Sato?” Without thinking he’d make matters worse, Sato explained.
“…and you see,” he finished, “those ships are 20,000 years old! The Union Science Guild is hiding key technologies from that era.”
“Hiding?” Ramirez asked.
“Those ships are living museums,” Sato continued, not hearing what Ramirez asked. “I’ve already seen a few examples from the other four ships, but they were largely cleaned up before we got them, probably by the same creatures that call 2nd Level Hyperspace home. The other ships? Those are different, for some reason. Very different. I don’t know what their purpose is. Weapons, I’m sure, but the architecture…”
“Is he well?”
Sato looked up to see the portable transport for an old friend. “Hello, Nemo,” he said. “Is who well?”
“Why, you, of course.” The translator on the side of the robotic tank spoke in perfect English, like most translators properly programmed. The Wrogul floating inside it was from an exotic race that looked like an octopus with too many legs and huge eyes. The liquid wasn’t water, either. Although the translator spoke in perfect English, the Wrogul’s thought patterns weren’t like Humans, so the translator was unable to render voice inflections or emotions. “Do you want me to check your brain for you?”
“Jesus, Nemo, give it a rest!” Ramirez exclaimed.
“Oh, he’s been in my brain many times,” Sato told the physician. “I’m fine, old friend. I’m just being blocked by the commander from doing what I want to do. Those ships—I need to get inside and examine them.”
“I didn’t think the commander’s orders forbid you to examine them, thoug
h,” Ramirez said.
“In order to properly examine the equipment, I need to be able to do things.”
“Properly?” Ramirez asked.
“You know, some systems work with other systems…” he gave a shrug.
“From my point of view,” Nemo said, “it would seem that the commander’s orders implied certain freedoms.”
“Really?” Sato asked, scratching his chin.
“Now hold on,” Ramirez said, holding up his hands. “Let’s not read anything into this.” Sato had a little smile on his face as he stood up and finished his tea. “Why don’t you sit down and we’ll talk a bit?”
“No, I’m good,” Sato said and headed for the door. Makes perfect sense now, he thought as he walked. “Thanks, Nemo.”
“No problem at all,” the Wrogul said as the scientist left.
Ramirez looked from the departing genius to his enigmatic alien counterpart and sighed. “Nemo, we need to talk about your excessively helpful attitude.”
“I don’t see how that’s a problem,” the Wrogul said.
Ramirez sighed. “Don’t you have something you need to be doing?”
The Wrogul floated in its tank for a moment, then rolled away. His race didn’t do overly well with formalities or the niceties of conversation, either. The tank rolled down the hall until it entered Nemo’s private lab, where dozens of tanks contained various organisms, body parts, and other things that would have confused or horrified most sane beings. All such things were interesting to Nemo. He particularly enjoyed the brains of all sorts of races.
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