Exodus: The Orion War

by Kali Altsoba

  Thirty years old and stuck teaching grade school history, he was called to command early in the diplomatic crisis with the Imperium, just before the Bad Camberg incident that led to war. Just like everybody else on Genève with any military training, he reported a little over two months before the invasion of the outer system and the RIK assault drop on Southland.

  ‘That was when I met Zofia, back before the war started, back when we were training Madjenik’s raw recruits and I thought there was all the time in the world left to me to ask her, to kiss her. Back when she wore a red dress and looked like filtered starlight as she danced.’

  They gave him Madjenik, his old reserve company, one of seven forming 3rd Battalion, 5th Light Infantry Brigade, Gold Division. He was still training the youngest recruits when the Bad Camberg incident sent everything spiraling out of control. Madjenik went active-duty and was ordered into perimeter defenses along the continental coast. It never got there.

  The invasion came so fast Jan never even saw the sea. Only his baptism-by-fire. That first time in combat his worst fear about himself came true. He failed. He ran. He left behind good men and women, young soldiers who died from his weakness, his inadequate cowardice.

  ‘I ran and yet they came back for me. Zofia’s squad came back when I got fragged in the leg while running away. Some leader! Some legend! What is this mad general thinking?’

  Constance is watching every flicker of doubt and pain and memory course over his face, willing him through his personal Vale of Tears, silently urging him to join her on the other side.

  ‘Come on, colonel. Embrace your cruelty. Embrace defiance and savage vengeance. Breathe the foul stench of war. You must traverse a nebula future. You must agree to lead us on starry seas. Only then can you return like Ulysses to slaughter our enemies as they lie in sloth in our stolen homes. Only then can you make the black bile and blood of our enemies spill out our doors and run in Toruń’s wooden streets. Run in all the villages of all our homeworlds.’

  It’s not fear of his cruelty that holds him back. Not since Pilsudski Wood, where he learned how to cut a throat that needed cutting, to do whatever it took to lead. It’s not that at all.

  It’s that he hates that everyone in Toruń admires him without knowing him, calls him a hero and buys him drinks he doesn’t want, yet gulps down tumbler-after-tumbler to forget what they don’t know. That he lies and lets people down. That he ran the first time he was tested.

  ‘What if I fold under pressure again? Sure I got Madjenik to Toruń, but that was mostly luck. I don’t want this new responsibility. A whole brigade, in exile? I’m no hero? Ulysses...?’

  Constance makes him feel his old shame all over again. Worse, her strange words and demand that he become a legend promise more and bigger shame and greater failures to come.

  ‘But if I argue, she’ll just repeat all that bull crap that I’m special and round-and-round we’ll go. And in the end I’ll still have to do whatever she says, whatever she orders me to do.’

  He suddenly realizes that neither of them have spoken in minutes. He looks straight at her. Constance stares back, deep into him. This time he holds her gaze. Unflinching. Defiant.

  She knows it before he does. ‘Got him!’

  “Well, Colonel Wysocki?”

  “Yes, I’ll follow your orders. I’ll sail your Ionian Sea. I’ll be your Ulysses. I’ll wrestle with monsters of war and misfortune. Krevo’s will is above mine and must be done.”

  The mood has him. He’s a little giddy with relief the decision is made and embraces his new role making history instead of teaching it. Perhaps a bit too much. “I shall do your bidding even if I would ‘fain die a dry death’ over your wet one.”

  He’s far too pleased with a childish recollection and allusion, but at least he quickly realizes it and has the sense and decency to be embarrassed. ‘Damn! I have to get away from this woman. She makes me feel ten again, makes me want to play the clever schoolboy to her demanding headmistress.’

  Constance absorbs his bright and salty look, his burning anger and smoldering defiance, his cocky grin smirking beneath doubt that’s fast disappearing as he accepts her challenge and his destiny. She welcomes his insubordinate glare and disdain, which he no longer tries to hide.

  She knows that she’s just blown away years of cherished doubt to reach his deeper, secret arrogance. She knows his pride will serve him as he wanders with her people into exile. They understand each other completely at last. She hands him the order scroll for the brigade.

  “Good. Now we can begin.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “We both have a lot of work to do over the next week.”

  Her eyes move his to the countdown clock on the wall. It reads just north of 79 USH left. She makes no move to rise, no special effort as she sends him into exile, to the gods only know what fate. All she says as he stands before her is: “Colonel Wysocki, you’re dismissed.”

  He salutes, palm out KRA-style. Constance doesn’t look up as Jan turns sharply on his polished heel, like a best cadet. Already, she’s working on some other urgent matter, aides-de-camp bustling to and from her with importunate purpose. He hears her sonorous, mature voice give out steady commands as the heavy wooden door to her chambers clicks closed behind him.

  He needs to berth a newly-formed combat brigade of over 8,000 fighters. He needs to brief his new majors and other new officers and NCOs. He knows that he won’t sleep all week.

  As he leaves he’s sure he hears white sea birds calling plaintively over a crashing salt sea surf. He could swear he smells hard brine and kelp, dead fish and crabs and wet sand. He understands now. It’s the smell of uncharted and far-off seas. It’s the odor of all his future days.

  Data search: FTL

  Result: gravity echoes, bohr-zones.

  Historia Humana, Volume V, Part III (e)

  Under relativity, spacetime cannot be flat where gravity shock waves collide. It ‘folds’ into local singularities instead, ripples if you like. These perturbations are quantum detectible, but only at superstable bohr-zones. Otherwise they are too ‘flat’ to affect celestial bodies in normal spacetime. They have no detectible effect on small, artificial bodies such as asteroid or centaur mines, refineries, platforms or ships resting in an LP without employing a quantum-drive. However, ‘horizon singularities’ can be engaged, leading to remarkable quantum effects.

  Gravity ‘wave outs’ from a massive object like a star interact with gravity ‘echoes’ from more distant yet adjacent masses, cosmologically speaking. A ‘horizon’ singularity results. The paradox is one of four-dimensional spacetime flatness that is nonetheless ‘folded’ or ‘wrinkled’ by gravity wave collisions (‘echoes’). This is known to engineers, who occupy a more prosaic profession than cosmologists, as a ‘spacetime tunnel’ or ‘gravity tunnel’ or ‘quantum bridge’ (among other terms). The idea recognizes the singularity as decidedly not flat in engineering terms, and thus that it can be traversed differently than normal spacetime. By any chosen name, ‘hybrid’ or ‘horizon’ or ‘horizontal singularity,’ or ‘spacetime tunnel’ or ‘gravity tunnel,’ the essential paradox of crinkly-flat spacetime is key to jump detectors inside every quantum-drive.

  Think of it like this. Lagrange singularities (‘bohr-zones’) are akin to tiny disturbances made by water striders on the skin of a flat, yet immensely deep pool. The surface is normal spacetime in this analogy. The essential calm of the deep water is unaffected by the passing striders. Einsteinian relatively works for normal spacetime, yet minute echoes or disturbances the striders make on the taut skin ripple outward across the surface, to collide or fold into ripples made by other striders (stellar and planetary masses). The ripples move and interact in observable, mapable patterns. If you had a ship and a quantum map plotting each ripple and where it folded into others you could ride the waves (enter the ‘folds’ or ‘tunnels’) on the taut skin of normal spacetime. No need even to say ‘thank you’ to the striders as you leave.r />
  Gravity echoes may also be understood as ‘entangled’ components of a complicated probability distribution that links both ‘ends’ of a spacetime fold. The Universe as a whole is in a pure state, but bits of it are entangled ‘mixtures.’ FTL or stardrive thus became theoretically possible while remaining physically improbable, until computers employing magnetic matter came of age. These were radical, grand quantum devices making ultra-complex calculations that could identify a ‘fold’ to ride to another star system, allowing a ship (or message) to ‘jump’ instantly through Minkowski ‘hyperspace,’ or folds. But only to an adjacent LP ‘echoing’ from a gravity field mapable only from one three-body system to another.

  Why? We still don’t know. We do know that LPs are where entwined ripples on the tense skin can be detected and ridden. We remain limited to sub-light speeds traveling in a star system or any other normal spacetime, yet we can make quantum or bohr-jumps and send bohr-messages from one LP to another LP in an adjacent three-body system. Otherwise, the great tyrant of the Universe, the light-speed limit, still rules unchallenged on his throne.

  Light sails and GDMs made interstellar travel and the colonization movement a reality but created hundreds of lonely worlds, each out of everyday reach of all the others. Every one of the Thousand Words was left to chart a path through a new and unique history. Some took very dark turns under fundamentalist or radical sectarian movements. For the all the rest, the realization set in that we had finally reached the stars only to rediscover solitude.

  Everything changed with the quantum-drive. Travel and communications among all the brave new worlds became routine, linking First Wave settlements with Second Wave and Third Wave colonies, until together we achieved the glory called the Thousand Worlds. Links were made, bohr-com systems built, commerce and cultural interaction grew apace. We learned also, in ways no longer deniable or denied, that empire is the natural form of our social and political organization. The reality all Humanity cleaves to and desires in the end, regardless of the surface forms that pretend that the star states are or can one day be something else.

  Thus, the most important consequence of stardrives was to shrink the space occupied by the Thousand Worlds, and thereby make war in the stars possible and inevitable. It began with local wars, limited to a few neighboring systems. Then it spread, as the Broderbund pillaged out of the Ordensstaat, the Oetkerts conquered the Grün Imperium, and the Dauran Empire spread over eastern Orion. Next came the wars of empires, great general conflicts known as the First, Second, and Third Orion Wars. They…

  …Finally, we achieved the blessed Peace of Orion some 300 years ago, embarking on the Satya Yuga, the age of the Shōwa or Enlightened Peace. It is hard for us to imagine what war might be like, as even with extended Youthspan it lies beyond the reach of living memory.

  Troopships

  As General Constance’s heavy door clicks shut behind Jan a crisply dressed young officer with cropped black hair and impeccably shiny brass buttons greets the new brigade commander. Lt. Dylan Byers holds out a silver eagle collar insignia and a brand new peaked KRA cap with colonel’s rank badge to match.

  “You’ll need these, colonel. You’ll get further a lot faster with boarding and logistics officer types if they see your new eagle up front. Rank has its privilege, sir.” He’s not wrong.

  “Byers? Right, I remember you from the debrief at the tunnel. I see that you knew about my promotion well before I did. Constance said you were good. Guess she was right. Welcome to the 10th Combat Brigade.” Jan accepts the rank insignia and puts the cap on, awkwardly.

  “Thank you, sir. May I say that it’s an honor to serve under you, colonel?” Byers snaps off a crisp salute, even clicking his polished shoe heels together in the old-fashioned way.

  “Well, we’ll just have to see about that. You volunteered for this?”

  “For Wysocki’s Wreckers, yes sir! Wouldn’t miss this for anything. Wouldn’t miss being a part of this new outfit for all the mir in all the Thousand Worlds.”

  Jan winces. If even his officers are going to use his name for the new brigade there’s no escaping it. He’s just going to have to learn to live with it.

  ‘All part of this “you’re a legend” and “Ghost of the Woods” shit. Gods, what I am getting into? What has my general done to me?’

  “No regrets at leaving the general?”

  “All the regret in the world. But when I asked for combat duty, you know, to finally do my bit outside a map room in the real war, she said only if I first agreed to join Exodus.’

  “Sounds like her. Tell me, does she always win at chess and poker, too? Never mind, I think I know the answer. Now, how do we get out of here? Lead the way, lieutenant.”

  “Forget the external elevator, sir. It’s too slow. It was built for tourists, to give them long views of Arbor City. Follow me, if you will. I know a much faster way. It’s fun, too.”

  They race each other down 30 stories of polished wooden stairs that circle the building like a climbing vine, taking them three at a time.

  “I do it twice daily. Upside, too!”

  “Oh come on,” Jan protests through gasps for breath. “Now you’re just boasting!”

  “No, really. Working for the general, I never have —I mean, had— time for the gym or track. This is my only daily workout. The secret is not to sweat.”

  And sure enough, when they hit Governance Square Jan is nearly done in and dripping-wet overheated, but Byers is hardly panting. Plus his uniform looks like he never broke a sweat.

  He smells like brass polish, first in his class at the KRA Academy on Aral. In the same class as Zofia, he finished ahead of her by two slots. He’s Toruń-born, but unlike the slower pace of living most Genèvens prefer and practice, Dylan is all professionalism and competence and military crispness and efficiency. For all of that, his passions and soul are local. He’s made from knotty birch and silver pine, inlaid artisanal oak, trimmed with teak and redwood filigree.

  ‘It’s an attractive and impressive combination. He’s genuinely humble, too. I like this young man already. I’ve known him less than 10 minutes and I can already see why Constance valued his counsel and his company.’

  He briefs Jan on a mobilization action plan on the way down. He’s done before they reach the 10th Floor. They’re already in thick agreement as they cross the square, then split up. Jan heads back to Madjenik’s makeshift quarters to meet and brief his new brigade officers on their promotions and tasks, and go over their battalion recruitment lists. Byers goes direct to the KRA Armory, thence to secure berths on the Exodus troopships. And if need be, on the escorts.

  Jan’s anger abates with his plunge into heavy command duties. The farther he gets from Constance the more he becomes aware of her larger burdens and longer purpose. Still, it will be months before he truly understands. Not until he’s fighting in the lava caves on Minotaur.

  Orders are orders. He has a whole new set and over 8,000 fighters depending on him. And less than eight Standards to organize and equip a new combat brigade, then berth it on waiting troopships. He feels time moving faster, spinning him away from all that he knows.

  Byers is indispensable, but Jan knows that he can’t manage without Zofia’s help. It’s the one conversation he dreads more even than a repeat of his session with General Constance.

  They can’t talk about anything personal, so both resort to professional formalism. When he congratulates her on her promotion to major it’s as if he only just met her and hardly knows her. No one watching them would ever guess that they lay together in near-perfect kama.

  Jan shows Zofia the order sheet from Toruń HQ, recorded on the feathery filament as light as air that Constance gave him. As he pulls it from his shoulder pocket he goes directly to a verbal summary, trying to shorten their already abbreviated greetings and conversation to a bare minimum. He aches to look long and deep into her green eyes again, but he does not dare.

  Instead, he focuses on the canary stripe
around her cap and the crisp collar of her new KRA dress uniform. She still wears her lieutenant’s rank insignia. Her collar is not yet adorned with the major’s golden oak leaf clusters it soon will be, for Jan only just told her that she’s jumped up to major and put in charge of Madjenik Battalion. Her apple hair is pulled back off her face into a tight bun that’s snugged inside a peaked officer’s cap. Jan steals a glance.

  ‘Gods she’s beautiful! With such perfect skin. I forgot just how beautiful she is during those weeks and months on the trek here. We were all covered in filth and ash back then.’

  “So, Madjenik is mine now? Good, that’s very good.”

  “Yes, the company, umm, the battalion is yours. So get it up to complement and up to speed. Constance says we’re to get the brigade outfitted and at full strength, then berth on the Exodus ships. Byers is preparing a list of bunk assignments and pulling equipment and weps.”

  “Right, he’s a good man. I knew him on Aral, at the Academy. But I think I better meet him at the Armory nevertheless, and take over weps procurement. I’ll draw personal weps and gear for the whole brigade. Dylan is as good as you say, and he has the close contacts we need here in Toruń. But he’s not a combat officer. I know better what the brigade will need to fight and what we can usefully leave behind. I hear there’s very little room left on the troopships.”