The Jovian Manifesto (The Formist Series Book 2)

by Matthew S Williams

  THE JOVIAN MANIFESTO

  Book 2 of the Formist Series

  MATTHEW WILLIAMS

  Published 2018 by Castrum Press

  An imprint of PP Corcoran Ltd.

  138 University Street, Belfast, BT7 1HJ

  United Kingdom

  www.castrumpress.com

  Copyright © 2018 Matthew Williams

  Cover Art by Duncan Halleck

  Cover Design by The Gilded Quill

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book wouldn’t have been possible were it not for the help, encouragement and general support of Doctor Abraham Loeb, Heather Archuletta, JJ Clayborn, and of course, Carla and Jasper.

  Table of Contents

  The Jovian Manifesto Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Part One: Cythereans One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Part Two: Aquilean Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Part Three: Minoan Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  Excerpt from book 3 of the Formist

  About the Author

  Castrum Press Presents

  PROLOGUE

  THE STASIS PERIOD ENDED. The ship’s automated systems slowly brought the crew out, raising their bodies’ temperature and restoring their minds to wakefulness. As they came to, their wetware merged with the ship’s systems, gradually feeding them swarms of data.

  Telemetry

  Distance

  Speed

  Time of arrival

  Their pods finished draining protective fluids, and then opened onto a cool deck. Saana’s body was the first to emerge, starting with a single, shaky foot. At their current speed and distance, gravity wasn’t yet available. But the floor responded by becoming tacky and supportive, anchoring her in place as she emerged.

  Four more bodies followed. Different in outward appearance, but identical in nature. All belonged to men and women who were currently bringing their neural suites up to date, digesting information from the ship’s data feed to bring themselves back to the present. Saana took in the faces and profiles of each.

  Dina Okran - T901302

  Bastion Henrissant - T1049113

  Miri Popov - M22931

  Elizabeth Konsou - C3134

  Saana reached out to them, using the squad frequency.

  [Assimilate mission package data. Deployment in minus sixty-three minutes.]

  [Affirmative.] came four simultaneous replies.

  Her squad did as she instructed, running over the mission data which had been uploaded to their neural cortices prior to being put into stasis. As they did this, they went about the decidedly worldly process of cleaning themselves up and donning coveralls.

  Saana took the opportunity to consult the ship cams and check on their position. While the navigation systems assured her they were fast approaching Ganymede, she preferred to get an outside look and see it with her own eyes. Or the closest approximation of such.

  The ship’s front-facing sensors obliged her, producing an image of a disk which resembled a half-moon. On the light side, the mottled ice of the surface gleamed, peppered with lights indicating the presence of the settlements. On the dark side, faint glows were visible, which were the result of Jovian radiation interacting with the moon’s magnetic field.

  The disk slowly became larger as they neared it, their high velocity making short work of the distance. Similarly, every member of her squad moved quickly, finishing their prep and making their way from the hibernation area to the ship’s rear. They formed a single line, standing in their coveralls with their eyes trained forward and awaiting her orders. A mere formality, but one which was hard to shake. Attention stance and pre-mission briefs were something soldiers still relied on before sent off to fight.

  Saana reached out to them again. She kept it plain and simple.

  [Our landing coordinates place us directly outside the Selket settlement. Stealth conditions will be in effect. We’re to secure entrance to the settlement and procure identities on-site. Target package, weapon profiles, iconography, and exfil plans have all been included. Any questions?]

  She received a unanimous negative.

  [Good. Then suit up!]

  Four affirmatives, and they moved to the storage lockers at one side of the bay. The doors unsealed and folded back, revealing exosuits. Saana joined them, fetching the exo from its resting place and letting its straps form around her arms, legs, shoulders and midriff. Once her suit power was activated, the nanomaterial matrix started covering her. It was like watching a puddle of mercury with a mind of its own, stretching forth and coating every part of her body in a second skin.

  Once it was in place, and merged with her systems, she turned to face the others. Four metallic, reflective bodies looked back at her. The forms took on solidity, and status lights formed around their chests and faces. All indicated in the green, and they each ran the suits through basic systems check.

  Saana did the same, calling up the weapons profiles included in the mission package. For this run, they weren’t being given anything radically advanced. Simple ballistic carbines, handguns, and stunners - the basic compliment for constables on a Jovian world. Naturally, they had a few options for exfil or emergency.

  Directed Energy Weapons, Agni and Tarakona models. High-yield area stunners. Deployable shield generators. Electro-magnetic pulse float grenades. As always, Saana was determined to avoid the use of any heavy weaponry. Such means of last resort would mean failure in their mission.

  The ship’s nav system reached out to her, indicating that they were slowing down to achieve orbital insertion.

  [Be warned. Breaking thrust in five seconds.]

  [Acknowledged.]

  Their feet become more solidly fastened as the reverse-thrust set in, making the ship lurch slightly. When it passed, the floor material returned to its regular level of viscosity and they were able to walk again. They made their last circuit, moving from storage to the rear of the craft. There they waited, until the craft started its descent into the moon’s meager atmosphere.

  When the moment came, a general alarm was triggered. There was no noise in the cabin, but all five members of the squad were aware of it.

  [Get into position.] ordered Saana.

  Her squad assumed their ready stances, bracing for the comin
g change in atmospheric pressure. Their boots grafted to the floor, anchoring them in place as the air was sucked out of the cabin. It was imperceptible, but Saana thought she could feel it rushing around her as it made its way through the vents. When the rear hatch opened before them, Saana was sure she could hear the last bit of air pressure escaping into Ganymede’s thin exosphere.

  The exterior wall of the ship opened and retracted, retreating into the hall. Before them, Ganymede loomed. They were past the terminator now, looking down on a vast strip of lighted terrain fast retreating behind them. On the other side of it, rolling out beneath them, was a sheet of darkness with a few pinpricks where light shined through.

  The next notification from the nav system told them they were over their jump target. Saana responded with the go order.

  [Go! Go! Go!] she said mentally. The five of them were running out the rear of the craft and falling into the darkness below.

  For the next few seconds, time ceased. They were technically in freefall, being grabbed and pulled by the moon’s 0.146 g to the surface. But at the moment, it felt like weightlessness. It was an illusion which could only persist so long as they didn’t open their eyes.

  But Saana did. Looking ahead, she kept the horizon in view. To her left, the Sun was now hugging the surface across Perrine and Barnard Regio. To her right, the auroral lights were the only illumination on the horizon. Beyond the horizon, the star field sparkled, indicating the end of the moon and the beginning of deep space.

  Lastly, there were the lights of Selket immediately beneath them. The main settlements and its adjuncts looked like a glowing spider web. It was becoming larger and more intricate with every passing second.

  Saana kept it all in view, refusing to shut it out. Far more appealing than a sensation of freefall was the sense of being overawed by the immensity. Despite the sheer number of people traveling between worlds on a regular basis, to be reminded of how small all humans were in the grand scheme of things was a rare and awesome experience.

  If she wanted it, Saana could slow the experience down considerably. A simple command to her temporal lobe, and the entire fall would feel like it was taking hours or even days. But there was little point for such pretenses. At the moment, she wanted her team to get to where they were needed.

  It wasn’t taking long. In her field of view, indicators went off, telling her they were reaching critical altitude. Saana reached out again, ordering the squad to begin the controlled portion of their descent.

  [Deploy aerofoils.]

  The squad acknowledged. Altogether, the appendages of their suits morphed into wing-like structures. From the front of their suits, nozzles took shape and fired bursts of ionized particles. The indicators in Saana’s HUD showed the squad’s rapid loss of vertical speed. As they drew closer to the surface, the foils changed shape. The nozzles also disappeared and re-emerged in other spots around their body - facing fore and aft.

  Their direction shifted, and a new indicator formed in her field of view. In a hexagon, located outside the growing ember web of Selket, was their landing zone. She and her squad pitched their foils to follow the directional lines now appearing in their HUDs. Beneath them, the settlement shifted, falling to one side as they weaved through the tenuous oxygen atmosphere.

  A few minutes later, and they would be touching down in Galileo, descending onto a small patch of darkened ice. Their airspeed was slowed by a few well-timed bursts from their forward-facing nozzles and their wings formed flaps. By the time their boots touched the ground, they were like feathers on the wind. Were they flying onto a world with a dense sheet of air around it, their boots would have barely made a sound when they touched down.

  [Systems check,] she ordered. The others ran diagnostics on their suits’ systems and their uplinks to their suits. They sent her the results, which were all in the green. Turning around one-hundred and eighty degrees, she once again saw the terminator in the distance. It now cut across the surface perpendicular to them, with a glowing mass to the right of it.

  The city of Selket. It was time to get moving.

  [Proceed to checkpoint Alpha. Double time!]

  IT TOOK MERE SECONDS to hack the airlock’s antiquated security system. It opened to them, admitting them into a pressure chamber that they rapidly cycled through. When the light turned green, they opened a second door that led them into one of the settlements outer domes. All five formed up inside the tube, where Saana ordered them to go dark.

  [Engage stealth mode and. proceed to checkpoint Beta.]

  The squad obliged and engaged their electromagnetic cloaks. All five of them disappeared from sight, like puddles of mercury slowly disappearing into the background. Their sonic dampeners also kicked in, concealing their footfalls as they double-timed it down the tube towards the settlement proper. The occasional pod car passed them by, its inhabitants completely oblivious to the infiltrating crew.

  The tube opened onto an open court. The lights changed drastically as holographic emitters filled the air with green, blue, orange and white images. The people were similar, wearing garbs of cotton, linen, and synthetic fibers. Some were drab and simple, others flamboyant and colorful - indicative of hundreds of different influences and overlapping cultures.

  Once past the pod station, they were onto the main deck. Their overlays told them they were standing in Aljiran plaza. Saana scanned upwards and down, taking in the tiered-structure. Consistent with what the mission records had told them, the colony was laid out in a honeycomb fashion. Every plaza was arranged in a series of expanding levels, reaching upwards towards the main dome, and downwards into the floor.

  The entire settlement sat in a base of regolith which had been harvested from Jove’s more rocky moons and Trojans. Each one had been pulverized and used to fill the crater. From this base layer, public spaces were carved out by assemblers, sucking up regolith and spitting out molten rock to create walls, rooms, and tunnels. And in no time at all, all of those honeycomb-shaped tiers were filled with willing inhabitants.

  Moving from one side of their level to the other, they kept towards the walls, making sure not to get close to any of the pedestrian traffic. Quite a few people were out at this hour, despite it still being early morning for the settlement. They made it to the far side in no time at all, where a doorway passed to the adjacent plaza.

  Saana became aware of a faint buzzing and noted the appearance of a strange signal in one of her display reticles. A Visible Light Communications signal was growing in intensity, and her proximity sensor indicated it was because something was encroaching on their position.

  She turned around with the rest of her crew, looking to the source.

  [Tracking a UAV on approach. Remote traffic monitor. Unarmed.]

  It was Henrissant saying this. He had already obtained the drone’s frequency and was accessing its specifications.

  [Acquire it and connect its feed to us.]

  Henrissant obliged, and soon, the drone’s cameras were broadcasting directly to them.

  [I have control,] he said. [VLC interface is out of the Stone Age, but images are of sufficient resolution.]

  [Dispatch to objective, acquire identities en route, and provide overwatch towards our approach.]

  [Roger that.]

  From the air, the colony looked even more strange and beautiful. Like pixels of color moving about a sea of grey-blue, little insects funneling their away along hexagonal tunnels. However, these views ended when the drone ducked between one passageway and the next, moving ahead of them to get to the corner where they needed to be.

  Every so often, the drone caught sight of a person who carried markings that identified them as being a member of the Children of Jove. Red clothing, the right tattoos. On occasion, it spotted someone in a public place seeking to agitate. Henrissant slowed the drone to conduct a quick image capture of these ones. When he had five, he signaled to Saana.

  [Identities acquired.]

  They kept following along, maintai
ning a constant distance. Henrissant also maintained a speed which prevented the drone from getting too far ahead of them. Saana kept her eyes focused on their path, following the markers projected by her overlay onto the world around her. With every step, with every marker passed, the distance indicator continued to tick down. The mission clock did the same. So far, they were well within their specified time frame.

  When the drone finally reached the passageway they were seeking, Henrissant brought it to a stop. Its cameras then focused on the constables standing in a security hub located beneath it. Some were heavily outfitted, wearing ballistic armor suits and helmets, and carrying rifles. The rest wore the standard coveralls and carried basic sidearm. As people came and went, they watched and occasionally checked IDs.

  The constables stationed there took notice of the drone too, then looked away. Henrissant started moving it again to avoid any suspicion. There wasn’t anything strange about a traffic monitor passing above them. But one that lingered in one place for too long? That was something they might feel obligated to call in about.

  After passing through this last doorway, they sought out a corner. Under the cover of shadows and obstructions, they disengaged their stealth fields. With her four squad members now apparent before her, Saana gave the order.

  [Upload identifications, select weapons profiles.]

  Four affirmatives. Within seconds, the five squad members in their metallic suits starting changing form. Monochromatic mercury turned into solid form, mimicking the color of cloth and flesh perfectly. It took only a few seconds before they were all the spitting image of those the drone had spotted on the way in.

  They raised their hands next, gripping a space that filled with swarms of nanoware. Their weapons of choice materialized shortly, producing three carbines, one rifle and one heavy repeater. They let a few seconds pass, waiting for a break in the people who were passing through. Witnesses were needed, but as few as possible. Saana ordered Henrissant to bring the UAV back around and release it from their control. A picture was worth far more than testimonials.