by DJ Morand
"Flak it. Damn EFNF pilots,” he pronounced it F and F, “you would think the Admiral would have given up, the man has to be near seventy years old. Probably a flakking husk by now." Abel spoke to his partner in crime, the tall Quintarran co-pilot known as Zee. For centuries, the Quintarrans had been slaves to an insane Artificial Intelligence known only as the AI, until Abel Cain had broken that control.
"A husk?” Zee asked, seemingly occupied, but attentive enough to realize he heard a new word. The Quintarran was always eager to learn more of the human language and colloquialisms. He had an odd fascination with knowledge for the sake of knowledge.
“Human term Zee, it basically means their nanites are dead, gone, or they never had them - a husk. In any case, after I helped contain the EXOs I figured this nonsense about crimes and betrayals would have been forgotten.” Abel explained the terminology and then broke into a tirade again. Zee did not seem to care, other than filing the word away for use later. He had already adopted the term exed; another human term, meaning: someone converted into an EXO or dying violently. He had also added flak and its many forms; though he was less fond of the alpha curse; as Abel had described it.
“It is only logical that the crime has not been forgotten Captain. The theft, as well as the perceived betrayal. Stealing the URSA GS-I would, logically, lead to this dogged pursuit. If not an execution order. Neither I, nor you, I assume, want to be exed." Zee tried the human word out, sometimes the words flowed, other times he scrambled them horrifically. Zee considered the term exed, its dual meaning sometimes eluded him. The word itself was simplistic in usage, but the translation often left him wondering if it meant to be murdered or simply to be infected by the EXOs. The way Abel utilized it, exed, meant both; it seemed, to him at least, that humans looked upon the infection as a death in of itself.
He looked to Abel, who seemed not to notice any oddities about the usage, and noted that he seemed to have used it in the correct context. The Quintarrans were a species of logical thinkers and rarely tackled a problem without thinking it through. This logical order of processing was in part due to their years of forced servitude and in part due to their physiology. The people of the Quintar Prime system were born with advanced nanite implants far outstripping anything humans could produce. The technology on the Quintar home-worlds spanned generations of testing and experimentation. Each Quintarran was born with the collective nanites of both parents, granting them increased awareness as well as a hive-like memory. The nanites did more for the Quintarrans that just enhance their memory and perception. The micro-organic machines also increased their physical strength and speed. Generation after generation of Quintarrans allowed the nanites to evolve into their physiology.
"Of course I don’t want to be exed.” Abel said. “Who asked you anyway Zee?" Abel snapped in false irritation. He turned to look at his blue skinned friend, Zee was at least a head taller than the six-foot Abel and was more filled out. Zee was a bit on the taller side for a Quintarran, standing nearly at seven feet and his skin tone was a dark blue. Abel decided the oddest thing about Quintarrans was their total lack of hair, even the females had no hair and the men did not even have the slightest hint of a beard.
"Captain?" Zee said, confused at Abel’s dismissal. The relationship between Captain and Co-Pilot extended into a friendship neither man would readily admit to, but both understood to be the core of their partnership. Abel and Zee had formed a friendship even before running from the EFNF; sometimes one or the other found a reason to be irritable if only to show some warped sense of affection. Abel often remarked it was because all Quintarrans were inherently glitched. This was another term Zee had filed away; it was one he assumed meant off center or crazy.
"Never mind. Put the computer on evasive maneuvers and bring the pulse lasers to bear, keep that AI disabled, though.” Abel added, he had great distrust of anything with more intelligence than himself.
Captain Abel Cain looked out the Transteel viewer at the light fighter, “I don't want to cripple that RAVEN this far out, but a few shots at his shields might make him think twice. While you're at it, scan his ship; look for any traces of the EXO virus. If he's carrying that, we're crushing him here and now." Abel ground his teeth. The EXO virus and Alek Vale set him on edge. The very thought of the virus-infected man made him cringe.
"Acknowledged." Zee turned to the console, although it was unnecessary. The Quintarran's physiology allowed him to access the ship's computer from anywhere aboard the ship via his nanites. Abel had, quite vehemently, urged the Quintarran to turn to the console; because, as the Captain put it, it was flakking glitched.
Zee could, if he chose, stand still appearing to be doing nothing while the ship responded. Although he had special nanite injections himself, it still unnerved Abel how far the Quintarran's had taken their level of technology. Secretly, he feared the artificial intelligence that had taken over the Quintarran race; even though Zee was freed from its influence. His fear of AIs extended to the EXO virus, and Alek Vale considering the feats the man performed against Exodus Fleet.
As a pilot aboard the Terran Veil, Abel Cain had witnessed the effects of the EXO virus firsthand. The virus had been designed by scientists from the Earth Coalition to disable their enemies in combat. The result was an invasive virus that disabled entire systems aboard a starship and infected human nanites, causing them to glitch; eventually the virus evolved to take control of the host through their nanites. Zee believed Alek Vale to be directed by the influence of the Quintarran AI than the EXO virus.
After the events on Exodus Fleet, an army of EXOs flooded across the Quintar Prime system. But for Abel Cain’s actions on Eden, humanity would have been lost. Abel and Zee had teamed with a doctor, Talia Balker, and her fiancé Mercury Frinz. The four, together, discovered that the EXO virus had evolved beyond its original programming, turning humans and Quintarrans into mindless drones and giving them the potential to infect others. The virus continued to spread and soon after Alek Vale revealed himself as the leader of these new soldiers.
Abel devised a means to protect against initial infection, but he wasn’t able to save someone who had already been infected. When Talia began to show signs of infection, Abel and Mercury had a falling out. Zee urged Abel to leave Eden. Abel's departure from Eden tore his friendship with Mercury even more, taking a small rift and turning it into a gaping maw. Abel and Zee made a life on the edge of the Quintar Prime System managing to survive by pirating and salvaging, further ensconcing them in the rebellious direction they took in leaving the EFNF.
Civilization was gone, at least as far as Abel was concerned. To Captain Abel Cain, the planets in the Quintar Prime system did not count as civilization, unless you counted the few EFNF bases, which he did not. The Kodiak was his home now and no self-righteous EFNF pilot was going to convince him to give her up. The large gunship was more than a match for the smaller RAVEN Fighter, but Abel had seen his share of exed beings and he was not about to allow either his copilot or himself to become infected.
He had taken precautions to prevent that particular problem, but they were, as of yet, untested. Considering that his co-pilot acted as an entire crew accompaniment to run the Kodiak, he was especially nervous about any mutation of the virus. Without the Quintarran at his side, he'd have to pull triple duty just to get the ship from point A to point B; Zee was a blessing and his closest friend; even if he is, at times, a bit glitched, he thought.
"How's that scan coming Zee?" Abel spat out while he prepped the ship for combat. Just because he had Zee did not mean he could run blindly into battle. Most of his - and Zee's - modifications to the URSA GS-I model resulted in his incarnation of the ship - Kodiak - as he affectionately called it, even though Zee had chosen the name. The ship still required a fair amount work, although mostly digital versus manual. The navigation systems required Zee's input on each station linked to the main helm and the co-pilot’s controls. The weapons system required his authorization, Abel loved Zee lik
e a brother, but he was not quick to trust anyone. Zee did not seem to care in any case. It would, he surmised, be impossible to run the ship without Zee.
"Captain, I have completed the scan. The vessel is a RAVEN F Mark XII with advanced shielding against intrusive scans and a small bit of stealth technology. It is also equipped with a long range transmitter more powerful than the standard RAVEN F. In the amount of time we have waited to complete the scan, it is very probable the pilot has already sent a message regarding our location."
"Flakking EFNF. Can you pinpoint where any transmission might be heading?" Abel barked.
"No, Captain. I thought it best to continue the systems scan to locate any traces of the EXO virus. Should I try to track the transmission? It will likely be too late now," Zee said expressing no frustration at Abel’s tone or demeanor. If the Quintarran was honest, he appreciated the Captain’’s direct approach to problems, if not his choice of language.
"No, keep up that scan. I am sure as hell not opening a communication line with him until I know the virus is not on board." Abel had no desire to see any incarnation of the virus again, especially when communications from ship to ship spread the virus like wildfire.
Twenty years ago the EFNF had been infected by the EXO virus. By the time the fleet had realized the extent of the infection during Alek Vale's attack over a third of the vessels in Exodus Fleet had the virus onboard. Admiral Shade, Abel remembered, had prior information of the infection, but did nothing to prevent an outbreak. This was one of the primary motivations that led to Abel’s decision to leave the Exodus Fleet Naval Force.
"Flak it!" he yelled as he smashed his fist down on the arm of his chair. The chair, his favorite modification to the Kodiak, took the abuse absorbing the impact and melded back into its former shape. He had pieced together the salvage, and bounty, of other ships and built the chair himself.
Utilizing the science of quantum locking Abel had created a core for each of the seats on the vessel. The core kept cool and allowed the magnetic build up to lock the parts into any configuration he chose. For the interior, this meant chairs that could fit any size person and easily hold their weight; for the exterior of the ship it meant adjustable shield plates that could be moved to protect the vessel during combat.
He sat in his chair comfortably, at the front of the ship. The command deck at the forward prow of the ship made little sense to him. There was something about the Earth Coalition design that made its way into the minds of those designing the URSA GS-I, narrow minds in his opinion. Abel had wanted to place the command deck in the center of the ship.
Poor sods, he thought. If the Exodus Fleet had never left Sol space they would have never dealt with the EXO virus on this scale, and his family might have lived. Abel tried not to dwell on the loss of his parents, but it always drew him in. Abel could remember the smell of his mother’’s perfume and her soft voice. He remembered how it was all taken away from him as the Earth Coalition bombarded Mars. When the blast that destroyed the terraforming rods and nearly killed him, his father had pled to allow the young Abel aboard the last escaping vessel. Days later Tiberius Abel had shown up with Fleet Admiral Cade aboard a new ship and demanded Admiral Shade’s surrender. It had been the last time he had seen any of his family.
"EXO virus is not present Captain. The RAVEN F Mark XII is clean. What are your orders?" Zee related the information with an intonation like everything else he said, clear, precise, and dry. The Quintarran’s voice drew Abel from his reverie. Zee was a good friend - and an excellent co-pilot - but Abel missed human interaction at times. He missed the scent of a woman. It seemed to him that every interaction with other humans was met with force or the threat of force. He supposed he could attribute this to pirating and banditry. If not for his illegal activities, he and Zee would not have survived after Eden.
After having fled Eden, and starting his life as a pirate, Abel Cain had returned to Exodus Fleet to help humanity put a stop to the EXO threat. The EXO Shield, a network of satellites around Quintar V, prevented the EXOs from expanding their influence and kept the virus from spreading beyond it. The duo had left again hoping to avoid unnecessary entanglements, they had been in Dark Space since.
"Open comms Zee. I'll talk with the RAVEN pilot." Abel said.
“Acknowledged Captain. You have open comms.” The Quintarran held up his four-fingered hand and counted down from two … one. Zee pointed all four fingers at Abel, indicating he should begin speaking. He paused a moment longer, allowing the relative silence over the communications link to fester.
“Greetings RAVEN Fighter Mark twelve, Exodus Fleet Naval Force. Pilot, this is Captain Abel Cain of the Kodiak. We have your fighter in our sights and you know - as well as I - you cannot hope to win this fight.” Zee looked at the Captain and motioned with his hands, signaling one. The duo had worked out a code for determining the numbers they faced before entering an engagement. Sometimes that code had to be used on the fly; a situation such as this merited it.
“Scans show you’re alone out here,” Zee motioned again, and showed one again, “and alone in your ship. What possessed you to travel to Dark Space alone?” Abel was starting to get nervous, a lone ship was strange enough, but a lone pilot? That was stranger still.
“What’s your mission pilot? That RAVEN might last a long time in open space, but not without backup nearby.” Abel said. The pilot might have an escort waiting behind a moon or in a nearby asteroid field. “What game are you playing man?” He stared at the ship beyond the Transteel viewer, for prudence sake he had flipped the Kodiak around barring the cargo bay airlock from easy access. The continued silence from the pilot was starting to unnerve him; just as he had hoped, he would unnerve the RAVEN pilot earlier in the exchange.
“Not a man. Captain Echo Shade," the pilot’s voice was distinctly female, cleared up now by having an open connection. If the silence had been unnerving for Abel, this new revelation was more so. He had left the Exodus Fleet Naval Force when he was twenty-two years old, Admiral Shade had marked him as a traitor. It stood against reason that in the last ten years the Admiral could have had a child fully grown enough to be piloting a RAVEN F; weren’t you just child when you flew your first? A voice in the back of his mind nagged at him.
"Shade? As in Admiral James Shade?” He knew the question was silly, there was not likely another Shade claiming to be a part of the EFNF.
“Admiral Shade was my father,” She said simply.
“How do I know you’re not lying?” He could have no assurances from this mystery pilot without actual proof; unless Admiral Shade had disclosed everything from both Abel and his past, she would not be able to provide that proof over a comms channel. The fact that she was piloting a RAVEN put him off as well, if Shade had a daughter after he left she’d be less than ten years old. She is either lying, or Admiral Shade has kept her a secret for some time. But how long, he thought to himself.
"You don't Abel. My father said you were brilliant, surely you know well enough I cannot give you assurances over a comms channel." Was she some kind of psychic? He dismissed the thought as soon as he had it, but it nagged at the back of his mind. The Quintarrans had some sort of psychic connection, in truth it was more scientific than supernatural, but he didn't entirely dismiss the thought that she might have updated Quintarran nanites.
The EFNF had embroiled themselves with the Quintarrans more deeply than he had ever felt comfortable with. Following the raising of the EXO Shield, he heard, the EFNF had banded together with the remaining free Quintarrans. He had heard little about the alliance, but what he had it was always in the form of a threat from the spacers he was robbing. He never killed humans or Quintarrans, but he certainly stole what he needed to stay in Dark Space, unmolested; he used to make trips to Eden, but that was over. Abel knew that Quintarrans could link their nanites with others; maybe she had done this, he thought before he dismissed it all. Zee was his friend and co-pilot, but he didn't interface his nanites with the Quin
tarran, that level of trust never found its way into his being and he doubted another human could find the trust either. Eventually, Abel decided that his firewalls would have prevented any intrusion without his knowledge and decided that Echo was just very insightful and not a psychic or enhanced being.
"Alright, let's say for the moment I believe your story. Why are you really here? You know you can't take the Kodiak with that RAVEN and I am taking a guess that the comms package you sent out was only large enough to give a general location." A realization was beginning to dawn on Abel, with the EXO threat the EFNF was not about to send out lone RAVEN ships to search for him, not after ten years and if they knew where to find him, it would not be a single fighter. "In fact, I am not even sure you are a part of the EFNF or, if you are, you’re off mission. That just leaves the reason for your appearance here, you want something. Something only I can offer, so spit it out."
"The comms package was general coordinates; you are right about that and the fact that I came to see you." Her voice wavered a bit, and Abel knew he'd hit the rest of his assessment on the nose as well.
He mulled over his decision for a moment, then said, "I have a port side airlock and docking ring alongside the cargo bay, shut down your shields and dock with that ring. I don't like talking over comms, and I'm confident enough Zee and I could take you before you cause any trouble." He cut off the communications channel looked to Zee waiting for confirmation that Echo Shade was following his instructions.
Zee nodded, "She is powering down shields and has started an approach angle. Scans still show no other signs of life or the EXO virus. The vessel is clean and clear Captain." Zee sounded a bit excited, he had always been fascinated by the human species and his friendship with Abel had not diminished that curiosity in the least. He had come to realize that Abel was unique among humans and so any interaction with, non-EXO infected, humans nearly brought him to tears with the excitement.
