The Free Citizen

by T. J. Sedgwick

  “Darkstar-One, this is control,” said the female voice in his helmet’s headset. “Confirming IQL established. Please copy.”

  “Copy that, control. Secure link established,” he said, referring to the Instantaneous Quantum Link—an undetectable means of communication. Classified. Experimental.

  “Darkstar-One, confirming zero detection on all-sensors,” she said. “Please confirm rendezvous orbit has been achieved.”

  No one, including ground control, could now track him as he sped around low Earth orbit at eight kilometers per second. Rae knew the best cloaking tech the American Union’s military researchers had devised rendered his capsule like a ghost in the night. Revolutionary and restricted to covert units.

  “Confirmed. Intersection with target in eighty-three minutes. Closing at twenty meters per second.”

  “Acknowledged, Darkstar-One,” she said, betraying hint of relief. “Good luck, Captain. Our hopes go with you. Out.”

  Rae exhaled long and hard, closing his eyes for a few seconds, only aware of his thoughts and the helmet's gentle flow of cool air. Relaxation embraced him despite the high stakes ahead. He couldn’t tell if it was training or his neural implant that provided such calm. His eyes flicked open and he switched the headset to External View. Complex patterns of night-lit cities traced the congregations of humanity on coasts and rivers and on the black canvas of the land below. The glow of the planet’s atmosphere foretold of the Sun’s light beyond Earth’s mass. Somewhere, about 1,600km ahead, sped the enemy station, SS Erasmus. Darkstar’s orbit stalked the Erasmus, closing the gap. Covert entry, absent of detectable retro-burns, called for a gradual approach, and that would take time.

  Night turned to dazzling day after seventy-five minutes of mentally rehearsing what he knew of the plan. He checked all systems for the umpteenth time as rendezvous loomed. Gradually, the SS Erasmus resolved from a bright point of light to something more. On his visor display, he saw the station’s white cylindrical modules, multi-port dock, and huge solar arrays hanging in the blackness. He removed his flight helmet and replaced it with the matte gray combat helm with its opaque visor and side-mounted, forward-pointing, stereoscopic sensors. From that point on he’d see, hear, and sense the world through those sensors via the visor display. The combat helm was the last part of his closely-fitting combat suit, the fishbowl flight helmet a misfit always destined to remain tethered inside the capsule. Checking the combat helm’s heads-up display, Rae knew the air now entering his lungs came from the slimline backpack integrated with the combat suit.

  Despite being a veteran captain of the 1st Covert Action Group, serving in and above the Badlands—or Military Operations Zone—this was only his third orbital mission. Mission one: rescue the crew of the abortive Mars-bound scientific mission from Earth orbit. Mission two: the termination of enemy spies on Zenith Station—the American space station. Now came mission three: rendezvous with SS Erasmus—a 250m-long enemy research station. Infiltrate the facility. After that: classified but electronically implanted in his subconscious mind during the briefing.

  Even Rae—his conscious mind, at least—didn’t know what came next. But that didn’t concern him. That was how it had been ever since the enhancements had rendered his previous life blurry. The neural pathways, constituting memories, had eroded quickly once the neural implant had taken hold. It happened to everyone and it didn’t worry him. Perfectly normal. Only faint memories remained of his childhood, growing up in New Zealand, and of his parents. When those recollections came, momentary sorrow welled inside, before a hit of some feel-good hormone—he wasn’t sure what—fixed the sadness. The usual trigger of such thoughts was a glimpse of the tattoo on his upper left arm. The outline of the country he’d renounced after swearing his allegiance to a greater cause. And beside the tattooed map of North and South Island, the word, ‘Aotearoa’—New Zealand in the Maori language. An enemy state and part of the Democratic Alliance. For some inexplicable reason, he’d never quite gotten around to removing it. It had somehow escaped the attention of the authorities too. Maybe they didn’t know what it was, or simply hadn’t noticed. Anyway, everyone knew that patriotic deficiencies occurred mostly in natural-born United Statesers. Their allegiance to the Stars and Stripes and their misguided Constitution corrupted them, obscuring the superiority of the American Union.

  Three missions made him a veteran when it came to space. He wondered if there would be more with international tensions mounting. So far, the phony war remained below the bar for open conflict. Another Cold War threatening to turn hot. If full-scale conflict ever came to space, it would be short and would render Earth-orbit unusable, with millions of fragments zipping around faster than bullets. And without space-based technology, the world would be unrecognizable. Another way of mutual assured destruction—the doctrine credited with the twentieth century’s Cold War staying cold. Rae wasn’t sure the established, acrimonious world order would endure. Ever since the Arrival, he, like everyone else, knew the game had changed. Old tensions between the American Union and the other Great Powers—the Democratic Alliance, China and Russia—had worsened since well before the Renaissance in 2074, when President White replaced the US Constitution and removed the term limit. That was just cementing the gains his movement had already secured. Then in 2079, three years ago, came the Arrival. No one knew for sure what the new enemy’s ultimate goal was. Everyone assumed it was total conversion of humanity. All they seemed to strive for was infecting new hosts. And the spread continued apace. The American Union was a fortress like never before. Rae believed in the righteousness of his country, the struggle to protect their way of life and resist all enemies. Ever since he’d joined up a decade ago, he’d felt the struggle was a part of him. It was his calling. Now their enemies weren’t just ideologically different like the Russians, the Chinese, or the Democratic Alliance. Now the enemy was a different species—terrifying, rapacious devils who bowed to no reason and only understood violence. He’d seen Screamers in the flesh and could hardly describe the feelings they imbued. It wouldn’t be long until he faced off against them once more.

  Europe had been ground zero—what at first had been misidentified as a small meteorite, crashing down near the Dutch village of Oostrum. It contained the parasite—an organism perfectly matched to commandeer the faculties of its human host and use them as a vector to spread and control.

  Spread and control, thought Rae. If the Screamers have a motto, Spread and Control would be it.

  The rest was history. Not only did he live in the stream of history, but he could shape its path. He sighed as he recalled this sad progression of events, then tried to blank it out of mind. Focus came quickly. Contact with the enemy demanded nothing less. Now on suit-air he knew the clock was ticking. Finite resources: air, power, and—if it ever came to going extra-vehicular—monopropellant. Breathing station air would mean infection and a life of torment and pain and… He didn’t want to contemplate.

  Contact with the Screamers was minutes away. As his matte-black, stealth capsule hurtled around the Earth, his future narrowed to the station, suspended in blackness above Earth’s magnificence. In that moment his whole life seemed a prelude to the secrets within. The SS Erasmus loomed large as Darkstar-One slipped unseen towards the unsuspecting host. The critical moment rushed headlong towards him. Infiltration was next. What awaited after that was locked away in his subconscious. But once Rae knew, it would feel like he’d always known.

  3

  Men make history and not the other way around.

  Harry S Truman

  T he Democratic Alliance—consisting of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, and South Korea—was in Rae’s view, cynically named. As all American Union Citizens knew—there was nothing free and fair about the enemy’s pretense of democracy. Nor was there any superiority in their system. Still, that era was ending. Now something far more terrifying was co-opting the old enemy. That they regarded the SS Erasmus the jewel in the crown of t
heir space-based facilities, Rae couldn’t disagree. The research station had taken ten years and over a trillion dollars—even with most of the heavy lifting done by their Skylon II, a single-stage to orbit spaceplane costing far less than rocket-based launches.

  Now three minutes separated Rae and Darkstar-One from the Erasmus. The length of two football fields, the huge, complex structure now dominated his view. Two large white cylinders—measuring fifty meters long by twenty in diameter—sat at either end. Between them were two columns of five narrower, but otherwise identical, modules. In the same plane, eighty-meter-long struts holding multiple bronze-colored solar panels, sprouted from the flanks of the ten smaller modules. Rae zoomed Darkstar’s external camera to Large Module 1—the space-dock and service module on the nearside. Along the axis of Large Module 1 were four circular, metal docking ports. Only the far left one was occupied—a Skylon II that had flown out of Europe last week, tracked by Space Command at McKinnon. The cloaked Darkstar-One flew a direct course for the center-right port, its millimeter-perfect trajectory already set in motion, the solar wind too weak to alter the orbital mechanics at play. Adrenaline was kicking in. He felt on-edge, proximity making real the closing velocity of twenty klicks a second.

  Darkstar, initiate micro-burn and de-cloak on my mark, he thought, his neural chip communicating directly with the capsule. Only the capsule’s computer could coordinate the powerful, but brief sequence that was about to happen next.

  “Acknowledged,” said the female voice of Darkstar, audible only in his mind.

  Rae switched his head-up display to radar visualization. A colored 3D visualization of the Erasmus’s radar coverage filled his helmet’s display. Overlapping umbrellas of radar energy covered almost every part of the station’s surroundings. But not all of it. The blind spot between the station’s numerous radar globes sat like a pyramid-shaped void extending ten meters to its apex, some of it above his target port. He would need to place his trust in stealth technology until reaching the blind spot. At this range, even a tiny radar signature would alert the enemy. Visual cloaking was just an extension of full-spectrum stealth, but unlikely to betray him on a camera feed or due to a chance view through a porthole.

  Twelve meters, eleven, ten, nine, eight—mark!

  Darkstar read his thoughts and a moment later, Rae felt the momentary brick-wall-force of rapid deceleration as the retro-thrusters burst into life for a microsecond—enough to go from twenty meters a second to a gentle drift, no more than a snail’s pace. Blood rushed to his head, eyes bulging, pain in his cranium, a stone-hard jerk against the five-point harness. Then it was over, a dull headache all that remained.

  “Micro-burn sequence complete,” said Darkstar. “Distance to target: 7.1 meters. Closing speed: 0.21 meters per second.”

  Darkstar, initiate hack sequence now.

  “Acknowledged,” said, Darkstar. Then came a pause and, “Connection to Erasmus established…”

  The next pause felt like forever. Rae watched the circular, satin-gray alloy docking port grow to fill his external feed and counted down the distance, meters becoming centimeters. If the hack failed, the enemy would know he’d docked. He grew impatient.

  Darkstar, update. Now!

  Silence. Half a meter remained. He reflexively checked his sidearm—a semi-automatic with minimally-penetrating 9mm rounds.

  “Hack sequence successful. Docking system control established.”

  Rae exhaled long and hard, ignoring the bead of sweat running into his eye.

  A second later, Darkstar-One’s nose-mounted port mated with the enemy’s dock with a gentle thrump. Next came the whir of servos, followed by a quiet metallic sliding, a click, and then silence.

  “Docking successfully masked from enemy station’s computer. Docking complete.”

  Darkstar, patch through the station’s external video feed of the docking ports.

  He trusted the stealth but needed to check. Double-checking had kept him alive too many times to count—overseas ops in warzones, many more in the Military Operations Zone or Badlands, as it had come to be known. The Badlands covered virtually all continental American territory between the Mexico and Canada buffer zones. Canada was a Democratic Alliance enemy, its continued existence owing to the mutual defense pact with its allies. Mexico was a failed state. The islands of sanity amongst the Badlands were the Sanctuary Cities. Only Citizens and Serviles were freely permitted in Sanctuary Cities. The same applied to military bases, Mega-Farms and Resource Zones—mines, oilfields, timber forests and the like. Rae knew from countless operations that Illegals and terrorists swarmed the Badlands and its crumbling, battle-scared cities. Cities like Memphis, Austin, El Paso-Juarez, and what the sea hadn’t yet claimed of New Orleans and Miami. There were many more of what were once part of the American Union’s predecessor, the United States of America. That was history. A new and better nation had arisen.

  Freedom Through Struggle, thought Rae, recalling the national maxim. And not just recalling it—believing it.

  The video feed from one of the Erasmus’s external cameras appeared on his helmet display. Still just the Skylon II in the far-left port. He studied the picture closely, the only discernible clue to Darkstar’s presence was a mirage-like shimmer around the center-right docking port.

  Not perfect. But he who doesn’t look, doesn’t see, he thought. But he did wonder if the parasite somehow changed a host’s senses. He censured himself for worrying about what he couldn’t change. His stoic mindset had served him well.

  He switched his combat suit to stealth mode, rendering him as invisible as Darkstar-One on account of similar technology. This included his sidearm—an extendable tether providing the power for its stealth coating. He checked all suit systems, including rebreather function. It was vital this stayed on despite the presence of breathable air in the station. The parasite was thought to spread via spores carried in the air, which could infect a new host via respiration, the eyes and even bare skin. He unclipped the harness and pulled himself to the hatch.

  He accepted the incoming message to his helm via Darkstar’s IQL—the subspace link, undetectable to the enemy station. Time synchronization with Center meant they knew when to send the objectives.

  “Captain, this is Center. Standby for your next objectives. I have just sent the command to your neural implant to release your orders”.

  Instantaneously, he knew the next part of the mission like he’d always known. In a way he had, but only the subconscious part of his mind, where it had been encrypted. Now he knew the station, knew all that Intel knew. Understood the mission and its risks at far as they did. A level of detail hard to convey in words.

  Following protocol, Center ran him through it in summary. “Primary objective is as follows: retrieve the prototype enemy device from Module L2, marked here… You should now be seeing the 3D layout of the station with the device marked as a red blinking dot in the second large module—the L2 module at the other end of the station from where you are docked. Captain, please confirm.”

  The 3D rendering had appeared in his mind’s eye, leaving his visor display alert to the outside world. His route would need to take him into the L1 module to which he was docked, then through three successive small modules—research labs connected end-to-end. Finally, a right-hand turn into L2, in the center of which sat a cluster of what were marked as computer equipment. The detail on that part of the rendering wasn’t much, but they looked like multiple server cabinets surrounding a sphere perhaps two meters across. The red marker dot blinked insistently dead center.

  “Yessir, visualization of mission and device location is confirmed.”

  “Good. Recover the sphere and exfiltrate. Recovery via Pegasus within the recovery zone,” he said referring to the volume of airspace roughly above the American Union plus some of the Pacific to the west. A Pegasus aircraft would pluck the Darkstar from the sky after re-entry.

  “Confirmed, Center.”

  “Note the heavy
enemy presence. Intel says fifteen on board—assume they’re all Screamers.”

  Fifteen, thought Rae. He’d seen what they could do. Inhuman in every sense. Despite his training, they sent a shiver down his spine. At the same time, it saddened him that these once-humans were lost forever—to his knowledge, no cure had been found. American military research informed that finding one was a monumental task because of the way the parasite rewired the brain.

  “Secondary objective: destroy the SS Erasmus and every one of those devils on board. You must destroy the facility, so they cannot remake this prototype device. Is that understood, Captain?”

  “Yessir—confirmed. Destroy the station, ensure no survivors.”

  “And one more thing, Captain: the device must be removed with spherical covering intact.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  “And it goes without saying: any intel you can pick up is always valuable.”

  “Yessir—gather actionable intel as usual, sir.”

  “Good luck, Captain. Our hopes go with you. Out.”

  Silence returned, he was on his own. The Screamers awaited. Again, his thoughts turned to his wife. He found bringing her to mind brought comfort when he needed it. She’d been there for him at his time of need when he’d had no one else to count on. No one else who would understand and nurse him back to health after the devastating head injury he’d suffered on the ill-fated mission to take down the insurgents in Baton Rouge in late 2073. Sure, the military had provided for his medical needs and rehabilitation, but his traumatic concussion had other consequences. The debilitating depression, the bursts of anger, loss of balance, of short-term memory. Cora had put her life on hold, shown a level of compassion he’d seen from no one else. He’d grown to feel safe with her. She intrigued and challenged him in equal measure. Her passion for her business matched his own for soldiering. She was ambitious and driven and well connected—a potent combination in someone who had her looks. He knew she understood how much soldiering meant to him, how it was part of him. With the military stretched, and trying to re-establish civil order, he had returned to active duty after marrying Cora in late 2074. He counted himself a very lucky man. Their relationship was testament to how love could cut across social boundaries in their great country. They all had a lot to thank the Regime for. He’d never admit it publicly, but he actually thought he loved his wife more than the president and the Regime and the Renaissance put together.