The Genetic Imperative
P. J. Cherubino
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Thank You
Contact and Mailing List
Chapter 1: The Third Arm, Warsphere Alpha, The Descent
Chapter 2: Earth, Maryland, The Interview
Chapter 3: The Third Arm, Warsphere Alpha, Mutiny
Chapter 4: Earth, New Mexico, Incursion
Chapter 5: The Third Arm, Warsphere Alpha, Escape
Chapter 6: Homesphere, Return
Chapter 7: Earth, Maryland, Trainee
Chapter 8: Homesphere, Whispers
Chapter 9: Earth, Arizona, The Exile
Chapter 10: Homesphere, Conspirators
Chapter 11: Earth, Arizona, The Conscript
Chapter 12: Homesphere, Arrest
Chapter 13: Earth, Maryland, Orientation
Chapter 14: Homesphere, The Train
Chapter 15: Earth, Maryland, The Dignitary
Chapter 16: Homesphere, Assignment
Chapter 17: Earth, Maryland, Flight
Chapter 18: Homesphere, Mission
Chapter 19: Earth, Strategy
Chapter 20: Earth, Endgame
Chapter 21: Earth, Antarctica, Reckoning
Chapter 22: Earth, Antarctica, Meeting
Chapter 23: Earth, Antarctica, Conclusion
Farewell
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Chapter 1: The Third Arm, Warsphere Alpha, The Descent
Captain Nina Gaav sprang from the stone bunk, and her feet made a bass drum thump on the cold deck. She squinted at the sudden white glare as the ceiling light strips flared in the horizontal tube which was her sleeping chamber. Shortened deployment cycles always come far too early. Nutritional wine from the cycle before was still present on her breath and assertive in her belly.
Nina pressed her hands against the rough, russet-colored stone bulkhead and bent forward to stretch out her arms and upper back. The ancient ship hummed through her fingers. She gathered the sleeves of her battle robe and rolled them up to her broad shoulders, cinching them with crisp, regulation pleats. With a deep breath, she pushed aside the spinstone curtain and stepped out into the narrow passage.
"Warriors!" Nina shouted. "Assemble! Now! Move! Move! Let's go!"
She was the duty officer in her bunk section. It was her job to roust subordinates. It was the unofficial job of the others to grumble and grouse about it. Down the hall, Talin's shrill voice prickled every ear in range. Nina turned to the right and saw Talin's long, blond hair billowing about her head as she lashed out orders. It was Talin's wine that still hummed in Nina's skull.
Nina's communications sergeant appeared and slapped a comm crystal into her hand without a word. The sergeant disappeared into the increasing crush of bodies streaming from the crowded cabins of the lower ranks. Nina slipped the crystal into a pocket at the inner waist of her robe. The amber-colored stone moved through the silky cloth and found its place in the small of her back. The harness cinched around her waist, and the crystal's broad facets vibrated as it linked to the thought network. She closed her eyes for a moment as the network formed. The rush of voices produced a moment of vertigo, and she made a quick note of status reports as her platoon checked in.
Some of the voices on the comm circuits sounded abnormally stressed. This was an unusual deployment that had many Advocates worried, including Talin. Nina spent too much time the cycle before listening to Talin's doubts. The older warrior had been Nina's friend and mentor for nearly a century. In all those years, Talin never spoke about a mission the way she did last cycle. Nina tried to placate her friend by pointing out that the pursuit of an anomalous spore would naturally involve unusual measures. But Talin's doubts stuck around. Some of their orders did not make sense.
Talin made some good points as the two stood on a vacant deck atop one of the primary, planet-facing command towers. The two were up late drinking wine which Talin saved and nurtured from the time she received it from her first mentor.
"I was saving this to share with my first protégé or my Last Day," Talin said, "whichever comes first." The statement worried Nina because words like that so often resulted in self-made conclusions.
Nina's oldest friend slumped against the cold ship skin, staring through a section of bulkhead Nina made transparent when they first arrived. They surveyed the Queen's Fleet orbiting a planet well on its way to gas giant status. This region of space was very close to the Galactic Center. It was a riot of wounded stars, broken celestial bodies and cosmic flotsam lost on chaotic eddies of gravity.
The planet below held in thrall more than twenty-seven moons, in addition to the hundreds of asteroids and planetary shards that failed to resist its influence. It was hard to tell the Queen's fleet apart from the other drifting rock. Only the tall, round-peaked conning towers rising from the cruisers' rocky surface would tell any sentient being who cared to look, that some rocks circled under power. To the untrained eye, the Great Ships would seem like trivial moons.
The nervousness apparent on the comm circuits as Nina rushed up to the launch deck was due in large measure to the weeks the fleet idled in orbit. The countless drills Nina ran with her platoon were continually punctuated by asteroid strikes against the hull which became the subtext of creeping unease. Terse reports came down, telling of Silicoid spore activity detected across the region.
A confirmed spore existed on the planet below. They were going down there. Before Talin pointed it out, Nina had no time to think about why a spore would be in a region so hostile to the forms of life on which they preyed. The interior Third Arm of this galaxy was a desolate place best suited to the Silicoids alone.
What Talin pointed out last cycle was accurate. The configuration was very strange. Nina's platoon contained a large section of heavy infantry troops and a large communication squad. Nina was among only a small number of Range Force soldiers in the platoon, yet she would be in command. Talin pointed out numbers like this were normal for large-scale invasions meant to be followed up by occupying or pacifying forces. It was as if each platoon were a regiment in miniature.
But Nina was an Advocate Warrior. She wasn't created to question orders. It
was her job to achieve objectives. She put aside all other thoughts as she made her way through the hive-like chambers leading to the spiral tunnel that brought her up to the launch deck. Soldiers streamed by the thousand into the vast cavern from hundreds of tunnel openings at the chamber base.
"Let's Go! Assemble your platoons!" Nina bellowed outside the thought channels. Many soldiers grit their teeth. "Roust your cadres! Assemble!"
Most of her Platoon fell in around her as she made her way to the designated launch pad. The rest of the soldiers already stood at the pad when she arrived. They formed orderly lines, and the Heavy Infantry squad stood in the middle. Their bulky forms hid from view the sisters behind them. Soon the Comm Sergeant reported all soldiers as present.
"Platoon! Listen here!" Nina began in her loud, deep command voice. She walked the rigid lines, two hundred Warriors strong. As she paced and inspected them, the pre-battle excitement grew. Their lust for battle washed over her and began to displace all else. They were about to drop through violent layers of atmosphere and land on a hostile planet surface where an unseen enemy lurked in unknown number. The thought made Nina's spine tingle. She would destroy the enemy and do her part in making the galaxy safe for sentient life. They were all born for this.
"We are about to make a drop with incomplete intelligence. Hard battles are nothing new to us," she added, shouting the last part with greater volume. She paused to let her troops stoke their pride.
"It will be a hard drop, so keep your energy levels high. We're looking at double Homesphere pressure at the surface, so I want you to concentrate on displacement. You will need to maintain high energy in your armor just to move around down there. I hope you've been keeping up with your displacement exercises." Nina pointed eyes at a group of young soldiers she knew would have trouble. She expected to lose at least five of them right away. She hoped she was wrong.
"Stick close to your sergeants. Watch each other for signs of trouble early. Most of you will acclimate quickly. Pay attention to the drop-crater. Find the largest pod fragments and regroup there.
Comm section: we need you up and running immediately. Signals in that atmosphere will be greatly diminished. We need to group as fast as we can to make a hard line quickly."
As she said this, the engineers sent up the drop pods as if on cue. The floor rippled as it changed phase. Humming gravity fields tickled their ears, and the vehicles shimmered into view as they rose up from the liquefied stone floor. More engineers streamed down the lines from the supply bays, carrying weapons and equipment. Other engineers stood ready to seal them inside the drop pods. Soon the vehicles hovered a few centimeters above the floor, filling the space between platoons.
"Make ready!" Nina shouted.
The same order went up the line, and the launch cavern filled with a cacophony of rustling. The soldiers armed each other and helped one another secure breathing harnesses. Nina made herself busy offering guidance to some of the greener troops. When she was satisfied they were well under way, Nina opened a channel to her lead engineer to order provisioning.
Without a word between them, the engineer appeared from the crowd with the Captain's staff and breathing gear. The engineer slipped Nina's staff sections into the dual sheaths attached to the back of her robe. The familiar weight pressed its reassurance against her shoulder blades as the straps adjusted themselves to secure the weapon. Nina parted the robe slightly at her chest, allowing the engineer behind her to pull back the collar and slip the breathing cylinders into the pouch which rested against her thoracic spine.
The engineer draped the breathing harness over Nina's shoulders, then pulled and tugged on the robe until the harness hung loosely. The captain relaxed and let the robe logic do its work. Before long, the harness branched off from itself, snaking perfectly around her ribs just above her solar plexus. It pulled just tight enough to secure the cylinders. The arrangement was different for every soldier according to the robe's logic. Soon the harness was fully integrated with the breathing system built into the robe.
Nina retrieved her breather tube from its place in the robe's blouse-section. She moved it to her mouth, and its end became pliant. The cylindrical end shimmered, shivered and formed a gray, egg-shaped blob as it neared her mouth. She brought it to her lips, and it pulled the breath from her as it spread out, forming a mask to seal her mouth and nose.
Nina closed her eyes and took a slow, deep breath. She gave a small start as the oil dribbled over her teeth. She had done this since she was a child, but she never quite got used to breathing liquid. The oil was cold. It filled her mouth while she continued to draw it in. The mineral oil slid down her throat, and she struggled to relax as it reached her lungs. The transition from breathing air to oil was always a bit painful. The second breath was easier than the first. The one good thing about the breather was that it delivered more oxygen than most breathable climates. Nina's limbs tingled as her blood infused with an extra dose of oxygen.
She opened her eyes again and turned to the long, lozenge shape of the massive drop pod. The view seemed brighter as her heartbeat quickened. The head deck engineer nodded to her and issued the thought command that opened the pod's side access section. The dull gray surface of the pod shimmered as it changed phase, just as the deck beneath had done moments before. When the shift was complete, the platoon filed dutifully inside.
Nina passed through the portal last. The phase field pressed against her bare arms and face like a curtain of static electricity. She kept her eyes open to marvel at her passage through liquefied stone. Moving through stone never got old. She passed through grains of quartz, iron, and silica, as well as the uniform web of synthetic alloys grown beneath the crust of Homesphere. Once the field shut down and they were away from the ship, there was only one way to open the pod again. Only planet-crash would set them loose. In a way, Nina felt it a shame that such a carefully crafted device was entirely disposable.
Once through the portal, she passed easily into the warm, and perfectly transparent kinetic fluid. The protective fluid shivered with gelatinous waves as it transmitted the movement of other warriors. The drop pod was in calibration mode. The fluid changed viscosity rapidly as the pod used it to measure the total mass of the assembled force. It would use that data to protect them from the horrendous forces of the drop. The vehicle was now fully autonomous. Its final order was received to deliver them to the planet surface. The drop pod evaluated its orders and negotiated with the other pods for its place in the launch queue.
They would perceive no motion for a while. Once fully calibrated, the pod would isolate them. They did not sense transit as the vehicle levitated across the launch deck, one among hundreds. Not until the drop pod reached atmosphere did they sense motion again. Not even the kinetic fluid could completely isolate them from the violent descent. Its job was to protect them from the worst forces. Nina relied on her comm officers for the status of their transition into space.
"Report," Nina thought and opened a channel to the in-transit Comm Sergeant.
"Here Captain," Comm said. The words were present in Nina's mind as if they were her own. Nina found the Sergeant in the forward cabin, peeking around the massive back of a heavy infantry soldier.
"Systems nominal," continued the Sergeant. "We pierced Warsphere Alpha and are descending on course."
"Excellent," Nina thought in reply. She kept eye contact with her subordinate.
They waited in silence, and the soldiers stilled with anticipation. A few standard minutes later, Comm began counting down. A few minutes after that, the kinetic fluid carried a low rumble that rose quickly from a barely perceptible level. The sound steadily grew until the vibration shook their bones as they struck further into the atmosphere.
Nina left her position and moved down the line closer to the planet-facing end. Along the way she made eye contact with as many soldiers as she could, touching shoulders, giving grimly confident smiles and curt nods in acknowledgment. It was a typical insertion, one
of many hundreds Nina experienced.
Things fell apart quickly. Halfway through descent, the comm section reported engineers tracking the failure of four dissipaters. Half the pod heat shielding was down on. Nina called network status and many other pods in their sortie showed complete component failure. The soldiers on those vehicles would die in the upper atmosphere. A feedback count showed twenty-five drop pods completely gone from launch network. The loss was a startling number from a barrage of five hundred. A loss of two was a high failure rate from a drop of this size. Pods rarely failed.
Nina swam quickly through the viscous fluid. She had scant minutes to issue orders that might give them a chance. A few sergeants urged the troops in sight to pull their captain along. Chaotic voices came to Nina as she passed. Something was not right.
She reached the front of the tube and found four engineers huddled near the narrow domed section near the main logic crystal housing. Nina used her voice then to speak outside the thought channel. She wanted the others to have her voice against their skin.
"Status!" Nina barked.
"Systems failing, navigation is fifty percent confidence. Power levels are dropping quickly. We don't understand it. Something is draining us!" the engineer said.
They were in grave trouble. Nina made a rapid decision.
"No time to understand it. Lock in last known-good coordinates and move rear. Adjust logic priority for entry sequence. Get as much kinetic fluid between the bulk of our force and the planet surface. Impact coming quick! Move!" she bellowed, and the breathing oil foamed in her mouth.
Nina grabbed the arm of the nearest low-ranking soldier—a private. She was very young, barely forty.
"Get moving! Keep order. It's up to you," she thought to the young soldier.
The senior engineer locked in the coordinates quickly and Nina waited for her to pass. She brought up the rear and made sure the platoon spaced itself correctly for an emergency burn. The ground was coming at them quickly, and the kinetic fluid grew thick. They had to get to the rear of the tube before the mass turned solid. They just made it.
The Genetic Imerative Page 1
