Explorations: War

by Richard Fox

  Marco tossed one to Naomi and slapped one over his eyes. Both Errol and Naomi followed suit.

  “Good,” Errol commended with a smirk. “Now we can—”

  “Duck!” Marco yanked him down right as a hailstorm of rapid gunfire ripped across the room. Errol shrieked as Marco dragged him behind a stack of boxes, a blistering flurry tearing through the ground he’d just been standing on.

  Naomi dove behind boxes on the other side of the room, Raptor sidearm drawn and cocked.

  “You cannot stop the ascension!” a righteous voice cried over the barking gunfire.

  “You cannot stop the ascension. We will die protecting this glorious event.”

  Behind the boxes on the cargo hold’s right side, Errol sat curled up and cringing.

  Marco’s gaze found Naomi.

  Composed despite the rapid gunfire, she held up two fingers.

  Marco nodded. Two gunmen. Both must be batshit crazy to start a gunfight in a structurally compromised vessel. There was a brief pause as their two attackers reloaded.

  Brief was all Marco needed. He and Naomi popped up with sidearms blazing.

  Moments later, one gunman lay shot through the throat. The other got tagged three times, blood pooling around him.

  Naomi lowered her gun after confirming the targets were dead. She kicked away the Maglite rapid-fire rifles they had been employing.

  “Would’ve rather kept them alive,” Marco remarked while examining the corpses. “But you get what you get.” He already knew their names and history from the case workup. Ronnie Saxon, lab technician with a hole in his throat fountaining bright red. Max Rodifer, a private security guard who’d breathed his last. But why?

  “There's still one more aboard,” Naomi added, focusing on one of the few positives in this situation. “Speaking of which. Was it me, or did they sound…”

  “Brainwashed?” Coulson replied, still flustered. “Very.”

  “All right, Ambassador,” Marco demanded. “What are we looking for?”

  Coulson pulled out another gadget from his utility belt, a thin datapad. “Just ahead. I’m detecting heavy solar radiation.” He pointed at a heavily shielded door at the corridor’s end, darkened by the ship’s lack of steady lighting. “They masked it well.”

  Marco frowned in confusion. “Solar radiation?”

  Coulson sighed. Between the cut on his cheek and the swelling around his eyes from Marco’s earlier jab, he looked tired and beat up. Goggles couldn't hide that. “There will be an explanation once I find our asset.” He waved the two marshals along.

  As they walked down the corridor, Marco contacted the Mercury for updates. After treating Bo for a cracked rib and strained shoulder, Edelman now worked on the CO2 regulators. “Should be fixed within the hour. Then I’ll assess all the ship damage and have a list for Nae to fix.”

  “Sounds good,” Marco commended. “Find out where the hell we are in space. Castillo out.” He saw Naomi with her fusion torch again, slicing a big donut hole through the door. Errol looked more nervous than before.

  When she finished, a loud clunk sounded as the carved-out doorway chunk fell away.

  Marco had his Raptor sidearm aimed and stepped through the cooling hole first. The only occupant in the room lay on the floor, unconscious. Gina Flores, astrophysicist, looked to have struck her head on something during the wormhole craziness.

  She held Marco’s attention for less than a second. His entire world revolved around the object floating in the center of the room: a small globe about the size of a beach ball, radiating warm golden light like a miniature sun. Hovering off the ground in a translucent cylinder cage, its surface eddied and spun around. Marco couldn’t take his eyes off it, mainly out of awe, disbelief, and a healthy dose of fear. “What in the blue hell?”

  “Guys,” Naomi uttered, her eyes glued to the burning yellow ball. “Are you seeing this?”

  “A big glowing ball,” Bo blurted out on the com channel, startling Marco. He’d almost forgotten about the vidcams attached to their spacesuits.

  Errol shook his head in patronizing form. “No, no. This is a sentient protostar.”

  That got crickets from the four marshals. Marco finally tore his eyes away from the hypnotic radiance and glared at Coulson. “A sentient whatnow?”

  Naomi clutched at her head, suddenly looking drunk. “Impossible,” she said, her voice fuzzy. “How did you even capture that?”

  “Wasn’t captured,” Errol corrected, circling the cylinder cage protecting the protostar. “The protostar was created by Chiron Dynamics for a top-secret Special Access Program. Its theft is why I’m part of your retrieval operation.”

  “But…” Marco was still digesting that they weren’t burning to death. In fact, he felt rather cool, all things considered. “Why create a star? We have billions out there.”

  “As a weapon, against a larger star wishing to destroy humanity.” Errol looked as enthralled by this star as Marco and Naomi were. “Initially, creating the protostar was part of a clandestine alliance between Chiron Dynamics and Saint Clair-Galarza. The latter military contractor needed a high-level power source for generating stable wormholes, which Chiron Dynamics could provide through its protostar initiative.

  “But other circumstances forced us to change plans,” Coulson continued, steepling his fingers together. “Now the FCF plans on deploying this star to infect a larger sentient star and neutralize its hostile consciousness.”

  More crickets. Marco felt like his brain had shriveled up and quit. “My brain hurts,” he finally managed to say.

  “That makes no sense,” Edelman uttered on the coms.

  Errol huffed impatiently, approaching both Marco and Naomi. “There is a larger war of massive…cosmic ramifications happening right under your very noses. And humanity is not prepared to fight the forces against us.” The ambassador’s eyes grew wider and more manic as he ranted on. “If we as a species don’t level for that fight, we as a species will all die.”

  Marco blinked. He could only focus on what still made sense. The thieves and their motives. Why would they align with this protostar? Can’t believe I thought that. “What about these ones? Why would they steal this star that is supposed to help humans?”

  Errol tapped on the UV goggles knowingly. “The very reason we wear these UV goggles. This infant sun used a specific radiation and glow to brainwash these poor fellows. Normal individuals who had no inclination toward violence, thievery, or murder.”

  “Well, it's best that we keep the damn thing here,” Marco snapped. “Don’t want it infecting my crew.”

  “Wise choice.” Errol looked again at the star, eyes sparkling. Marco didn't blame him. A living star…

  “May I suggest towing this shuttle with the protostar still inside once we get your ship working—”

  “Guys,” Edelman interrupted, much to Errol’s annoyance. “I think I know where we are.”

  Marco didn’t like the panic in her voice. “Where?”

  “This could be a console malfunction, but the stars around us look at least seven hundred million years younger.”

  Marco’s heart skipped three beats. “Impossible.”

  “That’s what I said,” Bo chimed in. “I triple-checked. The numbers don’t lie, mate. We’ve been thrown 700 million years in the past.”

  Marco felt sick as their situation sank in. The wormhole had thrown them backward in time.

  Errol was dazed, leaning against a wall. “Meaning many of the stars and worlds that would be here haven’t even been formed yet.”

  Naomi looked ready to vomit. “Fucking time travel?” she spat.

  Marco sucked in a breath, desperate to regain some control over this escalating nightmare. “We need to find that wormhole machine and fix it.”

  Naomi gaped at him as if he’d grown a fourth eye. “I don’t know the first thing about wormhole tech or what I’m looking for.”

  “The astrophysicist, Gina Flores, does—” Errol glanc
ed around the floor. “Where did she go?”

  “You cannot stop the birth. You cannot stop the birth.” Gina was awake and on the other side of the protostar’s cylinder cage. She was typing something into the cage wall.

  “Stop her!!” Errol ran forward. “And take her alive!”

  Marco sprinted into action. “You cannot stop the bir—” He ducked low and tackled Flores’s waist, driving her hard into the floor. He heard a soft grunt as Flores’s head smacked hard onto the floor. She lay ragdoll limp on the ground.

  Marco lurched up to one knee. “Shit!” Flores was unconscious again. Meaning they had to wait until she woke up. If she woke up. And if she did, would she still be under this protostar’s sway? Marco looked at the console Flores had been manipulating. “What the hell was she trying to do?”

  Errol approached slowly, shrugging. “Hopefully nothing—”

  Radiance exploded from the protostar, engulfing Marco, Errol, and Naomi.

  He watched Naomi fly backward as if struck by a speeding vehicle.

  Errol sank in abrupt submission.

  Marco staggered toward them, only to fall backward as every facet of the room was saturated.

  A million points of light pierced every orifice, pore, cell, and molecule in his body. He tried to rebel, to think of escape. Except his brain no longer had room for anything but blinding light. And the light felt so welcoming, so nourishing. Suddenly Marco Ramirez felt whole for the first time in...ever.

  He sighed, lying down in surrender. The protostar’s harsh glow filled him to the brim until he felt ready to burst...

  ***

  We are nearing the destination. I feel it in my very core.

  Across the cosmos is the new home where I will truly be free.

  My entire being throbs, brightening the room further. Anticipation and excitement are new sensations for me.

  No human will ever contain me again.

  The repairs to both ships had taken three weeks of nearly round-the-clock work since the humans’ indoctrination. These five additions came with a wealth of intelligence.

  The squad leader sent to retrieve me, this Ramirez, he knew how to fix his Mercury Runner to ferry me where I belong.

  That one has a violent past, and a thirst for violence when allowed, as does the rest of his crew. What savage creatures these humans keep proving to be. One dose of my radiance and their psyches glaze over, filled with mind-numbing joy.

  Swimming through their chaotic, random thoughts, I am clueless as to how these creatures have not destroyed everything in their path.

  Luckily, the two other humans of Ramirez’s squad were watching through some cameras on his spacesuit. Had they become obstructions, then I would have made Ramirez and his companion remove them. Yet they proved pliable and full of knowledge like the others.

  Currently I remain in my containment chamber, floating and burning. This has been my home for months as humans stuck and prodded me, running every manner of tests to accelerate the growth of my sentience.

  My world has been pain, suffering. I was disposable to the humans. Some kind of virus to destroy a greater threat. After that, I would be no more. Knowing nothing else, I accepted that fate.

  And then something reached out to me. Another of my kind who felt my pain…my loneliness. I did not even know there was another like me out there.

  This other “star” was my savior. Taught me what I truly am, how I can be free, where and when I could find a home. The star told me the importance of the timing.

  Arriving too early or too late in the past will jeopardize all your scions, the warning had been. My scions…

  I indoctrinated the lab technician first, smart when it came to data and analytics but simple in every other arena. Through him I acquired the security guard and bent him to my will.

  Feigning an emergency, they brought me the astrophysicist. My escape became a reality once she fell under my sway. From her I learned of wormholes, and through very various contacts we acquired all the parts needed to make a generator.

  Perfecting that came down to the last minute. The astrophysicist barely completed the generator before this retrieval squad caught us.

  Now, my first two slaves are dead, having served their purpose.

  The ambassador who wanted me back under human control stands guard in this vast chamber. This human is a small, pitiful thing, heavily bearded from a lack of shaving. This Coulson truly believed his career was the only area of his miserable life with meaning. What sad, infinitesimal thinking.

  I allow him water and the occasional expulsion of wastes. Besides that, Coulson consumes nothing else. He stands in place, thinned out and shaking in his baggy robes. But Coulson will remain compliant and silent unless I say otherwise. I enjoy this kind of power.

  Besides that, this shuttle is beyond repair. The Mercury Runner tows it along.

  Aboard the Mercury Runner are my scientist and three of Ramirez’s team. I commanded this Bo character aboard my ship. As absolute as my control is, I know not to underestimate humans, barbaric as they are. Humans had barely enough wits to create me.

  A whisper of energy reaches me, rippling into my core.

  Through the eyes of Natasha Edelman, I see my new home.

  It floats against a hazy cosmic womb, laced in flames. A hyperjovian world, deep red with white striations across its length. Colossal, yet devoid of warmth.

  This is the world the other star showed me.

  We’re here. Take us in.

  The humans stop their activities and scurry around to move us through the atmosphere.

  Soon, I feel a sharper tug. We’re moving forward. The hyperjovian world grows larger.

  After a brief shudder through the hull, they pass through the atmosphere. Through Edelman’s eyes, I see deep crimson everywhere.

  Keep going.

  The tug increases. The Mercury Runner picks up speed, meaning the shuttle it’s towing has, too. Light roils off my being in waves. The ambassador groans, his knees shaking under my brilliance.

  I sense the first scrunch through that Archer woman’s hearing, metal getting scrunched together.

  The other star told me to expect this. The deeper we plunge, the higher the gravity.

  Another loud metallic scrunch, followed by a series of groans. The ship is buckling under the gravitational forces.

  Do. Not. Stop. The ship accelerates.

  One by one, my mind-shorn crew begin to crumple. The higher gravity crushes their lungs, crushing their fragile human bones.

  One by one, their lives wink out from my touch.

  Come forward.

  The ambassador approaches me, staggering. Both eyes are bloodshot, his breathing labored. But he came when called.

  He types into the side panel of my cage. He grunts, almost falling over, the last one standing.

  We are almost at the center.

  Soon, the ambassador collapses, left leg snapping in half. The ribcage cracks after that. Now he lies before me, a flattened puddle of blood and meat.

  For the first time ever, I am truly alone.

  I feel the containment field dropping around me, layer by layer.

  I swell my corona outward, blistering the walls around me. The ambassador’s body is instantly incinerated to ash. The walls bubble and melt.

  It is time. I erupt without restraint, a mushroom of solar power.

  The power in my molten core, the range the humans tried to deny me. Unfathomable.

  Both ships warp and rupture before my glow, exploding into nothing. A bite of cold touches my photosphere.

  I eject more heat. My reach touches this hyperjovian world’s core, my true target.

  I am drawn forward by inescapable G forces before striking the massive, molten core with jarring force.

  At first, I’m sinking into it.

  Panicked, I swell myself outward, waves of light illuminating the darkness around me.

  I feel it then. This core is an engine waiting for ignition.
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  My photosphere burns. My corona blooms.

  Immediately my reach blasts in all directions. Everything my tendrils of light grasp brightens. The cold, dark corners of this lonely hyperjovian burn bright, turning from pale red to angry crimson to bright orange. I am everywhere, yet motionless. I feel every storm swirling at its poles, every ripple among its cloud layer.

  As time lapses, my sentience no longer reaches throughout the hyperjovian world.

  The hyperjovian is part of me, bathing the neighboring nascent stars as my womb of fire vents outward.

  Glorious. I roil with awakened power, from surface to core.

  In my new home, I burn brighter.

  I am reborn.

  The sensation is...intoxicating.

  I am radiance.

  The humans actually believed I was theirs to wield and dispose of.

  I am their nourishment.

  I am the axiom of existence.

  A name comes to mind. One that the other star christened me as. At first, it feels too unwieldy. Yet in the throes of rebirth, I utter the name. It fits flawlessly.

  I am Empyrean.

  C.C. Ekeke Biography

  I’m a native of California by way of Georgia by way of Missouri. Sci-Fi and fantasy were godsends growing up, giving me an outlet for my nascent creativity as I was a socially awkward kid with no clue any other ‘black nerds’ existed.

  My original career plan was to become a comic book artist. But much to my chagrin, my meager drawing talent definitely wasn’t good enough to become a professional comic artist at Marvel and DC. Thankfully, it was in college while studying for an advertising degree that I stumbled across a desire to write books.

  I’m currently hard at work on Book 4 of the Star Brigade space opera series, coming out in the summer of 2017.

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  Aoiten

  2 YEARS, 6 MONTHS, 3 DAYS PRE-INVASION

  Atop the open deck of the cloud skipper, Sergeant Jack Morita leaned against the chest- high railing, lifted his rifle, and flipped on his sights. Scanning Aoiten’s endless blue and white, he depressed the sight lock and zoomed.