by Korza, Jay
With the file vanishing from the keyword database, the captain had his answer: do nothing. The captain took a quick look at his schedule for the following week. It looked pretty clear; that would make things easier.
Another flash traffic message came through to his desk. Not related to the first one, this one had a cancellation notice that didn’t require secondary confirmations. Who was next on the list? Ralph was up in the rotation; time to put him to work.
The audio-only line went green, showing a connection. “Hey Ralph! Thanks for the theatre tickets. My wife and daughter loved the show. I hope you don’t have plans for the weekend. I have a job for you. Ready for the info?”
Chapter 4
Coalition Vessel Vanguard – Good Morning Sunshine
A hint of light began to invade the edges of Seth’s consciousness. He gradually began to open his eyes, which he found to be an amazingly difficult task. When Seth was finally able to focus his vision, he realized he was in a stark white room, with only a bed and no visible doors or entryways.
He began to call for someone, anyone, but that was even harder than opening his eyes. He noticed a small stainless-steel pitcher next to the bed and a plastic cup. He poured some of the clear liquid into the cup and after a few moments of sniffing and small tastes, decided that it was probably just water. Besides, he thought, if whoever had brought him here wanted him dead, they could have done it by now. Why take the time to poison him?
A quiet and soothing voice entered the room. “Lieutenant Seth Fields, we will not hurt you in any way.”
“Tell that to my broken nose,” he retorted. Strangely though, Seth realized his nose wasn’t hurting or seemingly broken at all. Odd, he had broken his nose before and knew without a doubt that during the attack it had been broken again. There’s no mistaking that feeling.
“That was an unfortunate accident. We had expected you to be less confrontational and were surprised.” As an afterthought, the voice added, “We apologize.”
“Great, why don’t we just shake hands, have a beer and call it a day then? Let me the fuck out of here right now!” Seth yelled at his captor.
“Lieutenant Fields, we are going to send a representative in to talk with you face to face. We assure you that there is no possible escape, so please do not force us to stun you again. A door will open now to let in our representative.”
With that, the seamless wall opposite of Seth’s bed opened to allow a very tall and broad figure into the room. “My name is Surgeon,” he began.
“Oh, my parents wanted me to be a doctor, too,” Seth quipped. “But at least they didn’t name me Surgeon. How did I get here, anyway?”
This seemed to almost make the figure smile. He continued, “The night of your graduation, you shook hands with one of our operatives. He had a small needle in his palm, laced with a tranquilizer. You were shaking so many hands I doubt you will even remember his face when you see him again during your training. As far as names go, you will find that our true names don’t matter much anymore and you will, in fact, be given a new operating name. I think ‘Cadet’ suits you just fine.”
“Now wait a minute,” Seth shot back. “I worked damn hard for my lieutenant’s bars and there’s no way I’m being called ‘Cadet’ again!”
“You’ll also find, Cadet, that your previous rank, no matter how short-lived or deserving, is also not of much consequence anymore. Maybe after our mission, I’ll give you your name back.”
Surgeon seemed to nod towards no direction in particular and shortly after, another door, this one next to Seth’s bed, opened into a corridor. “We will now eat and then you will be given a briefing as to why you are here. Offer no resistance and no one will harm you. Agreed?”
With a small nod, Seth stood and faced the new door. Surgeon took the lead and together they walked down the hall about a hundred meters before coming to a mess hall filled with other soldiers, all wearing identical black outfits.
He knew that they were all soldiers just by looking at them and how they acted. He also realized that these weren’t ordinary soldiers but the best of wherever they came from. They had the look of trained and highly skilled operators.
Surgeon, whoever he was, must be one of the best to get the looks of respect the others gave him. However, no one seemed to look at the new guy and this was odd considering that Seth was the only one dressed in white.
Surgeon stepped into the mess hall and just as casually began to address the assembled crowd. “Attention on deck!” His voice was smooth and even slightly subdued. “This is ‘Cadet’ and he just awoke today. He is the last of our cadre to come out of cryosleep so we are now in the full swing of things. We’re on schedule but we still have a lot to accomplish. Carry on”, he concluded. With that, everyone began eating once more.
A sudden and almost frightening thought hit Seth. “How long have I been out?” he asked Surgeon.
“Two weeks of sedation while your nose and kidneys healed from the extraction”—”
“Kidnapping,” Seth interjected.
“And three months of cryosleep,” Surgeon concluded.
“Why have I been out so long?”
“You’ll be briefed after your meal.” Seth began to speak again but was cut off.
“No discussion. Eat and then we’ll talk.”
That being final, Seth looked at the buffet laid out before him. The spread was even better than his graduation’s. Seth could identify food from at least twelve different species and several others from only God knew where.
He grabbed a tray and utensils, of which the knife and fork were removed from his hand by Surgeon, who added, “Not yet. When I trust you, you’ll get more than a spoon.”
Seth had to smile at that. It seemed that they—whoever “they” were—wanted skilled operators. Didn’t they realize that a spoon was just as useful as a fork or knife in the hands of a skilled soldier? Without a fuss, he resigned himself to eating dinner, or lunch, or maybe it was even breakfast. Who knew what time it was? He decided that the food pointed towards lunch but no matter; he was hungry, so who cared what time it was?
After he had finished, Surgeon led Seth to an issuing room where Seth was measured and given a black uniform that of course matched everyone else’s. Together, the two soldiers, now identically clad in black, walked down the corridor to what seemed to be a conference room. Seth entered first at the ushering of Surgeon and was amazed by what he saw.
The room was filled with holo-emitters for information displays and tactical readouts. A large wooden conference table filled the center of the room and reflected light from the displays on its shiny smooth surface. Surgeon motioned Seth to a seat and took one himself next to Seth.
“You have been ‘kidnapped,’ as you put it, by your own government for a very important reason. We are facing one of our most deadly adversaries in our entire history and we don’t even know who it is.”
“What are you talking about? We haven’t made contact with any new species in more than thirty years.”
Surgeon gave him a look that seemed to say, “If you’ll just shut the hell up, I’ll tell you.” This made Seth sink a little in his seat as he allowed the briefing to continue.
“Five years ago, we found an artifact on 07-0198 that turned out to be a star chart. This chart held maps to the outermost regions of our galaxy, parts that even now we would be decades from exploring if we hadn’t found the maps. The technology of this artifact seems to be more advanced than our current technology and it is estimated to be close to a thousand years old.
“After excavating the entire site, several more advanced artifacts were found, most of which we still don’t have a clue as to what they do. We have determined that whoever these items belonged to, they weren’t the nicest neighbors on the block. After almost a year of cataloging and research of the artifacts, the archeologists discovered that they had similar properties to many other items found on dozens of known worlds. The artifacts are similar in nature but d
ifferent enough not to be noticed right away as coming from the same makers. “The society seemed to be a warring species bent on conquering everyone they encountered. The evidence we’ve found points to the fact that they were good at it”, he added.
“How come it’s been kept so quiet? Usually the Earth Interstellar Expansion Department brags about everything they find.” Seth was getting impatient.
“As I said, they were an advanced species and the dig sites indicated that they hadn’t died out but rather lost interest in this sector of space. No gravesites, homes, or anything to indicate that they died out at those colonies. It seems as though they just up and decided to leave and took almost everything with them. We don’t know who they were or where they went.
“Then some of the scientists decided to power up a machine that they thought was just an information terminal. It turned out to be something else, something they shouldn’t have touched. Before they realized what they had done, it was too late. It sent out a signal of unknown content to an unknown destination.
“After more evidence was discovered eight months ago, we’re now pretty sure that it was a distress beacon. It looks as though this species had an adversary who didn’t like them very much. Their weaponry is much more advanced than ours and operates differently, so it was difficult to tell at first that a battle had been fought at that outpost. A few remains were found in an underground vault that seemed to be a stronghold or shelter of some kind. Many of the corpses had major trauma to their bodies before they died and the others must have pulled them into the shelter.
“All of them were in uniforms and had weapons with them. The bunker they were in did a good job of mummifying the remains, so it’s not difficult to tell that the wounds they suffered were from a battle. One of the corpses had a small communications device with him. When it was hooked up to a power source, it sent out the same signal as the terminal found almost five years ago. That’s why we think that it was a distress signal of some sort.
“We also believe that the outpost on 07-0198 had been an expeditionary force, one of hundreds in that region of space. And for whatever reason, when they were destroyed, no one came looking for or even cared that they were never heard from again. Until now.”
“So now,” Seth interjected, “we awakened their distress call and alerted their descendants to their destruction that took place close to a thousand years ago. And let me guess, they are mad as hell. Right?”
“Exactly.” Surgeon continued, “Whatever caused them to forget about this sector a thousand years ago is no longer an issue to them. They’ve decided that they want to move back into this space and they didn’t even call ahead for reservations. Twenty of our outermost expeditionary colonies have been lost. They weren’t just destroyed—they were completely obliterated. Scans of those outposts reveal no debris from enemy craft, so we’re assuming our people either didn’t have enough time to respond to an attack or their response didn’t even damage the attacking force.”
“So why haven’t we alerted all our forces and built up our military? And for that matter, where do I, we, fit into this?” Seth just couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“To answer your first question, we didn’t want to send a widespread panic through the Coalition. We haven’t yet met an enemy we can’t beat and that’s why planets join our little group. We can’t have them lose faith in us and pull their fleets out of any upcoming battles just to try to save their own hides. And as for us,” Surgeon let the words linger for a moment before continuing, “we just might be the Coalition’s last hope.”
Chapter 5
Dig Site One - On the Outer Rim
Daria had awakened from her cryosleep journey to this planet two months ago. “This planet” is all it could be called because it hadn’t even received a number designation yet. And worst of all, Daria and Davies were in a platoon that had a lab geek for a CO. Even though she was a nice geek, Daria still didn’t like it.
Her name was Emily. It almost hurt her to say it. No officers were called by their first name but this one wouldn’t have it any other way. Officially, she was First Lieutenant Riley and Daria really didn’t like anything less formal. But orders were orders and after finding out that Emily’s brother had been a marine and killed during training, she had a bit more respect for Emily’s desire to not be called by her rank.
Emily was a xenobiologist and specialized in creating profiles of races by their artifacts. Daria had noticed something about their little group of scientists and marines: everyone was not only good at their job but REALLY good. Some, like Emily, were even acclaimed to be the best in their field.
There really wasn’t much to do so Daria had read some of Emily’s articles. Daria found that Emily’s work was actually very fascinating.
Just by examining some artifacts at a site near the core worlds, Emily had deduced that the species had only two fingers on each of its three arms, stood about two point five meters tall, and each member of the species was the same sex and used a type of internal cloning to create offspring. She could probably even tell you how much change the alien had in its pocket when it made the artifact you were looking at.
After burial sites had been discovered, it was found that Emily had made mistakes on only a few very minor points concerning their anatomy.
Daria had become very interested in Emily’s work and so they spent many hours together each day. Emily was always teaching Daria about her work and much to Daria’s surprise, she caught on quite quickly to the research.
“Now take a look at this,” Emily began. “This artifact has almost a completely different readout display and input terminal than the others we have encountered so far. Why do you think that is?”
The answer seemed so obvious that Daria almost felt stupid saying it. “Because it came from a different species. Possibly an off-world trader or someone along for the ride.”
“Good, but how can you explain the fact that it is made of the exact same material as everything else we’ve found? A different species would indicate a different alloy or even a different processing of a similar alloy. So why the difference in appearance and biological compatibility if it were made by the same people?”
Daria thought for a moment. “Maybe,” she hesitated, “whoever made these artifacts stole the technology from a different species and were too lazy to reconfigure it to their own specifications. The original creators and the ones who stole it were close enough in biological compatibility that no changes were necessary in order to use it.”
“Very good answer, but as a scientist we need more than one hypothesis to work with. Give me another one,” Emily challenged.
After several moments of thinking, Daria placed the artifact down and replied, “My hypothesis is that my training for the day is over and yours is about to begin.”
A week ago, while excavating at a nearby site, a local bug had decided that Emily was a suitable host for its larva. These bugs were the size of a small cat and had a spine-tipped tail that injected its larva into a host organism. After a few weeks, the larva hatched and ate their host from the inside out. The problem was the bug laid thousands of eggs so it was found to be nearly impossible to get them all out before they hatched. Unfortunately, two marines had already died from these bugs and one scientist was nearly lost. The base forces set out with flamethrowers and small-arms to terminate the creatures. The sweep had done a pretty good job of clearing out the immediate area but there were still a few that lingered here and there.
Daria had seen the bug making its stealthy approach and yelled a warning towards Emily. All Emily could do was stare at the thing now running towards her. When she finally snapped out of it, she tried for her sidearm but was too clumsy to get it out in time. Daria quickly pulled out her throwing knife and deftly pinned the bug, from ten meters away, to the packing crate it was crawling across.
From that moment on, Daria had made it her personal goal to teach the lieutenant how to fend for herself. For a lab geek, Emi
ly was learning more quickly than Daria had expected. She was almost able to beat Davies in a simulated knife fight, though Daria teased this was no great accomplishment.
Emily eagerly put down the artifact she was holding and stood. She really enjoyed these workouts and that was probably why she advanced so quickly.
“Where’s Davies at? I’m in the mood to win today.”
Daria laughed aloud. “Sorry, lady, but he’s on duty so you’ll have to face me in the ring. And today, we work with staffs.”
“I’ve never used one before.” All of a sudden she didn’t seem too eager. Simulated knife fighting wasn’t bad. The fake knives left a mark on your training suit and the computer determined the damage created by the strike. If your arm was injured too badly, the computer would disable the appropriate joint in your suit and you could no longer use that body part. If you were killed, well then, the computer just said so and you started over.
But staffs, those were a different story. Emily knew that there weren't any training programs for staff fighting, so they must be using REAL weapons. The idea of getting beat about the head by Daria was not a fun one.
“Don’t worry, we’ll start with padded staffs first. They only bruise a little bit,” she added as they started towards the gym.
“Oh great! Only a little bruising. Why didn’t you say so?!” Sarcasm was not Emily’s strong point but she got her message across.
Once in the gym and changed into their combat suits, Emily was handed a staff about one and a half meters long. She held it as though it was a broom and she was about to sweep the floor. Daria tried not to look too concerned.
“Now,” Daria began, “if you do not know how to use a staff and it’s the only weapon you have, the best thing to do is to fake it. People are always scared of someone who looks like they know what they’re doing with a weapon. Posturing can win a fight or even prevent one from starting if done correctly.”
