by Michael Kan
So different, he thought, the cryptic patterns glittering on her skin.
To this, the woman couldn’t resist but answer back.
The woman was reading his mind even now, and not in the least perturbed.
Julian felt his ribs and his forehead, noticing the bandages were gone, healed skin in their place. He then looked at the figure before him, and saw her face more clearly now.
Twenty five. Twenty three. Julian couldn’t place her age, but the woman had clearly been the product of what he knew to be centuries of genetic and bio-cybernetic augmentation. He noticed the irises to her eyes, each one a crystal purple that cast an almost menacing glance at him.
It was all unnatural, but built for perfection.
“No, no. It’s just been a while… since I’ve seen a New Terran.”
The woman knew Julian had suffered through a great deal of trauma. She felt his fear, worry and guilt.
“Where is Nalia? The woman I was with?” he asked, rising to his feet. “Can I see her?”
The woman wanted to calm him, fearing his mental state.
Julian didn't care to answer.
“She’s okay, right?” he asked. “Nalia. She was hurt bad. The burns…”
The woman smiled again, trying to alleviate his worry. Julian only scowled, his eyes shutting, the fatigue overwhelming his mind.
Julian simply nodded in silence, as if he already knew that information. She could see that he only wanted to be alone.
She then walked away, heading toward a pale blue wall. Julian sat up, wondering where she was going.
“What about Haven? My home? Is everything…”
The woman stopped in mid-step, and then faced the wall ahead. A small hole, the size of a door handle, had abruptly opened in front of her. Then it enlarged into an elliptical doorway large enough to fit a person. It was like the wall had turned into some sort of putty, molding into whatever shape it wanted. Julian wiped his eyes.
She then left, passing through the materialized doorway. Now gone, the opening shrank back into an opaque surface, the wall turning solid once more.
***
The two walked through the hallway of the starship, an experience Julian felt akin to being on an alien world. It was unlike a standard SpaceCore cruiser, where everything was designed to be functional, and hardened for war. Here all the walls seemed to be made of porcelain, giving the surroundings an inherent beauty to them. He traced his hand across the surface, expecting it to feel cold, but was greeted by a warmth — like that of the hide of an animal. If he wasn’t mistaken he could feel the material breathing, expanding and contracting. He saw no electric lights hanging from the ceiling, and could only guess that it was the walls themselves illuminating the way.
It was hard to believe, but the ship was largely alive. To live in the belly of a beast, Julian thought, the framework architecture not constructed, but grown by using organic cells, and augmented to thrive in space.
One benefit of this was that the hallways could congeal and loosen, opening up doors where solid structures once were. Julian had seen such vessels during his career as a military pilot, but this was his first time he had set foot in one. He heard no churn of machinery, only the still calmness of open air blowing through the ship.
Just as peculiar was the woman officer walking in front of him. Her stride was elegant, almost regal-like, her golden hair falling down behind her back like a waterfall. She seemed far too glamorous to be serving as a military officer, moving with a beauty he was unaccustomed to. The cybernetic implants across her hands and face shined, fluctuating in a white shimmer. He wondered if she was trying to sense his mind now. Or if perhaps she didn’t care at all. How someone as young as her had risen to become an Alliance specialist was another curiosity. Julian had no idea.
Eventually, the woman stopped, turning toward the side of the hallway. An opening in the wall quickly expanded into an entrance. Julian could see the wall morph, the hard solid surface slackening, becoming a liquid-like texture. A wave then rippled across the surface, opening the structure apart as the exotic material peeled itself back.
They both stepped inside to what would be Julian’s quarters for the rest of his stay on board. The room was small, a simple white bed, with a table and chair. But what caught Julian’s eye was the view. A large window showed a small planet hanging in the backdrop of space.
“Is that Haven?” he asked.
The woman nodded as Julian timidly approached the window. He could see the blue world, serene in its ocean glow. Clouds rolled across its skies, the locks of white blooming in its atmosphere. Water, oxygen and land had combined to form this, a place where life had thrived on, under the light of the neighboring sun. It was the only picture of peace Julian had ever known. He pressed his hands on the glass, a vast planet becoming no larger than his fingertips.
The voice spoke, interrupting his thoughts. He turned to the specialist, noticing a miasma of light forming in front of him. Projected from within the ship, the beams solidified forming a holographic image that filled most of the room. It was of Haven, once again, the planet drawn in magnified detail. Yet all Julian could see was a world reduced to neon yellow light. The oceans and clouds had been deemed graphically irrelevant. Instead esoteric symbols and data points circled the world, the strategic minutia crowding the image. He understood what this was: a battlefield map of Haven built from the pixels.
The specialist pointed to the enemy ships. They nested across his homeworld, forming two rings in their orbit around it. He guessed that there were more than 200 ships, each one but a white dot, a simple statistic belying their destructive power. Already they had decimated Haven’s defenses, a strategy that the military had spent centuries devising. Now there was nothing to stand in their way.
“Was the populace able to escape?” Julian asked as he closed his eyes in frustration. “What happened?”
The specialist paused as she moved past the hologram. Julian could only see a sadness hang on her face. She crossed her shoulders, and gazed at the view outside.
“But I mean… what of the Alliance? Will there be a counterattack?”
“What? That’s ... I don't understand.”
Julian looked away from the woman, at a loss for what to say. He had seen this before, only this time, it was happening to his own homeworld. A world he thought prepared.
/> “This doesn’t make sense. Why wasn’t SpaceCore ready for this? Weren’t you supposed to help us?”
The Alliance officer could only reply with a look of regret.
“But the Alliance must be preparing another assault? Or maybe even the Terran Hegemony? They can’t just let the Endervars set up a goddamn beachhead here.”
The woman, a specialist in name, seemed heartless as she fed him the bleak reality with her mind. Any question he asked was met with another round of despair.
It felt like a public relations statement. But Julian knew the logic behind it.
“I’ve fought in the war,” he said. “I know the military protocol. It’s containment.”
He leaned up against the window and placed his hand on the cold organic glass. Julian felt it blasphemy to even think the thought, but he had to ask.
“Will there be a Lucifer order?” he said. “Is Haven set for eradication?”
He looked back at the specialist, and saw her power down the holographic display, the floating pixels dimming into black.
He didn’t know which was better. To give his homeworld a quick death, or to let the enemy have free reign over its conquered carcass. Julian just simply nodded, wanting only to stare back at the planet. From this distance, the world looked unharmed, still a shining beacon in the darkness of space. His instincts, however, had already told him Haven and its people were lost the moment he arrived in the system; Julian’s family was among the victims.
“I was too late,” he uttered. “Maybe there was no point.”
The enemy had claimed another colony of humanity, the loss a total rout. But it had not been the first time, nor would it be the last. Millions of innocent civilians were now doomed, and yet it was a cycle that had repeated itself over and over again, the pattern extending throughout space, to all sentient life. This had become the natural order of things; the galaxy had fallen prey to an unstoppable force.
Julian shut his eyes, wondering if perhaps it was all just inevitable.
“Another world falls,” he said. “And humanity retreats once again.”
He pulled himself away from the window, feeling the hollowness of defeat.
She reached for Julian’s hand, casting a glare with her artificially enhanced eyes.
***
The injuries on her body were no longer visible, masked by the medical bandages covering the dead tissue.
Nalia’s face was expressionless, the left side hidden behind a thin metallic cast, white in color. It hugged the skin, and segmented down in plates, stretching across her neck and shoulder. Julian could only watch her as she lay still, confined in the stasis chamber holding her body. Seeing her once again, he couldn’t help but recall everything that had happened. It started with her scream.
The final energy beam had struck the ship, causing the whole vessel to shake. He remembered her hitting the ground. The command console at her finger tips had overloaded, sending fire and broken metal up to her face. He ran to her side as the Crusader’s systems were failing, the darkness enveloping the bridge.
Julian kept calling her name, but she gave no reply, not even a moan. He turned over her body, seeing the wounds. Smoke misted from her head down to her chest. Blood began to spill out from her face. Julian could already feel it on his hands. “Nalia,” he kept repeating, frantically trying to revive her. But there was no time. He could sense the ship breaking apart, a giant seizure vibrating through the hull. Emergency alarms sounded off, warning of the hull breaches and radiation leaks. In time, a fire began breaking out on the bridge, toxic fumes filling the air. Julian grabbed her body, gathering all his strength to lift her from the ground with his two hands.
The last memory of the dying ship was all but a haze, the hallways a near labyrinth lit only by the red emergency lights socketed into the ground. Hot gas blew pain into Julian’s face, nothing to shield him from it but his resolve. He kept crashing into the walls, explosions continuing to rock the hull. Reaching the escape pod had been their refuge, a tiny compartment from which they could flee. Julian had stepped inside, finding a spherical room, the seats attached to the walls. He then launched the pod away, and into what Julian thought might be some form of safety.
There they would be for what seemed like days as the escape pod drifted in space.
He held her in his arms, the red blood thickening into a stained brown that blotted Nalia’s clothes. There were no medical supplies on the vessel. Julian could only wipe away the wounds with his uniform, a gory rag it later became. He cradled her, feeling the weak heartbeat. “Nalia,” he would whisper, trying to find the words to apologize. But all he could do was wait, the escape pod’s homing beacon the only hope he could cling to.
Julian looked at her now, Nalia’s body clean and gradually healing. The stasis tube the commander had encased her in glowed as the ultraviolet liquid immersed her body. The cryogenic technology had slowed her heart to a beat per hour. Calm she appeared, as if completely unaware of everything that had happened.
“Thank you,” Julian said in gratitude. “We owe you our lives.”
The specialist smiled.
Julian nodded, his face still solemn.
“Where will you be taking us?”
“Bydandia. Isn’t that some kind of military outpost?”
To run, he thought. That was their only option.
He could tell she was referring to the war. Yes, he wanted to say. Hasn’t it always been?
But the words were overshadowed by another raw emotion.
“I want to fight,” he said. It was a response that surprised Julian, the words finding themselves quickly tinged in doubt. He shook his head, unsure if it was even a realistic answer.
The specialist looked over Julian, running her crystal eyes up and down his body.
She smiled again, showing Julian a nod of kindness.
“Thanks.”
The specialist then left, wanting to give Julian some time alone. But not before, she beamed another thought into his mind.
Chapter 6
The last time his people had fled the invaders was over two thousand years ago when the Earth system was lost. The remnants of mankind had scattered themselves across the galaxy, looking for a new home. Among those survivors, one lone colony ship had found a habitable planet in a star system far from the enemy threat. They named that world Haven, believing at least for now humanity had found a sanctuary.
Julian recalled that history as he saw the planet for what he knew might be his final chance. It was now but a bright speck of light from the window in his quarters as the vessel car
rying him traveled out farther from the system.
He had always considered Haven his home, although he knew its demise was near. Each year, the distance between his world and the enemy was becoming smaller and smaller. The projections had already said the Endervar threat would likely come to the planet’s door step in another 40 years. In response, the government had prepared by pouring funds into its military arm while at the same time establishing a new colony in another sector of the galaxy.
Those military projections, however, had been dead wrong. The enemy threat was expanding exponentially, and now Julian could see that all too well. The people of Haven had spent more than three centuries on that world, only to see it all swept away. Ancient history was unfolding as it had before, another exodus set to begin.
Julian looked at his distant home; the dot of light was almost lost among the countless stars shining through the veil of space. For hours, he stared at it, a dead silence filling the room. Haven may have been conquered, but how many other systems would fall to the enemy? Had it all already become a graveyard? The entire galaxy under assault?
Julian shook his head. He did not want to know the answer.
***
HAVEN UNITED GOVERMENT/SPACECORE DEFENSE FORCE
CONFIDENTIAL DOCUMENT -- PRIORITY ALPHA CODE
TITLE: A study of the Endervar threat. (Summary, updated 8.1.314)
ORIGINS: Still unknown. Earliest records show their emergence in year PRE 5139. Speculation points to the Endervar threat originating from outside the galaxy. No indications of a homeworld have been found. All attempts at communication have failed. (SEE: THEORIES)
AIMS: Endervar ships prioritize the search for intelligent organic life above all else. Habitable masses including planets, moons, and even artificial space stations have been targeted for subjugation. The reasons are unclear, but systems devoid of sentient life have never been under threat. Ongoing studies monitoring the Endervar activity estimate that between 800 to over 3000 sentient races have already been conquered.
