by Boris Mosso
―Sir, the readings have been channeled into another specific interpretation about the capsule’s contents. The conclusion can’t be real. Something is working wrong.
In that instant, a persistent and powerful loud alert distracted Trivian’s and the crew’s attention, at the same time causing a commotion in the rest of the spacecraft. The Captain approached the holographic frowning and shrugging his shoulders.
Totally confused, he turned looking at Prander with both hands extended upwards, moving his head from one side to the other.
―What is all this, Prander! It can’t be!
The capsule’s inside area was marked in the holographic in an intense red color. The third control bridge general services Officer stood up and looked directly at Lancar, evident fear reflecting on his tense features.
―It’s too weak… and despite that, the detected organic trace in the chamber, remains in active biological functions. There’s a cryogenic living organism inside of that capsule.
―I’m looking at it with my own eyes Officer!
Prander and Trivian remained petrified.
―That devise must have been floating in space maybe for hundreds of thousands of years, something is wrong. Verify the biological signal again. I demand absolute safety.
―It’s too weak Sir, almost nonexistent, but it has in a dormant life; there’s no doubt about it. Whatever is in there is still alive. The automatic systems of the sensors in the robotics have already confirmed it; our genetic identification decoders are looking for classification, but there’s a blockade. The biological component seems to be surrounded by some type of force field, although without traditional power, I don’t understand…
Suddenly, Dran appeared transmitting from his hybrid spacecraft. He looked undaunted, adjusting his controls in a multicolor holographic.
―Officer Ladia, Captain Lancar, what should I do? Do we shoot at it?
―Mr. Prander, Trivian. What to you guys think?
―You can’t destroy it just like that… it’s not a threat!
―That’s seriously open to question, Mr. Prander. We have a couple of devastating records in our exploration history in past times, which would give you the creeps.
―But it’s nothing aggressive!
―It keeps a blockade interfering with our tracking instruments, which already seems aggressive enough to me. Besides, if we go back home with this in the warehouse, it’s very likely, almost sure, that they would send us all back to this forgotten outer space place again, to track the origin of that metal body. Do you all want to spend another fifteen or thirty years wandering through emptiness, far away from the Solarian System or from your family? It’s more likely that we wouldn’t come back alive again… We’ve already depleted the fate from an entire life in this voyage.
Prander and Trivian were trembling with fear before the imminent possibility of seeing the chamber explode after a thermal missile impact. The other crewmembers watched fearfully and anxiously before the development of the unexpected scene.
―Captain… Imagine it coming from Lumina or from another galaxy from the local group, which would be a major finding to any other performed before in the search for distant life. In our galaxy, nobody has ever contacted with another galaxy’s civilization, never. It could even create a scientific revolution in the entire Astral Galaxy.
―I don’t give a hoot about the damn thing! It is crawling with treacherous and creeping breeds!
―Captain please… Remember what the first guideline from your control and from this mission is. The Espacia Council would surely send another Captain with a new crew… You’ve already achieved it beyond expectation. We all did.
The hardened Captain Lancar looked again at the bright outstanding red area in the middle of the central holographic, grabbing his head with his right hand at the same time.
―Have someone turn off that damn alarm!
The noisy class one event alarms stopped instantly. The silence suddenly turned unbearable for Trivian. Then the young geneticist stepped in without wanting to, conscientiously being pushed by some external power.
―Captain, we have all seen the capsule and know that is carries a living being in the inside. What are you going to do? Are you going to throw us all into space to eliminate the witnesses? That would change your life Captain Lancar, it could redefine it for the good and forever.
Prander felt like hitting Trivian, even though for a moment, he thought that the very Lancar would do it.
The husky mission’s Commander approached in a threatening way, stopping just a couple of steps from the young and determined scientist.
After a couple of seconds, the old Captain began to change his facial harsh expression, until he finally smiled sarcastically.
―Very well… you have guts, young Trivian, we already knew that. Dran, link the capsule for quarantine.
―Understood Sir.
―Trivian, I’m going to bring your gadget with the mysterious passenger on board. After all, it might just be a damn earthworm. I believe, however, that you’re mistaken with something. The life that will be drastically determined by this event will not be mine; it will be yours, and all the way to the end of your days.
―I have the same feeling, Captain. We finally agree on something.
Four hundred space years after:
Chapter I
FAREWELL SPACIA
1 - Tronius
Tronius was standing on a slightly rugged and dusty hill in front of a half-buried grey hull from a very old Espacian combat spacecraft with a three hundred meters wingspan. Overseen now from its tragic history, it showed huge holes on its side bulkheads. It was a bleak memory of the battles against the Scardian’s invasions, one thousand years ago. Times when the Astral Galaxy was ravaged by endless bloody conquest battles.
Everything began when the unbridled ambitions from some galactic powers, like the Scardian Constellation Group System, collided against the Vintar’s Constellation’s Atirov Empire. Being this the greatest military power that the Astral had seen emerge in all its history.
The enormous flare up, subsequently razed with the weakest worlds and systems from the galaxy, in a terrible seven years battle and a decade afterwards, in another one that would last three more years.
Four hundred years would go by until the Astral Galaxy completely recovered from those merciless and devastating events.
Now, currently, many of the reminders of spacecrafts belonging to Espacia’s former advocates, added to thousands of invaders that tried to subdue them, were spread throughout the planet and its solar system’s colonies, which was a reminder of the prize of freedom and peace. Freedom that once again demanded huge sacrifices from its civilization
He knew that these sacrifices would be greater, or even result as final under the desperate and chaotic present circumstances.
A cold chill went down his body imperceptibly which wasn’t caused by the fresh spring breeze caressing the hill in the cloudless dusk.
The sunny but fresh evening was one hour away from giving in to the sky’s night darkness, while the nearby Baltar Moon peaked into the horizon. At the peak, the small and distant second moon sphere called Kran, stood out.
From his position, his deep black eyes entirely conveyed the recently abandoned beautiful city, the great Lenodon Metropolis, his birthplace and Espacia’s capital city; consequently, being the Espacian Systematic Council headquarters.
An enormous city, whose huge structures built with carbon nanotubes, were seen from two hundred kilometers away, until it disappeared in the global curvature.
In the thousand-year-old and abandoned coastal area city, the intriguing and somewhat in darkness, original and archaic city known as Antigua Lenodon rose up being more than one hundred eighty thousand years old, and it spread out in a mysterious and endless lights, colors and ghostly shadows mosaics, created by its own megalithic constructions of gigantic stone blocks, mingling in an unfathomable perspective in the transparent Spring sunset.
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br /> When looking away toward the modern city, he marveled once more before the astounding and gigantic structures, challenging gravity and logic. Buildings up to eight thousand meters high, boasting infinite and amazing shapes and colors in striking deterioration.
He observed the Espacian Tower sadly, a one thousand kilometers high structural body. This linked the city to a huge space station outside the ionosphere, practically at the beginning of the space exosphere. In its inside, big ultra-fast elevators, performed the journey from the space station surface. First one of ten they were able to build in different places of the planet. All the towers displayed Terminal Stations in space, where great installations of a little more than a kilometer in diameter were built. However, the Spacian Tower was the greatest of them all. There were hotels in that space platform, astronomical observatories also and several administrative institutions. Including the large-scale installations of the Registry Office for access to visitors from other planets, who didn’t have free transit treaties with Espacia; a small space fleet port even operated there.
The tower rose high until it disappeared into the sky in plain sight. The last end transformed in an almost invisible line after reaching the troposphere limit. Tronius remembered that the forty meters wide halted elevators now, ran tirelessly day and night, transporting thousands of passengers and hundreds of tons of cargo in each transfer.
Sharpening his eyesight, he was able to see the huge boarding building at the core of the city. The splendid and monumental Continental Station. He remembered the countless trips on the upward paths, in the comfortable and spacy ultra-fast trains which took fifteen minutes to arrive to the Space Station, reaching speeds of seven thousand kilometers per hour to the station, in vacuum tubes.
With a panoramic glance, Tronius sadly admired the evacuated metropolis. Not even one being lived in those beautiful and magnificent constructions now.
None of the eight hundred million Gtrans and Gravycycles, or the twenty million multipurpose public levitators, raced around the virtual highways anymore, which increased the traffic flow up to ten thousand meters in altitude.
The eight hundred million Lenodon’s residents, remained safe in the gigantic evacuation spaceships. After a short approach quantum leap, the last civilian shipments would join in few minutes the improvised fleet where the discouraged system residents were sheltered in, at the prime scape leap point attached to the tenth huge gas planet called Cratias; dragging tens of thousands of spaceships, loaded with its fellow humans.
The one hundred thousand million from the Solarian System Espacians, would have a second chance, jumping into the space above time after time until erasing all traces of their whereabouts. They would at least be safe for a while, Tronius assumed.
Two percent of them, would depart on board of the Espacian’s War Fleet towards a very different destination. Two thousand million soldiers and crewmen would face the pervasive, mysterious and devastating invader in a few more hours. Joining the Astral Fleets, to help defend the Atirov Solar System, located more than one thousand light years away.
The soft dusk breeze swirled his gray hair over his broad forehead and the warm sun from the spring season, warmed his tanned and thin face.
He squinted his eyes for a few moments, while he tightened his flawlessly smooth jacket with his mechanical motions, whose memory material, sustained and recovered its creases by itself.
Dust particles swirled around his body which then fell downhill. The sea breeze increased its speed, while the sun was still visible in the horizon. Scanning to the west, he found the coast line, distant and shielded by a leafy tree strand.
He remembered similar afternoons, fifty-five years ago. Being a restless small child running and playing around those fields covered with huge and ageless trees in the Cerlador Forest at some ten kilometers from its current position. He clearly remembered his mother hugging him and lifting him up with her strong hands before feeding him lunch amongst the dark green leaf trees, at the beginning of Autumn, her favorite season.
Suddenly, Inia’s face came clearly into his mind. It was a stabbing pain reflected in his heart at first, sharp but distant. He pressed his eyes strongly, trying to hold the fresh image of the beautiful woman which appeared young and perfect in his memories.
Everything happened many years ago, in the times when the Baltarian came into his life. Being a young and enthusiastic fleet officer. On any given day, he met her by chance in the Lenodon’s city History Museum, next to Espacia’s Advocates monument, forty-one years ago.
He seemed to perceive her black hair’s exquisite scent and feel the warmth of the soft and white skin, like the Baltar Moon at its prime. The memory brought back the blue violet bright gaze and thin lips, which knew how to show an overwhelming smile at the right times.
He got carried away by the comforting color of his memories which lit up his hardened heart.
He remembered his casual and repeated encounters which made them become inseparable with the passing of weeks. He opened his dampened eyes, while the old images from that remote time filled his mind and spirit in that desperate time of his life. He remembered the walks around the city’s outskirts and the first kiss they gave each other that day when he carved her name on a great rectangular rock with a laser on the top of a hill located on the outskirts of the great metropolis. He bitterly remembered, that such day he had imagined eternal happiness.
Inia was a ghost now. However, there was a bond between both which time and present events, brought him brutally and unexpectedly back, just some days ago.
A voice behind him drew him out of his musings abruptly, like if they had just thrown a glass of cold water on his face.
—Admiral, we need to withdraw.
—What are you saying?
—Sir, we should abandon Espacia. It has been informed by the Trendar Spaceship. The attack fleet is ready and arriving to the leap point in four hours and a half. The fleet is waiting for your orders and your presence, Admiral.
—What about the evacuation fleet?
—Espacia’s and the Systems’ residents are almost entirely already lodged in the evacuation fleet. The last shipments coming from the colonies will arrive in a few minutes. Only us two remain here, the explorer’s pilot and Officer Lestar, are standing over there.
—Fine, get on board the spacecraft…I’ll be there right away.
—Yes sir.
The young officer walked away making strides towards the explorer. Tronius stayed a few seconds studying the combat spaceship and the thirty meters long standard exploration one, which floated twenty centimeters above the ground and at some two hundred meters away. It waited for him to take him to his personal Vector spaceship, in which he orbited the planet alone at an altitude of thousands of kilometers.
He looked at young Officer Lestar, the new robotics squad leader, who always escorted him in his journeys and whose name he had just found out. The hunting spacecraft pilot stood dressed in his black combat suit, with his hands on his back and facing the City of Lenodon. He was there, stagnant and staring vacantly at the arquitectural enormous structures, next to his stylish vertical three meters high spaceship. The Admiral raised his eyes to the sky. A great part of the other forty-nine twin and automated squad’s spaceships fluttered there. An itch went down his back recalling the tragic death of that young pilot’s predecessor, Officer Barzi. He had given his life to save him from a violent attack which occurred in the Baltar Moon’s orbit, some weeks back.
Tronius figured that the young man was silently bidding farewell to the beautiful and everlasting Lenodon. Maybe it was also his home. He felt the weight longingly, of how that young officer looked like him forty years ago. He remembered that sometime in his distant past, he had also stood in that same place, looking at the overwhelming greatness of Lenodon, but with a broken soul from the pain.
The Corporate explorer spaceship parked some meters away from him, was the last military transport levitating over Spacia’s surf
ace. Tronius assumed that he would be the last resident to touch its surface; although it wasn’t so. One more resident was still there. One who slept the universe’s deep sleep; a time and space traveler of whom he knew nothing.
Tronius turned to see the City of Lenodon for the last time, with its elongated shadows up to the horizon.
Then he moved forward to the explorer accurately. When passing near a huge rock, he caressed it imperceptibly and without stopping. On the side, an old and somehow blurred engraving stood out fuzzy in the middle of the green moss. Four big letters engraved on the hard rock: INIA.
Lestar quickly moved to his hybrid spaceship upon seeing the Espacian Fleet’s Supreme Commander approaching his transport. He jumped into the cabin in a flash, being drawn then from the inside. While it closed tightly, the small spaceship took off rising hundreds of meters in a couple of seconds, covering the Admiral’s withdrawal.
Once Tronius climbed into the compact spaceship, it rose surrounded by fifty small dark spots. They crossed the the ionosphere’s last layer in ten seconds.
From his comfortable levitator seat the Admiral was able to perfectly observe his world’s curvature, the Espacian Tower also rising on his side, whose endless column shined proudful with the sunrays.
But neither de Admiral nor his scarce crew saw or spotted the spaceship from the Espacian Foreign Intelligence Agency entering the planet’s atmosphere through the opposite hemisphere. The sophisticated Nimide triangular combat spaceship with a fifty meters wingspan, built with the latest undetected presence technology, carried ten crewmen.
After a few seconds of swift ascend, the Admiranl’s transport zoomed out crossing the exosphere, at more than eight thousand kilometers from the Espacian surface.
Through another hemisphere, the Nimide approached the surface in a silent flight. He modified the path to stem from the South Pole, descending then at some hundreds of meters from the ground, to channel his definite route then, without reducing one inch of the sixty thousand kilometers per hour swift speed, which he achieved by completely withdrawing from the air resistance, while traveling wrapped in the Transient Dynamic Vacuum Field, which surrounded the Espacian raider with a transparent film of less than a centimeter.
