A Call to Arms

by Bradley Hutchinson

  Rebecca heaved a sigh of relief. Although she’d been treating re-life patients for nearly twenty years now, they had – until recently – been on a largely case-by-case basis, as there was rarely ever call for a large-scale reincarnation like the one the Commonwealth was now suffering through.

  “Why do you always leave the best news till last?” Rebecca asked.

  Sarah shrugged as she offered an imp-like smirk. “I like stringing you along.”

  “Yes, that much I knew,” Rebecca said drolly, her eyes narrowing in mock-annoyance. She reached over and, with a press of a button, put her terminal to standby – the holographic displays flickered and died. “Well, I dunno about you, but I’m going to need some lunch before I start tackling these reports. It’s the one thing I hate about working in the public sector.”

  “The pay check, or the terrible public-service food?”

  Rebecca cackled. “I wasn’t actually thinking of them, but since you bring it up… No, I was actually talking about the paperwork. I’d forgotten how much of it you have to do… especially here on Earth.”

  Sarah arched an eyebrow. “That surprises you? This is the bureaucratic heart of the Commonwealth, you have to fill out forms just to leave the house.”

  Rebecca rolled her eyes – that sort of pessimistic cynicism was typical of people who came from Bastion. “Spoken like any true child of Patrick.” She rose from her desk and gestured for the doors.

  “Guilty as charged,” Sarah said, offering a wistful smile as she fell into step beside Rebecca. The corridor they were walking down was stark white, antiseptically clean, with very little in the way of decoration. “It’s about the only thing in common I have with Michael.”

  “Well, there’s also the fact that you’re both nearing a century,” Rebecca teased, and was rewarded with a fierce scowl from Sarah.

  “As are you, you old bat.” Both women laughed sardonically. “You planning on anything for it?”

  “What, nearly a decade in advance?” Rebecca scoffed loudly. “Don’t be absurd… but speaking of planning, have you got any for lunch?”

  Sarah winced and shook her head, letting out a sigh as she scratched the back of her head, a move that . “I wish I had time for lunch, but I’ve actually got consultations backed up all afternoon. Routine stuff, but it needs to be done.” She sounded a trifle bored at the prospect.

  “You can’t join Sean and I for lunch?”

  “I’ll have to take a raincheck, I’m afraid, Bec,” Sarah said as she keyed for an elevator. “But sure, the next time I’m free, I’ll join you.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  *

  “You got rid of the Trident?”

  Emil Palhares had to stifle a laugh at his father’s digital avatar that floated in the air above his tiny desk. Emil had always hated that car, and had been annoyed when his father had bought it to add to his small, unspectacular collection of antique vehicles from Earth’s 20th century.

  Emil was currently enjoying a respite from combat duty aboard the heavy cruiser Ushakov, which was undergoing repair and refit work in orbit of Elysium. The ship was currently down to a skeleton crew while the shipyard workers did their work, allowing those that remained aboard a chance to use the long-range communications grid unimpeded.

  In the last day, Emil had managed to reconnect with some of his more distant family members, ones he hadn’t heard from in a while, including his maternal grandparents.

  “It’s been pissing Rebecca off for months,” Sean Palhares said, more than a little bitter. About to enter the double-digits age-bracket, Emil’s father had taken to collecting antique vehicles in the last few years… much to the chagrin of his girlfriend, Rebecca. “It’s just sitting there,” he added in a fair mimicry of a woman’s voice.

  “Did you get much for it?”

  “Nearly two million,” his father said, his tone bitter, even as his eyes narrowed into beady little specks of disapproval. “But I wanted three for it.”

  “So why did you settle for two? You loved that car.”

  Sean sighed dramatically, the energy seeming to seep out of him – Sean was probably feeling depressed over having to give up his pride-and-joy. “With this economy, Emil, and with my finances the way they are? I took what I could get.”

  Palhares winced in sympathy. Ever since his parents had divorced, his father had struggled to control his finances. Without the support of his girlfriend, Sean would barely breaking even – the Trident was the third collectable Sean had sold in the last year, and was also the most expensive.

  Aside from that hideous VW thing, he hasn’t got much left to sell to stave off the creditors. Emil privately thought his father would rather declare bankruptcy than give up that old relic of a pollution-inducing buzz-box.

  “How long are you on Elysium for?”

  “We’ve got three days of leave left before we set out again.”

  Sean nodded thoughtfully. “I’m afraid with business the way it is I couldn’t afford to travel to El–”

  Emil waved him off; as much as he loved his father, he didn’t want to spoil his good mood by listening to his father’s excuses – it was bad enough he’d had to endure a ten minute whinge about Sean having to give up the Trident.

  “It’s know, it’s okay,” Emil said, affecting an air of disdain. “What time is it over there anyway?”

  “It’s almost noon, and Rebecca is currently driving me to –”

  Wherever it was Sean was going, Emil never found out – like a bulb blowing, Sean’s holographic avatar winked out with a burst of static hissing out of the speakers before being muted. Emil stared blankly at the now empty air, slightly unsettled by the darkness that had engulfed his cramped quarters.

  Emil sighed into the silence at the inconvenience, temporary though it probably was.

  “Computer, re-establish communications with last recipient,” Emil instructed the computer.

  “Unable to comply: intended recipient is currently off-line.”

  Emil frowned.

  “Try again,” he barked – he only had another eight minutes of access for extra-solar communications. But it was to no avail – the computer’s monotone voice simply reiterated its inability to comply. “Fine, try Rebecca Gold,” Emil said, then uploaded her unique ID to the computer.

  “Unable to comply: intended recipient is currently off-line.”

  “Well, that’s odd,” Emil said softly to himself. To lose a connection to Earth in this day and age was almost impossible – the only way he knew that could happen was if you were being actively jammed… and, a quick check of the extranet showed that this was not the case: it was simply his connection to his father that was disrupted. “Problematic.”

  *

  “What’s the big emergency?” Sarah Hunter asked brusquely, pulling on her lab coat tightly around her and buttoning it up. She stepped off the elevator onto the rooftop of San Francisco Memorial Hospital, blinking against the harsh sunlight and shuddering against the bitterly cold wind. “Some sort of accident?”

  “Yes,” Doctor Burton said, nodding sharply, his brow heavily wrinkled with worry lines. “A drunk in careened into a skycar and took out a third. Multiple serious injuries.” He pointed to an ambulance that was inbound. “We’re getting the occupants of one car, Mercy is getting the rest.”

  Sarah nodded grimly, bringing out her diagnostic scanner and letting it rest in her palm. She waited with baited breath as the ambulance – a large, boxy red craft made by Mercedes – came to a rest just meters away, its rear exit hatch lowering noisily.

  “What have we got?” Burton asked the lead paramedic as he trundled off with a hover-gurney.

  “Sean Palhares, severe head trauma, major loss of blood,” the paramedic said, pointing to the gurney he was guiding. He put a thumb over his shoulder to the second gurney following him. “Here, we have –”

  “Rebecca Gold,” Sarah finished, coming to a sudden stop as the second gurney came into vie
w. She couldn’t bring to look at her one-time stepmother – the white sheet that shielded her was now almost completely red.

  “Yes,” the paramedic said. “Severe trauma to the head and upper body – we had to cut her out of the vehicle.” He handed her a datapad. “I don’t think you’re going to have much luck, doc. She’s crashed three times on the way here.”

  Sarah looked at the scans and came to the same conclusion.

  Chapter Two

  It had been quite some time since James had been to the birthplace of humanity. He’d visited the Sol system several times in the last few years in his capacity as a naval officer, but he’d never actually ventured down to the hallowed surface of the human homeworld in over a decade – any business he’d had in the system had been conducted on any number of space stations that dotted the star system, or orbited the planet.

  The Sol system in the 25th Century was a hive of activity, akin to an insect colony. Swarms of independent vessels traversed its spaceways, linking Earth to its colonies on the moon, Mars, and the experimental facilities on Titan, Europa and the like; still more vessels sought to connect Earth to the inner colonies, with large passenger and cargo ships angling past the asteroid belt before flying off into FTL speeds.

  The actual defence of Earth began all the way out at Saturn, with Apex Station, a medium-sized sprawling facility that was the home base of fifteen warships – led by the dreadnaught Excalibur – and dozens of fighter squadrons and defence satellites. Apex Station was also home to an academy where expert pilots went for special training, and also housed the thousands of miners that prospected the moons of Saturn.

  Jupiter had a similar defence arrangement as Saturn, but it was at Mars that an invading force would start meeting intense resistance. Mars was the site of the largest shipyard in the Commonwealth, with well over a hundred berths, established in the 2090s to alleviate congestion around Earth’s orbit. Mars was protected by a trio of dreadnaughts, as well as more than thirty other warships and a classified number of fighters and defence platforms, which was military-speak for a fuck-tonne.

  But even that paled in comparison with what protected the Earth and its singular moon. Nine space stations of a similar design to Apex Station orbited at a distance of a million kilometres, each station housing hundreds of fighters on their own, with a trio of frigates supplementing them and acting as Customs vessels. Inside that perimeter were dozens smaller defence platforms, each one possessing the firepower of a destroyer or light-cruiser. And there were still more ships, including five of the first Vanguard-class dreadnaughts ever produced.

  These sights, however, were of no comfort to James. In the weeks since James had learned his mother had died – killed in a freak car accident amidst Thanksgiving traffic – he’d gone from despondent, to angry, to depressed, to repeating the cycle when he realized that the delay in being granted compassionate leave meant he would miss the funeral – still a ritual these days, despite most people opting to be cloned and re-lifed – by almost twelve days.

  “You made good time, Captain,” he told Captain Dawson. “I wasn’t aware the Ignatius was capable of such speed.” It had taken the cruiser nearly eight days at flank speed to get to Earth – it would have taken the Englewood, James’ current command, at least eleven.

  Abigail Dawson smiled. “She’s one of the few Renegade-class cruisers to be equipped with a GM Mark VI drive.” She made a sweeping gaze of the bridge of her ship – James knew that she’d taken command of the Ignatius when it had left the shipyard three years ago. “We can push nearly 35 light years a day – 37 if we really push the engines.”

  James nodded in understanding. Most cruisers of this class had a Mark V, or a rival equivalent, installed, meaning the fastest it could go was thirty light-years a day. It was the same drive system installed on the Vanguard-class dreadnaughts.

  A select few cruisers, though, had been built – or retrofitted – with a faster, more expensive (and power-hungry) variant, making them easy picks for Line officers to use as a temporary flagship to get around a theatre faster than a traditional flagship would allow. Aside from this technological difference, these variants were basically identical in offensive and defensive capabilities.

  Usually, a ship like the Ignatius wouldn’t be sent away from its deployment the frontlines on a ferrying assignment so deep into undisputed territory, but most of the faster ships in the fleet were on assignment at the moment… and as it turned out, luckily for James, the Ignatius was suffering intermittent problems with its auxiliary systems, which couldn’t be fixed in the field without leaving it vulnerable. By sending it to Earth instead of Elysium – whose shipyards were backed up as it was – for repairs, two problems were solved at once.

  Of course, it meant that James’ stay on Earth was dependent entirely on how long it took for the Ignatius to get its problems sorted, whereby it would return back to the fleet for redeployment; Dawson assured James that she would prolong the process as much as possible, but how much time that would buy him was up in the air. It could be a day, it could be a week… James would just have to make his peace with things as quickly as possible.

  “We have clearance to proceed to Earth orbit, Captain.”

  “Thank-you, helm, take us into a high orbit, proximate to San Francisco… if you can manage it.” Dawson turned to look at James, who was still staring out at the blue-green world of Earth. “There’s the Sovereign.”

  The flagship of the Commonwealth, the Sovereign, was a variant of the premiere Vanguard-class of dreadnaughts. Nearly a third larger than a regular dreadnaught, it retained its dagger-like profile, but sported weapons and shields that were almost twice as powerful; unfortunately, the cost, both in terms of resources and time needed to build the ship, and its rather sluggish speed – both at sublight and FTL velocities – had precluded consistent production, and the sub-class had been relegated to three vessels – one each for Earth, Elysium, and Bastion – with a fourth rumoured to be under construction… somewhere.

  “Big ship,” James said airily, his mind not really taking in the image before him. If he was honest with himself, he was just trying to distract himself from his feelings – of course, if his mother were here, she’d tell him that it was healthier to vent, rather than bottle it up and act like a pressure cooker.

  Dawson seemed to sense his unease, and quickly changed the subject. “We’ll be in orbit over San Francisco in a few minutes… does that suit you, Captain?”

  James smouldered silently as he turned to face her, his face sombre and his tone mild. He offered a half-bow in thanks. “That would be fine, Captain. Alert the shuttlebay to prepare a shuttle.”

  *

  The ride down to Earth did nothing to improve James’ mood, and the murky, overcast day San Francisco was currently enjoying couldn’t have been a more perfect match for James, as his shuttle broke through the low clouds and sailed over the bay. It was almost noon, local time, but the sun failed to penetrate the low-lying cloud cover.

  The city looked as cold as James’ heavy heart felt.

  It was a short drive – technically, though, like most things lately, it felt like an eternity – from the local spaceport, which was nothing more than a series of small hangars located at the southern-most point of the city, to his mother’s apartment complex near the Golden Gate. There wasn’t much in the way of traffic in the sky, but it was a little more hectic on the ground, as lunchtime commuters raced to their favourite eateries.

  Rebecca had definitely invested her divorce settlement well. The apartment tower that she resided in rivalled James’ own in the Citadel in terms of aesthetics and metropolitan beauty, but thanks to the more restrictive regulations on Earth, it failed to reach its true potential, coming in at just barely 300 meters high – it didn’t even have a mid-level garage, with residents having to park their vehicles underground.

  Troy was waiting for James in the ground-floor lobby. He looked much like he had when James had last seen him on Titus,
except that his hair was rather unkempt and a little lifeless… it was also lighter than normal, flecked with alternating shades of dark colours – he’d obviously decided not to get his glitched cybernetics fixed.

  “James.” Troy was embracing James in a bear-hug before the taxi door had even closed behind him, his voice tight and croaky, somewhat higher in pitch than it normally was. His skin seemed a little clammy, as if he’d been sweating – which probably meant that he’d been sweating anxiously for some time.

  “I’m here,” James said, trying to sound soothing or comforting, and conceding that he was probably failing on both counts. “I came as fast as I could.”

  Troy sniffed, and James felt a chill run up his spine that wasn’t caused by the coldness in the air. He’d half-been expecting Troy to throw some sort of tantrum at James’ delayed arrival, but it looked like calm waters… at least in that regard.

  “I know, I know,” Troy said, letting James go and guiding him into the warmth of the apartment tower. “There have just been… complications.”

  “What sort of complications?” James asked as the doors to the foyer whisked open, expelling a gust of hot air like a decompressing airlock. The foyer in the complex looked rather austere, considering how luxurious the apartments on the floors above were, but James knew that this minimalist look – comprised mostly of shiny metals and glass panels – was probably one of the most expensive parts of the whole tower.

  As expected, there were no real people – all queries and needs that couldn’t be handled by a person’s VA were dealt with by the sophisticated AI programs and holographic aides inside the mainframe of the tower. As such, the foyer was devoid of the human element that had been a cornerstone of the hospitality industry for centuries.

  Troy shook his head, and was silent for the whole trip in the elevator up to their mother’s apartment, which annoyed James greatly. Things were complicated enough as it was without Troy giving him the silent treatment.