The Seryys Chronicles: Death Wish
Copyright © 2012 by Joseph Nicholson
Edited by Kristin N. Hamm
Cover Copyright © 2012 by AcidKru
ISBN:9781623750121
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First Edition
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Prologue
Chang-chang-chang-chang, the hydraulic jackhammer shook the muscled arms of its user as it cut through the crete layer of the bottom level of an old skyscraper that had seen its last days well over fifty years ago. The upper levels were easy to break down after the last skirmish with the Vyysarri had demolished most of the building. Fortunately, the population was down since the building had been condemned for a long time. The only people inside were mostly homeless squatters and some local gang members who used the deep, dark innards as a spot for gambling, prostitution and worse.
Khai’Xander Khail grimaced as the he jacked his way through slab after slab of crete. The last attack from the Vyysarri had pounded through the Seryys Naval Forces in a quick and decisive strike that left the planetary navy scratching their heads and still pulling up their pants. Fortunately, before the planet wide Net’Vyyd had gone down during the attack, the navy was at least able send a message to the surface warning them of the imminent attack by Vyysarri ground forces. The anti-aircraft turrets were able to gun down a good portion of the troop-landers before they touched down.
That was until the Vyysarri capital ships punched through the defense perimeter and started their bombardment. Several high-rises crumbled to the ground, killing thousands- tens of thousands. Eventually, the Seryys Planetary Defensive Naval Forces, or SPDNF, finally responded and drove the invaders out. The remaining ground forces were rounded up and executed immediately-all before any real damage could be done. The Vyysarri soldiers had only killed a handful of civilians each, tossing them about like ragdolls. Khai was there for the execution. He was leaning against the wall of a dilapidated building that was brought down by Vyysarri cannon fire. Corporal Gor’Sky Gorn stood stoically, casting a long shadow behind himself- facing the setting sun- as the captured Vyysarri were stripped of their protective helmets and were then literally cooked alive. Their pale, albino skin couldn’t handle the UV rays emitted by the Seryys sun.
Fucking leaches, Khai thought. Only cowards target civilians.
If only Corporal Gorn-a descendant of two very famous, and influential, military leaders-had pressed his troops harder into the landing zone, he could have sprung a trap amongst the rubble from the bombardment that would have stopped the invasion before it happened. It was all Khai had, to not charge in there, knock the Corporal out and take control of the situation. But he was retired, now. And he was sick of fighting-sick to his stomach of it. Still, there was something missing…
“Get back to work, Khail!” the foreman shouted. The portly, multiple-chinned foreman with a slightly upturned nose- which gave him a remarkably pig-faced appearance- stalked over to him. “You’re drifting! I swear,” he steamed, “the only reason you still have a job here is because you’re a vet and I can’t fire you. You’re damn lucky the government compensates me for keeping you here.”
Khai shook the reverie from his head and got back to work, saying nothing.
You mean, “You’re lucky the government would tax the hell out of me if I fire you,” Khai thought, ruefully.
Chapter One
Two weeks- and several sleepless nights- after the attack, the excavation was progressing nicely. They had cleared a huge, flat hole six hundred yards in diameter and nearly a hundred yards deep, almost fifty yards deeper than any building ever constructed. In that excavated ground, they were building a giant coliseum-style skyscraper that was also going to have the deepest foundation in history- twenty-five stories underground. It was going to house its own water treatment plant on the lowest five levels; the next five levels were going to house several state-of-the-art cinemas, where they were going to premier the latest movies and bring the hottest stars; the next ten levels were reserved for all of the employees that would work there (the company was advertising free rent for their future employees.) Before demolition even started they had over forty thousand applications to fill the five thousand jobs the skyscraper would create.
Seryys City was a sprawling megalopolis of nearly fifteen million residents and the capital of the whole planet and planetary system. The city spanned over two hundred and twenty square miles and was slightly circular in shape. The southern end, the most prominently circular, banked a large river - the “Great Rush”- named for its dangerously fast currents. The city was broken into three major sectors, Corporate, Residential and Red-Light. The Residential Sector, which housed almost the whole population for the city and the largest concentration of mom-and-pop-type shops, constituted the bulk of the area in Seryys City, from the center to the northeast corner up into Upper Seryys and Seryys Heights. Seryys Heights looked much like a large bubble that protruded northeast from the rest of the circular-shaped city and had a higher elevation than the rest of the city, hence the name. Prime Minister Pual’Kin Puar called the upscale Aurora area home, as well as several of the crème de la crème of Seryysan society. Aurora was located on the northern tip of the “bubble” that was Seryys Heights.
The southern Corporate Sector was the backbone and pumping heart of the city. It occupied a large percentage of the southernmost edge in a crescent-shaped area along the Great Rush. Most of the world’s economy rode on the war machine that repelled the hated Vyysarri. Problem was, most of the purchases were coming from the government and were considered tax-free.
Just Northeast and east of the Corporate Sector sat Lower Seryys. These were considered the slums of Seryys City. Mostly gangbangers, drug dealers, and the impoverished lived there. Many of the high-society people in Seryys Heights considered Lower Seryys an “eye sore” for the whole city, and several of them at one time tried to start a petition to have it leveled to the ground and used for waste management. Prime Minister Puar shot the petition down so quickly, it barely had time to reach legislation.
The last Sector was the Red-Light District, the hopeful future of the city. A place designed for people to be able to come and have fun, to forget about the centuries-old war with the Vyysarri, and most importantly, to spend money. The driving force behind renovating the whole Red-Light District was to make some t
axable money. Not much resided within the bounds of the RLD except for movie theaters, casinos, sports arenas and other recreational buildings; however there were some residential dwellings for people who worked in the northwest protrusion known as the RLD.
However, in the last twenty years, the city had been in a constant state of economic flux, being a main target for nearly every invasion the Vyysarri mounted. In a last-ditch effort, the government funded a huge operation to rebuild the Red-Light District and make it the grandest the planet had ever seen, starting with the mammoth casino on which Khai was currently working. It was the first prong in a multi-pronged operation to bring some revenue back into the economy by promoting some frivolous spending.
Though the initial hole for the deep foundation was nearly ready, there was still more digging to do to get ready for the water works, sewer and electrical. Khai put the chisel on the mark and started the jackhammer up. The rhythmic pounding lulled him into yet another reverie. He tried to shake himself out of it. Damn! Forgot my pills again, he admonished himself. It was inevitable, though. His thoughts drifted again.
Chang-chang-chang-chang-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!
“We’ve got inbound to my six o’clock!” Khai shouted, discharging his weapon.
“Shit!” another yelled, spinning to bear his ground-mounted, high-caliber weapon on the flanking enemy. He opened fire.
Cham, cham, cham, cham, cham, chunk-chunk-chunk, chunk. Chunk… chunk.
“The hell’d you do this time, Khail? I swear to shit, if you broke that thing, it’s comin’ right out of…”
His sentence trailed off as Khai pulled his jackhammer out of the six-by-six foot circular hole he had dug in the last two hours, hours that seemed to pass by in a few minutes of reverie. The usually wedge-like attachment at the end of the jackhammer was mangled and twisted beyond recognition-or repair.
“What the f…?” the foreman asked.
“What the hell happened, Khai?” another worker asked him.
“Don’t know,” Khai said in his gruff voice. “Just… struck something solid.”
“Khai, get in there and check it out,” the foreman ordered.
“Yes, sir,” Khai said with a mock salute.
He climbed into the hole and was whisked back to a day long ago, when he was a pre-teen. He dropped down—no, he was pushed—into a hole with a fellow recruit. It was raining hard and mud was filling the hole quickly.
“Try to get out!” a burly drill sergeant shouted.
The fellow recruit in the hole with him called out to Khai for help as the mud levels rose rapidly.
“Khai? Khai? KHAI! Fuck, you’re worthless!” the foreman snapped. “You forget your pills again?”
“Huh?” Khai asked in haunted voice. “Oh… yeah.”
“Great,” the foreman scoffed. “You’re a fucking basket case, Khail. You know that?”
“You’re a fucking basket case, Recruit Khail!” Drill Sergeant Moon’Sinder Moore screamed into Khai’s face. Khai lost it. He charged his superior and tackled him.
“That’s more like it, Recruit! Bring it!”
Khai wrapped his left hand around the sergeant’s neck and brought the other back to wind up for a bludgeoning blow, when another sergeant grabbed his arm.
“That’s enough, Khai!”
“That’s enough Khai!” another worker said, both his hands holding back Khai’s fist.
He was straddling the foreman with his left hand wrapped firmly around the terrified, wide-eyed man’s throat. His green eyes were rolling back into his head. Khai immediately released his boss and stumbled back, staring at one spot on the ground, almost comatose.
“FUCK!” the fat foreman shouted as he stood, rubbing his neck and coughing. “Keep this shit up, and I don’t care how much I have to pay in taxes, I’ll fire you! Just like your friend, Ralm’Es Ra!”
Ralm’Es Ra was a fellow retired veteran of the military who also suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. However, his was far worse than Khai’s because an anti-personnel mine went off behind him, vaporizing the medic behind him and blowing his own arms off. He was put back together with bionics, but there was nothing they could do to repair his mind. He ended up hospitalizing a co-worker by nearly pummeling him to death on another construction site in the Corporate Sector where they were about to finish a revolutionary device that emitted an energy field around the city, much like that of a capital ship, that would protect the city from orbital bombardment and ships cutting through from within the atmosphere.
It was completed a few days prior and so far was able to withstand a test bombardment from Seryys ships. Though, the true test would be when the Vyysarri attack inevitably came. If the prototype worked, it would be the greatest invention since Eve’Zon Drive, or, “Event Horizon Drive”- the means by which a ship could travel faster than light. It created a micro black hole in space, by super-colliding atomic particles, through which a ship would fly and come out on the end at their destination.
The research was extremely dangerous and progressed painstakingly slowly at first. Thousands of naval officers and scientist’s lives- as well as trillions of credits in ships, equipment, research and lawsuits- were lost in the initial test runs, but once they developed the technology to stabilize the black hole long enough for a ship to pass through, the research progressed relatively quickly. But, even at the current state of technology, controlling the most destructive force in the universe was limited. Only one ship could pass through a singularity at a time and it was still a bumpy, if not exhilarating, ride.
The next set of problems scientists faced were radiation and radiant heat produced by black holes. The initial gamma radiation spike produced at the point of creation caused hundreds of latent radiation poisoning deaths. Then the crew of the first ship to pass through a black hole, and make out the other side, was found dead, cooked to death from the heat generated by the radiant energy. This prompted scientists to develop a force field around the ship that absorbed the particles, and also by simply lining the inner hull with a six-inch layer of lead. However, a desirable effect came from the radiation as well. Scientists had no idea how to close a black hole once the ship had passed through. Radiation is an emission of atomic particles. The black hole would radiate particles until there were none left and then evaporate.
Each ship was equipped with its own Eve’Zon Drive so that multiple ships could jump at one time using their own drives in tandem; which, in the early days of Eve’Zon travel, presented its own set of problems. The gravitational forces produced by each ship’s black hole would occasionally draw other ships in the fleet toward it causing ships to collide and get sucked into the same black hole at the same time. Eventually, each ship was outfitted with a gravitational inhibiter that allowed the ship to be piloted through when the crew wanted, rather than pulled through as soon as the singularity was created.
In the end, each multi-trillion-credit ship was equipped with an Eve’Zon Drive, a radiation shield and gravitational inhibiter. The resources required to produce, maintain and pass through a black hole, and protect the crew while doing so, were extremely taxing on a ship’s power supply. A ship could only jump once every hour without draining both main and emergency power. The distance a ship could travel was limited only by the amount of power the ship generated. Some destinations took multiple jumps with a rest period between to recharge main power.
Also- aside from power consumption, the distance a ship could travel was limited by the area of the galaxy that had been explored. The navigational computer had a fail-safe that prevented a ship from jumping to an uncharted area of space, to help prevent catastrophes such as jumping into an asteroid belt, or worse, jumping into a planet and killing the entire population by creating a black hole at its center.
Exploration of the galaxy began nearly ten thousand years before the war started. Tens of thousands of ships, some were even cryogenic transports called “Sleeper Ships,” roamed the galaxy, charting asteroid belts, bla
ck holes and sometimes, if a crew was lucky, a whole star system. It was a hazardous business and, sadly, some ships were lost, never to be heard from again. The government funded private organizations and, in some cases, families to take their ships out into the unknown. The government made it sound dashing and exciting to explore space, like it was some space-based Net’Vyyd. In fact, there was a series that ran for seven seasons. It followed the adventures of an intrepid crew of explorers aboard a starship and every week, the crew faced a new crisis on their trek across the stars. Unfortunately, the cold reality was that hundreds of ships were lost every year. Entire family lines, to the tune of six generations, were lost when ship convoys, or even one ship, would perish.
Aside from accumulating knowledge of the surrounding galaxy, the exploration initiative had other more useful applications. In one instance, a patched-up, rundown freighter with a ragtag crew of misfits discovered a star in its final stages of life. They sent an emergency subspace transmission back to Seryys with preliminary and very basic scans (as the ship simply didn’t have the sensor package necessary to perform a scan with any real detail.) The supergiant star was threatening to go supernova and the shock wave would have shifted the orbit of the entire Seryys Star System which would have resulted in its annihilation. The planet’s brightest minds and top researchers pooled their abilities and resources together to find a way to save their planet. As a star matures, it burns helium, which burns during the fusion process. As the helium supply wanes, the fusion goes with it. Once the helium is gone, the outward force decreases and the star’s own gravitational pull causes it to collapse in on itself creating a supernova and later, a neutron star or black hole.
It took almost a hundred years, but eventually, they came up with a solution. The theory was easy: inject the dying star with more helium to burn. The application was the hard part. With the extreme temperatures, getting anything close enough to reach the core was nearly impossible. It was only with the discovery of Ti’tan’lium that they were able to develop a delivery method. The precious metal was the key; its ability to absorb massive amounts of energy was the answer to their prayers. Encasing several thousand probes with the armor would get them into the gravitational pull. Once the probes reached the core, the metal would melt and the gas would be released.
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