2680 – Due to the Empire’s reluctance to promptly share its jump-technology, scientists and engineers from around the world organize in an attempt to develop the technology. In order to better compete with the Empire, the U.S. and China (with subsequent support from other U.N. countries) integrate greater portions of their space and colonization programs. This agreement helps to cement an alliance that would eventually become the Coalition, an organization the Concord would later loosely associate with due to practicality.
2682 – The Coalition attains jump technology. Vague, difficult to enforce laws begin hasty space race for claims on otherworldly bodies.
2693-96 – The first and only space war involving at least two major human factions begins over disagreement about ownership of a resource-rich world. The first two years of the war largely takes place in remote space between the Alethean Empire and Concord forces, but the war ultimately escalates and reaches Earth by the beginning of the third year. Orbital weapons devastate manufacturing centers and military bases, killing and displacing hundreds of thousands across most populated continents.
2696-2733 – War between the Coalition and the Empire unexpectedly ends with the Exodus Agreement. It is ultimately revealed that the Exalted had received a vision of a new planet suitable for human life, a planet that will help prevent the future wars the Exalted is shown and which will aid in the Empire’s prosperity. This new planet is shortly found near the given coordinates and is named Arcadia. The Exodus Agreement calls for a cooperative operation to gradually transport willing Alethean citizens (intermingled with a small number of citizens from other countries) to the new world while the Empire steadily sells some of its Earth and space colonies to the Coalition.
2734 – The first major wave of colonists settle on Arcadia’s first colony and capital city, New Athens. For the next several decades, regular waves of colonists make Arcadia their new home.
2735-2875 – Subsequent arrangements between the Coalition and the Alethean Empire officially recognize territory lines and interstellar laws concerning trade and law enforcement. Advances in jump-engine technology and its lowering cost helps spur private and commercial ownership of interstellar vehicles. Though a handful of groups pursue isolation from government meddling, most colonists settle on other planets primarily for economic opportunity (particularly in mining ventures), but budding colonies also give engineers, technicians, and dozens of other specialists a legitimate reason to find permanent work outside of Earth and Arcadia.
Silent’s End
June 8th, 2876 S.E.
It was seen as an inevitability. There was simply a matter of answering a few trivial questions. When would it happen? Would it be a peaceful or violent encounter? Was mankind ready for the possibility that an alien race could carry three, or Sacred forbid, four breasts? That last question was usually as far as Kalie Bell went when pondering the mysteries of the universe. She was the type that her former legal guardian, her aunt (a haughty Sacred priestess) often described as a river prone to flooding; normally calm and went with the flow, but would send a flash flood of energy when even a light sprinkle of undesirable stimulant was applied. Hilda, the aunt-priestess, said she must have inherited this temperament from her father, but Kalie could not confirm it herself. After all, he was supposed to be some big time marauder who never stayed put for long. She did have a vague sense of a harsh looking man doting on her when she was around four, but that could have been an escaped child molester for all she knew. She figured if her father was still alive and marauding away, then she would run into him sooner or later, though whether she actually did mattered little to her.
Her mother, Gilda—the name gave Kalie the early impression that her grandparents were lazy, which was later confirmed—was a poor woman, who morals were easily loosened by even the mere potential of a few credits. The part-time prostitute believed getting pregnant would force her to straighten out her life. However, the experiment quickly failed and so the one year old was left to her aunt. Hilda provided well enough, but the stuck-up woman believed reading the Sacred Script ad nauseam to her niece was more than enough to raise an upstanding citizen of the Arcadian Empire, perhaps even to make her an acolyte of the faith when she turned eighteen.
That did not happen.
Shortly after her eighteenth birthday, Kalie ran off with an older gentleman who promised her an endless romantic adventure aboard his spacecraft. She did not believe him, of course, but anything was preferable to spending another moment in a Sacred Temple surrounded by chanting priestesses. What she didn’t expect from the gross smelling gentleman was his status as a smuggler. That was sixteen years ago. As it turned out, the convenient boyfriend and most of the crew he had been a part of was arrested shortly afterward. Still, he had not been entirely useless, having introduced her to two things. The first was space itself. While it required a considerable amount of work with long periods of boredom to survive on a ship, it had its moments. Kalie found she enjoyed hands-on work and the hum of a jump-engine was a considerable improvement over the yapping of a city crowd.
The second introduction was to her future best friend; a titan of a man who in turn taught her to be competent in the art of smuggling, and, if he was allowed to tell the story, in lovemaking as well. There was much less of the latter ever since Ren “Rhino” Wei began a serious relationship with Brandon, their newest, youngest, and smallest crewmember. Brandon did not yet have her approval, though it had nothing to do with jealousy. She simply saw no potential in him, constantly reminding her of that naïve younger self she had left behind. In any case, she hid her dislike from him and everyone else, generally content when she was not bored out of her mind.
Her current state of mind had her leaning closer to cabin fever than not. She sat alone in one of the two pilot’s chairs, mindlessly staring past her bare, sooty feet propped up on the control console and at a far off cluster of stars. These stars were soon being engulfed by a rainbow colored ball, a ball that continued to expand until it popped in front of her face. Kalie robotically collected the strands of gum using her tongue and inserted them back into her mouth, prepared to restart her mission of blocking out the entirety of the star cluster using her expert bubblegum blowing technique.
She was so absorbed in the process, she was startled by Brandon’s voice behind her saying, “Rhino wants you to show me… Sorry, did I scare you?”
After she recovered her gum from the precipice of her throat, Kalie mustered up as much sarcasm as she could and said, “No, I find that chocking on my gum is a great way for me to see random episodes of my life.” She rolled her eyes when Brandon’s eyes gained a coating of watery residue. He couldn’t be that sensitive, could he? she thought to herself. Her hate for him grew, but her outward mien softened, and she said as empathetically as she could, “It’s nothing. Don’t worry so much. Now, what is it you were here for?”
Brandon’s thin lips formed a relieved smile as he regathered himself. Regaining his typical cheeriness, he said, “Rhino wanted you to show me how to manually reroute power to and from the jump-engine, in case of emergency. He said to learn from the best.”
It was Kalie’s fuller lips that twitched themselves into a wry smile this time, as their owner knew Wei had trapped her. He understood she would not refuse being known as the “best” in anything, forcing her not to reject teaching the pupil. However, Kalie also understood that, for all intents and purposes, the two captains of the Oracle were the best at anything regarding their ship.
The accustomed acting captain was an unassuming former soldier by the name of Clay Thompson. He was proficient in any and all weaponry, whether it be a pistol or the anti-ship cannons. He was also an arcanist capable of warping the aspects of air and flame. Actually, if his chorus of a wife did not keep reminding everyone how deadly her other half was, Kalie would have never known of Clay’s lethal skills, as she never had much of an opportunity to see him in action, a testament for his aptitude to keep his crew out of unnecess
ary conflicts. The most common position anyone saw the exceptionally fair-skinned man (he did not enjoy sunlight) was when he was in one of his various meditative poses, quietly chanting some segment of the Sacred Script. Despite the chants, Kalie liked him, seeing as he did not intrude on anyone’s life outside of smuggling operations.
Clay’s wife of a dozen years and co-captain was Trista Thompson, a robust woman in every sense of the word. While her husband worked on bigger picture goals, she oversaw the daily goings-on of ship life. Kalie liked her a little less than her husband, but was actively friendly with her, though true friendship was just out of reach. Trista was really the preeminent technician on board, having been a ship mechanic for the Arcadian Navy in her earlier life. Everyone assumed she had met her Mister Right in this military venue, but they actually met in a strip club where she worked to get her adrenaline pumping before joining his up-and-coming smuggling crew some fifteen years ago. The Oracle was also technically her ship, as she had used her life savings up until then to upgrade spacecraft.
Once she slipped in her trusty work boots and musty gloves lying beside her seat, Kalie led Brandon to the engineering deck of the frigate-class ship, sliding down the portside chute a few steps behind the pilot’s seats. The Oracle’s engineering deck was currently Kalie’s favorite place in the known universe. She often found herself waking up inside her sleeping bag amongst the exposed piping and wiring, hearing a valve periodically release a concentrated burst of blistering steam and feeling the deep rumble of the ever charging jump-engine locked up in a sealed chamber at the center of the deck. It also helped her confidence that she knew what every button, knob, and lever did. It was normally an S.I. that would keep the peace on most ships, automatically adjusting power levels, pressures, and execute routine protocols issued wirelessly by a crew member, but an S.I. meant records could be hacked by law enforcement or fellow ne’er-do-wells, forcing the majority of smuggler ships to solely rely on the most basic of programing. The lack of this convenience made it imperative that all members of a crew had a basic understanding of engineering procedures in the event of a crisis.
On lifting a floor panel to show the novice some of the few covered piping sections, Kalie nearly chocked on her gum a second time when one of the two cats on board leaped out and vaulted onto her shoulder. Just before the snow colored feline settled back on the floor, and as she rebalanced herself, Kalie shouted, “Gods damn it, Nippers!”
The orange eyes of the cat looked up at Kalie and emitted an indifferent meow before skulking off somewhere else. This incident would have made her laugh at any other point, even if around most other crewmates, but hearing Brandon’s boisterous laughter had her seriously contemplating what cat meat tasted like. She once asked the proprietor of the cats, Mr. Eli Broussard, the sixth and final member of the company, why he did not decide to own dogs instead, but he answered that he found most dogs did not handle long space excursions all that well.
Two hours later, Clay’s voice came over the intercom’s speakers to inform everyone that the last jump was nearing, which would take them close enough to their destination to permit conventional propulsion to reach the world of Olmega within an hour. Olmega was their usual stop after a successful smuggling run. It was an outlying Arcadian colony world that had been sympathetic to the livelihood of Kalie’s ilk ever since the major mining companies moved on to more fruitful endeavors a few decades ago. As the space adage went, ‘When the mines are empty, the rats move in.’
Soon after the shipmaster’s announcement, several stocky lights began to flash their yellow advisory light. There was no need for Kalie to exit the engineering deck for the jump. In fact, it was recommended that someone was present after the jump was made, being as the event had a tendency to burst some pipes or short circuit some components. Five seconds after the warning lights activated, the entire frigate vibrated like a struck guitar string of the thickest gauge. Five seconds more and the jump-engine had enclosed its artificial wormhole completely around the ship and carried it dozens of light years virtually instantaneously. The captain then announced they would reach Olmega in an hour and a half. Kalie noted that this gave her just enough time to repair the piping she had heard burst almost directly above her.
As she was putting the finishing touches on her handiwork, having sent Brandon away soon after the jump, Wei’s voice entered her mind via her thought-comm.
“Have any plans, girl? Brandon says he can probably get you a ticket to the Signet concert so you can join us.”
Descending from the three-step ladder, she answered, “And be a third wheel? No thanks, I still have social standards, and I get enough nauseating displays of you two already.”
“Nauseating? I think we’re quite tactful, like a couple of hummingbirds.”
“Uh huh, if there was a species of hummingbird that slobbered everywhere.” She lifted a bag of tools and the sack of unusable piping.
“Fair enough. Seriously though, we’ll have at least two weeks off before the next job, you can’t have nothing planned.”
“Oh, I get it,” she said as she shoved the tool bag into a locker, “You think I’m going to gamble all my earnings away, don’t you? I already promised I wasn’t going to.”
“Uh huh, I remember. I remember the last three times as well.”
The bag of shattered pipes was tilted into the recycle bin, clanging them down into the junk bin. “Yeah, and if I listened to you, then I wouldn’t have been able to afford my new speeder.”
“And I just want to be sure you can afford the payments of your apartment. You can’t live on a speeder.”
“Geez, I’ll be fine. I’m not dumb enough to risk everything I earned… um, again.”
“If you say so. Just know in advance that I can’t bail you out this time if you need a loan. I know I can trust you to pay it back, but Brandon and I are likely going to invest in something big soon, so I just don’t think I’ll have much left.”
“Yeah, well, then I’m not sharing my winnings either.”
“What?! But that’s tradition!”
Over the ship’s intercom, Clay blared out, “Preparing to enter atmosphere. Please buckle up or prepare to have a concussion or two.”
Kalie rushed up to the main deck, strapping herself to a seat by a narrow strip of window on the portside of the ship. Ahead of her she could see the two pilot seats occupied by the captains. Their usual chairs being empty, she figured Wei and Brandon were in the living quarters at the stern end of the craft. Meanwhile, Mr. Broussard was sitting opposite her, holding Turkey, a gray, orange-eyed cat, on his lap. In their initial meeting, she had pinned the short black man as a creep, and that was before learning he was a lawyer. He had charcoal eyes that unabatedly stared at anything they liked without regard to social principles and usually combined the gaze with a disarming smirk at the borders of his thick lips. As it turned out, he was mostly harmless and was the man to go to for a randomly interesting conversation. He had the highest formal education of anyone Kalie knew personally, having studied to be a lawyer on Earth. Mr. Broussard now used his expertise to aid the Oracle’s crew when inevitable legal snags arose either in space or planetside, an uncommon partner for the majority of small-time smugglers. It was Trista who happened to know the lawyer who yearned for adventure outside of dreary law offices. Kalie assumed she had also first met him in the strip club.
With the Oracle’s digital signature automatically recognized and accepted by ground control, they wasted no time diving into Olmega’s oxygenated atmosphere. The flying bucket of bolts shook like one as the air friction increased for half a minute before smoothing out. From her spot by the window, Kalie could distinguish the progressively detailed scene below her, the early morning light shining on a thirty mile long and five mile wide artificial lake. Hugging either side of the lake were two near identical cities. Each had four white, spiraled skytowers that stood three thousand feet tall and made up a corner of a square three miles across. Within this squar
e laid the bulk of skyscrapers and smaller structures that housed much of the colony life on this world. Patches of green parks and strips of blue that germinated from the manmade lake could also be seen after a few more seconds of plunging.
Surrounding these dense blotches of bustling city life was an endless plain of dark brown soil unsuitable to grow anything edible, even with the nearby presence of water. Until the dirt could be converted into something more agreeable to plant life, it was inside one of the skytowers that grew most of the natural food the city dwellers consumed and processed. The city on the Oracle’s portside was their destination, a city colloquially known as the City of Leaves. Kalie could not understand why it was designated as such when she knew of many other metropolises that were much leafier in their appearance, the capital city on the other side of the planet being one of them. Still, it was not enough of a nuisance for her to look up the answer to such a pointless question.
With as much delicateness as the navigators could muster, the Oracle hovered just feet from the water’s surface and lowered itself until the underside of the ship merged with the water as though it were several tons heavier than it actually was.
“We’re home, kiddies!” Trista said through the thought-comm, her traditional exclamation whenever they touched down here. “And remember! A certain someone’s birthday is just a few weeks away and-”
“Don’t listen to her,” stated her husband through the same conveyance. “Don’t waste any of your earnings on me. I know this year hasn’t been as fruitful as others-”
“Oh, stop being depressing! It doesn’t have to anything special, just get like-”
“Just go, everyone! I’ll hold her back!”
Kalie had already grabbed her prepacked backpack and waved goodbye to Mr. Broussard and Clay by the time the captain uttered his last declaration. She lifted the acrylic glass box on the wall and banged on the hard-to-push red button it covered to lower the ramp, which it accomplished with a metallic groan. She skipped down the slope and landed on the dull concrete pier adjacent the ship. She absorbed a quick farewell view of her home for the past week, noting that one of the two tubular thrusters at the portside of the stern was in need of a minor leveling. The Oracle always appeared to be encrusted with rust, but it was largely an illusion cast by the piss-poor paint job. Otherwise, the rather bulky ship did carry a battle-worn presence that distinguished it from others of its type. The pier did not lead straight to shore, as that would cost extra, so she interweaved her way past other docked frigates—most of which looked sleeker than the Oracle—for what amounted to several hundred yards.
Generations (The Nimbus Collection Book 3) Page 7
