The Teristaque Chronicles

by Aaron Frale

  “If I wanted to join the dregs, I’d follow Seayolar to the pleasure dome,” Kal said as she sat down. Seayolar spent most of his earnings on his sexual fetishes, which were numerous and too weird even to think about. The other part he’d spend on drugs to keep himself active and engaged during those encounters. Despite his recreational activities, he’d always come back clear on the tox-screen, if not a little sluggish from the sleep deprivation.

  “Gross. I don’t even want to think about what that man does,” Hayden said.

  “You humans are so squeamish about reproductive behaviors,” Kal said. “On Nigramoto, we do not shelter our young. We learn reproductive value as well as pleasure value. It’s a simple act of beauty.”

  “Guess you have to be human to understand. Well, you’re half human at any rate,” Hayden said. Kal could tell that he was slightly intoxicated from alcoholic drinks. A cocktail waitress with a skinny dress, furry ears, and a deep blue tail poking out from her silver skirt, came by with a tray. She put a brown, carbonated drink down by Hayden, a couple of pills next to a large-eyed creature in a brown jacket, and gave a vial to a shimmering species that looked like animated water. The waitress turned towards Kal and said, “What’ll it be?”

  “I’ll have what he’s having,” Kal said, unsure of the pills and vial given to the others.

  She pulled out her coinchip, and the waitress waved it away, “Your recreational substances are free when you gamble. I’ll be back with your rum and coke.”

  The shimmering creature popped the cork from the vial, and the liquid floated up in little yellow droplets. The creature sucked the droplets from the air and placed a chip in the circle on the felt table. The one in the brown jacket took a pill and did the same. Hayden nodded and placed a bet. They all gambled for a while. She won some hands and lost others. She did well on a double down when she had placed an unusually high bet. Overall, she was ahead for the night, even though Moffat’s would take the money back by the end in the form of immersive arcades and spa treatments. Her body felt warm from the alcohol, and for a night she forgot about the crate and the screams of her village. She shared a room with Hayden. He was happy to forget about his losses at the table.

  _______

  “What do you mean it’s located on earth?” Seayolar yelped. He stood up from the mess hall table and began to pace. The others looked at each other nervously.

  “According to our best estimates of the data that Hayden procured,” Maker said, “the ship is located on Earth.”

  “You can count me out,” Seayolar said.

  “Me too,” Rys echoed.

  “You haven’t even heard our plan yet,” Hayden said.

  “What plan could there be? They will kill everyone but you just for not being a Teristaque!” Seayolar yelled.

  “They don’t kill aliens on sight,” Hayden said. “Unlike the rumors you may have heard, Earth is not the bad place the galaxy makes it out to be. Sure, I may not agree with every policy…”

  “But what if we are recognized? What then?”

  “Earth’s an overpopulated planet! The chances of you running into-“

  “But what if they stop us on the street!”

  “Our identchips seemed to have held up so far, and even on Earth, the authorities don’t scan DNA unless prompted by an investigation. The Teristaques may have questionable practices on other planets, but on their home world, I assure you it’s quite different. Humans live in the oppression of other worlds, not their populace,” Maker said.

  “Ok, fine. Let’s say we steal the ship. How do we get it out of the solar system without every Teristaque ship hunting us down?” Seayolar calmed down somewhat.

  Hayden pounded on the mess hall table and said, “That’s exactly the beauty of it! I’ve been reading about the ship’s system for weeks now. This is the fastest vessel in the fleet. It has a top speed of 100 p-years.”

  “Impressive,” Grannork said.

  “Impressive?” Hayden said. “It’s shit-your-pants impressive. Nothing has ever traveled that fast!”

  “But what about acceleration, maneuverability, weapons,” Haath-Nlo said. “Top speed is meaningless if the Earth defense network can blow us out of the sky before we have a chance to get to cruising speed.”

  “It out maneuvers, out accelerates, out everythings every ship in the fleet. This ship is the best piece of hardware I’ve ever seen, and trust me. I was a UPE soldier. I got the training on everything.”

  “Even more reason why they won’t give it up without a fight,” Seayolar said.

  “Why not have Hayden pilot it remotely?” Grannork said. “He’s connected to the ship.”

  “I’ve been practicing on a training simulation that I found. Thought-controlled flight is pretty different, but I’m starting to get the hang of it,” Hayden said.

  “A person needs to be in proximity of the ship to access its vital systems. It’s one of the fail-safes built into the ship for the occasion the implants should fall into the wrong hands. The user must be authenticated by physically being near the ship before remote functions will work,” Maker added.

  “So you’re saying Hayden has to be on board before we can take off?” Seayolar said.

  “All of us need to be on board,” Kal said. “Once we leave Earth, we aren’t coming back anytime soon, so that means we may not have time to pick up the Scitronite.”

  “What about the hanger? What do we know about where it’s being stored?” Grannork said.

  “Very little,” Maker said. “From the flight test data, we know it’s located somewhere in North America. However, the exact location is a mystery because they usually stop logging flight data once the ship enters the atmosphere. However, I’ve devised a way to track it down using three implanted individuals.”

  “Three! You want us to get one of those things?” Seayolar yelped.

  “I must remind you that everyone will need one anyway if we do end up stealing the ship, but I can understand your reservations considering what happened to Hayden.”

  “That thing nearly killed him!”

  “I may have understated the pain involved, after all, it is installing on a live host, but kill is hardly an appropriate choice of words.”

  “Enough,” Kal said. “I don’t think I need to explain what a ship like this could do for us. However, as with any risk, there is a reward. We’ve been doing small jobs and getting by. The question before us now is whether we want to continue to think small or take ourselves to the next level.”

  “We’ll make an enemy of the Teristaque,” Haath-Nlo said.

  “What mercs aren’t an enemy of the Teristaque? Hell, what independent planets aren’t either?” Hayden said.

  “I’m in,” Grannork said after some thought. “May the seas run red with the blood of our enemies.”

  “The captain has never steered us wrong before,” Hayden said.

  They all chimed in with their support of her. Even Seayolar voted to go to Earth once he saw the rest of the crew wanted to go. She almost wished Hayden never gave her his vote of confidence. While she was sure about her people, she had seen her crew work and what one lacked another would provide in abundance, the part that made her falter was herself. She wasn’t sure that she had earned the confidence they had in her. However, if there was one skill she had in abundance, it was the ability to look confident even though doubt was eating away inside.

  4

  The Scitronite fell out of what Hayden liked to call warp speed just outside the Sol Blockade in the Oort Cloud at the furthest reaches of the solar system. Comets and other space junk were vaporized as soon as it crossed the threshold to what was known as the Blast Sphere. To protect Earth from long range attacks like flinging an asteroid in its direction or sending deep space nukes, the entire solar system was being orbited by little spheres that would coordinate their attacks to blast anything that got too close.

  As a consequence, comets, meteor showers, and all sorts of cosmic phenomena were a t
hing of the past. Except a few nighttime spectacles here and there like the famous Halley’s Comet replica that streaked through the sky for the sake of tradition and festivity, there were no stray objects in the inner solar system because of the defense network. The Blast Sphere would pose a problem getting the prototype out of the system but not an insurmountable one, Maker assured them.

  They flew through the Oort Cloud to the edge of the Blast Sphere and hailed the Sol Port on the dwarf planet of Pluto on the other side of the destructive floating spheres. The port authorities requested their docking files, and Kal transmitted a fake set she had purchased at a premium. Their entry was logged as a free market exploration data exchange vessel. Earth’s prime import and export was information and ideas. Most of the entertainment and news networks for the Galaxy were located on Earth, though Hayden liked to call them the propaganda networks. The leading scientific research outfits were also located on Earth. It wasn’t uncommon for independent science vessels like Kal’s Scitronite to arrive at Earth and attempt to sell their collected data to the highest bidder.

  If a science vessel had a breaking story or had explored a previously unknown star system, each piece of information collected could be sold for a price. Biotech firms would pay top dollar for samples of previously unknown life, especially if the life had measurable medicinal properties. Since most independent researchers didn’t have the funds to create large-scale reproductions of beneficial organisms, they’d come to Earth to sell their data. If they were skilled negotiators, they would get a cut. However, since most scientists were in it for the science, they usually would get screwed on the business end. For every independent Scitronite that left Earth loaded with cash, there was a Scitronite that would come away with little to nothing.

  But the winners were the important component to human society. The stories of people who lost everything were forgotten. That’s why people would keep coming and keep trading with Earth. Unlike many cultures in the universe, anyone could make money on Earth. UPE law made it clear that wealth and earning weren't restricted to humans. However, since humans were in the game the longest, and already entrenched in the system, most of the wealthiest people in the galaxy were human. Even though there were a few aliens here and there, it seemed almost as if those few other species in the Earth elite were more for the show. Even if the system was open for all, it favored the humans and those born into it.

  The fake docking papers were accepted by the port authority, and they were cleared to pass through the Blast Sphere. It was hard not to feel uncomfortable as they passed through a swarm of satellites that could vaporize their ship in seconds. Kal pulled up the interface for the prototype ship just to confirm it was still on Earth. Even though she had checked several times before their arrival, she wanted to check some more.

  Seayolar’s worst fears didn’t come true once they passed the solar system boundary. After they had decided to put implants in the rest of the crew, he thought the Teristaque would detect the devices as soon as they were inside the Blast Sphere. Maker assured him several times it wasn’t true. A crew member with an implant will only transmit data when they want. Also, the data is encrypted so even if someone did intercept a signal from the implant, they wouldn’t know what the signal meant.

  The other component to their safety was that because the intergalactic network transmitted so much data, stumbling on one signal among the trillions floating through the network was near impossible. Because the information traveled from one end of the galaxy to another in an instant, an infinite number of packets of information could travel at the same time. Since every being on every technological planet had several devices interacting with that network at once, the chance of stumbling on her signal in the swarm of data was slim, and then breaking the encryption was even slimmer.

  However, despite the misgivings of Seayolar, the rest of the crew decided to get the implants. The pain Hayden had experienced seemed like it was worse for the crew. It was like the implant had to learn their alien physiology, so the seizure-like state lasted for much longer than with Hayden. Grannork was the only one who didn’t seem to be affected all that much by the installation. His eye twitched once or twice and then he said, “It’s complete.” For Kal, it was painful, but nothing was more painful than what Dr. Feslerk did to her in prison. If prison was good for one thing, it taught her that she had a higher tolerance for pain than even she thought she had.

  Once the crew had their implants, she offered Seayolar the chance to do it one more time. He said that he’d wait until they were aboard the prototype. The rest of the crew used the simulations Hayden had discovered to learn how to do their various posts. Maker gave Kal the implant designed for the Captain. One interesting thing that she noticed right away was that she could see what her crew was doing at any given time and override them. She decided only to use that feature in desperate times, as trust and privacy seemed to be the key to keeping people together in long space flights.

  Hayden flew towards Pluto’s Sputnik Planum where they’d land at a large spaceport. There, a crew would inspect and register their vessel. All ships were required to land and go through an inspection. Had her mission truly been trading science information, she would have ordered Maker to hide key elements of his experiments. Sometimes dirty port authority inspectors would steal the secrets of vessels, especially when it’s as easy as downloading information during a routine inspection and collecting the money themselves. Regular science vessels would always delete critical sections of their most valuable experiments. However, most of the science that Maker did with his spare time was for his curiosity and not worth much. The inspector coming to their vessel would think of the crew as inexperienced kids with eyes bigger than their ability to produce. Had they been a knowledge-trading vessel, they would have left earth sorely disappointed.

  Their cover was easy to maintain because Maker did have experiments and information they could register. The story also contrived a good reason for staying on Earth for a long time and traveling around the planet. Science traders could spend months, even years, negotiating deals. Not only would they travel around looking for the highest bidder, sometimes they would get hired as a consultant for the first production run, or they would even find an independent factory and attempt to sell their discovery themselves. Either way, if they made somewhat of an effort to sell their knowledge wherever their search for the ship would take them, the authorities wouldn’t bat an eye.

  Their ship touched down on a long silver landing platform. A white buggy with a group of three humans waited for them on the tarmac. Similar buggies waited for other ships landing as well. A Teristaque mech patrolled Pluto’s surface in the background.

  The buggy connected a tube to their airlock, and a couple of men climbed aboard with green port authority jumpsuits. A bored looking man in his fifties approached Kal. She smiled, laughed, and shook his hand. She felt fake while greeting him, but Hayden had assured her that giggling makes her look young and inexperienced. They had to play the part of the young Scitronite team ready to take on the universe.

  “I’m Inspector 5221,” the man said in a bored, dry tone. “I’m here to assist you with proper tariff procedures. Before we start, are you carrying anything hazardous as defined by section 43, code 435, of the Sol Free Trade Agreement?”

  He launched into a series of questions designed to protect the population of the solar system as if terrorists would openly admit to hiding a bomb onboard. After all the questioning had been done, his two companions pulled out handheld scanners and proceeded to scan the ship. Maker went over some of the data and samples with the inspector.

  The inspection went off without a hitch because they didn’t have anything to hide. The unused implants were buried on a forgotten moon in a devoid system not too far from Earth. While there were ways to smuggle objects past the port authority, it was a risk they didn’t need to take since enough of them had implants already installed to pilot the ship. The inspector was clean because h
e didn’t even try to steal Maker’s data. Even Seayolar couldn’t find anything to worry about.

  Once they were clear from inspection, they were given clearance to make the trek to Earth. Hayden was quiet when he looked out of the window because he hadn’t been back to Sol in a long time. Kal could tell that he was deep in thought as he watched the planets go past the view screen. The outer gas giants of the solar system had been stripped of their atmosphere and their decrand at their rocky core long ago. Where Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus should have been were rocky leftovers, derelict mining stations, and a few skeleton stations for businesses that managed to stick around after the mines ran dry. However, most of the outer moons and planets were cannibalized long ago. The poorest of the poor dug through remnants and eked out a living among forgotten space stations from a dead economy.

  The inner planets were a different story. While the asteroid belt was also a thing of the past as it was mined out of existence, Mars, Earth, and Venus were alive and teeming with life. More accurately, they were a trio of planets with giant cities spanning every inch of their surface. Long ago, when the gas giants began disappearing due to mining, the orbital paths of the inner planets were at risk because the entire solar system was balanced. Remove Jupiter and all the planets may fall out of sync. Since most humans didn’t want Earth to fall into the sun, or get thrown from the solar system, they devised methods to correct the orbital paths of planets in case they needed an adjustment. It was natural then to adjust the orbital path of Mars to bring it a little closer to the sun and bring Venus a little further out. Cooling down Venus helped terraform the planet. Correcting the magnetic field of Mars, restoring the atmosphere, and giving it that extra bit of warmth helped Mars harbor life that didn’t live under a dome. Soon Sol had three habitable planets. While Venus and Mars did preserve a little more park and green space than Earth from the megacities, it was still green space that was completely manufactured from every tree to every bug. Mercury was the only untouched planet left, as it was too hot to mine cost effectively and later protected through solar system preservation societies that lost the effort to protect the other gas giants.