by Dean M. Cole
"Exactly." Richard activated the comm panel. "Groom Tower, Turtle One is in position and ready for departure."
"Roger, Turtle One, you are cleared for takeoff. Contact Space Control passing flight level niner-niner-niner."
"Roger, Groom Tower, Turtle One cleared for departure. Thanks, guys."
Pulse racing, Jake stared at Richard. "Passing flight level niner-niner-niner?"
"You betcha!"
"That's ninety-nine thousand nine hundred feet."
"Yep, everything above a hundred thousand feet is Space Control's domain."
Huge grins spread across Jake and Vic's faces.
Jake turned to Victor with a hand held up for a high-five. "Holy shit, we're going into space!"
"Hell yeah!" Vic shouted, smacking his hand.
With a crooked grin, Richard shook his head. "Amateurs."
Jake scoffed. "Yeah right, asshole." Elbowing Victor while pointing to Richard, he said, "Sandy and I went to flight school with this guy. I'll bet a dollar to a doughnut that the first time he went up, his silly ass was standing right there, giggling like a school-girl."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Richard said, feigning innocence. Bringing them back on subject, he changed to a serious tone. "Back to the mission, boys. We're cleared for takeoff."
Their smiles evaporated and they both nodded.
"Jake, I want you to take us off, vertically for the first five seconds—like an elevator—then pull the nose straight up."
Looking back at the rear wall, twenty-five feet behind them, Jake imagined falling backward when he turned the nose up.
Seeing this, Richard said, "Let me have the controls for a moment."
Jake stepped right. "You have the controls, Captain."
With Vic on the left, Richard moved to stand between them. Placing his hand into the controller, he said, "Roger, I have the controls."
Without warning, he flipped the ship upside-down.
"Shit," Jake screamed. He and Vic clutched at the edges of the control panel. He hadn't felt any movement, but the visual disorientation of seeing the horizon flip so quickly was overwhelming.
Richard started laughing. "Don't worry, I had the same reaction."
With a discomfited chuckle, Jake eased his death grip on the control panel. Looking up at the runway, ten feet overhead, he said, "Standing outside looking in, we'd look like bats hanging in here by our feet."
Looking irritated, Vic said, "Any chance we can get a heads-up next time?"
"Nope," Richard said, stepping back, gesturing to Jake. "You can have the controls, Captain."
Stepping back into position, he said, "I have the controls." Gripping the control pad, he slowly turned the ship upright.
"Chicken," Richard chided.
Jake turned, facing him eye-to-eye. Without looking away, he snapped his hand to the right. The ship executed a perfect snap-roll through three hundred sixty degrees, stopping instantly once level. To his delight, a moment of disoriented concern flashed across Richard's face.
"Gotcha," Jake said.
"Damn it!" Vic yelled. "Cut that crap out."
Regaining his composure, Richard continued. "Now that we've gotten that bit of training out of the way, are you ready for takeoff?"
Jake and Vic looked at each other. A mixture of anxiety, excitement, and apprehension was evident in Vic's face. Jake felt some of the same emotions crossing his.
"Let's do it," he said, facing forward.
"Make it so number one," Richard said, in a poor imitation of a British accent.
Jake gripped the control pad and pulled up. The world outside blurred.
CHAPTER TWELVE
From the captain chair of his command ship, Helm Warden, Admiral Ashtara Tekamah surveyed his fleet through the vessel's broad view-wall. Utilizing the display's pan and zoom features, he studied each silhouette. Light absorbing skin rendered the armada's huge battlecruisers and carriers as black voids drifting across the crisp star-field. In the expansive bridge, a floating holographic version of the fleet surrounded his elevated perch. The green holograms lent the dark silhouettes a third dimension. The ancient fleet was the culmination of technologies accumulated over the uncountable millennia since Argonians first ventured into the great vacuum.
The admiral shifted his gaze to the brilliant bulge of the galactic core. Without the obscuring dust, its billions of stars were clearly visible from the fleet's current inclination and proximity. On nearby habitable planets, the core was often visible during the day. Seeing the center third of the spiral armed galaxy brought out Tekamah's inner anthropologist. Unlike the earthbound Argonians, inhabitants of planets in this sector would never refer to the bright blue stripe dominating their sky with a moniker as inane as Milky Way.
The backstory to the name of his command ship, Helm Warden, still fascinated Tekamah, even though he'd been alive long enough to have witnessed a not insignificant percentage of its multi-millennial history. It was more mission statement than title. Since ancient times, Argonians had called the galaxy the Helm, an archaic mariner term for wheel. Warden, meaning defender, gave the name its full meaning: Galactic Defender.
Staring into the brilliant core with a sardonic grin, Tekamah cocked an eyebrow. And, the Helm truly needs defending.
He pushed the negative thought away. If only for a moment, he wanted to revel in rumination.
Long ago, medical advancements coupled with a full understanding of DNA banished death by disease and old age. The ever-expanding population birthed by their virtual immortality had fueled the Argonian's drive to explore and populate the galaxy. It was during those early efforts that Argonians must have first populated Earth.
Esoteric and tradition-based, the Argonian culture developed and matured over the subsequent millennia. While the earthbound branch had somehow lost their technological roots, generation after generation of Argonians developed technologies and machines, each better and more advanced than its predecessor, each bringing societal and economic changes. Eventually, their cultural and technological achievements plateaued. Further advances had required the Argonians grow beyond their mortal bodies.
To take advantage of the expanded mentality afforded by the virtual world and the rich textures and unpredictability of the real world, as well as to buffer themselves against unplanned terminations arising from accidents or warfare, most Argonians experienced a parallel existence. Simultaneously, they lived within the digital realm and the organic.
In order to maintain continuity of thought and self with their computer-based version on Argonia, each vessel or community maintained a real-time data link utilizing a zero-width one-dimensional communications wormhole. Exceeding the speed of synaptic-based thought, the transgalactic data transfer rates seamlessly connected the organic brain to the computer-based just as the corpus callosum connected the two hemispheres of the brain, rendering the parallel existence as one. Unless you sought the boundaries, you couldn't sense where one ended, and the other began.
Originally, Argonians had uploaded themselves as copies, maintaining their sense of self within the organic body. Over the intervening centuries and millennia, the thoughts, memories, and life experiences stemming from their computer-based reality far surpassed their corporeal existence. Now, most Argonians considered the organic half of their existence as an extension of their essence, not the home of it.
Leaning back in his chair on the Helm Warden's bridge, Ashtara took a moment to enjoy his surroundings. Throughout the ship, naturally antiqued metal decorated every surface. Over the millennia, the metallic alloy had taken on a dark bronze tint. While not as big as the ship's largest halls, the bridge had a respectable ten-meter ceiling. Tall pointed arches marked the three corridors entering the bridge. Shifting his gaze to the ceiling, he surveyed the cube-shaped room's upper four corners. Large metallic sculptures of predatory birds pointed toward the bridge's center. The artist rendered each frozen in full dive, wings pinned back, talons outstretched,
and carnivorous beaks thrust into the onrushing wind.
Across a multitude of species and cultures, galactic history revealed a persistent theme. Once a society reached a plateau of wealth and technology, it switched to developing cultural richness, entering the Age of Legacy. In that epoch, projects of every type and scope aspired to eclipse mere function, endeavoring to maximize cultural wealth.
The Galactic Defense Force's space fleet was a pure manifestation of this legacy, every ship a massive floating cathedral to prosperity, art, technology, and life. Each as ornately decorated as they were functional, the vessels were replete with cavernous halls. Their ceilings towered fifty meters overhead. Elaborate passageways decorated with towering twenty-five meter bronze arches connected the ship's various sections. Interspersed throughout, elegant and ancient botanical gardens gave the ships a regal air.
Cultural studies were Admiral Tekamah's passion. The similarities between races separated by millennia and light-years fascinated him. His studies of the closely guarded secret of the earthbound Argonians—the lost colony—revealed amazing parallels between their development and Argonia's ancient history.
Earth's society, evolving in complete isolation, employed many of the same traditions and governmental organizations as the Argonians. Even the military organizations had separately evolved a synchronicity of traditions and command structures.
Earth's history was replete with Age of Legacy examples: the early Egyptian's pyramids, the Roman Empire's Coliseum, followed by the rise of the Roman Catholic Church and its Vatican.
Earth was now in the Disposable Age: a time when a society repeatedly finds yesterday's new technologies and materials rendered obsolete by the relentless march of discovery. Out of necessity and the expectation that whatever they build today will be worthless tomorrow, little, beyond minimal artistic appeal and bare essential engineering, is invested in projects.
Having exhausted all the time the current situation afforded for an old man's reminiscing, Admiral Tekamah shook off the thoughts and stood. He ran fingers through his wavy permanently salt and peppered hair. With an apparent age in his mid-forties, the admiral had a dignified air. While Argonian medical technology allowed him to maintain any apparent age, he felt this one best represented his inner self.
Turning his gaze from the view-wall, he studied the bridge. The command level's elevated floor was a transparent permanently stable forcefield that placed the observer in the center of a room-filling three-dimensional holographic display.
Computer-generated representations of the vessels and planetary bodies in the Helm Warden's vicinity filled the bridge. In every direction the admiral looked, holograms of the fleet's ships flew in formation with the Helm Warden. The size of each vessel was exaggerated. The fleet's formation spanned several light-seconds of space. If rendered at true scale, the massive ships would be little more than tiny specs.
Slowly passing through one of the birds of prey in the bridge's upper corner, a hologram of the planet they were departing was drifting out of view, its curving surface receding into the ceiling.
The permanent forcefield floor was augmented with on-demand features. For instance, if you want to sit you simply lean back, and the field adjusted to support you. To leave the elevated pedestal, walk to the edge marked by a softly glowing yellow line and step over. A gravity lift then gently lowered you to the bridge's bottom level.
Finishing his survey, the admiral watched as one of his senior Corps commanders rose to the pedestal bridge.
Standing at attention after landing on the clear floor, the commander saluted. "Admiral Tekamah, I've received an unusual report regarding the Zoxyth."
"Forward it to my EON," ordered the admiral as he dropped into his forcefield generated captain's chair.
After a brief pause, the commander said, "You have the file now, sir."
The admiral accessed his EON. After a quick scan, he cocked an eyebrow. "This doesn't make sense."
"My thoughts too, sir."
"They never send dreadnoughts away from the action … and such a large force."
"Yes, sir. Dividing their military like this is pure folly. This may be our opportunity to bring the war to a close."
Admiral Tekamah went through the various possible scenarios. He couldn't understand why they would send a force of that size into that sector. Far removed from the main shipping routes, the area in that direction offered nothing of strategic importance.
Utilizing his EON he accessed the bridge's hologram. The rendered fleet and planetary body dissolved into a swirling storm of disassociated pixels. After a moment, the vortex of light coalesced into an animation of the Helm Galaxy or the Milky Way as the earthbound Argonians would call it.
"Show the last known position of all Zoxyth military ships."
A tight grouping of red icons popped into existence about a third of the way out from the galactic core. A second grouping appeared less than halfway out from the center. In the relatively empty space between the spiraled bands, the second grouping of ships appeared to be crossing to the adjacent galactic arm.
Subvocalizing through his EON interface, he commanded the display to draw a line from the enemy's main fleet to the reported position of the other ships. Connecting the two groups, a red line crossed an appreciable portion of the galaxy's radius. "Extend the line to the galactic perimeter."
As the red line lengthened, it penetrated the adjacent spiraled arm about midspan.
Tekamah studied the area with growing concern and mounting unease.
"Superimpose sector numbers."
His heart skipped a beat when he saw the line passing through the sixty series. "No," he whispered. "They can't know." Hell, even his commanders didn't know of their existence. Subvocalizing, he ordered the display to zoom-in on sector Sixty-Four. To his horror, the red line cut through the center of a solar system with a very familiar G-type main-sequence star.
"Oh lords!" exclaimed the admiral, standing as a sinking feeling struck his gut. "Deploy Third Carrier Group and three attack squadrons to sector Sixty-Four immediately!"
"I don't understand, sir. The Zoxyth only attack Argonian systems, there are none in that sector."
Ignoring the commander, he said, "Tell Admiral Thoyd Feyhdyak he'll have his deployment orders once they're underway. Have all other commanders report to the briefing arena in one hour. If they can't be there, their holograms had better be."
"Yes, sir," the commander said.
Wondering how they knew, hoping he was wrong, but knowing he wasn't, Admiral Tekamah monitored the orders cycling through his EON.
Gods, please let Thoyd get there in time.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The outside world blurred the instant Jake applied upward pressure on the flight controller. As if it anticipated his intentions, the ship rocketed up like a homesick heavenly elevator, almost before he commanded it. The artificial intelligence's instantaneous interpretation of his rapid input made the AI seem prescient.
The ship lifted so quickly Jake's knees buckled under the visually perceived G-forces. He saw Vic respond the same. While Jake had felt no acceleration, the visual input through the view-wall convinced his mind, tripping the instinctive response.
The scene outside was astounding. Under shocking acceleration, the airfield and then the surrounding mountains rapidly shrank below their line of site.
Looking up at the brightening stars, Jake applied slight backpressure to the controls. The ship responded by gently pitching up. Continuing to apply accelerative pressure on the flight controller, he ushered the ship upward, nose first.
Like a swimmer coming up from the depths, the ship broke free of the planet's ocean of air. Shining in more colors than he imagined possible, stars morphed from soft twinkling lights to crisp points. Jake had never seen pictures, videos, or even cinematic special effects that approached the level of beauty he was witnessing.
"Now neutralize all pressure," Richard said, pointing at the controller.
Jake slowly relaxed his hand. From this altitude, unknown miles above the planet's surface, with only stars filling the view-wall, nothing seemed to change. Applying a slight forward pressure on the controller, the stars slid up as the ship pitched forward.
His heart soared as an incredible sunset rose into view. With the beautiful panorama filling the view-wall, he released the controller, freezing the scene.
Watching the day's second sunset from an apparent altitude of a hundred miles above North America's West Coast, the three Officers stared in silent reverence. Peeking over the distant horizon, the sun's beautiful rays streaked across the Pacific Ocean. The golden river of light flowed around towering cumulus clouds. Like fingers in the stream, their long shadows stretched into the east's encroaching darkness.
I can't believe I'm here. Wish you could have seen this, dad, he thought, sending a prayer to his deceased father. It was he who had nurtured Jake's love of aviation. Ron Giard had taken his son to countless air shows and Space Shuttle launches. Jake could still see the awe in his father's eyes at the first launch they had attended. Jake had found it infectious and ultimately irresistible.
As the sun dipped below the horizon, the atmosphere flashed with golden brilliance, its thin life-supporting blanket glowing brighter than the underlying surface.
A few poignant moments later, they turned away from the panorama. Stifling sniffs, they coughed, looking anywhere but at each other.
"Let's not hang at this altitude too long," Richard said, breaking the uncomfortable silence. "Even the light-absorbing skin can't soak up this much sunlight. We might be visible." Richard pointed at something beyond the view-wall's right side. "Why don't you take us over there?"
Following Richard's gaze, Jake grabbed the controller. As he rotated the Turtle eastward, a half-lit orb slid into view at the far right end of the ship-spanning panoramic display.
Victor drew a sharp breath.
A huge smile spread across Jake's face. "The Moon?"
