Valor's Stand

by Kal Spriggs

  I got out of her way. The ship was relatively modern and I followed the layout I'd downloaded on my implant without an issue, coming up to the quarters that the Deck Officer had assigned me.

  The hatch wasn't locked and I opened it, finding a narrow but serviceable room, with a single bunk, which doubled as the seating space to work at the desk and work-station. There was a small locker under the bed with just enough room for me to store my duffel bag.

  Before I stashed it away, I pulled out my datapad, my toiletries, and the clothing I'd stashed at the top to get me through the trip to Erewhon, putting it in the drawers under the desk, before I closed up my bag and shoved it under my bunk.

  I looked around, feeling uneasy, wondering what to do. I had plenty of school work to handle, both my correspondence work and the assignments to prep for the Erewhon Midshipman's Course, but I really didn't want to get started in on that. I'd been working non-stop for the past few days and I knew that once I got started, I'd have plenty to keep me busy until I was done.

  I was acutely aware that this was my first time leaving my homeworld and star system far behind. I'd been all the way to the edges of the Century system, but this was my first time leaving the system. I was going over forty light-years. Erewhon was hardly an exotic locale, though I understood that they didn't allow outsiders to travel freely on their planet or in their system. It was one of Century's main trading partners here on the Periphery. Champion Enterprises and other mining groups in Century had been feeding Erewhon's huge industrialization projects for the past forty years. Half of Champion Enterprises' expansion and wealth was due to the massive demand for manufactured parts and equipment at cheaper prices than imports from Guard Space.

  Plenty of people I knew had gone to Erewhon, before. But I hadn't.

  I paced around my tiny quarters for a bit before I tried the small hatch that went to my shared latrine and shower. The head, as it was called aboard ship. I tapped on my hatch, didn't hear a response and poked my head inside. The light was off and Alexander Karmazin wasn't there, so I stepped in to check it out. It was smaller than the inside of my wardrobe back at the Academy. The space between Alexander and my rooms held a small sink with a mirror and a narrow door to the shower, which was tiny. I was pretty certain my shoulders would touch the walls when I climbed inside to wash. The toilet sat in the shower stall, designed to fold up into the wall when the shower was running.

  I tapped on the opposite door and moment later, Alexander Karmazin opened it. “Hey,” he gave me a nod.

  “Not much room, huh?” I noted.

  He quirked a smile, “It's fine, I showered last week.”

  I snorted at that. “I think Sashi mentioned something about that.”

  Some emotion flashed across his face, but I wasn't sure what. His smile vanished and his expression went a little wooden. I started to open my mouth to ask, but he interrupted me, “Have you started on the Midshipman projects, yet?”

  “Not yet,” I answered.

  “I'd just started going through it, there's a lot,” Alexander's voice was harsh. “I'd recommend you get started. See you for dinner.” He closed the door, leaving me wondering what I'd said.

  ***

  Travel aboard the Maybelle Sooner was remarkable only for the fact that it was totally boring. The first day out, I occasionally wondered into the lounge to look around and check updates on the ship's progress. But other than a small glowing indicator of our position, slowly crawling across the display, there wasn't really much to see.

  The merchant ship's crew had no reason to let a couple of Militia cadets wander around their ship, so neither Alexander Karmazin or I had access outside of the passenger section. I wasn't bored enough to start wishing for pirates or something absurd like that, but I quickly lost interest in the travel itself. It would be seven days to get to Erewhon. Since I had plenty of school assignments to work on in the meantime, I focused on that.

  After his initial weirdness, Alexander Karmazin settled back to his normal brooding self, complete with his occasional spans of dry humor. We settled into a routine where he would rap on the shared wall between our rooms and then we'd meet in the corridor and share a meal, before returning to our separate rooms to work.

  There was plenty of work to do. I didn't have any hope that I'd be able to finish my correspondence work due on my return to Century, not in the few days I had before we got to Erewhon, but I went through it, framed it all out in a logical fashion so that I could at least figure out how long it was going to take me and what to start on first. There were twelve class credits plus another three “labs” worth of simulations that I'd have to complete with a passing grade. I had no idea when I was going to have time to run through the iterations, but I knew it was going to take me a while.

  The assignments to Erewhon were less of a problem, in some ways. Most of their assignments were verification-type exams, gauging my knowledge and experience and skill level in tactical, engineering, and strategic areas. They also included a primer on how the Erewhon Defense Force was organized, with a lot of weight put on the distinctions they had between ground and space forces, as well as the separate distinctions between their “mobile” and “static” defenses.

  It wasn't as easy a distinction as I might have assumed. The vast majority of their warp fighters were in their static defense element, because they were based off of stations, moons, or on the system's primary inhabited planet, Ereh.

  Stations, on the other hand, being, well, stationary, I figured that they'd all be in the “static” defenses... only not all of them were. There were four “Defense Stations” that were equipped with more than the standard, static warp field defense, they seemed to have full tactical warp drives. I wasn't sure how and why those defense stations weren't considered ships in their own right, but they'd labeled them as stations.

  That was only the start of things, of course. They had corvettes based in both groups. But different types of corvettes, those with faster than light warp drives were in the mobile forces and those without were in the static forces, though both groups were based in the same areas as the fighter squadrons. Except for a handful of vessels with faster than light drives were still in the static forces because they were courier vessels.

  Their mobile forces larger than corvette were easy enough to follow, rising in size from frigates, to destroyers, light and heavy cruisers, battlecruisers, and even battleships. The notes I had listed battleships, dreadnoughts, and superdreadnoughts as classes of ship within their mobile defense force, but didn't list any specific vessels. The briefing that the Century Military Academy had given me on the Erewhon Defense Forces noted that capital ships of up to battlecruiser size were confirmed, but details on the system's defenses were limited.

  I wasn't really sure what that meant. I mean, we traded with them and everything, so I figured that meant we had merchant ships at least going in and out of the system. Since it was pretty much impossible to hide the active drive fields of almost any warp drive ship, much less that of a capital ship, I would think that someone would have seen the powerful drive fields for a battleship, dreadnought, or superdreadnought.

  For that matter, I found it hard to wrap my head around just how much military strength that Erewhon had managed to assemble. Their large numbers of corvettes and fighters were one thing, we'd managed much the same at Century, but they also had multiple large stations, plus the four big defense stations, and on top of that squadrons of frigates, destroyers, and cruisers. The thought that they also had battlecruisers, battleships, and full-sized dreadnoughts and superdreadnoughts was mind-boggling. The Dalite Hegemony had a single elderly battleship and a pair of slightly more modern battlecruisers. The Drakkus Empire had a force that included dreadnoughts, and they were a multi-system nation with a population in the tens of billions.

  Reading up on the culture and history of Erewhon just left me scratching my head even more. It had been colonized nearly thirty years before Century and it lay even furth
er out in the Periphery. The history classes I'd received at Black Mesa Outpost had as much as said that Century was one of the first Periphery colonies in the region. But there wasn't a colonial charter for the place on file. In fact, the Guard hadn't listed any colony being in the system, or even any inhabited worlds, for over four decades after Century had been colonized. There was a marked absence of any comments about it, either, with only a few references in Guard records of there being an “independent fuel station” in the system as well as noting that “two of the systems inner planets are marginally habitable.”

  Which was something of an understatement. Ereh, the systems primary inhabited world, was far nicer than my homeworld. It was square in the middle of the system's green zone and all the records showed that it had taken to terraforming with terrestrial life very well. The planet's estimated population was over fifteen billion people, which was more than many of the colonies of the central Parisian Military Sector could boast. Yet it wasn't a world of sprawling cities. Most of the planet's many towns were spaced fairly evenly around the available land masses, with much of the factories and industry built either underground or in orbit, or else on the second inhabitable planet, which was colder and drier, further out in the system's green belt and possessing far less in the way of terrestrial flora and fauna, and even less to speak of in the forms of native life. It was the center of a lot of the system's manufacturing and production.

  And there was a lot of that, to be certain. Century's estimates put Erewhon's industry as far in excess of anything we could manage. A lot of it was old, more rugged technology, far from cutting edge, but it wasn't in disrepair or anything. Erewhon's factories seemed to be built around heavy automation and robotics, with construction of set templates that they hadn't changed in the past few decades since they opened their system for trade.

  That latter was something I remembered well enough. Erewhon had been considered rather isolationist. They hadn't invited any merchant traffic for trade. Century's missionary vessels hadn't been welcome there either. In fact, reading up on it, Erewhon hadn't really let anyone into the system until not long after Century's Three Day War with the Dalite Hegemony. Whatever the reason, they'd begun allowing trade from Century as well as the binary colony system of Mason and Corvale.

  Sometime between then and now, they'd also apparently dealt with some kind of pirate or mercenary attack, possibly funded by the Drakkus Empire... and people had awoken to the fact that they had a serious concentration of military vessels and equipment.

  We really didn't know much more than that about them. Trade was only allowed in isolated enclaves, most of those were on the industrial planet. The missionaries who'd been allowed into the system hadn't met with any real success and had never been allowed outside the trading enclaves. They seemed to allow just about anything inside those enclaves, but the Erewhonese didn't talk about anything outside of trade or outside news. Trade and diplomacy agreements were signed by their Chief Executive, so Century's intelligence assets assumed that it was some kind of representative republic of some kind, but they didn't know for certain.

  I was headed to one of the most secretive colonies in human space. I'd see and hear things that outsiders hadn't. It was enough to make me nervous and excited all at once. I mean, what if I did something wrong, or if I saw too much? Would the Erewhon Defense Force do something to me? Would they try to make me disappear or something?

  It was one of several thoughts that kept me awake at night on my trip to Erewhon.

  ***

  Chapter 4: I Travel The Galaxy, Meet Interesting People, And Want To Kill Them

  The Maybelle Sooner emerged from faster than light warp with as little ceremony as it had left. The deck officer came on over the ship's intercom, notifying passengers that we'd be docking in only a few hours.

  I'd already packed all my stuff. I used my implant to tap into the ship's network and watched our approach. The passengers had limited access to the ship's sensor feeds, enough so that I could see the system traffic and monitor our progress. We were coming into Rouf Station, one of the orbital stations near Ereh that had a trading enclave.

  The locals had built Rouf Station to a similar design-type to Century Station. It had a three-point-five kilometer outer wheel for civilian traffic and a two kilometer inner wheel for military vessels, and it spun a little slower than Century Station, being wider across. The Maybelle Sooner's pilot handled the ship easily, bringing in towards the station quickly, dropping the warp drive and engaging the ship's thrusters to bring it along-side it's docking port without incident.

  As docking completed, I shouldered by bag and stepped out of my room. Alexander was already out in the corridor, his tan face and gray eyes eager, despite his attempt to look calm. He quirked a smile at me as I staggered under my duffel bag, “Need a hand?”

  “I got it,” I growled back. I didn't need help. To be certain, the bag weighed half of what I did and it was bulky, over a meter long and stuffed full of my uniforms and gear. But I wasn't going to make a first impression with our new hosts that I needed help.

  We walked to the docking port quickly enough. A moment later, we showed our travel papers and orders to the customs agent at the hatch. He waved at us to go down a side corridor. “Your military escort will meet you at the far end.” He went back to reviewing the cargo manifest for the Maybelle Sooner with the deck officer without another word to us.

  I looked at Alexander Karmazin, who gave me a slight shrug. We went down the corridor, pausing as we came into a transparent section, surrounded by what looked like a large-scale medical scanner. Before either of us could think about turning around, the doors behind and ahead of us slid closed. An automated voice above us spoke, “Please wait while you are scanned.” A moment later, the scanner whirred. I wondered what it would make of our implants and I also wondered whether anyone had considered the possibility that we'd be scanned. Alexander and I were still under our non-disclosure agreements, we weren't allowed to talk about the implants to anyone outside of the program, even if we'd wanted to.

  As we stood there, waiting, the scanner whirred to a halt and the doors opened. An automated voice above us spoke, “Proceed.” I stepped forward, feeling nervous as I went on.

  The corridor opened out into a waiting room. An officer stood there waiting, in a crisp dark blue uniform. “Cadets,” she said, her voice welcoming in a sort of non-personal way, “welcome to Erewhon.”

  “Thank you, ma'am,” we both rumbled in reply.

  For just a moment, a grain of dust must have floated through the room and the woman's appearance flickered. Hologram, I realized. If not for that, I wouldn't have suspected it.

  “Please follow me and I'll walk you to your shuttle,” the holographic officer said.

  Alexander shot me a look. With a hologram, we couldn't know if this was some kind of recorded or automated program, or if this was a real person who was projecting her presence via transmission. We fell in behind her as she stepped out of the waiting room, leading us down what felt like service or restricted access corridors.

  The holographic projection of the officer spoke, her voice still friendly in a distant sort of way, “We have arranged shuttle transportation for you to travel to Defense Station Zulu, where you will join our Midshipman during this phase of their Officer Training School.”

  I recognized the name of one of the four “mobile” defense stations, the ones with tactical warp drive capabilities. I glanced over at Alexander Karmazin, who gave me a slight nod. As far as we'd read, access to those stations was limited. This would be the first time any outsiders were allowed aboard one of the big stations.

  The hologram led us into a lift and we waited as it hummed, lifting us up to the inner ring. As the lift stopped, we stepped out into another corridor. These corridors were occupied and here and there we stepped past officers and enlisted in the dark blue uniforms of the Erewhon Defense Forces. I was proud of myself that I noticed the difference in uniforms, wit
h those whose blue pans were trimmed with a paler blue stripe, which signified they were Static versus those without, who were Mobile forces.

  The holographic projection led us to a waiting area and directed us to drop our baggage into a set of scanners. “Your shuttle will begin boarding in fifteen minutes. Please remain here in the waiting area until boarding begins.” Before we could ask any questions, she vanished. Alexander dropped his bag in one scanner and I put mine in the other. After a moment, the automated equipment took our bags and printed us out claim receipts for them. I hoped that meant they were being loaded, but there was no one present to ask.

  None of the tech was all that much more advanced than on Century. But back home, there were people to handle all these steps. There would have been a person to greet us, or at least to brief us, I figured. This whole process felt very impersonal.

  I went over to the wall by the airlock, but there wasn't any kind of viewport or any way to know if the shuttle was already there. A display near the hatch counted down, ticking away time to departure.

  Alexander Karmazin went over and took a seat, his expression calm. I sat across from him, I wasn't fooled by his outwardly calm expression, I'd been his friend long enough to know that he was uneasy and worried, too. “Interesting greeting method, with the hologram,” I noted.

  He grunted in reply. Either he didn't know what to make of it or he was worried we were probably being monitored. For that matter, they probably are monitoring us. There was no way that our prototype implants hadn't set off at least some kinds of alerts. Century wasn't exactly thought of as the height of technology, so there had to be at least a few questions they had about us. For that matter, with how secretive they were here at Erewhon, it followed that they probably monitored most of their visitors.

  A couple minutes before the shuttle's scheduled boarding time, a dozen or so more passengers began to filter in. All of them were in uniform and most of them were enlisted. They gave us and our tan uniforms a wide berth. We were the subjects of quite a lot of stares.