Echo- First Pulse

by C Scott Frank

  “Mm.” Black Suit paced the control room behind Kubitz as the data transferred. “Are you familiar with the old myths about vampires? Fascinating creatures. Evil, of course. Bad guys and all that. Mostly. But there is one trait I’m particularly fond of. Did you know it was said they could hear the heartbeat of their victims?”

  “I didn’t, but I don’t really—”

  “It’s true. Some myths even say they could identify their victims by their pulse, their senses were so tuned. Horrifying. If you’re a victim, of course. How can you hide?” Black Suit chuckled. “You can’t very well tell your heart to be quiet, can you? This—” he held up his datapad. The transfer was nearly complete. “—is the pulse of our enemy. They can no longer hide. You have done fine work here, Herr Kubitz.” He said this last in a mock German accent.

  Kubitz was convinced more than ever that the man in the black suit was insane. As soon as the console thrummed with the confirmation of the completed task, he felt the cool muzzle of a gun against the base of his skull.

  “It’s not personal,” Black Suit said with a neutral tone. “It never is. You said it yourself: ‘This news can’t be allowed to leave this facility.’”

  Epilogue

  Black Suit settled into a comfortable seat in the shuttle across from Titus, one of his favorite soldiers. The man was made from solid marble, it appeared. He kept his blond hair in an old-school flat top. Amber light flickered in the man’s hazel eyes.

  “Campfire is rolling,” Titus said and nodded out the window. “Some casualties. Enough to make the news for a minute or two. Looks like the rest of the station was running a bare crew. Astronomers and data crunchers don’t want to be in space in case the bad guys show up, apparently. This’ll all drop from memory as soon as some dog barks his owner’s name or something.”

  Outside the clear panes of the shuttle, an orange glow filled the windows of the research station. Soon the fire would cause a breach in containment and the vacuum of space would extinguish the flames and all but destroy the facility through rapid decompression. There would be no survivors.

  “In case…” Black Suit trailed off, thumbing his datapad.

  “In case what?”

  “Never mind. I knew I hired you for a reason, Titus.” Black Suit grinned sadistically. “You’re a lunatic. But deliciously efficient.”

  “Did Pearson tell you we tracked a transmission before we arrived?”

  Black Suit’s grin disappeared. “He did. What do we know?”

  Titus shrugged. “Very little, unfortunately. Came from that kid’s computer though. We should have the decrypted message soon enough. He didn’t do anything fancy with it, just used the lab’s standard.”

  “I want to be told first thing. I’m afraid the kid might’ve done something incredibly stupid.”

  Black Suit pulled out his datapad to catch up on the day’s news from Earth. Something had agitated the activists. Agitation was their natural habitat. Ignorant fools. If only they realized the real war going on above their heads. Maybe they’d have a little respect. Instead, they toiled away, begging for clone rights as if the echoes weren’t trying to wipe humanity off the proverbial map.

  It was sickening.

  If he had his way, he’d put the activists on the front lines and let them see how humane this war was. Up close and personal.

  Titus interrupted his internal rant. “We’ve lost contact with the Ceres base, sir. Looks like someone approved a squad of marines and a medic to the facility just in case. They’ll arrive in one day. Want to pay them a visit? We’re just a few days out ourselves.”

  Black Suit thumbed the datapad absent-mindedly as the medium-weight shuttle accelerated through the black of space around the moon. The blue marble of Earth with its unappreciative inhabitants hung quietly in the distance, untouched by the real war. That would all change soon.

  “Certainly,” he said. “Let’s go see some old friends.”

  State of Echo

  State of Echo

  In the year 2179, humanity made a breakthrough. For centuries, physicists and other scientists had speculated about the possibility of traveling faster than the speed of light. Thanks to the efforts of Dr. Ranault Clervance, the speculation became a reality.

  In the decades prior, various human factions had placed military and scientific outposts on many moons throughout Earth’s humble system, including the distant Charon, of Pluto. The military presence in deep space stoked a fair amount of controversy from anti-war groups. They asked why humanity needed to take their warmongering habits into a new frontier. It was time, they argued, for a shift in thinking.

  Proponents of the off-world military efforts claimed they had the defense of the human race in mind. Their arguments held little water, however, as the military factions were constantly embroiled in greedy controversy. Despite the controversy and pushback, the military presence in the system expanded. The scientific community, for their part, faced an uphill battle lobbying for more funding.

  Finally, in 2165, the military leaders saw the benefit of expanding science beyond the limitations and scope of Earth and helped to establish research facilities across the system. The caveat was that military R&D would take priority over all civilian projects.

  Bold scientists took the opportunity to learn, despite the dishonest goals of their military benefactors. The result of this effort led to the chance FTL breakthrough.

  When the landmark Charon output was established in 2168, excitement for deep space opportunities met its peak. Beyond state-of-the-art in every respect, the outpost served as the flagship of the innovation revolution and fostered a new age of discovery.

  While studying the way photons of light shifted slightly around the barycenter of Pluto and Charon, Dr. Clervance discovered the formula for faster than light travel. It is often stated that Charon is the largest moon of Pluto, and as such, Charon is the largest orbiting body of Pluto. While this is technically true, in a practical sense, scientists have observed a fascinating phenomenon. Since the mass of Charon is relatively similar to Pluto, the two bodies can appear to orbit each other around a singular point in space between them. This point is called the barycenter.

  Much like a Lagrange point, the physics at the point of the barycenter can cause unpredictable behaviors. Upon studying these physics, FTL travel became not only feasible, but approachable.

  The year was 2179, and a new dawn of space travel made distant stars accessible for the first time. Meanwhile, back at home the United States brought the entire western hemisphere together under one banner: the United Western States. Critics decried the use of subtle force to coerce the disparate nations into becoming members. Supporters claimed it was simply an aggressive diplomacy borne of a need for unity.

  Despite the political turmoil, there was a very tangible need on Earth: the planet was growing more painfully crowded every single day. Because of the new advances in space travel, an age of pioneering never before seen in human history exploded and the human race took to the stars. In less than ten years, the amount of populated systems reached into the double digits. Billions of humans now lived light-years away from Earth for the first time.

  By 2185, nearly every habitable celestial body within 100 light-years had a human presence. Outposts and colonies cropped up faster than governments could keep track of them. Because of the limited governmental reach, piracy became a present danger for organizations and humanitarian groups seeking to expand their reach. Hardly the swashbuckling pirates of the 18th century, these “space pirates” were essentially paramilitary groups dipping their hands in profiteering or racketeering.

  In 2184, the fourth moon of the gas giant Midas was established as a hub for interstellar regulation. In what functioned as a sort of ad hoc government for the furthest reaches of humanity, Midas IV became one of the most important human settlements. In the shadow of the massive golden planet, the moon represented the interested of the United Interstellar Systems. UIS acted as an advocate to the
bureaucracies back on Earth.

  As new systems faced the pirate threat, the UIS lobbied for support from the core worlds. What they got was a not-so-subtle military takeover. In an effort to combat piracy, the interstellar military efforts took a controlling interest in all stellar ventures. The fears of a military state were realized for many. Though protection was certainly offered, in came at the expense of a distant military state. The voice of the UIS was subdued by martial need. Control won the day, but it provided legitimate safety. So, support was garnered and deals were brokered. Piracy declined over the next two years as the military presence grew.

  In 2187, everything changed.

  The famed Charon outpost was attacked by an unknown enemy. The assault was suspicious—it seemed more like a game than a military endeavor. The Charon outpost held little military advantage, it was a scientific outpost. The attack simply didn’t make sense.

  Upon an analysis of emergency transmissions and recordings, Intelligence initially ruled out the possibility of extra-terrestrial enemies. Intra-ship communications seemed, well, human. It was by far the logical option.

  The initial theory of the Core Military Federation was that the pirates had gone too far. They had anticipated pushback as a result of the UIS takeover, but nothing as severe as the attack on Charon.

  The various pirate groups, in whatever forms of organization they possessed, denied any involvement in the Charon incident. No fingers were pointed amongst the groups. They all seemed just as baffled as the CMF.

  It wasn’t until Stranglehold fell that the CMF believed the pirate’s word. The distant, rocky dwarf planet had been a haven for pirate activity almost since FTL was discovered. Stranglehold in 2188 was what Tortuga was for the 18th century Caribbean. Nothing happened in the outer reaches that someone in Stranglehold didn’t have their hand in. But in 2189, the haven was destroyed. Thoroughly. When the den of thieves fell, CMF knew there was another threat in the galaxy.

  For the first two years of conflict, no enemy bodies were ever recovered. Whether by self-destruction devices or hasty retreats, the enemy covered their biological tracks far too well. It was clear they were humanoid, but there was no way of knowing anything beyond that.

  Toward the end of 2189, the enemy launched a campaign on the Titan colony. In the two years since first contact, the CMF and UIS had devoted much of their attention to bolstering the local system defense. As far as readiness goes, the core forces felt they had done everything.

  The Battle for Titan lasted ten long months. An eternity for space warfare. For the first time, humanity managed a victory. They retreated and left soldiers behind. As soon as their ships jumped, their army fell dead.

  CMF Intelligence had hoped to recover POWs, but the fallen corpses would have to do. For the first time since the fighting began, they looked on the face of the enemy. When they pulled the first mangled helmet off, lifeless human eyes gazed back at them.

  The metaphor was not lost on the poets back home. When humanity finally met their greatest enemy, they were face-to-face with themselves.

  Every fallen enemy soldier had bloodshot eyes and trickles of sticky blood running from their ears. Autopsies revealed deadhead devices installed in the skulls of every single one. Besides acting as a killswitch, the devices acted as one-way communicators. The soldiers were receiving instructions from somewhere.

  By reverse engineering the burned out devices, a sharp Intelligence team stumbled upon a shadow transmission that was recorded as the enemy retreated from Saturn. The intercepted signal was either encrypted or in a different language—likely both. Top CMF decoders would spend months studying the signal to decipher any meaning. After months of study and nontrivial amounts of supercomputer processing, the cipher was cracked and they established the language lexicon. For the first time, CMF Intelligence felt like they knew something valuable.

  For the most part, the recovered transmission was mundane—a simple recall and retreat order. But CMF Intelligence learned the code and the frequency footprint. It would not be the last intercepted message. Intelligence had garnered another valuable piece of information: a name for the enemy. They called themselves the Sardaan.

  Armed with the frequency footprint, one sharp Intelligence operative had a brilliant idea. She proposed that they listen to the past. Since the mid-20th century, scientists had recorded almost every trace of sound that reached Earth. Most of it was white noise, emitted by various galactic phenomena—indiscernible sounds of a silent space.

  When filtered with the code and transmission frequencies, the silence of space erupted into life. Entire divisions of the CMF opened overnight to study and catalog the startling findings. Not only was humanity not alone in the universe—they were known.

  Recordings from as early as the 1950s revealed that the Sardaan not only knew that Earth existed, but they knew intimate details of humanity and their technical status. Humanity was being studied

  Little was known of the Sardaan other than what they could infer from their transmissions and behavior over the years. They seemed like a careful race, and they feared what humanity might become. The rise of atomics caught their attention—the constant planet-wide fighting kept it.

  What began as simple observation went to the next logical step: sample collection. They began taking samples of the human race for research and study. Some made it back. Others were never seen again. On Earth, various extra-terrestrial enthusiasts and tin-hat groups called them abductions. The transmissions never revealed what they intended to use the samples for, specifically, only that they required a broad range of subjects.

  Two hundreds years later, it was easy to see why they needed such a sample size: they grew an army of disposable clones to prepare for humanity’s eventual journey to the stars.

  The Sardaan feared that humanity would overtake their corner of the galaxy like a swarm of greedy locusts and bring their warmongering with them. Based on the actions of CMF and UIS, they didn’t have any reason to give humanity the benefit of the doubt. So they created a ready defense—a defense that would preserve their own people.

  Though it seems noble at first, the Sardaan programmed their clones to be aggressive, tenacious, and merciless. When the Sardaan attacked, colonies were ravaged by the clones.

  Humanity’s scientists were still decades from boasting an effective cloning procedure. Though they’d tried for centuries, the problem of entropy still plagued the results. Copies always introduce artifacts, and when dealing with DNA, artifacts led to unexpected and often disastrous results.

  By increasing the sample size and creating what scientists dubbed “chimera clones”, the Sardaan were able to artificially create genetically natural human clones. The largest caveat was that they had to rewire the brain.

  The complex programming the Sardaan required went far beyond conditioning. The brain of a clone more closely resembled the fabled positronic brains than the simple synapses and folds of the natural-born humans. A semi-biological implant embedded in each and every clone also aided the neural programming.

  In theory, every clone could be identified with an X-Ray. The implant would shine like a beacon and expose the enemy. But humans had grown far too numerous for that sort of focused test. To make a difference, the scientific community had to join the fight. Humanity needed answers. They needed solutions.

  The assault on Midas IV changed everything. When the headquarters of the United Interstellar Systems fell, citizens outside the local cluster revolted. Special elite teams of Orbital Drop Marines were tasked with extracting key political figures before the Sardaan could claim them. Non succeeded.

  The only marked success of the Midas IV rescue operation was the recovery of one surviving clone, the first ever apprehended. Her study paved the way for many advances in the fight, and more living clones would soon follow.

  Until she escaped.

  About C. Scott Frank

  I like making things. I know a little bit about a lot of things, and a lot abo
ut almost nothing. I’m a writer, musician, designer, and professional dabbler.

  I love the Lord and I love my family. I live in Oklahoma with my wife, Hailee and my son. We have a few animals, but mainly so we can pay people to watch them while we’re out of town. It’s one of our favorite pastimes.

  I write things. I write fantasy things, sci-fi things, zombie things, and my wife and I write about faith, family, and fostering at www.afrankvoice.com.

  I love meeting people on Twitter (@C_ScottFrank), if you want to say hi directly, bring it on. I especially welcome emails concerning book deals with non-trivial advances.

  Also by C. Scott Frank

  Venison: Season 1

  Venison: Chomp the Halls