by Kyle Larson
“I do hope you consider the safety of your people and the state of the Venusian monuments. Unfortunate that you chose not to lower the shield earlier. The Krasyko Mountains would still be there,” Aren said, in a condescending and motherly tone.
Again, there was no reply. Aren looked to the transmission status and she was still connected to Tendai.
“If you’ve contacted me to bluff some sort of ‘last warning’ before you unleash your Gravity Warriors on me; or, maybe warn me that the Colonel or the Wanderers are using me to hurt people and that I’m better than that. Whatever you have to say, you can say it with your surrender. The planet is going to be ours anyway. You can end this with dignity and no more destruction. It’s really up to you, your majesty.”
“Are there children aboard any of your ships?” Tendai finally said her tone flat. The lack of emotion sent a chill through Aren. There was also a coolness in the inflection that implied Tendai’s question was genuine.
“No, don’t be ridiculous. There are no children onboard our ships. Despite what you probably think of the Wand–––”
“Are there any civilians or prisoners? People who may be onboard your ships at no consequence of their own?”
“Once again, no, we don’t keep prisoners and civilians aboard battleships. We keep the prisoners in prisons and there are no civilians in the Wanderers. We’re all here, fighting for the same thing, however, it needs to be done. Would you like to know if there are any puppies aboard our ships?”
“No, but we do not attack children or civilians.”
The word attack excited Aren. It was going to be a fight.
“So, you’ve got something planned?” Aren said. “You’ve been warned. While you pull off whatever attack you have planned, I’ll find a rainforest or two to torch.”
“If I were you, I’d stop pointing that terrible weapon at this planet or any other planet in the Nine Kingdoms of the Sun. You are only making this worse for you and everyone else aboard those ships. Retribution will find you, but there will be no absolution in your scorched soul if you continue this destruction.”
“Watch me,” Aren said.
She ignited the weapon again, this time it was pointed at the Voido Glacier Reserve, the first chunks of ice to land on Venus when it was being colonized. When settlers first landed on Venus, they had to geo-engineer the climate. The first thing they did was haul massive chunks of ice from around the solar system and deposit it on the surface of Venus to start a natural cooling. The Voido Glacier Reserve was one of the most historically significant sites on Venus and Aren turned the giant slabs of ice into water forever in less than five seconds. Not only did it destroy something sacred to all Venusians, the new volume of water would displace a large amount of land on the northern continent of Venus.
“This is your legacy Aren Sellwood. Now, I’ll show you mine.”
The transmission ended before Aren could respond. It was hard to tell if Tendai was bluffing, but Aren didn’t think so. Aren really hoped the Colonel and Riz were watching. She looked forward to giving them a preview of what was about to happen to them.
As much as Juda looked forward to flying the Monarch at such a high speed, dodging every stray asteroid, comet, or ship in their path continued to be dangerous and difficult. Juda could see they were close to Venus, but the Colonel had given her strict orders to maintain the speed until they were in an orbital range of Venus. For almost her whole life, everyday lead up to this battle. Everything the Colonel taught her and the rest of his officers that were on the bridge lead to Venus.
With as much certainty as Juda had about the importance of this battle, the uncertainty about what exactly the Colonel had planned began to sink in. Killing twenty-seven Earth Navy pilots for no reason was something that shocked Juda about the Colonel. She knew he could be vicious, but that was an unnecessary act of cruelty and would only make their case weaker. Juda spent her whole life training to fight but killing was never an option. The only time Juda thought she might have to take a life was in defense of her own. Those twenty-seven pilots posed no threat to the Wanderers, so there was no other explanation for the Colonel’s murderous act other than he was trying to make a statement.
Juda had grown tired of the three power players in the Wanderers trying to demonstrate their strength. Aren Sellwood intended to decimate a planet. Ristep Anker intended to train an army for himself. And, the Colonel would try to prove himself smarter and more deadly by pulling the bottom out from both of them, as well as take the conflict with the Nine Kingdoms to new levels. None of them realized that most people in the Wanderers only wanted to find their home in the solar system and that ending the borders that kept them from the planets claimed by the Nine Kingdoms was only a means to an end. They all wanted homes for their families, on a nice part of some planet, where they could breathe fresh air and feel like they belonged to the collective humanity once again.
The place Juda had in mind was Venus. It had always been Venus since the Colonel showed her pictures of the different places on the diverse planet. There were jungles, forests, deserts, tropical islands, and mountain ranges that beat anything she’d seen. The only memory of actually being on a planet was that of Earth when she was a very young. All she could remember were her parents yelling at someone who looked like a guard, while a young Juda looked up at the blue sky and puffy white clouds. She remembered how warm the sun felt and how pure the air was. Later, Juda would learn the guard was turning her family and the rest of her tribe away, only because they would not declare which kingdom they were citizens of.
As much as humans had evolved from the brutality and fear of the earlier centuries, the need to divide by borders was still present. For Juda, it was a divide and a tribalist mentality that gave useless identification to human beings. It seemed absurd to her that humans should feel allegiance to a throne or kingdom, as that noble notion should be applied to fellow humans, regardless of where they made their home. The Raven tribe only identified as such because they were a collective of families sharing resources so that they could continue to explore the solar system. They would have opened their tribe to anyone who wanted to contribute.
All Juda’s family and tribe wanted were to contribute to every planet. They didn’t want to pledge allegiance or identify with only one group of people. Her people felt that with that allegiance came a dark history of the wars that shaped the Nine Kingdoms of the Sun. To Juda, each kingdom represented the differences in humanity and would have kept it divided in the past. To the Raven tribe and many other tribes, the borders were an ideological hurdle in each human’s mind, whether they realized it or not.
Juda remembered being a child and watching that blue sky of Earth turn to the cold darkness of space. From there, the Raven tribe ventured deep into the Antioch Field to answer the call of the Colonel, who declared he wanted to build something. Ironically, before the Colonel could build what he promised them it would involve tearing a lot of things down. When the Raven tribe arrived there, along with many other nomadic tribes of the solar system, the Colonel promised he would teach them how to liberate humanity from the bind of the Nine Kingdoms.
Now, as she watched the stars streak by from the large window of the Monarch, Juda thought of the first time the Colonel offered to train her. Juda had been five and the Colonel’s appearance wasn’t as unpleasant than. He looked like an old man, but there was still some sense of youth left in him, instead of the ghastly appearance age added to him recently. The Colonel promised to make her and other children from Raven into his most trusted officers. He would teach them skills no one else in the Nine Kingdoms had and provide them abilities that no one else had.
That was when she learned the Colonel was once a Gravity Warrior, but that he had been banished for trying to free the people of Venus. He told her the queen and king of Venus went as far as to murder their own son to protect their power. The Colonel only left Venus to protect himself and so that one day he could return to free them all. Jud
a remembered how captivated she was with his tales of fighting of Saturn Conquerors during the terrible wars of the past. He promised her parents that she and the other children would be the leaders of the new solar system and a new, united humanity.
The training was difficult and never got easier. Juda never forgot the horror she felt the first day when the Colonel threw her off a balcony into a zero-gravity simulator. At the time, she and the other children he tossed into a dark, bottomless pit, didn’t know it was a zero-gravity simulator. The Colonel waited until they’d been falling for nearly a minute before he activated the anti-gravity generators. Juda remembered how her heart nearly stopped from the pounding dread that she’d be falling forever. If there was one thing the Colonel was a master of, it was using fear to build strength. Once Juda and the other children began to learn how to fly in the zero-gravity simulator, they all promised themselves they would never feel that fear again.
It was the same when the Colonel trained them all to fight with staffs. The stone staffs seemed impossible and they spent months building up enough muscle just to be able to pick them up. They had been carved out of stone from the resident asteroid where the Colonel kept his training facility. Each child eventually grew into their staff and then the Colonel taught them the art of Thalosi.
The Colonel told them tales of the Gravity Warrior who trained him, Karna. They all learned how Karna renounced his claim to the throne of Venus and fought against his parents to free their people. The Colonel taught them Karna was a hero and everything they would do would be to honor his vision. With each lesson, Karna Dubak loomed over it all. As the children grew stronger and more able in their fighting, they were told it was only because of Karna Dubak. If Juda and the other children hadn’t known Karna was once a real person they would’ve thought he was a god.
Juda looked around the bridge, filled with all those grown children. They were teenagers but felt the weight of adulthood on them. She and the others would fight for their families back in the Antioch Belt, who waited anxiously to breathe fresh air and feel the sun on their skin. These children had been trained to be Gravity Warriors, with everything the Colonel knew from his time on Venus.
There was never a moment the Colonel didn’t remind the children he trained of the disadvantages they faced. He told them of the special powers the Venusian gravity blessed the Gravity Warriors with. The Gravity Warriors didn’t have to practice flight in cold, zero-gravity simulators. Gravity Warriors on Venus could simply fly. There weren’t months of building up strength just to pick up a stone staff. The Gravity Warriors could usually swing their staffs within days of having them. Every strength the Gravity Warriors had was through the strange, natural force on their planet and a dunk in the Sanctuary Spring. Every strength his students was earned though patience and excruciating practice.
The Colonel promised his students that because they were blessed with this extraordinary aspect of training, they would ultimately be stronger than the other Gravity Warriors when the day came to face them. Because their training had been more difficult and without the abilities all other Gravity Warriors had naturally. Juda and the other students believed they were special and that they were the true Gravity Warriors. What the Colonel lead them to at that moment would complete the last of their training.
Juda thought of how long she’d looked forward to this day. She hoped she would see the mountains of Venus and she couldn’t wait to see what an actual Archive looked like. The Colonel promised her and her family a home on Venus when they finished. Juda knew of all the history of the Gravity Warriors and the Thalosi. Her dream, before she set out to explore the bounds of the solar system, was to master the ways of the Gravity Warriors. When history looked back at the dissolution of the Nine Kingdoms, Juda wanted to be remembered as one of the great protectors and warriors of humanity. If there were any other beings out there amongst the stars, Juda wanted to be a strong ambassador for humanity or the protector it needed.
All of those noble ambitions were in question to Juda as the Monarch inched closer to Venus. She could not shake the Colonel’s senseless decision to kill the Earth Navy pilots. In their training, Juda and the other students were taught that killing should never be necessary and that if death ever happened, it was due to carelessness or cruelty. The latter was all Juda could determine was in the Colonel’s head. Juda swore to herself she would do whatever she could to protect those she fought against from death. The Colonel had once been a strong teacher, but she could see that he was falling apart both in mind and body.
There would be a point where the Colonel would step away and Juda would command the Wanderers. Juda didn’t just assume that, the Colonel promised it to her and had been grooming her for it. The thing Aren and Riz schemed for was an honorable role Juda worked her whole life to achieve. That was why she stayed loyal to the Colonel, but in a way, it was using him. Juda knew that if the Colonel gave her control of the Wanderers, Aren and Riz would focus on taking her down. By staying loyal and continuing to support the Colonel, she would let him deal with Aren and Riz, so when she took over the Wanderers, they would all be united behind him, which meant they would behind her too.
Juda promised herself there would be no more killing though. Once they arrived on Venus and carried out the Colonel’s plan, she hoped the risk of killing anyone would never present itself again. All the Colonel’s students would finally become complete Gravity Warriors and there wouldn’t be anyone in the Nine Kingdoms that could threaten them again. Once they were victorious over Venus, the Wanderers and the Gravity Warriors would start a new era of freedom for everyone in the solar system.
The dream of fresh air and warm sun would never be denied a child again. Juda thought of the children back in the cold caves of the Antioch Belt. She thought of all the children that still wandered the dark spaces between planets but were denied a home because they didn’t want to be tied to a kingdom. Today, what she did, would be for them. Everything Juda did would be for them.
An indicator chirped at her from the workstation controls. It was time to slow the Monarch down. Juda didn’t check with the Colonel, as the arrival at Venus was for everyone on the bridge as much as it was a homecoming for the Colonel. Space slowed down around them and Venus appeared in front of them.
It was time for a new era of Gravity Warriors. Juda and the others had no idea the nightmare they were about to walk into, which made their misplaced optimism a strange tragedy.
Holloway and Captain Ali worked frantically to undo the work the Wanderer hackers had done on the Monarch. Most of the major systems were locked out. The access point to the central core was in the basement of the Royal Cabin –– a dark, cramped little room with three workstations. Holloway used two of the workstations and Captain Ali sat at the other. Captain Ali was still shaky from her near death experience. In a way, she was relieved that going up against the hackers was something only Holloway was capable of. She monitored what the Monarch was doing and watched as Venus came onto their monitors.
Captain Ali was concerned about the Wanderers ability to make the Monarch travel that fast. They shouldn’t be anywhere near Venus, but they had made the journey in unheard of speeds. Whatever technology the Wanderers had, it was well beyond what any other kingdom achieved,
“As soon as you’ve locked them out I need you to find out what in the world they did to the engine. The Monarch –– no ship, actually –– is capable of traveling that fast. We’re coming up on Venus now,” Ali said.
The words reached Holloway but she was deep in her own head. The squad of hackers the Wanderers employed were highly skilled and she took them all on. The only advantage she had at the moment was that they hadn’t detected she was undoing the control they had over the Monarch. It wouldn’t be long before they figured it out and then the real fight between them would start. For now, Holloway worked quickly to get control of some systems. With Ali’s announcement they’d arrived at Venus, Holloway knew she needed to work faster to lock them o
ut of the computer core and disable the system.
Communications were also a critical system Holloway worked on. No one would know the Monarch was under the Colonel’s command unless they could get a signal out.
“Oh no,” Ali gasped.
“What is it?” Holloway said. She would have ignored it, but Ali sounded very shocked.
“The gravity shield is down and the Empress is firing some huge weapon at the planet. It’s taking out a glacier right now and the sensor readout of the planet indicates she’s fired on two other locations.”
“Any cities, ma’am?”
“Huh?”
“Cities…has the Empress fired on any cities?” Holloway said. Kelvin and Amelia were her first concern. Holloway guessed they were most likely in Judur.
“Doesn’t look like it. It looks like the cannon is being powered by two ships. It’s using anti-gravity coils from simulators to disrupt the gravity shield.”
An alert went off on Ali’s workstation. She swiped through the different menus until she reached the weapons systems. The Monarch was starting to charge their electro-cannons.
“Holloway, they’re bringing the electro-cannons online,” Ali warned.
“Figured that. I’m on it,” Holloway said.
Holloway was deep enough in the system that she could disrupt the charge, at least for a few minutes. She misdirected the transfer of energy from the ship’s reactor to life-support. There was a chance her disruption would get the attention of the hackers, but she wasn’t going to let the firepower of the Monarch be used against Venus or any ships that might come to defend it. Whatever the Empress fired on the planet was bad enough, the Venusians didn’t need the Monarch turned against them, too.
“They won’t be able to charge the cannons for the next twenty minutes. Hopefully, by then I’ll be able to get us back tactical systems. Where do you want me to send the ship if I do?”
