“I really hope not,” she said, sighing. “If we stand any chance of learning what happened, we’ll need to talk with the original EVE we had when we launched. She was operational and in control of the ship during our last memories before we went missing.” The talk of returning to the Carl Sagan’s crash site reminded her to check the time she was to meet with the salvage team. She went to access it with her HNI, but it stalled with a superimposed error message flashing over her eyes. “This is going to take time to get used to.”
“What’s up?”
She grimaced. “My HNI.”
“Might still require more recalibrations,” Emmanuel said. “It’s a known issue for people that didn’t have them since childhood.”
“I hope it doesn’t interfere with my duties tomorrow.”
“If you’d like, I could come with you,” he offered in a suave manner that made her chest flutter. “If there are any problems, I could try and take a look.”
“Really?” she asked with intrigue.
“Yeah.”
“Or are you looking for an excuse to spend more time with me after we’re finished up here?”
Emmanuel chuckled. She joined in. “Perhaps.”
“I don’t think it would be necessary, I should be fine,” Rivera said. “But . . . if you’re looking to get to know me better, swing by my hotel after we finish up here. I’ll show you one of the most important items I recovered from the Carl Sagan.”
His eyebrow rose. “And what would that be?”
“My bong.”
5 Foster
XSV Johannes Kepler
En route to Aervounis, Luminous System
October 30, 2118, 12:43 SST (Sol Standard Time)
The XSV Johannes Kepler hurled several hundred light years away from Amicitia Station 14 and the Arietis system, having passed through the Union wormhole, heavily guarded by Radiance cruisers twenty-four seven. Once past the wormhole’s event horizon, the fastest ship in the cosmos, well to the known and explored cosmos, accelerated at full FTL speeds through the Luminous system.
Just about every planet and moon within the system had been colonized by the Aryile during their first voyages through space, back when the Radiance Union consisted of their species only. It was hard to tell which planets were colonized first as they were covered with the floating cities the Aryile were notorious for living in. It wasn’t like Sol where Luna, Mars, and Titan had massive cities as they were the first worlds colonized by humanity, while moons like Triton were playing catch up.
Foster had hoped to catch a glimpse of the mighty Union Navy, the largest in the galaxy, but no such sights appeared on the view screen, or scanners for that matter. The Draconians could partially be thanked for that, Radiance had yet to receive reinforcements from the rest of their worlds, unlike Earth and Paryo. The F in FTL wasn’t that fast, and neither was their voyage to the most populated planet in the system, orbiting a bright star, that according to Pierce, was growing larger each year.
Foster got up from her post on the bridge and left. They still had another hour before they reached their destination. She found herself in the Kepler’s labs, holding a duffle bag with the logo of the ESV Marcus Antonius on it. It was the bag she discreetly swiped from that ship, loading it up with contents the drake she encountered pleaded with her to acquire before it went up in smoke.
Doctor Travis Pierce, the ship’s science officer, sat at a computer terminal. A holo screen depicting the stars of the galaxy shined its light across his middle-aged face and graying hair. He spun on his chair, smiling at Foster as she approached him with the duffle bag in tow. She was glad to have him back on the team after his brief AWOL stint.
“All settled in, Doctor?” Foster asked.
Pierce nodded. “Indeed, I also had IESA have bots look after my apartment while I’m gone.”
“Seems a bit extreme.”
“With the exception of the wormhole in the Luminous system, Radiance doesn’t have a wormhole network . . . or space bridges for that matter.”
“Yep, they use straight up FTL to hit up their colonies.”
“Wherever in the Union this cybernetic doctor is we need to find for Chevallier, I doubt it’s going to be on Aervounis,” he said, then pushed a small projection of the map of the galaxy to Foster. “We might be gone for months, maybe even a year.”
She eyed the projection as it depicted exactly which parts of the galaxy were under Radiance control. It was more than a third of the explored region of the Orion arm of the galaxy. Understandable, given the multi-millennial history of the Union.
Still, they had to take the risk. The Kepler was the fastest ship, and therefore fastest means of traversing across the hundreds of light-years that made up Radiance Union space. Any other ship doing this would take too long to get Chevallier back on her feet. And regardless of what anyone said, the crew of the Kepler needed her. What happened days ago with the Terrans and on Taxah was proof enough to Foster that their mission of peace was going to require a little bit of violence, regardless if they wanted it or not.
If Chevallier refused to join the team after everything was said and done, so be it. Foster owed Chevallier this. She saved Foster’s life, something Foster wished she could have done for Chevallier’s mother now looking back at it, and all the guilty feelings that came with it.
“But you didn’t come here to chat, did you, Captain?” Pierce said to her.
Foster shook her head, placing the duffle bag in her hands onto a table. She waved Pierce over to join her, and then pulled the zipper of the bag open, unveiling the large, dark, and oval-shaped organic objects within. There were like basketball-sized avocados.
Pierce let out a loud whistle when he activated his EAD app on his wrist terminal. “Oh my . . . Captain, did you really?”
“Take dragon eggs from the Marcus Antonius? Hell, yea, I did.”
Pierce paused to read the data that outputted into his wrist terminal’s holo screen floating above his wrist. “Why?”
“That drake that saved me,” Foster said slowly. “It was a mother-to-be. She wanted me to save her unborn dragons.”
Pierce placed one of the dragon eggs on the table ahead of them, giving it a more detailed scan with this wrist terminal. “Incredible,” he muttered with amazement.
“I want you and Odelea to take a look at these,” Foster said. “Learn what you can and well . . . uh.”
Pierce beamed at her, lowering his wrist terminal. “Become baby dragon nurses when they hatch?”
“If we’s gonna make peace with the dragons, I think this is gonna be the thing that will make it happen.”
He stroked his chin, lost in thought, while eying the rest of the eggs lying inside the duffle bag. “Human compassion,” he finally spoke. “Raising the young of our enemy rather than killing them.”
“And don’t forget the drake and I had a connection,” Foster said, her arms crossed. “It came to save me since I let it free. Peace can be made, if not with the Draconians, then their dragons,” she paused, looking down to consider her next words. They were going to sound controversial. “The Terrans were right about one thing, these dragons are like pets to the Draconians.”
“So, we’re going to hand these back to them, then?”
“I ain’t got any plans in life to raise a dragon army of my own.”
“I’m so glad to hear that,” he said with relief. “Using dragons as living weapons is a disturbing thought.”
Foster snorted. “Not to the Draconians.”
“And not to the Terran Legion, just think about what they could have done if we hadn’t stopped them?”
“We didn’t stop them,” Foster said drily. “Miles says a bunch was arrested, there’s still more Terrans out there. All we did was shit over their plans.”
The intercom beeped. Saressea’s voice played over it. “Engineering to Foster.”
Foster took the call, pressing against the wall mounted intercom. “What’s up Saressea?”
/>
“So, you remember that vortex key project I was working on?”
Foster grimaced. “Ah, hell, what’s it now?”
“You might wanna come down here, Cap, and see for yourself,” Saressea’s voice replied.
“If I gave ya fifty credits to just tell me what it is, would you do it?”
“Fuck no, but I’ll gladly take the credits.”
“On my way . . .” she said then ended the transmission. On Foster’s way out of the labs, she said to Pierce. “Take care of my babies!”
Pierce nodded to her as she left. “I’ll keep them in the sample cryo drawer, so they won’t hatch prematurely.”
Engineering was down the hall at the end of the ship, taking up three decks of the aft of the Kepler. Inside, Foster saw Saressea and Nereid eying the interior of the vortex key. Saressea’s tail was stiff and rising upward, slightly trembling. That wasn’t a good sign.
“What did you and our resident water nymph discover today?” Foster said as she approached the two.
Saressea stepped way, offering Foster a look at the darkened interior of the Vortex key. Three tentacles reached out rapidly to touch her. Foster nearly lost her balance trying to back away, her face maintained a cringing glare, even after she stood up.
“Well, I guess I’m skipping lunch today,” Foster said drily, hoping the flipping of her belly would stop.
Saressea pushed a holo screen at Foster, displaying the results of her virtual EAD scans. “I think we might have discovered why the Draconians knew we entered the maelstrom every time,” Saressea said.
Foster eyed the holographic data, noting the increased levels of psionic energy and how far deep the creature within the vortex key was. “What in the hell’s that, Saressea?”
“A tracking device,” she replied.
Foster winced. “With tentacles?”
“Don’t get me started on that . . .”
“Did it pull on ya tail yet?”
Saressea looked back at her tail, still paralyzed with fear. “. . . Almost.”
“Captain,” Nereid said, facing the two. “I can hear the dragon songs transmit to me telepathically from this.”
“Oh, great,” Foster said, looking at the organic creature within the device.
“That thing,” Saressea said, pointing at the slinking tentacles. “Was telling the Draconian fleet our location telepathically.”
Foster started to put things together. “And when the first vortex key we had got fried, it stopped.”
“I guess the thing inside died,” Saressea said. “They lost the signal and gave up.”
It made sense the more she thought about it. The Draconians, during each of their test runs, knew exactly where the Kepler was when it ventured into the maelstrom. Why and how they knew was never discovered, until now, of course. They had a telepathic monster living inside the vortex key, a device required to rip open time and space to enter the strange universe.
“Is it important to the operation of the key?” Foster asked. “Last time I checked, organics and technology went hand in hand with the Draconians.”
“Probably, though, that octopus-looking motherfucker wasn’t in the blueprints we got,” Saressea said. “Before I called you, I was doing deeper scans of it. I think I might be able to remove it, make some adjustments, and keep the device operational.”
Foster grinned. Progress was being made. “Thus, removing the tracking.”
“In theory, of course,” Saressea said. “The damn thing does have psionic powers, it might just get pissed off and telekinetically hurl my ass across engineering.”
“Let’s not forget the tentacles.”
“I’m trying to do just that. You don’t have a tail; you have no idea how creepy that was.”
“Have any of you figured out why the Hashmedai did not tell us about this?” Foster asked.
“Yeah, I did,” Saressea replied, nodding. “Someone from Phylarlie’s team was keeping secrets from us. Throw in the Terrans conveniently showing up, and I’d say they were also working together.”
“Moriston said that the ultimate goal of the Terrans was to install puppet governments,” Foster said. “They wanna control the Empire, Qirak, and Union, and probably Draconians.”
“I fail to see how you could do that by nuking Taxah.”
“The Imperials were all gathered there for a party,” Foster said. “The entire line of succession to the throne would have been wiped out if they’d won.”
Saressea’s lips twisted. “Oh . . . in that case.”
“Terrans could have hand selected a particular Hashmedai to take over, one that would do whatever they wanted.”
“Someone like Phylarlie.”
“Course, we ain’t got any proof it was her,” Foster said. “And going back to the Empire to find it ain’t an option, they don’t want us back.”
“What about Peiun and his ship?” Saressea offered. “He seemed legitimately concerned for your safety when they made contact with us during that shit show.”
Ah, shucks, I didn’t know he cared, Foster thought. “We helped each other out, a lot.”
“Sounds like he’s a friend on the inside to me, maybe he can do the searching for us?”
“Maybe, yeah, I like that idea.” Foster went for the intercom, establishing a connection to the bridge. Odelea’s voice replied and she asked, “Contact the Rezeki’s Rage, Odelea. I’d like to speak with its captain, Peiun.”
“Of course, Captain,” Odelea’s transmitted voice replied.
Ending the intercom chat, Foster added, “Last time I checked, the Rezeki’s Rage was still in orbit around Taxah, let’s hope we can reach him before they leave.”
The planet Aervounis enlarged on the view screen, growing bigger with each passing second. The planet looked like a ball covered in yellow, blue, and green colors with some fluffy white clouds sparsely sprinkled over top. There weren’t many clouds when compared to Earth, sunny days were a common sight on the planet. It would explain why the yellow patches were more common than the green ones on the surface, and seemingly taking over.
Like Earth and Paryo, a vast debrief field orbited the planet while salvage crews worked day and night to pick up the junk that was once battleships, ambushed by the Draconians surprise attacks. The Kepler had to swerve around three hulks of derelict Radiance cruisers that spun endlessly through the cold celestial graveyard.
Foster gave her head a dejected shake while she sat on her captain’s chair. She just officially witnessed the aftermath of all three battles that took place on that day she and her crew awoke having overslept in cryostasis, for reasons still unknown.
“Captain,” Odelea called out to Foster. “We’re being requested to land at Aervounis.”
“Fine by me, we’s still need to figure out where this doctor is,” Foster said, and then faced the helm. “Mister Chang set a course.”
Flight Lieutenant Dennis Chang gave her a nod and reached for his helm control terminal before him. “Aye, Captain.”
“Also,” Odelea added, reviewing the data transmitted to her from her communication station. “The council is requesting we land at the capital once we arrive.”
Foster’s eyes narrowed. “The council? Why?”
Odelea’s face grew grim when she glanced over the newly conjured holo screen, its contents full of reports written in the Radiance language.
“There was an attack,” Odelea revealed. “We can’t proceed further until they speak with you in person.”
6 Saressea
Landing Pad
Veromacon, Aervounis, Luminous System
October 30, 2118, 14:10 SST (Sol Standard Time)
The XSV Johannes Kepler sunk into the cloudless skies of a region of Aervounis where its capital city, Veromacon, hovered over a vast blue ocean, shimmering with the bright sunlight that baked the surface of the planet. When the rippling waves of heat let up against the Kepler’s shields during its atmospheric entry, the city of Veromacon appeared. It
looked like a city built on top of a disk with four smaller disks hovering next to it, covering the ocean directly below with a ghastly shadow.
On those disks were the towering skyscrapers of office buildings and high-rise condos that made up the city. Other areas had lush green and purple parks, grandiose fountains spraying water while the people strolling through looked up at the Kepler as it made its way to one of the landing ports. Glass tubes connected the four orbiting platforms around the central disk of the city, the ever-famous Radiance rapid transit trains moved through them so fast they looked like a long white blur.
By the time the Kepler’s landing gear touched down smoothly upon the landing port’s surface, Saressea had made her way to her quarters. She grabbed a data crystal off her desk, one that contained all the intel gathered about the remote colony the Empire had near Omega Centauri. She felt obligated to inform the council of this, as the existence of such a colony could pose a threat to Radiance in the future, should hostilities between the Union and the Empire flare up.
And who was she kidding? Hostilities will flare up given how unstable the balance of power in the Milky Way had become. Terrans and Draconians were in the perfect spot to shatter the fragile alliance between Earth, the Union, and Empire. Radiance needed to be ready for anything, and the data crystal she held was going to play a role in that.
Before she left, she double-checked the files on it, ensuring that nothing had been corrupted, or worse, hacked by Maraschino. In fact, hacking was the primary reason Saressea opted to physically deliver the data crystal’s contents, rather than transmitting them, and why she kept her recent findings on the vortex key locked in the HNI in her head rather than saving them to the Kepler’s database. True, Maraschino could hack HNIs, which was why she made plans later that evening to copy her vortex key discoveries into a data crystal.
All it took was one crafty hacker to monitor the Kepler’s transmissions, decrypt the file, and prevent it from reaching the council, selling it to the highest bidder instead. Doctor Pierce having a run in with a Maraschino hacker no doubt made the group take great interest in the ship, further fueling the desire to not transmit anything.
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