Remember the Starfighter (27 page)

Julian stumbled to his knees, still holding the salvaged supplies from the Lightning braced to his back. Below him, the desert floor suddenly began to tremble.

“Watch it,” he said, speaking over the comm in his helmeted suit. “This planet is unstable.”

The tremor erupted, crashing through the ground. Losing his balance, Julian fell down, his hands almost sinking into the hardened sand. He clutched the clumps of rock, as the quake passed on and rumbled off in the distance. Walking not far behind was the android, who watched in concern. Despite the shockwave, she moved through the wasteland unfettered, her armored legs methodically locking into the ground with each step.

“Are you hurt?” she asked through Julian’s communication link. The android nearly ran, reaching out to try and assist.

He coughed several times, before feeling the android’s heavy hand on his back. “It’s nothing,” he said, regaining his footing. “We’re not far.”

Wiping the dust from his helmet, Julian looked down at the scanner in his hand, only to be corrected. The lifeboat had landed further than he had wanted, their destination located over 10 miles away. 

It would be a long walk, Julian thought, trying to muster the strength to move on.  Slowly, however, they could see the telltale signs of habitation. Or what remained of a now departed civilization.

“What is that?” the android pointed.

Within the sand ahead, lay the structure. An obelisk, and then another, rising from the surface. It no longer stood erect, almost collapsing to the side, the surfaces withered by age.

It was no surprise to Julian. “Yes,” he said. “Kilanthian Ruins. They’re all over this place.”

Buried underneath them was in a fact a former city that had decayed into the earth. From what Julian could remember, millions of alien denizens had once lived on the planet. Although that was centuries ago, long before the terraforming systems had eventually broken down and failed.

As they walked on, he began to recognize their surroundings. A few miles away lay a range of mountains in the distance. Vaguely, through a smoke-like fog, he noticed it, the outlines of the military base jutting out from the rock.

“Legeon base,” he said in relief.

The facility had been deemed confidential, but it was no secret among SpaceCore’s pilot and engineering teams. Many had trained there at one point or another. This included Julian, who had spent three years on the base.

They could gradually see it in full. Running through the mountain rock were the black citadels of the military base, the facility essentially a land-based spaceport hidden within the terrain. Launch-pads rose from the hill, the myriad of charcoal towers bleached in red sand. Ship departures and landings had once been common at the site. But oddly, the base had gone silent. Only the facility’s automated systems had responded to Julian’s communication hails.

“Access granted,” sounded the ID scanner at the base’s gate. It was a large cavernous-like entrance built into the hill side. Gears winded and released as the metal door lifted from the floor to open.

Julian walked inside, as the cleaning systems began to blow the dust from his body. He pulled the helmet from his face, to breathe the air. He could smell that the oxygen had become stale, the atmospheric systems idle, and unused.

The interior of the base remained largely darkened, the lights above turning on as Julian and the android moved forward. Aside from the movement of air, Julian could hear only silence permeate the confines. He began to walk faster, rushing to find the nearest computer terminal. “We need to see the logs,” he said, finally finding an information kiosk embedded in the station wall.

“Not good,” he said, staring at the monitor. “The logs say the last personnel left over a month ago, bound for another system... Delta Highron, it’s called. Another SpaceCore facility. The rendezvous point.”

It was very obvious now. The station had been abandoned. “Shit,” Julian said, fearing this outcome. He scrolled down through the reports, noting that several ships had left the base on the final day. Well over two dozen, in what appeared to be a mass evacuation.

He motioned to the android, and paced down through the long hallways. It would have been a maze to a stranger, but Julian could still recall the inner workings of the sprawling base. Turning a corner, he could see that they had reached what he had wanted to see for himself. Through what was a wall of glass, Julian saw the sight and sighed. “Gone,” he said, panting in frustration.

The android peered through and realized she was looking out into a hanger bay. It was enormous, housing what could have been groups of ships. But save for the piles of equipment and machinery, she saw not one vessel inside.

“What will we do?” she asked.

Julian’s hands fell to his knees. He had no answer to give.

Arendi quietly watched, as she stood inside what was the station’s communication center. The large room had been emptied, the row after row of individual computer terminals unmanned and shutdown. All except for the one, the terminal glowing like a beacon inside the hollowed facility.

“There are no ships left,” Julian said, sitting in front of the terminal. “After the Endervar invasion, SpaceCore pulled back all resources. The only vessels here are just planetary shuttles. Nothing that can escape orbit.”

The pilot had been accessing the terminal for the last hour, pulling up the data in a near endless stream of virtual screens. She noted the files, and their contents, and even Arendi could tell it was true. The mass evacuation had seemingly stripped the base of whatever value it had left.

“What of the New Terran contact?” she asked.

“I haven’t been able to open an encrypted channel,” he said. “I’ve told her our situation. But no response. Maybe its interstellar interference, we’ll have to wait and see.”

The pilot rose from his seat, coughing in his hand. He was visibly exhausted, and perhaps more so now, the disappointment evident in his eyes.

“Maybe...” he said. “Maybe we have to assume the worst. But it’s not a total loss.”

With a flick of his hand, the terminal projected the image onto a larger holo-emitter in the center of the room. It shinned brightly, bathing the confines in a yellow light.

“This is Delta Highron,” he said, as the virtual solar system spun through the air. “There’s a SpaceCore base there. I’ve sent a priority one signal to them, asking for assistance. Problem is, it’s a bit of distance. Even if they can send a ship to retrieve us. It may be too late.”

“The Ouryan Union.”

“They’ll be looking for their lost ship. It doesn’t give us much time. I’m trying to find something in the base. Something we can use. We have to get to Delta Highron somehow.”

“You’ll be safe there,” the pilot insisted.

Arendi understood the urgency. But she was still unsettled. The pilot’s face was covered in sweat, as his cough seemed to only persist.

“You should rest,” she said. “You do not look well.”

“I’m fine,” he said, clearing his throat. “We still have some time.”

The pilot shut down the equipment, and left the room, as Arendi followed the man out. They walked on through the station hallways in what she could only describe as isolating. The facility itself was vast, once housing thousands of cadets and military personnel. But it seemed hardly livable by human standards, the lack of windows and color evident in the sterile black arches permeating the high walls of the base.

“This place, it was built by humans?” she asked. 

“No. We adopted it from the Kilanthians. At the time, SpaceCore was still struggling to establish itself. We claimed whatever we could. Even if it was on a planet technical inhabitable.”

She could see signs of the prior habitation. Equipment, from environmental suits to powered-down cleaning robots, lay about in the rooms they passed. Many more were lecture halls for cadets, occupied by chairs and desks. In all, there was always a white four-pointed star close by, the signature emblem of the SpaceCore. “Fly for Haven, fight for humanity” accompanied one such symbol.

“I came here when I was just 13, I think,” the pilot said.

“Is that common?”

“It’s supposed to be a great honor. But it’s not like we had a choice. SpaceCore can draft whatever resource it needs, no matter what the age.”

It was then they approached a bridge in the base, the passage way leading to an even wider section of open space. The pilot pointed over the ledge. Below lay a field of shell-like structures, each identical in appearance and large enough to fit a person. The pods numbered in the dozens, maybe even hundreds.

“The first year, we spent most of the time at this simulation center,” the pilot said. “All our flying was done virtually. Only later on, did we begin flights to the orbital training grounds.”

He placed his elbows on the ledge, and leaned over. “I just remember hating it here. Hating everything.”

Julian pointed down at the pods, letting his finger wander, but said nothing. He paused, wincing, like he was trying to recall something.

“I think it was that one. Or that one,” he said, pointing to a pair of pods. “I basically lived in one, piloting and doing training simulations all the time. I about wanted to kill myself.”

It did not seem like a pleasant memory. Yet in the face of what seemed to be pain, the pilot merely laughed. 

“Doesn’t seem so bad now,” he said, shrugging. “For a time, this place was home.”

The pilot moved on, rising from the ledge to walk onward. He smiled, perhaps reminiscing.

“I guess I remember more than I thought,” he said.

The holographic projection displayed the alien in a virtual outline, the image depicting what had long ago become relic — the physical form of a Kilanthian body.

Arendi had pulled the graphic, upon accessing the base’s public database from a terminal inside an office room. It showed a being measuring over three meters in height. She had never seen anything like it before, the features almost bizarre. To her, the body resembled more like a mass of flesh, propped up by thousands of thin fibers that covered its underside. Notable were three large crevices at its mid-section, the holes functioning as both lungs and audio receptors, according to the diagram. 

“There are no Kilanthians left?” she asked.

The pilot sat in a chair nearby, looking through the base’s equipment roster for any sign of a viable hyperspace drive.

“No, not anymore,” he said. “Although, they’re still around. Just not physically.”

He swiveled his chair over and inputted the commands into the terminal. “They’ve joined our good friends,” he added sarcastically.

The projection before Arendi altered and displayed a text-based history of the Kilanthians. 

“They left this colony 322 years ago,” she said, reading the data. “They no longer identify themselves as the Kilanthians, but as part of the Ouryanic Collective Union.”

“They aren’t the only ones to join,” the pilot said. “Hundreds of races have supposedly converted.”

During her time on Alliance Command, she had read about the Union and its influence. Public records had described the intergalactic group to be the largest within the Alliance, covering a diverse range of alien species. What they had common was that they had discarded their bodies, in favor of a more “advanced post-organic existence” inside a virtual world. It was not a foreign concept to Arendi, she herself being a product of complex programs simulating consciousness. But the scale of the Union transcended anything she had encountered, the sum of which of equated to a universe all to its own.

“Why do they join?”

“It’s a question everybody asks,” the pilot said, sliding back into his chair.

“Some say it’s like paradise. Like heaven. You can have everything you want.  And yet, you don't really need anything. It’s a higher form of understanding. It’s supposed to be indescribable. ”

“But others say it’s a sham,” he went on. “A hive mind that reduces individuality, locking the consciousness to some alien entity. People just become servants. Slaves maybe. I don’t know… You basically have to abandon your body to join. Sounds like death to me.”

“You do not approve?”

“I can’t say I’m a fan. Especially since one of their kind is after us. They’re more dangerous than I thought.”

Listening to the pilot, Arendi had to ask. “Have humans ever joined the Union?”

The question left the pilot in pause. Arendi saw the man’s expression, the response taking more time and energy than either expected.

“Some,” he said, sounding reluctant. “Many actually.”

“It’s a way for people to preserve something before they die. They can choose to at least replicate their consciousness into the Union, hoping a part of them will survive. At the very least, there’s no war in the Union.”

The pilot returned to the base’s equipment roster, prompting Arendi to continue on with the images. She cycled through the data on the Kilanthians, the history of a former people flashing into existence with each formation of the pixels.

“Captain Nverson. What of this?”

She pointed to the projected image. It was that of a ship, elliptical in design, and covered in regimented plates of what looked akin to golden glass.

“Is that Kilanthian?” he said.

The data cycled through the vessel, and others of its kind, all built in similar fashion. He could see battleships, freighters, and typical transports. 

“Could it be possible that some still might be on the planet?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t recall...”

He went to the terminal, and looked at all the relevant data. It offered a summary of the Kilatnthian fleet, stating that it had once spanned thousands of ships. But cryptically, the data only revealed that the vessels had since been “retired” following the conversion of the Kilanthian people.

“The data lists nothing else,” he said. “Although maybe... some might still be around. We just need more information.”

“Where would we find that?”

The pilot had an unconventional answer.

“I guess we need to pay a visit to the Ouryan Union,” he said. “I don’t know any Kilanthians. But there’s something I can try.”

Arendi was confused. The Union was their adversary, the very enemy they were hoping to avoid. She saw the pilot’s indifference, and wondered if he was making a joke.

“Remember what I told you about the Union? About preserving something,” he said. “Well, I did it too. Six years ago. I’m betting there’s a part of me still there. ”