Remember the Starfighter (50 page)

“Ready?”

Arendi nodded, her upper body and legs fitted behind the suit of nano-machines.  

“Yes,” she said, the contained Endervar particle activated at her wrist.

Julian then commenced with the detachment procedures, the Au-O’sanah pulling away from the Elion’s landing bridge.

The anti-gravity thrust charged, as the secondary engines came online, and emitted a growing blue light from the ship’s rear.

On the view screen, Julian took one last look at the Elion, the ancient vessel like a monolith against the black void.

“We’re clear Servetus,” he said through the comm-link. “Godspeed.”

Using the manual controls, Julian turned the Au-O’sanah on its axis, and toward the specified coordinates out from the gateway.

As the bio-ship approached the wall of energy, Arendi inputted the order into her suit, the amplifier at her wrist reacting. It generated a field of warped space into the direction ahead, opening a path like she had done once before.

The Au-O’sanah’s secondary engines blasted, pushing it forward through the passageway unharmed. Maintaining a slow but steady speed, the vessel came upon the open sky on the other end.

“I’m starting to read it,” Julian said, looking at the scans. “It’s the other ship, and it’s not far.”

The Au-O’sanah finally passed through the barrier, leaving the gateway and its hostile energies behind.

“I’m reading a lot of different signals,” Julian said, going down the long list of communication frequencies the sensors had picked up. “But the motion sensors show it. The ship, it’s on an intercept course.”

He didn’t need to pilot the bio-ship much further. Over the horizon, the structure appeared, and closed in on their position near the anomaly. It was slightly larger than the Au-O’sanah at over 300 meters in length, and designed with a curved hull that stretched back along three wings. Colored in a silver and white, it flew along using an out-of-date plasma propellant, the technology archaic by Alliance standards.

“Incoming hail,” Julian said. “It’s EarthForce.”

He opened the channel, the view screen beaming the scrambled image from the approaching vessel.

“Kzzssk..kssskk....Will...ksszzk....zzzk...designation...”

Julian shook his head, switching over to the manual interface with direct control over the Au-O’sanah’s communication systems.

“Looks like there’s still a lot of interference,” he said. “Let me try to improve the signal.”

He calibrated the controls, the image slightly becoming clearer. On the view screen was a man, gray-haired, but shrouded in static.

“Sszssk…ssskk...Will...this...zzzsk...your designation...”

The man’s deep voice and accent was starting to fade in, as he continued to issue the same, but gargled statement.

Listening to the few intelligible words, Arendi left her position at the ship’s main controls and stepped closer to the view screen.

“We read you,” she said loudly at the image. “We’re here.”

Gradually, she could see more, the gray-haired man, accompanied by two other crew members, sitting at their stations, on what appeared to be the other ship’s bridge. Even the whistle of the static was starting to disappear.

“Zzsssw...wss...This is Commander Williams. Do you read?”

“Yes,” Arendi said, almost excitedly. “We read you.”

The commander, dressed in the signature red and black uniforms of EarthForce, smiled back.

“This is the surveyor ship the S.S.F. Hedy Lamarr. Please state your name and designation.”

Arendi turned toward Julian, elated, but not quite sure how to respond.

“This is the starship the Au-O’sanah,” she said. “We’re here on behalf of the S.S.F Elion.”

The commander blinked, jolted by the statement.

“The Elion. So it’s true,” he said. “It’s still there.”

The commander then leaned forward, and took in the scans from his own ship.

He rubbed the end of his chin, fully aware of the oddities. 

“Your ship. We’ve never encountered anything like it. And there’s no designation matching that name,” the man on the other end said. “But more importantly, you somehow emerged from the breach.”

“Yes, we’ve penetrated the invader’s shield,” Arendi said. “In fact, we are not from Earth.”

“Are you serious?”

The crew members on board the other bridge turned to look back at their superior in surprise.

Arendi motioned to Julian to prepare the payload. 

“We are about to launch a drone. It has all the data you need, along with the technology stored inside. It’s meant for Earth.”

From the Au-O’sanah’s belly, the drone was released, and headed to its destination over at the other vessel. Inside it was all the stored knowledge from the Elion, in addition to a sample of contained Endervar matter.  

“I must apologize commander, but we cannot stay,” Arendi said. “We still have a mission to complete, and the temporal effect risks prolonging our stay here.   

“Yes, the temporal effect. But that means... You really must not be from Earth then?”

Julian silently nodded, realizing that in a way, he was staring back at his ancestors.

“The data inside the probe will explain,” she said. “It has knowledge about the enemy, and also on the current state of the galaxy, and much more.”

Skeptical, the commander squinted, and rubbed the bottom of his bearded chin.

“I know it’s much to digest, but you have to trust us,” Arendi added. “We will return.”

“I understand,” the commander said. “But before you leave, I must ask.”

“Please.”

“The Elion. I assume its safe inside the breach. However, the crew, what is their status?”

Arendi paused. Although she knew the answer, she was unprepared for the question.

Brushing the back of her hair, she looked at Julian, who gave a careful nod.

“I’m sorry commander,” she said, turning back to the view screen. “Unfortunately, none survived.”

It was a grim outcome. And yet as she said it, Arendi came to see that it wasn’t totally true.

“But their sacrifice was not in vain,” she added. “We are proof of it.”

The commander closed his eyes.

“I see,” he said. “The Elion’s captain...I knew her.”

Giving a deep sigh, the man then expressed his condolences.

“She was the best of us. Yes... As you said, I’m sure she didn’t die in vain. ”

She had submerged herself in the neon fluid, passing through the protective membrane at the ship’s core, in a hurried rush.

Her golden hair opened in the blue waters, as she stepped in and tried to swim toward the curled pillar in the center of the pool.

There was little elegance to it. In the first step, the specialist stumbled to the floor inside the vat of liquid, her balance clearly off.

Clumsily, she pulled herself up, and reached out to complete her mad dash. It was almost pure desperation, the daze still heavy across her worn ruby eyes.

Beating in sparkles of light, the Au-O’sanah cooed to the presence of the specialist’s hands. She hugged the coral shell that made up the ship’s brain, and placed her face next to the pillar’s ivory white hide.

It was an intimate and yet sad embrace. Like a worried mother comforting a scared child. Julian could only watch from afar, not sure what to do.

“Has she said anything to you?”

Arendi raised the question, as they stood at the other end of the ship’s central core, both concerned.

Over an hour ago, the Au-O’sanah had made the jump into hyperspace, leaving behind Earth and the Endervar shield. The act had lifted the specialist out of her almost comatose state, and back into reality.

So far, she had said nothing to Julian, and instead had largely ignored him, his mind vacant of her presence.

“No,” he replied. “Nothing at all.”

Alysdeon was muter than ever, the quiet shock having rattled the New Terran woman into a near frantic state. Julian recalled her shaking the moment she had awoken. Her hands, arms, and shoulders all trembling, as if a freezing cold had clenched her body.

The specialist still shook now, her fingers fidgeting against the coral shell of the ship’s brain. 

Julian looked down at his own hand and wondered. The need to fold his fingers, and close his palm, had faded. That sense of weight over his thoughts gone.

His time with the visions, while intense, had only been relatively brief. And even then, he had tried to suppress them, or at least the trace of them, pushing out the recollections whenever he could.

He could not say the same for the specialist. She had been under the enemy’s influence for far longer, their time on Earth lasting for over five days, although in reality nearly two months had passed due to the temporal effect. Julian could only imagine what she and the ship had seen.

“The experience,” he said, looking at the specialist clumped on the floor. “It must have been traumatic.”

Arendi saw the muted pain as well.

“Can we help her?”

In her hand, she held the small monitoring device, the polished equipment ready to take another brain scan. Julian, however, shook his head.  

“Maybe we just need to give her some time,” he said.

In his own hand, Julian held the implant, the thin piece of cybernetic fiber a focused link to the Au-O’sanah. He placed it next to his left temple, and hoped for a response. Nothing immediately came, but eventually he could hear it. If Julian wasn’t mistaken, it sounded like the sobs of a frightened child.

A day later, Julian entered the specialist’s personal quarters, and found it almost polluted with a pinkish smoke.

He coughed, the adulterated air hitting his face. To him, it was a mixture of burning herbs, coupled with the smell of synthesized cinnamon and unflattering perfume.

He waved away the haze around from his face, and traced it to a corner on the opposite side of the room. Sitting calmly at a circular table was Alysdeon, a long cigarette between her fingers.

She took another puff, the flush of fog gusting from her lips. Dressed in a flowing red robe, and with her golden hair still wet, the specialist looked as if she had just taken a bath.

Julian approached, and sat across from her at an empty chair.

“Is this the Spice?” he asked, pointing at the surrounding smoke. “I thought it was illegal.”

Crossing her legs, the specialist grinned in a nod.

She then tapped the cigarette over a tray on the table. The magenta ash was falling down into an ever growing pile, surrounded by a ring of used spice buds.

Julian watched, noticing that her golden hair was quite damp and still dripping.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

She looked away at him, and down at the floor.

“You weren’t the only one affected by it,” he replied. “I saw it too.”

To make his point, Julian placed his hand on the table, and opened his palm, only to then close it.

“Everything was collapsing. The universe being pulled back.”

He described it, thinking that Alysdeon had encountered a similar experience. The specialist listened quietly, and inhaled another puff from the cigarette. 

she said, breathing the smoke out.

The specialist then took the receding cigarette and crushed the burnt end against the ash tray.

Julian remembered the theory offered by Servetus. All of space and time merging, preparing to expand once more into a new reality. He shook his head.

“It still doesn’t make sense. Why us? Why target sentient life.”

Alysdeon shrugged.

Rising from her seat, she walked away from Julian and toward the window, where the glowing fabric of hyperspace lay.

she said.

She crossed her arms, and grabbed the side of her shoulders, recalling the intrusive sensation. Indeed, there had been visions, a myriad of them, all crashing up against her psyche. And yet, it had paled in comparison to the other feeling. That of the alien force, burrowing deeper into her thoughts.

“Them?”

<
The creators of the Endervars. A presence from their reality. I sensed them. Not just an influence, but a consciousness next to mine. Growing.>

“Was it trying to take control over you?”

“But what?”

She hesitated, and shut her eyes.

Julian winced. “You don’t believe that do you?” he said, put off by her claim.

She saw his denial and blushed.

Running her hand through her long dank hair, she looked at him, concerned.

Starting to shiver, Alysdeon then gradually fell silent. Like Julian, she was both confused and disturbed by the alien thoughts that had invaded her mind. She paused, before regaining some composure.

Smiling, she walked past him, the surrounding smoke diminishing to the sound of the room’s organic filters.

Standing tall, she flashed her violet eyes in his direction. This was the Alysdeon that he knew.

“What about Au-O’sanah?” he asked. “How is she?”

He rubbed the implant on the side of his face, but still felt nothing.

the specialist replied.

“Your telepathy. I guess it was a liability in this case.”

Julian debriefed her, and detailed his encounters with the Servetus A.I. In the center of the room, the hologram appeared, the data displaying the acquired technology in prisms of yellow light. Alysdeon marveled at the sight.

she said.

“In the meantime, I’ve set course for the Orda refueling outpost,” Julian said. “It’s in the Yagereshna non-aligned territory. I’ve never been. But it seems safe from Ouryan influence. Unless you think otherwise.”

The specialist looked over the relevant data on display.

It was all coming into focus now, the specialist looking off to her side. Against the room’s wall held a pair of swords, each one real, and a meter in length.

She touched the closest blade — a medieval sword — and felt the refined silver steel along with its sharpness.

she said, holding the hilt of the sword and pulling it from the wall. In another motion, she raised the weapon into the air.