A Memory
[Charles] picked at the food on the plate in front of him. None of it tasted right; the meats were off and the vegetables were falling apart on the plate. It seemed the Humans couldn’t even cook correctly. That, or this was some really messed up method of torture.
“Do you have anything else besides this trash?” asked [Charles], holding the plate up.
The Human woman, who was what the species considered a Doctor, looked down at him disdainfully. “I’m sorry our food doesn’t meet your tastes, it’s a little difficult to grow food on Mars in the first place. Underground in a bunker without the sun? You’re eating better than half the population!”
“So that’s a no?”
Emily, the name of the Human doctor, sighed and pinched her nose – something [Charles] had noticed she tended to do when she was about to go on another of her tirades. He was tuning them out at this point, but it was also his only entertainment. It was like poking at the side of an animal cage and watching as it reacted. Not something [Charles] did very often, but he hadn’t left this room in what had to be weeks so he was quite bored.
It had to be some form of torture the Humans had come up with, leaving him in the room with the doctor and the ever silent guards that watched him as she worked.
“Emily,” one of the guards quietly warned. [Charles] looked up, surprised that the man had actually spoken.
The young Class C woman deflated and slowly nodded her head.
“How does your chest feel, any stabbing pains?” she asked, her eyes still closed as she spoke.
“Why do you keep asking?”
The woman’s eyes snapped open. “Because some people reminded me that I took an oath, and why – even if I feel like stabbing you through the fucking eye at the moment.”
“Emily,” repeated the guard, his voice sterner now.
She sighed and raised her hand, flashing the man a gesture [Charles] had seen her use several times before: the third finger on her five-fingered hand raised, the rest in a fist. He had no idea what it meant; the guard only ever ignored her when she directed it towards him.
“No pain,” said [Charles].
“Great, good for you,” Emily said flatly as she collected her data recorders from the table next to the bed and stomped out of the room.
The guard came forward, took [Charles’] half eaten plate of food, restrained his wrist again, and followed the woman out.
[Charles] watched them leave. He was sure of it now: they were torturing him with boredom.
Closing his eyes, [Charles] thought about what must be going on. Reinforcements had to have been called in at this point. His command staff had been all but obliterated, but it wasn’t like he couldn’t be further humiliated. His career had already been on shaky ground before this; it was surely going to crumble now.
The door to the room opened again. [Charles] opened his eyes thinking the woman had forgotten something, and was instead greeted by the sight of the man who he had only ever seen through communication channels: the infernal General.
“Captain.”
[Charles] didn’t respond. The man was gaunt; he was dressed in a uniform that was practically hanging from his frame, the hair which had been black with a spattering of grey before now almost entirely grey, surrounding a face that was badly weathered. But despite all that, the glint in his eyes that had promised to cause [Charles] no small amount of trouble was still present.
“Another three of your ships have dropped out of FTL above Mars.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I would like to execute you on an open broadcast just to send a message, but at this point I think the message has been sent. All of your forces on the ground have gone back up to orbit. They have abandoned you and are adopting the only strategy possible in this situation.”
“They are going to starve you out, or wait for you kill yourselves,” said [Charles].
The General slowly nodded, “Yes, although they don’t seem to understand what this bunker was designed for.” The man let out a short laugh.
“You killed a lot of us in that raid you led – so many in fact we actually hold the advantage now. The latest reports from the greenhouses show that we will be able to grow enough food underground here to maintain ourselves indefinitely. Now the only limiting factor is our nuclear generators!”
[Charles] looked at the man for a moment. “Why are you telling me this? You just said you weren’t going to kill me,” he asked.
The General nodded. “I’m not. I’m going to give you free reign of the bunker.”
“So you’re not officially executing me. You’re going to have some random member of your sorry excuse for a military do it.”
“All personnel have been given orders not to lay a finger on you… unless you try to do something stupid.”
[Charles] was silent for a moment, mulling over what the Class C man had said. “Why?”
The General’s eyes flashed, a look behind them that promised something vicious.
“I need to see if you’re a monster.”
[Charles] laughed, ignoring the pain in his chest. “A monster? YOU are the Class C abomination! You were born from the Seed of Life, but your own world twisted and maimed you! You are nothing but a violent plague that needs to be wiped out before you bring destruction to an Empire that has ruled this Galaxy since before your species was sentient!”
The General looked at him for a moment and slowly shook his head, “You say that, but Humanity has never been so brazen as to push a people to extinction. We have never dreamed of conquering the stars, our dreams were to explore and learn.”
He paused.
“Now we dream of war. I don’t like it, so I want to make sure you are a monster, something without remorse or empathy, before I set my descendants on the path to war with your own children.”
[Charles] looked into the man’s eyes and shivered. The man was speaking not as if he were proposing something but as if it were a fact. He didn’t believe that his species would survive, he knew they would. Even with the bunker crumbling around him; even with the home world reduced to nuclear slag by their own weapons; the man in front of him was still utterly confident.
Well, not confident – he looked more resigned to the fact.
“Your species is on the brink of extinction and you have the gall to suggest you can destroy my own?”
The General smiled slightly, “I have the gall to say we will. Maybe in a hundred years, maybe a thousand. I want to make sure that we should first. I want to make sure you don’t have a shred of Humanity inside you.”
[Charles] shuddered at the idea of comparing himself to a Human. “I certainly do not,” he asserted. “Now are you letting me out of this room or not?”
The General came over and quickly unstrapped the man.
Getting to his feet, [Charles] stood up and glared at the alien in front of him. He was a head taller than the General, who carried no weapon, and there were no guards. He could reach out and break the worthless Class C’s neck in an instant.
The General didn’t look at him with any fear though; the expression on his face was something out of place, [Charles] was sure he was interpreting it wrong. It almost looked as if the alien was pitying him.
Bellona Colony, Eridani System
9 Years 3 Months 10 Days After Eridani Landing
Ben slowly opened the door. The man inside twitched slightly, but otherwise didn’t move, his gun firmly trained on the few dozen Squeaks in front of him – or rather, the few hundred individual bodies. Ben was still trying to sort out how to quantify the creatures.
“Sir,” growled the man.
“What’s going on here?” asked Ben slowly, keeping his voice level.
“My daughter is in there, they took her!” growled the man.
“What makes you say that?”
“I traced her link! It’s in the center of that fucking nest they built!” the man said as he gestured towards the building. It was an apt description; past the entranceway where they were, the housing block looked nothing like what a human would build anymore. Given raw building material, the Squeaks had quickly deconstructed all but the thermal insulation and support beams of the building. They had kept the floors and stairs only so humans would be able to navigate the nest.
It resembled a beehive, intermixed with small handheld computers and components that the individual Squeaks were working with. It was an odd mix, the structures they had made were composed of metal and plastic, using tools designed for the smallest humans.
The Squeaks in the entrance way were all keeping still, only their eyes moving back and forth between the man and Ben. The two human guards who had been posted at the entrance to the building had their own weapons pointed at the man, their standing orders to prevent an incident.
Ben turned to look at the Squeaks. “Do you have a human in there?” he asked.
A small Squeak slowly inched forwards, “We do. It entered through a ventilation duct, and we have not been able to remove it. All attempts at communication have failed.”
Ben heard a scuttling behind him and glanced over, spotting Alpha moving at a breakneck pace down the tunnel connecting the housing block to the rest of the colony.
He let out a burst of the ultrasonic communication so loud that Ben could hear it reverberating in his own skull. An uncomfortable sensation; it had to be his equivalent of shouting.
The man holding the gun twitched, his gun turning towards Alpha.
Ben calmly stepped around, placing himself again between the gun and the alien.
“What’s your daughter’s name?” asked Ben.
The man paused, “Clara.”
“Alright, well we’re going to get Clara, alright? Shooting your way into the nest is probably not the wisest thing. If she is in trouble, we’re going to need a full squad. These little guys are tough,” said Ben gesturing at the Squeaks.
The man hesitated, and that was all that Ben needed. He jumped forward and pushed the man’s hand up, aiming the gun at the ceiling and in the same motion ripping it out of his hands. The man stumbled backwards and the two guard jumped on him, tackling him to the ground. He tried to fight them off, but the two guards, who were already in enough trouble over not subduing him when he first drew his weapon, were not going to let him escape.
“Clara!” shouted the man towards the entrance of the housing block.
Ben turned to Alpha, disassembling the gun and throwing the pieces to the ground.
“Can you lead me to her?”
“I can, but she is refusing to move. We could bring her down here by force.”
Ben shook his head. “No, I’ll get her. Keep him here,” Ben said to the guards.
They hesitated. “Sir?”
“We’ll take him to lockup after I get his daughter.”
They looked at one another and then at the depths of the nest. “You’re going in there unarmed?” asked the guard, holding down the man’s legs.
“I don’t think I’d taste very good. Not that a gun would help much, if they wanted to hurt me; they’re too quick.”
Turning around Ben strode forward into the building. The atmosphere was warm and humid, not quite at a level of an Earth rainforest but definitely outside what a human would be comfortable in. How the Squeaks had lived in the cold for this long if this was their preference, Ben had no idea.
“She is on the second floor,” said Alpha.
“Alright.”
Going down the corridor towards the stairs, Ben had to quash his own instincts. All around him there were moving bodies with thousands of eyes turning to look at him. The Squeaks were allies, and he was friendly with Alpha, but still they were aliens. His instincts weren’t sure how to classify them, so it defaulted to a wary fear. Humanity had evolved to give the unknown a wide berth and suppressing that was probably not the healthiest thing to do.
Following Alpha, Ben couldn’t help but give everything around him an appraising eye. From an engineering perspective, the alcoves and small rooms they had constructed to take up nearly all available space were organized, but still in resembled an insect hive. He didn’t have a hard time imagining the Squeaks digging out tunnels in the ground if they did not have access to more advanced materials.
“She entered nearly an hour ago. We first ignored her, thinking she was inspecting something, although it was strange that she had no guard. Thus far only you and your mate have been willing to enter without one.”
“Megan’s been here? When was that?” asked Ben.
“Just over twelve hours ago. She wished to discuss technologies with…” Alpha paused, “Names are still difficult to translate. She has not received a human name yet but she was an assistant in the engineering section.”
“She snuck out of the hospital then, was she walking?”
“She did not appear to have any difficulty moving.”
Ben rolled his eyes, but trying to convince the woman to stay in the medical ward was next to impossible. The fact that she knew how to hack the Bellona monitoring systems like he did didn’t help matters either.
Still shaking his head, Ben stepped into the small room which Alpha had indicated and paused, trying to absorb the sight in front of him.
A small girl – Clara obviously – was sitting in the center of the room, with a very disgruntled looking Squeak in her hands which she was petting and cooing at. The little girl couldn’t be more than three or four years old. She had grown up on the colony, and like most children on the last outpost of humanity had discovered that the air ducts were just the right size for her to crawl through. An engineering oversight that had been remedied in the newer buildings.
“Is he okay?” asked Ben concerned.
The Squeak let out a low warble. Ben’s translator picked up the words. “Get it off of me!”
Clara slowly turned around to look at Ben, the sound from the translator startling her.
“I found a puppy!” said the girl happily as she held up the Squeak. The poor creature let out another low warble which the translator didn’t seem to be able to handle.
“What did he say?” asked Ben.
“Expletives.”
“Ah, alright. Clara, could you put the little guy down? You’re dads been looking for you and we need to go see him.”
Clara frowned. “No!” she said, bringing the creature back to her chest. The Squeak was about as big as her, but apparently light enough for her to easily manipulate.
“Clara, you need to let the puppy go. He’s going to get you sick – he hasn’t gotten his shot yet.”
Clara looked at him for a moment and then back down at the obviously angry Squeak. “Sick?”
“He needs to get shots, like this.”
Reaching into his pocket Ben extracted the small circuit analyzer from his pocket and held it up to his arm, pressing it down so that it beeped as it tried to analyze his body for a circuit fault.
“He sick?”
“He will be, Clara. Can I give him a shot?”
Clara nodded and tried to stand up to bring the Squeak over, but lost control of the disgruntled creature which quickly shot away from her.
Clara let out a shriek. Ben quickly stepped forward to grab her. “He’ll get it later, first we’re going to go say hi to your Dad and get something to eat, okay? Are you hungry?” asked Ben trying to distract the girl from the alien she had thought was a pet.
The little girl blinked. “Ice cream?” she asked.
“Sure, ice cream.”
The little girl smiled and stopped squirming in his hands, Ben sighed and turned to leave.
“You handled that well,” said Megan.
Ben nearly said something that the little girl would have undoubtedly repeated and gotten him in trouble with her father. Holding his tongue, he instead asked, “What are you doing here?”
Megan held up a computer tablet and gestured at the crowd of Squeaks at her feet, who were also holding several small computer tablets between them.
“Comparing engineering specs.”
Ben turned to Alpha, “You could have told me she was still here.”
“Sorry?” said Alpha, unsure.
“Well, you can handle small children well. Nice to know.”
Ben ignored her and the little girl began to cry, helping him make his point that he was not good with kids.
“You shouldn’t be out of the hospital.”
Megan shrugged and jumped up into the air slightly, going quite a bit higher than most people would be able to do on normal legs. “The displacements still in effect. If it’s the damper holding it in place or not, I have no idea.”
“We really need to figure out what the hell is going on.”
“I’m just happy I don’t have to go through all of that physical therapy.”
Ben nodded and turned back towards the stairs. This was only a symptom of the mood Bellona’s population had towards its alien guests, and it was going to get worse. So far the Tanuin had kept to the building they had been allocated, but they were allowed in all public spaces. They hadn’t requested that their nest be put off limits either, although Ben wasn’t sure if they had a concept of privacy or not.
Stepping out of the hive, Ben sighed and looked at the man. “Let him up.”
The guards hesitated a moment, looking at each other, but stood and released their charge. He rushed forward and plucked Clara from Ben’s arms, tears streaming down his face.
“I promised her ice cream.”
Ben wasn’t sure if the man heard him or not. The girl had stopped crying, seemingly bewildered by the sight of her own father crying as he clutched at her.
Ben sighed and sitting down to lean against the wall turned to Alpha. “How far do you want to take this?”
“Meaning?” asked the creature.
“Technically, just by pointing a weapon at one of you he should be in a prison cell already. I’ve bent the rules by not doing that immediately.”
Alpha was silent for a moment. “We do not wish to cause animosity. No one was harmed. We both knew that miscommunications like this would take place.”
Ben nodded. He had hoped for that answer. “Alright, keep this in mind for when the next one happens. I’ll write up a report, and recommend that he not be charged with anything. Hopefully my superiors agree.”
Alpha came up and all of his bodies sat down next to Ben by the wall.
“Human children are odd.”
Ben chuckled as he replied, “What are your kids like?”
“Different. Our youngest are disharmonious within themselves, and even more so with others. We teach them and they learn, but we are always in contact with them, able to hear their voice, sense their thoughts.”
“I’m not sure if that would be a good thing or a bad thing with Human children. Although disharmonious describes them fairly well.”
Alpha let out the laughing sound again and Ben smiled.
The Canada
Orbiting HD 40307g (aka Jikse)
Arik, disgruntled, flashed the lights in the engineering section.
“Will you stop doing that!” shouted Diana.
Derick just ignored the two as they continued to bicker. He was busy picking the alien computer apart.
“I told you, simply interface it into my systems and I will be able to analyze it.”
“Captain’s already antsy with you using the alien communication channels. The last thing we need is for you to get an alien computer virus. Nor should we put all our eggs in one basket letting you handle everything alien,” Derick responded as he carefully pulled the components off the alien equivalent of a circuit board.
Arik was silent for a moment and a frustrated sigh rang out through the engineering section’s speakers.
Diana turned away from the workstation, pushed off of the wall, and shot out into the corridor of the ship – quite literally running into Captain Stagg. The two women, being accustomed to zero-g, quickly grabbed each other’s shoulders and spun in the air. The Captain regained her footing first, slotting her feet into the foot holds near the window display in the corridor.
“Sorry ma’am!” said Diana, wincing.
“Where are you off to in a hurry?” asked Stagg.
“Derick and Arik are analyzing the alien tech, they’re not very amicable at the moment.”
Reaching into her pocket Diana extracted the alien Link she had gotten from the surface, “I’m going to figure out what this can do, already gave Derick half a dozen of them.”
“Do not interface that with our systems,” said Stagg, looking sternly down at the young woman.
Diana nodded looking as if she were restraining from rolling her eyes. “I know!” she said as she bounced off of the wall, retreating back into the depths of the ship. Stagg watched her go. Diana was trained to lead, but she was still juvenile. It was a frustrating combination of confident and flippant, no doubt worsened by the fact that she was genetically enhanced. She hadn’t had anything go wrong during the few situation where she had been in charge, a blessing in of itself, but Stagg wasn’t sure what would happen when something did go wrong.
Shaking her head and focusing back on the larger problems, the Captain of the Canada drifted into the engineering section.
“Anything jump out at you?” asked Stagg.
Derick didn’t look up from the alien technology for a moment. “Yes.”
The room was silent for a moment as Derick, absorbed in his work, recognized that it had been the Captain and not Diana who had spoken to him.
“Oh, Sir!” he said and turned from the workstation.
A snigger rang out through the section and Derick gave the case holding Arik a good thump.
“Arik and I are still putting the report together, you should have that in a few hours.”
Stagg held up her hand smiling slightly, “I don’t need the full report at the moment. Just your general impression.”
“This technology is a hell of a lot different then what was in the fighter we recovered during the evacuation.”
“In what way?”
Derick picked up the small device and steadying his hand let go, the device began to drift in the air in front of him barely rotating.
“The technology on the fighter, or at least what I was granted access to, show that it had a solid design and architecture. This,” he pointed at the device, “This is an absolute mess. It’s like someone shoved a dozen different pieces of technology from a dozen different idiots together until it worked. This tech is eclipsed by our own in terms of raw power, about the only thing alien is the tachyon communication hardware.”
Stagg nodded, hooking her feet into the deck and plucking the device from the air.
“So it’s fair to say that the edge of this Empire and the Inner block have different technological strengths?”
Derick shrugged. “I don’t know. I won’t go as far as making that generalization, but yeah it would be my guess. The rich planets get all of the fancy well designed tech and out here they scrape together whatever they can.”
“It’s the same on the software side from what I have been able to decompile and analyze. The technological difference between our own software and hardware compared to that available here on the edge of the empire is negligible. However the fighter was several decades, perhaps a century or two ahead,” Arik added.
Stagg nodded. “Well, this is a good thing then.”
Derick frowned and turned to look at the display where Arik was. She was confused as well.
“How so?”
“It means that the majority of the citizens of this Empire barely outclass us from a technological perspective, so they are already at odds with the Internals. They have to be. Everyone always wants what’s new and shiny, but out here they don’t get it. That has to breed animosity.”
Derick nodded. “Alright, so people aren’t happy. I didn’t expect the aliens to be signing Kumbaya all day.”
“It means that the people of the Empire, at least out here, don’t care what happens to the leadership. They’re more worried about themselves than the Emperor, or the leadership, whatever it might be. So we don’t have to fight the entire Empire; we just remove the head and the body won’t even care.”
“That’s a lot to interpret from a piece of technology,” said Arik.
“Are the conditions on other colonies – the outer ones – any better than this?” asked Stagg.
“It varies, but in general – no,” said Arik as she searched through the database she had been constructing from data available on the Aliens networks.
“And how many outer planets are their compared to the inner?”
“About 8 to 1, although I do feel it important to note that the Empire is composed of nearly 3,000 planets.”
Derick ran the numbers in his head. “So instead of fighting 3,000 planets we fight something like 400… how is that reassuring?” he asked.
“I’d rather fight 400 then 3,000.”
Derick snorted. “We have a single moon. I don’t want to sound defeatist, but I don’t see much of an opportunity here.”
“We’ve only been exploring this Empire for a few weeks and we’ve already found a weakness. All we have to do is keep finding them and start chipping away. Pretty soon we might find an ace to play.”
Derick glanced over at the more classified computer console and device on the engineering deck. “I thought we already had that.”
Stagg nodded. “Sure, but that’s no reason not to cheat and get a few more.”
The Emporer’s Flagship, Imperial
Orbiting Empire Home World
[Vann] looked down at the home world. He never really got tired of seeing it from this perspective. Up here, it made things that took place on the surface seem small, and the things going on in the rest of the Galaxy seem so much closer.
“The Captain reports ready status,” said [Syn] as she entered the observation deck.
“Good,” [Vann] turned around to see the older woman [Sam] apprehensively looking around.
“What do you think of the Imperial?” asked [Vann].
“She’s probably the grandest ship I’ve ever been on sir,” said [Sam].
“It’s a waste is what it is. A party boat for the Emperor to take out and feel like he knows how to operate a military vessel,” said [Charles] from the couch on the other side of the room. The Class B woman and his old subordinate both turned to glare at him.
[Vann] winced slightly at the Class B, [Yuka] was her name or something like that. [Charles] had refused to board the Imperial without her joining him. Why the man was dragging the poor woman around, he had no idea.
“The Imperial is a fully functional military vessel, [Charles]. She’s seen her fair share of battles.”
The man smiled sardonically at the Emperor. “Fighting an idiotic pirate or some power hungry Class B crazy isn’t going to be anything compared to what the Humans will throw at you.”
“Are you going to tell me more about why, now that I’ve so courteously taken your ungrateful drunk ass out of the Consuls reach?”
“The Humans threw a space station at the Singer as a mere distraction, and they’ve had close to a decade to do nothing but plan revenge.” Charles ignored the Emperor’s insult. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve already made contact with the other Class C species your ancestors let slip away.”
[Vann] paused at that. “What?”
[Charles] looked at him for a moment and let out a barking laugh. Leaning forward, he picked up the bottle in front of him and took another swig from it. “You don’t know? Or are you trying to cover it up like all your Fathers have?”
[Vann] crossed his arms and glared at the man.
[Charles] put the bottle down and shrugged. “Species C23. Species C113. Species C950. Species C1335. Species B56.” Charles listed off the names, emphasizing each one heavily. “Those are just a few examples among dozens more.”
“You’re telling me a Class B species managed to avoid joining the Empire?! That’s even less believable than a Class C species escaping into the void! Why the hell wouldn’t they join?”
“The Species rating system was modified after that particular incident. They would be classified very much as a Class C species today.”
[Vann] shook his head. “What you’re suggesting is impossible. No one would be able to live undetected for thousands of years, especially if they are Class C! They’re too dumb to do anything like that.”
“I’m not going to be able to convince you of any of this, any more than I will be able to convince you that this ship is nothing but a pleasure boat with a few guns strapped to it.”
Charles took another swig of his alcohol and closed his eyes.
Irritated [Vann] turned to the Class B woman. “I told you to stop him from drinking!”
The girl quelled away from him. “I’m sorry sir! He went into a section of the ship where I wasn’t allowed and got it!”
[Vann] twitched. “I don’t want excuses, I need him coherent!”
“Stop shouting at her, and I’m perfectly coherent,” said [Charles] not opening his eyes.
[Vann] swore under his breath and turned to [Sam]. “Is he insane?”
She hesitated and slowly shook her head. “Not about Species C1764. I don’t know anything about the other species though.”
“[Syn].”
The woman nodded. “I’ll look into them.”
“Avoid the official databanks here, dig into the backup files on the outer colonies. They’re not as diligent about deleting files when requested,” [Charles] instructed, still not opening his eyes. He raised the bottle to his lips again. [Yuka] moved forwards to try and stop him, but he solidly pushed her away.
[Syn] nodded. “I’ve done so before. Although that method of data acquisition is not particularly legal.”
“So throw me in prison,” growled [Charles].
[Vann] sighed and strode forwards towards the door to the observation deck. The sooner they were underway, the better. Or perhaps the sooner he was out of the room, the better. He wasn’t sure.