F@nService Diner: Chapter 03 Homecoming

Chapter 03: Homecoming

The Jade Kingdom cargo freighter Yuzhao, High orbit over the planet Neon Phoenix.

Technical Sergeant Kale Hill gazed out the window, feeling the calming vibrations of the ship’s engines through the soles of his feet. His sense of serenity was interrupted by the occasional bloom of orange light that marked another drone strike. Hill reasoned that the target would have been infrastructure, probably early warning systems or anti-orbital defenses, communications towers maybe. Were they taking measures to avoid killing civilians? This was not what Hill had signed up for. He had joined the space force to become a Jump Trooper; to travel the galaxy and fight the sadistic, terrorist armies of the Golden Jihad, not to come back to his homeworld and fight his neighbors. That had been back before civil war split the Solar System in half.

So what if the Outer Planets decided to break away from the Federation? The United Solar Federation’s job, besides facilitating interplanetary commerce — another thing it deliberately failed at by the way, was to protect the Solar System from encroachments of foreign power. Rather than protect Solar sovereignty President Baytor rolled out the welcome mat and approved the measure to join The Galactic Union.

Sure times were tough; the economy was stagnant, jobs were scarce, inflation devalued the Solar credit, stem-fuel was in short supply and random acts of terrorism were not. But you didn’t solve those issues by joining the most inefficient, bloated, corrupt and morally dyslexic government organization in known space. Joining the GU was never a solution. It was just something the president’s sponsors wanted but could never get the people to go along with when times were good. Never waste a good crisis.

Part of the reason Baytor was able to get away with incompetence that would have been comical in less serious times, was because the traditional media covered for him, downplaying or hiding his mistakes and ruthlessly skewering anyone who dared to criticize the first puppet president of the USF. Granted, you weren’t supposed to call them puppets anymore, even though that’s what they had always been called. Vreck, Kale had finally gotten used to calling them Feltlings when the self-appointed Ministry of Niceness changed it again. Okay, he could see why a reasonable individual could object to being called a puppet, but who decided that Poly-filled Person was less offensive? That sounds way worse! If Kale were a feltling, that’s right he said it. He said it because it’s his internal monologue and he’ll call them whatever he damn pleases. As a rule he liked feltlings, unless of course a particular individual gave him sufficient cause to break from his rule. And neither he nor anyone in his family tree had ever exploited or oppressed any puppets! Anyway, if he were a feltling the first thing he’d do is strangle the preening meat-bag who who decided everyone has to refer to his people as Poly-filled Persons! Next he’d un-stuff President Baytor for forever destroying the legacy of the first feltling president. Why couldn’t it have been Kermit? That guy was a natural leader and could keep his head in a crisis. Unlike Baytor who declared a state of emergency as soon as he learned about the convention of planets that met on Jacinto and passed an amendment to make joining the GU unconstitutional. Then, overreacting in the way that only a feltling can pull off, he ordered the entire Solar navy, those who hadn’t already deserted or defected, to attack Jacinto, disband the convention of planets and arrest the traitors.

It might have worked too had it not been for the foresight of trillionare futurist Leon Omni, the founder and CEO of the OmniStellar Corporation. He had seen the current crisis coming and knew the establishment had no interest in taking the hard steps necessary to avert it, especially when they could exploit it to grab more money and power. While Baytor and his sponsors waited for the Solar System to descend passed the point of no return Leon had been making plans of his own. Leon had made his fortune inventing a process for extracting stem-matter from asteroids, an environmentally friendly alternative to drilling into planet cores. He also developed an algorithm that vastly improved the speed with which Myth-gates could be charted. These two advancements alone made his company one of the three most profitable in the known universe. But Leon was not satisfied to just make a lot of money. Being something of an idealist, it sickened him to see how the Golden Jihad abused or exterminated the minorities that fell under their control once the USF pulled its troops out of the Crescent.

Working with the OSI, he developed state of the art weapons, drones, ships and suits of powered armor that allowed small teams of well-trained operators to do what thousands of conventional troops could not, fight through the golden god’s asymmetrical hordes and kill his avatar. Naturally the establishment did what it always did when someone was a little too effective at fighting evil, they tried to destroy him. First the mainstream media slandered him as a war profiteer. Then congress tried to bring him up on war crimes as a way to get at the current president. In the end it was only a pardon from the disgraced, outgoing president that allowed Leon to keep his company.

Leon not only kept his company, he also kept the weapons technology and the lessons he had learned fighting the demon god Hastur and his sadistic minions. He put that tech and experience to work; quietly modifying his fleet of asteroid mining megaliths to combat capable at a moment’s notice.

When Baytor’s massive but poorly prepared navy entered the Jacinto asteroid belt they were ambushed by a well armed and coordinated militia fleet consisting of former USF military, mercenaries, asteroid miners and the entire OmniStellar megalith fleet. To make matters worse for the loyalists, their battle-net command and communication system had been designed by OmniStellar. Rumor had it Leon had actually warned them earlier to upgrade the system due to an obscure but potentially catastrophic security vulnerability. Rumor also has it they didn’t listen. Sensors and communications went downthroughout the entire fleet seconds before the opening shots were fired. When the system came back online the coms were a riot of conflicting reports. The sensors hid some enemy ships from sight, others it marked as friendlies and some friendly ships it marked as hostile. To say it was a slaughter would have been an understatement. Had the Outer Alliance commander not ordered his fleet to stop firing on any ship attempting to withdraw it’s quite possible there would have been no survivors. Fortunately for Hill and his team of jump troopers, their ship’s captain had been one of the first to say ‘I didn’t sign up for this crap!’ and retreat before the hull sustained serious damage. Many others were not so lucky.

The Battle of the Belt forced the president and his advisers to acknowledge the reality that a divided Solar Federation was no longer the strongest military force in known space, or the solar system for that matter. The Galactic Union attempted to prop up the Baytor regime by sending money, material support and foreign officers to fill the vacancies left by defectors, deserters, casualties and those whose loyalty was in question.

“It really is a beautiful planet, very different from what I’m used to but still quite beautiful, like a giant ruby floating in space.”

Captain Zhisheng, or Captain Z as the team had taken to calling him on account of being unable to properly pronounce his name, had snuck up behind him again. Granted that was not hard to do, what with the constant rumble of the cargo ship’s engines. Rather than purchase a shiny new cargo freighter for this op the planners had chosen to buy a slightly used cargo vessel with mostly legitimate records and visual signs of natural wear and tear. This would have been a good idea if the wear and tear were strictly cosmetic. The JKM Yuzhao was plagued by alternating mechanical problems, least of which was the constant rumble coming from the main thrusters. Strangely enough Hill actually found the rumble soothing, in a white-noise sort of way, as long as it wasn’t a warning that something important was about to break.

For the passed month it had seemed like the captain was looking over his shoulder every chance he got. Did he suspect something? Hill was still getting used to the concept of foreign officers aboard Solari ships, especially Jade Kingdom officers. Until fairly recently the Jade Kingdom had been the USF’s chief competitor. Now they were supposedly on the same team. It killed him to have to take orders from someone who used to be considered the enemy. He wondered if this was how the minkans felt after signing the Kaufman Treaty. At least the minkans got to put up a fight. The USF just forgot what mattered and had string of bad elections. How pathetic is that?

“Neon Phoenix is a little hot and dry for my taste sir, but it should be nicer this time of year.” Sergeant Hill replied, unsure how much he should reveal about his background.

“Yes, I understand you grew up here.”

Well that answered his question. Captain Zhisheng knew he was an outie. Outie was a derogatory slur some late night talk show host invented to mock outer planet natives. The Joke was on him. Nobody watches late night talk shows anymore, not when you have the OmniNet.

Just wonderful, as if his loyalty wasn’t suspect enough.

“I only lived here till right after high school.” Hill deflected. “First thing I did once I had my diploma was join the space force so I could get off this rock.”

“Interesting.” The captain stroked his thin mustache.

“Like I was saying, Fall really is the best time to visit. Trust me, you don’t want to be here in the summer.”

“Oh, is it worse than the Crescent?”

“Nuh — on a bad day it’s close.”

“Well then you’ll be happy to hear we will be long gone by then.”

“Oh — that’s a relief!”

It wasn’t. A prolonged operation would offer more chances for him and his team to jump ship before President Baytor got any other brilliant ideas that required they go out in a meaningless blaze of glory.

“So if you don’t mind me asking sir, what are we doing here?”

The captain took a deep breathe and folded his arms behind his back as he stared off into the distance, taking in the occasional explosion from the red planet below.

“The drone swarms we smuggled in, months in advance, on cargo ships like this one are the first wave. Their job is to blind the planet’s early warning systems, take out orbital defenses and jam the enemy’s communications. They are also our eyes in the sky; providing us with valuable real-time data.”

“I kind of figured as much sir, but why is my team here?”

The captain became very quiet. After a dramatic pause he turned a serious face towards Hill.

“What do you know about myth-gates sergeant?”

That was a weird question. Hill was taken aback, not expecting to get quizzed on grade school knowledge.

“Only the same things every school child does. They’re big and round, about the size of small moons and they make faster-than-light travel possible.”

“Yes, that’s…”

“They’re also super-weird. They exist in more than three dimensions. What we see isn’t actually them, just a three dimensional slice that cuts through our plane of existence. Nobody really knows how old they are. They may have been here from the beginning — or even before that. At some point they scattered those little marble copies of themselves across the universe. It was by decoding their transmissions that we discovered the science of mythology, the study of messages from another universe.”

“Yes that’s —” The captain waited to see if Hill would cut him off again. “—very thorough. I had heard Solari children didn’t learn anything in school. Apparently I heard wrong.”

“No, you heard right. My education was pretty useless.”

“But where did you..?”

“I had a minkan friend growing up, huge nerd. She would not shut up about that stuff.”

“I see.” The captain appeared disappointed. Also his right eye had twitched slightly at the word minkan.

It was then that Hill remembered there was still some bad blood between the Jade Kingdom and the Minkan Stewardship. During the Galactic War the Jade Kingdom had borne the brunt of the Minkan Empire’s aggression. Minkan ships had glassed entire cities, killing thousands. Though the Empress Xilu Tassarra had committed ritual suicide as penance for her mistakes after signing the treaty and apologizing for the death and suffering she inflicted on the galaxy she never mentioned the Jade Kingdom cities by name. Many in the Jade Kingdom hadn’t forgotten or forgiven. Hill decided to move the conversation along.

“So, is my team here because of a myth-gate?”

“You could say that. We are here because the OmniStellar Corporation is about to attempt something incredibly dangerous.”

“More dangerous than sponsoring a revolution?” Hill asked.

Leon Omni, the founder and CEO of OmniStellar, was well known for having something of a reckless streak. It had served him well in the passed. His company was now the most powerful in known space.

“What they are about to attempt is potentially much more dangerous than starting a civil war.”

Hill’s eyes darted to a cluster of orange explosions on the ground below and found the captain’s words hard to believe.

“What are they trying to do?” Hill asked.

Zhisheng stopped to reflect before he spoke.

“The myths those gates send out seem to communicate a greater truth from beyond our plane of existence. They speak to us on a primal level and have served as the inspiration for our race to colonize the stars. Listening to them has been a great benefit to our species but at the end of the day the spheres are still alien and unknowable.“ He paused. “Every attempt to communicate or interact with them has ended with silence or disaster.”

Kale shuddered, thinking of the stories of early expeditions that had first encountered the extra-dimensional behemoths. These days every space captain knows to keep a safe distance from a myth-gate. Don’t mess with them and they won’t mess with you, but that was a lesson that had to be learned the hard way. Scientists attempting to communicate with one had been driven mad. Ships had been disassembled or had the rules of reality changed in some random fashion that either killed, or changed the crew.

“Do you know how star sirens came to be?” Zhisheng asked.

“I’ve heard, stories.” Hill did not elaborate. Most stories involving the sensuous, shape-shifting femme fatales tended to be of the not-safe-for-work variety.

“It was the early days of space exploration. A Hitraxi science vessel was attempting to make first contact with a sphere and after a month of trying everything they could think of they had nothing to show for it. Finally the chief science officer decided to get — creative. Apparently this got the sphere’s attention. You never can tell what is going to set them off, each sphere being the extra-dimensional manifestation of a different myth. The chief science officer was consumed in the process of — communicating with it, and his female partner was transformed into something, unnatural.”

“The first star siren.” Hill added.

“Yes, she put the rest of the crew in pleasure comas and cocooned them into the walls of her hive, along with the two rescue teams that responded to her distress-call trap. It wasn’t until a minkan ranger ship found the hive that they were able to rescue any of the survivors and learn what had happened. Apparently minkans are highly resistant to the effects of siren-vibrations.”

“Too bad for them.” Hill muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing. — You were saying?”

“Unfortunately, while they were reanimating the crew and treating their withdrawal symptoms the queen siren escaped on a shuttle. Now her treacherous spawn have infested the dark, isolated corners of the galaxy where they lure unsuspecting ships to their doom. It is because of that reckless experiment that now all deep space mining vessels have to travel with voice filters installed on their communications systems and even that’s no guarantee that the crew wont fall for a siren trap.”

“I’m sure sometimes it’s deliberate.” Hill interjected. “If you don’t have anything great to come back to, a siren pleasure coma sounds like a pretty good vacation. Although I hear the withdrawals are hell.”

The captain raised an eyebrow.

“I think you’re missing the point.”

“Probably, what is the point?”

“The point is, OmniStellar is going to attempt to interact with a myth-gate.”

“Oh, well that’s not good.”

“No it’s not. Truth is, as much of a nuisance as sirens are, they don’t kill their victims, not on purpose. And they’ve shown very little interest in seizing power beyond hijacking the occasional ship to add to their hive. But if Omni accidentally creates some new gate-spawn lifeform there is no guarantee it will be as benign.”

“I see. Why are they doing this if it’s such a bad idea?” Hill looked back at the ground as a particularly large explosion lit the cabin in orange.

“They are trying to forge a skeleton key.”

“What’s a skeleton key?”

“Something we cannot allow the Alliance to control. I think it’s time I briefed your team.” The captain turned and walked towards the troopers who were prepping their gear at the front of the cabin.

Hill stole one last glance at the destruction below before joining his team.