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SPECIES C1764

Chapter 1

“We’ve detected an anomalies energy signature in sector gamma 43b.” Said [Tom].

“Anomalies how?” asked [Charles] looking up from the report he was reading.

“It looks like a massive antimatter detonation, at least a [kilogram]!” said [Tom] he glanced back at his instruments and then at the analysis the shipboard computer was running. “It might actually be more, we’ve never seen an antimatter detonation of this scale so the estimation might be off.”

[Charles] nodded and leaned back in his chair. “The distance of the sensor buoy?” he asked.

“It’s a light [day] from the system, a biological categorization team was observing the system about [300] years ago and they left it in place,” Said [Tom].

“Anything pertinent to this?” asked [Charles].

“A seeded planet was sustaining life, they were able to categorize the inhabitants as Dorvakian variant C1764. Called themselves human,” Said [Tom]. “They were at a pre-industrial stage, although predictions had them killing themselves off at the nuclear stage.”

“Well they made it too antimatter so that’s impressive for a C classified variant,” Said [Charles].

“I think it might be a record actually.” Said [Tom]. “Most C’s kill themselves when they discover chemical weapons.”

“We should do an analysis,” Said [Charles].

“Now?” groaned [Tom] as he put his hands over his face.

“Now, wake up [Sam] and tell her to come up here.”

[Tom] continued to grumble but turning back around to his workstation began to work, turning the small scout ship towards the coordinates and preparing it for the FTL jump. [Charles] meanwhile filed his standard report with Empire control informing them that they were going to investigate a subspecies variant killing itself off and make final recordings. If the planet was not too badly damaged it might make a good colony site in a few hundred [years] once the remnants of the C classified inhabitants had died off.

“Ready for FTL sir.” Said [Tom].

“Execute,” Said [Charles].

The ship’s drive which had been powering up behind them slowly eased them into subspace, not even shuddering at the transition the ship entered subspace and directing its thrusters burned propelling them towards the system of interest.

[Sam] yawning came onto the bridge and sat down at her workstation. “What’s up?” She asked.

“Anomaly in sector G43b, a C classified species was reported to be advancing in technology there,” Said [Charles].

[Sam] perked up and glanced back at her workstation and began to sort through the data on it, she was the biological specialist after all so she was no doubt curious.

“Wow, they are a deviant species.” Said [Sam] she put an image of the humans up on the screen.

“White skinned for the most part, they have that hair growth on their heads and look at that two extra fingers.” 2

Charles nodded in affirmation as he looked at the image, the humans certainly were a deviant from the normal Dorvakian structure especially the skin and hands. A correctly evolved seed world should have produced the normal red skin and natural eyes. Something had obviously gone wrong in the system, and they were obviously not fit to be inducted into the Empire.

“Any other changes?” asked [Charles].

[Sam] nodded. “They have the C classification,” she said.

[Charles] rolled his eyes, “besides that.”

“They are aggressive and animalistic impulses within the species were never correctly removed. They kill each other in droves and were never expected to make it past the nuclear stage. But this is an antimatter signature?” asked [Sam].

“They made it a little further but then blew themselves up, the energy signature was big enough to crack a Garden world’s crust,” said [Tom].

[Charles] frowned at this analysis. “Will the planet recover? Natural worlds for colonization are rare enough as it is.”

“In a few hundred years most of it will be habitable with minimal reconstruction effort. Although the fauna and flora will most likely have to be replaced if a class C species developed. Other deviations from the normal genetics are likely.” Said [Tom]. He glanced back at the information in front of him and nodded.

“The seed must have mutated, the catalog team was unable to identify all of the species on the surface,” he said.

“Alright, enough. How long until we drop into the system?” he asked.

“[ten minutes]” said Tom.

[Charles] nodded and leaned back in his chair. “We’ll see what these idiotic offshoots have done then.”

---

“Ready?” asked the pilot turning back in his seat to look at his partner.

“Just do it Malcolm, I’m nervous enough as it is!” said Lincoln, she was starting to regret being a savant when it came to mathematical calculations. She should have been on the ground doing these calculations, not up here with some hotheaded test pilot. But the combined resources of Earth and Mars were behind this and they didn’t even have enough resources to do a test flight with a probe first. So they wanted the best on the Longboat IV to keep the FTL systems stable. Which was going to require her expertise the first time through, after that the geeks back at control could build programs to do it. The issue was that no one had mathematical models to predict the internals of subspace accurately, so she would have to do it on the fly.

Malcolm was pilot from the war, and like all of the pilots from that time he was insane. The thought of being flung through the solar system at FTL speeds was just another day on the job for him. It would hopefully be safer than being launched form the magnetic rails around Earth and Mars but still, even at best Lincoln calculated a 23.259% chance that she would be unable to keep the ships systems in sync. Tumbling out of subspace at near the speed of light would mean being annihilated by stellar dust in an instant.

“You sure you don’t want to run another calculation?” asked Malcolm turning back in his seat to look at her.

Lincoln glowered at him. “No. And for your information one of the sensor buoys was not calibrated. I had to change all of the calculations so we had the right vectors. It would take most people about a week to do that. I’m sorry we’ve been sitting in here for ten hours,” She said fuming.

Malcolm laughed. “I’m just kidding doc, I figured out a long time ago not to doubt the eggheads. I saw a guy in my squad try to do his own magnetic launch calculations once, he messed it up and for a whole day he knew he was going to slam into the moon at 200 klicks a second! He was yelling half the time and drying the other half, it was horrible.”

Lincoln winced, whatever had happened to that poor man would be nothing compared to their state if something went wrong. The console next to Lincoln beeped and she glanced over at it. “Control agrees with my modified calculations. We’re cleared to accelerate whenever you’re ready.” said Lincoln.

Malcolm smiled and without another word activated the magnetic launch. At nearly 20 kilometers long the launch system orbiting Saturn was the largest structure in the solar system, and even it could barely get them up to 0.005% the speed of light. The inertia dampening systems and mass reduction properties of the ship would lessen the effects of acceleration, but it would still be uncomfortable. It was needed though, without a significant velocity a ship could not make it into the rift which would hypothetically remain open for only a few milliseconds.

Lincoln grunted as she was shoved back into her seat, and watched as the rail which was actually more of a tube flashed past them the super magnets inside of it accelerating them down it in the vacuum of space. Within moments they were clear. 3

“Extending stabilization arms,” said Malcolm. The arms on the side of the ship unfolded and extended up and around the core of the ship, forming an almost complete dish. The ship now looked like a communications dish but inverted, the dish pointed behind them.

“Arming the warheads,” Malcolm flipped another switch at his station and Lincoln felt the slight movement of the ship as the payload doors opened, a strange matter warhead pointing in front of them and the largest antimatter warhead ever produced pointed behind them. She tried not think about the fact that they were sitting on the combined arms of post war Earth and Mars, nearly 1.5 kilograms of antimatter.

It was the interaction between these two energy dense elements which would rend space-time for a fraction of a second theoretically allowing Longboat IV to cross into subspace.

“You ready doc?” Asked Malcolm turning around to look at her, she was pale white but a small replica of his own smile was on her features. Despite everything she was just as excited as he was.

Lincoln took a breath and nodded. “We’re ready, as soon as we cross the barrier transfer control to me. Maintaining sync will be critical and for all tests to be performed we need to remain inside of the event for 2 seconds,” said Lincoln.

“Roger, we can go for Alpha Centauri later,” said Malcolm only half joking. He turned back to his station and double checked the warheads. At the end of the war he had vowed to never fire one of these things again, but destroying the entirety of the antimatter reserves for both Earth and Mars in one go to move at FTL speeds was something he could bend that vow for.

“Launching warheads in ten seconds,” said Malcolm.

“Ready,” said Lincoln. She was staring at the sensor data and the analysis of all the screens around her, she was ready, and despite the adrenaline flooding her system she felt calm. She would do this.

The two sat in silence as the countdown reached zero. The missiles fired one streaking forward and one behind, they would detonate both in less than a second and either send themselves hurtling into subspace or kill them in the center of the largest explosion in history.

The missiles detonated, and the dish behind the ship caught the energy of the antimatter blast and translated the energy forward and into the frame of the ship charging the shields and reflectors far past their designed energy outputs, in the same moment the strange matter was released and it coiled outwards into the darkness of space tearing at the very fabric of it.

When the particles of the two explosions met, instead of annihilating normal matter they turned to the only substance left to them, that fabric of space that both were inherently able to damage. Only together could they destroy it though, for a few moments before the Universe repaired itself.

Malcolm winced as half of the systems in the ship around him shorted out and went dark, only the more basic and redundant systems left to him. He hardly paid attention though, as in front of him he stared into a void. His brain was desperately trying to categorize what he was seeing in front of him and failing. It was darkness and light, uniform and random, chaotic and organized.

Lincoln was typing as quickly as she could into the consoles in front of her manipulating and changing the dynamic of the reflectors as well as the mass of the Longboat IV in an effort to keep everything in sync.

They flashed into the void, and Lincoln stared out into framework of the universe marveling. He could not understand it, but if it was anything it was beautiful. Like a thunderstorm it held power and purpose but it was not evil. Like a Mother it stared reproachfully at him chastising him for breaking the rules, yet somewhat wryly impressed by his feat.

Lincoln hardly had time to spare a glance at the window, the computer of the Longboat had rerouted everything around the damaged section to redundant processors and the tests to probe what subspace was were underway. They had been inside of the anomaly for just under a second.

At the two second mark the tests finished.

Lincoln killed the emitters around the ship.

“Take us out Malcolm!” She shouted over the din of the machines and the roar of the universe all around them. Looking up she was startled for a moment, outside the ship floated raw and incredibly complex equations of a fanciful math, equations that promised the very nature of existence at their conclusion. She shook her head and looked at them again, marveling. A savant she might have been, able to see math and equations in the world around her but even this was beyond her. As it should be she mused, no one should truly know the nature of reality. They might glance at it and occasionally catch a glimpse but it should never be caught.

Malcolm thumbed the controls and another much smaller missile edged out in front of them. The nuclear explosion was only of a 50 megaton yield, strong enough to hopefully knock them back into regular space.

The missile sped away and detonated, subspace hardly reacted showing none of the classic signs of a nuclear detonation but still the energy was imparted and inside of the beauty of subspace the two saw the ugliness of reality, and the blinking of familiar stars. 4

“Here we go!” said Malcolm as they flew through it.

The rest of the systems in the Longboat IV shorted as they crossed the horizon and they were ejected into the inner solar system.

Lincoln glanced down at her one display that was still functioning, they were nearing Venus and they were on track she breathed a sigh of relief, her calculations had been correct. The net would slow them from the bleed over velocity.

Malcolm hit the panel in front of him. “Hell Yeah!”

Lincoln smiled and shook her head, he had the chance to immortalize his words, and she considered it for a moment though they were oddly appropriate words.

---

“What is it?” asked [Charles] annoyed.

“Sir, I’m not sure,” Said [Tom].

“Did they not kill themselves off?” asked [Charles].

“Sir, I’m detecting a subspace rupture. A recent one, coinciding almost perfectly with the antimatter detonation.” Said [Tom].

[Charles] frowned, “what does that mean?”

[Tom] shook his head, “I have no idea sir, and neither inhabited planet is showing signs of an antimatter explosion. The detonation and tear in subspace took place near the second largest gas giant in the system,” said [Tom].

“Sir there is no evidence of tachyon manipulation,” Said [Sam].

[Charles] glanced over at her. “What?! How did a subspace rupture form?”

[Sam] glanced back at her data. “I have no idea, but it coincides with the antimatter detonation. Is it no conceivable that this species has discovered a way to enter subspace without tachyons, but instead antimatter?”

“With over [1.5 kilograms] of antimatter?! That’s insane!” said [Tom].

[Charles] shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, we need a science team to investigate it. We are a scout team. If a class C species had discovered a way to enter subspace without tachyon emissions the Empire needs to know. Especially if they are using antimatter to do so.” Said [Charles].

“Yes sir, shall I plot a course back to our route?” asked [Tom].

“No, take us to the home world.”

Chapter 2

Lincoln fidgeted and crossed her arms, then feeling that it was awkward uncrossed them again.

“I swear you were more nervous during the flight,” Said Malcolm.

“I don’t see the point of this, we need to work on refining the equations and the systems. From the cursory data analysis I was able to run when they finally let us out of medical I think we should be able to replicate our flight with a far smaller amount of antimatter and strange matter, the amounts we used were extravagant due to the unknowns. If the systems on the Longboat IV were properly tuned the amount of fuel we used would have been enough to send us nearly anywhere in the galaxy, with just a few micrograms of antimatter and strange matter you could go to Epsilon Eridani in a day and have enough fuel to make it back!” said Lincoln excitedly.

Malcolm nodded, he had learned by now to just humor her. When she got going she would continue on for hours and although Malcolm had at first found it annoying he had quickly figured out that it was her way of dealing with stress. Sitting up on a stage in front of a crowd of thousands with live video feeds streaming to the rest of the Sol system in what had to be one of the most viewed streams in history had him nervous.

Malcolm shifted in his chair and winced, the strengthening drugs still hadn’t managed to eliminate the pain in his joints he sometimes got while on Earth but then it was better than most Martians. He had been in peak physical form when he started the regimen at the end of the war. The older Martians were having difficulty despite the anti-aging formula which was supposed to keep people young, many of them wearing power suits when daring enough to show themselves on Earth. 5

“So you think they’ll go for it?” asked Lincoln cutting into his thoughts.

“For what?” asked Malcolm.

“Building more ships, to explore!” said Lincoln.

Malcolm chuckled, “No, this was a political stunt doc. You know that. Besides we used up all of the antimatter and both sides have vowed never to produce it again. The political mess to get the production of that started up again will be insane. That was the last flight for a long time,” said Malcolm.

Lincoln’s face visibly fell. “I know that, but now that we know it’s possible. You don’t think they won’t try?” she asked.

Malcolm shook his head. “No, one of the factors of the war was Mars wanting independence, and that’s a single planet. How much worse would a war be if it’s between star systems and over dozens of planets? It’s not politically worth it to expand right now.” Malcolm paused. “We might even go back to being stagnate,” He said.

Lincoln slowly nodded a frown on her face. “It would be nice though, to explore the stars. You don’t want to fly towards a black hole or a red supergiant? Fly through an atmosphere so rich with hydrogen that you never need to touch the ground? I would think an old pilot like you would love that!”

Malcolm considered this, the gleam in her eyes was something he had once seen in his own. It was naïve and excited glee, not that unlike a child. For a moment he wished he could feel like that again. Lincoln might have been working for Earth during the war, calculating trajectories for fighter intercepts and bomb yields, hell she had even developed the Rods from God program, but if what he told her was right she had never seen the carnage on the front lines, he had and the carnage had squeezed all of that hope out of him.

Malcolm opened his mouth to respond but it was too late, the President for Earth had stepped onto the stage and a quite had fallen over the crowd.

Malcolm looked the man over, he was the typical political type his suit impeccable and grin fake. Still he was better than the last one who had provoked the war. This man was a new unknown element looking to gain power in the post war landscape.

The President waved his hand at the crowd and a cheer rang up from the throng of people.

He stepped up to the podium and still smiling slowly lowered his arms and the noise in the stadium slowly fell.

“Mars, and Earth have succeeded! As many saw yesterday we together have done the impossible! Together in what I hope is only the first of many successful cooperative projects between Earth and Mars we will strive for a better future for both our peoples, a future where we prove that nothing is impossible!”

Another cheer ran through the crowd and Malcolm felt a shiver go down his spine, the sound was almost primal. These were not planted actors in the crowd cheering, these were real people. He sat up a little straighter in his chair even as his back complained. The President was annoying, but the people were a different matter.

“The team that defeat the laws of physics and proved that nothing is impossible, a Terran and a Martian working together and braving some of the greatest dangers known to man, willing to face the unknown together. That is something that we should all strive to do as we rebuild our planets and work towards a better future!” The president raised his fist and the crowd again cheered.

The President continued on for several more minutes on the same theme, the continued co-operation and peace between Mars and Earth. Talking nothing more about what the teams of scientists on both sides had done, what the engineers had conceived and built, nor what the dreamers like Lincoln were hoping for. What humanity was hoping for.

Malcolm stood.

The President continued on for several moments before he noticed and turned slightly to see Malcom standing behind him a small grin on his face. The politician took it in stride however.

“Now some words from the brave pilot of the Longboat IV Lieutenant James Malcolm!” He took a step away from the podium the false cheerfulness still on his face.

Walking forward Malcolm took the spot at the podium and looked out at the crowd, and all those billions of people sitting behind the lenses of the cameras watching throughout the solar system. If only a few people would listen, then it would be worth it.

“This is not an accomplishment between Earth and Mars,” the entire stadium was quite now, and Malcolm felt the weight of those words and what they could imply, he continued though. 6

“This is an accomplishment for humanity as a whole. Since the dawn of our race we have dreamed of the stars, we have seen them as holes in the curtain of night, we noticed a few of those stars that danced across the heavens. Mars, was once a star to the people who had only their eyes to gaze upon the heavens. Now millions of people live on that star,” Malcolm paused and glanced back at Lincoln, her mouth was open in astonishment at what he was doing.

“Millions of people live on that star because humanity needed to conquer it, but with our first step into the universe we stumbled and like always we fought. History has shown that for all of our accomplishments humanity is always ready to go to war. We cannot let that happen again, and we cannot turn back and return to where we came from. We cannot stop moving, our fumble was because we were still for too long. After conquering the cradle it took us nearly two hundred years to once again start moving. We cannot stop, we should not stop.”

Malcolm paused for a moment collecting himself and sorted out his next words. When he did so a small smattering of applause grew inside the crowd. Within moments it was a thunderous applause. Louder than anything before the people were stomping on the ground simply making noise. Another shiver went down Malcolm’s spine and bolstered her continued.

“I will not rest until humanity has conquered another star in the heavens above, and we should not stop until we have explored all that the stars can offer to us. Humanity has fallen tripped and stumbled, but we are poised to take our first real steps into the universe. To stop now would be an insult to those who came before us, to those who died when we did stumble. We are not Terran’s and Martians working to fix our broken worlds. We are humans reaching out to conquer the stars!”

He stepped back from the podium and in a gesture that would never be forgotten reached up towards the fading light of the sky, making a fist towards the heavens he had pledged to conquer. In the noise from the crowd that followed no one heard the final element that would solidify the vow.

Malcolm hardly felt it at first, a slight pinch in his chest. He was running off of adrenaline and the emotions of the crowd around him. Looking down though he was for a moment curious about the stain spreading across his dark blue naval uniform. The pain hit and he collapsed to his knees one hand still reaching up towards the heavens, the other moving to his chest.

Lincoln was staring at Malcolm her face on him instead of the sky, she saw him collapse and the dark stain that was spreading across his back. She would later be told that the scream from her lips at that moment was one of the most horrible things people in the crowd had ever heard, but in the moment she didn’t even hear it.

The scream was picked up by the crowd, and in an instant everyone knew. The bodyguards moved to tackle the president and other VIP’s. The people in the front of the crowd turned and spotting the man with the gun pounced on him. Lincoln stumbled forwards and collapsed to her knees next to Malcolm. The image of the Terran mathematician cradling the Martian pilot in her lap weeping, would become more famous than the pose he had struck moments before.

The Terran weeping for the Martian, two humans, one who dreamed of the stars and one who wanted to make the woman he was falling in love with happy stared into each other’s eyes.

“Don’t stop,” Malcolm took a shuddering breath, “Don’t let them take that dream from you.”

---

[Charles] opened the link and sat down at the terminal.

The image of an annoyed High Scientist appeared on the holographic pad in front of him, complete with desk and disheveled clothing.

“What is it?” growled the man not even looking up from his work to address the captain of the scout ship.

“I need your analysis High Scientist, on a world we were investigating, before I make an official recommendation. My team is unable to come to any definitive conclusions,” said [Charles].

The High Scientist looked up from his terminal annoyed, “That’s the work of a Science apprentice, are you trying to insult me Captain?” asked the man.

[Charles] shook his head. “No, this is a unique case. I’m sending the data to your terminal now,” said [Charles]. He transferred the data and waited. There was the sound of the notification from the High Scientist’s terminal and apparently humoring him the man turned to look at the data.

For a moment he blinked, then his eyes widened and the whites flushed blood red in surprise. The High Scientist brought the terminal in front of him closer and stared at it.

For several minutes [Charles] remained silent and let the man read, he was one of the thousand High Scientists in the Empire, and if he was astonished than there was reason to be. 7

After several minutes the man reached up and wiped off his brow and then turned back to [Charles].

“This, this is insane!” he said.

“Yes sir, we have sent preliminary data to processing, but that takes months even flagged as high as my authority allows. With your stamp of approval on our analysis it will move to the top and be brought to the Councils attention,” Said [Charles].

The High Scientist shook his head, “This far more dangerous, we need to give this information to the Emperor.”

“Sir?!” said [Charles] astonished.

“This data, it shows that a Class C species which developed from a malignant seed was able to successfully breach subspace without using tachyons,” said the High Scientist.

“The importance of that sir?” asked [Charles].

“How do our ships navigate through the depths of space Captain?”

“Through utilization of tachyons to direct out subspace jumps, the energy being derived from natural tachyon emissions..” [Charles] trailed off his own eyes going red, “How did they direct themselves, without a tachyon beacon?”

The High Scientist nodded, “Indeed, our ships function by locking onto a static tachyon source and jump to it by breaching the highest layers of subspace. I am not an expert in physics but from what I can tell this class C species was able to breach the deepest levels of subspace, any jump within the galaxy would take less than a day, and they do not need tachyons. Left unattended they could expand more rapidly than the Empire, or even jump into our most protected systems. With no need to use tachyon beacons their drives have no limits!” said the High Scientist. He was standing now, and took a breath.

“Do you see why I suggest we bring this to the Emperor?” he asked the stunned Captain.

“Yes sir!”

“I am transmitting my personal codes, I want in in orbit of the home world in a [day] I will meet you,” said the High Scientist. He then cut the transmission.

[Charles] glanced down at his console, the credentials were indeed now in his possession. He shuddered slightly, the High Scientist could be executed for giving him unrestricted access to the home world beacon. Still, if the man was putting his life on the line for this it was more dire than he had first imagined.

---

Lincoln looked up at the General. The man was tall and his skin was pale from lack of sunlight, traits common among the Martian population, but even in what had to be painfully high gravity the man was holding himself up straight.

“Did he make it?” asked Lincoln, although she already knew the answer.

The man sat down in the hospital chair next to her. He was unsure of how to say it, the woman was still covered in the blood of her partner and the look in her eyes was one he had seen too often. She was on the brink of snapping.

“He did not. The bullet was coated in a toxin which prevented the nano-machines from repairing the arterial wall of his heart. It also compromised the oxygen levels of his brain almost immediately, the doctors have had him on life support but there is nothing left to save,” Said the General.

Lincoln slowly nodded, her eyes were burning but she had not more tears.

“We caught the man, or more accurately the crowd caught the man. He is in the intensive care unit under guard, almost every bone in his body was fractured. From what we can ascertain he was a member of a now defunct Pro-Terran organization. His son was killed in a raid that Lieutenant Malcolm performed.”

“Can I see him?” asked Lincoln.

“Lieutenant Malcolm is in room 205, I can show you,” Said the General.

“Malcolm is dead. He died on that stage, I want to see the man who shot him,” growled Lincoln.

The General hesitated. “I’m not sure that would be a good idea, this is already a political mess. Why do you want to see him?”

“To make sure that he dies.” 8

The General raised an eyebrow at that, the woman was small even by Earth standards, she had never served in the military, and as far as he knew she had never taken a life.

“As much as you and I might think he deserves death, he must still have his day in court.”

Lincoln shook her head and stood. “It’s not worth it, too much would be wasted. We need to start working. His life is an obstacle increasing the tension between Mars and Earth. If we remove that variable than relations are improved and no time is wasted,” said Lincoln.

“Working on what?” asked the General as he stood up to tower over the woman.

“What he promised, I’m going to fly to Alpha Centauri for him. I’m going to colonize the stars.”

The General paused, the intensity in her eyes was frightening even compared to the horrors he had seen during the war. She was praised as the best mathematician in the Sol system, and had single handedly written the algorithms to guide the Rods’ from God in the Earth defense systems. She had calculated how to jump into subspace a feat which had escaped physicists for hundreds of years. To her everything was math.

She knew she was right, as surely as 2+2=4.

“He’s in room 406,”said the General.

“Thank you.” Lincoln started down the hallway.

“Ms. Lincoln.”

She paused and turned back to him.

“If you want to make sure he didn’t die in vain you’ll need help,” Said the general.

“Are you offering?” She asked.

The General thought about it for a moment, the politicians were keeping to known issues. On both sides neither wanted to move forward, to concerned with maintaining the little power they held. The General thought back to the sound of the crowd in that stadium, the primal sound of the will to march forward. Humanity was poised to spread out into the heavens, and would not be denied.

The General smiled, “Yes I suppose I am.”

Chapter 3

Lincoln stepped up to the guards flanking the room, a Martian and a Terran guard by the looks of it consider one was in power armor with deep red and the other was in a deep blue uniform.

“I’m going inside.” Said Lincoln.

The guards glanced at one another, “We can’t let you in ma’am,” said the Terran.

“I hold the status of a TS-15, step aside,” Said Lincoln.

The Terran guard shifted uncomfortably where he stood. “Ma’am I was given orders by Vice Admiral Jones, you do not outrank his commands even if that was how civilian ranks worked.” Said the Terran guard.

“Then you’ll have to arrest and drag away the woman who is distraught over the death of her partner, who just flew the FTL ship and is a Sol system hero,” hissed Lincoln. She took another step towards the door the two guards were in front of.

They glanced at one another. The Martian caved first.

“I’ve got an armor malfunction, my hydraulics are leaking. I think that stuff is toxic,” Said the Martian.

His counterpart looked at him for a moment and then leaning down inspected the man’s armor, reaching down the Terran picked the knife off of his belt.

“Right here?” asked the Terran as he stabbed the knife into the leg of the suit.

“Yeah right there, we should get someone to clean this up incase its toxic right?” asked the Martian. 9

“Let’s go,” said the Terran. The two guards quickly jogged away from the door, careful to keep the “toxic” leak from getting on anything.

Lincoln watched them leave and taking a breath she opened the door to the room and stepped inside. A man in his late forties without anti-aging drugs was on the bed in the room, a vial of regenerative nano-machines plugged into the IV drip going into his arm.

The man glanced up as she entered, and a brief look of surprise crossed his face before it turned into sneer.

“He dead?”

“Yes, your assassination was successful,” Said Lincoln, her voice neutral. To anyone who knew her that was a warning, she was not loud when angry, but instead terrifyingly quite.

“You sad I killed Martian? You were fucking weren’t you? Being a good little whore getting all up and close with that filth,” the man spat his face contorting as he spoke.

“You know I’m at a loss about what you were trying to accomplish, do you want to enlighten me?” asked Lincoln her voice low.

“The Martian’s killed millions of us! Now the governments want to be all nice with one another!? We have millions of soldiers! They have thousands! We can crush them and make them pay for what they have done!” Shouted the man his face red.

Lincoln looked at the man almost pitying him, he had no concepts of what the tactics behind the war or why Earth and Mars were nearly equal despite the numerical advantage. The Martians had a working Elevator, something that would never function on Earth. They could move things into orbit with the greatest of ease while Earth still have to force everything up through the atmosphere.

Shaking her head Lincoln picked up the remote for the entertainment center in the room.

“So killing a single man, who had just accomplished what explorers has been striving to do for generations is retribution, vengeance upon the enemy of humanity?” asked Lincoln.

The man was starting to notice her deadly calm and the almost predatory look on her face.

“That’ right,” he said somewhat hesitantly.

Lincoln flipped the screen on and the news began to play, showing the throngs of people outside the hospital, it showed half of a crowd that were paying respects with candles and hastily constructed but genuine posters, and then panning moved to the other half of the crowd who were irately standing at the police lines in front of the hospital itching to get past the defenses.

The man glanced at the screen and shook his head. “Idiots, lambs to the slaughter willing to follow whatever the politicians spout. Real humans are the people born on Earth, the people who abandoned her do not deserve to live.” Said the man.

Reaching down Lincoln unscrewed the nano-machines from the IV.

“Hey!” the man shouted he struggled against the bonds holding him to the bed.

Ignoring him Lincoln opened a drawer in the bed next to him and finding the longest and thinnest needle she could she quickly screwed it into the vial.

“You have no respect for Martians, you will not use their anti-aging cure but you will use their other medicines to heal your body?” asked Lincoln as she held up the vial to the man. He continued to struggle but the cuffs locking him to the bed did not budge.

“Put that back you bitch!” he shouted.

“Do you know what I did during the war?” asked Lincoln as she spun the vial around in her hand ignoring the man.

“Fuck if I know, you were some cowering scientist hiding in the bunkers that soldiers protected with their lives!” he said.

Lincoln smiled. “I was in a bunker, but inside that bunker I killed thousands of people. Math, numbers and equations do not lie. I was the one who calculated kinetic weapons strikes against the Martians. I calculated where they would be, and when to strike.”

The man was groaning now, without the fresh infusion of nano-machines the amount in his body making repairs and dulling pain was rapidly decreasing.

“I have killed humans, what makes you think I won’t kill something that is less than human?”

“You’ll be arrested!” growled the man through the pain, perhaps realizing for the first time that he was in danger trapped with a predator in the room. 10

“No I won’t be. I’m a hero, the only real symbol of the relationship between Earth and Mars. So long as I don’t kill you in front of the camera’s the people won’t care. Hell I could probably get away with it anyway,” said Lincoln as she spread her arms out as if accepting the praise of the crowds.

“You’re insane!” Said the creature in the bed.

Lincoln leaned down and poised over the thing held the vial in front of it, the needle inches from the eye.

“No I’m Nemesis,” she said and stabbed the needle into its eye, going right through the tear duct and past the blood brain barrier directly into the brain.

She let him struggle for a moment before pulling the needle out, and wiping it on the sheets of the bed Lincoln carefully unscrewed the needle and placed the vial back into the appropriate slot.

“So you just stab me in the eye? I thought you were going to kill me!” growled the creature as it wincingly closed and opened its eyes a few times, there was little blood the high concentration of nano-machines having already repaired the damage.

Lincoln smiled and turning, slowly walked out of the room leaving the thing to its fate.

Nano-machines for all of their benefits could not under any circumstances be allowed into the brain. The tiny machines were dumb, simply repairing the damage to any cells around them. There would be no evidence to suggest she had done anything, and in hours the thing would suffer the same fate as Malcolm. It would feel its mind slipping away though as the tiny machines moved through its sorry excuse for a brain.

The two guards watched as she walked away, “So what do you think she did?” asked Ares as he finished patching up the hydraulic “leak”.

“I’m not sure we want to know, did you see the look on her face? She was smiling!” Said James.

“So?” asked Ares as he stood back up.

“Who the hell smiles like that after confronting an assassin?”

“She volunteered to sit on top of a 1.5 kilogram antimatter warhead. That’s a serious level of crazy in my book,” Said Ares.

“You live in a bubble on a planet that’s like Antarctica but colder and you’re calling her crazy?” said James.

Ares shrugged, “its perspective I guess.”

James rolled his eyes and followed Ares back to the door, “Did you get the same kind of order I did?” he asked.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Ares looking like the paragon of innocence.

“Ah, so no orders in your HUD about letting the good doctor into the room, definitely nothing like that?” asked James.

Ares exaggeratedly shook his head, “No, that would imply something unethical wouldn’t it? I didn’t get an order like that and neither did you, right?” he asked.

James nodded, “Right.”

The two guards stood by the door and waited, inside the room they could hear the moaning and the beginnings of the pleas for help. Both men were experienced in war, having served under commanders who were known for results, and despite their youthful appearances they did not usually serve as guards they were usually the ones getting past the guards.

They were both wondering how the higher ups on the two sides had known to let Lincoln into the room.

---

[Charles] paced back and forth across the yellow tiles of the palace briefing room, the High Scientists of which there were now at least thirty were all congregated in the front of the room their discussions heated and loud. Various other dignitaries including several councilors and Generals were also in attendance although they were seated waiting for the briefing to start which would be when the Emperor and his staff were present.

“Will you sit down?” asked [Sam].

[Charles] sighed and following his subordinate’s suggestion sat down.

“This is amazing, I never thought I would even get to visit the home world let alone the imperial Palace! I get to see the Emperor up close as well! This is amazing,” said [Tom] as he looked around the ornate briefing room. 11

“You sound like a giddy colony boy,” said [Sam].

“I am,” said [Tom].

[Sam] rolled her eyes, “I pity the woman that bonds with you.”

[Tom’s] smile just widened.

“Will you both shut it, were in the Palace and your bickering like cadets. Show some decorum,” Said [Charles] admonishing his team.

They were prevented from responding as the first Royal guard stepped into the room, instantly all conversation died and those sitting quickly got up to their feet.

Several more guards in their dark green uniforms marched into the room, with the Emperor in the middle of the throng, looking as serious as he could at his [1 meter] height. Behind the young Emperor were his Consul’s and handmaidens.

Everyone in the room placed their right hand over their right eye as he entered greeting the young Emperor with respect.

The Emperor barely acknowledged this and sat down in his designated seat in the front row of the briefing room, his handmaidens and Consul’s flanking him as the guards took up positions around the perimeter of the room. With the Emperor seated everyone else quickly took their places.

The High Scientist, [Roland] with whom [Charles] had first communicated stepped forward the small controller for the projector in his hand.

“We are honored by your presence Emperor, I regret that the purpose of the brief is to inform you of a great threat to your Empire,” said High Scientist [Roland].

The Emperor said nothing and clearing his throat [Roland] activated the projector and a simplified pictorial representation of system in G43b appeared in the air above the High Scientist. It quickly zoomed into the second largest gas giant where a representation of the tear into subspace was shown.

“Approximately a [day] ago a routine patrol detected deviant power readings from this system consistent with a large antimatter detonation. Assuming that the C classified species that had developed from the seed in that system had destroyed themselves the patrol following protocol and jumped to the system to examine the world to see if anything remained to colonize and thus expand your Empire,” High Scientist [Roland] nodded towards the Emperor.

“Instead they found evidence of a subspace rupture, by utilization of a technology previously thought to be only theoretical. This class C species opened a rift into subspace via antimatter and [strange matter] interactions. They do not need tachyon beacons to direct themselves in subspace transit,” said [Roland].

A gasp went up from the councilors and Generals in the room, and one of the Consul’s stood.

[Marcus] looked up at the High Scientist, “That is impossible! A malignantly formed C class species has never developed FTL, much less an FTL technology beyond the capabilities of our own Empire,” he said, his tone almost accusatory.

High Scientist [Roland] once more put his right hand over his right eye, paying his respects to the Consul. “I am stating only the facts, how the species developed this technology is unknown. They might have had help from the Outcasts for all we know. All I am requesting is that this system be more closely monitored, perhaps by a dedicated team,” Said Roland.

He flipped to the next image, and it showed the alien craft that [Sam] had been able to catch images of as it docked with a structure around the second planet in the system. It showed a small ship roughly cylindrical in shape and with a dish mounted on the back.

“Considering the small design of the ship which traveled through subspace as well as the short distance covered and the massive energy needed to fuel its journey I would suggest that the craft was a prototype. For now it is an oddity which could become a threat in the future,” said [Roland].

“And you would suggest that was simply monitor this development?” asked [Marcus].

[Roland] hesitated. “For now I would suggest we monitor them, yes. If we can see how they developed these systems then the Empire would be able to expand at a much greater rate, we would no longer have to wait for beacons to make it to neighboring star systems around our borders. Wipe them out and the technology might be lost,” said [Roland].

[Marcus]’s eyes widened at the prospect, to be responsible for allowing the Empire to expand uninhibited would solidify the name of those responsible in history. Slowly he sat back down.

“I would propose sending the [Singer] to monitor the system,” said [Roland].

Another consul stood, “The [Singer]? She’s the last ship still in service from the rebellions. Why send her?” he asked. 12

“The cloaking system’s which allowed her to be so successful in that war will allow her to remain undetected by whatever means of detection the C species uses. If they have not had first contact the presence of an alien ship would no doubt prompt faster production of these ships. The [Singer] need only access their communications network and locate plans for construction of the drive system. Once that is complete the elimination of the species would be my recommendation.”

---

Lincoln leaned back in her chair and once again had to catch herself, the nervous movement was normal enough on Earth but in Martian gravity it easily threw off her sense of balance when everything moved too easily.

Flailing her arms out Lincoln winced as she collapsed onto the deck plates, directly in fornt of the door to the lab which to her horror opened a second later letting someone into her lab.

“Need help?” asked the General somewhat bemused.

“No thank you, I’m still getting used to this gravity.” Said Lincoln as she righted herself and did a quick hope to demonstrate her readiness. Unfortunately she put too much energy into it and performed a John Carter like jump into the air where she once again lost her footing and collapsed.

“Oww,” She groaned and much more slowly this time picked herself up from the floor.

Brushing herself off as well as she could, Martian dust seemed to make it into every nook and cranny she turned to the General.

“We’ve been found out,” said the General.

Lincoln paled, “How?”

“The information gathering capabilities of a certain Terran Captain seem to be more adept than I had anticipated. Captain Takuya, the head of special tactics has contacted me,” said the General.

Lincoln’s eyes widened at the name, “Captain Takuya? We’ve got nothing to worry about then,” Said Lincoln.

The General nodded in agreement, “He contacted me when the Yamato entered orbit, and provided enough information to show that he is not guessing about what we are doing. He has the particle accelerator logs, how he got them is another matter that will be sorted out latter. He wants to meet with you while the ambassadors on his ship meet with the Martian delegates. He’s threatening to release the information to his superiors,” said the General.

“We can meet, I was a passenger aboard the Yamato at one point, he owes me,” Said Lincoln.

“That favor wouldn’t happen to involve the Yamato skip would it?” asked the General referring to the incident during the second year of the war where the Yamato had been disabled and knocked from orbit her main computers and thrusters completely inoperable and left for scrap to burn up in the atmosphere of Mars.

By some miracle the ship had managed to angle it’s decent by just enough with the maneuvering thrusters to perform an atmospheric skip and swing back around to make it to the Martian magnetic rail assembly where by detonating small nuclear devices at specific points on the rail they had charged it and launched themselves back towards Earth completely disabling the main Martian rail launcher for nearly a month.

Lincoln smiled, “He owes me a big favor,” she said.

The General harrumphed but didn’t press. He had the dossier on Lincoln but it was missing a few parts of her history.

“I’ll give him the coordinates then,” Said the General.

“Thank you.”

---

“I got your message, why did you have me threaten the General?” asked Takuya as he took a sip of the Martian coffee and winced at the taste.

“It will force him to look at his own people in case there are any actual moles. I assume your crew is still the same?” asked Lincoln.

“Of course, it’s the same twenty people and it has been for nearly five years now. A dozen other ships tried to poach members of my crew but they all stayed. We all owe you so they’ll keep their mouths shut, to be frank though quite a few of them were considering jumping ship now that all we do is ferry nervous diplomats. When we got your data packet, well we were ecstatic to say the least.” 13

Lincoln smiled and slid a small data stick across the table to the Captain. “I’m fairly confident that insane engineer of your will be able to make the modifications.”

“You’ll seriously be able to get the Yamato up to FTL speeds?” asked Takuya as he took the data stick.

“I think so. The Yamato is one of the few ships in the fleet that can accelerate to the required speeds in a reasonable amount of time to perform an FTL jump and decelerate from a jump without the assistance of a net,” said Lincoln.

“What are you having us do?” asked Takuya.

“Once I get the antimatter needed, you’re the scout ship.”

“So we’re really doing this, expanding to another solar system without involving the politicians?” asked Takuya.

Lincoln shrugged, “I’m going to do it if it kills me. Before we decide where we’re going we need to find a habitable planet. That’s what the Yamato will be doing while we spin up the rest of the projects.”

“For example?”

“An ark to carry the colonists, and any equipment we will need to survive. Once we’re out of the Sol system we’ll be free to work on expanding from their without interference,” said Lincoln.

“The antimatter though, how are you going to produce it?” asked Takuya.

“Right here,” said Lincoln and she pointed at the main accelerator tunnel outside the window of the lab they were in.

Takuya glanced over at it and then at Lincoln and raised his eyebrow, “this facility is under control of the Martian government, and it’s scheduled for decommission.”

“Exactly,” said Lincoln and she took a sip of her coffee and winced at the acrid taste.

“I don’t follow,” said Takuya.

“I’m working here to help decommission it, the main accelerator rail is being left there’s no point in moving it, but to comply with the treaty the government is going to bury this place, we’re going to make a big show of everything but the main tunnel will be protected. We then power it via a cold fusion reactor,” said Lincoln.

Takuya slowly nodded following along with her insane plan. “What about you? You can’t just disappear on Mars people will know something is wrong,” said Takuya.

“I suffer a mental breakdown due to my guilt over what I did in the war and the death of my partner, simple.”

Takuya blinked and then sighed, “Alright I’m convinced. I’ll get the designs for the modifications to Megan, how soon can we expect an antimatter supply?”

Reaching under the lab table Lincoln picked up a canister about the size of a thermos and put it on the table.

Takuya’s eyes widened and he reeled back in shock, and unaccustomed to the lesser gravity fell on his ass, “why the hell are you waving that around!” he shouted as he tried to get his heart rate back under control.

Lincoln shrugged, “If something were to go wrong you and I would never know,” she said.

Getting back to his feet Takuya picked up his cup of Martian coffee and drained it hardly noticing the bitterness as he stared at the silver canister on the table.

“Where the hell did you get that anyway? I thought it was all used on the Longboat IV,” He said.

“Yes exactly like Earth the Martians dismantled all of their most devastating weapons,” she rolled her eyes.

“This could start another war right here, just the fact that this thing exists!” said Takuya pointing at the canister.

“Yep, and you can report this and start that war or use this and explore at least two other Solar systems for now before we get the accelerator back up and running,” said Lincoln.

“Two?” asked Takuya. 14

“Well a distance of about 45 light-years total travel if my math is correct and the new ship configurations work. You do want to come back in between the exploratory missions though so we can run viability analysis. You’ll have to find an excuse to drop off the proverbial radar for about a week on each mission.”

“I’m sure I can think up some excuse.” Said Takuya. He looked back down at the canister, “you can hold onto that thing for now though.”

---

SPECIFICATIONS: Longboat IV (FTL Prototype)

Length: 20.6 m / 67.85 ft.

Height: 5.1 m / 16.73 ft.

Height (extended): 15.9 m / 52.16 ft.

Weight Empty: 14100 kg / 31085 lb.

Maximum Weight: 19000 kg / 4188 lb.

Max g-rating: 10.3

Max g-rating (dampening system): 8420.14 (theoretical)

Life Support: 240 hours (two occupants)

Delta V: 40.5 Km/s (chamber burnout)

Power: Micro Fusion Reactor (75 MW)

Drive: Quantum Vacuum Drive (Mark VII)

Weapons Payload: 4000 kg / 8818 lb.

Description: A modified Terran S-53 fighter this was the first human craft to jump to FTL speeds for a historic 2 second flight. Although the S-53 was designed for high g acceleration the systems had to be greatly enhanced on the Longboat IV to handle the acceleration to .005% C for the FTL jump. The magnetic rail Tesla which it was launched from had to be modified as well, two standard magnetic rail launch systems integrated into one, to form the 20 km track which was cleared in 20 seconds. The magnetic net in orbit of Venus had to bring a second Fusion reactor online to catch the Longboat IV which was unable to slow itself. As one of the first joint ventures between Earth and Mars after the war it remains a symbol of Sol system unity.

Chapter 4

Lincoln winced as she watched the charges go off, hopefully all of the reinforcement work that the General’s team had put into the facility were holding. The crowd inside the transport all cheered as the dust from the explosion flew up into the thin air.

“May peace be the only objective the future holds!” shouted the Martian announcer from the front of the transport as they began to move away from the site of the collider.

“Yay!” said Lincoln sarcastically, the people around her didn’t notice as they danced around inside the transport, most of them were the rich and powerful of Mars enjoying show. It wasn’t time for her breakdown yet so she had to participate in all of the idiotic events like this now that she was a celebrity for the peace between Earth and Mars. She was beginning to look forward to it though, the experience would be rather cathartic.

---

Megan sat the wrench in place and bracing herself against the bulkhead turned it, the old panel creaked for a moment before it gave way and she was able to turn the bolts. Working at it Megan quickly had the panel open and pulling it away she tossed it over her shoulder.

“Hey!” shouted Ben.

She didn’t turn to look at her assistant, instead she carefully started checking the wiring inside of the panel.

“No need to chuck things at me because you’re grouchy,” said Ben. 15

Megan rolled her eyes and pushed herself away from the panel to float back to where Ben was, “We’re still waiting on the capacitors! I thought Mar’s was supposed to be a powerhouse of efficient production! We’ve been waiting for days!” she growled.

“So you’ve resorted to checking the toilets suction relays, you need to get off this ship,” said Ben.

Megan scowled at the man, he had been her assistant on the Yamato for the entirety of the war, and he was long ago qualified to transfer to another ship where he would have been offered a chief engineering position in a heartbeat, but like the entire Yamato crew he liked the ship, or the usually impossible things they pulled off.

“Have you even been in the station yet?” asked Ben.

“No,” Megan crossed her arms and glared at the man, “Are you trying to pick me up again?” she asked.

“Yeah every guy wants to date the woman chucking two kilogram sheets of metal at his head,” He said as he pushed the panel back into place.

“Fine, let’s go. Get us away from the stinking politicians, the North American ambassador got motion sickness this morning and missed the bag, they he tried to clean it up himself. We are still finding chunks floating around,” Said Megan grimacing.

“Fun,” said Ben.

The two quickly made their way through the corridors of the ship, the Yamato despite spending most of her time in weightlessness was in theory designed to make atmospheric maneuvers, she couldn’t land but she could dip in and out of an atmosphere to perform operations so her layout was gravity friendly with handholds the crew used when navigating her in space.

Moving through the center of the ship they passed through the Bridge.

Captain Takuya was “sitting” in his chair listening to one of the diplomats as they no doubt complained about another discomfort. Takuya noticed them as they floated through the Bridge and although his eyes were pleading for help he didn’t say anything to his subordinates as they passed through.

Making it to the airlock near mid-ship where they were hard docked with the Martian station Ben quickly opened the hatch and putting himself on the edge of it pushed himself off. Still behind him Megan quickly sealed the hatch and reoriented herself. What had just been a wall inside the ship was now the floor, and she was standing inside a small chamber with a display on one of the walls showing a map of the station. Ben was floating in front of it his arms crossed and upside down from her perspective he examined it.

“Where to first? Theirs a rendition of Romeo and Juliet in zero-g at the theater in a few minutes, or we could go downtether and shop and have something to eat. Apparently the Martians figured out how to make actual food in weightlessness,” Ben continued on for several minutes listing off all of the things to do on the station which was tethered to the Martian surface far below.

For years Megan had wanted to see the station, it was a feet of engineering on a degree that she could only respect. Even during the war she had wanted to see it, but now she was apprehensive for some reason. Perhaps the upcoming mission had her stressed, not only were they planning to fool command but if anything went wrong with the ship they were dead.

“The engineering deck.” Said Megan.

Ben rolled his eyes. “Aw come on, that was what I was trying avoid. We spend all day working on the systems in the Yamato. Why the hell do you want to go and look at more circuits and hydraulic systems?” Asked Ben.

“How old is this station Ben?” asked Megan

“A hundred years old or something, the core of it at least right?” said Ben.

“So you can’t tell me you aren’t curious to see the old systems? See how the first wave managed to build this thing without Earth helping them?” said Megan.

Ben sighed and slowly re-oriented himself until he was upright compared to Megan, “Fine, but after that I get to choose where we go.”

“Deal.”

---

[Charles] turned and stunned quickly put his hand to his right eye, “Consul,” he said surprised.

[Marcus] waved his hand and [Charles] lowered his salute. 16

“I need you to do something for me Captain,” said [Marcus].“I need you to report directly to me about your observations of the species, and if they appear to be too much of a threat obtain the technology by any means necessary.”

“Sir?” asked [Charles].

“If you are unable to obtain the technology in a clandestine manner I want you to take it, so that our extermination teams can move in and eliminate the species before they are a threat to the Empire,” said [Marcus].

“Could you clarify that sir?” asked [Charles].

“Take the prototype if needed,” said [Marcus].

[Charles] slowly nodded and then looked back at his team who were in the briefing room behind them listening to the more detailed analysis of the class C’s species advancements. It was the [10th day] of the briefings and already [Charles]’s head was spinning as the scientists and politicians argued about how to handle the issue. Even the Emperor had become fed up with the proceedings and had not attended for the past few days.

[Charles] had gotten up to try and clear his head when the Consul had followed him out of the briefing room.

“Does this mean I have been selected to captain the [Singer] sir?” asked [Charles].

“You will be.”

[Charles] Looked at the Consul, he was not adept in the sciences currently being discussed in the briefing room and neither was he familiar with all of the political minutia that was intertwined within it. But he knew that the man standing in front of him was the de facto Emperor, with the actual Emperor hardly old enough to be making decisions about his own clothing, not that [Charles] would ever voice that particular concern.

“Yes sir, I will make sure that we do get the technology,” said [Charles].

[Marcus] smiled and briefly put his hand over his eye, “Thank you Captain. Now I think the both of us should get back to the meeting, as much of a headache those High Scientists are giving me it is important,” He said cheerfully.

[Charles] nodded and followed the man back into the room.

---

“I don’t think we’re supposed to be here,” said Ben as he looked down the dark corridor beneath his feet.

“Aww come on, this hatch will open If I can just get this stupid thing to turn!” said Megan as she struggled with the wheel, “Come on and help me you idiot,” she said and then moving her legs away from the wall she had been bracing against she turned to Ben.

“Are we sure there’s not a vacuum on the other side of the hatch?” asked Ben.

Megan tapped the side of the hatch, pointing out the seal that was on their side. If there was a vacuum on the other side the pressure of the atmosphere inside would keep the hatch sealed by pressing down on it. “Your strong Ben but not that strong, it’s just stuck!” said Megan.

Rolling his eyes Ben grabbed the wheel and bracing himself turned the wheel quickly breaking whatever had the thing stuck. Spinning the wheel until it hit home Ben tugged on the hatch, weightlessly it swung towards him and a blast of hot stale air ran over them along with a large accumulation of dust and a few floating pieces of trash.

Megan and Ben both coughed and pushed the floating trash away from themselves, whatever the room was it was illuminated by only a few ludicrously small portholes. Reaching into her belt Megan pulled out her firefly, a small LED array in the form of a sphere and switching it on slowly pushed it into the room.

Looking like a miniature sun the orb slowly floated into room and the words on the wall printed in faded black paint on the dull gray metal came into view. “Observation deck”.

Megan smiled and slowly pushed herself into the room, “this must have been one of the first things the Martian’s built up here! The original observation room on the top of the station!” Said Megan excitedly.

Ben nodded and followed her into the room, floating up to a small window in the middle of the deck he peered out. The entire station and the long tether leading down to the Martian surface obscured most of his view, but beyond the red planet was the familiar vista of stars.

“Why was this place abandoned?” asked Ben not taking his eyes away from the sight, the Yamato for all her glory didn’t have windows, she had displays embedded into some of the walls that showed live camera feeds from the outside and even though he shouldn’t have been able to notice a difference they were so high in fidelity their was just something off about them. Staring out through a weak piece of transparent material into the void was entirely different. 17

“That corridor was turned into a service crawlway, it goes almost through the exact center of the station right next to the tether. I bet it was the first thing built and then they moved outwards. Once they got orbital construction down they could build better structures,” Megan tapped the side of the outer hull around one of the windows, “Look at the weld. It was done in gravity, manufactured on the surface and brought up. They don’t do that nowadays,” she said.

“Well you wanted to see the old part of the station, here it is,” said Ben.

“I know, I’ve seen pictures of stuff like this but it’s amazing to actually see it. I mean look at this,” She pointed at the control panel along the side of the wall. Wires were leading out from it in every direction spidering along the wall many of them showing signs of corrosion.

“It’s simple, frighteningly so. Everything was so exposed back then and put together by people who had no idea what they were doing, eager to simply have something that worked. Nowadays exposed wiring is against regulation and I’ll bet that panel’s hotwired as hell, do that anywhere on the station nowadays and I bet you’d get fined.” Said Megan.

“What you don’t like safety regulations?” asked Ben bemused.

Megan chuckled, “I like safety regulations, but Mars was at the beginning a new frontier! It didn’t matter what kind of degree you had or if some university signed off saying you could do something. All that mattered was that you could do it. The people in the first wave knew they were only moments from death at any time from a breach or a radiation burst, but the crazy bastard still did it!” Said Megan.

She paused for a moment and looked out at the stars, “Now we get to do it too, we’re going to travel to another star system, and if something goes wrong no one will be able to save us. You and I will have to fix whatever comes up, no more safety nets.” Said Megan.

“Thanks for putting that thought in my head, and you do remember all of those missions we did in the war right? Their were no safety margins there, and we didn’t always follow regulation when fixing our engines, or the weapons” said Ben.

Megan pursed her lips, “That was similar but really if we survived long enough to make repairs we knew we were going to make it. Out there though, we’re fighting the Universe, and I’m willing to be she’s more dangerous than the Earth or Mars ever were,” said Megan.

“I’m not betting against you on that,” said Ben.

The two of them were silent for several moments looking out at the expanse in front of them.

“Crap,” said Ben.

Megan glanced over at him, he was floating in the dead center of the room out of the reach of any handholds.

Megan couldn’t help it, after contemplating the human condition Ben had gone and gotten himself stuck. She let out a small giggle and ben glared at her, “you going to help?” he asked.

Megan nodded and pushing off of the wall launched herself at him, sending the both of them into the opposite wall where they hit another control panel. Flood lights outside the observation desk windows that had been off and exposed to space for nearly 80 years slowly flickered to life, pointing directly down at the modern observation deck of the station no doubt blinding everyone inside of it.

Ben and Megan glanced at the mess of wires that was the control panel and then at one another, before scrambling for the hatch.

---

“No,” Said Megan.

“Aww come on! You said I would get to choice the next place!” said Ben.

“You want to go to a strip club,” said Megan as she tapped her foot on the deck plate she was looped into.

“A zero-g strip club,” Said Ben as if that were justification enough.

“No.”

“Restaurant then?”

“Sure, all of them are in the downtether area,” Said Megan, and pushing herself off of the handhold she shot down towards the far wall of the compartment they were in towards the bottom of the station compared to its orientation around the planet far below.

The downtether area was at the core of the station and being protected by rest of the it the largest open area. A massive cylinder the tether went through the center of it and up into the rest of the station. The Martian engineers had designed it to rotate to serve as a place on the station with artificial gravity but by the time construction was complete to many businesses had already adapted to the zero-g. And with the introduction of 18 nano-machines it was deemed unnecessary. So it was left as it was the only addition being handholds and thick ropes crisscrossing through it to allow for easier navigation.

As Ben and Megan made their way towards the downtether area and out of the service crawlways and ducts they had been in the corridors became much more crowded, the station had a population close to 5,000 with most of the population working to either expand the station or in the shipyards which unlike those around Earth were a suit less environment.

Mars officially considered the station as a city, and it had massive political and economic value due to the ease at which materials and individuals could be moved. Nearly all foot traffic to the surface of mars went through it the only exception being military craft designed to make hops in an out of the atmosphere.

Following the flow of the crowd Ben and Megan both paused at the entrance in awe of the largest open weightless environment in the sol System until a disgruntled Martian seemingly annoyed with their rubbernecking expertly shot between them his hand up behind him in the universal symbol of road rage, a gesture which had endured the transfer to Mars.

“The bar?” asked Ben not turning to look at Megan his gaze locked on the marvel in front of him.

“The bar,” Said Megan nodding her head in agreement.

Grabbing the nearest rope Ben pulled himself up to the correct angle and then launched down towards the middle of the cylinder, with Megan not far behind.

The bar was wrapped around the tether in the center of the cylinder running almost the entire length of the chamber. Several dozen waiters were buzzing along the tether stopping at intervals where drinks were stored in old phone booth sized compartments which also happened to be the anchor points for the internal lines of the cylinder. Drifting over to a table Ben slipped his feet into the holds and Megan quickly joined him.

A menu popped up on the surface of the table, offering the wide selection of Martian drinks, all but the most expensive being potato based.

“Any preference?” asked Ben.

Megan shook her head.

“Whatever is recommended, under 30 credits,” said Ben to the table. The menu winked out and within moments a Waitress drifted down to them, two plastic bags on her tray sticking to it with small magnets which would also allow them to anchor to the table.

“Anything else?” asked the waitress, she didn’t look like she was older than 18 in earth terms yet she towered over both Ben and Megan her height no doubt from the low gravity of Mars and working on the station.

“No we’re good,” said Megan as she picked up the bag and placing it to her lips took a quick gulp of the liquid wincing as it burned down her throat.

“Alright just call me if you need anything else!” she said and then expertly jumped back up into the air, small gas jets firing from her belt and feet and shoulders. She was able to get around in the low gravity when her hands were full.

“This place is amazing!” said Ben as he craned his neck looking around the inner surface of the cylinder where hundreds of small shops and vendors were all selling their wares.

Megan nodded in agreement, none of the shops were corporation storefronts. The station didn’t let them set up in the cylinder so the closest analog to the inside of the surface was the ancient Middle Eastern markets she had only seen in movies.

It was disorganized, loud, and despite the need for cleanliness in space a little dirty. Unlike the downtown areas of Earth which were clinically clean immaculate and occupied by the storefronts for the corporations this place was alive.

Ben glanced up amazed that in every direction around him he was seeing the same thing, people moving about and flying between the stalls that were set up trails of purchases and knickknacks flying with them. The residents were climbing along the lines strung up with expert ease, flying past one clearing others by only inches as they flew in opposite directions at speeds that if they were to have impact would have hurt quite a bit.

Megan took another sip of her own drink, “I never thought I would get to see this,” she said.

“What do you mean?” asked Ben.

“This station was always a target during the war, I mean the Martians can launch things almost for free from here! But we could never get through the defenses around it! Heck when it came into line for a kinetic bombardment the Martians put one of their largest frigates in between Earth and the Station and then over pressurized her as much as possible. The one rod that made it through the frigate just glanced off the station, they nearly lost the counterweight from the oscillations it caused in the structure. If that had happened this entire place would have fallen into the atmosphere,” said Megan. 19

“That would have probably let us win the war,” said Ben.

Megan nodded and ruefully took another sip of her drink draining the pouch.

Ben glanced down at his own which was still mostly full, “want more?” he asked.

Megan shook her head and leaned back from the table letting herself float, keeping herself attached only by the footholds. It had been five years since she had been able to relax, and even now she could still feel that knot of tension in her stomach. She doubted it would ever completely go away especially with the upcoming mission.

“You Terran’s?” growled a voice to Megan’s right. She glanced up and Ben turned as well. A man with a deep scowl on his face was staring at them, maneuvering jets occasionally firing off around him. He was tall like most Martians but he had a more developed muscle structure one that would have been on par with Earth wrestlers.

“So what if we are?” asked Ben keeping his voice neutral.

“I would ask what the hell you’re doing here after what your politicians just tried to pull,” growled the man.

Megan and Ben glanced at one another and then moving quickly Megan pulled out her link and groaned reading the first news story that came up in her feed, “We’re apparently demanding reparations from Mars,” She said.

Ben slowly nodded still facing the man in front of them and leaned across the table, “So we drag them all the way from Earth and this is the thanks we get?” asked Ben.

“Apparently.” Said Megan, looking up and around she could see other Martians beginning to gather around them, they should have changed into something other than their jumpsuits, apparently even with the patches missing they were still conspicuous.

“You started that war and now you want us to pay for it!” demanded the man as he bobbed side to side in the air, he was apparently already quite inebriated.

“Let’s go,” Ben said as he quickly put his pouch down and swiped his link over the payment slot on the table. Megan nodded in agreement and bending down slightly she pulled her feet out of the brace and got ready to move.

“Hendrik!” A woman who looked as if she had her own gravitational field floated over, she seemed to have jury-rigged three of the jets that people were using to navigate through the room and even with those the jets seemed to be struggling to move her. How she fit anywhere else in the station Ben had no idea.

The woman came up to the man and despite his height and muscle mass was tiny compared to her, “You start another fight and I swear I’ll toss you through the recycler,” She said, as she crossed her arms in front of the man Hendrik.

He considered the woman in front of him for a moment before turning and slowly drifting away, the gathering crowd quickly dispersed as well none wanting to incur the wrath of the woman. She glared at his back for several moments before turning around to the table, “I’m sorry about that, he didn’t threaten you did he?” She asked.

“Thanks, but we would have been fine.” Said Megan.

“Ah but then I would have had to kick the both of you out along with the prick. You’re the first Terran’s to make it here from that transport. The Yamato I think it was,” Said the woman.

Ben nodded and the woman’s smile widened, “I’m Janus, I own the bar.” She said.

“Quite the place.” Said Ben.

“That it is, I built it from the ground up. You have no idea how hard it was to get permits to actually build on the cable. But it was worth it in the end,” She said with a sigh as she slipped her feet into the hold at their table.

“Attracts something of a rough crowd most of the time, and station security is always out at the docks working there. So I usually have to lay it down here, not that the military guys mess with me or my staff. They still haven’t found the last one who did, so it’s mostly drunken traders and planet hoppers who cause trouble. You two on a date seeing the station?” She asked.

Ben coughed on his drink, “No! Yes, I mean we’re seeing the station, but we’re not dating.” He said.

“I understand,” said Janus as she glanced sidelong at Megan, who was pointedly glaring at the woman. 20

“Well I’m sorry about that disturbance, a word of warning don’t go to the upper ring if you don’t want something worse than that to happen. The fanatics were up there were during the war saying we should atomize Earth, they’ve been cleared out officially but those uniforms you’ve got on would get you stabbed, “she said.

“Thanks, we’ll keep that in mind.” Said Megan.

“You have any plans after this?” asked Janus.

“Not really be a tourist,” Said Ben.

Janus smiled, “In that case make sure you visit Ambrosia,” she said.

“Thanks,” Said Ben.

“Well I’ll leave the two of you to enjoy your free time than,” she said and activating the jets on her harness the woman floated off.

Ben and Megan looked at one another, “How the hell does she fit in a sleeper pod?” asked Ben.

Megan couldn’t hold I the small chuckle, “I have no idea.” She said.

----

SPECIFICATIONS: Yamato (Pacific Frigate)

Length: 70.3 m / 230.6 ft.

Height: 19.8 m / 64.9 ft.

Weight Empty: 298,523 kg / 658,130.5 lb.

Maximum Weight: 370,000 kg / 815710.3 lb.

Max g-rating: 5.3

Max g-rating (dampening system): 6000

Life Support: 1460 hours (thirty crew)

Delta V: 60.2 Km/s (chamber burnout)

Power: Fusion Reactor (105 MW)

Drive: (5) Quantum Vacuum Drive (Mark V)

Weapons Payload: 50,000 kg / 110231.1 lb.

Weapons: iyW4xGG8r6UtPjLXBkY7k/I6tmWon6On0jg+PaFGifi79e7TTwPCCeVoaeFXCYJMFmY42iUR/MF64Ku+ iwBN3BdvR+2hNvGcFwqmDY1swFMFV/uShDfp48AFK6cBawZIrc1vpvS6dhS4HPqFJFMqLf68cZoLpY9J h7kzoD0P8oPcNxvT/7F1dAl4q+zVCAyQxYuhvffSGPFPSuXuiIPqXq00ThAQCe18wA5FwJ0xHssZQoLe

P74U6MuoXciPwzJm0DpzvDwp6YJLtX1qa8I2IxdZ7odGpxUfVXeH5gt+Z4YJOaYg9mjibfjbzlV/d/zR

Description: The third Pacific class frigate to be constructed the Yamato was specially outfitted to be faster than other ships of its class at the detriment of armament and shielding. Constructed to make hit and run attacks at essential enemy targets the Yamato was a force to be reckoned with. One of the more successful ships during the war the Yamato is one of only five remaining ships of her class, all others having been destroyed in combat. The success of the Yamato is often attributed to her crew rather than her design, as the initial configuration of the Yamato’s power distribution systems left her susceptible to complete power failures when under atmospheric stresses, a design oversight not corrected until after the famous Yamato skip incident.

Chapter 5 21

Lincoln took a breath testing the air and then pulled her helmet the rest of the way off of her head. The other technicians and personnel from the General did the same behind her.

“This place is a mess!” Said one of the men as he took his helmet off.

Lincoln nodded in agreement, they had done as much as possible to surreptitiously re-enforce the tunnels around the accelerator and the lab she would be using as a control center, and although they had survived and the rest of the complex was buried under rubble the insidious Martian dust was still everywhere. If one speck got into the accelerator and was not properly flushed out then it would set them back by days if not weeks to repair any of the damage when they turned the thing on.

The lead technician a man by the name of Anton stepped forward.

“We have a lot of work to do, so stop complaining and get too it!” he shouted at the assembled crowd which consisted of around thirty people that the General had enough trust in and were technically competent. The man was a second generation Martian but both of his parents had been Russian and the accent bled through as he started to give orders divvying out the duties.

“I’m going to my lab,” said Lincoln. Anton nodded and moving through the rubble Lincoln could not help but feel some excitement, they were actually starting to work on the project, within a few weeks they would have enough antimatter to reach the stars!

“Any idea why he wants us on the Bridge?” asked Megan.

Ben shook his head, “No idea, the preparations for the flight I would imagine,” he said.

“What does he think I’ve been doing? We’re nearly done retrofitting everything but we still need to do an EVA to install the controllers on the hull,” said Megan.

“That’s all? I could have sworn we had more to do, like the regulators,” said Ben with a yawn.

“We did those last night,” said Megan.

Ben thought about it for a moment and then nodded, “So I didn’t dream about that?”

Megan rolled her eyes ignoring him.

Making their way to the bridge the two found the rest of the crew assembled floating around the captain, technically they were supposed to line up in some fashion but without gravity and any way to stabilize themselves it was a formality that the captain had long since dismissed.

“We’ve got an incoming communication from Dr. Lincoln,” Said Captain Takuya addressing the crew at large.

“Every one of you know what we are going to be attempting, and it is against all regulations to ask this of you so I once again offer any of you the chance to disembark.” He was silent for a moment and no one in the room moved, Captain Takuya nodded and continued, “We all lost people in the war, and with the way things are now we will be fighting in another very soon. I never dreamed of exploration, but I can see why humanity needs it. We as a species need something to focus on, and room to grow. We have the technology but our governments have little will to do anything, so we will have to do it ourselves,” he said and turning to his screen he opened the communication link.

“Dr. Lincoln?” He asked.

“I’m here Takuya,” Said Dr. Lincoln. Glancing up at the forward screen where the doctor was projected Ben could see that she was standing in an underground room with banks of monitors and equipment around her. In the background Martian technicians were moving to and fro working on what he assumed was the particle accelerator to produce more antimatter.

“Your crew is present?” she asked.

Captain Takuya nodded, “They are,” he said.

“Good, I want to thank all of them for this. For trusting that the calculations I have made will let them be the first to explore another solar system,” she said.

Captain Takuya smiled, “It hardly took that much convincing, most were just happy to have an excuse to dump the politicians,” he said.

Several of the crew laughed in agreement. 22

“I have the final control program, I’ve included hook in’s for the navigation system on the Yamato so you can perform on the fly adjustments if needed. Your engineers should be able to optimize it further, and I’ve done as much as I could but their might be unforeseen circumstances due to the greater distances,” Said Lincoln, “This could be one way, you do know that right?”

“We are aware, and it is something my crew is prepared to face,” said Captain Takuya.

Lincoln nodded, “Godspeed Captain.”

---

Pushing the baseball cap down tighter onto his head James stepped out of the car and into the mostly empty parking lot of one of the larger warehouses in the district. With only a few other cars and the fog rolling off of the sea it would have been the perfect setting for a horror movie.

“I still don’t get it. Why the hell are they meeting in a warehouse? I thought that was something of a cliché,” said Ares through the comms unit in James’s ear.

James rolled his eyes, he was really going to regret leaving the channel open, especially when he wasn’t going to be able to shut him up.

“And along with that what is that smell?” He asked.

In the background James could here Red saying something, “Seriously? How can you stand it? Smells like something rolled up and died inside a helmet,” Said Ares, “How can you swim in that muck?” He asked.

James knew he was going to have a headache after this. Red and Ares continued to argue inside the helicopter and for a moment James considered activating his mike and telling them to shut the hell up but he had already spotted the Terra Supremacy guard lurking very conspicuously near the entrance to the warehouse.

As he approached the guard raised his handgun pointing it at James, who paused and slowly put his hands up. The small display inside the guard’s helmet which looked like a surplus military helmet from at least three decades ago lit up as it scanned him. Not that James would show up in any of the databases they had access to. His cover though would show him to be a wanted man in connection with several Martian ship sabotages.

The guard nodded and lowered his gun, and as was protocol for most Terra Supremacy meetings James rolled up his sleeve to display the tattoo of earth on his forearm. The guard glanced down at it and opened the door to the warehouse without saying a word.

“Seriously what kind of security is this? A tattoo and a face scan can be fooled as easily as anything else these days.” Said Ares.

James ignored him as he stepped into the abandoned warehouse, the small HUD in his eye was working overtime as he scanned the faces of the crowd around him. Quite a sizable amount appeared to be former military if looks were anything to go by so he fit right in.

The people were milling about the warehouse apparently waiting for whoever was supposed to be speaking to take to the crudely constructed stage in the back of the room. Already a few people with minor warrants had been identified, but they had not been deemed war criminals like the bigger fish that James was supposed to be looking for so he let them be and continued to scan the crowd.

After several minutes the lights dimmed and a man who had been lounging near one of the walls pulled off his hood and stepped forward.

“That’s Henry Waldo, the right hand to our Jon Doe of a leader for this organization,” said Ares through the comms.

Red cut in a moment latter, “James you have another five minutes to identify everyone for the strike, the teams are getting ready to drop.” He said.

James didn’t say anything as he followed the rest of the crowd forwards towards the stage where the man had put his arms up ready to start his speech whatever it was.

“Brothers!” he shouted.

“Oh god really?” Said Ares.

“We are the ones who have cared for our Earth, we are not the ones who abandoned her for another world! We are the ones who provided the Martian’s for decades giving them all the needed to survive on a world that they should not have been on! We asked that they repay us and they refused, and incurred only more debt as they attacked us!” the man continued to rant, and the supporters in the crowd only continued to get more riled up. Looking around James carefully marked the positions of all the guards and anyone else who had a modern firearm. The coordinates were sent to the targeting scanners of the incoming drop units, and would remain accurate down to the centimeter as long as James was in the room to see them move.

As the rant continued going on to something about impure genetics James slowly turned his eyes to the roof, he had rarely seen a drop from this perspective. He was usually the one doing the dropping. 23

“Here we come, I’ll try not to shoot you!” said Ares.

James ground his teeth together but didn’t say anything.

“We have impact in five seconds,” Said Red.

James snapped his head to the side activating the hearing protection and what little armor the simple hat could provide. Several of the terrorists looked over at him for a moment and James simply smiled.

The roof above the man yelling at the crowd split open, as Terrain mech suits and a single Martian unit dropped into the warehouse. The automatic turrets on the shoulders of the Terrian’s suits automatically targeted the individuals James had painted, and fired the nonlethal darts.

The men around the perimeter of the room all collapsed, the man on stage was crushed under one terrain unit and the rest of the crowd had barely had time to react, the fight was over before most of the debris had hit the ground.

“On the ground now!” Shouted one of the Terrain units broadcasting it through the loudspeakers in the suit. A man next to James moved to pull the antiquated gun from his jacket, and in one smooth motion James’s fist shot forward hitting the man squarely in the jaw sending him sprawling onto the ground.

“God damn it!” Said James as he shook his fist, hitting people point blank like that always stung like hell without any padding on.

The rest of the supports slowly went to the ground, and were quickly cuffed. Additional units in mech suits streamed in through the main door to the warehouse now that it was secure and began dragging the men off.

Still rubbing his knuckles James walked over to the Martian unit, which as he approached popped up its visor revealing Ares.

“You got em!” said Ares smiling.

James pulled out his combat knife and flipping it in his hand rammed the hilt of it into the side of the helmet, producing a very satisfying clang.

“Ow! What the fuck!” Said Ares as he cringed away brining his arm up to try and swat at James who had already stepped away from the man.

“That’s for being a prick and not shutting up!” growled James.

Ares’s grin widened, “I’m sorry?” he said.

James held up the knife again and Ares raised his hands in surrender.

“Where’s Red?” he asked.

“Landing in the lot outside, he was a little pissed when I jumped though.” Said Ares.

“I can’t imagine why,” said James. Leaving the commander to clean up the rest of the terrorists James stalked back out of the warehouse with Ares in tow behind him, moving silently despite the exoskeletal suit. The Martian models were nearly silent, it was unnerving considering the ones on Earth made quite a racket when they moved.

Stepping outside James glanced up to the sky to see that it was beginning to rain, and out in the middle of the lot the helicopter was just touching down. With a sigh James pulled his hat on tighter and ran out into the rain soaking himself in moments as he sprinted towards the helicopter.

The side doors opened and Red leaned out.

“I thought we would get him this time,” he said.

James nodded, “I thought so too, we’ll see what information we can get from them maybe we’ll get lucky,” He said.

Red snorted, “Yeah maybe. Doubt it though.”

“Ah come on we got a whole lot of them! Can the two of you be happy about that for once?” asked Ares as he stepped into the helicopter and collapsed into his seat.

“Considering they want to kill you I’m surprised their not more concerned,” Said Red.

“Well if they want me dead they want you to die a thousand times over Red,” Said Ares looking up at the traitor who had defected from Earth to Mars in the beginning of the war.

“Is this a competition?” asked James as he stepped into the helicopter. 24

Red shrugged and walking back into the cockpit began to spin the blades back up, “It’s not one I would want to win.” He said.

---

“Are we ready?” asked Captain Takuya.

“Almost!” said Megan over the comm as she turned to Ben.

“Give me that wrench,” she said pointing at the one sitting next to Ben. He quickly pushed it towards her.

“You’ve been saying that for the past two hours, are we ready or not?” asked Captain Takuya.

Megan raised the wrench and making sure she was lined up banged it into the array sending herself spinning from the impact. The displays on the monitoring system all lit up green.

“We’re ready,” said Ben as he reached out to offer Megan his arm to stop her spinning. She grabbed it and caused the both of them to slam into the bulkhead behind them.

“Ow, fuck!” said Megan.

“We’re going to launch in five minutes then, I would suggest locking down for acceleration,” said Takuya, he muted the line to the engine room and Ben groaned.

“Why the hell is it every time you do that I end up being the one to hit my head?” he asked.

Megan glanced down at him and shrugged, “the universe hates you, and rightly so,” she said.

Ben ignored her and pushing off form the wall went to what was the floor and pulled out two of the acceleration chairs, “Well then let’s see if that’s true, if the universe hates me I doubt we’ll make it to Epsilon Eridani,” Ben.

Megan rolled her eyes but floated down to her seat and strapped into it, both of them flipped their confirmation’s that they were ready for g’s.

In the bridge Takuya glanced down at his readiness display, all of the crew were strapped into the restraints ready for acceleration. The engineering crew being the last to get into them, most of the crew had been in them for an hour or so at this point.

“We sure this won’t send a report back to command?” asked Takuya referring to the magnetic rail they were about to commandeer around Saturn.

The pilot shook his head, “The war overrides are still in place and we’re on the far side of Saturn nothing can see us and it won’t transmit back.” He said.

Takuya nodded, and then looked at the display in front of him.

“Well than, launch us,” he said.

The pilot nodded and activated the countdown. On every screen around the ship the standard acceleration countdown appeared, with a smaller subset clock underneath of it in blue instead of red for the FTL jump.

The crew held its breath as the two clocks slowly wound down, even the ship itself which was usually humming with activity was silent waiting for its moment. The clock hit zero, and Takuya grunted as the g-forces from the launch pushed him into the back of his seat, he heard a few objects that had not been secured go flying into the bulkheads like with any other launch. This one lasted slightly longer however, the track around Saturn being twice as long as any normal magnetic launch system.

“We’ve cleared the track, we are on an escape trajectory from the sun. The FTL drive will activate in ten seconds while we are still in the blind spot Saturn provides.” Said the pilot.

“Roger, engine room all green?” asked Takuya.

“All green!” said Megan.

She glanced back at the display in front of them, part of her wanted to close her eyes and brace for whatever was coming but an even larger portion of her wanted to watch, she quickly switched the camera feed on the monitor to show the prow of the ship.

“FTL engaged!” shouted the pilot over the PA. 25

The more precisely tuned charges were ejected from the Yamato, the strange matter in front and the antimatter in the back. The two detonated and once again formed the tear in space, for a half second Megan could see it, the coiling rip inside the fabric of reality bending and already starting to close. The Yamato plunged inside.

Megan blinked as she tried to comprehend what the screen was showing her, but couldn’t, it looked as if everything was composed of metal and wire, and infinitely complex machine that she could spend an eternity studying and never understand. Ben tried to process what he was seeing but it looked like a multitude of flashing lights and incoherent projections of matter forming into impossible shapes moments before unraveling.

As quickly as it happened the images faded and stars were once again in view. In front of Megan and Ben the fusion power plant started blaring out warnings.

“Shit!” Said Megan, she quickly undid the straps holding her in place and launched off of the wall towards it with Ben inches behind her.

“Engine room what’s going on?” asked Captain Takuya through the intercom.

“Overload!” Shouted Megan as she quickly began to manipulate the controls on the reactor dampening down the nuclear reaction inside.

“The reaction temporarily went above expected tolerances, the efficiency spiked and almost breached the containment unit!” said Ben as he looked down at the readouts, “Holy shit! Our efficiency spiked to almost 98%”

Megan finished adjusting the reactor, bringing it down to its absolute minimum levels while still keeping the fusion reaction stable.

“Engine room report!” Said Captain Takyua.

“We’re good Captain, although next time we perform a jump we need to dampen the reactor. The fusion reaction nearly breached containment and I don’t feel like breathing plasma,” said Megan.

“Understood, any damage?” he asked.

“Nothing permanent, a few blown relays. I want to inspect the reactor housing before we go back up to full power though.”

“How much thrust can you give me?” asked the Captain.

“Forty percent for now, once the inspection is done in two hours full thrust.” Said Megan.

“Good, inform me when you’re finished, and be prepared for ship rotation the scanners are going to be running,” said the captain referring the array of sensors in the belly of the Yamato originally designed to monitor enemy movements but had been repurposed to observe the planets of the system.

“Ben I want you to go and start flipping all the load tests, make sure we didn’t fry something with that burst,” Said Megan.

“What I can’t even look at the star?” he asked pointing at the monitor now showing the first analysis the guys on the bridge were running on the solar system.

“Sure, you can watch it. I’m going to work on making sure we don’t blow up and die!” said Megan.

Ben sighed, “You know sarcasm really is the lowest form of comedy,” he said as he moved over to the relay junction box and plugged in his diagnostic computer to start running the load tests. The first minutes into the historic exploration of another solar system and he was stuck running diagnostics. Really he shouldn’t have been surprised.

---

[Charles] looked down at the ship in her hanger, the frame of the [Singer] was one of the oldest in the Empire. She had originally been built to curtail the threat of the Outcasts long ago, and had been outfitted during the rebellions with the more advanced technology of the age. She was old now but had a legacy of brining victory to the Empire, a task just as much reliant on the ship as well as her Captain.

Smooth and almost organic in form the [Singer] represented the architecture and construction of the ships of old, her surface marred only by the slight bumps of the cloaking system she was now famous for. The rest of the hull was a black material which when looked at for too long made one’s head spin and eyes tired, even without the cloaking system activated she bent light around herself.

“When will she be ready?” asked [Charles] turning to the lead engineer for her refit.

The man scratched at his head and then glanced back down at the ship, “we’re nearly done, about the only thing left is to load the classified cargo,” said the engineer.

“Classified cargo?” asked [Charles]. 26

The engineer shrugged, “I don’t know what it is,” he said.

“You have the transfer orders right?”

The engineer nodded and quickly pulled them up on his display handed it to [Charles]. Once glance at the orders confirmed what he had thought, the signature was that of [Marcus].

“Thank you.” Said [Charles] and he handed the document back to the man. He nodded and turned back to look at the hanger.

Stepping away [Charles] quickly exited the small room and stepping into the elevator rode it down to the ground floor. Exiting the facility he quickly flagged down an official transport,

“The Palace,” Said [Charles] as he settled into the back seat. The Driver paused and turned back to look at him.

“Sir?” he asked.

[Charles] glanced up the man a class B from the looks of it, his skin tinged slightly blue and eyes much lighter than was proper for a Dorvakian. He was not permitted anywhere near the palace under normal circumstances, allowed only on the outskirts of the Capital.

“Take this,” said [Charles] leaning forward and giving the man his authorization chip.

The man hesitated but then slotted it in, the control computer of the transport flashed and then opened up, giving the driver [three hours] of access to all airspace around the Capital.

“Go.” Growled [Charles].

The transport shot up into the air and breaking quite a few of the speed regulations shot towards the center of the Capital.

In the back of his seat [Charles] fumed, whatever the political games were putting something that not even he had knowledge of on his ship was out of the question. The Consul would either tell him what was being loaded or he would quit, it was that simple.

The transport slowed as they approached the Palace, the man was trying not to show it but he was looking in every direction taking in the sights. This was perhaps the closest he had ever gotten to the Emperor in his life and was taking it all in.

[Charles] rapped on the separator and the man looked back at him sheepishly before speeding back up and landing in front of the Palace at its security checkpoint. Stepping out [Charles] felt the multiple scanners reading him as he stormed towards the office he knew the Consul would be in, none of the guards or automatic defense moved forward to detain him so he didn’t pause.

Entering the building [Charles] walked down the hall towards the office housing the Consul, further security measures disengaged as he moved through the building, shield generators snapped on and off as he moved, and several large security doors swung out and moved as he approached them. Whatever else was going on he was expected.

The final obstacle was the old wooden door of the office, and hesitating for only a moment [Charles] pushed it open and stepped inside. The office was ornate, blue and yellow in color but not gaudy by any means. Like the Consul it projected a calm control.

[Marcus] glanced up from his desk and carefully put down the data he was working on and stood up, “I was wondering when you would make it.” He said.

[Charles] glared at the man, “am I still the Captain of the [Singer]?” he asked.

[Marcus] nodded, “You are. May I ask why you are storming into my office? I had to delay the talks with the trade minister when I was informed you were tearing across the capital to see me,” Said [Marcus].

[Charles] placed his own data pad down on the desk showing the order for the object that was being loaded onto the [Singer].

“You completely bypassed the military chain of command and placed an object on my ship that is classified higher than I even knew was possible. I want to know what it is,” said [Charles].

“If I don’t tell you?” asked [Marcus].

“Then I file a complaint with military command and continue with my mission. I want to know if this object will endanger my crew that is all. I understand that secrets must be kept to protect the Empire but I will not unknowingly risk my crew,” Said [Charles].

[Marcus] looked at him for a moment and then nodded, “I was going to inform you Captain, it is one of the latest development from Hygonix, a breakthrough that was made near the end of the rebellions that was never tested,” said [Marcus]. He stood and reaching into his desk pulled out a secure data pad and pressed his hand to it unlocking it, then offered it to [Charles]. 27

Hygonix was one of the oldest planets in the Empire, and a site exclusively for dangerous scientific testing the planet’s atmosphere having been accidently poisoned by a reactor overload which sent dust and debris into its atmosphere.

“The scientists whom created it call it The Cleansing, it will within a matter of hours eliminate any impure Dorvakian variants from a planet leaving the local flora and fauna as well as any infrastructure intact, a much cleaner method than cracking the crust. If the local wildlife is also too far gone that can be easily eliminated by ground forces,” said [Marcus].

[Charles] read through the report on the weapon as quickly as he could absorbing the details, a detonation in the hold of the [Singer] would be as toxic as any gas leak due to the concentration of the toxin but other than that it would have no greater threat to any of his crew that were pure Dorvakian.

“Alright, thank you Consul.” Said [Charles].

“Thank you Captain. Once you have the FTL technology in hand I want this to be used.”

“Sir?” asked [Charles]

“The High Scientist came to their conclusion, this species will present too much of a threat in the future if they are allowed to develop. Once we have the technology plant the device on their home world. The colony they have constructed will no doubt easily fall without assistance. A garden world even as badly damaged as the one this C species possess is a valuable asset to the Empire,” Said [Marcus].

[Charles] placed his hand over his eye, “yes sir.”

Chapter 6

“Really?” asked Takuya.

The analyst nodded, “I said it was the best candidate, and we were right,” he said as he held out the pad to the Captain.

Takuya looked down at it looking at the blurry images of the two moons in question, “Still two habitable moons? That’s got to be rare,” he said.

The analyst smiled, “We have no idea if it is or not, although habitable is a bit of a stretch for both. Certainly more habitable than Mars though, the larger moon has about 56% the gravity of Earth but its average temperature from what we are able to discern at the moment is about -50 Celsius and the atmosphere is almost entirely nitrogen without any other gasses that we can detect at this distance,” said the analyst.

“Well that’s alright, and the atmospheric pressure is about 0.6 of a Bar!” said Takuya.

The analyst nodded, “Meaning so long as you have oxygen there is no need for pressure suits, you’ll want a jacket but without the possibility of decompression colonists could simply wear breathing apparatus!” said the man.

“Let’s try to not get too excited, we still need to do a more detailed analysis,” Said Takuya.

“Right, the second moon with an atmosphere though, that one is a little crazier. The closest Sol analog would be Venus but it’s not as extreme. It’s got about 30% the gravity of Earth, and it’s atmosphere is mostly CO2 and the pressure is at 15 bar. It’s a lot closer to the gas giant and tidally locked to it so the side facing it is mostly slag, the average temperature on the opposite side about 55 Celsius,” said the analyst as he paged through the data.

“So we have a world of fire and one of ice, we know how to deal with the cold from the Martian colonization efforts, barring anything unexpected on it that’s probably the prime candidate for an outpost,” Said Takuya.

The analyst nodded, “That was my opinion as well sir, after that’s established we could try for the other,” he said, “The other moons are mostly without atmospheres and no better than Earth’s moon in terms of colonization. Although a few look like they are captured asteroids, we could mine them for hundreds of years.”

“Good, the analysis is great but focus on the data collection we can analyze data latter,” said Takuya.

“I had some down time, the sensor suite is offline at the moment,” he said.

Takuya frowned, “still?” He asked.

The man nodded. 28

Takuya rolled his eyes and keyed his comm.

“Ben, Megan?!” He said through it.

There was a moment of silence, “What?” came the muffled chief engineers voice.

“Why are the sensors still offline?” asked Takuya.

“Because I’m fixing them, and Ben is screwing around like usual,” said Megan.

“Yeah because getting hit with ten amps is fun,” grumbled Ben through the comm.

“I told you to check it, that was you’re fault,” said Megan.

“How long until it’s fixed?” asked Takuya cutting off the feuding mechanics, they would argue for hours like high school kids unable to admit their feelings so they were constantly at one another’s throats.

“An hour!” said Megan.

“Good,” said Takuya as he picked up the pad to continue reading the reports that were being compiled.

“An hour?” said Ben as he reached out and banged on the top of Megan’s helmet, “Why the hell did you tell him it would take an hour!”

Megan twisted off the final bolt and slid the array out from the underbelly of the ship, “Because it either takes us an hour to fix or its going to take us a month. It’s got to be one of the controllers,” said Megan as she floated up into the cavity now in the underside of the ship.

Ben pulled the sensor array towards himself and slowly spun the long cylindrical like component the size of a large desk around in front of him examining as much of it as he could through the suit and helmet.

He hated doing the EVA’s but they were always done in tandem, and all he had to do was try and not focus on the fact that they were speeding through an alien star system at close to 50 km/s.

“No damage on the array that I can see,” said Ben.

“Didn’t think so, I think one of the controllers is burned out,” Said Megan repeating herself.

Ben sighed and clipping the array in place slowly floated up into the ship next to Megan, switching on his own floodlight to look around inside what was in essence a glorified and oversized socket.

The two of them carefully scoured the different contacts and input points, whatever had been messing with the sensors had only affected them when more high power instruments like the long range cameras or laser reflectors were in use, the passive sensors had operated up until that point.

“I think I found it, connector 43,” said Ben pointing his light at the pin.

Megan leaned over and looked at it, “Looks like there was something corrosive on it, I think those bastards at the shipyards used glue to hold that thing in place!” she said.

Ben reached out and touched the contact nodding in agreement, “I guess so, although to be honest no one thought we would be using our sensor array this much, we already know quite a lot about Sol,” He said as he began to work the contact loose.

“Still not an excuse for shoddy workmanship,” said Megan.

“At least your prediction was right, this will take less than an hour,” said Ben.

“When am I not right?” asked Megan.

Ben decided not to comment on that.

---

Lincoln took another sip of her coffee, by this point she was past the taste of the acrid beverage, something she had worked at purely for the caffeine content of the drink.

“We need to negotiate with Janus,” said the General.

Lincoln looked up at the man from across her rather disorganized desk, “Janus?” she asked. 29

“The owner of the Bar on the Station,” said the General.

Lincoln frowned, “Why would we want to negotiate with a barkeeper?” she asked.

The General chuckled, “She runs the more illegal operations on the station, including the construction of smuggling ships,” said the General.

“Why hasn’t she been arrested then? If you know about her,” asked Lincoln.

“She was helpful during the war, and she keeps the criminal element under control for the most part, it also helps that she has blackmail on half of the Martian government. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if she knows about what we are doing down here,” said the General.

“Does she have anything on you?” asked Lincoln.

The General shook his head, “No, but like I said she was helpful during the war. If we want to build an Ark she’s the only one who can do it in orbit,” Said the General.

Lincoln took another long sip of her coffee and set it back down, “She won’t sell our secrets to anyone else?” asked Lincoln.

The General shrugged, “She keeps her word, unless you cross her first,” Said the General.

“Honor among thieves?” asked Lincoln.

“More like good business practices, sell someone out and they are liable to want revenge.”

---

“Wow!”

“Will you shut up?” repeated Megan, and emphasizing her point threw her pad at the back of Ben’s head.

He deftly dodged the projectile without even looking back and continued to stare at the display that was the porthole in engineering. A gas giant which had the bands of clouds like Jupiter but was tinted more towards the blue spectrum like Neptune was dominating the view.

“You’ve been staring at it all day like an idiot! Help me get these reports done!” said Megan.

Ben reached out and snatched the pad that she had thrown at him and turned around, “Come one how can you not be freaking out at this!” said Ben.

Megan shrugged, “It’s a gas giant, you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all. When we get to the moons I’ll be more excited.”

Ben sighed, “So hard to please you isn’t it,” he said.

Megan raised an eyebrow at that and looked at Ben.

“Fuck off and get your mind out of the gutter,” he growled as he positioned himself next to her and handed the pad back over.

“You’re the one who said it,” said Megan.

Ben rolled his eyes and looked back at the display, “Do any of these planets have names? Heck I’m sure the moons don’t we are going to have to name them,” He said.

“If they have names its Enduri B or something, it needs better name than that,” Said Megan.

“Any ideas?” asked Ben.

“I’m not making up the name of a planet on the spot, and I’m pretty sure we have enough gods in mythology to name them all,” said Megan.

“Roman or Greek?” asked Ben.

“Both, they are basically the same right?” said Megan.

Ben shrugged, “depends who you ask.”

“Well then what would you name it?” asked Megan.

Ben considered it for a moment, “Blue?” he said. 30

“Very original,” said Megan as she shoved another pad in his hands to help her with her work.

---

“Professor Lincoln, General, it’s so nice to see the both of you,” said Janus.

Lincoln couldn’t help but stare at the enormous woman, it was odd to see people like her nowadays what with nano-machines eliminating obesity, meaning the woman either didn’t use them or was as large as she was for a preference.

“Janus,” said the General.

She smiled and tossed a bottle with he deftly caught, “trying to butter me up already?” asked the man.

“As if you would appreciate anything that expensive, you’re an old sailor all you want is something to get you drunk,” said Janus.

The General chuckled and brining the bottle up to his lips unscrewed it and took a sip, expertly putting the cap back on not letting any of the liquid escape in the weightlessness.

“Would you like anything?” asked Janus turning to Lincoln.

“No thanks,” she said.

Janus nodded and floated down to be level with them around the small table, they were near the end of the cylinder on the Bar in one of the more private booths with partitions around it. How Janus had managed to fit inside the door Lincoln had no idea.

“Straight to the point then, does this have something to do with the little project the two of you have going down on Mars?” asked Janus.

“What project?” said Lincoln perhaps a little too quickly.

Janus glanced over at the General and smiled, “the one involving supposedly decommissioned antimatter accelerator?” She said.

“How?” asked Lincoln.

“You still have people in my ranks don’t you?” asked the General.

“Like you don’t have any in mine?” Janus shot back.

The General took another sip of his drink, “Well straight to it then, we need a ship.”

Janus nodded, “alright, what kind? Something to get past detection? If you want to sell the antimatter you’re cooking up I can smuggle that without a special ship.”

“No,” said Lincoln icily.

Janus smiled and tuned back to her, “So what kind of ship then? Something that has a penchant for breaking the laws of physics?” she asked.

“An ark,” said Lincoln.

Janus nodded apparently not fazed by what Lincoln had said, “Well alright then, I’ll have my guys design something. They will love the chance to make something that doesn’t have to fly under the radar, and the chance to make the first FTL ship from scratch? It’ll be like Christmas,” said Janus.

“What without negotiating a price Janus?” asked the General.

Janus tapped her fingers on the table, “General when do I ever do something for free? I can see more than the politicians though, if I had even one ship that could jump to another system to mine asteroids without oversight I would make back whatever I spend building your ark in a year,” said Janus.

“So you want the FTL calculations,” Said Lincoln.

Janus nodded, “Give me those and I’ll build you a frigate if you want,” she said.

Lincoln glared back at the woman for a moment and then sighed, “Fine, but I want flight data from anything you do so I can optimize my math and you don’t end up blowing yourself up.”

“I didn’t think you cared so much,” said Janus. 31

Lincoln rolled her eyes and slipped her feet from the moorings, the zero-g equivalent to standing up from the table, “I’d rather you didn’t create an explosion that would make anything that happened in the war look like a firecracker,” Lincoln pushed up from the table and floated away.

Janus turned to the General, “She’s fun.”

The General sighed, “I’ll have the designs to you for the Ark by the end of the day, Lincoln’s not an engineer so the drive system will probably need someone else to look it over, and I don’t want you skimping out on any of the construction, I’ll be sending you some of the better engineers under my command to help and supervise construction.”

“You don’t trust me Gerald?” asked Janus.

“Should I trust you?” he asked turning to look at the woman.

“Not usually, but I’m not going to try and pull anything over you, didn’t end too well last time,” said Janus.

The General nodded in agreement, “True, but this is important Janus, and like I told Dr. Lincoln you’re someone I can at least trust to keep the secret, going to anyone else to build the ark wouldn’t have been right. It will also stop you from having your lackeys try and hack into the military servers looking for the FTL calculations,” said the General.

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” said Janus.

“Right,” said the General.

He took another swig out of the bottle, “You serious about mining?” he asked.

Janus shrugged, “It’s a factor, but you know me, I made the Station what it was because it was the frontier, I might just need to reserve myself a seat on your Ark.”

“Make it two seats,” said the General.

Janus raised an eyebrow at the man and he laughed, “We’re both too old to go exploring, you’ve seen the videos, it’s the handsome young captain that goes off to explore and make relations with as many aliens as possible,” said the General.

“Well that would have been you back in the day,” said Janus.

“Well, the times past now. I’ll have to settle with the fact that I helped the first true explorers make it out among the stars.”

“We helped them to the stars, don’t go hogging all the credit Gerald,” said Janus.

The General frowned, “You haven’t built the damn ship yet.”

“I will, and it will be my best ship to date,” said Janus.

---

[Charles] sat down in his new command chair and looked out over the bridge, [Tom] and [Sam] were the only familiar faces in the crew which was now close to 1900, all pure Dorvakian. Usually the grunt work on a ship like the [Singer] would be performed by a Class B variant but with the security needed for this mission even those slots had been filled by Class A’s.

The [Singer] had just left dry-dock and they were in orbit of the home world, ready to make the jump to the C1764’s system.

“What is the status of the stealth systems?” asked [Charles] turning to the new engineering officer in charge of it, the system was difficult to keep in sync and very few were trained in doing so. A quarter of the individuals in the Empire who understood its operation were a part of his crew.

The engineering officer turned in his chair, “Fully operational sir, we’ve gotten the dorsal emitters functioning within the standard specs, this is a class C species though so I doubt they would even detect us through the passive cloaking materials,” said the officer.

“What’s your name?” asked [Charles].

“[Jack] sir!” said the man.

“It’s always best to assume your enemy is more capable, underestimation is the easiest way to lose a battle,” said [Charles].

“Are we at war with a class C species sir? They don’t pose any kind of threat,” said [Jack].

[Charles] sighed and leaned back into his seat waving his hand at the officer to sit back down, it was the common mindset of Class A citizens to not consider anything a threat, and after all they were the genetically superior race, the purest form from the Seed of Life. 32

A brief overview of history would show that even with their genetic superiority they could still be threatened, something [Charles] had studied. The uprisings for which the [Singer] was retrofitted to combat were only the most recent example. Unfortunately many of the pure Dorvakian’s whom were raised on the home world or most of the internal Empire colonies were never taught anything but their own superiority, and it was something that [Charles] had always seen as more of a weakness than an advantage.

Then again, his unconventional views were what had gotten him stuck as the Captain of the patrol vessel, and only a stroke of luck and a particularly nasty alien threat had freed him of that dead end in life.

“All stations report ready to translate into FTL sir!” said [Tom] from his station.

“Execute” said [Charles] as he shook the thoughts from his head.

The ship barely shuddered as they slipped into subspace, and [Charles] glanced up at the window, watching as normal space slipped away and the blurry amalgamation of stars their light smeared across his eyes came into view.

“Time to the system?” asked [Charles].

“About [five hours] sir,” said [Tom].

“Alright then, [Sam] what progress have you made in the translation of the Class C species communications?” asked [Charles].

Sam frowned, “They are utilizing digital formats for information distribution within their system sent via different wavelengths of light. Using samples of this communication from our original survey I was able to interpret many of the communication protocols, they are fairly similar to the Empires ancient communication methods. I’m still working on the actual translation of the contents of messages, with more samples I should have a basic translation program within a day or so,” said [Sam].

“Good, any chance we would be able to crack encryption algorithms that might be in place?” asked [Charles].

[Sam] shook her head, “No, from what I have gleaned out of the data their encryptions standards border on the insane, some of the algorithms are comparable to our own in terms of effectiveness, they lack in efficiency but still it is impressive,” said Sam.

“Work on it, we need to get into their military systems to find the designs for the FTL system, in a direct attack to obtain military assets the Empire would destroy the objective before allowing others to obtain it. We must assume that this species being more violent then out own would have similar response, they will go down fighting if given the chance, we can’t give it to them,” said [Charles].

---

“No, hell no,” said Megan.

Takuya glanced over at his engineering officer, “An emphatic no? Is it that dangerous? The Yamato was designed for atmospheric maneuvers,” he said.

“Designed for and recommended are two completely different things! Sure we can do atmospheric flight, but we have hundreds of years of data on flying inside Earth and Mar’s respective atmospheres. ” said Megan.

Takuya nodded in agreement, “alright then, the science techs will have to be happy with spectrographic analysis of the atmospheres around the moons.”

“Good, and tell them they’re crazy if they want to take atmospheric samples in the Yamato,” said Megan.

“Oy!” said one of the techs as he turned his console away from himself to look at the chief engineer.

“I’ll be sure to tell them,” said Takuya smiling slightly.

“If they get any more bright ideas about throwing the ship into a volcano or something come ask me first,” said Megan, and turning away from the bridge she pushed off from the deck to float back towards the end of the ship.

Entering the engineering compartment she was treated to the sight of Ben staring out the windows like before, the pale blue moon with the cold atmosphere now the predominate feature in its view.

“So what next?” he asked.

“Nothing, we can relax,” said Megan.

“Seriously?” asked Ben. 33

“No, where the hell are those calculations I asked for on the variances within the fusion reactor when we went FTL?” asked Megan.

“Like my analysis is going to be the right one? Let the eggheads back on Mars figure out why the hell the fusion plant went haywire, all we need to do it put it into combat mode when we jump to FTL,” said Ben.

“It is procedure,” growled Megan.

Ben sighed and picking his tablet off of the wall he casually floated it towards her, “Best I can tell is that when we are inside whatever the hell we’re calling that tunnel thing inside of FTL it bleeds through everything and matter gets messed with. We saw the large effects but I have no idea what it could be doing to normal matter not in the state of fusion,” said Ben summarizing what was on the pad.

Megan looked at the pad and then back at Ben, “If this is right then FTL might be messing with normal matter?” she asked.

Ben nodded, “We are breaking most of the laws of physics, is it that hard to believe that matter might be affected by it? So far we haven’t noticed anything but the most FTL jumps anyone has done is one, we’ll see if effects start to build up once we go back to Sol, hopefully my analysis is wrong,” said Ben.

Megan continued to read through it, the sensors monitoring the fusion reaction clearly showed that for the second or two they had been at FTL the laws of nature had almost gone out the window, becoming more suggestions than ironclad rules. Not surprising considering they had no idea what the stuff going on outside the ship during FTL was. Other sensor data included the weapons monitoring stations, all of which had registered a change in the state of the magnetic rails, something that should not have happened unless the system was powered up.

So not only was the effect on plasma but also metal, they didn’t have advanced sensors on the Yamato to look into atoms though, so for now it was speculation.

“We need to show this to the Captain,” said Megan.

“Already did, we have to jump at least one more time to get home,” said Ben.

“Hopefully it’s like radiation, you can take small dosages and the nano-machines can deal with it,” said Megan.

“But it’s not just biological matter that’s getting screwy, its every bit of matter, what if the fusion interlocks fused and were suddenly out of place because of it? Boom!” said Ben.

“Boom,” repeated Megan.

---

“Come on I thought you were ready!” said James.

“Screw,” Ares took a breath, “You!” he said.

James jumped up and sunk the basketball into the net, right over the head of the panting Martian.

“You’re taller than me how are you not winning?” asked James as he grabbed the ball and started to dribble it again, Ares was panting in underneath the net trying to get his breath back.

“Screw gravity!” said Ares as he slowly straightened back up, he heard several joints crack and felt his muscles straining against the gravity of Earth, he hadn’t grown up on her surface but he had evolved to survive on Earth, and there was no way in hell he was going to let James win.

---

SPECIFICATIONS: [Singer] (Translated values are within 0.1% of accuracy)

Length: 415.3 m / 1362.5 ft.

Height: 60.8 m / 199.4 ft.

Weight Empty: 146,020,000 kg / 321,918,995 lb.

Maximum Weight: 160,000,000 kg / 352,739,619 lb.

Max g-rating: 5

Max g-rating (dampening system): 30

Life Support: Unlimited (Crew of 2,000) 34

Delta V: Unlimited (5 Km/s acceleration)

Power: Antimatter reactor (10 TW)

Drive: Standard Tachyon Drive

Weapons Payload: 10,000,000 kg / 22,046,226 lb.

Weapons:

(2) 10 TW Laser Main Guns

(100) 10 GW Laser Point Defense guns

(10) 500 GW Ship To Ship Laser Guns

(1)

Description: One of the oldest ships within the service of the Empire the [Singer] represents the fluidity and grace of the earliest ships constructed within the Home world’s ship yards. Throughout her life time she has served in many capacities, when first constructed she was the largest battleship of the fleet. In the [hundreds] of years since she has been reduced in her role due to her limited frame size and was scheduled to be decommissioned, at the beginning to the rebellions however her fluid design made her optimal for experimental cloaking technology. Retrofitted with the newest weapons and stealth technology she is still very much an antiquated ship in every other regard, she is not like most Empire battleships equipped with shield technology instead relying on her amour.

Chapter 7

“Are we ready?” asked Takuya.

The Yamato had just spent the past day accelerating up to the velocity at which the FTL jump would be possible without the magnetic rail to assist, the blue planet was still visible but was rapidly receding away. The Yamato was one of the few ships in the Terran or the Martian fleets capable of doing so, and still it was a time consuming task.

“We’ve got the reactor shut down and all of the systems are at their minimum power levels, if we make it through this jump without any issues I’m going to recommend that it be made procedure to do this until we determine why power levels spiked,” said Megan.

“Roger that, Helm prepare for the jump,” said Takuya, he switched on the shipboard PA, “All hands brace for FTL transit.”

Takuya himself settled further back into what served as the command chair, it was rarely used due to the usual weightlessness within the Yamato but during acceleration it was critical.

“Five seconds to jump,” said the Helmsman.

Takuya glanced at the screens showing the outside feed of the ship, he had looked back through the logs after they had first crossed through FTL but all that it had shown was static, despite the things he had seen during the transit, whatever happened when you crossed FTL it could not be recorded by current instruments.

The antimatter and strange matter charges were jettisoned, and the explosion from the two meeting formed directly in front of the Yamato, Takuya felt the ship violently jerk beneath him and once again the fantastic images flooded his vision, the only thing that he could compare it to was looking out at the ocean, vast and beautiful but deadly all the same.

The event of FTL ended as quickly as it began and the ship shuddered as they were thrown back into normal space, “Report,” said Takuya keying the comm relay to the engineering compartment.

“No issues, we still had that power spike but we were ready for it,” said Megan.

“Alright, Helm?” asked Takuya.

The Helmsman was staring at his instruments, and then his shoulders sagged and he let out a sigh of relief, “We came in within the orbit of Venus, were in Sol!” he said. 35

The man flipped on something at his station and the speakers on the bridge began to play the familiar beacon signal of Earth, a steady beep that signified the military command was still active and operating. Something that had been implemented during the war in case of any other communication blackout, the beacon transmitted on an ultralow frequency that would permeate space for light years, the only reason they hadn’t heard the signal in Enduri was that the beacon had only been up for five years.

“Good, take us to Mars, and transmit the false reports on the maneuvers we performed,” Said Takuya.

“Command is going to want to know how we passed Earth without them spotting us.”

“That was the point of the maneuver, tell them the operators are getting lax now that we have peace,” said Takuya as he unstrapped himself from the seat and watched as the ship rotated around him.

The Helmsman chuckled but didn’t say anything else. Takuya nodded and leaving the bridge made his way through the spine of the ship towards his quarters, the last few days had afforded him very little sleep and he was exhausted, ecstatic about everything that they had found but exhausted.

Lincoln glanced up at the General and then back down at the report that he had placed on her makeshift desk, “What’s this?”

“The Yamato made it back to Sol, they found some interesting candidates for colonization,” said the General.

Lincoln picked up the report and quickly paged through it to the engineering reports on how the FTL drive had operated.

The General frowned, “You’re not even going to look at the colonization candidates?” he asked.

“I’m not a climatologist, and I know nothing more than common knowledge about colonization efforts. I do know how to optimize the FTL calculations based on more data points. So that is what I am going to do, once that is done I’ll look at what will hopefully be the future planetary homes of humanity,” she said.

“Moons, they are moons,” said the General.

Lincoln nodded and continued to page through the data giving it a cursory once over, and then paused looking at one of the engineers reports.

The last part of the analysis that had been written by Ben Williams, “This is disturbing,” she said.

“Those last few pages? It seems a little dire, and it was the assistant engineer of the Yamato that wrote it, I think it’s a little premature to jump to conclusions,” said the General.

Lincoln scoffed, “He’s an assistant engineer with enough experience to be the chief engineer of an entire fleet, the crew of the Yamato is one of the most tight nit ships in the fleet, most of the crew is entirely overqualified for their positions. Ben would not make and report this analysis unless he was sure.”

The General frowned, “Then you think he’s right? The FTL is causing matter to degrade in some manner?”

Lincoln shrugged, “We won’t know until we have a larger sample size, if we analyze the hull of the Longboat IV we might be able to make a determination of the effects,” said Lincoln.

“And if FTL does effect matter in some way?” asked the General.

“We learn to deal with it, either limit the number of FTL jumps an individual or ship makes or find a way to shield against the effects. When nuclear weapons were first used the scientists that created them had no idea what radiation was, and these days we can easily manage it,” Said Lincoln, “Whatever the effects are we can learn to manage them, assuming that they exist.”

“I wish I had your confidence,” said the General as he glared down at the mathematician.

“Ultimately it doesn’t change anything, even if it is only safe or moderately dangerous to perform a single jump humanity can still expand far beyond the Solar System,” said Lincoln.

The General sighed but nodded in agreement, “Fine, we’ll come back to this latter, how are the repairs to the accelerator going?”

Lincoln stood up and walked around her desk to the accelerator hallway she stepped out into it and the General rolling his eyes followed her out into it, Lincoln started to walk down the length of the tunnel, which in its entirety was several kilometers long. 36

“We’re getting there, the engineers you sent are crazy as hell though, this will be the most ghetto accelerator in history, but we’ll have it working again in a week,” said Lincoln.

The General looked at one of the repairs that had been done to the machine, a patch of metal welded to the side of one of the magnetic coils that worked to accelerate particles up to nearly the speed of light. It was rough and bulky compared to the smooth metallic shell of the original construction.

“Worst case scenario?” asked the General.

“Another CERN incident,” said Lincoln.

“You say that like the CERN incident was a small thing,” said the General.

“Well we’re in the middle of nowhere, what’s it matter?” asked Lincoln.

The General paused and slowly shook his head, “You know I think I’m starting to understand why there’s not much of a difference between genius and insane.”

Lincoln smiled, “Well history usually gets to decide, we’ll see which I am once we’re at the end.”

[Charles] was staring out of the window at the small blue world below, they were orbiting the planet at [42,164 Km] stationed over one of the larger continents where the concentration of military power was. He could see the multitude of crude space stations and assemblies that were in orbit, and the different sized ships that were slowly orbiting the planet, more disturbingly he could see the scars in the surface of the planet from bombardment.

[Sam] was in the process of piecing and translating the data that they were capturing from the transmissions that the two major planets in the systems were broadcasting. From what she had been able to discern the two planets had been at war, and had only been at peace for at most [a year].

In that time they had managed to surpass the technological progress of the Empire and build something that many scientists had thought was impossible, if they were left to their own devices they might quickly match and surpass the knowledge of the Empire.

That was not something that could be allowed, and considering their status as a Class C species induction into the Empire was out of the question, such genetic impurity would never be tolerated.

The door chime to his quarters rang, “Come in,” said [Charles] as he turned away from the window.

[Sam] stepped into the room and quickly saluted, [Charles] waved his hand dismissing the formality.

“I’ve found something interesting,” she said.

“That’s all that you’ve been finding for the past few days [Sam] I need you to be a little more specific,” said [Charles] as he relaxed back into his seat.

“They don’t know anything about gravity reflection. This Class C species has no technologies anywhere along the lines of it,” said [Sam].

[Charles] blinked surprised, gravity reflection technology was one of the more important aspects of modern space flight, it created the artificial gravity that allowed ship occupants to operate in space, and it protected them from any sudden accelerations, without it space flight of any duration was impossible.

“Are you sure?” asked [Charles] slowly, even the other species that had been inducted into the Empire, the class B species for example had discovered gravity reflection and manipulation by the time the Empire had accepted them.

“it’s not just that sir, a lot of the technology that they use is different from all other development cycles we’ve seen, including our own. They are equal to us in some fields and woefully behind in others, it’s like their technological progress was stunted and malformed at an early age,” said [Sam].

[Charles] considered it, “Class C species usually destroy themselves when they discover atomics, perhaps this species never discovered them?” said [Charles].

[Sam] shook her head, “there is more than enough residual radiation in the atmosphere to show that they did, not to mention historical evidence from what I can glean out of their records,” said [Sam]. 37

“No something drastically changed their development, and whatever it was makes some of their,” [Sam] hesitated.

“Continue,” said [Charles].

“Are we off record sir?” asked [Sam] as she nervously swallowed.

“If we need to be, I’d rather not have your analysis conform to rhetoric if you don’t think it’s appropriate. Just don’t voice anything of it beyond these walls,” said [Charles].

[Sam] nodded and continued, “whatever it was that caused them to deviate has granted them military technology in several fields that is comparable to our own, specifically in kinetic warfare. Have you seen the scars on the planet’s surface?” asked [Sam].

[Charles] nodded, “Yes, I assumed it was from orbital bombardment.”

“Those strikes were kinetic warheads, they were launched from the other inhabited planet,” said [Sam].

[Charles] sat up straighter in his chair, “really?” He asked.

“Yes, here I was able to convert one of the formats they use for media displays,” Sam gestured at the table and a hologram quickly materialized and flattened out into a display showing a badly distorted image.

The picture moved and showed one of the many orbital rails around the planet far below launching what looked like a metallic rod off into space presumably towards its target on the opposite planet.

[Charles] shook his head in amazement, “It’s an incredibly brutal method of war. A single error in the calculations and you could hit a civilian populated area,” said [Charles].

“From what I could tell sir, they did. Both sides hit civilian populations with these weapons, deliberately.”

[Charles] was for a moment stunned, it was not unheard of for an Empire detachment to fire on civilian populations, but doing so meant the disgrace of any involved for governments to deliberately do so was unimaginable.

“The species population did not protest the targeting of the innocent?” asked [Charles].

“No sir, this species is mad enough that they have something close to a hive mentality, once stirred up they all wish to fight with very little exception. They are perhaps one of the most violent Class C species we have ever encountered.”

“It’s amazing that they haven’t destroyed themselves yet,” said [Charles].

Sam nodded in agreement, “They almost have several times over, from what history I’ve managed to sort through in some instances it has come down to a single individual whom stopped the destruction of their species, however mad they may be as a whole the individuals of the species can at least be rational,” Said [Sam].

She paused and looked out the window at the planet far below, “They are a paradox, and they can be insanely evil one moment and then compassionate the next, they are not something that can be predicted, if we ever deal with them that must be remembered.”

Ben sighed and leaned back in his chair letting his arms float out in front of him he relaxed, since they had made it back to the station they had been doing nothing but run analysis on the FTL drive and send data to Dr. Lincoln.

He was wiped out and despite the nano-machines in his system he felt his bones aching, the price of working for extended periods of time in zero-g.

“Ben!”

Startled Ben opened his eyes, “What?” he growled.

“What the hell are you doing?” asked Megan.

“I’m relaxing, is that not allowed?” he asked.

Megan picked up the nearest tool available and chucked it Ben who lazily dodged to the side used to her aggressiveness by this point to not be concerned.

The tool bounced off the back wall and hit him squarely in the back, Ben doubled over in pain and yelped, “Fuck!” he shouted. 38

Megan smirked, “Fine your relaxing smartass, we don’t have time to relax. Dr. Lincoln wants us to look at the frame of the ship being built, the Ark,” said Megan.

Ben perked up at that, “They’ve already started building it? Where?” he asked.

“Right here on the Station, in one of the illegal shipyards. Apparently the Doctor knows someone in the Martian crime syndicates,” said Megan.

Ben whistled, “That’s some friend though to build an entire ship like that in secret, how big is it going to be? What kind of power plant?” asked Ben.

Megan shrugged, “no idea I just got a message from the Captain telling us to go to the lower docks and that someone on the Station would meet us and then guide us the rest of the way.”

Ben unhooked his feet from his chair and flipping around launched himself off of the wall shooting towards the airlock of the Yamato, “Well let’s go! Like you said this is no time to relax!” said Ben.

“Oy!” said Megan.

Ben twisted around and reaching into her Belt Megan tossed Ben a pistol, he deftly caught it and stared at it for a moment, then looked back at Megan.

“What’s this for?” he asked.

“It’s the lower levels of the Station, we look like Terran’s, so we need to change,” said Megan gesturing at her own jumpsuit that was stained with mechanical fluids and burns from different accidents.

“Oh,” Ben looked down at the gun and then tucked bounced back to his cot to grab some of his off duty clothes, “I thought it was illegal to have guns on the Station,” said Ben.

Megan rolled her eyes, “It is Ben.”

“Oh.”

Megan rolled her eyes and started to change her clothes as well, “We’re already in a conspiracy involving the illegal production of antimatter. I doubt that the small weapons charge would compare.”

“Right.”

Ben looked back at the thug as he slowly floated past, the boy glared at him for a moment before turning and continuing down the corridor. It turns out that even on another planet in zero-g that impoverished areas all turn out the same, broken down and dark with shady characters the only ones willing to move about the streets. The only thing that was missing compared to the more impoverished areas of Earth was the trash. In zero-g no one was throwing things away, all it would do was float back up to annoy you latter so it was clean.

“Do you see our contact?” asked Megan.

“No, and I have no idea what he should look like, so why are you asking me?” said Ben.

“Well I don’t know what he looks like!” said Megan.

Ben was about to turn around and argue with her but a small girl floated down in front of them, her hair like a halo around her head it spread out in every direction.

“You are the engineers from the Yamato?” asked the girl.

Ben hesitated looking at the child, “yes?” he said unsure what exactly to say.

“Follow me, Mrs. Janus is anxious to show you the progress we have made,” said the girl.

Megan blinked, “Janus? The same woman that runs the Bar?” she asked.

The girl nodded, “yes.”

Touching the floor the girl launched herself back off shooting up into what was the ceiling a moment ago slipping into what looked like an abandoned access hatch. Ben and Megan glanced at one another and with significantly less grace than the girl kicked off from the floor following her. 39

Like the white rabbit they followed her through an array of passages and corridors, and each time they would only catch a glimpse of her as she floated through the air, the grace at which she moved in the lack of gravity showed that she was a true child of space, her feet had never touched ground and even with nano-machines stopping bone degradation she most probably never would, as miraculous as the machines were they had limits.

“Any idea where she’s taking us?” asked Ben.

“The shipyard,” said Megan.

“Yeah and we have no idea where that is, so for all we know this is a trap to kill some Terran’s,” said Ben.

“I doubt they need to go to that much trouble, I’m sure they could just shoot us in broad daylight and be done with it,” said Megan.

“Well that’s reassuring,” said Ben as they exited another hatch and floated out into a wide open area, the frame of a massive ship was floating in the middle of the space, a ship that was at the least two times larger than the Yamato if not more.

Ben and Megan unable to stop themselves glanced back to see that their guide had hooked her hand around the last hatch and was watching as they soared across the space, towards the framework.

Ben grabbed the frame as they passed and Megan grabbed onto him, Ben winced as her hands dug into his leg but didn’t say anything his gaze locked on the construction in front of him.

Most of the work was being done at the opposite end of the ship, at their arrival a group had broken off from it though and made their way towards them cold jets firing, chief among them was the large form of Janus.

“Welcome!” said Janus her voice booming across the space.

The little girl that had been guiding them shot past and hooked herself onto Janus, standing on the woman’s shoulder as they drifted towards the Yamato engineers.

“So what do you think?” asked Janus, spreading her arms out wide at the framework of the ship.

Megan looked around, “I think this is insane, how the hell did you build this much? Even if you started work the day after FTL flight you shouldn’t be this far along,” She said.

Janus smiled and nodded, “True but let’s just say that this frame has been sitting around for a long time, don’t you recognize the shape?”

“It’s a carrier!” Said Ben.

Janus nodded, “At the start of the war before the magnetic rails were put into use Mars was going to launch carriers, the government only ever completed the construction of one ship though and she was destroyed during the last battle above Mars,” said Janus.

“How did you get the frame of the other?” asked Megan.

“I know some people, and according to all records the frame was scrapped. I couldn’t do anything with it though, too big for any recreational use and other business ventures,” Janus couched, “so when Dr. Lincoln asked for an Ark, well it was perfect,” said Janus.

Ben nodded in amazement, “I guess it is.”

Megan looked at Janus and then back at the little girl, “How did Dr. Lincoln convince you to build her a ship?”

“She didn’t.”

The girl on her shoulder jumped back up and flipped through the air, retreating towards the back of the ship.

“Who’s that?” asked Ben watching the little girl as she drifted away.

“One of the better individuals I employ,” said Janus.

“Child labor?” asked Megan reproachfully.

“Nepotism,” said Janus coolly.

“Ah,” said Megan.

“Can we look at the ship now?” asked Ben interrupting the two women. 40

They both turned to him the situation diffused.

“Sure, I’ll have my engineers give you the tour,” said Janus.

Ares took a breath and looked out at the planet below him.

“You know I think I’ve changed my mind. Can we have someone else do this?” he asked.

Red chuckled, “to late hotshot!” He jerked the control stick around and suddenly the Earth and stars were rapidly trading positions until in a moment both of them were a blur.

Ares felt his stomach rebelling but he quickly quelled the feeling.

“Can you warn me next time?” asked Ares.

“I could, but I won’t,” said Red.

Had the suit he was in not been so constrictive Ares would have made a gesture at the man.

“We’re about to test a multimillion dollar piece of equipment and your pilot and test pilot are making jokes?” asked the pale military oversight observer, it looked like the spinning was effecting him more than Ares.

“They are professional when they need to be,” said James.

“This is not the time?” asked the observer.

James chuckled, “Getting thrown out of a drop ship at higher than orbital speeds is not something I would expect to affect Ares,” said James.

“What would affect him?” asked the observer now curious.

“Asking a woman on a date, that would terrify him,” said James.

“Well screw you too,” growled Ares.

The light above the bay went green, and James smiled.

“We’re over the drop!” said Red from the cockpit.

“See you!” Said James, and he hit the airlock release, with a small thump the back half of the bay depressurized and the Martian test pilot was blown out into space going nearly forty five kilometers per second, unlocked from his harness, there was a brief moment where James was sure he saw that rude hand gesture before he was whipped out of sight.

Ares was still spinning but concentrating on the instruments in front of him he looked at his trajectory, everything was lined up and in the green. He would be out of communication contact with anyone on the ground or in space due to the extreme atmospheric interference that was going to form when he hit the soup that was the Earth’s atmosphere. Still he could feel the gaze of half a dozen military satellites and a few civilian ones watching his decent.

The suit he was in was the newest variant of Martian mech’s and it was designed for the fastest of atmospheric entries, the ablative shielding on the suit would protect him coming in at any entry vector but he would fall like a brick in the air, and he had no way to control his decent once he punched through the upper atmosphere.

He was at the mercy of physics, and she was not the kindest soul.

Ares felt the slight bump as he started to slow, it was imperceptible at first but the pressure quickly built and watching the readouts in front of him Ares could see the external temperature of the suit quickly rising.

Ares’ spin began to slow and his vision was consumed by fire, it was disturbing to think that the only thing protecting him from the massive amount of friction was only a few inches of material in some places and that should even the smallest tear from he was done for, the extreme heat would cook him in a second.

Firing the jets on the side of the suit Ares began to spin himself back up to speed, if he wasn’t rotating quickly enough the heat wouldn’t be properly distributed, and it was one of the major drawbacks to the new suit designs. The ones that had been in use during the war had been a disposable 41 heatshield an individual would ride into the atmosphere, lighting themselves up to radar detection and the like when they did so. After entering the atmosphere and slowing to terminal velocity the shield was dumped.

This suit did not have that luxury, and like the tech that had gone into the FTL ship it was a collaborative effort between Earth and Mars.

The world now a blur around him Ares focused on the navigational display, he was almost through the deceleration portion of his decent. Ares felt himself grinning, he had only gotten to do this once in the war, and that had been a terrifying experience, then again it had been his second mission and he had spent the better part of a day inside a shell launched from Mars before he hit the Earth’s atmosphere.

With this new suit he could actually feel the air around him as hot as it was.

The radio in his ear cracked, “You alive?” asked James.

“I’m alive you asshole, next time we test something I’m pushing you out first, and without a spacesuit if I can manage it,” threatened Ares.

“You can try, I’ll just space you again,” said James chuckling through the line.

Ares rolled his eyes and looked out through the visor, he had just fallen past 40,000 feet

An alarm blared inside of the helmet, “The parachute casing has fused, I’m going to backups,” said Ares.

“Roger that, going to backups,” said James his voice suddenly serious.

Ares hit the release on his chest but nothing happened, a second alarm blared inside of his helmet, “That chute is fused as well, I’m going to try and force them open,” said Ares.

“You’re at 35,000 feet!” said James.

“I’ll make it!” said Ares, reaching into the side pocket of his suit he pulled his faithful knife from its sheath, thankful for the gloves insulating him from it because it was still faintly glowing from the heat.

Shoving the knife into the front of the mech suit James tried to lever the jammed emergency chute open, to no avail.

“we’re getting telemetry back, we have a fix on your position,” said James.

“James, take the stick!” said Red.

“What the hell are you doing?” asked James, through the radio Ares heard them switching around in the cockpit.

“Get us as near as you can to the Drone control satellites,”

Ares heard the communication line open and the entire base team that was listening into the mission, “Control I need access to the drones in the drop area.” Said Red,

“Why?” asked someone at control.

“Just do it!” ordered James.

“We’ve got three in the area, two camera drones and one high altitude communication relay drone, which do you want?” asked control.

“The communication relay drone, slave it to the controls I have,” said Red.

Ares glanced down at the rapidly approaching water below, “Red what are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m saving your life, can you eject?” asked Red.

“I think so, but I’d prefer to stay with the parachutes,” said Ares, “I’m at 25,000 feet”

“I have your position, when I say I want you to eject,” said Red.

Ares blinked and then glanced back up at the sky imagining he could see the ship that the insane pilot was in.

“What are you doing?” asked James breaking into the conversation.

“Catch,” said Red.

“Catch?! That’s your brilliant idea!” Shouted Ares as he continued to plummet. 42

“You have a better one?” asked Red.

“No, still doesn’t make your idea a good one!” said Ares.

Glancing to the side he could see a small black speck approaching, it rapidly grew and a gigantic multibladed drone drew level with him.

“Hell no!” said Ares.

“When I say!” said Red.

“Wait! Let me try something keep the thing still!” said Ares, and streamlining himself out Ares dove past the drone, angling it so that his chest hit one of the larger blades, the suit was designed to take high caliber impacts and come out unscathed, hopefully the parachute compartments were not as strong.

The blades ripped into the casing of the parachutes and Ares spread his arms back out, “Here we go!” he shouted and tried the backup chute again, this time the hatch popped and the orange chute deployed.

Ares was jerked up into the air, “It worked!” he shouted, the drone above him went spiraling to the side, trying to compensate for the loss of its rotor.

“500 feet!” said Red.

Ares glanced down, and prepared for the impact, with the parachute around his chest he had no way to soften the blow, the emergency chute was purely designed to make sure he lived, not that he would come out unscathed.

“This is going to hurt,” said Ares.

It did.

Chapter 8

“A little more power, it would be worse if this panel came flying off then if you strip the bolt,” said Ben.

The small girl nodded and placing the bolt driver that was nearly half her size back on the panel she flipped the power up higher and drove the fastener home.

“Good!” said Ben.

The girl smiled and let go of the drill, “When are you going to show me how to do something more complicated then screwing something in?” she asked.

Ben considered her for a moment, since he and Megan had been trading between working their shifts on the Yamato while she went through her post war retro fits and upgrades courtesy of the Martian government and working in the secret Martian dry dock on the Ark both of them had taken a liking to the small girl.

Ostensibly the daughter of Janus the small girl was constantly hanging around the construction site, the Martian engineers ignored her for the most part perhaps not wanting to get on the bad side of Janus whom was inspecting the construction of the Ark every other day. At first Ben had tried to ignore her but perhaps realizing that he was not one of the Martian engineers and therefore a weak link she had pestered him with hundreds of questions, getting in his way until he answered them.

Now she was an assistant, any annoying one but helpful all the same.

“When you tell me your name,” Ben said.

The little girl crossed her arms and shook her head, “No.”

Ben pursed his lips and grabbing the pad out of his toolkit he theatrically scrolled through it, “Shame, we’re supposed to be working on the FTL drive next now that we have the power distribution system up and running. Lots of dangerous stuff there.”

“That’s not going to work,” said the little girl. 43

“Why not?” asked Ben.

The little girl grabbed the driver and pulling it off of the mount points to keep it from spinning in zero-g tossed it at Ben, sending herself flying backwards as the heavy piece of machinery lazily drifted towards him.

Recovering the small girl hooked her feet into the wall and glared at Ben.

Pushing the tool away ben glared at the girl, “Why are you throwing stuff at me now?”

“Megan told me to if you annoyed me,” she said.

Ben rolled his eyes, “So you take her advice?”

The girl nodded, “You’re not going to let me help?” she asked, her lower lip quivering and her eyes growing wet.

“Now I know what you’re doing,” said Ben.

“Is it working?” asked the girl sounding as if she were on the verge of heartbroken tears.

“Yes,” growled Ben.

The girl smiled and unhooked her feet from the mooring point, “I’ll beat you there!” she shouted over her shoulder as she bounced off through the corridors of the ship.

Ben heard the muffled curses of other engineers as she flew past them and undoubtedly used them as springboards to travel faster through the air.

Ben followed after her and glanced around the inside of the ship, it was amazing how quickly everything was coming together, but then the Ark was not a terribly complicated ship her entire volume save for the mid-level a uniform layout of bulkheads and storage rooms to carry everything a new colony might need. The only complicated part was the FTL system which instead of being a jury-rigged job was a fully integrated system.

The Ark was a glorified shipping vessel, but she was the first human ship built specifically for FTL and even the paid illegal engineers working were putting extra care into their work. Ben had expected the builders of smuggler ships and illegal warships to cut corners and skip checks, but on the Ark at least they were triple checking and in many cases over engineering the systems for safety and redundancy.

Ben had no idea if it was because Janus was leaning on them or if they were truly invested, he was hoping it was the latter, but then again he had seen the paychecks of a few of them, and Ben had for several seconds debated quitting the navy to build illegal ships if he could make that kind of money.

Floating into the main engineering compartment Ben frowned, “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked.

Megan turned around to glare at him, “I’m helping build the Ark, what the hell are you doing?” she asked.

“The Yamato is about to go on another scouting mission to Eridani and I though we agreed you were going to stay on her during it,” said Ben.

Megan nodded, “I was but the Captain wanted us to finish up the Ark, the auxiliary guys are having a crack at running the FTL systems,” said Megan.

Ben winced, “The fusion reactor is going to be out of sync then, not to mention the inertia dampers,” said Ben.

Megan nodded in agreement, “I told them not to touch them but they never listen, it’s going to take a week to get everything back in order,” said Megan.

“Well great, just great,” said Ben.

The girl floated over in front of them, “Someone wrecking your ship?” she asked.

“Yes, those idiots who think that you should crank the power up to 110% all the time,” said Megan.

The girl sagely nodded, “that sucks,” she said.

Megan turned to look at the engineering readout of the Ark, “Did you finish those adjustments like I asked Diana?” asked Megan.

Ben looked over at the girl and she stuck her tongue out at him, “You know her name?” asked Ben.

Megan turned around to look at him, “what you don’t? She told me the first day we were here,” said Megan.

Ben put his hands up in the air, “unbelievable, why the hell is it always me?” asked Ben. 44

Diana giggled, “You make it too entertaining to do anything else.”

---

---

The General, Lincoln, and Janus all looked down at the partially constructed ship, its outer hull was nearly complete with only a few large patches left to weld or fix into place. The internal electronics and controls systems were still being installed but it looked like a ship, a flying brick of a ship but nonetheless a ship.

“You’ve made stunning progress,” said the General.

“You can move a lot more quickly when you don’t need to fill out all the paperwork,” said Janus.

“When will it be completed?” asked Lincoln.

Janus glanced over at the woman, “We’re hoping in about another two weeks or so, we’ve started to requisition all of the appropriate colonization equipment from Sagan city, ostensibly for an outpost in Hellas Planitia.”

“How many people are we going to be able to support?” asked Lincoln.

“Well the life support systems for the Ark are more robust than anything in the fleets of Earth or Mars, that’s your only limit if this is a one way trip. About four hundred people can fit on the Ark if they are willing to squeeze in,” said Janus.

“We need to start the process of selecting candidates and secretly inviting them then,” said Lincoln.

“Selecting?” asked the General.

“We need to offer spots to scientists of multiple fields, engineers, colonization experts,”

“We’re not just offering this to the elite,” said the General.

Lincoln turned to look at him, “We have a limited number of seats, we need to send the best to ensure the success of the colony.”

The General shook his head, “That’s a good start but history would suggest that we need to send a different kind of people. What were the first Martian colonists like?” he asked.

“Insane,” supplied Janus.

“Right, they were insane, they came to Mars in tin cans that barely had self-sustaining life support. The people on Earth said they were going to die and a whole hell of a lot of them did. They were the rejects of society who had nothing else to live for, they were not the Nobel Laureates, they were the insane inventors who wanted to live on another planet. Within 200 years those insane first colonists managed to create a society with almost as much power as Earth!” said the General.

“So you want to send insane people on the Ark?” asked Lincoln skeptical.

The General sighed, “No, but we need some decidedly normal people to be on it as well, we’re only going to get one shot to launch the Ark before the politicians fall down on top of this whole project, heck just the fact that we’ve produced antimatter will get heads rolling. The Colony might be out of contact indefinitely,” said the General.

“Ten years, and a few months is the time lag between Sol and Eridani, so the politicians will have 20 years to figure things out if they want to demand the colonists come back,” said Lincoln.

“An eternity in politics,” said Janus, “I’ll help draw up the requirements, and I have a few recommendations for some people who might not have official resumes.”

“Good, how’s the antimatter production coming along Lincoln?” asked the General.

“Well enough, the accelerator can’t be active for more than 16 hours straight without overheating, but we’ve managed to produce about an ounce of antimatter, we’re going to start producing the strange matter in a week or so,” said Lincoln as she rubbed at her eyes, “I would prefer that the Ark had six ounces of antimatter, that would allow for a jump to Eridani and a jump back. That might not be realistic though. The longer the accelerator is in operation the more we risk detection, it is the weakest link in this little endeavor,” said Lincoln.

“I can’t hide this ship forever, I’ve paid my engineers well enough but eventually one will let something slip,” warned Janus.

“We’re rushing everything so we don’t get caught, but we can’t make any slip ups on this we’ll only have one shot,” said the General. 45

Janus leaned back in the air, “Well I have my best agent working on the ship, that won’t be the weak link,” she said.

The General frowned, “Your daughter, Diana?” he asked.

Janus shrugged, “Clone actually, with a few genetic tweaks and the next generation of nano-machines, she’s never set foot in a gravity well but she’s got bones strong enough to stand up on Jupiter if she wanted too,” said Janus.

The General groaned, “You did not need to say that, I did not hear you say that,” he said.

Janus smiled, “You’re already in trouble, what’s a little genetic enhancement and augmentation,” said Janus.

“It’s illegal and is one of the few laws that both Earth and Mars followed during the war, hell its part of the Geneva Convention under biological experimentation!” said the General.

“I thought the whole point of this FTL Ark was to ignore the politicians? She’s not a weapon or experiment, she’s my daughter. I hardly think a century old ban should hold clout,” said Janus.

The General sighed and reaching into his pocket pulled out a small flask and took a swig.

“Gerald!” said Janus reproachfully.

The General turned to glare at her, “You’re one to talk?” he growled.

Janus crossed her arms, “I know what happens when you retreat into the bottle.”

The General growled something under his breath and put the flask back inside his uniform.

---

---

“Sir!” said the communications officer, “we have an incoming message from the tachyon buoy!” he said.

“Who is it from?” asked [Charles].

“It is from the Consul Sir!” said the officer.

[Charles] stiffened in his chair but nodded, “I’ll take it in my ready room, transfer it there,” said [Charles].

Getting up from his chair [Charles] quickly walked across the bridge and stepped into his small ready room, the lights dimmed and the holographic image of the Consul materialized.

“Consul,” said [Charles] saluting the man.

“What has taken you so long Captain?” asked [Marcus].

[Charles] hesitated for a moment insure exactly what to say, “We’re having some difficulty obtaining data on the FTL technology, the technical sophistication of the data encryption techniques they use is comparable to our own in many respects.”

[Marcus] raised an eyebrow at that, “Our technology is in no way similar to anything a Class C species uses. I want that technology under the control of the Empire within [two weeks] Captain. Use whatever methods are necessary to obtain it, but do make sure that planet is purged.” Said the Consul.

For a moment [Charles] considered asking the Consul if they could try to make peaceful contact, but the species was a Class C species, interaction was only through extermination, and the species below was the most dangerous the Empire had ever encountered, they were a threat that had to be eliminated lest they challenge them in the future.

“Yes sir, we will make final recordings and prepare for the assault, could I request that a [wing] be on standby to assist if needed? They do have antimatter weapon technology and I would prefer not to lose anyone,” said [Charles].

[Marcus] frowned but then nodded, the [Singer] was a ship entirely staffed by Class A’s after all any loss would have to be explained.

“They will be on standby,” said [Marcus].

“Thank you sir,” said [Charles]. 46

The Consul cut the line and [Charles] let out a sigh of relief, interacting with the de-facto leader of the Empire on an almost [weekly] basis was taking it out of him, with a single order the man could do anything and he was not known to be forgiving.

Sitting down in his office chair [Charles] closed his eyes and tried to calm the headache that was building, this mission itself was too stressful. The species below was unlike others he had seen from outside the Empire, he had observed a total of three class C species, but both times he had not been the commanding officer.

The first species had been C1655, a species whose seed had been entirely corrupted several billion years ago the creatures had never managed to make it past their agricultural age. When the survey team took readings and samples it had shown that they had been stagnant in their development for nearly a million years. They had purple skin and elongated limbs, and the small tribes of them that had formed would be constantly at war with the others they encountered, in many situations resorting to cannibalism.

They had left the species to stagnate, the world they inhabited was barely habitable in the first place.

The second species had been C1702, and [Charles] had been an officer of the ship when they were surveyed, the species was short and stocky due to the gravity of the world their Seed had hatched on billions of years ago. Other than that they had almost been a Class B species, their skin color and number of fingers was correct, the amount of hair they produced normal.

Were it not for the brain abnormality that caused the females of the species to go mad after the childbearing age they would have been accepted. The planet they had inhabited was lush and plentiful, the plants and other species on the world adjusted for the higher gravitational pull were neatly within the Class B category.

The Empire had removed the Class C species and set up a small colony.

This new species, C1764 though, it was one of the most deviant species on record. Their bodies were hardier than any Class A species, their skin and bones stronger and denser than anything in the databanks, their eyes and hearing keener by a slight measure, their ability to heal.

A subject of the C1764 species could survive loosing almost any number of limbs and senses, so long as the internal organs were not severely damaged they would heal, coupled with what [Sam] had been able to pull form their data networks and the state of their medical science they could survive almost anything which left the brain intact.

[Charles] shook his head and turned to look at the planet, even the plants and animal life that had developed form the seed that had taken root on this planet were more vicious then normal, and it seemed as if throughout its entire history the life on the planet had been in a furious race to dominate it.

Now a species that had conquered that world was reaching out to the stars, if they ever managed to make that leap they would be like a virus, a cancer throughout space. Still there was something about them that made them feel different from the other two Class C species, [Charles] couldn’t put his finger on what it was but something was different.

He hoped that whatever it was wouldn’t come back to bite them.

---

---

Leaning back in her chair Lincoln looked out at the small portion of the accelerator that she could see from the small workstation / lab that she had set up in the underground tunnels.

The table in front of her was a mess of information and calculations, the design schematics for the Ark were on a glowing screen, the analysis of the Eridani system on another tablet, the engine schematics for the Yamato were on old fashioned paper, and the FTL calculations that had started it all lay off to the side, the crumpled and by this point somewhat faded scratch work of calculations that she had first done.

Leaning forward Lincoln picked up the sheet of paper and slowly unrumpled it, it was only a year ago that she had made the calculations, and ten months ago when she had first met Malcom.

Her heart skipped a beat and Lincoln closed her eyes remembering the first meeting she had with the insane pilot.

“Lincoln!”

Startled Lincoln looked up from her workstation, the science director was walking down the hall towards her office, never a good sign.

“Yes?” asked Lincoln. 47

The man smiled, “I want to introduce you to your pilot!”

Lincoln looked at the director, either the old geezer had finally cracked or the pilot was missing. Seeing her confused gaze the director turned around and sighed, “Mr. Malcolm!” he shouted.

Getting up Lincoln followed the director as he backtracked through the complex, entering the open area Lincoln spotted a man who was obviously a Martian on the other side of the security perimeter around the Longboat IV pacing the length of the ship examining it.

“How the hell did he get in their?” mumbled the director.

Swiping his keycard to open the security perimeter the director walked into the hanger and up to the Martian.

“Mr. Malcolm, I was hoping to introduce you to the-“

“What the hell did you guys do to the stabilizer profile? It looks like its gone through a thresher!” said Malcolm pointing at the side of the ship where a patchwork of panels was covering a small bulge from the uniform skin of the ship.

“Mr. Malcolm-“

Lincoln stepped forward, “Well we decided that the pilot of the ship might want to have some actual control of the ship within a subspace / normal space convergence. It’s an old style reaction wheel, the quantum vacuum propulsion theory most likely breaks down in subspace being that there are no virtual quantum particles to push against, so I guess we could remove it if you really don’t like it,” said Lincoln interrupting the director.

Malcolm turned away from the ship and slowly turned his head down to look at the Lincoln a small woman even by Terran standards.

“Reaction wheels? The trainer I flew back in the day had those, haven’t flown with them since,” he said.

“Well then I certainly hope you won’t have any issues flying with them then, the turbulence around the subspace rupture will be extreme, any errors in the piloting will cause the ship to shear along point of contact with the event horizon,” said Lincoln.

Malcolm smiled, “So risky piloting, with deadly consequences if I mess even one thing up? Easy enough,” he said.

Lincoln frowned, “Are all pilots like this? I was hoping the Martian’s might be different,” said Lincoln.

“Nah, pilots are all assholes unless their Mothers are in the room, we’re better than sailors though they’re still rude even with their Mothers,” said Malcom.

Lincoln rolled her eyes and groaned, “I’m going to die,”

Malcom shook his head, “It wouldn’t be nice to let a woman like yourself die Doc, I’ll make sure you get through it in one piece.”

Lincoln looked at the pilot and raised an eyebrow, he grinned and turned back to look at the Longboat IV.

“Doctor?” asked a technician.

Startled Lincoln opened her eyes and looked at the man, he was holding out a form to her.

“Could you look these calculations over? We’ve run them through the computer a dozen times but we’re still running short on the magnetic bottle limits,” he said.

Blinking Lincoln nodded, “Sure,” taking the tablet from him she quickly started to sort through the math in front of her, balancing and calculating the values of the magnetic fields and the electronics that would hold the antimatter in place, within moments she found the small error, someone had not converted the units correctly, and the computer was not supposed to do those conversions for fear of accuracy.

Pointing it out Lincoln handed the tablet back to the technician and he hurried away to his colleges.

Lincoln once again looked out at the accelerator, it was strange, it hadn’t even been a year yet she felt as if it had been a lifetime. Up until the point of Malcolm’s death it was like she had been asleep, she hadn’t broke any laws in her life, she had dreamed but never really fought to make those dreams a reality.

Now she was committing crimes of a degree that would have two planetary governments vying to execute her, but she had never felt so alive, so full of hope for the future of humanity.

48

“Captain!” said [Sam] from her station.

“Yes?” Asked [Charles]

“The FTL ship, it’s being moved! From the second planet to the third one we are orbiting right now, the public data streams just broadcasted the information!” said [Sam].

[Charles] felt himself pail slightly, this would be the best opportunity to take the ship and the technology it contained, an FTL technology more advanced than the tachyon drives the Empire used, a species more violent and deviant than any the Empire had ever encountered, the odd something that made him hesitate.

[Charles] closed his eyes and let out a breath.

“All hands to stations, prep the package for deployment. [Sam] I want to know exactly where that ship is going, helm prepare us to move to that location.”

The subordinates nodded and turned to their stations to execute his orders, [Charles] once again looked out at the planet far below, it was now or never, for the glory of the Empire.

“I don’t get why the hell we have to be here,” groaned Ares.

“Dignitaries and VIP’s are coming to greet the ship as it comes home, the higher ups want us here because we’re the public face of military cooperation.” Said James.

Ares winced, “I know and I’m still recovering from the last cooperative event, I swear the nano-machines didn’t knit my skin together right, it itches,” said Ares.

James shook his head and looked out at the display, they were on Aldrin Station around the Moon, and it was one of the few ring stations with artificial gravity the dignitaries uncomfortable with zero-g unlike most space fairing individuals.

“You’re fine Ares.”

“What happened to the Doctor Lincoln? Will she be showing up?”

“I’ve heard she’s up to something, don’t know what.” Said James.

Ares glanced over at his friend, “I’ve heard the same, got a buddy on Mars Station who said something odd was going on in lower docks, all hushed up of course. What do you think she’s up too?”

James shrugged, “No idea, and I’m not digging into it, she might be an egghead but she’s vicious.”

Ares nodded in agreement, remembering the sounds the man in the hospital room had made as his brain slowly melted inside his own skull, or as the reports stated it succumbed to his injuries from the crowd pouncing on him.

Ares glanced over at the small window, in the side of the wall. It was idiotic to put windows on space stations and ships, but some people mostly the politicians liked them. Stepping over Ares looked outside, “Is that it?” he asked.

James followed his gaze spotting the Longboat IV outside the station as they rotated past it, “yeah, it’s a modified fighter, what did you expect?” he asked.

“I don’t know something more impressive.”

James started to say something but the floor beneath them shook, the gravity holding them to the curved floor slowly started to lessen, and alarms of every kind began to blare.

Chapter 9

49

“Let’s go!” said James, as he pushed off from the floor and shot down the curved hall towards the section of the station where the VIP’s were housed.

Ares followed after him, and James could hear the Martian suit going into combat mode, the mechanisms crackling to life making the air around him hum.

There was a momentary buzz in James’s earpiece and he winced, the buzz cleared in and with the recognizable chirp the communication line opened.

“Unknown Hostile, 2 Km off of Aldrin Station, all forces converge on the unknown!” the fleet message repeated.

“What the hell!?” breathed James as he caught a glimpse of the ship through one of the small portholes, space always made it difficult to gauge the scale of objects, but from what he could tell the ship whatever it was more massive by far than anything the Martians or his own government had ever created.

His com buzzed again and Red cut into the line, “We’ve got incoming fighters, whatever that thing is it’s a carrier!” said the pilot.

“What the hell is going on?” said Ares.

“Red, I want our transport up and running!” shouted James.

“I’m on my way to it now, get a suit on!” shouted Red through the communication channel.

Flying past an emergency kit on the wall James grabbed a helmet and slid it over his head, it attached to the mechanical counter pressure suit he was wearing underneath his civvies and pulling the gloves from his pocket James shoved them onto his hands.

“They’ve fired!” shouted Ares.

James glanced out just in time to see a gout of light and energy carve its way through space towards the station, from his perspective it was aiming above them, right at the core of the station.

James didn’t even feel the station move, but a quarter second later the bulkheads leading to the center of the station sealed. Whatever had been fired wasn’t kinetic, when a kinetic shot hit you felt it.

“Jesus Christ! The entire core it gone!” shouted Red through the channel.

“Get to the fucking transport! We’re getting to the VIP’s!” said James.

“Roger!” said Red.

James and Ares flew down the corridor and coming to the bulkhead at the end of the hall found the hatch to the presentation hall open, a man without a protective suit looking out of it down the corridor.

Ares and James both bounced one final time off of a wall and seeing them approaching the man quickly drew away from it and back into the room. Charging through James did a quick once over of the room.

There were several green looking Martian and Terran guards, several older higher ranked military officials, and quite a few people whom James could only assume were politicians. Most were still working to pull on their helmets as well, looking at the other side of the room James could see the large airlock doors that led to the presentation platform where the Longboat IV would have docked, at the moment the ship was hanging behind the transport that was towing it, a slight haze around it from the vacuum drive thrusters keeping it in place.

“What the hell is going on?” asked General Collin, a Terran commander who had been in charge of the defense of Earth during the war, he had retired the day hostilities had ended and no one blamed him the job had visibly taken years off of the already aged man.

“A hostile ship appeared out of nowhere and fired on the station sir, the core of Aldrin is gone,” said James as he turned around and shut the hatch, sealing it.

“Everyone got helmets on!?” shouted Ares.

There were a few murmured replies and shouts of affirmation, “Get them on we’re venting the compartment!” shouted Ares.

It was standard procedure in the event of a battle, vent the compartments before a weapon could do so and you eliminated the possibility of getting blown out into space. Not that it would matter if you got struck by an accelerated round, but in that case your really wouldn’t have time to worry about the hit. 50

There was a hiss of air as James hit the control panel to vent the atmosphere, under normal conditions it took at least three people’s verification to vent a compartment. Under emergency procedure though safeties were disengaged so that anyone could do it, a concession that had been made after to many accidents leaving people in sealed pressurized rooms only to be blown out into space.

“We’re not sure, not the Martian’s that’s for sure,” said James.

General Collin frowned, “what make you sure?” he asked.

“Turn around sir,” said James grimacing.

The man did so, and James couldn’t see his face but he could easily imagine the look on it, surprised and fearful.

“I would have to agree with that assessment,” breathed General Collin as he stared out at the Alien ship.

It was Alien, no one had said the word yet, no one wanted to be the first to say it. The ship was gigantic, and despite its size it possessed a fluidity in form that no other ship anyone had ever seen possessed, she was lethal like a creature from the deep ocean, a creature that knew only destruction.

“We’re depressurized,” said Ares.

James nodded, he could feel the oppressive silence around him from the lack of atmosphere, the only sound was people breathing on the public com channel.

“I’m coming into the dock!” said Red, now close enough for the public channel to pick him up.

The people in the room turned to look out the window and at the military transport cutting in front of the larger hauler that was towing the Longboat IV in.

A blast of energy lanced out from the alien ship, narrowly missing Red, the hauler was not as lucky, and a moment latter the entire font half of the vessel was gone, no debris or particles, it was simply gone.

“Shit!” shouted Red. The transport twisted to the side, and crashed violently into the docking bay, the station shook from the impact and James grunted as the floor came back up and hit his feet sending him and nearly everyone else in the room up into the ceiling.

“Sorry about that! Let’s go!” shouted Red.

The inner airlock doors to the room opened, had everything been normal the Captain of the towing transport and several of the scientists’ excluding Dr. Lincoln who was indisposed at the moment, whom had helped to develop the FTL drive would have entered through it and given a speech about the importance of Martian and Earth relations. That speech was now canceled.

Now that proximity was an advantage, the transport Red had crash landed had opened its back bay door, and was only about ten meters from the airlock a small push and you could make it, he couldn’t get any closer without extending a docking tube, something that took at least ten minutes and with the Alien ship looming directly in front of them it was not something James wanted to deal with.

“Let’s go!” shouted James.

---

---

[Charles] looked out the large window of the bridge at the station, it was designed like a ring with what had been the central command center and power distribution systems in the center. The design was crude but effective, and if he was remembering his classes from when he was a child correctly a ring like that would provide artificial gravity simply by spinning it. The Class C species was resourceful it seemed.

The [Singer] had disengaged the cloaking systems and disabled the power generation capabilities of the station first, to prevent them from communicating distress. That plan had gone out the window however, the station had multiple communication systems which had for some reason been inactive up until main power had been lost.

Why someone would design such an intricate and unnecessary system for the unlikely event of power loss was beyond [Charles], all he knew was that they had lost the element of surprise on the rest of the system. Not that it was that large of an issue, but the tactician inside of him loathed giving up such a valuable element so early.

“The ship towing the FTL prototype has been disabled,” said [Jack] the current weapons officer. 51

“Tell the fighters to go in and retrieve it, once we have it in the bay we’ll jump out of the system and let the reserves clean up the rest of the species,” said [Charles].

“Aye, they are moving in now sir.”

[Charles] watched as the fighters moved in towards the FTL prototype, the station looked to be dead, the lights that had been radiating from it only a [minute] ago were gone. The thing had absolutely no refractive shielding, the low power shot from the ship-to-ship guns had completely disintegrated the core of the station.

“Good, make sure the prototype is not damaged,” said [Charles].

As the fighters moved in towards the station [Charles] turned to look at the tactical readout, just in time to see the incoming barrage.

The [Singer] shuddered as several large kinetic rounds struck her shields, “Damage?” asked [Charles].

“None sir! Our shields are down to 80% and regenerating!” said [Jack].

“Move us to intercept the incoming ships, they might be able to punch through the fighters shields with their main guns if that barrage was anything to go by, once we’re in range weapons free,” said [Charles].

The front view shifted as the [Singer] turned away from the crippled station and back towards open space, the ships were slowly moving towards them from what [Charles] could see on the tactical readout. An alert on the console told him that the package had hit the atmosphere, and [Charles] winced. There was no turning back now.

---

---

Earth had been host to humanity for nearly 100,000 years, it was her crowning achievement, a species so ruthlessly intelligent, ruthlessly violent, and ruthlessly clever that she feared they would destroy her. They had come close several times over, and her face showed the scars of only the most recent attempt.

She had endured far worse pains though, gone through so many extinction events that they were almost routine. After every event the life on her surfaced survived only to flourish again in the future, the life on Earth was not efficient or needlessly complex, it was hardy.

Humans were earth’s most recent evolutionary enhancement, and her gift to the Universe at large. A species that would not matter the cost or the consequences, survive.

3 months 20 days 15 hours and 43 minutes after they made the largest step towards the stars and spreading the unique form of life that had evolved on Earth to the heavens the Earth watched as her children faced their greatest challenge since their separation from their long lost cousins on the plains of Africa.

The bomb had split into thirty different pieces, each carrying a small but extremely effective portion of the compound designed to destroy anything not deemed worthy, the pieces entered the atmosphere around the equator equidistance from one another covering the Earth’s entire surface.

Within a span of ten minutes the Earth was void of all Human life save for those inside sealed environments. The bodies fell to the ground and were consumed by the compound, the Earth watched as her hardiest and most proficient accomplishment collapsed back into the dirt from which they were made, defeated by an enemy not even brave enough to face them head on.

Seeping into the ground of Earth the compound found the remains of every human whom had ever died on the surface of the planet, and consumed them as well erasing their legacy. It found the heroes and the cowards, the Kings and the Serfs, the powerful and the weak, the young and the old, the forgotten and the remembered, it consumed them all. Every physical trace of Humans ever living on Earth was gone in an hour, leaving behind only their impeccable ruins.

Mother Earth watched as the last human fell to the dirt, clutching at her like a child begging a mother for help. The Earth did nothing, she need not do anything, her children were already among the stars, already spreading through the wider Universe like they had across her surface.

They would not be stopped, they would not be denied, Humanity would return to Earth, and she would welcome her conquering children home.

---

---

52

“Jump!” shouted Ares, as he motioned for the stubborn politician to jump.

“Throw me a rope!” shouted the man as he tightened his grip on the handrail.

“Oh for fucks sake, incoming!” shouted James as he pushed himself off of the floor and slammed into the guy carrying the both of them towards the transport.

“We’re all onboard!” shouted Ares.

The back door to the transport slowly began to rise and James leaving the man to complain pushed himself up to the cockpit.

“What’s going on?” he asked Red as he sat down at the weapons station.

“The big guy just pulled a turn that should have torn it apart, it’s facing off against the entire Earth defense fleet! I saw it absorb their long distance barrage like it was nothing!” said Red as he twisted the transport around.

“The small guys?” asked James.

“Heading right for us,” said Red.

“Get us to the accelerator rail then,” James turned around in his seat, “Ares get everyone strapped in or against the far bulkhead we’re going for a max-g jump!” shouted James.

“Got it!” shouted Ares.

The transport swung around and James heard several people hit the walls as they rotated, “We’re gone!” shouted Red and he punched the accelerator, several more thunks from the back of the transport said that not everyone had managed to strap themselves in.

For several tense seconds James stared at the tactical radar in front of him watching the smaller alien fighters dart around, before he let out a sigh of relief.

“They’re still on track for the station, they’re not following us,” he said.

Red nodded but kept his gaze locked forwards, General Collin floated forwards into the cockpit, “Report?” he asked.

“We’re clear for now, the fighters are still on track for the station,” Said Red.

The General glanced down at him and then back at James.

“Have they fired on it?”

“No sir, they have not.”

General Collin’s nodded, “Alright give me access to the communication system. I want a link to Earth command,” he said.

James nodded and turned to the communication system, and froze.

“Sir.”

“What?”

“The beacon sir, it’s gone,” said James.

The General paled, for the beacon to be down meant that the eight separate military command structures where the modules were kept were gone, or no one was at their stations.

“Com’s now! Get me the fleet!” said the General Collin, his voice low but urgent.

James passed it back to him and the older man slipped it on over his head, for a moment James saw the professional veneer crack, and the fear in the old man’s eyes mirroring his own.

---

---

“Five, Four, Three, Two, One!” said the Ken the pilot of the Yamato. 53

Takuya felt the now familiar jolt as the ship jumped through the antimatter strange matter explosion and into the rift in reality it created, outside the ship he saw the fantastical lights and images bleed in and out of reality, for those few infinite moments Takuya watched them along with the rest of his crew. The instruments still had no idea what they were, and were still unable to record anything but blackness.

The Yamato dropped out of FTL near Saturn, and Takuya breathed a sigh of relief, they were home.

“All stations report.”

The various officers waited a moment as they collected information from their sections of the ship.

“We’re all green, a slight irregularity in the vacuum drive but well within standard deviances.” Said Ken as he read off the reports from the other departments.

Takuya nodded, whenever Ben and Megan were off ship they always had issues with the vacuum drives, which was odd considering the system had been replaced several times over by this point and each time that small irregularity cropped up.

“Alright then, get us on the rail and launch us back towards Mars,” said Takuya.

“Aye!” said the Ken.

Releasing the straps from around his waist holding him in place Takuya drifted up from his seat, “I’m going to get some sleep, you’ve got the watch Ken.”

The pilot nodded and held up his thumb.

Takuya looked around at the other officers and they all nodded in agreement, he had been on the bridge for two shift changes already. The stress of being in a completely alien system without any backup was keeping him from getting any sleep.

Drifting back through the ship Takuya opened the hatch to his small cabin and slipped inside. The bunk on the wall, a thermos, and the ever present pads and reports were the only things adorning the space.

The current status of the ship was overlaid on the fake window he had in the room, for a moment Takuya stared out at the familiar visage of Saturn.

Drifting over to the thermos Takuya lifted it from its cradle and took a sip of the scalding hot liquid. Coffee was not the best thing to drink right before trying to get some sleep but it was a habit.

Putting the thermos back in its cradle Takuya closed his eyes, a slight rumbled through the ship told him that they had launched from the accelerator, and they were back on track to Mars. Drifting back to the wall Takuya quickly slid himself into his bed and cinched the straps down to hold himself in place.

Letting out another sigh Takuya flipped the lights in his cabin off.

The alarms in every compartment of the Yamato went off, not the red alert signaling a ship emergency but the yellow alert signaling immediate military action was needed, an alert that had not been used in over a year, an alert that Takuya had hoped he would never see again.

Running on autopilot he was out of his bunk and flying down the halls of the Yamato not caring he was dressed only in his underwear, the rest of the crew was in a similar state of precise panic, every crew member not already on duty rushing to their stations as the alarm continued to blare.

“The beacon is offline!” said Ken as Takuya shot into the bridge, rebounding off of the forward display before making it to his seat.

“What?!” said Takuya.

“The Earth beacon is gone! We’re getting general distress calls from all over the Earth Moon system, reports of,” Ken hesitated for a moment, “reports of an alien vessel launching some sort of biological weapon at Earth and then attacking Aldrin station,” said Ken.

He turned to Takuya, “All hails to the surface have failed, no one is responding on Earth’s surface.”

The bridge was silent, no one was quite sure what to say, and the implication of the communication blackout was extreme.

“How soon can we get to Earth?” asked Takuya.

“Four days, we’re already on our trajectory to Mars,” said Ken.

Takuya turned to him, “Do we have any antimatter left?” he asked. 54

Ken hesitated but turned to look at his console, “A sliver, it might be enough, I’m not sure. Dr. Lincoln’s calculation left us some margin for error,” said Ken.

“Is that a yes or no?” asked Takuya angrily.

Ken turned around to look at the Captain, “It’s a maybe!” he said.

Takuya glared at him for a moment, then nodded, “Put the engines into attack run speed, get us as much acceleration as possible,”

Takuya turned to the officers who were now looking at him and at the data from Earth as it streamed in, “We’re 80 minutes behind, I want all stations battle sealed, someone get me a suit. We’re jumping as soon as all stations report ready.”

The department heads turned to their consoles, and Takuya started to sift through the data as it came in, they were 80 minutes behind the time and the battlefield would be completely different when they hit it, still it was data, and he would take everything he could.

A crewman drifted into the bridge and quickly tossed Takuya and the few other officers who had been off duty their suits and before continuing on through the ship.

Slipping into the suit Takuya felt his stomach tightening, the alien ship had survived a hit from every main gun in the Earth defense fleet and shrugged it off like it was nothing, the latest data showed that fighters were being directed towards Aldrin station and that the main alien ship was turning to face the fleet.

“I want all of the nukes primed, take the limiters out. Prep the guns and load heavy rounds, we’re going to have to go in firing.” Said Takuya as he sealed the helmet.

“Aye, Weapons reports ready sir!”

“Engineering reports ready!”

“Venting atmosphere,” said Ken.

The air inside of the Yamato slowly vented and Takuya felt the oppressive silence close in around him leaving him with only his own heartbeat and the hum of the ship beneath him as the

Takuya took a breath and nodded his head, “Let’s do it. Jump us in.”

---

---

“We’re almost to the rail! Where are we going?” said Red.

“We’re heading to Mars!” said General Collin,

James turned to look at him, “what about Earth sir?” he asked.

The General slowly shook his head, “Earth,” the man paused and brought his head up, James could see the tears inside of them that were unable to fall, “All reports show that Earth is devoid of all Human life, a biological weapon designed specifically for us. Everything else, the infrastructure and other forms of life remain untouched. Some scattered communication from people who were working in sealed environments but that’s about it. Earth is lost.”

“We’re not even going to fight?” asked James.

General Collin slammed his fist into the metallic wall next to James, “We’re going to damn well fight, but there is no point in rushing into a battle to get yourself killed!” said the General.

James nodded, “yes sir.”

“We’ve got incoming, I need you on the guns James!” said Red.

“How many?”

“One small fighter, normally I would say we could take them out but if they have the same shields like the big one I doubt we can, we’re going to have to hope it can’t follow us on the rail,” said Red. 55

“Time to intercept?” asked James.

“One minute, we need six to get to the rail, and there are other ships in similar situations, from what I can tell those fighters did something at Aldrin and then bugged out to chase us down.”

“Ares tell everyone to hang on!”

“Roger!” said Ares.

James turned back to his display and reaching into the console grabbed the wire jack and shoved it into his helmet, it flashed and he got the momentary sense of nausea as his view was replaced with the tactical feeds from the hull of the ship making it appear like he was floating in the void of space speeding along the surface of the moon, which was getting closer.

“Red what are you doing?” asked James.

“Slingshot,” growled Red as they dove closer to the surface of the moon.

“I see the guy, here we go!” said James as he brought the guns of the transport around and placed the small fighter in its reticule, the ship was small and shaped like a dart with a green tinge to it, with a crisscrossing of lines across the hull.

Zooming in James got his first look at the Aliens, they looked almost human, their skin was bright red and the specimen inside of the cockpit at least was bald. The pilot was sitting in a cockpit reminiscent of old earth fighter jets a clear canopy over him with the controls in front of him, an engineering standard that both Earth and Mars had moved away from in favor of actually armoring the hulls of their ships instead of relying on easily punctured transparent materials.

From what James could tell the pilot looked board, and that made him angry.

“Die you bastard,” growled James as he pulled the trigger.

A stream of magnetically accelerated rounds shot from the back of the transport towards the pursuer, crossing the space in less than a quarter of a second, too fast for any human pilot or as it was apparent alien pilot to dodge out of the way.

The rounds disintegrated in small flashed of fire and plasma about above the hull of the fighter, the pilot looked startled for a moment but didn’t show fear, instead simply looking startled.

James poured on the rounds, holding the trigger down he watched as they continued to be eaten away by whatever was protecting the thing, Red continued to dive towards the surface of the moon and the fighter continued to close.

“We have anything else? He’s not even dodging and I haven’t even scratched his paint!”

“This is a transport!” said Red.

“Fuck!” said James as he continued to lay in on the ineffective fire. The guns were being pushed into the red the magnetic coils beginning to overheat.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” shouted James as the fighter crept forwards towards them.

“Whoa!” shouted Red, James was jerked to the side as Red spun off away across the surface of the moon.

James glanced up in time to see the Terran Frigate bearing down on them, its main gun lighting up along with ever ship-to-ship guns along her hull.

“The Yamato!” said Red reading the IFF signal even as James spotted the name on the side of her hull.

James turned to see the small fighter that had been tailing them get hit with the concentrated fire from the frigate, James continued his own small barrage, and he watched satisfied as the small ship seemed to stutter under the fire, the protection around it apparently failing.

The Fighter let out a small burst of pure white light and James watched as it began to violently tumble through space all semblance of attitude control gone.

The Yamato didn’t change her course her nose pointed directly at the small fighter, her armor was built to withstand multiple orbital kinetic hits, and she plowed into the alien fighter which began to slowly drift.

“I hope everyone is alright in their!” said a voice over the com, the Captain of the Yamato James guessed.

“We’re alright, thanks for that!” said General Collin, “Where the hell were you? You just appeared out of nowhere on the sensors, were you on the surface?” 56

There was a pause, “No sir! We were around Saturn when we heard the beacon go dead, decided to use our new FTL system and join the fight!” said the Captain.

General Collin looked confused for a moment, “FTL system? Like the Longboat IV?” he asked.

“Yes sir! Dr. Lincoln was kind enough to give us the specs! We had some antimatter lying around so we figured why the hell not!” said the Captain.

General Collin looked like he was at a loss for what to say, “Uh, Alright. Give them hell.” Said the General.

“Yes sir!” said the Captain and the line went dead.

James watched as the battleship’s engines glowed and the haze formed around them the Yamato began to accelerate past them, back towards Aldrin Station and the battlefield.

“We’re almost to the rail,” said Red.

General Collin nodded, James disengaged his display pulling the wire from his helmet and he turned to Red, “Where’s the wreckage of that thing?” he asked.

Red glanced down at his display, “About ten klicks behind us catching up quick, we have to slow down as we approached the rail,” he said.

“This might be the only opportunity we have to get our hands on their tech. Grabbing a functioning Martian suit was what helped us turn the ground wars, this might be the same,” said James

General Collin nodded, “Once we have it we can replicate or find weaknesses in it, I’ll have that Martian solider clear the bay, it should fit.”

---

---

“Jesus,” breathed Takuya as they go their first look at the battlefield around Aldrin Station.

The station was a wreck and debris was floating in every direction. A small squadron of enemy fighters were retreating from it dragging what at first Takuya thought was a piece of the station behind them.

“Sir, I’m getting an IFF signal, those fighters have the Longboat,” said the sensor officer.

Takuya glanced back at her and then at the display, “These are aliens, we have to assume they have FTL, why do they want our FTL ship?” he asked.

There was no response from anyone on the bridge, and Takuya shrugged.

“Arm a nuke, target the Longboat,” said Takuya.

“Sir?” asked Ken.

“They want it for some reason. I don’t know what it is but I’m not going to let them take anything else,” said Takuya.

“Nuke ready!” said weapons.

“Ken, fire when we’re in range,” said Takuya.

“Yes sir!” said Ken.

The Yamato accelerated again, quickly bearing down on the small fighters as they dragged the Longboat IV through space behind them with what looked like tendrils of light or plasma. As they approached several of the small craft broke off from their task of pulling the Longboat IV and turned to face the Yamato.

“All guns open fire!” said Takuya.

The multiple weapons officers along the hull of the Yamato gleefully took to the order, all of the point defense turrets rotating and opening fire their small ammunition contributing to the power of the five larger 75 mm rail guns. Ken and the weapons officer on the bridge coordinating with one another brought the main gun to bear on their target, the main gun of the Yamato was of a 100 mm bore, only 25 mm more than the medium ship to ship guns rotating on the hull, but the accelerator track for the ammunition spanned the entire belly of the ship and her record speed was just a hair over 2% the speed of light, a shot that would be devastating to any Martian ship, the challenge was lining up the shot.

“Firing!” said weapons. 57

The main gun fired and Takuya felt the slight jolt and lights inside the ship flickered from the power drain, the fighter that was unfortunate enough to be in the reticule violently spun as it was impacted, Takuya glimpsed the damage which as opposed to being physical appeared to be electrical judging by how sporadically the ship was now moving.

The fighter slowly spun and firing what looked like reserve thrusters judging by the propellant now being expelled it started to limp back to its mothership.

Takuya grimaced, if what were presumably the weakest ships in the alien fleet could take a direct hit from the Yamato’s main gun and live the mothership would be a whole hell of a lot tougher. They had only managed to disable the first one by surprising it and focusing all fire, now all of the point defense weapons were targeting the other fighters as they approached.

“We’re in range!” said Ken, “Firing the nuke!”

The missile carrying what was actually a hydrogen based warhead, modified for use within space launched from the Yamato and fired off its chemical rockets. In combat with the Martian’s nuclear devices were rarely used, kinetic weapons being far more effective and more difficult to stop than a warhead. Still they were useful for the destruction of larger structures that a kinetic would simply punch a hole in. With the amount of radiation shielding in a modern ship all that you had to do was ensure you were outside of the initial blast radius and EMP range.

Takuya watched as the missile streaked towards its target, the fighter still towing it turned, and a lance of energy burst from it arcing towards the missile, missing it by only a hair the missile impacted. For a moment all sensor data streaming into the Yamato was blinded and even through the display screen which was filtering out all of the harmful light and radiation Takuya had to close his eyes. As the light from the reaction died off and data began to stream back in Takuya let out a small whistle, the Longboat IV was gone, but the ship which had been only a few hundred meters away seemed to have survived the nuclear blast.

“How the hell did it do that?” asked Takuya. The small ship turned and no longer burdened with the need to carry the FTL ship trained its guns on the Yamato. The ship froze, and the guns which had been glowing slowly tapered back off to cool metal.

The other small fighters that were charging towards them stopped as well, and then slowly began to retreat, joining their injured comrade in their flight back towards the mothership now at L1 where the rest of the Earth fleet was.

“Follow them!” ordered Takuya.

---

---

“What?!” growled [Charles].

The pilot inside of the fighter hesitated, “We lost the target sir, a Class C ship appeared and destroyed it,” said the man.

[Charles] was resisting throwing several choice words now, they were unbecoming of an Empire officer if not appropriate at the moment.

“But the ship that attacked, it had a similar reading as the ship we were towing, the FTL signature was actually more pronounced!” said the pilot.

“You’re saying the ship dropped out of FTL and surprised you?” asked [Charles], it was not a tactic unheard of in the Empire, rare though considering the proximity of a tachyon beacon needed to execute a jump.

“Yes sir, I’ve lost contact with one member of my wing, I fear the ship might have gotten him. Their energy weapons are crude, they detonated some sort of nuclear device to destroy the FTL prototype. The kinetics are strong though, they were able to knock out the shield generators of another ship in my wing.” said the pilot.

“You left this second ship, the one with the FTL signature intact, right?” said [Charles] hoping the pilot had some semblance of a brain.

“Yes sir, as soon as I got the reading we stopped our attack run, it’s following us right now presumably to join the rest of its fleet,” said the pilot.

[Charles] breathed a sigh of relief, “the bays are open, land your wing. We’ll have to figure out how to get our hands on the ship without damaging it.”

[Charles] cut the line, and turned back to the front view port looking out at the Class C fleet in front of the [Singer], they were continuing with their ineffective attack, the forward shields of the [Singer] were now bathed in plasma and energy, but were holding at 60%.

“Weapons, we have one ship near the moon marked as an objective, I want every other primitive ship gone in [five minutes].” Said [Charles]. 58

Getting up from his command chair [Charles] strode over to the workstation [Sam] was at and pulling out another chair sat down and leaned over to her.

“Could you crack the data encryption on their networks if you had access to the hardware?” asked [Charles]. [Sam] frowned and shook her head, “No, from the public records I’ve been able to translate both groups of the Class C species had incredibly redundant but complex data security. We can’t crack the encryption, not for another [hundred years] or so,” said Sam.

“Alright, what about a translation program, for communication?” asked [Charles].

Same blinked, “A translation program sir? You want to talk to them?” she asked, for a Class A species to communicate with a Class C was unheard of.

“I want their FTL technology, if we can negotiate with them in some way for the tech, then our mission is complete. The colonization fleet can get rid of the rest of them when they move in,” said [Charles].

[Sam] considered this for a moment but nodded, “Alright, It’ll take me a few hours.”

“Get to work, call in anyone you need. I want it ready as soon as possible.”

---

---

Takuya watched in horror as the energy streaked out from the alien ship in a concentrated beam, it quickly swept through each ship in the Earth defense fleet in quick succession, cutting through the armor and mechanisms of the ship shearing many of the most advanced combat vessels in Earth’s fleet completely in half.

There were multiple internal explosions on each ship as the beam moved away to the next, within the span of thirty seconds the entire fleet of twenty ships was gone.

“Fucking hell!” said Ken as the ships exploded.

Takuya stared at the destruction for a moment and then forlornly looked back at the Earth behind the wreckage, “Turn us around Ken.”

Ken silently brought the Yamato around and pointed it back towards the moon. A message flashed on the pad next to Takuya’s hand.

“We’ve received orders, all ships Martian and Terran are regrouping at Mars.” Said Takuya as he read the report that was coming in to his command terminal, “At the moment the causality list for this attack is at 10.5 billion, with the entire population of earth in that count.” Said Takuya, he felt his throat closing up but he continued, “The command structure for the Terran fleet is in disarray, at the moment standing orders are to fall in line with Martian command until such a time as we can reorganize what commanders are left,” aid Takuya.

Takuya closed the message and looked up at the screen, the alien ship with the wreckage floating around her and the Earth, now devoid of human life behind her.

“God damn it!” Takuya threw the pad at the nearest wall and it shattered.

No one on the bridge said anything, and the only noise were small sobs from different members of the crew as they moved away towards the lunar launch rail. Earth was gone, Humanity’s cradle was vacant, and for all the grief that there was in that fact anger was the more prominent emotion. An unknown enemy had simply dropped in and destroyed them, none of them had even had the opportunity to fight for their lives.

Humanity was angry, they were furious, but like every other challenge they had faced in their long evolutionary history they were not broken, they were not defeated so long as a single human still lived. Like every other challenge they had faced they would defeat it and grow stronger.

---

---

Lincoln stared at the display for a moment and then turned around in her chair, “General I have an insane plan, I need to talk to the Martian government.”

The General tore his eyes from the screen and the data streaming in, and looked at the Mathematician. He had thought the news was terrifying, but the look on Lincoln’s face was something of nightmares, the determination in her eyes mixed with what he knew was a very developed sense of vengeance the General found her more terrifying than the aliens for a moment.

“Do I want to know why?” he asked.

“We’re going to make sure they regret the day they attacked humanity General, and make sure the Ark completes her mission.” 59

Chapter 10

“Aliens?” said Ben looking up at Diana as continued to work on the environmental control system of the Ark, he’d been at it for a few hours but the damn thing still wasn’t working right.

Diana nodded, “aliens attacked Earth! They detonated a selective biological pathogen in the upper atmosphere!”

Ben nodded and continued to work on the panel in front of him, ignoring the joke that she was making.

“Ben!” shouted Diana, startled Ben jerked up and hit his head on the panel behind him making his head ring.

“What!?” he growled turning to look at the small girl.

He paused, for the first time she looked like a child, her eyes welling up with tears that could not fall, a look of desperation prominent in them. She was normally a small adult what with her understanding of all the different ship systems and her unnatural ability to quickly pick up and understand almost anything. Ben would never admit it but she was almost as good as he was at picking out bugs in a ship system, give her a few more months and she would be.

Now though she looked like the child she was, unsure what was going on or what she should do.

Slowly Ben extricated himself from the panel, “Aliens attacked Earth?” he questioned.

Diana nodded, reaching down she pulled a tablet off of the wall and shoved it into Ben’s hands. Looking down at it Ben felt his throat constrict, a fleet wide alert for both Mars and Earth had been sounded, that was not something that would be faked for a joke.

“Holy hell!” said Ben as he quickly paged through the reports, and then paused on the one in the middle, it was the shortest, but the most devastating.

Information Level – Critical

Information Security – None

Information – A biological weapon of unknown origin and design has been detonated on the surface of Earth. 100% fatal, complete coverage of Earth in less than 30 minutes. Do not attempt landing. Do not respond to distress calls, contamination factor is unknown, assume all vectors. Do not attempt landing on Earth.

Casualties – 10.5 billion

Putting the report down Ben wasn’t sure what he was feeling, he didn’t have any family on Earth save for an asshole of a brother who was in jail, still the idea that every single human on Earth was dead and gone was difficult to grasp. It was a surreal nightmare to even contemplate.

“Where’s Megan?” asked Ben.

“She’s up with Janus in the observation bay,” said Diana.

Ben nodded, “thanks,” he slowly started to move through the ship, still not sure what to make of everything when he felt an impact on his back, and a pair of small arms wrapping around his neck.

Ben glanced back to look at Diana.

She gave him a pleading look, and he didn’t consider trying to shake her off. Slowly the two navigated through the Ark to the exit hatch. Kicking off from the hull Ben drifted towards the observation bay.

Drifting inside Ben found Janus and Megan along with most of the construction workers for the Ark all staring at the news as it was reported, the scrolling bulletin at the bottom reporting that all ships were retreating from Earth. The entire first fleet of Earth was gone, the second and third Earth fleets which had been conducting maneuvers near Venus and Jupiter were on route to Mars. The third and fourth Martian fleets whom had been at Venus and Neptune were doing the same. Within two days every ship in the entire solar system would be around Mars.

Still it had only been a single Alien ship, and all reports showed that the first fleet hadn’t even scratched her before being destroyed.

Sitting down next to Megan Ben took the bottle from her hand and quickly downed half of whatever it was. 60

“What the hell is going on?” asked Megan as he handed the bottle back.

“I have no idea.” Said Ben.

Janus seemed to wake up at that, she took a breath and pushed off from where she was sitting to drift into the center of the room, “We’re getting ready for the last stand.”

Megan wanted to argue, but it was true, everyone knew it. Every ship was falling back to Mars and away from Earth, they had already lost.

“What about the Ark?” asked Diana, her voice cutting through the somber mood of the room.

Janus slowly turned to look at her daughter, “The Ark won’t save everyone.”

Diana nodded, “No, but it will save enough.”

Janus looked down at the ship and then back at her daughter and then at the men she had employed to build the ship, “You guys want some overtime pay?” she asked.

A few of the men looked at one another, and then the largest man drifted forward, “I’m working under one condition,” he said.

“That is?” asked Janus.

“I want a bottle of that good Scotch you got, and a gun to shoot when we need to.” The muscled and rough looking man turned to the rest of the workers, “We’re sure as hell not going to be the ones flying off to save humanity, we’re all too ugly,” he said producing a few weak chuckles from the crowd.

He pointed at Diana, “We’re going to save her though, and then I’m gonna ride a nuke into the bastards who killed Earth, who’s gonna help me?” he asked.

All of men slowly moved forwards, “I’m gonna need a few more bottles of that scotch Janus,” said the man.

She shook her head chuckling, “You can have the whole case.”

---

---

Lincoln sat down at the conference table and looked across it at the politicians, despite everything that had happened they still looked presentable. Her own clothes were rumpled and her hair a mess, her brain running on a not so healthy combination of the Martian coffee and other stimulants.

“We understand that you have been manufacturing antimatter,” said the politician sitting in the middle of the table, Senator Daniels.

“Yes,” said Lincoln.

The Senator blinked, “You don’t deny it?” he asked.

Lincoln shook her head, “No I don’t. I told you I was manufacturing it with the help of your military.”

The man to the left of Daniels, Senator Hollows nodded, “Yes, and that is a subject that will have to be investigated at a later date, at the moment we want to know how much of it that you have,” he said.

Lincoln leaned back in her chair, “I have about 7 grams of antimatter.”

Senator Hollows nodded, “In exchange for that antimatter we won’t press charges against you for violation of the treaty.”

“Senator what do you intend to do with the antimatter?” asked Lincoln.

“We intend to weaponize it, fend off the invaders who destroyed Earth,” said Senator Daniels.

Lincoln nodded, “Alright let’s say you do, then what? There have to be a hell of a lot more ships than just the one.”

“We have not received any reports indicating as such,” said Senator Hollows.

Lincoln sighed, “Their ship can do FTL same as the Longboat IV, for all we know they have reinforcements waiting a few light days away or heck across the galaxy! Attacking them without investigating the full extent of their power is a good way to make sure the rest of humanity dies!” 61

Senator Daniels shook his head, “I was not aware that you we’re a military strategist Dr. Lincoln, in any case this is not a discussion, you hand over the antimatter and take the deal or we will take it anyway,” he said looking smug.

“It’s not military strategy, its common sense and in any case I am the one who called this meeting, I told you I had the antimatter, but we’re not going to waste it on a simple bomb,” said Lincoln.

“The Ark you have been constructing in conjunction with the head of the Martian crime syndicate Janus? You want to send five hundred people to another star system and leave the rest here to die?” said Hollows, “That seems like an even more stupid and cowardly idea than attacking!”

“So you would have your population throw themselves at an unknown enemy? The Terran defense fleet was destroyed in seconds, what makes you think you would fare any better?”

“Our military has more advanced ships than those of the Terran navy, we have been assured they will stand up to the weapons the aliens are utilizing.”

Lincoln stared at the two politicians for a moment, and then started to laugh. It was a strained laugh with no humor in it, bordering almost on insanity. She had thought they were only playing the politics of the situation, but they believed what they were saying.

Lincoln continued to laugh and reaching into her jacket extracted two small objects, a small tablet and a canister much like the one she had shown Captain Takuya several months ago. An intern sitting in the back of the room recording the proceedings seemed to be the only one who knew what it was and at the sight of it blanched at let out a small scream.

“Here is the antimatter, and an analysis of the alien weapons from the Yamato. They were firing plasma based weapons somewhere in the range of five terawatts output, the most we, Mars or Earth have produced for plasma based weapons is in the megawatt range! We have no defense against this type of weapon!” said Lincoln.

“Why the hell are you carrying that around!?” asked Senator Hollows as he halfway stood from his seat as if getting a few more feet away from the substance would make it safer.

Lincoln glanced down and tapped the canister knocking it onto its side, everyone else in the room winced, “Incentive, this is only about a quarter ounce of what we were able to produce. It’s as much as I’m willing to give you if you want to make a vain attempt to bomb the aliens.”

Picking up the canister Lincoln juggled it in her hands for a moment tossing it in between them before underhandedly throwing it across the table to the Senators.

Daniels’ eyes widened and he quickly reached out to grab it, the small thing slipped through his fingers and fell to the floor with an audible clink.

Scrambling from his seat Daniels retrieved the small canister and sat back up breathing hard.

“What the hell are you playing at?” he asked.

“I’m not playing Senator, and I have no intention of stopping my plans to launch the Ark. Your military command has been aware of my utilization of the old accelerator and the construction of the Ark at it’s highest levels since the inception of the plan. The Earth military was aware as well, and both militaries offered me aid.”

Lincoln stood up and offered the data pad to the Senators.

“I have no doubt they were looking for a way to weaponize the FTL technology, but they both recognized that Pandora’s box had been opened and I was fine letting them use me so long as I got to use them. They wanted a weapon or tactical advantage, I wanted to make sure humanity spread to the stars. Now those goals are the same, we both want humanity to survive and we don’t have the time to deal with you.”

Senator Willow picked up the pad, “what is this?” he asked.

“The signatures of the Martian military commanders who support me, they’re still not happy with how you retained control during the war, politicians don’t make very good strategists. I’ve also got the support of what is left of the Terran military. So you can fall in line with the plan I have outlined their or be ignored as we execute it,” said Lincoln.

Senator Willows stood up, “This is an act of war Doctor! Not only have you illegally produced antimatter, you have incited and planned a military coup on our planet! We have enough on you to have you hanged right here!” he said.

Lincoln let out another strained laugh, “You do that, and humanity will die right here. If you want to help I’ll be meeting with the Martian war council in an hour along with what is left of the Terran military,” said Lincoln.

She turned and began to walk out of the conference room. 62

“Arrest her!” said Senator Willow.

The two guards flanking the door glanced at one another and then at Lincoln, she glared at them for a moment, and they saw the determined insanity embedded within her gaze. The two of them remained still not moving as she swept out of the room.

---

---

Lincoln sat down at her second conference table for the day, this one looked more appropriate for the situation, people were constantly moving around the large room, multiple cups of Martian coffee were on every surface, data pads were everywhere and for some reason even a few slips of paper were on the large table.

The Generals of the Martian and what was left of the Terran military were sitting around the table or otherwise up on a display, a total of thirty Generals along with a few hundred other ranking individuals listening in to the conversation with the ability to talk when needed were around the table.

The General was sitting next to Lincoln, off to the side behind him were two military officers that looked familiar for some reason, a Martian and a Terran, Lincoln couldn’t place exactly where she had seen them before though and quickly dismissed it to look back down at her notes.

Ben was absently flipping the data pad around in his hand as he waited for the meeting to start and reaching over Megan put a hand over his stopping him before he ended up dropping it on his foot.

Captain Takuya was still on the Yamato docked to the Station far above, but he was watching the proceedings through a monitor ready to offer information when needed.

Janus, with Diana floating in front of her were both watching the meeting from the observation platform of the shipyard, where she had just received an influx of military aid.

Everyone was waiting to hear the plan that Dr. Lincoln had, all that she had released so far was that they would be able to save humanity, no details or plans, no designs or blueprints for a weapon to defeat the aliens had yet to be announced.

That alien ship was still in orbit of Earth, and the last distress calls had been from small transports and civilian ships as they attempted to run from it and make it to an accelerator rail, only a few had managed to escape though, most were still trapped in Earth orbit being hunted by the alien fighters.

“I think it’s about time,” said the General leaning over to Lincoln.

She nodded, “I know, but I’m not used to crowds.”

The General chuckled, “You’ve nothing to prove to anyone here.”

Lincoln nodded and taking small sip from the glass of water in front of her she stood.

The crowd around her immediately fell silent and turned to look at her.

Lincoln took a breath, “Earth is dead, Mars will be dead soon as well, and fighting a losing battle against an enemy like this will be impossible. We have to evacuate,” said Lincoln, with that she turned the center display on and a live image of the Ark appeared.

“I have been working with the Martian military to construct the Ark, A ship which utilizes the FTL technology I helped develop. The Terran military graciously allowed me to retrofit a frigate with a similar FTL drive and they have identified a system to which we should be able to evacuate too.”

The silence in the room intensified for a moment, a Terran general leaned forwards, “How many people could the Ark carry?”

“400 people on the Ark, but that’s not important. What is important is that the Ark has engines designed for the FTL jump,” she quickly brought up a page of mathematics, “We can take the entire fleet through an FTL jump,” said Lincoln.

“What?” asked the Terran general.

“What’s left of the Terran fleet and the Martian military fleets could jump with the Ark, her engines can hold open the rift for other ships to make an FTL jump with her, it will burn the engines out and consume all the antimatter we have, but it is possible.”

The Terran general looking nonplussed leaned back into his seat, “Uh, alright then,” he said. 63

She paused for a moment and looked out at the assembled crowd, “The only issue is speed. We would need to be moving quickly for every ship to make it through the rift.”

“How quickly?” asked the General from beside Lincoln.

“Roughly 100 kilometers per second,” said Lincoln, “At those speeds so long as all ships in the fleet are within 1.5 kilometers of the Ark they will pass through the subspace tear.”

“100 klicks per second!” said a Captain, “that’s insane!”

Lincoln nodded, “We’re going to have to accelerate without the rails too, all ships need to be within 1.5 kilometers of the Ark when we perform the jump, the rails would spread us out too far.”

Ben stood up, “That’ll burn out a lot of the engines on civilian ships doing that much acceleration,” he said.

“Yes, but they only need to make it through, once were’ in the Epsilon Eridani system we’ll worry about slowing the ships down,” said Lincoln.

A captain of one of the civilian transports that had escaped Earth, a woman with graying hair leaned forwards, “How do we know that the aliens won’t follow us to this new system, that we’re not wasting time evacuating when we should be fighting?” she asked.

“We don’t, but they won’t know where we are going. Information travels only at light speed, so retreating and rebuilding on Epsilon Eridani will give us at least ten years. If we stay here on Mars we will be defeated long before then,” said Lincoln.

The woman looked like she was going to argue for a moment but then nodded.

“So we’re just going to run away and let them have Earth and Mars?” asked the Terran general.

Lincoln twisted around to look at him, “by all reports Earth is lost, Mars will fall just as easily if not from whatever biological weapon they used to the plasma weaponry. We have no defense, it cut through all Terran armor like it was paper. If you are suggesting we leave them Earth intact, I’m sure there are more than a few biological weapons of our own we could use, or a good old fashioned nuclear bombardment.”

The General blanched, “you want to destroy the Earth?” he asked.

Lincoln grimaced, “I don’t want to no, but I would rather destroy it than leave it to someone else. Humanity is not dependent on a planet, we will remember the Earth, we will remember where we began, but our children will grow up among the stars, they will hear the tales of how we retreated, burning everything in our wake so that the invaders could not have it and so that we could not turn back in fear. They will remember that bravery and it will inspire them,” Lincoln paused and took a breath, “and when we burn the home world of the aliens we will return to our own and heal it returning to her as the victors.”

Lincoln punctuated her sentence by slamming her fist into the table, cracking the glass laminate.

She glanced down at it and sighed.

The general looked at her for a moment and chuckled, “A sentiment I’m sure many share Doctor.”

“So what should we announce to the people?” asked another captain.

“We’ve been streaming this conference live, I’ll let the military types get the exact details down while the Ark is launched, and I and the other eggheads iron out the science,” said Lincoln, “the people deserve the truth just as much as everyone, and there are not going to be enough ships. So like every other time in history we prioritize, those who want to stay and fight will have opportunity to do so,” said Lincoln.

---

---

The meeting continued for several hours as the details were planned out, what equipment would be taken from Mars, who would be on what ships, what ships would be left behind and stripped for parts, along with hundreds of other details.

Engineer after engineer, from military, company, private, and civilian ships had been approaching Ben and Megan asking them questions about the FTL jump and how to calibrate their ships for the jump.

The power down sequence was about all that the two engineers could give them, and for many it was hardly enough information.

The entire operation no matter how much planning they put into it was going to be sloppy. 64

Getting up Ben quickly walked out of the meeting room and put his hands to his eyes, reaching into his pocket he extracted another stimulant and grimacing popped into his mouth, the sickly sweet taste barely registered as he swallowed it.

“Those are unhealthy,” said Megan, she had slipped out behind him into the hall.

“You want one?” asked Ben reaching into his pocket.

“Yes,” Said Megan as she took it and popped it into her own mouth. The two hadn’t slept since the attack, they had been working on the Ark, and then they had been told to come to the meeting being one of only 4 engineers to have actually worked with the FTL drive and the backup guys on the Yamato were busy retrofitting whatever weapons they could to the ship, stripping her now useless armor in favor of more weapon mounts.

“We’re going to have to be on the Ark,” said Megan.

Ben frowned but nodded, “I know.”

“You don’t want to be on the Yamato?” she asked.

“Hell yes I want to be on the Yamato, but jumping the entire fleet with the Ark, on her first go in space burning out the engines? We both know it has to be us in the engine room if we don’t want to kill everyone,” said Ben.

Megan nodded in agreement, “Anyone else would blow themselves up.”

“We must sound like absolute assholes, no one else can do it!” said Ben he put his hands up for air quotes.

“We could let Diana do it, she knows more about those engines then either of us!” said Megan.

Ben considered this for a moment, “She can’t reach both sides of the engineering console at once, Humanity would be doomed because the engineer couldn’t reach the right button,” he said.

Megan chuckled a strained sound that quickly devolved into a sob, slowly she made her way to the wall and sat down against it. Tears began to fall from her eyes flowing down her cheeks in the unfamiliar one third gravity.

“Everyone’s dead,” she said.

Ben leaned into the wall next to her sitting down beside her.

“My parents, my little sister, they’re dead!” said Megan, “They lived through the war but now they’re dead!” she said the tears continuing to fall.

Ben wasn’t sure exactly what to say, his parents had been dead for several years, and his brother had been in prison, after the war he had continued serving on the Yamato and the crew had been his family, Megan a large part of that.

“You think it hurt?” asked Megan.

Ben hesitated looking down at the chief engineer for the most successful battleship in the Terran fleet, he wasn’t used to seeing her like this, she was strong, and worked constantly to ensure that no one saw her like an old fashioned woman in need of a knight in shining armor, but even the strongest people had their limits, and she like everyone else had lost everything.

“It was biological,” said Ben not finishing the sentence, the implication hanging.

Megan nodded, and tried not to think about it.

“We’re running away now, abandoning everything we fought for in the war and running away,” said Megan.

“We’re retreating so we can make some really big weapons and kick their teeth in, you saw the video reports, they shredded everything! We can’t fight that right now,” said Ben.

Megan nodded and sighed, leaning over she put her head on Ben’s shoulder, “Still feels wrong, but it makes sense,” said Megan.

Ben looked down at her concerned, “You’re not thinking of staying with the second Martian fleet are you?” asked Ben. The second fleet was supposedly going to remain around Mars and defend those who stayed, there were not enough ships for everyone to make the jump with the Ark. Those staying on Mars were for the most part the elderly and the volunteers. Thankfully the Martian public had understood the need to evacuate, there was relatively little panic in the populous like there would have been on Earth.

Ben supposed it had something to do with the Martian’s almost always being in a certain amount of danger, just a breached wall away from being blown out onto the surface of the cold and desolate world they inhabited. 65

Megan shook her head, “The Ark needs us, as much as I want to stay and fight or ride out on the Yamato.”

Sitting straight back up Megan looked over at Ben for a moment, and let her arm lash out hitting his shoulder knocking him to the side, “You tell anyone I cried!” she threatened.

Ben just smiled and raised his hands up in surrender.

---

---

“This is their main communication channel as best as I can tell. It’s been broadcasting from a bunker on the fourth planet, its emergency instructions from what I can translate,” said [Sam].

“No tachyon transmission hubs then?” asked [Charles].

“No sir, there will be a delay of several [minutes] between the communications,” said [Sam].

“Alright, we’re going to send them the message then, transmit the translation package and let’s start the burn towards the planet. Once we get a response we’ll tell them what they need to do,” said [Charles].

“Yes sir,” said [Sam] and turning she transmitted her translation package to the fourth planet, not knowing how much damage that act would cause.

---

---

The General stood up, “We’re committing the second Terran fleet, and the first and second Martian fleets to destroying the alien ship, if they are not successful it should be sufficient diversion. If that much fire power cannot down the alien ship then we will have no choice to evacuate, and committing further resources would be a waste.”

General Collin stood up at the other side of the table, “The fleet commanders have all volunteered, I actually had to assign the other fleets to the evacuation. For the first time in history we’re not going to be limiting the power of our attacks, or pulling the punches, to say that certain members of the military are excited would be an understatement,” said General Collin.

“General Collin has been recalled to active duty, and he will be leading the assault,” said the General addressing the other people in the room, which now included the rather disgruntled Martian Senators.

General Collin nodded, “I saw what they could do on Aldrin station. We’re going to have a fight on our hands.”

“Are we sure we want to commit forces to this?” asked Lincoln, “The first Terran fleet was eliminated in an instant.”

General Collin turned to the mathematician, “We are, not everyone is going to be able to evacuate, and we owe it to them to at least try,” he said.

Lincoln looked at the man for a moment but nodded in agreement, “We’re only going to be getting at most 8,000 people out,” she said sadly.

“That’s more than the number of people that left Africa 20,000 years ago,” Said the General, “I doubt it will take us as long to recover though.”

Lincoln nodded, “Hopefully.”

Leaning back in her seat Lincoln started going over her calculations for the Ark’s jump again. It had to be right or all of this was for nothing, to be fair half of the calculations were a guess, they had never thrown other objects through FTL with a ship before, and now they were doing it with half of the reaming Terran and Martian Armadas.

“I’m getting a weird data stream,” said a tech from one of the workstations around the perimeter of the room. He and a dozen other geeks had been coordinating data and communications as well as relaying tactical data as it streamed in.

“Define weird?” asked Lincoln.

“We just got a sudden data burst through the entire Martian communication network, the TCP packet is all screwy and the data inside of it is weird, text, audio samples, and a computer program.”

The General looked at the data the tech was showing for a moment and then turned to look at Lincoln, “Any idea what it is?” he asked. 66

“I’m a mathematician, what do you,” Lincoln paused looking at the data for another moment, “Primes, this message is full of primes.”

She thought about it for a moment, and then gasped, “General, it’s a translation program! It got flooded through the entire network and everything about it is just a little off, the aliens want to talk to us!” said Lincoln.

The General frowned, “they want to talk now? That means they want something.”

“They want the Yamato, our FTL technology.” Said Captain Takuya through the communication line that was still open to the room.

The General glanced up at him, “What makes you say that?” he asked.

“They had us dead to rights with their fighters and their mothership right after they destroyed the fleet, when we destroyed the Longboat IV they looked like they were going to attack but backed off. I assume they detected our FTL drive,” said Takuya.

Lincoln glanced over at the General and then back at Takuya, “It’s as good a theory as anything else at the moment, but if that is what they want it means we have the upper hand in negotiations.”

“In the fashion that we’ll throw ourselves off a cliff before giving the technology to them type of way,” said the General.

He sighed and turned to the room at large, “I want those Yamato engineers looking at the alien ship, and as many free linguists and computer scientists that we have available in here getting this translation thing working! If the damn aliens want to talk I want to be able to do the same if only to tell them to fuck off!” shouted the General at the room.

For a moment everyone was frozen processing what he had said, and then the room which had already been chaotic before the data burst began to move again in a frenzy of activity.

---

---

“We’re approaching the planet, any delay in communication at this point will be negligible,” said Sam.

“Have we gotten the acknowledgement package?” asked Charles.

“We did, which means we should be able to communicate with them,” said Sam.

Charles nodded and stood up, straightening his dress uniform he looked up at the screen.

“Open the channel.”

The main screen fuzzed and for a moment there was only static, but the image quickly coalesced, the two alien computer systems syncing with one another.

Charles blinked, the image was of a messy conference room, data pads and other objects were strewn about on every surface, and more people than what looked to be comfortable were inside of the room, all of them looked worn out, not surprising that they had just had the majority of their race exterminated.

In the center of his view was an old man, his skin wrinkled and worn, pockmarked and scarred, clearly the oldest and most senior man in the room. Were it not for the hair on his head and the paleness of his skin Charles would have sworn the man was a Dorvakian General, the look in his eyes was the same.

Sitting next to him was a much younger woman in a black jumpsuit, the odd hair on her head was sticking out in every direction and the glare she was giving him made Charles pause for a moment, unsure exactly what she was communicating.

The old man stood up and as the image cleared the translation program provided him what he already knew, superimposed over the man’s head was his rank, General.

The man spoke, and it took the program several seconds to translate, the text in standard appearing on the bottom of the screen.

“What do you want?” asked the General.

Charles was stunned for a moment, he had expected a member of the Class C species to be ranting about reparations and revenge, but the man and indeed the room around him were all radiating a cold fury, it was disconcerting. 67

“You possess technology crucial to the Empire, you will hand it over or we will destroy you like we did your home world,” said Charles. When negotiating with a Class B species threats were usually the best way to get results, so long as you demonstrated superiority. That was apparently the incorrect tactic to use when negotiating with a Class C species however.

The General stared at him for a moment, the woman next to him seemed to find the entire interaction humorous, a small giggle escaping her lips.

“You murder billions of our kind, you take [Dirt] from us and expect us to comply with anything you demand?” Asked the General his words appearing below him as he spoke.

Charles blinked, “You’re planet fell to only a single ship, you cannot possibly hope to fight us, if you do not give it to us we will destroy you and take it from the remnants of your civilization!” said Charles hoping that further reminders of what would happen if they did not comply would make them acquiesce.

When a class B species was brought into the Empire it rarely required force, but even when it did the application was always small and the results immediate.

It clicked in Charles’s head as he looked at the man, he could see his eyes darting back and forth reading the translation on his side, the General was responding like a man of the Empire would, he was responding in the same manner Charles would if he were in a similar situation, he would rather die than comply.

Charles felt a shiver go down his spine, this species, this species C1764 was not like the others. They would not comply, they would not surrender to hope for survival, they would not yield until their entire species was dead.

“You seem to be laboring under the impression that threats will be effective, we have no guarantee you will leave us alone if we give you what you want, we would not give you what you seek anyway, try to take it again and we will destroy you and all knowledge of it. You attack us and we make sure we take as many of you with us as possible and that you don’t get what you came for.” Said the General.

Charles stared at him for a moment, and sighed, “Very well General, we’re attacking in one day. I can give you that much time to prepare, but I will complete my mission,” said Charles.

The men stared at one another for a moment, and the General smiled, “I’ll make sure you don’t,” he said.

Charles punched his chair, closing the channel.

“Prepare all fighters, when they are ready we’re attacking.” Said Charles turning to his officers.

“You gave them a day sir?” asked Sam.

“If we give them any more time they might find a way to win.”

Chapter 11

“All stations open fire!” roared the General as he turned away from the display and the aliens that had been on it a moment ago.

The order was quickly relayed, every encrypted communication channel, every human ship communicating with every other, every weapons platform synced on the target in orbit above Mars all received the same message.

The Phobos Cannon, the main weapon of Mars during the war and one of her most devastating Kinetic weapons turned. To the Terran’s the cannon had lived up to the name of the moon on which it was stationed, the cannon was only 100 mm in diameter but her specialty was hurling rounds that for most ships served as main weapons fire at a rate of nearly one round every five seconds, the metal accelerated to nearly 5% the speed of light.

The weapons platforms in orbit around Mars meant to fend off attacks from Terran frigates like the Yamato all turned and began to fire as well, all one hundred twenty five satellites in the network firing together for the first time in history. The satellites on the far side of Mars from the alien ship slowing their shots enough so that the pull of Mars curved their fire into their target.

The now combined fleets of Mars and Earth burned from orbit and the largest collection of space born warships in human history advanced. Guns large and small let loose, missiles which had for nearly three-hundred years been a war crime to even consider using were fired. Kinetic, atomic, chemical, humanity brought to bear their entire history of weapons and warfare on the singular enemy. 68

Space lends a small amount of warning, distances being vast and objects moving only so quickly. For a moment the entire cacophony of weapons fire seemed to hang in space, the burning metal of kinetic rounds heated by the intense magnetic forces glowing against the stars light years behind them. The flare of missiles as the chemicals carrying them towards their target burned off.

For a moment it was still and for that moment humanity stared defiantly at the enemy.

The first rounds hit the alien ship and melted away into plasma slag with a small burst of light. Within a fraction of a second the entire alien ship was consumed in a glow of plasma, radiating with the brilliance of human weaponry.

The nuclear warheads hit moments behind the first coordinated kinetic volley, a total of 10 devices equivalent to the Tsar bomb of Earth detonated in perfect unity, and the fireball of atomic energy flared more brightly than the fusion reaction of the Sun.

Humanity held its breath, waiting for the fireball to clear.

---

---

“If we give them any more time they might find a way to win.” Said Charles as he turned away from the display.

“Incoming Fire!” said Jack.

Charles looked up and for the first time he felt a small amount of panic, the amount of weaponry the species was bringing to bear was primitive but plentiful “All power to shields!” shouted Charles.

The first rounds hit, and the Singer rumbled as she absorbed the Kinetic fire, the Empire had never used kinetics in the amount that this species was, and it taxed the shields to defend against them. Still the Class C species weapons were weak when compared to the energies the Empire used to test ship shields.

The nuclear blasts which followed were even less trouble. The Shields of the Singer were built to handle energy weapons. That energy was usually in the form of Plasma weapons but the shields handled the nuclear blasts, the Singer shuddered under the onslaught and Charles winced concerned for a moment that a shot might actually get through the Singer’s defenses.

“Status?” asked Charles as the shuddering died down. The forward display was nearly useless being covered in plasma and the remains of the weapon detonations.

“Shields are down to 70% but weapons capacitors are full, we need to discharge now!” said Jack.

Charles was momentarily surprised, the Singer funneled as much enemy weapons energy as possible into her reserves when fired on. The process was incredibly inefficient but when attacked with energy based weapons the Singer was able to absorb some of the excess, it was not tuned to kinetics though since the Empire never used them, and they had only absorbed the nuclear blasts.

For the capacitors to be at full charge was impressive, it showed how much energy the Class C species was clumsily utilizing, it was lucky they had been discovered when they had another century of development and they would be a serious threat to the Empire.

“Identify the most damaging Kinetic weapons and open fire,” said Charles.

---

---

“Let’s go, let’s go!” Shouted Janus through the communication channel, the Ark’s dry dock having been drained of an atmosphere only a few hours ago.

The Ark, already full to capacity with the refugees she had been selected to carry slowly moved out, her vacuum engines flaring up for the first time creating the recognizable haze behind them.

Red glanced down at the display and then back up at James, “Remind me why I’m flying this tub again?” he asked.

“We needed the best pilot in the fleet flying the Ark, that’s you,” said James.

Red turned back to the controls as the Ark moved out of the station, the false façade that normally would have hidden the clandestine dry dock slid away and Red quickly moved the Ark out through the hole in the Station superstructure.

On one side of the ship was the cable running down to the surface of Mars, and on the other the battlefield. 69

Looking out Red was in awe for a moment, three entire fleets were engaging the alien ship, and it was somehow still alive. The Ark was launching in the wake of the nuclear strike, when hopefully the sensors of the alien ship would be blinded like the human ships. A nuclear warhead tended top release a lot of electromagnetic energy after all.

James reached over to the com unit of the bridge, “This is the Ark all ships prepare to follow us out! I want at least a kilometer between every ship until we need to jump!” Said James.

The fleet responded, and as Red swung the Ark around to accelerate along Mars’s orbital path the other ships fell in around him including the third Terran fleet and the third and fourth Martian fleets, every civilian and corporate ships that would be able to keep up with the Ark and her escort as she accelerated also quickly fell into formation around, all gravitating towards the larger war ships for protection.

The fourth Martian fleet was in front of him, the third was surrounding the Ark and the Terran fleet was bringing up the rear, with the Yamato tailing behind the rest of the fleet, her antimatter stocks replenished thanks to a contribution from the Martian Senate.

The Yamato would have the grim task of reporting the failure or victory of the assault on the alien ship to the Ark after she made her jump.

“Here we go!” said Red and he slowly brought the thrusters up to maximum. Vacuum drives were efficient and could get you moving, but on almost any type of ship unless designed specifically for speed the acceleration was dismal, he barely felt the acceleration pushing him back into his seat.

A warning flashed up on the console in front of him, and Red glanced down at it, “engine room what’s going on?” he asked.

“Thruster balancing is off! Normal for a new drive, under usual circumstances I would ask you to shut down so we could fix it without breaking anything,” A sharp bang in rattled through the mike, “But we don’t have time for that! We’re good!” said Megan.

Turning around from the com panel Megan took another of the small fire extinguishers off of the wall and tossed it to Ben. The second engineer took it gracefully to the stomach, and recovering quickly turned and sprayed it at the small electrical fire that had formed underneath the redundant engine control module quickly quenching the flames.

“So much for backups,” said Ben.

“I didn’t think we would be hotwiring her right out of the gate!” said Megan.

“Well she was rushed towards the end and most ships do get a shakedown run before trying to do the impossible, it’s not like anything big has failed.”

Diana popped out of the access hatch in the wall next to them, the two engineers turned to look at the girl.

“You fix it?” asked Megan.

“What would you define as a big failure? You just had me crawl through the ductwork to fix the antimatter containment unit!” said the girl.

“We’re still here that means you fixed it so it’s not a very big problem,” said Ben.

Diana glared at him and pulled herself out of the small duct, “I had to wire it to main power directly, so we need to adjust the engine output for the jump and we’ve got to make sure we use up every atom of the antimatter if we lose main power the magnetic bottle is going with it,” said Diana.

“So we just have to make sure we don’t lose main power,” said Megan, “In the middle of a battle and a mad dash to another solar system, seems simple enough.”

---

---

The General shook his head in amazement in grim admiration for the aliens, their ship had survived an assault which would have destroyed an entire Terran fleet in an instant. They had stood up to ten Tsar Bombs!

As the nuclear blast cleared the General winced, he had hoped they would be disable if not destroyed, but they had shaken off the attack almost immediately. The alien ship was turning and he knew what was coming, the ships in the first Martian fleet saw it as well and tried to scatter.

The plasma lanced out from the alien ship carving through the Martian fleet, the smaller and more agile ships dodged away from it, but the larger frigates and battleships even stripped of most of their ineffective armor could not turn in time.

Like above earth the ships were cleanly cleaved in two, the beam of plasma acting almost like a scalpel on an immense scale.

The engines on several of the larger ships died as main power was lost, but prepared for this many of the now bisected ships continued to fire on the alien ship, the secondary explosions from the attack contained and backup capacitors and generators powered the ship guns. 70

The Martian ship Dancing Grace took a full hit to the port side shearing off her armor and systems there, her engines flared and several chemical rocket backups kicked in stabilizing her trajectory as she burned at full throttle bypassing all safeties, the vacuum engines usually producing only a small haze actually formed a small gout of flame as the virtual particles of space were violently expelled in her wake.

The General watched, he knew what the ship was doing, every other Captain in the fleet could see what the frigate intended was planning to do and with her weapons still firing the Dancing Grace accelerated directly for the alien ship.

The aliens noticed as well, and the plasma beams quickly turned away from the rest of the fleet concentrating on the approaching ship, within moments several more sections of the ship had been carved away, but already on her path the Dancing Grace did not stop even as her engines flickered and died.

The Martian ship slammed into the alien one, and the shields around the ship stuttered for a moment before flaring back up in a burst of light, carried forwards by her momentum the Dancing Grace was consumed in a gout of plasma completely vaporized against the alien shields.

The General grimaced, the fact that the alien ship had tried to stop the impact told him that a suicide run would in some fashion be effective towards combating the technology, how much of an affect that would be still needed to be investigated.

Ordering the fleet to perform suicide runs would have to be the last resort, and many of the Captains were no doubt going to attempt them when they were disabled, the Terran fleet was being particularly aggressive as well no doubt already enraged. It was something which normally would have been frowned on, pure rage had no place in a battle, but this was not a battle of strategy or tactics, this was a fight of a cornered animal. Rage would only make them fight harder.

“All ships break formations and spread out, get as much distance between yourselves as possible, don’t let the beam get a fix on you!” ordered the General. So far the alien ship had fired only a singular large beam, the smaller ones were shots that simply punched through the ships of the fleet instead of shearing them in two. A clean punch through was something that Kinetics did as well so the fleet was enduring them well enough.

The General glanced at the weapons readout showing him the status of all weapon systems in the fleet, as well as a countdown to when the Ark would jump. They still had an hour to go. It was going to be the longest hour in history.

---

---

Janus watched as the Ark began to slip away into space, the rest of the ships around her. She had told Diana that her private yacht would be following close behind the Ark, but she couldn’t leave Mars, she couldn’t leave her Station. Diana would understand it someday.

“We’re almost in position, another few seconds,” said the engineer.

Janus nodded, “Tell me when,”

The Engineer nodded his eyes locked on the display, hand in the air.

“Now!” he said brining his hand down.

Janus flipped the cap on the detonator up and pressed the button underneath it.

There was a faint rumble and the station shook as the explosive charges detonated, five thousand pounds of explosives was all that it took to sever the bundle of carbon fiber wires binding the Station to the surface of Mars far below.

Similar charges along the length of the cable detonated shredding it into thousands of pieces, many of which would burn up in the atmosphere of Mars. Janus had just stepped down and relinquished her control of the Station to Isaac Newton.

“We’re on track,” said the Engineer.

The communication unit crackled, “Janus what the hell happened? Did the cable get hit?” asked the General.

Janus smiled and keyed the mike, “We’re fine, just making sure you don’t get to have all of the fun, tell that fleet of yours we’re providing cover.”

There was a pause, “Holy hell Janus, you’re heading right for them. You planned this!?” shouted the General.

“Yep.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me!?” shouted the General. 71

“You would have tried to stop it, now stop whining like you always do, we’ve got a fucking alien ship to blow up!” Said Janus.

Turning around Janus looked around the cavernous chamber that the Bar was in. The men who had illegally built the Yamato, the criminals who ran the various parts of her side operations, the grunts who worked the streets. All of the men were present, all of them had the same grim determined look on their faces.

Their families had been evacuated, but even among thieves and criminal syndicates on the station there was honor. They would not take the seat that another child could fill, so they stayed ready to atone for the sins of their life in the grandest and most time honored fashion possible, a blaze of glory.

“Everyone clear on what we’re doing?!” shouted Janus.

A muffled cry went up from the group, but even in the vacuum Janus could feel the energy in the air.

“Open her up!” said Janus.

The engineer next to her nodded, and hit the second detonator.

The shaped charges on the side of the chamber blew, a small section of the cylinder turned almost instantly to plasma and debris all of it blown out into space. For a moment Janus looked out of it and towards the stars, imaging that she could see Epsilon Eridani, even though she had no idea which star it was.

“Let’s get those guns in place!” shouted Janus,

The men moved forwards, old kinetic guns stripped from ships were placed at the breach, stolen missiles and their launch tubes quickly bolted into place, other older and stolen weapons were quickly lines up along the hole, other men armed with nothing more than side arms quickly took aim.

Parts of the Martian and Terran fleet were already retreating towards them, and Janus smiled, the Station might not have the firepower of the battleships, but she would be the shield they needed.

---

---

“This species is insane!” said Jack as he stared at the readout in front of him.

“What happened?” asked Charles as the Singer vibrated underneath another hit, the species certainly was persistent, even going so far as to perform suicide runs.

“The orbital station they had tethered to the surface, they just cut the lines! It’s on a collision course with us!” Said Jack.

Charles looked up and squinting through the plasma burning in front of the shields he spotted it, a mass of haphazardly attached modules and frames. The thing looked more like a floating junk heap than anything used in the Empire, but it was moving slowly towards them.

The species ships were retreating behind the thing, employing a strategy rarely used in space battle, cover.

The ships behind the mass of metal were quickly rotating out of cover to fire their main weapons as the Singer. The amount of plasma on the front of the shields was rapidly decreasing as their smaller arms fire petered off, but protected the ships were now able to line up precise shots with their main guns.

Charles looked at the mass of metal and shook his head in dumb amazement, that construction as crude as it was probably represented decades of work. They had thrown it away to vainly try and destroy the Singer.

“Look at that!” said Sam.

“At what?” asked Charles.

Sam turned around in her chair and quickly zoomed the main display in, focusing it on the bottom half of the station. A section looked as if it had been blown apart, and inside the breach Charles could see members of the species rapidly brining to bear large and small weapons alike, even pointing handheld weapons in the Singer’s direction.

As if knowing they were being watched the first volley of fire launched, and Charles watched in dumb amazement as the rounds struck the shields directly in front of the bridge, the concentration of the fire landing not twenty meters from him. 72

The Singer shuddered again and the lights on the bridge flickered.

“Jack, no more small shots, charge the main weapons to maximum,” said Charles.

“Aye!”

If they were eager for death he would deliver it to them.

---

---

“I need more acceleration!” shouted Red through the com.

“Well I need you to pull over! Neither of us is getting what we want!” Shouted Megan.

“We’re falling behind!” said Red.

“No we’re not!” shouted Megan.

In the engine room another small explosion went off as Megan tore the small control console regulating power through the lighting system in the ship. The lights around her died and independent emergency lights flickered on.

The issue had something to do with how the ship was protecting her electrical systems, and a fault in the wiring of the lighting system was messing with one of the automatic shutdown sensors somewhere on one of the vacuum engine modules, which in turn meant she was having to cycle that engine on and off.

With the lights off that sensor wherever the hell it was could no longer send false reports.

Megan saw the wall behind her moving quickly towards her as the acceleration kicked in and she quickly braced herself, Diana spotted it as well and grabbed onto the nearest handhold. Ben working on keeping the buggy communication system working didn’t and he was flung away from the panel and into the far wall of the engineering section.

Ben groaned, but said nothing as he pushed off of the wall to return to his work.

“We’re falling apart around the seams!” said Diana.

Megan glanced up at the girl, “New ships always need to have the bugs worked out, the fact that half the ship was built in secret and the other half in just a few days it’s amazing we’re still in one piece, now could you fix the error in the life support system?” asked Megan pointing at the warning light on the console.

Diana twisted around to look at it and nodded, pulling her herself up she flew out of the main engine room to the life support module.

“We are falling apart at the seams,” said Ben.

“I know that! Will you shut up!” shouted Megan.

The Ark jerked violently to the side, both Ben and Megan slammed into the nearest port side wall.

“What was that?” asked Megan.

The com lit up, “Sorry about that a transport in front of us just had their drive blow up took some debris, we alright down their?” asked Red.

Ben and Megan were both staring at the engineering display, the FTL system was offline, the forward launch tube for the antimatter charge disabled.

“Nothing we can’t fix!” said Ben.

Pushing off from the communications console Ben drifted over to the emergency cabinet and quickly pulled out an engineering suit.

“God damn it!” said Megan as she drifted over to help him get the thing on.

Ben quickly slipped into the suit and donning the engineering harness he paused and turned to Megan.

“Uh,” he didn’t know what to say, and he felt his skin turning red.

Megan rolled her eyes and grabbed his helmet shoving it onto his head. 73

“You come back alive!” She growled at him, her own face blushing, “Then maybe!” she said as she shoved him out of the engineering section.

---

---

The Station was now close enough to the alien ship that Janus could see the individual windows in the side of her hull, and the small protrusion on the top of the ship.

The aliens were confident enough to have windows in the side of their ships, and to place their command center directly on top of it exposed in almost every direction. The men manning the weapons were sinking round after round into the shields of the alien ship, all of them staring out at it as they slowly drifted forwards.

There was no sound in the vacuum of space, but Janus imagined she could hear the massive weapons as they went off directly next to her, firing through the hole in the side of her Station.

The alien ship had not moved for several minutes even as they and the rest of the fleet continued to fire rounds into it, and she was starting to get a bad feeling.

A feeling which was validated a moment later, the alien ship rotated in space slightly, and her main cannon was now lined up directly with the heart of the Station. The weapons at the front of the ship glowed for a moment before they fired.

A beam of Plasma larger than anything yet carved through the station, the entire frame shook and looking up Janus caught the tail end of the beam as it arced over her head, disintegrating the Bar.

The heat from the blast set off every alarm in her suit and Janus watched as several of the men closer to the beam clawed at their suits for a moment as the material melted away.

“God damn it!” shouted Janus and twisting around she grabbed the nearest weapon, a shoulder mounted rocket launcher. Activating the jets on her own suit Janus kicked the small thrusters into overdrive and shot out through the new hole in the Station.

The men still alive at the original breach point in the Stations hull once again resumed fire.

For a moment Janus floated above the battle, several of the ships that had been using the Station as cover were now tumbling in space completely destroyed, and one whole half of the Station was gone, cut down the long way the entire superstructure of her domain was exposed.

Turning in space Janus felt her lip curl up, she was going to make sure they paid for that.

Firing the jets on her suit Janus shot towards the alien ship, moving directly towards the bridge.

Magnetic rounds and plasma beams tore through the space around her, and several impacts registered on her suit, Janus winced as her leg was hit, a piece of metal flying through it.

Her suit sealed and administered an anesthetic.

It took her several minutes, her suit was more powerful than a standard mobility package but it had its limits. Flying towards the bridge of the ship Janus let a snarl rip through her throat, it had been years since she had done anything like this, years since she and the General who had been only a green recruit at the time had done something like this.

Those had been the days, when Mars was still a fight for survival, when everything had been for the taking.

Now those days were gone, now there were only two things in humanities future survival, and more prominent in her own mind revenge.

Rocketing towards the alien ship Janus slowed as she neared the location of the shields, only guessing how far they were projected from the ship.

Her glove grazed it and buzzed, she felt heat from it but her arm did not disintegrate. Surprised Janus slowly drifted forwards and reaching out touched the hull of the ship. Grinning now Janus drifted up along the hull towards the bridge.

Moving up to it Janus looked in through the glass at the aliens, seeing the whites of their eyes.

One alien sitting at a station looked up at Janus and surprise crossed her face, she shouted something.

Raising the rocket launcher up Janus let it float beside her. 74

“Fuck you!” she shouted, knowing they couldn’t hear her.

She hit the trigger and the small missile streaked forwards, slamming into the clear material at the front of their bridge, the launcher flew backwards away, and was vaporized by the shields.

The window material exploded outwards blowing Janus backwards away from the hull her jets fighting wildly to retain her position. Looking at the damage Janus cursed, some sort of energy field had formed replacing the glass.

Moving forwards again Janus alighted onto the bridge of the ship for the first time feeling gravity’s pull on her, unholstering her pistol she pointed it at the alien who had been negotiating before the Captain of this ship.

Janus fired off a shot at him, which bounced away on the shield that had formed.

Janus stared at the aliens for a moment and took several steps forwards, putting her hand out she touched the new field and winced as it burned away at her suit.

Another alien off to the side pulled out a weapon and Janus turned to him, locking eyes with the alien as he leveled the gun at her chest.

---

---

Jack put his sidearm back away and turning around slowly expanded the force field back out, pushing the corpse of the rather large specimen of the species out into space.

Charles was stunned, the members of C1764 were insane enough to try and attack a frigate with person mounted weaponry. She had figured out how to get through the shields, blown up the main display and nearly shot him! If not for the force fields he would be dead!

Charles watched as the body began to slowly tumble away into space, it was surreal, no species that the Empire had rightfully exterminated had ever made it through the shields of a ship, let alone onto the bridge!

“Sir!” said Jack.

Charles turned to look at his officer shaking the feeling off, “yes?”

“A large portion of the species fleet has left orbit of the planet, they’re accelerating away into deep space, and I’m detecting an FTL drive!” said Sam.

Charles looked up, “What?” he asked.

The scenarios quickly ran through his head, and he quickly settled on the most likely one.

“This is a distraction, they’ve been pouring on the fire hoping it would blind our sensors. They’re trying to save the FTL ship and keep it from us,” said Charles.

Standing up Charles walked over to the station Sam was at and looked at the readout, the FTL ship was accelerating away from the planet, but it was still well within the Singers ability to catch up too.

“Let’s clean this up, all stations fire!” said Charles.

The main plasma cannon of the Singer fired again. Within moments the station that had been floating towards their position was reduced to its constituent atoms, just another dust cloud in space.

The ships hiding behind it seemed to realize this was the end, and all of them began to accelerate forwards.

“Take them out!” said Charles as a dozen ships moved towards them.

The Singer had only 10% shields at the moment, and although they were regenerating any more impacts and the matrix around the impact site would fail.

“Trying!” said Jack, the stoic and argumentative officer for the first time looking concerned.

The shields on any Empire ship could take a lot of punishment, but slow kinetic strikes were impossible to defend against effectively, the shields would be drained. 75

Several more of the species ships were disintegrated, the plasma weapons of the Singer were now moving as quickly as possible rotating and twisting in place to line up on the targets.

The Singer fired, and the plasma ate into the approaching remnants of the species fleet.

One ship more agile then the rest dodged through its brethren, using them as a shield like the Station and quickly accelerated towards the Singer.

“Jack!” shouted Charles as the ship approached the starboard section.

“It’s out of the firing arc!” said Jack as the Singer twisted around at his command trying to get a targeting solution on the ship.

He didn’t get it in time, and the ship impacted. The entire front section of the ship was eaten away by the shields before they failed three fourths of the way through the collision, and a moment latter the ship impacted the hull of the Singer.

The deck beneath Charles’s feet shook and he was thrown to the floor.

“Report!” shouted Charles.

“Starboard living quarters have been hit! Force fields and bulkheads are in place but we’ve sustained heavy damage in that section. We won’t be able to reengage shields around that section or cloak until what’s left of the enemy ship is removed and the profile restored!” said the engineer on the bridge.

Charles looked out through the force field in front of him at the derbies field in front of them, there were no enemy ships still operating, he could see some signs of life, and a few floating sections were still firing off kinetic rounds, but it was negligible.

“Get the engines up, Jack restore as much of the shields as possible, we need to get that FTL ship!” said Charles.

---

---

“They’re not going to make it,” said Takuya.

Ken hesitated but nodded, “They won’t no.”

Captain Takuya looked at the fleet of escaping ships in front of him and turning looked at the alien ship quickly gaining on them.

“Turn us around Ken, we’ve got to stop them, tell the other fleets to hold steady.”

The Yamato quickly twisted around in space to face the enemy cruiser, and firing the engines Ken slowed the Yamato in relation to the rest of the fleet, bringing their speed down to something closer to the velocity of the alien ship.

“The First Terran fleet fell, and they just destroyed all three fleets defending Mars. Do you have a plan?” asked Ken.

Takuya closed his eyes and took a breath, the stale suit air was nothing close to the air on Earth but he wasn’t going to ever taste that air again.

“How many short FTL jumps could we make, within 100 kilometers?” asked Takuya his eyes still closed.

Ken surprised turned back to his console and consulted the equations that Dr. Lincoln had provided, “At least 5, its horribly inefficient.”

“Get ready to make five jumps then, all weapons free!” said Takuya.

Once again the Yamato took to her task, no longer in a war based on ideals or rhetoric, no longer forcing brother to fight brother, but in a fight for the very survival of humanity the Yamato was resolute.

Her guns blasted metal through space, ripping into the shields of the alien aggressor, doing no more damage to them than anything else. The alien ship twisted slightly protecting her damaged starboard side.

“Jump!” said Takuya.

Ken punched the drive, and once again the strange matter and antimatter were fired in opposite directions. The Yamato consumed by the explosion slipped into subspace.

Takuya looked out at the spectacle, it was clearer now, where before it had been a smearing of light and energy beautiful and incoherent, now he could almost make out shapes. 76

The Yamato dropped out of FTL barely 100 meters from the hull of the alien ship, on her starboard side where the damage form the fleet was evident, a large chunk had been scraped out of the hull and embedded in it were the remnants of the human ship.

It took Takuya a moment to get his bearings, everything around him looked almost fuzzy, all of it like a badly projected image shaking his head he cleared the numbness.

“Fire!” shouted Takuya even as the Yamato’s cannons did so.

Reaching the shields the accelerated rounds slowed, but managed to punch through the weak point.

Takuya watched with savage glee as the alien ship seemed to stutter for a moment the lights throughout its hull changing from a static white to a red, four whole fleets flung at the ship and they had managed to knock them into emergency lighting.

The alien ship was quickly turning trying to hide her injured flank from the Yamato, the smaller plasma based weapons seemed to have been weakened, the shots impacting the armor of the Yamato were dying on impact sizzling out only eating a small bit of the metal away.

As the alien ship swung her main gun back into range Takuya turned to Ken.

“Jump!”

---

---

Ben looked up at the fleet around him, on the nose of the Ark he could see almost all of them, they were close enough to the final countdown that many of the ships were without orders beginning to drift into a closer formation trying to get into the radius of the Ark’s jump.

“Have you tried resetting the magnetic coils?” asked Megan in his ear.

Ben rolled his eyes, “That’s the first fucking thing I did! I’m telling you it’s in the sensor relays and command circuits!”

“That’s not what the data in here is telling me!” said Megan.

Swearing under his breath Ben reached into the nose of the Ark and ripped out the small command junction box.

“Anything change?” asked Ben.

“No.”

“It’s the command circuits then, I just tore out the chips,” said Ben.

“You did what!? Are you trying to kill us!” Shouted Megan making his ears ring even through the com channel.

Ben winced, “No! It’s not like we would be able to repair those circuits in ten minutes anyway!” Looking up at the fleet around him Ben sighed, “Tell me when to fire off the antimatter charge!”

Inside the ship Megan hit the console in front of her, “You want to be on the outside of the ship when we fire off an antimatter charge, and for FTL travel!? We have no idea what that will do!”

“I don’t want to be on the outside of the ship! But It’s not like we have much of a choice!” shouted Ben.

“God damn it!” said Megan.

---

---

“Divert power to the shields!” shouted Charles as once again the C species ship jumped, and reappeared on their starboard side their weapons still firing full tilt doing far more damage then they should have.

The single ship was causing more damage than the rest of its fleet had been able to, concentrating on the small weakness that they had managed to carve into the Singer. 77

The ship was the same one they had encountered around the moon of the primarily inhabited planet. It was equipped with the FTL drive, and was performing maneuvers with it that were breaking every doctrine that Charles knew of regarding space based combat.

The ship was moving via small FTL jumps accurately placing itself only a few hundred meters off of the hull of the Singer with each jump, its momentum preserved through each jump it quickly moved away from the Singer before they could rotate to get the main weapons on it and when they were almost lined up it would jump away again only to reappear and repeat the process.

The military applications of the technology that the Class C species was now evident, in space it provided an enormous advantage not restricting a ship to any classical maneuver. It was large enough of an advantage that for a moment Charles entertained the thought that the ship might actually destroy the Singer.

“Jack!” shouted Charles.

“I’m trying! The computer’s having a hard time getting a lock! It’s like they’re only half their or something!” He growled.

Charles leaned in on the com, “All fighters launch!” he ordered.

The small craft had been inside the Singer for the battle mostly because the Class C species ships were able to break down the shields of the fighters when they concentrated fire on them, but a single ship would not be an issue.

The fighters launched from the port side of the Singer and Charles watched as they began to loop around the hull towards the FTL ship.

---

---

Takuya stared at the alien fighters as they approached, their time was up.

“Ken, what do you think would happen if we were to jump into that ship?” asked Takuya.

Ken looked up from the display and back to the Captain of the Yamato, every other crew member on the bridge did the same.

Ken let out a small laugh, “I have no idea but it won’t be good I know that.”

Takuya nodded, “that’s my guess as well.”

Takuya thumbed the control panel next to him, “Engineering, I want the reactor set to overload in thirty seconds.”

“Aye!” came the voice of the engineer.

Takuya looked around the bridge at the officers, “It’s been an honor,” he said.

Ken turned back to his controls, and stared at the countdown to the reactor meltdown, timed just right and its energy would be added to that of whatever the Yamato would do when she materialized inside the alien ship.

Twenty.

The alien fighters were now circling the Yamato, their weapons trained on her. The communication channel in front of Takuya opened and the alien from before standing on the bridge of his ship appeared.

He spoke and the translation program took a moment, “Surrender your ship and you will be spared.”

Ten.

Takuya laughed and looked back at the alien, “take it!”

Five.

Four.

Three.

Ken hit the controls of the Yamato for the final time, the ship fired off its antimatter and strange matter charges, and was once again thrown into subspace. 78

Takuya looked up and around him again, the images were almost clear, only what looked like a small layer of plastic or something over them. It was a garden, the Yamato was drifting through the sky over a lush garden of Earth.

Takuya stared in wonder at it, this had been what he had been looking at through every jump into subspace, this same garden. It had been blurry and his mind had trouble even putting it together, but here and now he could see it.

The Yamato materialized and Captain Takuya of the Yamato was no more, his atoms scattered along with his crew and the ship in an explosion of energy.

Chapter 12

Charles was once again thrown to the floor as the Singer lurched, for a moment the artificial gravity of the ship disappeared and he floated up into the air, it reactivated a moment latter and he was slammed into the deck plating.

Groaning Charles slowly got to his feet.

“Report!”

“I uh,” Jack was still at his station but it looked as if he had slammed his head into the control panel, blood was pouring down his face from a gash in his forehead.

Sam was slowly regaining her senses as well, and she gasped as the sensor data streamed in.

“Sir, the ship!”

“Where is it!” asked Charles.

Sam pushed herself away from her station and pointed at the camera feet from deck 8 on the starboard side. A piece of alien metal was embedded in the wall, with writing on it. The translation program gave the name a moment latter, Yamato - Great Harmony.

“They performed an FTL jump directly into us!” said Sam breathless.

“Damage?” asked Charles.

“We’ve lost the starboard section of decks three through eleven, it’s going to take us hours to get shields back online in that section, and even longer before we can perform a jump back to the beacon.” said Sam.

Charles ground his teeth together in frustration, “anything else?”

Jack swore and turned around unconcerned with the blood, “The other FTL ship, it and the rest of the fleet around it are gone!”

Charles looked back at the display showing the name of the ship, it had been another distraction, another delaying tactic by a desperate species clinging to life. It had worked though. Whatever technology it was they used to go to FTL had been applied it to an entire fleet. They had escaped.

Charles sighed, “Sam send a message to the beacon, tell the fleet in reserve they are needed for cleanup.”

“Yes sir,” said Sam.

Sitting back down in his chair Charles closed his eyes and put his head in his hands. Species C1764 was going to be a problem.

Red glanced down at the tactical display, the Yamato was gone but the alien ship wasn’t accelerating towards them. They had stopped it somehow.

Red opened the com to the fleet, “All ships form up and prepare for the jump!”

Slowly all of the ships large and small drifted in closer to the Ark, some getting so close to one another that they were only meters away, proximity alarms sounded in the Ark and every other ship in the fleet. The only gaps were directly in front and behind the Ark where the charges would be detonated.

They were now tearing through the solar system at a rate of 101 Km/s relative to the Sun, and they were ready. 79

“All hands brace!” said Red as he activated the FTL drive and launched the charges.

“Now Ben!” shouted Megan through the earpiece.

Ben pushed the contacts together and with a small thump that transferred itself through his suit the antimatter charge was thrown out of the front of the Ark. It took only a moment and as much as Ben wanted to see what was happening he flipped his visor down and turned away from the antimatter, it was going to be bright.

In space there is no medium through which sound can move, and at the energies involved here that was a good thing since the sound alone would be enough to kill anyone. Still Ben swore he could hear the shockwave as the antimatter blast expanded interacting with the strange matter field.

The Ark jerked and he lost his grip, Ben opened his eyes in shock and grabbed at the emergency line holding him to the ship praying that the clip would hold.

The colors of subspace around him swirled and twisted, Ben stared at them and slowly put his hand out. The stuff drifted like a gas around his hand. Looking around Ben could see the other ships of the fleet around them, but they were out of focus as if he was seeing them through a badly distorted lens.

As his mind tried to process what was going on the colors and images around him seemed to stutter, and they turned to static for a moment. The Ark dropped out of FTL and Ben watched as the back end of the ship near the engineering section decompress and explode outwards.

“Megan!” Shouted Ben.

The com line was dead for several seconds before it clicked on, “We’re fine, we knew the FTL engines were going to overload!” said Megan.

Ben breathed sigh of relief and tugging on his line pulled himself back to the ship.

“What about you?” asked Megan.

“I’m alive, I take we made it through,” said Ben as he looked up at the now familiar blue and white banded gas giant.

“We made it,” confirmed Megan.

---

---

The ships of the fleet were desperate, many of them nearly at the point of drive failure from taxing the vacuum thrusters designed to perform orbital maneuvers up to 200 Km/s of acceleration. Several ships had lost their ability to thrust after exiting subspace and were still bleeding off velocity by passing through the upper atmosphere of the gas giant, waiting for other ships to come and save them.

No one person could claim credit for stepping onto Bellona first, and at the time it didn’t matter, there was no single name to go down in history, no Neil Armstrong, no Kevin Musk, all of humanity stepped onto the small moon first, all that was left.

Only the remaining warships of Earth and Mars stayed in orbit, all other craft dipped down to the cold moon below. The Martians were not fazed by the conditions of Bellona. In many respects the moon was more hospitable then their previous home.

Stepping off of the ramp of the Ark as the final group of refugees Ben reached down into the rocky ice of the surface of the moon and weighed the material in his hand.

“So, a new start an engineer’s dream,” said Ben as he examined the rocks.

Megan nodded looking out across the plateau the fleet had landed on. Already men and women were hauling out shelters and equipment from cargo bays, food was rationed, and energy farms were already being mounted.

The ships they had ridden out the storm in would be their homes for now, ships like the Ark would probably never fly again, their systems too damaged by the escape.

Diana in a smaller suit awkwardly ambled over to Ben and Megan, it was odd not seeing the girl at eye level hovering in the air.

“I got a message from my Mother, she wasn’t on any of the ships,” said the little girl, Ben couldn’t see the girls face but he could hear the tears in her voice ready to fall.

Megan stooped down on the cold rocks in front of her, “I’m sorry.” 80

The little girl put her hands around Megan’s neck and the engineer slowly lifted her up.

This little moon in the solar system over from their Sun was her home, she was the one who was going to grow up here. It would be Diana and her peers who took revenge for the Earth.

---

---

The General sighed and looked up at the monitor, the fleet had made the jump over 48 hours ago and still the alien ship hung in place far above Mars.

They had continued to fire kinetic rounds at if from the orbital cannons for over twelve hours, but it had no effect on the thing. With the military fleets destroyed and every civilian ship capable of lifting off in another solar system all they could do was watch the alien ship.

“General, we’ve got five more contacts,” said an exhausted radar technician, “they just appeared out of nowhere next to the alien ship.”

“Show me,” said the general.

An image of the alien ship appeared on the screen, next to several other more massive craft. These massive craft were all identical to one another and nearly three times larger than the original alien ship, their form less sleek but equally as threatening.

“All cannons, prepare for Armageddon,” ordered the General.

The weapons platforms in orbit of Mars responded, loading the tactical nuclear warheads into their chambers.

“All cannons fire!” said the General.

The orbital cannons of Mars fired for the last time, their payload of weapons streaking through space towards their target.

The alien craft did not react, and the rounds sped past them towards Earth.

It would take them a few hours to reach the planet of human origin, and then the Earth would be dead. If humanity wasn’t going to keep Earth then no one was.

---

---

Lincoln turned off the monitor and slowly stood up.

The Ark fleet was away, and the Earth would soon be a nuclear wasteland. Mars had only the smallest amount of defenses, the single alien ship had been joined by another five of its kind. There was nothing left for humanity in the Sol system.

Moving over to the communication console inside of her lab Lincoln quickly loaded her message. Using the communication codes that she had lifted from the General she quickly took control of the Martian communication network.

The dishes in orbit which were normally pointed at various location in the solar system all turned to face the target in the sky, Epsilon Eridani. The message would take ten years to get to the system, assuming it made it at all.

It was repeating on a loop, until either the network was destroyed or someone shut her out of it.

Walking out into the accelerator tunnel Lincoln took a breath and pulled the small control panel off of the tube.

Replicating the CERN incident would be spectacular, and in this case be only a byproduct of her goal. The math told her this would work, and that the margin for error was actually rather small considering the forces at work, a 1.127% margin of error.

Still approximating what a microscopic tear in subspace with open ended temporal values would do was something no one except her had ever tried to calculate, it was something that no one had even thought to calculate. She didn’t have the time to colonize, she didn’t have the time to wait for the infrastructure to be built up.

She didn’t have the time at all, not since the first jump. 81

The Yamato engineers had spotted the problem as well although they didn’t know how extreme it was, she and Malcolm were the ones most affected by it. The first sloppy hole in subspace had been enough exposure to reduce her life expectancy from one hundred and fifty years to only another three. The Ark was a completely redesigned system, it would at most take a few months off of the life expectancy of anyone in the fleet.

It would take astrophysicists decades to understand whatever it was that caused it, and it would take physician’s decades more to cure it.

The FTL jumps caused all matter to shift into the subspace realm, it was a small shift but cumulative. Any ship that performed too many FTL jumps would become trapped in subspace, and any human that suffered the degradation would have their very atoms break down at the quantum level. The effect was in subspace outside of the normal flow of time, nano-machines and the body’s own replacement of cells would not cure it.

The universe did not like it when its rules were broken it seemed, and exacted the toll on anyone who was daring enough to do so.

Her message was to humanity in the future, when they needed her she could be retrieved from her stasis inside subspace.

Closing her eyes Lincoln started the sequence, she could feel the particle accelerator ramping up to full power behind her a steady hum that quickly grew into a roar as the particles inside of the machine were pushed up to near the speed of light.

This would either work, and her next memory would be falling to the ground in some future lab, or she would end up trapped in subspace for eternity.

The particles inside the machine for an instant replicated the CERN accident, the mass of the particles creating a small artificial black hole with the lifespan of only a few picoseconds, the strange matter and antimatter inside the stream of particles reacted with the rip in space time and the entire amalgamation of physics erupted out of their containment in front of Lincoln, consuming her and a small portion of her lab.

The excess energy unable to go anywhere else simply exploded.

---

---

Moving slowly across the surface of the moon Diana crept away from the encampment of ships, she was supposed to stay inside of the modern circling of the wagons. Ben and Megan were busy though despite the fact that they had promised to take care of her.

Diana didn’t blame them for being distracted, they were some of the finest engineers humanity had left. They didn’t need to waste their time babying her. Besides she could take care of herself, her Mother had been kind but time alone with her had been sparse. She grew up on her own inside the Station, learning what she needed too from its inhabitants.

Pausing Diana looked up at the star in the sky, Epsilon Eridani was dimmer than the sun, redder as well.

The planet underneath her feet was cold, but it had a certain beauty to it. Magnificent desolation was the common description that ancient astronauts had used when they described alien vistas. She saw where they were coming from now. It was an untamed and untapped land, a fresh start.

Wondering further from the camp Diana walked over to the edge of the Plateau they were on and looked down, it was a gradual drop rather than a sheer cliff but the slope was nearly uniform and the bottom of the was cloaked in darkness.

Diana shivered, even in the suit she felt the edges of the cold around her. More atmosphere than Mars meant the suits designed for that planet transferred more of the cold through them, there was more atmosphere for the heat transfer to take place in.

Finding a small boulder Diana lay down on it and looked up at the stars, searching for one that would perhaps look familiar.

She closed her eyes and shook her head, her mother was dead, once again tears threatened to fall. Diana knew about her genetic heritage, that her DNA was modified and enhanced. She was stronger, faster, and smarter than the average human.

She would have to use the gifts her mother had given her not to take her place as the head of the Martian criminal syndicates but to exact revenge on the enemy of humanity. Ben and Megan for as much as they complained and joked with one another never wavered in their resolve. Ben had crawled out onto the nose of a ship as it jumped through FTL, and Megan hadn’t argued with him. They both knew what had to be done.

The first fleet around Earth had thrown themselves at the aliens knowing nothing about them, the fleets Terran and Maritain around her home had faced the enemy even knowing the power they wielded.

Her own mother had destroyed the bastion of her success just to give the fleets cover, the men on the Station who had been the reprehensible outlaws hunted by the Martian government had stood up with the rest of humanity.

All of the sacrifices, all of the death. 82

All to save her generation. Diana opened her eyes and looked up at the stars, It was genetic she supposed. Ensure the future survives at all costs, it was hardcoded into the human genome.

It was also hardcoded into her genes to seek revenge, to seek justice. She owed it to those who could no longer fight, she owed it to those who had died fighting, and to those ten billion who never even got the chance to fight.

Diana brought her eyes down from the stars and to the moon in front of her confident in what her future held, more resolute and determined then any adolescent should have been and then Diana blinked, startled out of her reverie by the small creature in front of her.

About the size of her head and covered in leathery skin with four legs , two small stubby arms, and two very large eyes the small thing stared up at her from the dirt, the eyes expressive enough to show that it was as surprised as she was.

Diana froze not sure what to do, if she should scream, fight, or run from the thing.

Small antenna on its head vibrated for a moment and then the creature squeaked and quickly turned and dove back into a crevice in the rocks disappearing from sight.

“Weird,” said Diana her dramatic and resolute thoughts buried underneath an appropriate sense of wonder.

---

---

OTHERS

SKY

SPACE

FEAR

TERROR

KILLERS

HIDE

BURROW

SLEEP

WAIT

~~~

~~~

Yes, that’s the cliff hanger you get.

No I’m not saying anything else.

~~~

~~~

Alright, so this story is finished. This stories final title will be Species C1764. It is the prologue to the Eridani Series, which will take place after an interval of time from these events. I think you can guess about how long that time gap will be.

I’m also going to start a Patreon, and I’m going to be completely honest about why, I need money like everyone else on Earth, and if I can make enough with a Patreon I don’t have to take any minimum wage jobs (A little unrealistic but I can hope.)

I want to structure it like this, and I’m open to suggestions.

Patreon type: I’m debating between monthly and per chapter. I plan to keep up the once per week schedule of every Friday so even at the minimum amount that would be three chapters per month meaning I’m charging my contributors at a minimum 3$ a month. I would like to do it on a monthly basis but not many of the writings on Patreon follow that model. 83

Contribute 1$: You get the chapters which will be posted every Friday a week early. As in when I start the next series there will be a delay so that week gap is in place. Normal users still get to view it a week later on HFY. You will also receive the ebook version of Species C1764 whenever that comes out, I have to do some serious editing to it.

Not quite sure how to do this one, either a private subreddit or through the Patreon activity feed.

Contribute 3$: My gratitude? I’m not sure what else I could put up as an incentive. I would put the ebook here but I’ve not even started to put that together yet, and I hate making a promise I can’t keep.

Among other things I need to make cover art for this story, figure out how to legally handle money with Patreon, and move this weekend. I’m going to be busy.

First chapter will be up on the 11th with the link to Patreon where if you do contribute you will get chapter 2 on the 11th as well, or wait a week.