Pei invited me on one of her missions. We boarded one of the legendary stealth ships, painted all black and nearly undetectable. It was commanded by a sister marine Captain Lydia along with seven other sister marines, most hailing from Ganymede or Io.
Her mission was to visit a remote outpost on Vega. Unlike most other settlers who jetted to the nearest habitable planet, a breakaway group had chosen to build a station around a seemingly worthless rock in a fairly inhospitable region of the Vega star system that was constantly irradiated. The settlers on death rock have inundated the other colonies with their sick and dying.
Settlers are a stubborn breed and old habits die hard. This particular group had grown up on desolate asteroid mining camps in the outer rim and found the abundance overwhelming planet side. They preferred familiarity and comfort in the known, including its pains and suffering.
We hitched a ride on one of the newest ships, none the wiser. Pei smiled and confirmed my suspicion that this happened quite often and there were dozens of stealth ships in active service. It was madam Sophia who instructed Pei to have me become more immersed in the ways of the sisters. While they did not expect I would fully embrace their ways, they would show me more of their secrets.
Both Enya and Felicia have already traveled by stealth ships and performed several missions of their own. Enya having earned her stripes and now a full fledged sister marine. Pei liked us both and found Enya capable, but too eager. Felicia too timid and emotionally burdened. She admired me as somewhere in the middle, a truly ideal candidate for a sister marine.
I made no allusions and asked what bargain had made with Sophia. Pei smiled and liked most my ability to discern the truth. She was offered the right to train her daughter personally and to be released from her marriage with Kallos. Pei thought I would be both relieved and glad that she was handing him back to me. Pei is despicable and so is her mother Naoka. She agreed with me. She felt relaxed around me and had no reason to ever hide or lie.
We neared our destination and disembarked along with another sister. Lydia would return in a few weeks and we were tasked with finding passage to the death rock from one of the planetary colonies. I asked what was the intent of Pei's mission and she informed me that we were to give the settlers a reason to abandon their rock and finally move to one of the main planetary hubs. In simple terms, they were going to destroy most of the onboard station systems managing life support, power and artificial gravity.
It would be a controlled failure giving the settlers enough time to abandon in an orderly fashion. Sister Arka was an engineer by training and would handle the sabotaging of the station, we were to provide cover and reconnaissance.
The first few days were uneventful and we mingled with the settlers who spent most of their day complaining about the cramp conditions and the lack of suitable ore to mine. The station chief, Ul-Kaine was different, he was out of place among his own. Pei knew of him and he was once a star ship captain. He lost his ship after destroying one of the main warships of the Martian fleet, the Formidable. A fools errand as the rest of his scouting party turn tail, he alone continued and face the entire Martian armada near its moons of Deimos. Lacking the firepower to defeat a dreadnought, Ul-Kaine forced the Formidable to give chase and brought it within the gravity of Deimos, just enough to attract all of its aft torpedoes that the Martians were not suspecting.
Ul-Kaine's ship was not designed for torpedoes and he had them secretly installed. But he only had enough to destroy one ship and the rest of the fleet exacted their revenge for the loss of the Formidable. Most of his crew were killed and he was found drifting in an escape pod. He was spared death and exiled.
Pei was upset at this discovery. She had not been informed that someone like Ul-Kaine was here and in command of this station. But she now understood why she was selected for such a delicate mission. We convened at a local bar and Arka advised we should abandon the mission and return to a planetary hub and await for Lydia's return. I didn't understand why they were concerned with Ul-Kaine.
Ul-Kaine is a leader of the separatists known as the Revisionists who are currently in a civil war with their Proto-Artesian brothers. He is allied for now with the Neo-Artesians who provide the Revisionists weapons and supplies. This station must serve as some sort of rebel base, perhaps for training or possibly weapons research.
How could the sisters not know something like this? Pei felt someone had intentionally withheld information and she needed to confirm with Sophia whether to continue or scrub the mission. We all agreed to leave when a group of men approached us and a woman introduced herself as Alice and his second-in-command. They were aware of our presence and been monitoring us since our arrival.
We were invited to meet Ul-Kaine and escorted to his home near the end of the station. It was a cramp series of rooms and his was the only one with a window. He addressed us as sister marines and had anticipated someone would attempt to force the settlers to leave. He welcomed us and wished to assist. He then gave his reasons for why they had chose this inhospitable location to establish a base and he explained that they had found an alien ship encased in the rock. Only a few among his group of followers knew of its existence and they've been studying the alien ship for some time.
The timing was perfect as they were ready to leave onboard the alien ship and wished to fake their own deaths by having the station destroyed in spectacular fashion. He was tired of Proto-Artesian spies constantly prying and attempting to infiltrate his operations. Only with his faked demise would they cease hampering his efforts.
Pei and Arka agreed and they were provided assistance by a dozen of Ul-Kaine's men who knew all the of the maintenance tunnels and ship's systems. They left with Arka to begin planning a way to destroy the station and provide everyone ample time to escape.
Pei and Alice went to another room to discuss an agreement Ul-Kaine had made with the sisters, specifically with the rogue sisters of Triton. For reasons unknown, they provided him immunity and some had assumed it meant he was of a special bloodline, but he had no ties to any of the sisters, nor to Karl Knutmudsen. Pei promised to honor the agreement.
I was left alone with Ul-Kaine who asked me to sit with him as we shared a drink. He had a private supply of Martian wines and we enjoyed a glass as he wanted to know more about my dream travels. He had heard of it and was impressed that I had become an adept. They spoke of stories of people who could travel the stars without the need of space suits or ships. He felt it was the ultimate leap in technology to become one with everything and knocked on the din of metal and steel that we were primitive compared to the Alpha Centauri.
He then shared he was friends of Dr. Peter Hsiang and that he had been dismissed from Despina. He now worked for the Revisionists and they planned to pilot the ship to his new research facilities near Betelguese.
This ship, while more advanced than anything man could dream of conceiving, is still quite primitive relative to the Alpha Centauri, but from their initial research they believed it was very old and possibly was created by the ancestors of the Alpha Centauri. At one point, in the distant past they were a primitive people and they too had to make the gradual leaps and bounds of technological innovation. The ship had been drifting for billions of years and in time collected dust that clumped into a million tons of rock.
He then asked if I wanted to see it for myself and curious, I agreed. We left on a small mining rig that could fit only two people and docked with a mining tower beneath the station and attached to the asteroid. A space elevator took us the rest of the way as we descending into the darkness of the rock. After several minutes we reached a platform deep within and took another larger rig deeper still until we reached a room. Inside, there were several series of doors that opened until we reached a very intricate door with runes I recognized from Sirius.
He pressed on one and the doors gave way and we entered. Lights began to flicker and illuminate the entire ship and it was massive, at least a quarter of the size of the entire asteroid, bigger than the Amaya and Grand Traveler combined. He took me into a central room and to my shock, he revealed a door, like that on iG's planet and within a sleeping Alpha Centauri, the hissing of fog reminding me she was still alive and dreaming.
Ul-Kaine stroked her hair and commented at how beautiful the sleeping woman. The door seemed different in style and technology than the rest of the ship and Ul-Kaine confirmed they had reached a similar conclusion that someone else must have placed the sleeping chamber within this ancient ship, but done so a long time ago and for reasons they could not understand. We surmised it was the Alpha Centaturi who re-discovered this ancient ship and sealed it away.
The only others who are aware of this are the inner elite of the Revisionists, the Loyalists and the cybernetic brain on Despina. He is well aware of the despot of Despina, Dr. Hsiang brought him up to speed on all that had happened while the Loyalists ran amok.
I warned them not to awaken her. She would live for only one day and then succumb to the brain worms. Ul-Kaine agreed that would usually be the case. I raised an eyebrow, there were others? He smiled and said my perception of things proved true and said there were a dozen others, they had all since died, but not after experiments were made to try and sever their connection with the void. On their most recent attempt, they nearly succeeded and for a time had a living, breathing Alpha Centauri walking about the ship and communicating with them. It lasted for only a few weeks then he too died suddenly, but they suspected he dream travel to escape.
He told them a great deal and shared that they were refugees who found the ship and hid inside hoping to avoid being captured. There had been a great civil war fought among their kind and a smaller, more militant faction finally achieved victory with the release of the brain worms. They were initially allied with the winning side, but were sickened by what they saw being done to their fellow Alpha Centauri and fled.
They were hunted down and were whittled away from several thousand to only a handful. The larger contingent fled for other parts and a dozen hid aboard the ancient ship. It's hull made of a special material that would shield their existence from being easily detected. He also had the purplish scars that I carried and said they offered some protection from the brain worms, but at a terrible cost. I would eventually die, unless I fed off the living thoughts of another. And only those who could access the void and of sufficient quality to be food for a brain worm. I had as my symbiosis the same cravings and needs. Eat or be eaten, he lamented.
Arka completed all the necessary steps to destroy the station in three days. It would be a more rapid and violent destruction and would give the settlers mere minutes to escape. But before that they would prepare for toxic radiation leaks to force many to take refuge planet-side and Ul-Kaine would ensure at least 5,000 of the 5,500 settlers would evacuate as anymore would invite suspicion. The rest would be able to escape quickly on escape pods, mining rigs and shuttles.
I asked to remain and with reluctance Pei agreed. We made arrangements with Ul-Kaine that if unforeseen problems would emerge he would have us escape on his ship. They would make a warp jump within the cocoon of the rock and go directly to Betelguese. There, we could make contact with a colony hub to return back to Mars.
The days passed slowly and we waited while the initial evacuation commenced and the ship was largely deserted. We drank alone in the bar and prepared for the final few hours. Alice joined us suggested we make towards a mining rig or escape pod. We knew of several nearby and Arka left to prepare one for us.
Near a few minutes to the hour, we heard the controlled blasts radiate through the exterior of the station and panicked voices and sirens alerting that it was a catastrophic failure and to abandon the station. We made our rush to Arka and instead found her dead, her throat slashed and the escape pod gone. Pei was suspicious, Arka was a sister marine and it would take someone with considerable skill to kill her so easily. She had sensed for some time that Alice didn't appear to be who she claimed.
We had little time to ponder and looked for another escape pod. Our search became more frantic as we realized there were none left and the blasts were increasing with the hull now groaning as it began to heave and come apart. Without much time, we could start to see the bulkheads come undone and before I knew it, Pei had wrapped a portable emergency spacesuit around me and sealed the helmet. She kissed me on the cheek as violent decompression ejected everything into space. I could barely see anything and was screaming her name.
I drifted for an hour and began to lose consciousness. I decided to dream travel. but found something was preventing me from doing so. A mining rig emerged from the wreckage and its pincer arms took hold of me and carried me towards the alien ship. I collapsed on the deck and Ul-Kaine was waiting for me along with Alice. Alice took out a syringe and injected something in my arm and I felt immediately drowsy and closed my eyes.
Ul-Kaine advised his men to take me to the room with the sleeping woman and to be careful as Dr. Hsiang would need both of us for his final experiments.
No comments:
Post a Comment