Of my meeting the commander

[tha_rami]

I'm not certain I like the fact you've written yourself into a happy ending or at least, a moment of survival, but I'm still loving every line of it.

[Edited on 2-4-2009 by tha_rami]

[shewter]

Great story so far Nigel, keep it going:)

[Nigel_Strange]

And then, I died. I'm writing to you from beyond the grave.


When I started, I didn't know I was going to turn it into a longer story. If I had to do over again, I might have started in 3rd person. I don't think I've written a story in 1st person before.

I did once write a story in which the main character died in the beginning, though, so don't count on survival

Thanks for reading.

[Nigel_Strange]

Captain Devious and I parted ways. He said he would meet me in Riftspace where we would have a drink. He would not tell me how to get there, however, because of their clan’s strict code of secrecy. From that point on, I was on my own, to get to Riftspace, or, as they like to call it, the Rift, any way I could.

Like most fledgling pilots, I knew about the first beacon. It was somewhere on Sapphire. Since the first beacon is not a big secret (they actually have a restaurant there named after it) I can relate that part of the pilgrimage. However, after the first beacon, I will not go into detail in order to preserve the purpose of the beacons for future generations.

When I got to Sapphire, the sun had already set on the beacon, which resembled a small space station that had been sunk into the wet, grassy surface of that planet. As I flew by, the ancient radio message displayed a slightly cryptic message on my shipboard computer. The message was a clue to the next beacon. While at the first beacon, I parked my ship and walked over to the Beaconside Grille and had a double beacon cheeseburger. As you might imagine, the burger had faux bacon, in addition to the usual textured protein ersatz beef and cheese-like foody product. The waitress was impressed with my Evoch (it does have that effect on the ladies) and so I did spend a little longer on Sapphire than I originally planned.

When it was time to get back on the quest, I hopped back in my Evoch and entered the first beacon location in the map log, along with the clue to the next beacon. It was my intention to use the map log in this way, entering each beacon location with the clue to the next, so that I could retrace my steps if necessary. With that, I blasted off the planet in search of beacon two.

The second beacon was a little harder to find, and, since it required the pilot to figure out the location from the first beacon, there were no restaurants or gift shops built up around it. Sometimes, there were other pilgrims, though, and I passed one on the way. He seemed an amiable fellow. When I asked him why he was on the pilgrimage, he said he thought it was time to make a break from his old life and to seek out a new one. With that, he was on his way. I did not see him at the third beacon. I wonder if he ever got there.

For those of you who have been on the pilgrimage, you know what it is like so I will not boor you with the details. For the rest, I’ll just say that it gets harder as you go, but also more rewarding.

I eventually found a Mantis jump drive. These things are extremely high-tech and somewhat experimental (possibly dangerous). Regardless, I had the thing in my Evoch as soon as I found one. I was only glad that I had saved up enough credits to afford it. With the Mantis, I would be able to move much faster.

There was, of course, the usual run-in with pirates, aggressive guilds, officious governments, and random marauders, but with the stealth generator, I was able to evade most of them, and the few that I had to fight did not give me much trouble. I was a seasoned veteran from the Vonari conflicts, so I could easily take whatever these unskilled thugs could dish out.

After the fifth beacon, I began to have some confidence in my success. In fact, I was feeling much better about the whole mission. I was no longer in close proximity with my enemies and so the need to keep up illusions and lies was no longer there. With that pressure gone, I found my thoughts becoming less paranoid and more focused on the tasks at hand, which were finding beacons, decrypting their messages, and upgrading equipment, whenever I could find something better than what I had. The cold silence of space has a calming effect on me, and the infinite reaches and multitude of stars has a kind of transcendent effect on pilots who are allowed the time to appreciate their serene beauty. Perhaps that is one of the purposes of the beacon quest: to give the pilgrim plenty of time for reflection and meditation.

There are many uncharted planets in the Evochron system which I had never even suspected existed. These planets were off the main trade lanes and so they paid a premium for certain items, since they were so remote. I did a fair bit of trading with these remote and hidden systems, and used this money to finance the cost of my trip. I found some of these on the quest that I would not have discovered otherwise, so the quest had at least one positive outcome

As the beacon messages became harder to decrypt, it took longer to find each new beacon, so finding one was becoming quite a rare occurrence. The first few I knocked out in a couple of hours. The last one took a few days.

When I thought I had worked out the meaning of the last beacon, I was totally dumbfounded.

“You’ve got to be kidding,� I muttered to myself. The final destination that appeared to be indicated was so far removed from the trade lanes that one could easily get lost in space, never to return. I reviewed the message again and tried to find another meaning for it, but I could not. It seemed that only one interpretation was left to me.

Because the exact location was not given, I had to try to work out the coordinates as best I could. The problem here was the question of how literally to interpret the directions. The calculations could be made in different ways, depending on how you believe they were intended to be interpreted, but there was a wide margin for error. Too wide. If you were more than ten sectors off or so, you might not find it, and if you could not find it, it was likely you would not have enough fuel to get back. Should I take the Y coordinate into account in the calculations or trust that whoever made them did not intend for the Y axis to be a factor? The decision could mean life or death.

I plotted the coordinates according to the simplest possible interpretation of the data and then sold my good old Evoch. The journey ahead required the largest fuel tank I could buy, and the Evoch was limited in that regard. I bought a Leviathan class fighter and fitted it with the biggest fuel tank and the most powerful engines I could find. Because of its mass, though, even the biggest engines left the vessel underpowered. Still, I was not likely to encounter many craft on this last part of the journey, so the lack of maneuverability was not a major concern.

With a full fuel tank, a carefully drawn map, as much food and water as I could cram into the ship, and a deck full of music files, I sallied forth from the system closest to the designated target area, taking this leap of faith that at the end of this quest, there is something to find aside from an empty void.

[tha_rami]

Haha, lovely.

You could always let your main character tell his story or have it recorded before the final battle, eh.

[Maarschalk]

Very Nice, I did the Pilgrimage! I'm looking forward in reading how yours will end!;)

[warsign]

Nice story really.
Also good style of writing...

[Nigel_Strange]

There is more to come, but I haven't much time at the moment...

Thanks for your encouragement. I enjoy writing these probably more than you do reading them.

[Nigel_Strange]

Hours turned to days. There was nothing but empty space all around me. There was nothing but empty space within me. Even the radio chatter, which is ubiquitous throughout the Evochron sector had grown silent. I had not really noticed the sound of the radio chatter until it was gone, leaving me in the eerie silence of the void.

I had carefully plotted my course and counted the jumps as I engaged the Mantis time after time, struggling with doubt, uncertainty, and mind-numbing boredom. I was vaguely afraid of finally losing my mind out in the void, and thereby losing my bearings and becoming lost, which would mean my death. The fear of such an end was eating my sanity, so the whole experience was a downward spiral into oblivion.

When I finally got to the coordinates I had marked, I found…nothing. In a panic, I amplified the scanners and squinted at the radar, but no pink blips alerted me to the presence of anything. Had I been lied to? Was this all some sort of sick Renegade joke? I began to feel hot as the rage hit me, the blood rushed into my head, making it hard to see. I began to hyperventilate, knowing even then in the back of my mind that my limited supply of oxygen was going to waste. I started flying around, trying to figure out some kind of search pattern. I didn’t know what I was searching for, but I would know when I found it.

Then, my ship picked up something, so I eased the throttle (to conserve fuel) to investigate.

There are two kinds of asteroids. The first kind, with which most of us are familiar, are the rocky sort that you can land on. These are relatively solid crater-encrusted hunks of metallic rock that are often mined for minerals. When these enter the atmosphere of a planet, they make a big light, a huge explosion, and a giant crater. The other kind of asteroid is called a rubble pile. It’s really just a “pile� of small rocks that are attracted to one another by mutual gravitation. These rubble piles are too small for the gravity to overwhelm the cohesiveness of the individual particles, so they remain a collection of small rocks that are loosely packed together. If a rubble pile enters a planet’s atmosphere, it breaks up and becomes a kind of shower. If you land on a rubble pile, your ship would likely sink into it, so landing on this kind of asteroid is discouraged. Rubble piles often collect in Lagrange points because of the odd gravitational effects, which is why pilots usually avoid Lagrange areas on their travels.

The object on the radar appeared to be mostly metallic, but not completely solid on the radar. It had no craters and so I concluded it was a rubble pile. This seemed odd to me, at first, because I was very far away from any stars, and there couldn’t be a Lagrange point within light years. I wondered if it could have been cast here from a star, maybe as two stars moved too close to one another, this thing was ejected from the cataclysm and settled here, but why? When a body is in motion, it tends to retain that motion until acted upon by another force, yet here in the deepest void, there were no forces. These thoughts occurred to me as I drifted closer to the rubble pile for investigation.

Then, I noticed a flash of light from the pile. It was a reflection from the lights on my own ship. As I got closer, I discovered that the reflection was off the canopy of another ship! Some idiot had attempted to land on the rubble pile and got stuck, I concluded. But upon closer examination, I discovered that the rest of this “rubble pile� consisted of other ships. The entire pile was nothing but dead ships, held loosely together by their own gravity. It was really a giant graveyard of pilgrims, who had come to the same spot I had calculated based on the coordinates from the last beacon. They had all come here to die! The poor sods had made it this far only to find nothing but despair. Like me, they must have been curious about the one blip in the entire sector that reflected radar and went to investigate, only to find this jumbled spherical tomb. So, one by one, they became part of this enormous monument to misplaced optimism, a leap of faith that ended in the abyss. I scanned the ships with my floodlights and saw the dead pilots faces staring out, each one a mask of horror and insanity. How long had they been here? Some of the ships looked pretty old: models they hadn’t made in decades. Most of them were probably still spaceworthy aside from their lack of fuel.

I had read accounts of tar pits in Earth’s prehistory. They would find the bones of a mastodon amid the bones of ten or twenty saber-toothed cats. The theory was that the mastodon got trapped in the tar, and then the cats would try to take advantage of its inability to escape and pounce on it, only to become trapped themselves. As the creature sunk, more carnivores would jump on the pile, hoping to catch a good meal, but ended up adding to this sinking zoo. I could not help but think of those animals when I saw this pile of lifeless ships, each one of them attracted by the one radar blip in the entire sector, only to find this planetoid of carcasses.

I forced myself to return to the matter at hand. My ship was still operational, at least. I checked my fuel to see if I could make it back. My breath sucked in as I realized suddenly that I was already past the point of no return. If I jumped until my fuel ran out, I would still be too far from any known system to make it there alive.

At this point, I am ashamed to confess that I totally lost it. I will save you the particulars, but anyone who has had children and watched them go into an uncontrollable tantrum for hours and hours has a pretty good picture of me flailing around in my cockpit. I don’t know how long I was in this state because I lost track of time (and my watch had suffered a grievous blow during the break). I finally sat there in a foetal position, rocking back and forth in my seat.

Thoughts slowed.

Like tar.

Then stopped.

[Nigel_Strange]

I was startled by a sudden noise. I don’t know how long I was semiconscious, but the cabin was cold and the hud was off, so the computer had shut it down for sleep mode to conserve energy, which happens if you don’t move for a long time. It was pitch black inside the cockpit when I opened my eyes and I could see the distant stars through the tempered glass. My Leviathan had drifted to rest on the surface of the ship graveyard. In my current hypnagogic state, I was not sure if I actually heard the loud clunk or if I had dreamed it. I couldn’t remember my dreams, though I have had prior experiences in which I would awaken at the onset of a sudden noise only to find that it had been entirely imaginary. In the recesses of my imagination, I thought that perhaps another ship had landed here, and as it crashed into the orb of twisted metal the reverberations carried through the planetoid to be transferred to the hull of my Leviathan, which I experienced as a distant clunk.

Then, I heard it again. This time, it seemed less like a clunk than a tap, or a rap. I was aware of all of the hairs on my body suddenly sticking straight out as a new kind of fear gripped me. I knew I was alone. Nothing was out here. Nothing but the dead. The dead.

I turned my head slowly to the right and saw what looked like a figure in a space suit standing a few yards away from my ship. I stared at it for some time in disbelief. I tried to make it into some random shape, like a crumpled wing or the nose of a downed ship, but it still resembled a human figure more than anything else. Impossible, I thought, but the more I tried to disbelieve, the more the figure refused to fade away. I could see my Leviathan reflected in his helmet. Though I could not see his face, in the reflection I could see myself in my own canopy. It was a self I almost did not recognize: eyes wide open, mouth hanging, tongue lolling from side to side. It was the face of madness. Soon, it would be the face of a corpse.

Then the clunk again. This was no crash on a distant part of the pile. This time I could tell it was definitely something hitting my ship! It was not coming from the lone figure to my right, but from my left. I quickly jerked my head to the left and saw another figure, but this one was right outside my cockpit, looking in, and he was moving! I watched as his suited hand moved up to touch my canopy and tapped on it. Three fast taps, then three slow taps, then three fast ones again. I vaguely recognized this pattern, but I could not put my finger on where I had heard it before. Then it came to me: SOS.

“What do you want?� I rasped, gripped by such terror that my voice no longer worked properly. Perhaps these were fellow pilgrims who had come here and got stuck, and they wanted my air or food, or maybe even…no, I’d rather not write just what I was thinking at the time. The tapping repeated itself: SOS.

“I don’t have anything for you.�

SOS.

“Look, I don’t belong here. If you will back off, I’ll just be on my way.� I reached for the control to turn on the computer, but as I did so, I noticed that my hand was instead moving toward the cockpit release lever. I stopped. “Let’s try this again,� I said. To myself. I wasn’t going to fly very far if I couldn’t even control my hand. The cockpit release lever was not a good idea, especially since I was not wearing my helmet. I was also talking to myself. What’s worse: I did not seem to be listening.

SOS. It was louder this time, more insistent. There were more of them outside now, barely discernable in the darkness. How could there be so many? Was there some capital ship in the rubble somewhere? Maybe it was the core of it, the original gravity beacon that became a porch light to the moths that flew in and got stuck on her. My computer was still off and the multi-function displays were still black. That was odd, I thought. Then I remembered that I hadn’t turned them back on again. My hand went out for the cockpit release lever again and this time, I had to fight with it to make it stop.

SOS.

“Stop it! Stop the tapping!� I screamed. “Just leave me alone!� I turned to look again at the annoying tapper and at that moment he chose to lift his visor. There, in the helmet, was one of those dead faces I saw in one of the cockpits, its eyes wide open, glassy, staring vacantly, its lips receded from its teeth, but otherwise intact. It was a walking corpse.

SOS.

I started awake. The moment I realized it was a walking corpse, I realized that it was a nightmare. Everything was the same as it was, though, just before the unreality crept in. My ship actually had drifted into the planetoid, but there were no figures that I could see. Without hesitation, I turned on the computer and used the maneuvering thrusters to pull away from the planet with the kind of feverish panic one feels when walking into a spiderweb. Within a few seconds, the dull grey orb was far below me, a safe distance. Safe enough, at least, so that I wouldn’t have to worry about the walking dead welcoming me to the neighborhood.

SOS. Of course! That was the distress signal they told me to use when I needed help. It was in that ancient code I had to learn when they gave me the tangler. I cursed myself for not thinking of the tangler before. Messages traveled instantly, so no matter how many light years I was away from civilization, my message would instantly be read by Commander Waters back in Cerulean. He’d know what to do. He could probably get a bunch of mathematicians together and then give me the right coordinates. Maybe I was not too far off.

SOS SOS SOS STOP FOLLOWED LAST BEACON STOP NOTHING HERE STOP SEND CORRECTED COORDS STOP END

I then sent the last beacon message copied from my map log and briefly explained what I thought it meant, along with the coordinates I had ended up in.

In retrospect, I can’t excuse my stupidity in this situation, but I can explain it. I had taken my role as an eager pilgrim too seriously, and felt the need to prove to myself that I had what it took to be a member of Clan Destiny. I had to remind myself that I was not a pilgrim, but a government spy. I was not the best or the brightest, just some guy who hadn’t given up on the idea of living. I might have been a cheat, but I would get my mission accomplished, even if I had to live with the ignominy of my own mediocrity.

I waited for what seemed like an eternity, staring intently at my tangler for a reply. Then, at long last, it came:

REVISED COORDS AS FOLLOWS…

I punched these new coordinates into my navigation computer and checked the range. I was far off, but not so far that I couldn’t reach the corrected coordinates with my remaining fuel. I was truly overjoyed. I celebrated by grabbing the Denebian ale I had been saving for my arrival in Riftspace and drinking the entire bottle. Then, I pointed my ship in the direction of the corrected coordinates and engaged the Mantis drive.

As I pressed the launch button and was engulfed in the blue aura of space-folding travel, I vaguely recollected that when I woke up from my nightmare, my hand was actually on the cockpit release lever.

[Ian2454]

Maybe the fear of dying such a unannounced death in the middle of nowhere (literally) cracked him into temporarily having a disassociative hand disorder.
I would be scared to always have my hand on that lever. Especially unknowingly.

[Edited on 4-3-2009 by Ian2454]

[Nigel_Strange]

Next chapter might be a while. I wanted to get this far, at least...

[warsign]

Originally posted by Nigel_Strange
I enjoy writing these probably more than you do reading them.

Believe me, you don't

[tha_rami]

What warsign said, this is an amazingly well-written, uniquely styled story.

[Maarschalk]

What Warsign and Tha_Rami said, I agree, looking forward to more!

[Jeremy]

My sentiments precisely.

[Nigel_Strange]

When I arrived at the corrected coordinates, I found nothing immediately on my short-range scanner, so I broadened the range. Just on the edge, I saw a blip that indicated a gate or a wormhole. That must be it, I thought, as there was absolutely nothing else out here. I set the jump coordinates to the new object and jumped to it.

There it was! In front of me, 2500 meters, was a gate. I almost did not believe it, but while I was debating whether or not to believe it, my ship was fast approaching it. I really did not have time to change my mind, and it occurred to me that it was perhaps a mistake to jump straight into an unknown gate such as this. The Leviathan did not stop quickly, did not move like a cat, or even a drunken lemur. It moved like a wrecking ball and steered appropriately. I realized that, even though I could not stop in time if I wanted to, even if I applied full reverse afterburners, I could use the maneuvering thrusters to change course just enough to slip by the gate and then consider more carefully whether I wanted to go through. However, I was in a void so profound that even death, at this point, would be a kind of rescue, so, without further reservation, I allowed the massive ship to plow straight into the center of the gate. I was immediately surrounded by the blue aura of space-warping unpleasantness, which always leaves me with the feeling of having my stomach turn itself inside out. Wherever I was going, it would be better than where I had been.

When the light faded, I found myself in a new system. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the comparative gloom. I saw light from a nearby star shining through dust, with dark shadows knifing through the dust caused by large asteroids. So, the gate led into an asteroid field. How strange, I thought. It was not unheard of, though. There are some gates that are hidden in asteroid fields, but usually, it is to prevent detection on the side with the asteroids. Why would the Renegades want to hide their gate from themselves?

Crack! Something hit the forward shields. I slowed the ship down to avoid further collisions. When I finally stopped, I took a look around. First, I checked the radar. There were no ships on it. There was only the purple blip indicating the gate I had just come through. I was somewhat relieved that the gate had a return gate, though I would prefer never to return to that empty space. If I had a full fuel tank, though, getting back would not be so difficult as getting there. So, my first mission was to get fuel.

Something caught my eye in the windscreen. I glanced to the right to get a better look. It was a metallic object, spinning in the hazy sunlight from the nearby star. As it spun, the light glinted off its surfaces, causing a kind of strobe effect. As it drifted closer, I identified it as a bicycle. Bicycle? I thought. That can’t be. I used the maneuvering thrusters to edge closer to it, and as I did so, I confirmed that, without doubt it was a simple bicycle. There was no way a bicycle would be in deep space, unless someone put it there, for a reason. I turned and bumped it slightly with the nose of the Leviathan. The wheels turned and the pedals spun as the main body changed its direction of spin.

I increased the range of the scanners and saw the reason they called it Riftspace. There were several wormholes all close together, as if a big rift had been opened up in the fabric of space, causing these eddies to appear, swirling currents of subspace that could suck your ship to some distant part of the galaxy. It made sense that the Renegades, fugitives from the legal system, would enjoy such a place. There was no way one could get caught in it. As soon as enemies approached, they could bolt into one of these wormholes to appear anywhere, and there would be no way to know where they would arrive without following them into the wormhole, where there would likely be an ambush. So, here I was at last: Riftspace!

As I pondered these ideas, I saw a blip on my radar. A red blip. The shipboard computer sounded a little beep to let me know that there was a threat. I looked at my ship ID display and saw that it was Vonari scout! The Vonari were in Riftspace.

Ordinarily, I would engage Vonari wherever I saw them, but this was a totally unknown situation, and I was almost out of fuel, so I reached over and engaged the stealth generator. There was not much time on it, since I had just jumped through a gate, which depleted my energy reserves. I hoped that the Vonari had been distracted and had not seen me on its scanners. I quietly edged away from the alien ship and directed all my energy to my shields. When I appeared again, I would want my shields to be building up as fast as possible. Meanwhile, I could build up some speed, which would not be easy since I was in a Leviathan. I tried to put as much distance between myself and the scout as possible.

After a few seconds, which seemed like hours, the Vonari ship disappeared off my radar again. A half-second later, my stealth generator cut out as the energy reserves were exhausted. I realized that I had been holding my breath all the time and could now let it out. As soon as my shields were up to full, I redirected the energy to fill up the reserves, so that the stealth generator would be operational for the full duration next time I needed it.

I decided to start heading at 90 degrees. This would take me out of the asteroid field so I could safely make a jump. As I began to accelerate, I noticed something peculiar, even more peculiar than a bicycle in deep space: a tree.

It was a mighty thick-trunked tree. Its gnarled roots gripped an asteroid with a tenacity of a drowning man gripping a buoy. I had to shine the floodlights on this to make sure I was really seeing what I thought I was seeing. It was a tree all right. It was dead, but it was still a tree. There was no denying it. As I studied the asteroid it gripped I noticed that it was covered also with dead frozen grass. Now, I did not major in biology, but even I knew that trees do not grow on asteroids. Something else happened here. By now, I imagine you can guess what it was, but in my state of mind (having barely escaped death only a few minutes before) I was not certain whether I was alive or dead, and seeing this caused simple wonder and amazement for a few seconds. Then, the horror of what I was seeing, and what it meant began to sink in. Had I been standing up, I would have staggered and fell completely to the ground. It was unbelievable, but even as I tried to disbelieve, I could not hold back the creeping terror of what travesty the evidence all pointed to.

Trees do not grow on asteroids. Trees grow on planets. There were no planets in Riftspace. Only asteroids. And Vonari. There was only one explanation: the planet had somehow been destroyed. Not just destroyed, but destroyed with such energy, such force, that it flew apart and became an asteroid field. Even as I thought this, something about this explanation did not make sense to me, but there was no doubt that there was a planet here at one time, and now it was gone. Words cannot describe the dread that such devastation causes to settle upon one’s soul. If the Vonari could obliterate a whole planet, wipe it out of existence, then what could they not do? What planet was safe? How could the Alliance survive against this threat?

I set new jump coordinates for the nearest star and engaged. I was at nearly bingo fuel and so I needed to resupply. Luckily, I thought to install a fuel converter before I left civilization. I could use this device to harvest stray gases streaming off the nearby star and convert it into liquid fuel. During refueling, I kept a wary eye out for more Vonari, but did not see any.

Once fueled up, I was much more sure of myself. I could handle some Vonari, even in Riftspace.

I chose one of the wormholes nearby and jumped to it, hoping to find some activity, and activity I found. Out of the wormhole, one after the other, came several Vonari capital ships: destroyers. I had never seen more than one at a time in Talison and Cerulean, but here were six of them, all together. As they emerged, they formed up into a kind of group, like a whale pod, but whether it was for offense or defense, I could not say. I stealthed in for a closer look. They were surrounded by the usual array of Vonari escort ships, only multiplied by six. Suddenly, I did not feel as confident in my ability to take on the Vonari. They began their inexorable crawl toward one of the other wormholes.

Suddenly, the radio was abuzz with voices squawking orders, human voices. Out of nowhere, several human ships decloaked and began to engage the enemy fighter escort. There were not many of them, but they kept the escorts busy. Unfortunately, the capital ships continued to move without impediment, bent upon whatever goal they were trying to attain. The human ships, which I guessed to be Renegades, were no match for the onslaught of both alien capital ships and their swarm of fighters, but they were putting up a good fight. One by one, I saw the Vonari fighters going down in flames, sometimes spinning off into the void, and sometimes crashing directly into their heavily-shielded destroyers.

I was moving in closer so I could decloak and help them out, thinking that, by doing so, I would ingratiate myself with the Renegades, fighting alongside them against a common foe. Before I could decloak, though, I heard the familiar voice of Captain Devious over the radio.

“Alpha to command, pod of six approaching. Transmitting coordinates now.�

Then, an unknown voice from a greater distance “We have your entry point, Alpha, bug out now.�

“All fighters, time to fly,� said Captain Devious. At that moment, I thought I caught a glimpse of Careless Whisper materializing directly in front of the enemy destroyers. It could have been any wraith, I suppose, but I assumed it was the very same that belonged to Captain Devious. After a few seconds, he jumped out. Then all of the human fighters at once zipped into hyperspace, leaving their blue trails behind. Only the Vonari remained, and I was careening straight toward the pod of destroyers. I was thinking that my time had finally arrived to impress the Renegades with my battle tactics, but my audience had suddenly disappeared. The stealth generator was almost out of power and I was going to become visible to the enemy in a second at close range, with no shields and no weapon capacity, and no allies. Whatever they thought they had achieved had apparently not occurred. I decided the best course of action was to fly by, since I could not stop in time to avoid the collision, so I used the maneuvering thrusters to glide safely under the enemy ship.

I was looking up into the underbelly of the lead destroyer through the top of my canopy when I heard the stealth generator shut down, leaving me visible and vulnerable. Immediately, I heard the missile lock klaxon, and so I throttled up and engaged the afterburner to gain on the missile. At this time, I felt a few impacts from the destroyer’s guns which were trained on me. I diverted all available energy to the shields and hoped that the shields and the thick hull would protect me long enough to get clear of the enemy forces. There were a few more thumps and then a clang, indicating that they had breached the shield and actually hit hull. Luckily, the hull was thick, but a few more like that would have finished me.

At that moment, there was a bright blue flash to my left, toward the front of the destroyer pod. Sliding into view, directly in front of the destroyers, was a carrier. It was unlike any carrier I had seen, though. It was black, like the Careless Whisper, and could only be discerned by the nebulous ionized gases that trailed in its wake after jumping in. It arrived so that its starboard side was toward the bow of the lead destroyer, making a kind of T intersection. There were a couple of puffs of smoke from the Aurora (for I had quickly worked this out to be the infamous ship I was seeking) and then, as quickly as it arrived, the ship jumped out again, leaving those two little puffs of smoke in its wake.

I had already sailed past the lead destroyer and had turned around to see the result. I thought I glimpsed two oblong specks heading toward the lead destroyer from the direction the Aurora had just vanished. Then, there was a bright light, like a sun suddenly appeared only a few kilometers away.

One never really gets accustomed to the soundless vacuum of space. When you see an explosion, you expect it to go BOOM, and to hear the thundering echoes in your ears for seconds after the event. Not so in space. In space, you hear nothing. You see a flash of light, but there is no sound. It is like watching a video of an explosion but without the sound on. It is eerily unreal, and by virtue of this unreality, one has a bizarre and unwarranted feeling of safety. Rationally, you know it’s still dangerous, but the subconscious mind assumes that if you can’t hear it, then it’s not really there.

The twin fulcrum detonations, however, were there, and they were way too close. I had no time to react or even brace for impact. All I did, actually, was grit my teeth and squeeze my eyes shut instinctively. In a flash, it was over. A second later, the shockwave hit my ship, and, unexpectedly, I did hear it. I heard the gases rushing past my ship’s hull, the clanging of debris and shrapnel hitting my Leviathan, ripping holes in the wings, bouncing off the armored hull, but inflicting severe damage. The Lev, despite its size, was buffeted forward, and my body knocked against the side of the cockpit so hard that I felt and heard bones crumple before I blacked out.

[Jeremy]

...

That rocks. :|

[Maarschalk]

Wow!;)

[tha_rami]

Well integrated with the main story-line! I mean, this fits so well it could easily go in the EvoClopedia at this point.

[Nigel_Strange]

When I came to, I found myself floating in the escape pod of my Leviathan. It must have ejected me just prior to exploding. There went several million credits, I thought bitterly, but then, as I gained consciousness, I became more acutely aware of my situation. I was in Riftspace, but without a ship now. I had some broken ribs, but my limbs seemed to be OK. I did not think my skull was fractured, but my head felt as though someone had put it in a vice. Furthermore, I was totally at the mercy of anyone who found me, be they human or alien. I looked at the instruction sign on the inside of the pod. It was a newer Terranova model. I looked around for any indication that it had some after-market customization.

What escape pods were supposed to do is put the pilot into a state of hibernation if he’s been there too long, usually after about 48 hours or so. How they work, precisely, has never been made explicit in the advertisements, but nobody really wanted to sit in space long enough to test them. Then, a few decades ago, they found an escape pod that had been floating for too long. They brought the guy in and revived him, but it was obvious there was severe brain damage. The hibernation, apparently, was not a viable alternative to timely rescue. After that, there was an escape pod recall, followed by more regulations, and more tests. They never seemed to have quite worked the bug out, and pilots began to fear the escape pods more than the simple expedient of burning alive in a flaming hunk of twisted metal in the vacuum of space. Finally, the Grinning Skull company took up the reigns of innovation and performed after-market customization of other companies’ life pods. They replaced the hibernation unit with a high explosive charge that could be detonated by a sequence of button presses. These were called “death pods� to distinguish them from life pods. The pilot, therefore, could choose when to finally be released from this mortal coil at the push of a button, rather than be turned into a vegetable and kept in brain-dead stasis for years and years…or worse, be functionally impaired but with brain activity, a mind trapped in a dead body, forever reliving the last excruciating moments of his life, over and over and over again.

Pilots who could not afford a Grinning Skull Death Pod could usually afford a pistol, which they kept for that purpose. Unfortunately, my life pod was just regular life pod. There was no reassuring grinning skull on the panel. Luckily, I had my military issue side-arm for just such exigencies. It might also come in handy for dispensing Alliance-style justice throughout the Evochron system.

Life pods did not have much in the way of sensors, but they did have a radio, a distress beacon, and a tiny window through which I could look out. The beacon had already activated automatically, so there was really nothing to do but wait and try to get someone on the radio.

“Is there anybody out there?� I implored over the radio.

“So glad you could join us,� said Captain Devious. “Welcome to the real war.�

“Real war?�

“Wait a tick and I’ll reel you in.� Moments later, the pod was engulfed in a blue tractor beam and pulled in. The wraith did not have any cargo area, so I could be brought aboard, so the only option would be to take me somewhere I could disembark. I listened in as Captain Devious radioed for landing instructions.

The wraith shot into the asteroid field and before long we were gliding into the Aurora’s hanger bay. I was quickly lifted out of the pod and placed in the ship’s medical facility, where they put me under (despite my protests) and worked on fixing my injuries. I was out for some time, but when I came to, I was braced up and had some new scars that were healing fairly nicely.

I had been on many carriers in my military career, but I had never been on one like the Aurora. It was, if anything, even more Spartan than regular military vessels, and was extremely cramped. Every room was half-filled with pipes and equipment of some unspecified nature. Everywhere I looked there was bare metal with valves, gauges, and the like. I was told that, in order to maintain the stealth generator for the ship, they had to displace much of the other equipment, which ate into the living spaces. I could believe that. There were a few places where I actually had to stoop to get into a room. The crew were friendly enough, and they gave me plenty to eat, though I could not say it was gourmet cuisine, it got the job done, and I was able to keep it down without much trouble.

During my initial stay on the Aurora, they had taken my PDA, so I had to bide my time before I could make another report. No explanation was given to me for why this was denied to me, but I suspected that they might have known about my mission. Sitting on that ship, without the ability to make a report, surrounded by men whose commander I was sent to bring to justice, was excruciatingly tense, but I endured it as best I could, and tried not to let them see me sweat. This became nearly impossible when I was alone with Captain Devious in the cramped mess hall, chewing on delta rations.

“Well, I suppose I could boor you with a history lesson, or I could take you straight to the commander so you can finish what you came here to do,� he said. “I would suggest that you listen to the history lesson, though, before you make your decision.�

�What decision?�

“You came here to kill Commander Konrad,� he said plainly. All ruse and jest was gone, and now his face was sober and serious. I smiled and tried to bluff, but he could see right through me.

“As I said, before you meet him, you should know about our situation,� he continued. “Perhaps you noticed the salient presence of Alliance military in the Rift?�

“No, I did not.�

“Funny, don’t you think, considering the Vonari presence? I should think that there ought to be a conspicuous military presence here, but what we see, instead, is a conspicuous absence of military activity. The Vonari are in Riftspace, Lieutenant Hothead.�

“Yes, but why would the military be interested in Riftspace?�

“Why? You don’t…you really don’t understand, do you?� Captain Devious was positively flabbergasted.

“Apparently not.�

“Do you know what the Rift is?�

“Why don’t you tell me?�

“The Rift is the key to the galaxy. Whoever controls the Rift controls everything, can go anywhere.� He drew a map on a napkin. “See these wormholes, they go to different sectors of Evochron. From here, you can go to Vonarion, and from here,� he pointed dramatically, “you can go to the Sol system. That’s right,� he nodded. “That’s the birthplace of our whole sorry race, and we’re just one little step from it, right here, and the scalies are at the doorstep.

“What do you think might happen if the scalies got to Earth?�

“You’ve been to Earth?� I was incredulous. Nobody had been to Earth in decades. The gate to Earth was gone long before I was born. Lost or destroyed, I was not sure. Earth, though, had become a kind of lost paradise of which many stories were told of some golden age followed by numerous wars and such, the very fabric of myth, though there was no denying that we humans all came from one planet, originally, and they called it Earth. There were history feeds about it and so on, but it was like studying ancient ruins. The idea that Earth still existed and that one could travel there was well outside the last bastion of believability.

“No, I haven’t been there, but I have been to Sol Station, which is in Earth orbit. Nobody goes to Earth. It’s protected by a kind of security ring. They don’t let anyone in and I’ve never seen a ship leave. The system is, however, one of the most technologically advanced systems I’ve been to, more so than Deneb, and even Al’s Quay. If the scalies got to Earth, you think they would do what they did to Planet Freedom?�

“Planet Freedom?�

“The asteroid field you flew into when you arrived was the home planet of the Renegades. They named it Freedom after their highest value.�

“Oh,� I said, feeling dumb. I chalked my obtuseness to having sustained a concussion earlier. “So, why aren’t the military here, protecting our ancestral homeworld?�

“Because the Alliance is stupid. The attacks on Cerulean and Talison are feints. Their sole purpose is to distract the Alliance military from the real objective, and they’ve done a superb job of it. The main thrust of the Vonari attack is aimed here. We think they might know about Earth but haven’t been able to launch a lethal strike yet, and after the Aurora bloodied their noses again, they’ll take a while before they try that again, but try they will. Scaly bastards never give up.�

“So, Clan Destiny is out here, protecting Earth from Vonari aggression, is that it?�

“In a nutshell.�

“And I’m supposed to believe all this altruism on behalf of Commander Konrad and his crew? Seems like quite the martyr.�

“He’s not a martyr yet,� said Devious with a smirk. “In any case, Clan Destiny are one of the Renegade clans. This was our homeworld,� he said, pointing to the asteroid field. “We’re not just doing Earth a favor, but we’re fighting our own enemies, and maybe we’ll…� he stopped. I could not get him to continue this thought. “Well,� he continued. “Let’s just say that the people of Earth sleep in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. Your Alliance military is just playing footsie with the scaly play-actors, sent there to keep your guys busy. The real work is here, and nobody is handing out medals for the kind of heroics we perform on a fairly regular basis. You have Commander Konrad to thank for that.

“So, are you ready to meet him?�

“Yes.�

“Then let’s go,� he said, handing me my pistol. I looked at him uncertainly. Then checked the weapon to see if it was loaded. It was. I holstered it, but kept the snap open so I could draw it quickly.

“Why did you let me have my pistol?�

“You have to make your own decisions. Bear in mind that if you do kill him, you won’t leave our vessel alive, but you will fulfill your mission. Your precious Alliance military might even award you some posthumous medal.�

“How did you know I was coming here to kill Commander Konrad?�

“Do you know who was the last man they sent to kill him?�

“No.�

“You’re looking at him,� he said with a wink.

[Edited on 4-11-2009 by Nigel_Strange]

[tha_rami]

Haha, you really do know how to write, don't you?

As a small reminder, it is true that Earth is surrounded by a security ring, but as far as I know it is available to Alliance personel seeing Earth holds Alliance HQ. Federation HQ is in Orion.

This still fits greatly in the Evoclopedia. Would you mind if I, when this story is done, integrate a summary of it in it as long as it stays true to canon (and Vice doesn't change the story in the future)?

[Jeremy]

Originally posted by tha_rami
Haha, you really do know how to write, don't you?

I'd say so..

[Maarschalk]

Originally posted by Jeremy

Originally posted by tha_rami
Haha, you really do know how to write, don't you?

I'd say so..

Really, Really, Really does know how to write!

[Nigel_Strange]

Thanks for your comments.

I don't know how Earth can maintain control over the Alliance, being so isolated. Maybe it is a separate Alliance?