“Let’s raise up a toast to the fine men & women who serve not only our country, but ALL of humanity! Please my boy,” the boisterous man at the bar yelled, “Have a round on us! And THANK YOU!” The not-quite-crowded bar all cheered in unison, raising whatever alcoholic preference they had in their hands upwards.

Cole was home, on special leave, and had managed to come out with his father to a local pub to watch the annual “Rivalry Weekend” between his home state’s two major colleges. It was the tailend of American football season and the home team was barely managing to scrape by with a 3-point lead. All the rivals needed was a field goal to tie it up on this final drive to have an overtime showdown.

Cole stood, shakily, upon his bar stool, “No my friends! It is good people like YOU who make this fine country - and humanity - worth fighting for! Keep doing your part, keep your hopes alive, chase your dreams, and keep your faith. If you can do that, then we can keep fighting to save our species!” Another ruckus of a cheer went up. Cole pounded back his shot.

Cole’s father, Cade, patted his son on the shoulder, “You’re quite the speech giver!”

Cole smirked, “Well you do a few tours as the Hero of Cancer and you can come up with them almost on the spot.”

The pair laughed lightly for a moment. 3rd down was up on the screen and the rivals quarterback handed the ball off to his tailback. He was stopped at the line of scrimmage, making it 4th down with 9 yards. The rivals burned their last time out with 12 seconds left in the game.

Cole felt a presence approach him from behind; his sixth sense, a strong survival instinct, caused him to turn around on his stool to see a man in front of him. The man was older, but not quite elderly - perhaps early 60s or so. He probably was in mostly good health with his body starting to break down on him. He looked familiar but Cole couldn’t place his face.

“Excuse me son, I wanted to come shake your hand,” the man said with his right hand extended.

Cole took it, “No need sir but that’s right kind of you.”

“My son…” the main trailed off for a moment, and tears started forming in his eyes. But he recovered quickly enough, “My son was at the Battle for Cancer as well. He died over Aganon.”

A lot of people died over Aganon. Cole barely making it himself thanks to a quick wit, some luck, and divine intervention from the Almighty. Cole nodded, “I’m sorry sir. What’s your son’s name?”

“Jeremiah Tennyson,” the man said with some effort.

This explained why the man looked so familiar. Ah fuck - why did it have did it have to be Tennyson’s old man? Our sins come back to haunt us, I guess. “TJ Tennyson?” Cole asked trying not to look put off.

“Yea that’s him! You knew him?”

“Yes sir, I did. He was in my unit. I, uh… I was there. I did all I could for him. I don’t know what your official report said but he didn’t suffer sir. I can promise you that,” Cole said.

“Thank you, son. I appreciate you telling me. That puts my mind at ease, somewhat.”

“Can I buy you a drink?” Cole asked.

“No that’s alright I was getting ready to head home. Maybe-” Mr. Tennyson paused, “Maybe I could talk with you about him sometime? Not right now but if you’re going to be home for a while and you aren’t busy one afternoon?”

“I’ll be redeployed soon, but if I can Mr. Tennyson I’ll look you up,” Cole replied.

Jeremiah Tennyson nodded his thanks and walked off back to his table. The rival's time out had expired and they tried for one more play, skipping the first down and going for the end-zone. The ball was barely deflected by a home team safety with calls for pass interference from the rivals' fan base. The refs never threw a flag and with 7 seconds to go the ball would turn over on downs. The home team would take the knee to win the game, just barely, at 24-21.

Cole stood up, threw some bills on the bar top and grabbed his flight jacket, “Come on dad. I’m ready to get the fuck out of here.”

Cade looked a little confused but stood as well, quick as he could. Cade had become a heavyset man in his older years so he didn’t move quite as fast as his very limber military son. The pair got in his father’s large SUV and left the small town pub just outside of Aynor. It was back to the farm, about a 15 minute drive away.

They weren’t on the road a whole minute before Cade asked his son, “What’s on your mind?”

Cole sighed heavily, “Tennyson… why did it have to be Tennyson?”

“You were in the same unit together, it’s understandable that you’d be upset over losing a comrade.”

“No, Daddy, that’s not it. I know TJ Tennyson didn’t suffer. He, along with his cockpit, were vaporized in less than one-tenth of a second,” Cole paused for a moment. Cole wasn’t sure he wanted to say the next words but he supposed it was about time he confessed. “TJ didn’t suffer because I fired the shot that killed him. I aimed my Koryu right at him & pulled the trigger. The official report says he died in battle above Aganon, but what it doesn’t say is that he died a coward’s death because he was a cowardly bastard.”

Several moments of silence hung in the air before Cade spoke, “Son… why?”

“Because he ran. When the Kamikaze were about to attack the civilian transport he was supposed to protect he panicked & hauled ass. I watched those people die, and Tennyson’s wingman - who wasn’t a cowardly piece of shit - die. 153 civilians and one damn good pilot died because he ran off scared. So I ghosted his ass. And no one is left alive to say anything different.”

“What about your computer systems, I thought they recorded that kind of information?”

“They do but we never had a proper wind-down time during the fight. We would go in for a few, get resupplied, get a little sleep and a little food. Then we were back on deck launching again to cover more evacuees. My wingman, Donato Santos, died 40 hours later,” Cole remembered the incident. “Dad the Bible talks about giving your life for another as being the greatest show of love. What if you give your life for 300 others? Cause that’s what Santos did: he went head-long into an enemy formation knowing he wasn’t coming back. Santos should be the Hero of Cancer because he gave everything he had.”

Cade didn’t know what to say. The rest of the car ride was in silence back to the house. Once there, at the farm that had been handed down over the generations until it rested with Cade, the two sat in the living room. Cole was on the couch and Cade in his recliner. The old southern man poured himself a glass of Jack Daniels and then a second for his son. “You want to talk about it? I know you probably debriefed but did you get any of this off your chest properly, to anyone?”

“Not really,” Cole said, taking a sip of the hard Tennessee whiskey, “But yeah, Daddy, I think I do want to talk about it.”

CANCER SYSTEM

AUGUST 4TH, 2253 AD

ECS SUGAR HILL EN ROUTE TO CANCER II

ETA 26 HOURS

The transit in-system was perfectly smooth. So smooth in fact that Cole Shaw hadn’t even noticed the transition. The new Hyper 5 engines were impressive, indeed. His unit was the 388th Combat Wing known as the Blood Skulls. They had 11 veteran pilots from all over and 1 newbie from Cole’s home state back on Earth, after one of their girls bought the farm a few months back.

Cole was only aware of the transition because the flight deck lights overhead shifted from purple to yellow, meaning the ship had transitioned from hyperspace to real space. He kept working his pre-flight checklist again. He wouldn’t be space borne for another 20 hours at least but he was always one who preferred to be prepared. Santos, his wingman, was with his own bird the next berth over. The Brazilian man barely had an accent anymore after being around so many Americans for so long. The pair had been wingmen for just over two years; Cole had helped tutor him a little along the way. Before Cole was a pilot he’d spent a year as an English teacher. Then the call for war went out and everything changed once it’d been discovered that he was qualified.

Those days seemed like a lifetime ago but in reality couldn’t have been more than eight or nine years. In a way it was a lifetime ago because there wasn’t a war on. And the alien beings known as the Kamikaze were distant rumors. Back then, on Earth, it was like they didn't really exist.

“Hey Cole,” his wingman called.

“Yeah.”

“Did your system get a patch for a new weapons system?”

Cole checked, “Yeah. Something called the ‘Dust Buster.’ Any ideas?”

Diogo shook his head, “No idea at all.”

Aside from that one modification everything else in his system seemed to be in order. With that he bounded up out of his cockpit and closed the metal canopy. It was pointless to be transparent like clear aluminum or a dense glass. In space objects and events moved so rapidly using your eyeballs was pointless: by the time you could see a threat you were already colliding with it.

Cole bounced down the ladder onto the catwalk. Diogo waited at the lift to take them down to the personnel deck. From here they could return to their squadron barracks for a quick meal and one last round of good sleep before the action kicked off. Or kicked off for them, anyway. Last he’d heard the PAC’s (Pacific-Asian Cooperative) 401st fleet had been fiercely engaged trying to buy time to evacuate Cancer II – known locally as Aganon. The Kamikaze had already made planetfall and brought their spores with them to terraform – or ‘terror form’ as some called it – the human world. Within weeks all life on the planet would be wiped out. The only thing to do was to fall back, regroup, and counterattack at some later date.

The PAC 401st, however, had been sorely outgunned and outnumbered. The PAC, having such a large population, often waged a war of attrition against the Kamikaze. Sometimes the numbers were in their favor and sometimes not. This time: not so much. So the AWDI (Allied Western Defense Initiative), lovingly called “Audi,” were coming in to even out the firepower equation. There wouldn’t be a tactical victory here, Aganon was already doomed. A strategic victory was hoped for. If the civilians could get off-world and relocated they could be put to use making new weapons, new ships and even make new recruits. So the 388th Combat Wing and her mother fleet, the 256th Assault Fleet, were coming in to be the heroes.

Just as Cole and Diogo had got to their racks to lay down for some shut eye his personal comm let out an alert for attention. Cole answered it, “Shaw, go ahead.”

“Shaw, Ingram. Is Santos with you?”

“Yes sir,” Cole replied.

“Good. Both of you come to BR3,” the line ended with that.

“Well Santos my friend it looks like there’s no rest for the wicked. Lead wants us in briefing room three,” Cole said grabbing his arm-link and reattaching it.

“Just wonderful,” Santos said sliding out of his bunk.

Briefing Room 3 was as sterile as any other part of the ship, outside the galleys and heads. The pair walked in to find only Commander Ingram, 1st Lieutenant Akio Fukai and the captain of the carrier ship Sugar Hill - Captain Walden - in the room. It was a big room for only five people.

“Take your seats gentlemen we’ve got a special job for you three,” Ingram said pointing to the seats closest to Fukai. Once seated their flight leader started, “As you know we’re moving into the Cancer system to evacuate the civilians on Cancer II. We have been told that the PAC high command has ordered their 401st fleet to fight to the last man to keep the Kamikaze at bay in order to buy more time for the civilians. We are not here to bail out the 401st, we’re here to save civvies. However, you three have a different priority.”

The man activated the room’s holographic systems, “Your three vessels will be outfitted with atmospheric maneuvering gear and transferred over to the Grimacing Smile. That fleet element will be one of the first units into the fray. Their job is to create as much atmospheric confusion as is humanly possible to cover your mission.

“Which brings me to this,” Ingram said and activated the first image of the planet of Cancer II. “Here you’ll notice what has been described by our intel teams as ‘an oddity’ - it’s some kind of new weapon the Kamikaze have for consuming planets. We don’t know how it works but we do know that if we kill it before it expands too much, we can save the planet. The traditional Kamikaze viral spores only kill living organisms on a planet’s surface. This new weapon actually consumes planets over time. A weapon like this can make plans to repopulate planets after the war is over – or after the battle lines shift – impossible as those planets literally won’t exist anymore. In addition the disappearance of an entire planet can cause hell with the way our hyperspace lanes are setup. Gravity and time are the only things that are constant considerations across hyperspace and real space. So loss of gravity in real space means the alteration of hyperspace lanes. I don’t have to explain to you what that means for humanity’s war effort. This takes priority: the destruction of this planet killer.”

The three were in mild stunned silenced. Cole nodded his head and the other pair did likewise. Ingram continued, “Good. Now your mission: you’ll be dropping in a semi-free fall into Cancer II’s atmosphere from high orbit. We don’t want to risk a low orbit drop because we don’t want to tip them off.” Cole understood this as humanity rarely, if ever, dropped forces back onto a world that had been spored. “So you’ll be launched via stealth insertion modules off a series of modified railguns,” Ingram said and altered the images to show their predicted flight paths and entry. “Once in-atmosphere you’ll be a no-fire on engines until you hit 100 meters above the deck. This will ensure that you won’t show up on the Kamikaze sensors, we think. What’s going to happen next is the tricky bit.”

Cole leaned back in his chair, “Being fired from a moving cruiser doesn’t count?”

“Not compared to what’s next,” Ingram said. He’d learned to ignore Cole’s mild complaints. He knew it was how the younger man dealt with pre-combat stress. “The three of you will come in across this natural lake east of the weapon’s drop zone. Fukai, Santos - as the lake terminates and starts to become mountainous you two will ascend enough to clear the mountain range. We suspect the Kamikaze facility here-" Ingram highlighted a geographical region on the hologram "-is one of their planet-side weapons batteries. Your primary role is to create enough of a ruckus to keep the Kamikaze’s attention on you. Shaw, you’ll break formation and follow this heading and path until you reach the weapon’s deployment zone here.” Ingram indicated a new location. “This is were our new weapon, the Dust Buster, comes in. It’s described to me as a ‘quantum displacement device’ - meaning it basically take whatever is caught in its area of influence and moves it to an alternate reality. I don’t know where nor how, only that it has a two cubic kilometer effective radius. Hence why we need you three in there fast.”

Cole spoke up, “Sir Santos and I both noticed that our birds have been updated with the new weapon’s firing protocols. I assume Fukai’s is the same?”

“That’s correct. If the planet-killers area is larger than we anticipate, or in case Shaw is mission inoperable,” that meant ‘dead,’ “Then Santos and Fukai will break contact with their distraction and engage the planet killer with their Dust Busters. Once the job is done cut and run back to space. If you’re able, join up with the forward fleet elements. You’ll receive revised orders then.”

“Understood,” Cole said. His two wingmen echoed the sentiment.

“You’ve got three hours for personal time, then you’re on board the Grimacing Smile within another two. Once on board you are on scramble alert, your ships will be moved to your berths and you’ll wait there for insertion. The captain of Grimacing Smile has been updated on everything she needs to know. Any questions?”

Cole tried to think of something witty but came up blank, “No sir.”

“Dismissed.”

AUGUST 5TH, 2253 AD

HIGH ORBIT, CANCER II

ECS GRIMACING SMILE LAUNCH BAY

Saying it was a “launch bay” was a wildly inaccurate statement. These literally were modified large-bore railguns so their fighters could be fired into Aganon’s atmosphere. Cole sat in total darkness except for the ebook scrolling across his helmet’s display. It was against regs but he’d been in one too many cockpits, waiting aimlessly for hours and hours on end. Through some trial and error he’d figured out that vids were too distracting to any audio alerts he had, listening to the open-frequency civilian channels or the COMNET (Combat Network) was too unnerving and doing nothing at all put him to sleep. He’d fallen asleep once only to be woken up by his fighter being launched on a no-alert scramble. He’d never fallen asleep again. Besides there were so many books he wanted to read he figured there no point in dying without working his way closer to that goal, right?

A status light in his cockpit blinked and a small message appeared: FLEET ELEMENTS ENGAGING ENEMY.

Cole closed the ebook on his helmet display and called up the tactical HUD. He turned on the external view of his cockpit. Normally he’d leave it off except for the tactical displays but in atmosphere, when movement was only a fraction of that in space, he felt better being able to see the ground beneath him and the sky above.

Currently he could see nothing except the four magnetic rails his fighter was attached to and at a distance the purplish orb that was Cancer II. Her atmosphere was slightly different from Earth but was safe enough for humans to breathe, with a small genetic alteration. He knew that either in a few moments, or another hour, that planet would be getting a whole lot bigger in a hurry.

It turned out to be closer to an hour. Cole could see the blindingly bright scattered beams of the Kamikaze weapons flash far in the distance a few times. The light-speed particle weapons were ruthless but thankfully shorter-ranged than humanity’s own Ryu directed energy weapons. The term “ryu” was borrowed from the Japanese word for ‘dragon’ as the weapon’s heat and destructive power were reminiscent of a dragon’s might. The “Koryu” was ‘little dragon’ - as these smaller versions were put on fighter craft and smaller strike vessels.

Within two minutes of achieving high orbit the orange lights around Cole's cockpit illuminated letting him know that his inertial dampeners were activating. His fighter had probably received the launch codes from the C&C of Grimacing Smile. He relaxed his body as the sudden G-Forces would be pressing him back into his chair momentarily. Cole hated the feeling, it always made him need to piss due to the crushing force on his bladder, despite the additional G-Force nullifiers in his flight suit.

Then his fighter shot forward with alarming speed. He was used to being launched from the deck of a carrier or even a fighter-cruiser, not from the barrel of a cannon. This experience was much quicker and much more jarring. Within a couple moments Cole's fighter was able to catch up to the demanding forces and adjust, so he could operate. He checked on Santos and Fukai - both of whom where in formation to his port side, fore of him. It was a bit unnerving as in space combat you almost never saw your wingmen - or any other vessel - this closely. Yet here the trio was on a completely ballistic trajectory and in a staggered line. All external powered flight had been shut down and would remain so until they broke through the atmosphere's upper layers. Even then he'd only be using enough power to slow his fighter's rapid and chaotic descent.

Seven minutes passed from launch to entry of Aganon. The first turbulence of atmospheric entry was of a minor reassurance to Cole. Typically, when entering atmosphere, the Kamikaze weapons were more disturbed by the gases of atmosphere so the coherent light that made up their energy weapons were diffused, like a traditional glow lamp would be.

Cole watched as his DME, which was all estimations based on radar and LIDAR scans since no functional DME stations were on Aganon anymore, counted down the distance. At 1000 meters Cole heard the call from Fukai to begin hard flight maneuvers. This meant they were using minimal power afforded by their add-on atmospheric flight gear to perform powered glides and bring their speed down below Mach 1. At 100 meters from the deck (the assumed safe umbrella for the Kamikaze sensors) the trio powered on their engines properly and came in two seconds ahead of the mission clock's estimated time to the lake. Again the group dove and came in barely four meters above the placid lake surface. Behind them their engine wash caused the water to splash upward wildly in the air leaving large “rooster tail” water jets behind them.

"Saint are you still with me?" Fukai called to Santos, using his call sign.

"Right on you, Masamune."

"Gamecock?" Fukai called.

"In formation, prepping to break off in twenty seconds," Cole replied. His callsign was because of his home state's college mascot and the fact his bunk was covered with the university's memorabilia.

Then the Japanese native said something in his own language, "Seiten no heki-reki!" The literal translation was "thunderbolt from a clear sky" but Cole understood the man's meaning to mean "be a complete surprise."

"Amen," Santos said.

"Amen," Cole echoed.

Cole increased his altitude and banked starboard. Instead of attempting to fly through the too-narrow and unknown terrain of the canyons leading to his target Cole stayed close to the ground that formed the canyon's opening. Within another minute Cole could see his target. He banked his fighter so he could look down at the target. It was a circular surface of deep green and a maroon color that swirled about itself like an oil spill.

Having no warnings of anti-air defenses Cole pulled up for more altitude, targeted his payload for center-mass of the target. It was no larger than nine or ten city blocks and was perfectly smooth across its top. Cole hit his weapons release and felt the aircraft shudder as his weapon released. Cole poured on the speed to clear the blast zone and altered his course to his fellows.

He looked behind him just prior to the weapon's detonation which was nothing more spectacular than a bright white sphere. It disappeared within a few seconds and Cole could see in the distance it appeared as if someone had taken a massive ice cream scoop and just taken away part of the planet of Aganon. No crater ridge, no cracked or scorched ground. Just a simple glass-smooth semi-spherical opening on the ground.

Cole opened his comm, "Gamecock to Masamune - we are clear and free. Ready to make orbit."

"Roger, Gamecock! Orbit!" the man said loudly into his headset. Cole thought that perhaps the distraction attack his wingmen had started had, in fact, met them with more resistance than anticipated.

Cole maxed his engines making a hard break for orbit. He looked at his radar screens to see that both Fukai and Santos were making the break for orbit too. He let out a small sigh of relief. Once in high altitude Cole switched his atmospheric engines off and slowed down to reform with his wingmen, both of whom came up perfectly behind him.

Fukai's comm came through to Cole's ears, "Skulls we are clear to return to orbit and rearm under Grimacing Smile's direction. No ETA on rejoining the squadron yet. Control confirms you are back in control of our flight, Gamecock."

"Roger that. Ok Skulls put yourselves on this course," Cole said and punched out coordinates and a flight path back to their fleet formation. "We rearm and refuel first, then we're back on it."

The confirmation calls came in from his two wingmen and the trio sped back to orbit.

December 5th, 2254 AD

AWDI province South Carolina, Earth

Shaw Farmland

Cole put the whiskey glass on the coffee table in front of him. He leaned back on the sofa and explained the prologue to his father, "So the purpose of that was to tell you that we had bought the planet's civilian population more time to evacuate. We ran almost continuously for the next 20 hours with a couple of short docks to rearm our birds. Didn't even get out of the cockpit to piss properly just had to dump the tanks on our suits. The PAC boys and girls kept the Kamikaze tied up real good, but every hour that passed more and more of the Kamikaze's ships got through their lines. At first it was smaller vessels - smaller fighter groups and a couple cruisers - nothing we couldn't handle with our forward elements. Just so happens the Smile was a part of those elements.

"By the end of those 20 hours the Smile was grouped up with the Sugar Hill and running close support for the civilians. The rest of Skull squadron hadn't seen action yet but the three of us got to rack our birds. That is, we actually docked our fighters back on the Sugar Hill and dismounted. We bunked for about 6 hours but the atmo-gear was never taken off. Other combat wings were launching and landing too fast.

"At hour 30 or so the Kamikaze big ships, those monster dreadnaughts of theirs, had chewed up the PAC fleet so bad someone among them agreed to fall back and reform with us. So we moved as a mixed combat fleet and it was nasty, beginning to end.

"When we finally got out into the fight I had the Tennyson kid as my wingman. He was fine so long as we were sitting back sniping at range against the Kamikaze strikers that were trying to harass the civvies. But it was as soon as the Kamikaze came in close..."

AUGUST 5TH, 2253 AD

HIGH ORBIT, CANCER II

Skull Squadron escort duty

Cole looked “up” from his point of view, through the simulated glass of the canopy at Aganon. Their ploy had worked and the civilians were mostly clear. Now it was getting dicey. Tennyson had barked into his comm, “So we good to return? I don’t see us doing so well against those cruisers.

Cole rolled his eyes, “We don’t have to do well against them we just have to distract them, keep their focus on you and don’t get shot.”

“Aye. Just… do you think-”

Cole cut him off, “Dammit Tennyson! Cut that talk or else I’m going to report you. Now keep your eyes on your VIPs.” He meant the civilians on the last pair of passenger liners coming up with this group.

“Aye, leader,” came Tennyson’s reply, sounding dejected.

Cole watched his readout. The Smile was holding back in a formation of AWDI and PAC fleet elements about 4 light minutes distant. The Kamikaze cruisers were trying to make a large enough hole in the front line of defenders to let their world-killer vessels get in close enough to attack. So far it was a stalemate. The human fleet would hammer the Kamikaze back enough to stop their forward progress but in turn were so badly hammered they couldn’t push forward without taking excessive losses. Besides, from a strategic point of view, Caner II was already a total loss. The only thing that mattered at this point was minimizing civilian casualties.

“Heads up,” Santos called. “I read six of the Kami strikers coming in on us.”

“Copy. Skull flight, pick your targets and hit them at range. Don’t let them get close,” Cole called out. He throttled his bird around to face the new targets. Santos was way out in front of him, about seven light seconds. His canopy didn’t bother painting the Koryu discharges as he opened up on the alien fighters.

Within a minute Cole was in range and got a solid lock on the second front-most fighter. He pulled the trigger on his primary weapons control. The Koryu silently stabbed a pink finger out at the speed of light and melted right through the center of his target. It was followed a second later by Santos’ shot which cleanly dealt death to the fore alien craft.

About this time the Kamikaze, having moved to within their weapons' range, were able to reply. Two of their white beams wacked against his port forward shield. Two others went wide. He bounced his fighter to his up and to his right – space being relative. Cole fired off another Koryu shot without a good lock, just to keep the Kamikaze on their toes.

A marker – a yellow diamond – appeared around one of the Kamikaze ships. It was moving slower than its comrades and not facing Cole’s direction. Instead it was pointed towards Santos’ fighter and pumping white energy at the human craft.

“A little help, Gamecock,” Santos called.

“Got him. Tennyson get the attention of these other guys,” Cole called. He lined up his shot. It took a number of seconds since he himself was juking his fighter around, trying to avoid taking a permanent spacewalk. Then the enemy weapons fire stopped and Cole took the moment to kill Santos’ harasser.

“Good work Tenn-” Cole started to say but was cut off by a burst of flash emergency traffic.

“Civilian transport Sierra Eight-Two! We have two hostiles coming in on us quick, their first shots missed! Where is our escort?!” the frantic voice of the civilian pilot called.

Cole’s head was already arching around to his left as he pulled his bird in the same direction. Did Tennyson get hit? Where is he? Cole didn’t see his wingman right off but also didn’t call up his IFF to ping him. “Santos get your ass over here quick, they got by Tennyson.”

“Fast burning to you,” replied the other pilot.

Cole did a quick calculation and realized he wouldn’t be able to shoot both enemy fighters bearing down on the civvies in time to save both civilian craft. He could, however, lock on to the first with his missiles then try to gun down the second with his Koryu. Let’s hope Tennyson did enough damage to take those shields down before he bought it.

Cole pulled up the missile readout and waited for four seconds as the missile racks mounted to his bird got three solid locks. He depressed the fire control and three Messenger-class anti-fighter missiles spat forward on small fusion engines to bear down on their target. He couldn’t watch to confirm the kill; he had to nail this other bastard with a quickness. Cole began lining up the shot at the most extreme range of the Koryu and goosed his engines for everything they were worth. It was a dangerous maneuver because in order to slow your craft down, regardless of the size, you must provide counter-thrust; there were no “air brakes” in a zero atmosphere environment.

“Just a little more…” Cole thought aloud. Then he got the confirmation of a solid lock and fired. Once the Koryu had recharged he fired again. The Kamikaze fighter never stood a chance as it got melted into oblivion. That’s just a taste of the hell that waits you in the next life, asshole.

It really pissed Cole off that the Kamikaze had no regard for civilians. They genocidally killed every human being they could, regardless of threat posed.

Suddenly there was a bright flash as an explosion appeared silently in the distance. Less than a second later another appeared. Two explosions? The Kami and… Cole realized and hoped against reality that the second explosion wasn’t the civilian transport. He frantically checked his LIDAR – which showed two expanding gas clouds moving in roughly the same direction. His IFF readout showed one civilian transport: S-81, but not S-82.

His heart sank… one-hunderd fifty-three people just lost their lives because he wasn’t fast enough to save them. They had trusted him and he couldn’t get the job done.

Then his comm crackled. Cole was about to tell Santos to save it for later but to his surprise it was Tennyson’s voice who broke through, “I’m sorry, Shaw. I’m so sorry. I just couldn’t do it.”

Cole checked his IFF readout, “Tennyson?! Where are you? Are you hit? I’ll come get you.” Cole said thinking his wingman had been shot down.

“I’m just… I’m so sorry Shaw. I just can’t do this, I’m not built for it after all,” the plea came.

Cole’s anger started to rise in him, “Tennyson… What the hell did you do?”

“I’ll own up to it, I’ll get out and you’ll never see me again!” The coward’s voice called through the comm.

Cole began scrutinizing his LIDAR display and found a wayward heat signature. It was Tennyson’s fighter burning straight away back to the fleet. Cole didn’t really think about what was happening, he just opened up his throttle after a minor course correction to give chase.

Tennyson’s IFF was off, meaning he wouldn’t be identified as a friendly craft but as a foe. Cole snapped on the thermal tracking and started lining up his Koryu as Tennyson’s voice kept pleading for mercy. Cole hit the jettison command for his missile pods to reduce his fighter’s mass and give him more acceleration to catch up to the traitorous little shit.

In just over a minute his thermal readout gave him a solid lock with his Koryu. Cole’s finger hovered over the trigger. Cole's conscience clashed with his contempt.

Waste that bastard. Give him the death sentence he gave those innocent people.

No, he’ll get a court martial and probably be hanged for desertion.

Why waste the time? He’s a dead man anyway.

Maybe but we have a rule of law.

And the law says deserters die. We need to focus on the enemy, not the petty legal system. Pull. The. Trigger.

Maybe you’re right. Besides, what’s the chances you’ll ever need to explain it? Probably won’t have to ever meet his family.

That’s right. And what about those civvies? They won’t get to see their families again. And their families won’t even get a body for the funeral.

Yea, that’s right. Waste the bastard.

Cole pulled down hard on the trigger. The fluorescent pink Koryu tore through empty space and annihilated Tennyson’s fighter. Cole let out a harsh, haggard breath as the would-be friendly craft was annihilated in a bright fireball. He instinctively eased up on his throttle as he came down off the adrenaline and anger.

He wasn’t sure how long he had been slowing down when Santos’ voice chirped in his ear, soft and considerate, “Good thing you got that runaway enemy fighter. No telling what kind of damage it would’ve done to the fleet.”

It took Cole a minute to catch his wingman’s meaning, “Yeah. Yeah, good thing. Couldn’t allow a threat to the fleet to stay active.”

“Nope, couldn’t allow that at all.”

December 5th, 2254 AD

AWDI province South Carolina, Earth

Shaw Farmland

Cole was half-way through another glass of whiskey and was watching the light of the lamp beside the couch dance through the glass’ imperfection. His father was silent. Cole was too.

“So yeah… that’s that. I’m a big hero, savior of a bunch of civvies. Killer of a fellow pilot,” Cole said softly, almost a murmur.

“Son you did the right thing. The Tennyson boy deserved it,” his father said, trying to reassure him.

“I’m not saying he didn’t, I’ve just never taken a human life away before. But I think I’d do it again. Not gladly, but I would if I had to.”

“And no one knows about this?”

Cole motioned around the room lazily and buzzed, “Just us and these four walls.”

“Because your fighter was destroyed?”

“Yeah, it burned up in Aganon’s atmosphere. I ejected as she started getting out of control upon hitting friction. She was shot up pretty bad anyway, I probably would’ve had to scuttle her. No way she would’ve landed back on Smile. Or any other carrier for that matter.

“When we banged out on Cancer II we had too many fighters and not enough ships to carry them. Attrition rates for the capital ships is real bad,” Cole explained.

“I can believe it. How did you manage to get away? You ejected but did the fleet send a rescue for you?” Cade asked, knowing that in a desperate situation like that the command authority wouldn’t risk nor wait on a slow moving rescue ship that was trying to save a wayward pilot.

“It was actually some hot shot freight hauler, whose call sign was Able-Niner. I never met her skipper but the guy, one Captain Mabry, pulled me in using a grav-beam. Very considerate of him,” Cole said.

“If you ever talk to him again, please thank him for returning my boy to me,” Cade said. Cole could tell his father was holding back tears. Cade never liked the idea of his son being in such danger, and it scared him knowing how close to death Cole had come.

“I don’t think I will see him again, but I’ll tell him if I do,” Cole promised.

Cade nodded in thanks to a man he’d never meet.

Cole let the face of TJ Tennyson – and his father, Jeremiah – haunt him briefly. He shut them out, wondering if there could ever to be peace for a traitor.

"Jet fighter design 1 by Hideyoshi"

Jet fighter image found via online search with the filter "public domain" - I am not the artist of that image.  Borrowed from Epsilon Eridani Regime private role player game forums.  

SOL SYSTEM

April 2, 2178 AD

Earth, undisclosed location in old China

Earth Command Briefing

Ying Oum stood beside her military contemporary, Ilarion Chuvnik, who wore his sharp black and gold dress uniform. She was a civilian and had always felt dressed down when in a formal meeting with Ilarion. This time was no different except that the Pacific-Asia Cooperative had informed her that the Allied Western Defense Initiative’s council would be present as well for this meeting. It was unnerving. She had been born after the Final War and the Economica Collapse yet still had the suspicion of the AWDI nations – especially the old United States – drilled into her by her parents and very aged grandmother.

Ilarion had been her direct aide and security advisor since she had graduated China’s premier political and corporate leadership school. His quiet, intense, brooding and measured anger had been a magnet for her similar personality. She was outgoing, intense, brooding and had her own measure of anger as well. Though, truth be told, his anger could borderline on blind rage. Where she was more of a pit viper and waited on her prey to draw close to pounce, Ilarion was more like the Russian brown bear. When he struck his power was overwhelming and destructive.

Ilarion was the product of a defunct European system. The man had been displaced into Russia where he was recruited for private security for the reborn Czar of the now defunct Russian Federation. A nation that was born again after the 21st century Russia merged with the Northern Federation and then was remade into the new Russian Federation. When it collapsed, after China agreed to leave Japan to the UNAP, the European and United North American Protectorates surrendered control of western Russia to China. He then found employ under the command of an Indian Colonel that reported to the PAC council. Now he reported to her, after some clever political maneuvering on her part.

Ying checked her tablet’s time again just as it changed over to 13:15 local time. And exactly at that moment the PAC council appeared on the wall display before her, each occupying a square with six squares in total. There she bowed, Ilarion doing the same, a respectful distance. She knew from her past experience she was never to speak first to these elders: they were China’s wisest and most revered leaders. They were almost deities in themselves, though she knew better.

Qiang-Nan, the Minister of Food, spoke first with a weathered yet still not tired voice, “Advisor Ying, it is agreeable to see you. As is your security advisor.”

Ying and Ilarion bowed in supplication, she spoke for them both, “The great Pan-Asia Cooperative Council are the ones who do us great honor. We are filled by your greatness.”

“It is greatness for which we come to speak,” the Minister of Extra-Solar Space – Mingmei – interrupted. It was a rude and disrespectful thing to do. Yet Ying could tell there was something yet unspoken bothering her leadership. Perhaps it was the impending inclusion of the AWDI council that bothered them. “We have come to use you as our great leader on a new world, on a new expedition.”

Ying almost – almost – jerked back at the idea. The term “expedition” was not used for anything relating to Earth. Jobs here were “tasks” or “projects” or “objectives” or some other term. An expedition meant something off-world. And most likely outside the Sol star system. Ying had a sinking feeling. Despite this she replied correctly without hesitation, “Any requirement I will fulfill.”

“This may be the most challenging of them all,” Minister Mingmei stated, “and it will also be the greatest, if it is successful.” Mingmei was much younger than Qiang-Nan but older than Ying. Her bearing was almost military but she lacked the clipped movements and efficiency that professional killers had. Not that there were many professional killers left on Earth; they were all off throwing themselves against the unending wave of the Kamikaze. “Advisor Ying you will are being selected as the leader of a great new expedition to colonize a new world. It is called ‘Nile.’”

Ying’s heart really did fall out of her chest into her stomach. She never wanted to leave Earth. Her sole purpose was to serve the PAC- serve China and her people. Here. Not at some cursed rock that would be a target for the Kamikaze onslaught. Have I made an enemy? Have I upset the wrong political adversary? Her mind raced thinking of who would have the gall to subvert her brilliant work in feeding and organizing the people of China.

“We are now bringing on our AWDI partners,” Mingmei stated. As she finished her sentence six additional windows showed up. Followed by six more, then six more. Ying had spoken with the PAC Council’s six members many times. She even knew that there were six members on the AWDI council. But the remaining twelve she slowing began to piece together: they were leaders from various states around the world. The UNAP Co-Presidents, the Japanese Emperor, the Chinese President, Europe’s three Prime Ministers, the Union of South American Nations’ President and more.

“What you see here,” Qiang-Nan started to explain, “Is something few people truly grasp and understand. You know, as it is very public knowledge at this point, that the allied human fleets are directed by Earth Command to fight the Kamikaze threat. What you do not know is that Earth Command is truly organized under the leadership of every major human power. We have no secrets and no hidden agenda, except from that of the alien menace.”

Ying nodded. She could tell Ilarion hadn’t flinched in the least – a testament to his self-control. “I understand, Minister. Am I to assume I will be operating under Earth Command authority?”

Qiang-Nan nodded slowly, “In a sense, yes; in a very broad sense.”

Ying’s attention was diverted to a male American, whose video box lighted with a green square to indicate that was the person to whom she should be looking. The man spoke directly after a too-shallow to be respectful bow, “Hello Advisor Ying Oum, I am Secretary Florence. I’d like to know what your knowledge regarding the Kamikaze is.”

The man’s words were translated across the bottom of his image to her native Chinese, but she was perfectly fluent in English and needed no assistance, “From my understanding the alien menace attacks human-settled worlds. They have made no demands, they give no quarter and throw themselves at the bulwark of our might with full abandon. It seems they care not for losses and desire to exterminate any system humans have settled.”

Florence nodded, “Correct. Did you know that they don’t actually destroy human-occupied systems? Only human-occupied worlds?”

This Ying did not know. She had been under the assumption that their foe had made sure to exterminate every trace of human existence in any system – going so far as to annihilate current or previously-occupied human asteroids or planetoids.   She shook her head.

“Not many people do. I’m going to show you something,” he nodded to a second projector that activated in her briefing room. It was a video playback of what looked like a very zoomed-in image of a typical Class-M habitable world.   “This was a human colony that had only been settled for a half-decade.   Here we see one of the Kamikaze cruiser-type ships come in to destroy the human settlement.   This was after their scouting missions had done their typical suicidal attacks on the largest colony cities.  We weren’t able to provide any warning to the people there to make an attempt at evacuating.”

Ying assumed the video footage was from an AWDI or PAC warship that had been sent to intervene, but now considered that perhaps it was a feed from the colony’s HyperCOM relay.  The video advanced to show the Kamikaze cruiser go into a geosynchronous orbit and begin to bombard the planet’s surface.   After several seconds the time stamp proceeded forward again to the hostile cruiser dropping their real-planet killer onto the surface; a biological/chemical weapon that decimated everything living on the world – including the native wildlife that had nothing to with humans.   In a couple of weeks the weapon would begin to boil away the water, then use some process that humans didn’t yet understand to disintegrate the atmosphere.   The last progression of the time stamp was of the video’s source camera being annihilated confirming her suspicion of it being the HyperCOM buoy.  It was the only way the video footage could’ve been recovered: the buoy was transmitting its video as it was being captured.

“That footage occurred twelve years ago.   Typically what happens on a colonization effort is that we send in a HyperCOM buoy after a habitable planet is located. As an accident, one HyperCOM relay arrived while the human colonists never did.  We suspect that the Charon rocket was destroyed or otherwise suffered a critical failure of some kind, therefore never arriving.   Nonetheless the HyperCOM kept sending regular updates back here to Earth.  After eight years, just after we had a new rocket already in hyerpsace, the Kamikaze show up.  They survey the world, find no traces of human habitation and then destroy the HyperCOM.   The colonists arrived and setup shop as normal.   Since they didn’t have a HyperCOM to communicate with Earth we sent a warship equipped with one.  Within a week the Kamikaze showed back up and annihilated the colonists,” Florence explained switching the image to a still picture of the unnamed colony, covered in the black and gray death cloud the Kamikaze employed.   In the fore of the image was a series of Kamikaze vessels whom were destroying the vessel capturing the image.

“So we started an experiment,” Florence said, “We designed and sent a deep-space long-mission stealth craft to an uninhabited system. One were we knew the Kamikaze would pick up a quantum signature in short order. Within a year we got our results.” He continued progressing through various video and still images, “They showed up, scanned the planet to find no human inhabitants, and then scoured the system for several weeks before finally leaving, never to return.”

Ying nodded, “I have heard the Kamikaze are attracted to our radio signals – savagely so. Are they also somehow finding our quantum communications as well?   I thought the science behind quantum entanglement made that impossible.  That is, there is no radio wave to intercept.”

Florence nodded, “We thought so too. But the reality is that the Kamikaze know something about quantum mechanics we don’t and can use that to locate our worlds.” Ying inhaled quietly but with inner dreaded realization for what that meant. The American nodded again, “You’re probably grasping what this means: the Kamikaze know where Earth is. And, if their previous patterns are any indication, they will be coming for us in force in due time.”

“At this point we explain your purpose,” one of the European women said who carried a French accent, “which is to be our great leader on a new world. An expedition completely unlike any we have ever carried out, save for the first Charon rockets that didn’t have HyperCOM relays.”

Mingmei spoke again, “We are going to provide you with the very best and latest materials we can design and furnish. You journey is going to be long, hard and isolated. But you are our brightest star and greatest hope.”

Ying very rarely in her life had felt overwhelmed. She had never felt unprepared. Until now. This is a curse, my destiny has been robbed of me! And yet this is my duty, I must comply. I am a child of and a part of the physical will of China – of the greater PAC at large.

Qiang-Nan spoke again, “We know you have family here on the homeworld. We are offering you the right to bring them with you, should you so choose. Your security aide, Ilarion Chuvnik, does not have a choice. He will accompany you for protection and, if nothing else, to offer you some familiarity on a distant world.”

Ying nodded stiffly, “I understand.”

“Advisor Oum,” spoke another woman with dark skin, a warm voice and welcoming face – a dignitary of an African nation most likely – spoke to her, “We understand that this will be a difficult idea for you to adjust to. Hence we are going to provide you the option of a personal counselor to visit before you depart and during your journey.”

“This Council is too kind, but I require no such special treatment. I will succeed,” Ying stated with the utmost confidence she could muster.

“Advisor Ying,” Mingmei said, “Success is not merely leading an expedition. In this regard success is also the maintenance of your personal health. You cannot lead if you cannot stand. You will take a counselor, the dossiers will be provided to you.”

“I understand,” Ying replied.

Secretary Florence spoke again, “Speaking of departures, we are still making preparations. As a part of this undertaking your chariot will be a new design. We are calling it the Charon X-LR.” With that the second display changed to the line schematics and a fully rendered rotating 3D image of the craft. Ying had no real concept of the scale but Florence spoke to provide that, “The rocket, if it can be called that, will not actually leave Earth’s atmosphere. It’s already being constructed in orbit.”

Ying could see from the design it was definitely not a rocket. The main fuselage was rocket-like: thick, long and in a roughly cylindrical fashion. The body had a series of trapezoidal pods attached around the vessel’s circumference in groups of three as a part pf four sections. The front of the craft, where there would normally be a tip to help remain aerodynamic enough to punch through atmosphere, was instead adorned by a construction that looked like the top of a gothic cathedral: sharply pointed, with some kind of ribbing moving down the body and a strange orange-yellow glow emitting from those ribs. To the rear there was no propellant-burning engine. Instead eight bulbous orange pods were attached in parallel rows of four. Exiting further back was another long and comparatively spindly spoke from which three massive solar panels protruded. Each on their own was over half the length of the vessel but flowed behind like kites; they were an asymmetrical hexagon.

“This vessel is designed to carry you to the surface of Nile. Once you have selected a landing site the vessel will break up and pieces will fall to the surface with you, to assist in founding your colony. Whatever is incapable of making planet-fall, such as the solar collectors and the hyperdrive unit, you will program to fly into the local star,” Florence explained.

“So we will have no ability to return,” Ying stated more than asked.

“No matter what happens this is a one-way trip, Advisor Oum. You and your people are a strategic safeguard - a life insurance plan for all of humanity. In time, as we are able, we will send vessels to come assist you and protect you. However, if the Kamikaze remain the threat they are and if we keep losing ground – especially if we lose Earth – your world will be the only safe place for humanity,” Florence explained with a degree of solemnity.

That struck Ying pretty hard. She knew the war against the alien menace hadn’t been easy. She had thought, however, that the offensive actions some decades ago had pushed the Kamikaze back. Instead of pondering it she decided to voice it, “So our war is not going well?”

This time a different man spoke, “Advisor Oum I am Space Admiral Bron, I oversee the strategic deployment of the combined AWDI and PAC space navies. The war is not an absolute route. We have made progress in assaulting several Kamikaze worlds but we aren’t having any success in deterring them from continuing to fight. They are a species that seems absolutely hell-bent on xenocide against us. This plan – this expedition you are leading – is a safeguard against that xenocide. Hypothetically speaking if we suddenly had no space forces to content with the Kamikaze our best guess would put them close to a decade of working their way inward to Earth. Assuming they destroyed every habitable system in the process.”

“So there is still hope for us?” Ying said. She was speaking of humanity at large but also for the isolated mission she was undertaking.

“Yes,” Bron stated, “Humanity has a lot of fight and willpower left in it. One reason we’ve managed to survive this long is because we play the long game. We aren’t relegated to short-term plans.”

“If there is a break in the war, if we achieve victory through force or by the enemy’s surrender, we will send a relief force to you to help you re-integrate into the human whole,” Mingmei spoke. “If there is not victory then you will be the foundation upon which our species stands strong again.”

Ying unconsciously swallowed. Her exterior composure was breaking as the pressure of this settled in. She was trying to rationalize the responsibility here down to a more manageable size. She posed a question, “I had thought that the primary reason – though it was in secret – of the push for the colonization efforts was to provide many targets for the Kamikaze; so that if they did come to the Sol System we would have fallback options?”

Admiral Bron decided to field her question, “Initially yes – that was the primary reasoning. However, as the Kamikaze have not relented and our strategic posture - despite offensive operations - has shifted to one more focused on evacuation & flexible defensive fleets. We haven’t had the time to fortify any significant numbers of worlds. Fànròng is our most heavily militarized world, besides Earth and Jupiter. In addition, all of our worlds have HyperCOM relays so – if the theory that the Kamikaze are tracking us in this manner is true – they know exactly where to hit us already.”

“And if they attack Earth, and are successful in doing so, there will be nowhere to fallback to. Each colony must stand on its own. That realization was the impetus for our offensive actions into systems decimated by the Kamikaze and into their own home systems,” Florence added.

It all made sense to Ying only too well. As she pondered the situation for a few moments, looking at each of the 24 world leaders and Council members, she also realized that her destiny was calling to her. In a brief moment of clarity she realized that she would be the Harold for a new chance for humanity to strike out and once again defy the odds of fate. She bowed deeply to the projectors, “As a daughter of the Pan-Asian Cooperative, descendant from China and Advisor to these Councils – I accept and will meet this challenge.”

Bron said nothing but nodded. Florence added, “Thank you.”

Mingmei said, “We have the utmost confidence in you.”

Qiang-Nan closed with, “May destiny guide you, and may you bring humanity great blessings.”

SOL SYSTEM

April 2, 2178 AD

Earth, undisclosed location in old United States

AWDI Military Briefing

Admiral Bron of the AWDI space navy, Secretary Flornce of the UNAP and President Courvoisier from the Union of South American Nations were in the same room after the Earth Command briefing with the Earth leadership and Advisor Ying Oum. Now the trio were having a second meeting with an Army Major of the Allied Western Defense Initiative’s mobile infantry. They weren’t quite the Marines of the prior centuries that worked with sea-borne navies yet they weren’t quite the long-term ground pounders of a traditional army either.

Major Scott Decatur stood in his Army Dress uniform at attention. Bron saluted the younger man and motioned to a seat at the briefing table, “Please sit, Major.” Decatur did so.

The Admiral pulled out a tablet and handed it to the major, “This is going to be the briefing for the special assignment you volunteered for some years ago. You’ve been previously informed of the XLR mission so I won’t re-explain it to you.” 

Decatur nodded. He had actually been covertly allowed to monitor the briefing, with the approval of the PAC Council and Earth Command. It was only covert to Advisor Oum and her security assistant.

Bron continued, “I’m going to detail a little of what you can expect as the military protection force. This is, putting it simply, a long-term garrison and base establishment. You are being given fully autonomous control. You are going to be supplied with a central Army Corps to make up the backbone of your defensive force. However you do have the right, with the assistance of the civilian leadership, to field a militia for whatever purposes you see fit.

“The simple fact is Nile looks very habitable and all of our surveys seem to indicate she is a very human-friendly planet. That does not in any way mean you will be free of unknown hostile local wildlife,” Bron stated. Decatur’s mind shifted to a declassified report about what happened on Prosperity at the early part of the 22nd century and how a former US Army Ranger, along with some local militia, killed a very hostile fire-breathing menace of a creature. Bron continued, “We are also providing you with heavy weapons systems and aerial support craft just in case. The military compliment will be 120 troops for the over 1000 colonists. You’ll have four multi-format VTOLs that you may choose to employ in whatever manner you desire. These models are modified to connect with weapons systems or civilian support systems – various weapon mounts, magnetic cables, tractor beams, external storage pods and more.

“You’ll also have four heavy-armor platforms that have multi-format attachments for them as well. Again you’ll have various weapons but also civilian assistance systems like a bulldozer scoop and other earth-mover equipment. You’ll have eight pilots total, for your VTOLs and eight crewmen for your heavy armor. You can, as you see fit, re-assign and retrain your personnel to whatever positions you see fit.”

Decatur asked a question, “For the troops under my command – are they signed over to military service for their lifetimes?”

President Courvoisier spoke to answer, “There is no hard deadline for these troops. We did, however, impress upon the volunteers for this mission that they are only required to be contracted for ten Earth years. Once you are out there the situation may change and you can adjust your requirements to the colony’s needs as you see fit, in accordance with the civilian government.”

“So there is nothing really requiring these troops to remain troops, once we make planet fall, sir?” Decatur asked.

“There’s no way to make a legally binding contract with Earth when your world will be so completely isolated. As far as they know they are required for ten years; whether you choose to dissuade them of that notion or not will be your command decision as military leadership,” Courvoisier clarified.

“We are, then, a peacekeeping force?” Decatur asked.

“Yes,” Secretary Florence replied, “Let it be made clear that you do not have the authority to institute martial law nor enact any form of coup d’état except in the most extreme case where the civilian leadership is deliberately and obviously seeking to harm the colony’s population.”

“And the civilian leadership is who? Advisor Oum?” Decatur inquired.

Florence nodded, “For now, yes. If she decides to enact some form of democracy or not, then that is for her to decide. If she wants to be a dictator then that is also her decision. Nile is going to be a bastion for humanity in a distant corner of the galaxy, far from human habitation. You’ll be making your own rules in your own way.”

Decatur was taken aback by the vague distanced commentary, “How far out are we going?” He had, up to this point, assumed that Nile was a relatively close but isolated world that hadn’t been colonized.

“Nile is over seventy light years away from our furthest colony. Making the system two-hundred fifty-two light years from Earth,” Florence stated.

Decatur was wasn’t sure what to make of that. He was shocked by the distance. He wasn’t aware any human vessels could reach that far out. Then again the Charon XLR was a one-way vessel. She’d never come home to Earth to pick up more colonists or be repurposed.

“Understood, sir,” Decatur simply replied. He hadn’t had any misgivings about the assignment until right now. For some reason, in this moment, a small nervousness overcame him.

“The journey won’t be anywhere near that long. The new hyperdrive systems step into a higher band of hyperspace and you’ll only be in stasis for just under six years,” Bron explained.

Decatur arched an eyebrow as he realized that wasn’t so bad given the distance being traveled. He’d spent four years in stasis once, which was difficult but not having any family he didn’t mind it so much. He was married to the AWDI mobile infantry now. “Seems it’ll be a lovely nap, sir. I’m sure my troops will agree.”

Bron gave a small curve of his lips to imitate a smile, “I’m sure it’ll pass by in a heartbeat.”

“So the short version is that we’ll be there to establish protection and ensure colony growth until we reestablish contact with Earth?” Decatur asked.

“Yes,” Florence said, “Assuming we can neutralize the Kamikaze threat.”

“Major,” Bron interjected, “Let me be clear on this: the war with the Kamikaze seems to be an eternal affair courting death. Our offensive operations were nothing short of absolutely successful simply because they didn’t know we were coming for them. Despite the complete and utter destruction of seven systems’ worth of resources, their numbers have not abated in the least – especially in larger engagements. If they can take the loss of seven solar systems like a slap in the face and keep coming at us, it doesn’t paint a pretty picture. We have three fully populated, well-established and protected systems – including Earth. We can keep throwing advanced technology at them and win engagements by attrition. However there doesn’t seem to be a method for which we can decisively strike and end their threat.”

“Not yet, anyway,” Courvoisier stated. “Which is why this expedition is so important. It’s also very fragile. Earth’s governments don’t have militaries any more. For example, you and Admiral Bron both report to Earth Command who is an amalgamation of world powers working toward a mutual benefit. But the UNAP doesn’t have a military just like we in the USAN do not. Because of this, we really don’t know what to expect when combining a military-civilian group for founding a new colony. Earth Command has discussed at-length what kind of force to send and who to send. You were picked because you have an impeccable military record of just, decisive and fair leadership among your men. The civilian organizations you’ve worked with have had nothing ill to say for your conduct. You are the best person we have to re-forge the path of military-civilian cooperation.”

Decatur understood that. Long ago, before Earth’s Final War, militaries typically worked in conjunction with the local populace for any number of reasons. Often rebuilding cities after a war or battle; even helping in the event of natural disasters with food, supplies and medical needs. After the Final War and the Economica Collapse, with all standing militaries completely eradicated, there was nothing but civilians to administer their own lives.

“Understood, sirs. I won’t fail,” Decatur stated flatly but meant wholeheartedly. For Decatur he was happy to volunteer for this assignment because he’d not had any family anymore. The Kamikaze, when they raised Apollo, had struck his home as their second target while he was deployed. The only thing that Major Scott Decatur had anymore was the mobile infantry; for him, that was enough. It was a purpose and a direction.

“The Charon rocket will carry you to Nile in approximately one year, when the project is complete. We’re staggering the civilian cyro-sleep initiation so they’ll be boarded starting six months before launch. This is different from the traditional Charon launch methods where the civilians are on-boarded and they are conscious through the orbit out past Mars. In this situation all of the passengers, including the military, will be asleep before you ever leave dock. Only the flight crews will be awake to keep an eye on the vessel so that minimal power will be used on life support,” Courvoisier stated.

“It should also be made clear that there is no provision for a return trip. I don’t mean simply upon your arrive in the Nile system. If there is some complication on the way out to Nile and you have to be moved out of Hyperspace then you are on your own to find your way to a habitable system. In fact, that is solely the flight crew’s discretion. Advisor Oum will have no say on any matters en-route or in regards to the ship operation until you arrive in Nile,” Florence explained.

Decatur again nodded. The briefing continued in the fashion forward for some time covering smaller minor details. Decatur knew, at the end of this journey, there was a simple direction: forward, only forward. He’d forgot who in history had made that quote for which he’d clung to so long.

"Worldship flying" image found via online search under "Public Domain." No specific artists was credited, image was linked to blogspot.com but no specific page would load.  I am not the artist of this image.

EXTRA-SOLAR SPACE

January 3, 2184 AD

Charon XLR Brevity, Hyper Point Actor

The lukewarm water in the hands of Ying Oum was doing nothing to assuage her headache. Being in cryogenic stasis for six years had taken a toll on her physical and mental state. Her focus was blurred, her thoughts foggy, and part of her higher functions could only acknowledge that she was barely above the category of “simply existing” for now.

Flight Captain Aegeus turned in his seat to look at her, “Advisor? Do you want to see the star?”

“Hm?” she grunted, blinking her eyes.

“We’re coming up on Nile’s star, Advisor. I thought you might like to see it as we rotate to bring her in line,” the Greek man said.

Slowly she came to standing upright to meander closer to the front of the cockpit module. The titanium shields had been withdrawn back from the glass & steel mixture of the front viewport. Far in the distance just off to her right was a faint white star pulsing away in the pitch emptiness of space.

She had to admit it was a sight to behold. She’d seen Earth from orbit once - that was far grander than this little pinprick of light. Yet there was something holy and glorious about seeing the star that would sustain the people of Nile for the foreseeable future. How unforeseeable is that future? Years? Decades? A century? … Eternity? She inwardly questioned. Now was no time for that.

As if to remind her of this fact the heavy dull thud of boots being pulled to the deck by the artificial gravity plate caused her to turn around. The ever-driven and persistent Major Scott Decatur stood in the hatch leading to the cramped bridge module. “Major,” she waved him over cordially, “The star of Nile is far forward of us, if you’d care to look.”

He nodded – a favorite simple gesture of his. Decatur walked over to politely and unobtrusively peek over her shoulder, for just a moment, then stood upright again, “Looks lovely, ma’am.”

Ying smiled at him; part of her mused that they shouldn’t be so formal with each other – they were founding a colony together, after all. Still she also thought they should be formal simply to keep their positions separate from each other. He was military, she was civilian. Ying did not want to give the impression that this man had any say in the administrative decision making of this colony. Equally, she did not fancy the idea of her leadership being perceived as one of a military dictator. The people of this new colony were a varied people with a greatly differing array of ideologies. Perhaps not so varied as the ones of a century or more ago on Earth, before the Final War; but that didn’t make her job easy.

To his credit, Major Decatur didn’t seem to have any plans on taking over her position. When his duties would allow it, before leaving Earth, he had been nothing short of helpful in the extreme. There was, understandably, some friction between the Major and Ilarion but nothing that prevented either of them from doing their jobs.

Speaking of… I wonder where my security advisor is… she pondered. Deciding to voice her question she sat again and turned to Decatur, “Any idea on the status of Mr. Chuvnik?”

“He’s suffering from an advanced case of cryo-sickness, ma’am. That’s why I came up – to give a status report on the primary crew revival process,” he said in a purely military-business tone.

“Please, sit,” she said and waived for him to sit beside her on the two-seat crash couch at the cockpit module’s starboard side.

He did so and began talking, “About one third of the primary infrastructure crew is suffering from advanced cryo-sickness. Doctor Krug suspects that they’ll need to stay under watch by the medics for 48 hours, at most. He says most will be up within the day.”

“Good. How about your people?”

“I’ve only woken the pilots at this time. But us infantry are used to cryo-sleep, so we bounce back in a few hours,” he explained.

She rubbed her head, “I wish I could say the same. I’ve been awake for twelve hours now and no amount of water has helped clear my head.”

“Coffee, ma’am – that’ll cure you right up.”

She made a small shake of her head, “Can’t stand that foul liquid.”

“That foulness,” Decatur said pointing over his shoulder at the passageway leading to the passenger module behind the cockpit, “will cure this foulness.” He moved his hand so that his index was now pointing at her forehead.

“Maybe you’re right. How long until we start bringing in the general populace out of cryo?” Ying asked.

“Another eight hours and we’ll have the second berth life support setup, the second wave will be after that. I’ll bring a dozen or so of my men out ahead of them to help the doctors and assist with their transition to from sleep to wake,” he stated.

“Good,” she stated. For the part of her that questioned his integrity, the Major - once again - was proving he wanted to do nothing but help. You shouldn’t be so cynical; the leaders wouldn’t have chosen an incompetent to assist in this grand undertaking.

The initial landing party for the new colony would be just over 300 people. Over the course of several weeks – as the colony habitats were setup and the needed infrastructure was put in place – the remaining 700 would be brought planet side. Ying was happy with this because it allowed her to acclimate to governing a larger body over a period of time instead of plopping down a thousand souls to immediately oversee.

Ying looked at him and noticed he was wearing full olive drab attire. Save his boots, which were polished black. His pants looked like the cargo variety and his shirt clung greedily to every muscle on his torso. She looked down at herself who was wearing the unflattering loose patient scrubs from when she was changed at the medical room. “I suppose I had better be more presentable for the people as they wake up,” she mused out loud.

Decatur nodded, “I would suggest so, ma’am.”

Marvin Brown’s cryo-capsule light slowly warmed to life to provide a soft mildly blue glow. It wasn’t blasting his eyes with harshness which was of small comfort. The AWDI soldier’s head banged around like a he’d been on a week long bender with tequila that had lasted a few nights too many. Marvin moved his head left and right to try and get a sense of his body’s movement. Sometimes coming out of cryo took longer than others, it was purely dependent on one’s body to compensate for being near death.

The capsule’s hatch popped from “above” his head. The table he was lying on slid smoothly out into the main passenger hold where Major Decatur and one of the medics was looking over him. His vision was a bit blurry yet he could identify the man who was his commanding officer.

“Private Brown?” the medic asked, “Can you respond to me?”

“Yea I’m good,” he whispered as razer blades attacked his throat. I always forget that sensation.

Decatur handed him a container of water. The medic began speaking again, “You’ve been asleep for nearly six years. You will be tired, you will be thirsty and dehydrated. Because of the extended sleep you won’t be recovering quite as quickly as you have in past operations.”

Marvin nodded emphatically as he kept downing the precious water. His eyesight was already starting to improve, which seemed about normal compared to the last two times he’d done cryo-sleep.

Major Decatur brought himself eye level with the private in the zero-G room, “When you’re comfortable moving get down to medical and do the once-over. Then get to berth two for gear up. We’ll be helping the civvies recover from cryo and get as comfortable as possible as we make approach to planet.”

“Yes, sir,” Marvin croaked out. With that Decatur patted his shoulder before pushing off the wall to float over to another medic who was attending someone else. Marvin slowly got his head together enough with the protests of a stiff body to get free-floating and bounce his way around to the minimal gravity passage that lead to the medical bay.

His physical went fine: no abnormalities. He did note that several other passengers weren’t quite so lucky in their recovery. One fellow in particular seemed especially ill. A series of tubes and medical equipment was keeping him monitored.

Eventually Marvin was cleared and he made his way down to berth two. Inside a dozen or so other Infantry were sitting on benches that had been bolted to the deck. They were in various stages of late recovery. Marvin found his pack on the ground beside Corporal Dario Ortega. Marvin made small talk with the man while he changed out of the cryo-sleep scrubs into his more comfortable military-issued skivvies.

Marvin looked at Ortega, “Hey when you came out of cryo was your… was your junk hard enough to break a cinderblock?” Marvin made a slight gesture towards his crotch.

Ortega busted out laughing, “Are you shittin’ me, private?” Marvin shrugged bashfully. Ortega just laughed harder. Marvin wasn’t sure if the corporal was laughing at the absurdity of his question or it was the man’s way of dealing with nervousness. Then the corporal spoke up a bit so everyone could hear, “Hey everyone, Marv here had a six-year morning wood.”

Raucous laughter ensued from the berth. Marvin ducked his head into his pack to get his jacket. As he did so a voice from his right, one of the infantry females, spoke up still recovering from her own laughter, “If it makes you feel better Marv, my nipples were hard enough to cut diamond when I woke up.” The speaker was Private Kristoff.

Marvin did smile at that thought. Not just because it was funny but because, he realized, he hadn’t seen a woman in more than half a decade. Even Private Kristoff, who was no winner of any beauty pageant but wasn’t unattractive either, caused a small stirring of lust in his mind.

“Hey, that’s the most action you’ve got since before cryo,” Ortega threw a verbal barb at her.

She caught the insult as she was putting on her shirt, and shot it back at him, “Don’t be mad that deep space turns me on more than your ugly ass does, Ortega.” She pointed her right hand like a pistol at Ortega, sticking her tongue out at him with her shirt still half off.

A chorus of “Oooooh” traveled around the room as the gathered Infantry laughed back at Ortega. Marvin smiled, glad to see that no matter where he was – even if these volunteers from the MI were almost complete strangers to him – he was with friends. The Mobile Infantry had been a family ever since it had been pulled together from the traditions of the histories of Earth’s armies. Except here they didn’t turn their weapons on each other, it was purely to protect and advance the will of God’s people as a whole. At least that was how Marvin felt.

As he reached down to strap his boots in place one of the pilots came into the berth in her flight suit took a seat at the bench across from Kristoff. In a typical operation you wouldn’t see Flight Officers, or any officers, mingle with enlisted personnel. With only 120 military, all of whom had some part of their families with them, they just mingled in a common group. And all of the soldiers here – pilot or infantry, officer or enlisted – had all seen combat. They all knew that when you were in the shit there was no such thing as ranks or ratings; only grunts getting a job done.

Flight Lieutenant Alisha Ledger, whose call sign was “Pharaoh,” pulled a smoke from her outer flight pocket. The term “smoke” was a bit of a misnomer because there was no smoke or vapor that actually emitted from the electronic cigarette. In fact the device didn’t have much in common with its 150-year old ancestor from the early 21st century’s e-cig craze. Modern tech, from some of the nicer colonies anyway, had managed to create a device that was usable for a number of reasons. Sometimes it only emitted a flavored inhalant, some were breath fresheners and others could be used for teeth whitening – or any combination of a dozen uses.

From Pharaoh’s pearly white teeth Marvin suspected she was using it as a teeth whitener. But given how his own mouth felt upon waking up she may have been adding some freshener to it as well because the faintest hint of peppermint wafted in after her.

“The Major says we’re a week out from this place,” she stated nonchalantly. “Supposed to be a real beauty.”

“If the briefing images were accurate this place is supposedly on-par with Eden,” Ortega commented.

“The star looks like Earth from way out here. As much as a white speck can look like Sol,” Pharaoh replied.

Marvin made a motion with his head towards her, “So Lieutenant, how much action have you seen? Where do you come from?”

“UNAP province of Oregon. What’s left of it anyway; the coastal regions are still irradiated. I've been pilot to two evac operations, and seventeen combat insertions in Kami space,” she stated with cool confidence. She paused for a moment, “I guess I pissed someone off at some point though, because I got relegated to transporting animals.” Pharaoh rolled the ecig in her left index and thumb. Marvin smirked catching her friendly jest.

One of the other privates in the room made a grunt of uncertainty. When she picked up on the private’s vapid stare she rolled her eyes, “That means I’m here now – ferrying you unevolved apes, Watkins.”

“Oh!” the meaty-handed soldier said. “’Unevolved,’ that’s funny.” Pharaoh shook her head as she took another toke off of her cig.

About that moment the Major came through the hatch, “Pharaoh: you’re up.” And he just as deftly moved back out to wherever Commanding Officers disappeared to.

“Alright then,” Pharaoh said putting away her smoke, “I’ve got to go taxi the engineers to inspect the hull. See you apes in a few hours. Hopefully some of the civvies are more entertaining than you.”

EXTRA-SOLAR SPACE

January 9, 2184 AD

Charon XLR Brevity, ETA 26 hours to Nile

The verdant green and azure world of Nile was visible far into the distance now but much closer than it had been before. The Brevity had deployed her solar shields to power their external engine systems on final approach to Nile. From a distance it looked like a silver pen was gliding to the planet on four giant golden square sails.

Ying inspected the weather reports with one of the meteorologists for the planet. Many years prior Earth Command had deployed a series of orbitals to monitor the atmosphere of the world to help the colonists find a suitable landing area. There was also a geologist in the small cabin that was just behind the command capsule, studying the tectonic readouts from the large world.

Ying pointed to a place in the northern hemisphere, “How about here? It looks like relatively flat land. And on a yearly basis there are only a few months of storms that seem to dissipate just a ways to the east of this region.” She pointed at a few locations on the holographic representations.

“I like it. But let’s come a little further west, so that we’re on higher ground. For all we know these regions may flood from the storms. I’d rather not see our colony go swimming out to sea,” Kyle Brady, the meteorologist stated.

The man was well educated and had experience studying atmospheric patterns on two worlds before volunteering for this mission. Ying had come to respect him as a consummate professional and wise expert on such matters.

“Looks solid to me,” the geologist, Sean Alford stated before noisily sipping more of his coffee. “Literally, that is. Solid rock straight through for at least a kilometer if the orbitals’ scans are accurate.”

In the same respect that Kyle Bradly was the professional businessman scientist, Sean Alford was more like the disheveled genius savant. Even now, having been released from the medical bay over 24 hours ago, the man was still wearing his cryo scrubs. He didn’t care in the least for social standards or expectations. That being said he was, quite possibly, humanity’s foremost expert on exo-geological matters. The man had attained doctorates in Geology, Geophysics and Geological Engineering. Doctor Sean Alford was exceptional in every sense so long as he was locked away in a lab, doing his work.

Kyle Bradly asked a question, “Are you sure? The southern hemisphere looks to have a great series of landing areas too; comparatively few storms and looks temperate.”

More loud slurping of the coffee, “Yes but the terrain is terrible; a lot of tectonics spikes in that area so I’m not convinced the ground beneath is properly settled. We might get down there and find a series of sinkholes. And, given how large the constant cliff drop-offs are,” Alford went on pointing at the southern hemisphere “we could be looking at a giant underground cavern. These swaths of land are all just recessed in by hundreds of meters in some areas. That kind of thing might cause earthquakes or the whole colony might be sitting on a plate that one day just collapses.”

Ying looked at Alford a moment longer then at the display. Indeed, there were some odd geological patterns at work here. Some were hectic and scattered while others looked oddly patterned. Both regions seemed to have good weather and a varied ecology. She didn’t want to roll the dice on a seismically unstable region, “Then we shall plant our feet down here on these northern plains.”

It was a relief to have finally said it. Ying had been arguing with the two men, or mediating their arguments, for the last couple of days. Even when Alford couldn’t stand from his cryo sickness he was still studying the geological reports in the medical bed. Bradly had visited to discuss the planet’s conditions at various stages. These visits were when the arguments had started. Ilarion had to escort Kyle out of the med bay since Alford was still immobile. Even though it had been Alford’s lack of social graces and empathy had had started the near-physical spat.

Hopefully that was behind them, however. There would be no opportunity for them to be separate from each other out here on the fringes of the known galaxy. Ying finished her meeting with the two individuals and decided to see Major Decatur. Ilarion was outside the small room. As was his typical custom he escorted her, be it walking in the artificial gravity sections or floating in those that were still zero-G.

The Major was in the passage just outside of berth two and was dismissing one of his pilots. “Major,” she said in greeting as she approached.

“Advisor Oum, Mr. Chuvnik,” he nodded in response.

“We have decided on a landing spot for our colony. I wanted to request your pilots inspect the location before we actually made planet fall,” she stated as she handed him a tablet with the relevant information.

Decatur inspected it briefly then nodded, “Very well. When we are three hours out I’ll have a dropship prepped and find a suitable escort for you.”

"Very go-" she started to turn then stopped. “Wait, for me? I wasn’t planning to be a part of any scouting mission.”

Decatur drummed his hands on the back of the tablet, “I would encourage you to reconsider. If we – that is the Infantry – go in first it will look like we’re the ones in charge. You, as the civilian leadership, should come along and show that you’re leading. This isn’t a military operation. The military contingent is here to support the people by protecting them and helping as needed.”

“You would be reckless in this,” Ilarion stated flatly, looking at Ying. “If there is some failure beyond your control then you could die. What happens then? There would be no leadership. The people would be doomed.”

Decatur fired back, “There’s already a lot outside of her control. If she had died in one of the cryo capsules we’d be in the same situation. Except she didn’t.”

Ilarion made a motion to interject but the Major pressed his point, “Furthermore she has to go down eventually. No one can stay on the ship, it doesn’t go back to Earth. It would be better to have her get a feel for what’s happening on the planet before we get there so that the general populace won’t put the Infantry on a pedestal.”

“This is unacceptable! The Advisor will be fully capable of making a report herself once your personnel report back,” Ilarion stated.

“Once I report back,” Decatur stated. “I’m going too. The Infantry borrowed a saying from our warrior forefathers: leaders are the first in and the last out.”

Ying put up her hand to gesture she’d heard quite enough from both of them, “The Major’s points are salient. I will come, if for no other reason than to show I am not afraid to tread where the people must go.”

Ilarion looked frustrated by the statement but made no attempt to argue, “Then I shall come to. I am your escort after all.”

Ying looked from the large Ukranian to Decatur, asking an unspoken question of permission. The military leader nodded with some hesitation and said, “If you feel it would be best, Advisor, then feel free to bring Mr. Chuvnik along.”

“Very good. What time do I need to be here?”

“Meet me at Pod One six hours before we hit orbit, I’ll have my pilots go over some basics of the dropship safety protocols with you,” Decatur said.

“Understood.” Ying walked over to the hatch for berth two and peered inside its open door. All kinds of people milled about talking, playing electronic games or using some other form of entertainment to pass the time.

“How are their spirits?” Ying asked Decatur since he’d been down here more than she had.

“Good considering the four we lost in transit,” he replied standing behind her but not close enough to illicit Ilarion’s scorn.

“That was unfortunate news, but it was accounted for within the plan limits. It wasn’t the half-percent expected by the operations guide lines,” Ying mused aloud.

“No it wasn’t. Let’s hope the rest of the wake ups go this smoothly.”

Ying agreed but noticed none of the Infantry or pilots were in the large storage-room-turned-living-space. “Where are your personnel?”

“Either helping with whatever they can or checking the hardware in the pods,” he replied.

“I see. They aren’t much for sitting still, I take it?”

“No ma’am. You let a bunch of combat grunts get complacent and it festers bad behavior. Keep them working so you get good little soldiers and get some real work done. That's better for everyone,” he explained.

“I look forward to seeing their progress tomorrow,” she turned and bowed slightly to Decatur, “Until tomorrow then.”

“Until tomorrow Advisor Oum,” he offered a slight bow back before nodding at Ilarion.

NILE SYSTEM

January 9, 2184 AD

Charon XLR Brevity, ETA 3 hours to Nile

Ying eyed the blue and white marble that was Nile a mere three hours away by the Brevity’s pace. This smaller Hercules-class combat dropship was also much faster. The acceleration of her engines was, for her comparative small size, much greater than that of the Brevity; though in sheer output the Charon rocket had much greater ability.

Ying was seated behind and to the left of the pilot, Pharaoh, in the co-pilot’s seat. Ahead of her was the transparent steel that made the cockpit nearly weapons-proof but also provided a very large field of view. Decatur had worked out the co-pilot sitting in the troop transport area so that she could experience what any pilot would experience coming in and out of atmosphere. Though Ying firmly protested against piloting the craft herself in some kind of romantic semi-training exercise. Decatur hadn’t argued and Pharaoh’s relief was palpable.

“Pharaoh to Control, disengaging locks in 3… 2… 1…” the female pilot said just before a deep clong sounded through the vessel’s hull. The dropship eased away from her mothership under expert precision. Pharaoh then inverted the ship gently so that the two of them could see the Brevity as they drifted apart. “There’s our rocket, Advisor. Hardly the worse for wear, save for some micro-meteor impacts along her hull – nothing too serious.”

Ying was confident in Pharaoh’s assessment as she’d been the pilot to escort the hull engineer and repair team after they’d come out of hyperspace. One section of a solar panel had been damaged but nothing that affected power. The micro-meteor impacts had caused the self-sealing systems to engage so no explosive decompression occurred. And the armor of the vessel was strong enough that those impacts hadn’t damaged anything critical.

Pharaoh piloted the vessel away toward Nile after a couple of minutes of watching the Brevity drift from them. Now it was time for Nile to get a whole lot larger. Ying wouldn’t admit it outwardly but atmospheric re-entry terrified her. She’d only done it once after her initial inspection tour of the Brevity before it launched from Earth. But this was her first time doing so on an alien world.

Still, the flight lieutenant proved why she’d been picked for this critical mission. She was incredibly deft at the art of atmospheric re-entry. Indeed the small dropship had hardly bounced at all from the thick layers of Nile. Ying expressed her appreciation of Pharaoh’s piloting skills.

The pilot smiled and replied, “We like to go easy of civvies their first time through. Next time, though, you’ll get the full and proper combat drop experience. Minus the enemy weapons fire, of course.”

Ying’s nervous smile of a response made Pharaoh laugh in a manner most villainous as the pilot turned back forward, “Okay kids, we’re coming up on our co-ordinates shortly.”

Ying sat up a little to look through the canopy at the wonderfully verdant green world below them. Forests stretched for miles everywhere – absolute virgin land that had never been sculpted by the hands of a sentient species. In the far distance she could see mountains that had white caps to them. Closer, in the middle distance, was a large body of water with some smaller outlets of rivers or creeks.

When the vessel made a final turn left – to port as it were in aviator parlance – the thudding of Decatur’s boots caught her attention. He stood on the access stairs to the troop storage room with a slight smile, “Is she everything you hoped for?”

Ying smiled back in appreciation of his light hearted concern, “It’s quite lovely from up here.”

“Well the boys and I are jealous of the view, so come down here,” he waved her out of the co-pilot’s seat as the dropship leveled out again. Ying unbuckled herself and followed the Infantryman down. He was a little taller and wider today due to his PAF – Power Assisted Frame – that provided extra strength, stamina and versatility. She didn’t wear such a thing and neither did Ilarion, though the pair did both have some basic body armor on.

Decatur walked to the vessel’s starboard side and one of his Infantry clasped a safety belt to her. Ilarion stood and held on to the handhold firmly as Decatur said into his helmet mic, “Alright open it up.”

The starboard armor panel door of the dropship slid open deceptively quickly, given its mass. Once her eyes had adjusted to the harsh light of the sun Ying could have cried at the unbridled beauty of seeing the planet with her own eyes. Below them the ground came closer and the wind was very deafening. Yet she was not distracted from the look of their new home.

Suddenly there was a break in the trees and a very large plain was before them. A herd of some brown, black, tan and white animals – almost like cows – were grazing beneath them. As the engines of the dropship cut through the air above the herd panicked at the alien strangers and began to flee in whatever direction seemed safest to their instincts. Within a few minutes more Pharaoh began circling one area that was flat and elevated above the other areas by gradual slopes on all sides: it was the soon to be landing site for their future homesteads.

“Pharaoh bring her down,” Decatur ordered.

Gradually the dropship lowered to the ground but stayed hovering just above its grassy surface. Once the vessel had settled, still airborne, Decatur came over to Ying and reached out his hand, “Would you like to be the first to set foot on this new world, ma’am?”

Ying couldn’t help herself but to smile and nod. She moved to the opened hatch to sit on the edge, her feet dangling just a foot above the wild grass below. She took a breath of courage and hopped down. Her hands moved in front of her when she started to fall forward so as to avoid injury. Ying became very aware of the increased gravity of this world with that one simple movement. Her face came close to the ground and it too allowed her to smell the grass, the winds, and the life of the planet Nile. And she savored the experience as the first human being on her new home.

She stood, fighting against the slightly higher gravity of the planet as the exhaust from the dropship kicked gentle winds around her. Far in the distance, at least half a kilometer away or more, the trees of Nile looked remarkably like Earth’s. Ying looked to the baby blue sky above that was dotted with a few small clouds. The light from Nile’s sun shined on her face and for just a moment she closed her eyes to absorb its warmth.

There was a whirring noise behind her. She turned to see Major Decatur stepping down from the dropship in his frame that made his traversal of the high gravity much easier. His three other infantry jumped out as well. Ilarion followed them out but wasn’t as graceful. She could see him struggle slightly with the higher gravity but only because she knew how to read him. It was likely that the Infantrymen would have no idea he was working harder than any time he’d gracefully moved about the Brevity.

Ying turned back to the open field atop this large but gently sloping hill. She walked forward a few steps to get a feel for the struggle that would be traversing this planet. The movement wasn’t so bad, though, her first steps seemed a little jerky; as if she were wearing magnetic boots to traverse a ship’s hull. It didn’t take long for her body to start to adapt in forming a subconscious habit of how to move her legs. Within a minute she started walking fast and then running through the ankle-high grass.

Decatur came up and stood next to her holding his rifle at a low-ready position. Advisor Oum had jogged and then ran maybe a hundred meters. Decatur pursued her much easier thanks to his Frame. He looked over the untouched land with her at the mountains a dozen miles away or more. Then he turned to seek the landscape in the other direction and saw, far in the distance well beyond the edge of the forest, a reflection of light that caught his eye.

Decatur pulled down his helmet’s monocle to zoom in on the distant light source. It was a digitally enhanced image that was projected into his eye. In the moment that it took him to figure out what it was, a call from one of his men.

“Looks like we’ve got water far out there in the distance,” was said from a number of meters to his left, past Advisor Oum. He turned to look just as she did in the same direction as the voice.

“I was just thinking that,” Decatur said. “Pharaoh, when we dust off let’s take a pass out to our south and inspect that body of water.”

“Copy,” was the simple response.

Decatur turned to Advisor Oum, “Looks like a good place to call a home. What did it feel like being the first human on Nile?”

“Grand, which I didn't expect.”

“It is at that. I never really had a chance to enjoy landing on an uncolonized world. The untouched human worlds I've been to were all combat drops into Kamikaze systems. It's strange not to be constantly searching the skies for hostiles,” he mused.

“It's strange not being on Earth,” she replied. “I've never left our homeworld until now. It's a strange experience.”

Decatur nodded and continued to look around the area. Movement along the northern tree line caught his eye and he raised his IAR-9 instinctively. The weapon was a modified version of the XM-8 used by the now defunct NATO and UN militaries. It stood for Infantry Assault Rifle model 9 and was a versatile weapons platform that could change configurations. The weapon could go from a standard anti-personnel weapon meant for infantry combat, to a longer range semi-dedicated sniper platform, to a full-auto suppression weapon and had a configuration for an anti-vehicle attachment to use against light armor. Assuming, of course, you had the appropriate ammo for each weapon type. As amazing as the Kyu style energy weapons were on the human fleets' warships, that technology hadn't been miniaturized yet.

Decatur tracked the movement through his monocle to see a large furry animal, at least the size of an elephant ponder from the trees into the open field. It was combing the grass for something and hadn't noticed the human intruders. Decatur stepped in front of Advisor Oum as he raised his weapon.

“Mr. Chuvnik please get Advisor Oum back a bit,” Decatur called. The Ukranian security escort did so but Ying resisted without words. She wanted to stay and observe the creature. Ilarion Chuvnik didn't move far enough to keep the creature out of her sight over the hill's slight slope.

When Pharaoh brought the dropship back around and low, in an attempt to scare off the creature, its head came up. It spied Decatur, who had been flanked by his three infantry. The large animal returned its attention to the approaching dropship and bayed upward at Pharaoh's vessel. Its bottom jaw split into two as a deep, solemn moan came forth. It then moved its attention back to the grass and pawed some more.

Decatur made a bold assumption about the animal's temperament given its seemingly distracted movement. “Pharaoh I don't think it's hostile but scare it off, would you?” Decatur called into his mic.

His pilot complied by lowering the dropship more to a point where she could blast the engines a bit to make more dirt kick up from the ground. And the engines let out a sharp whistle every time she gunned the exhaust a small bit. Her skills were superb, as she nudged the craft forward and then hopped it back a small distance. The beast groaned once more before turning ponderously back towards the trees, occasionally pawing for something or other in the alien dirt.

“Very well handled, Major,” Advisor Oum stated. “I thought you might have shot at it.”

“I would've shot it and killed it if it had turned hostile or charged us, make no mistake. But I'm not a man who kills for sport or fun - only when needed,” Decatur explained. He believed it better to only exert force when absolutely necessary. “Besides, for all we know that thing could've been pregnant or killing it might cause a hidden pack of similar creatures in the trees to come after us.”

“Or maybe it would have sprayed out a swarm of hornets, like those buggers on Cetini-4,” one of the other infantry chimed in to support his leader's decision. “I wouldn't fancy flying back to the ship covered in hornet sings.”

“Your experience does you credit, Major. As does it for all of your men, it seems. But perhaps that's enough excitement for now. Should we return to the Brevity? She should be in orbit by the time we arrive, if I'm not mistaken,” Oum advised.

“I agree,” Decatur said turning on his mic again, “Pharaoh we're ready for dust off.” The pilot had already been setting her bird down.

Advisor Oum climbed into the troop compartment before moving to the cockpit. As she took the seat she asked the pilot, “Are you sure you don't want to get out to stretch your legs? It's very pretty.”

“Thanks for the offer, ma'am. I'd rather have wings than legs any day – I was a woman made for flying!”

“A talent and skill that is exceptional from what I've seen so far. Thank you for your skill and coming with us on this expedition, Lieutenant,” Oum said.

“You should go ahead and learn the dropship motto now: we deliver!” she said with some gleefulness.

“That you do, Pharaoh,” Decatur said standing behind Advisor Oum. “Now let's go see that body of water before we make for orbit.”

The Hercules-class ship was airborne again before long and moving south to inspect the water source. As it turned out the body of water was not a river or lake but a rather large sea. It was still stretching out into the horizon when Pharaoh starting breaking through the cloud layers.

“Well at least we won't go thirsty,” one of the infantry stated. “We could have a beach day!”

“Assuming it's not got contaminants in it,” Ilarion chimed in.

“Let's assume the nothing until we test it, okay? Once we're sure it’s pure we can talk vacations and beach parties. Until then, think happy thoughts and keep your safe water nearby,” Decatur said. None in the troop compartment offered complaint.

NILE SYSTEM

January 11, 2184 AD

Charon XLR Brevity, Nile orbit

Pharaoh watched from the transparent aluminum canopy of her dropship’s cockpit as the Brevity released two more of it’s pre-fab support structures. The white and black coned hulls slowly adjusted themselves using their positional jets. Within a few minutes they would be dropping through the atmosphere to land on the planet of Nile at the coordinates they had agreed upon two days before. The movements were calculated and unhurried in the pure-logic precision of computers. The pair coasted away from the orbiting colony ship into the upper atmosphere.

The Flight Lieutenant decided now was the time to adjust her heading. She double-checked her coordinates and re-entry vector for her vessel. It all came out green so she turned her bird around to begin it’s travel into Nile’s atmosphere in an almost opposite direction. Her mission was to give a fly-by survey of the alternate landing zone that had been scrubbed due to its uneven terrain.

The whole flight would take just under an hour as all Pharaoh really needed to do was wait for the optimal orbit location as Nile spun beneath her, then she would simply drop her vessel into position. The process was routine and she’d done it many times across various worlds. Granted, usually she was under fire from Kamikaze vessels or ground defenses.

With her were her co-pilot Jenner and two of the combat grunts. Decatur had originally wanted four to go with her but since they weren’t planning on landing she saw it as extra weight that would unnecessarily burn fuel. In space, as an object's acceleration changed so too did the weight of the object and anything within it. Hence, it would take more fuel to speed up and more to slow back down. Therefore, fuel burned was similar to how weight increased almost exponentially as G-forces increased.

Once in position in orbit Pharaoh dropped her craft into the atmosphere, breaking through the bottom clouds a few minutes later. Here her piloting skill of the less-than ideally aerodynamic craft started to take show. She opened the cockpit hatch that lead into the troop compartment before saying into the local comm-net they had setup, “If you boys want a look come on up.”

Ortega and another soldier, Private Grelski, both shuffled up after a fashion to peer out of the cockpit windows. They crammed themselves to be standing behind their pilots’ chairs to get a view of the landscape. Both were wearing their PAF except for their helmets; nor did they have their weapons. Those had been locked up next to their seats in the troop bay. It would do no one any favors to have one go off in-flight and punch a hole in the hull while still in vacuum.

Pharaoh brought the vessel into a modest altitude of about 150 meters. Hopefully, this was low enough not to run into a flight of indigenous birds - if this place even had birds. She traveled a relatively slow 200 KP/H to make sure their cameras and sensors were getting a good view of everything around them. After a while she noticed some of the land was “shattered” - that was the only thing she could think of at least.

The orange, brown, red and yellow landscape was cracked in numerous places and wildly uneven. She’d seen the satellite images but it was very stark to actually see. Her gut reaction was that it looked like a Kamikaze series of high-orbit shatter-rounds had bit the place, causing a circular series of deep crust canyons. The roughly concentric rings weren’t in any kind of pattern, however. And the cracks themselves ran far too deep to be caused by any Kamikaze weapon humans had ever seen.

“Damn, that’s some impressive geography,” Ortega said.

“I didn’t know you knew big words,” Jenner quipped.

“No, sir, the Infantry don’t much learn us our letters and numbers none too good, sir,” Grelski shot back, firing off a left-hand salute; which was an insult.

“Hey private, want to learn how to fly?” Jenner asked looking at the Infantryman’s reflection in the canopy.

The young man looked at Ortega then returned to the back of Jenner’s helmet, “With or without the ship?”

“What do you think genius?” Jenner stated flatly.

Pharaoh smiled at the jeers. It was the way military brothers and sisters got along: perpetually teasing each other. Combat did that to you, it forced you to bind into a very specific family-like organization.

“Heads up,” Pharaoh then said as the ship started passing directly above the crust fractures. Deep below could be seen an eerie yellow-orange neon glow. “That’s impressive. Looks like these canyons go all the way down to a magma flow.”

“Wonder how deep that is?” Ortega asked absently.

“Too deep for me,” Pharaoh said. She turned her head to Jenner, “Are we getting good images of this?”

“In all four spectrums,” Jenner replied. He meant that the visible-light, infrared, X-ray and semi-quantum bands were all being recorded.

Pharaoh kept up the pattern of slowly flying around the various fractures for over 40 minutes, when she saw in the distance that the land flattened out again. The odd part was that it was recessed down further into the crust by several hundred feet. It was like a sheer cliff face that, for many miles in both directions, just dropped off to another flat landscape. A few miles inward, the terrain did the same thing. This region had three distinctly lowering levels.

“Now that’s interesting,” Jenner spoke.

“Yes it is,” Pharaoh agreed. “This might explain those fractures we’re seeing that go so deep: some sort of massive sub-surface cave-in that caused this whole region to collapse in on itself. That would explain the crazy seismic activity the satellites have been recording for years.”

“Maybe it didn’t happen too long ago?” her co-pilot asked.

“I’m no geologist, but I’m pretty certain that the ongoing activity is surely a result. This place is probably no good at all for a backup or secondary settlement; anyone down there would probably experience earthquakes for years,” she speculated.

“Agreed. Should we pop a couple of those seismic sensors for the brainiacs on Brevity?” Jenner asked.

“I think so,” Pharaoh replied as she armed the seismic pods for deployment.

The dropships on this excursion had been heavily modified for any number of mission roles. At this point they were almost considered combat craft as a tertiary capacity - personnel and equipment transport were the two primary functions, followed by scouting and survey roles. As such, the typical weapons pods - normally used for missiles or direct-energy weapons - had been partially replaced with scientific survey gear.

For this particular flight the modular pods had been fitted with geological mini-missiles that would deploy themselves into a surface. Their geological monitors would record the findings and small transmitters would spit the information up to the orbiting satellites or the Brevity before the data was then re-transmitted down to the colony landing site.

“We’ll drop three seismic monitors - one on each level of this region - then bang out and head to the colony,” Pharaoh instructed. Jenner began working on the commands needed to deploy the sensors.

Before much longer Pharaoh had the sensors in place and she was making back for orbit. She opened her comm to Brevity who acted as a relay point for the landing zone, where she and the small crew would be headed next.

"Scotland Plains" was found using an online search under"Public Domain." The original image was taken by Felix Roser and is hosted on wordpress.com. I am not the original artist nor do I own the image.

NILE SYSTEM

January 11, 2184 AD

Nine kilometers out from the landing zone. Scouting party Whiskey 1-4

The light attack vehicle - or LAV - wasn’t much more than a slightly upgraded hummer used during the Final War on Earth. The offensive campaigns against the Kamikaze hadn’t required much in the way of ground combat in comparison to the space-navy actions, so the vehicle’s purpose hadn’t changed much.

Sergeant Smith had the window down on the passenger side of the LAV, looking out at the verdant green field beyond with a massive heard of four-legged animals lazily mowing the tall exotic grass. He cocked an eyebrow at the civilian xeno-zoologist with them, “So… Space cows?” he asked.

The zoologist turned to him, “Sure; sounds good to me.” The young woman turned back to the field to peer at the closest three-eyed animal, which was about 30 feet away, as it chewed more of the cud. Its mouth moved in the same rhythmic side-ways then downward pattern of Earth’s various cow breeds.

The zoologist - a woman named Brittany Landers - had field experience on Earth studying what remained of the planet’s life, was a mid-twenties brunette that was in sharp physical condition. Smith would almost say she was a soldier though she didn’t have that military bearing. Instead she carried herself in that cocky Masters-degree, super-confident fashion. And she knew what her physical appearance looked like too, as she was too happy to show off some skin. Ms. Landers wore body-tight short khakis, some hiking boots with ankle-high white socks and nothing but skin between her shorts and shoes.

Her torso wasn’t dressed much differently as she wore a brown sports bra with a white tank-top over it. In a strap over her shoulder she carried a small camera, a short-range drone and a basic flight controller. She could deploy the drone from ten kilometers away but the actual range on the batteries only lasted for a two or three kilometer round-trip.

Landers pulled out her camera then leaned forward a bit to take a few images of the cows. As she did so the two Infantrymen flanking her sides and just a few feet back both inclined their heads to get a better view - but it wasn’t of the cows. Smith scowled and snapped his fingers. The two soldiers looked at him and he made a chopping motion across his neck; the universal sign for “cut it out.”

“Pay attention Infantry!” Smith called out in a short tone. He wasn’t thrilled about his men sexualizing a civilian; even though in his own private-never-to-be-spoken thoughts he couldn’t blame them. But there was a time and place for all things – this was not the time or place.

Ms. Landers turned to look at the Infantryman on her left, “Fascinated by the view?” Smith wasn’t sure if the smirk on her face was because she suspected what his soldiers were doing or if she was genuinely speaking about the cows.

“Yes, ma’am. The view is quite good,” Rogers – the addressed Infantryman – replied.

Ms. Landers then looked at Smith smiling. He simply nodded his head. Inside his own mind he was rolling his eyes hard enough to cause a headache and plotting out exactly how he could strangle the life out of his two Infantrymen.

Smith started to bark an order, “Alright you two-” but he was cut short when the cow suddenly turned and bolted in the opposite direction. Perplexed by the sudden running he spoke, “Ms. Landers did your camera scare them off?”

She looked at it briefly then back to him, “I don’t think so.”

Smith suddenly became aware of a rumbling sound. He looked out across the field to see the herd of hundreds of three-eyed cows stampeding across the field, in a direction generally away from them.

Landers pulled up her camera and started snapping pictures. She hurriedly handed the camera to the soldier to her right and pulled free her drone, powering it on and throwing it into the air. She started piloting it out above the herd as it turned left and started looping back in on itself like an angry hurricane. “What the hell’s got them so scared?” she thought aloud.

“Ms. Landers I want you in the LAV – we may need to bust loose quick if they start running this way,” Smith said.

“Wait, wait!” she shouted, “Look at the ground!” Landers pointed out as part of the green ground was now a protrusion almost the height of a man.

Smith and the other soldiers were enraptured. He still had the presence of mind to step out of the LAV. He was going to pull her with him back into the LAV if she wasn’t going to come peacefully.

Without any warning there was a thunderous and deep crack as the green ground spat open. What came forth could only be described as the most nightmarish thing Smith could imagine. A massive worm punched through into the air – at least 20 meters up. At its front a massive maw split into four segments opened and bellowed an unholy roar. Landers and her two soldier escorts covered their ears in pain. The worm bent over to one side as a trio of tentacles came forth from its maw to grab the by-comparison small cows into its gullet.

“Fuck!” Rogers shouted.

“Get in the LAV! Now!” Smith shouted.

“To hell with this!” the gunner on top of the LAV shouted and primed the weapon perched there. The .50-caliber anti-vehicle rounds clicked into place, his readout showed a primed firing mechanism. Without orders from Smith the soldier depressed the paddles to fire the massive weapon. The worm, while not a small target, was still a half-kilometer away. A number of the shots missed but a fair number more were right on target. The worm didn’t seem to notice as it continued to scoop the cows into its toothless mouth.

When the soldier paused his firing after several bursts Smith shouted up to him, “Cease fire, dammit! You don’t what you’re shooting at! That thing could turn on us in a heartbeat and we could be next on the menu! Acquire target and hold fire until I say so!”

“Yes, sir!” the gunner complied, never taking his stressed eyes off the monstrosity in the distance.

Smith opened the back door to the LAV as Rogers and the second soldier pushed Landers into the vehicle. Smith slammed the door shut, hopped back into his seat up front and shouted to the driver to drive.

The LAV bounced across the uneven grassy ground as Landers fought with Rogers to get him to roll down the window. “My drone is still out there! I need to get it back! And I need all the footage I can get!”

“Are you bat-shit crazy, lady?! Did you see that thing?!” Rogers fired back.

“Yes I did! And this paltry window won’t make a difference if it comes at us! We need more data – but I need a clear LOS to get my drone!” Landers shouted.

“Quiet!” Smith barked over them as he looked out of his passenger window at the creature. It was starting to pull itself back into the hole it had made in earthy soil. “Landers make it quick.”

She leaned over Rogers to open the window and started to recall the drone once the worm was back inside its hole. After a couple minutes the driver slowed down enough for her to pilot it back to the LAV. The adrenaline started to wear off then. They’d moved back in the direction of their original trek out here. The field the cows had occupied was now behind large hills and a series of dense forested areas.

Landers spoke as she downloaded and reviewed the footage of her drone. “Wow – this is absolutely incredible.”

“I’d prefer to call it terrifying,” the gunner shouted from his turret.

Smith picked up his command radio then, “Whiskey One-Four to command – come in, over.”

“Copy that, One-Four. Go ahead, over,” the calm female voice replied.

“Command get Major Decatur on the line and Advisor Oum as well – no one is going to believe this,” Smith said with tension in his voice.

NILE SYSTEM

January 11, 2184 AD

Landing Zone command building.

Oum shook her head, her black locks dancing with the movement, “I understand your point, Ms. Landers, but we’re barely getting our feet on the ground here. We simply don’t have the personnel to deploy to track these things.”

“All I’m asking for is one vehicle, Madame Advisor. I don’t need an escort I’m a big girl.”

“A big girl on a very alien planet; we are all children here. Your expertise and our limited material resources are too scarce to squander on this right now. Besides, you might find something else out there that’s equally as deadly. You could die and we’d have no way of tracking you. Plus – with our pilots still bringing down other personnel and supplies I can’t afford to send them out on a rescue  mission if the worst does happen to you.”

Landers was frustrated by the Advisor’s refusal to allow her to study the massive worm in more detail. She tried one final tactic, “Ma’am please – if I can just inspect the ground were it appeared. I could maybe gather DNA samples to-”

“To do what? And how many hours has it been? Any samples you collect will be contaminated at this point, you would learn next to nothing. I said no and I mean it, Ms. Landers. I’m not saying you can never go study these creatures – it’s obviously a serious consideration and one we’ll need to address. However, now is not the time. That will be all, Ms. Landers. Please occupy your time otherwise by helping out where you can as we set down the colony buildings. Thank you.”

Landers pushed off of Oum’s desk and stomped out of the room. As she left Decatur closed the door behind her. He looked at Ilarion then to Oum, “She is right. We’re going to have to know more about dealing with such a massive creature.”

Oum played the recording from Landers' arial drone back on her screen as she spoke, “Are you questioning my decision as well, Major?”

“No, not at all. You’re completely correct: for the time being we can’t go running all over this planet chasing the local wildlife – fantastical as they may be – while we aren’t even sure if our buildings are going to hold up in this planet’s version of a thunderstorm. We need this colony up and running as soon as possible,” Decatur spoke as he crossed the room. “However, from a security perspective, she is also completely correct.”

Oum cut off the video of the tablet and laid it on her desk, “Yes, she is. Obviously we can’t address this now. Perhaps it would be best for her and Sean Alford, together along with any supporting scientists we have, to discuss ideas.”

“I agree. I’d let her know that, though; just so she doesn’t think you’ve completely dismissed her. If you do, she might just go to Alford ahead of time to come up with preliminary ideas for gathering more intel on these worms,” he replied.

“Agreed,” Oum stated as she sighed heavily. “I didn’t need this nightmare fuel on top of everything else we’re struggling to get taken care of. Anything else, Major? If not I won’t hold you up from overseeing your duties.”

“No, ma’am,” he said, standing, then left the room.

Oum eyed her bodyguard, “Speak your mind, Ilarion.”

“This creature is beyond anything we could’ve predicted. Because of this – we must strive to control it or kill it,” he stated flatly.

“We don’t have the weapons to kill something like this without expending a lot of our consumable ammunition. Until we secure more resources I don’t want to consider the rate at which we could burn through materials and personnel fighting a small war against such a beast. Not to mention, if there is one then there may be a dozen or hundreds more. We can't kill them all.”

“It is only a thought, Advisor.”

“Thank you, Ilarion,” Oum mumbled as she tried to push the thoughts of how devastating such a monstrosity could be to this fledging colony. With one swift strike an alien creature that was completely unpredicted could end humanity’s shot at surviving the Kamikaze threat. “I think it best I refocus on the task of getting the colony established properly so that we can survive the anticipated dangers.”

NILE SYSTEM

January 12, 2184 AD

Landing Zone sciences building

Brittany Landers stood looking over the readouts of the seismographs with Dr. Sean Alford. He was dressed more appropriately to a scientist’s standard than his carefree way on the Brevity but without the pressed suit. His shirt was a pastel blue and he wore grey slacks. And a pair of garish green, yellow and brown sneakers. Landers wore more of her preferred field attire: light shirts and shorts with good hiking boots.

“I don’t have readouts for that area, I’ve had no idea something like this could’ve existed. But knowing that one does means there are probably many more. It would explain the very high tectonics of this world. I’m amazed our orbitals hadn’t seen one sooner,” Alford stated looking at a still image of the giant worm as it cast a space-cow into its mouth. “It’s obvious their ground-penetrating radar doesn’t go deep enough to identify these worms.”

“I’d hazard a guess that it’s unwise to try and heard these space-cows. We might just end up turning this colony into a smorgasbord for this thing,” stated Esteban Tarifa, the lead civil engineer who had been assigned to the mission. Unlike many of the volunteers, the Brazilian-born native was ordered to come along under penalty of jail. Apparently there was no longer a need for him on Earth; Landers wasn’t sure if that boded well for the colony or not. He had, however, taken to his responsibilities fully and with heart.

“Maybe, maybe not. If the orbitals hadn’t seen these worms before now it’s possible that they live deep underground and only come up to feed on an infrequent basis,” Landers mused. “And aren’t we on a really solid piece of bedrock or granite?”

Alford nodded, “Yes we are. You think it’s possible they might not be able to penetrate our foundation?”

“Assuming if all we saw was half the length of one of these monsters I don’t see how. They’re thick skinned alright, but I didn’t see any real natural armor on them,” Landers stated. “I mean, hell, for all we know what we saw was a larval stage. Perhaps they do get bigger and fiercer.”

Esteban Tarifa buried his face in his hands, “Please don’t say this.”

Landers shrugged, “It’s only an idea, Esteban. There could be any number of reasons. Maybe this worm is old and they migrate closer to the surface before they die. Or it’s on some kind of instinctual migration - like birds on Earth - and it’s only passing through this area. It just happened to pop-up for a snack on the way.”

“This, I hope for,” the former Brazilian replied with a measure of relief. “That it’s passing through; I don’t want to see anymore of these creatures… ‘snacking.’”

Landers leaned back on one of the tables attached to a wall in Alford’s office, “Well I do. From a safe distance, of course. So is there a way you can look at tracking these worms? Mobile seismic sensors or something?”

“If we knew what to look for. I’m sure Major Decatur will be willing to let us drop some of the seismic pods around the settlement for tracking and security purposes. I’ll draw up a rough plan for a circular deployment outward,” Alford stated.

Advisor Ying Oum sat at her desk across from Landers, Alford, Tarifa, and Decatur looking over the plan the scientists, engineer, and soldier had devised. She wouldn’t have entertained any of this if it hadn’t been at Decatur’s behest. And, surprisingly, Ilarion’s council which agreed with Decatur.

“I think we can safely spare a dozen of the seismic pods, Advisor,” Alford continued with his explanation. “If we place them at the edges of the settlement’s granite layers about roughly the same intervals of a clock face - 30 degrees apart - we should have good coverage to track these worms.

“Assuming you know what to look for,” Oum countered.

“The only way to know what to look for is to do just that: go look,” Alford stated.

Oum very slightly shook her head before speaking to Decatur, “And you’re ok with this? Using our pilots and dropships to go plant scientific probes?”

Decatur nodded once, “I look at this as a preparatory measure for colony defense, honestly. And the reality is my pilots aren’t getting any flight time in besides moving heavy equipment from the Brevity. Pharaoh did a recon at our proposed secondary landing site, and I think it’d be good practice for the pilots to get in a little flight time doing something besides cargo runs. It gets monotonous and wears on them, Advisor.”

“I thought your people were professionals, Major. Shouldn’t they be able to handle ‘cargo runs?’ Especially when it’s crucial to the survival of our settlement?”

The major’s left eye had a near-imperceptible twitch to it. She must’ve struck a nerve. Despite his annoyance the Major’s voice betrayed no measure of insubordination in it, “They’re quite capable, Advisor. I think their track record so far - not a single accident or tiny piece of damaged equipment - is testament to that. However, monotonous and repetitive tasks can wear on a person down. Tiny things that build up over time to cause big mistakes later.”

Oum wasn’t going to give her approval. Yet having these four arrayed against her - all of whom were experts of the highest caliber from Earth - swayed her decision. One of her old mentors had taught her that the brain of the body - herself, in the case of this colony - was absolute. Yet even the mind would die if enough organs shut down. That meant in this scenario it would be wisest to allow her experts to push forward with this idea.

She clasped her hands together on the smooth desktop, “Alright, Major. Since they’re your pilots you have oversight of this. Work with Dr. Alford and Ms. Landers to find the best places for the seismic pods. You may use twelve and only twelve of the pods.”

Landers’ smile was rather large, “Thank you, Advisor!” She got up immediately and started to leave. Alford and Tarifa both nodded as they followed. Decatur, however, did not. He was staring at her intently. Oum knew that look: it was one of a predator about to pounce on its prey. Perhaps I really did strike a nerve.

When the door to the office closed after the scientists and engineer had left, Decatur stood - his face was tight and his hands flexed into fists. Oum spoke before he could, “Are you offended by my comments about your pilots?”

“They’re our pilots, ma’am. We’re all in this together and we’re all working very hard - especially the pilots. They’re going on minimal, staggered sleep shifts of six hours to get our people and gear landed safely. They don’t need to be mocked for their efforts, especially not by their leadership,” Decatur fired.

Oum stood, “I don’t mock them, I’m demanding they live up to their reputation. Earth Command ordered them out here and so-”

“They volunteered,” Decatur said forcefully. “Just like most all of us did. They left their homes, their old lives, any comforts they had, friends and colleagues to come here: to the ass-end of space with no means of contacting Earth. A lot of them felt like they were running from the fight against the Kamikaze but they all - all of them, Advisor - know that this is our best shot of surviving in case the worst happens.” Decatur then stepped forward and placed his fists, knuckles down, on her desk as he leaned somewhat closer to her. “Don’t let old grudges from a bye-gone era ruin that. You’re our leader, you’re our guiding light. But if Earth before the Final War taught us anything it should be that those who rule with harmful attitudes do one thing: get good people killed.”

Oum wanted to spit in his face, but she knew that wouldn’t solve anything. Perhaps her word choice was too dismissive of the people here. She was used to working with people who were best motivated by harsh words and insults. The collective will of the people from old China were mostly a broken people, looking for leadership under a directed forceful tone. The Major and his soldiers, however, were probably like a lot of Earth’s western people: give them a direction and get out of their way.

“Alright, Major,” she conceded while placing her own hands palm-down on her desk and leaning in to him, “I retract my statement about your pilots’ professionalism. But I don’t want them getting the idea we’re here for games. I’m not convinced this worm problem requires our attention to such a fine degree.”

Decatur stood back to his full height, removing his fists from the desk and uncurling them to relaxed open hands, “Thank you ma’am. I’m not sure how much of a threat the worm poses either, nor if we can address it. When was the last time you got some sleep, Advisor? I mean, honest good sleep?”

Oum shook her head, looked at the time on her desk, “Six years wasn’t enough?”

“Have your secretary AI push aside anyone requesting to see you that isn’t absolutely critical, ma’am. Lay down, and be uninterrupted for eight to ten hours. And if you need to get one of the psychiatrists the come over to see you.”

Oum held up a hand, “I hope that wasn’t an insult. I don’t need to be counseled, Major.”

“We all need some counseling sometime, Advisor. I’ll leave you to that rest,” Decatur started to turn and was somewhat startled by Ilarion’s large frame standing far too close to him.

Oum hadn’t made eye contact when Ilarion had moved from the back of the room to intercept the Major when he’d initially stood from his seat. The message from Ilarion was clear to Decatur.

“What’s your problem, Chuvnik? You think I was going to hit her? That wouldn’t solve anything, it’d only cause chaos. We have more than our fair share of problems out here without the civilian and military leadership going rounds,” Decatur said right into Ilarion’s face - he didn’t back down a milimeter.

“You be careful, Major, of how you flex your hands. That could be mistaken for something it isn’t. Mistakes lead to accidents,” Ilarion whispered threateningly.

“It’s a bad habit, Chuvnik. But I’ll keep that in mind to avoid any… accidents,” the military man said back.

Ilarion nodded then and stepped aside to let the Major leave her pre-fab office. When the door closed the Ukrainian looked at her and spoke in Chinese, “He is correct about the sleep.”

Oum nodded and set the AI to her customized secretary mode, “Yes. That would be best, I think.”

"Dune Concept Art" by Eduardo Pena. Found via online search under "Public Domain".  I am not the original artist nor do I own this work of art.

BREVITY COLONY CENTRAL SQUARE

January 22, 2184

Colonial founding of the colony city "Brevity"

Oum had given her speech, roused the people, and mingled for a short time among the throng of celebrating colonists. In their couple weeks since landing the death toll was low – less than 20. It astonished her. She'd heard of colonization efforts that had killed off over a third of the population within a week. Yet, here they were: colonists of Nile.

The Brevity was gone, having flown itself into Nile's star once it had been fully cannibalized. The colonists had agreed to name their city after the great ship which had carried them safely here. The colonist pre-fab buildings had all landed. New buildings had been constructed. Food stores set up. Farm lands were being mapped out and started being worked. To the southeast, not far from the sea she'd seen during her first trip with Pharaoh, survey teams had found what seemed to be a very rich iron-ore deposit that had trace amounts of gold veins running through it. In time they'd have their construction gear getting to work mining the trove. Despite the horrifying discovery of Nile's giant worms there had been no additional sightings. The “space cows” were remarkably docile creatures that had been easy to tame. The twin-jawed mega-sloths she had encountered when flying with Pharaoh were more aggressive but easily deterred by the Infantry's weapons.

For now there was much celebrating in the colony's square. Most everyone found a reason to delight in the moment. Except for her. She'd never fit in very well with what she had always called the “labor-class.” In old China, like many countries after the Final War, society had been rigidly enforced. You were whatever you were told you were: there was almost never an option to change what and where you served. You socialized with, had family in, and were married to whatever class you belonged to. Oum's entire existence had been dictated this way, despite the fact she had appreciated her place within society.

And what society is that? The PAC is not here on Nile. Now these things are only a memory. Her thoughts, in a way, felt like a betrayal. But her directions from Earth Command had been clear: this fledgling colony was one where she decided its destiny.

Oum had found her way back to the command building of Brevity. It was a no-frills pre-fab unit like all the others. Nothing identified it as being special save for the “Colonial Control Building” marker in several languages on the front placard. She moved inside and sat at her desk. This wasn't the building she called “home” - that is, it wasn't where she slept. Yet she felt most comfortable here.

Ilarion had been her shadow the entire evening, despite her protests. Now he'd followed her here. When she had lazily landed in her desk's chair – a collapsible thing that was designed for compact transport like so much else here – Ilarion spoke to her, “I will wait outside and stop any visitors. I know when you need to be alone.”

She nodded, “Yes Ilarion, I do want some time alone.” She then pointed at him, “And you go celebrate. I think there's a woman here who would love to spend some time with you.”

Ilarion's eyes shifted left as if looking for a lost item, “I do not understand.”

Oum smiled pitifully at him. Ilarion had never been one for romance so long as she'd known him, “Go be something besides a body guard for tonight, my friend. I would like to be alone, just for a little while.”

He seemed hesitant but complied without any additional words. As the building's door closed behind him Oum found herself in need of something to occupy her time. She tried looking at the latest orbital scans and was bored. Next, trying some meteorological reports reports found herself equally bored. She went to open a report on the seismographic analysis of their landing area but knew that too would send her mentally fleeing for escape before she was two lines through it.

In desperation she started going through the assorted music library that had been brought and communally shared by many of the colonists. Like anyone, she had enjoyed music herself. But unlike most she'd never kept her own library – the elders, her masters, hadn't allowed for it. It was a secret love and it had almost felt forbidden. Fortunately some of the Nile colonists had been from the PAC and had brought a collection of their favorite artists. The soothing sounds of a Tibetan tribal chant, with some modernized instrumentation, filled the room at an appreciable volume level.

At some point a knocking came on the door to the building. Ying Oum had fallen asleep in her chair, drifting away to the angelic sounds of a far-away world. She sat upright and looked just as the door opened. Expecting to see Ilarion, it was a surprise when Major Decatur came through the door.

“Major,” she nodded and stood, “What can I do for you?”

He offer a small but not condescending smile to her, “Keep late office hours, Advisor?”

“I am always available to ensure the survival of our people,” she replied.

Decatur walked forward a couple steps, one hand behind his back. The military man eyed her computer console that emitted the gentle Tibetan tones, “Doesn't seem like off-hours work to me.”

Oum smiled and paused the music, “I wasn't working. But I'm happy to accommodate anything you require.”

Decatur reached out with his un-hidden hand to press the control on her console that resumed the soft Asian melody, “I don't require anything,” he stated then showing the contents of his hidden hand. “But I would like for you to share a drink with me,” the man had brandished two brown bottles with colorful labels.

Oum started to object but the Major was swift in his movements. He had moved to the roof-service ladder and brought it down. He started to ascend through the small opening at the top. Once he'd disappeared through the opening he turned to look at her expectantly. She'd almost spoken again but instead just followed him up. She had no idea why she was entertaining this childish behavior. Didn't I say I wanted to be alone?

On the roof of the building, which was perfectly flat with a slight slope to one side to allow weather run-off, the Major popped off the small metal caps of the bottles. He stuffed the coin-sized caps into one of his pockets. He moved to the edge of the building and sat down, hanging his feet over the roof's lip. Decatur motioned her over and she followed suit. He handed one of the bottles to her, it had a very sweet aroma.

Decatur tipped his bottle and she did likewise, clinking the glass together, “A toast to the city of Brevity. We have beaten the odds stacked against us.”

She added, “So far.”

He took a pull off of his bottle, “So far, indeed. It's still something we should be proud of.”

Oum nodded as she sipped the incredibly sweet liquid. It didn't at all agree with her palate that had been crafted by bitter wines in her upbringing among the higher classes of the PAC. “Wow, what is this? And how did you make it?”

Decatur smiled, “Us Infantry grunts know how to bring a party to any deployment. Since there was so many supplies being loaded onto the Brevity before leaving Earth, it was easy to stash a few drinks away in place of less-important materials. But this is a hard apple cider. Do you like it?”

“I don't think so,” she said as she raised the bottle back to her lips for another drink. When she brought it back down she questioned him, “So you replaced items that were deemed necessary by Earth Command with alcohol?”

Decatur smiled at her, “Things like alcohol, which used in the right ways, are always necessary. They cultivate relationships and allow for a degree of relaxation. Alcohol is a suppressant – and humans have always found a way to get it wherever they go. The medieval Europeans had mead, the ancient Asians made rice wine.”

Oum was annoyed at his casual dismissal of Earth Command's very strict cargo and weight demands. What had he replaced for this? She silently berated herself knowing that while the two had disagreed on several topics, he had never proven himself to be untrustworthy or unreliable. That doesn't mean I'm still not annoyed by his cavalier attitude.

“This is true,” she said looking at the label of the drink, “But I hope this isn't a curse we bring onto ourselves. Part of me questions the wisdom of bringing something like this along. Are we bringing our sins with us to this new world?”

Decatur looked down at the bottle in his hands, then up at the sky above. “I don't think we're doing anything inherently wrong here, Advisor. In fact this is the most I've felt at home since Apollo.” Oum recalled that was a medium-sized colony world which had been destroyed by the Kamikaze; it had been Decatur's home before he joined the Mobile Infantry after its destruction. He continued, “Back then I would sit on the roof of our pre-fab: my wife, son, and I. We'd look at the stars; talk about our lives. I would tell him stories of my father and I, when I was a boy on Earth, of how we'd sit on the roof of our house outside of Dallas to look at the stars then. When I was that young I had never imagined I would ever go to the stars. All we knew back then was the aftermath of the War.”

Decatur raised the bottle to read its label before taking another drink, “Back then my father and mother couldn't afford anything besides a cup of water; a great deal of the old USA's industrial infrastructure was destroyed. Beer - real beer, not the home brew stuff our neighbors made - just couldn't be made in mass quantities so whenever it was available it was incredibly expensive. My family was far too poor for that.”

Oum looked at her feet, dangling a few meters above the ground below. She spoke, “It is incredible how similar we are – people that is. When I was young the War's legacy was the only thing I knew as well. I was born in a shanty town that was fortunate to be between large rice fields and a copper mine a few kilometers away. My father and I would sit on the edges of the fields at night, talking and looking at the stars. He'd tell me about life during the war. I can't say he painted a very flattering picture of the old US; a lot of fear and mistrust has been instilled in me.”

Decatur nodded, “It was the same for me as a boy. But that all changes when you are forced to integrate. When we left for Apollo we were on a mostly PAC-filled passenger manifest. My family were definitely the outsiders. But my father worked hard to prove his worth to them, and he taught me to do the same. One day – I must've been 19 or so – it all just stopped having a purpose: this mistrust of another nation's people. On Apollo, in many ways, we lived a better life than we ever had on Earth – we all worked for the same thing in similar ways. I ended up marrying a German descendant, we had a family. It was all good.”

Oum knew where the story went next, she didn't ask for him to elaborate. “It is an interesting legacy the people of Earth live with. Literally thousands of years of mistrust of foreigners; China is no exception. And then colonists come out to the tips of humanity's reach expected to immediately do away with that legacy of mistrust. I am genuinely amazed at how adaptable we can be. Until now I have never known anyone of the old world's western hemisphere, save Ilarion. And he seemed to only prove that the west's ideologies were wrong in the extreme.”

Decatur nodded, “We were taught the same. The East – they were the devils, the evil-doers. They started the war, they brainwashed their people: on and on. It's not like the West hadn't done its own share of provocation and manipulation.”

Oum looked at the face of a man who had burdened too much pain in his life, but who had a heart that was deeper than simply being a soldier. She had spent her life learning to read people so she could press them into service for the PAC. She could see in him that he was no tyrant. Her own mistrusting nature and misguided her about this man.

She fielded a question she'd secretly kept locked away – an uncertain doubt she never wanted to voice but inexplicably felt she could with Decatur, “Do you think we have a chance out here?”

Decatur nodded, “I do. For all of human history warfare has simply been two or more groups of people who simply refuse to stop killing each other. So long as we remember that here on Nile, we'll succeed. We will be humanity's hidden home away from home. For the rest of our species: if we could get the Kamikaze to stop killing us, then we have a good chance.”

“And if we can't?”

Decatur made a single shake of his head to the side, “Then I hope we have better weapons in the near future. We can't keep this war of attrition going on much longer. Hell, for all we know, it's already over for Earth. The alien bastards could've shown up a week after we left and annihilated our homeworld.”

“Would anyone even know we're out here, then?” Oum asked.

“With how paranoid EC was in my briefings, not likely. I don't think Fangrong or Castellan would have any idea we're out here. And if the Kamikaze do hit Earth, they'll be going through Fangrong and Castellan first – they're perfectly poised right in the war path.”

Oum suddenly found the cider to be much more palatable as she took a long chug from the bottle, “It's hard not to lose hope with an outlook like that.”

Decatur put a hand on her shoulder, “We are our own hope. We are hope. Look at us: beating the game despite the deck stacked against us. In a year's time we'll have newborns being carried around by gleeful parents, we have farmlands and space cows to call our own. Hell, we might even domesticate those big furry monsters we saw on our first trip down here.”

"'Mega-sloths' I heard someone calling them," she interjected.

"Stupid name, but it'll do for now," he said with his lips smiling around his bottle's rim.

Oum smiled as his optimism, “Let's focus on properly running water first. The recyclers are going to get old before too long with almost a thousand people to keep clean and hydrated.”

“Hey,” he said, “We've got a whole sea just a few miles south of here. Maybe we should call it the Sea of Ying's Tub.”

“Absolutely not!” she declared louder than she meant to. The Major guffawed before taking another sip from his cider.

“Nevertheless, Advisor, I'm glad you came up here to talk with me. I'm glad our little colony can, for tonight at least, celebrate a successful landing and happy settlement.”

“If you're right about us Major, about us being our own hope, then there will be many more nights of celebration ahead of us.”

“Let's just hope we have some decent moonshine by then,” Decatur replied.

“Wait- someone has already setup a distillery of some kind?”

Decatur eyed her, “If I know the Infantry – and even just frontier colonists in general – I can promise you one thing: someone is working on one, if it's not been made already.”

Oum sighed, supposing such things were inevitable. Though she did make a mental note that such a thing couldn't be allowed to get out of hand and to look into it later, “Then yes – let us toast to having a decent 'home brew' in a year's time.”

"Jamaica Couples" image found under a search for "Public Domain" images.  No original artist or organization was credited.  This image was hosted on Google Photos. I am not the original artist or owner of the image.

BREVITY SCIENCES BUILDING

July 1, 2186

Private Rogers busted into the front door loudly, “Holy shit, Landers! We found one!”

Rogers, who had become a good friend of Landers over the last year, ran to her with a print-out of a picture. She looked at him with a bit of wide-eyed mock-terror, unsure what he was so animated about, “Cool your jets, soldier. What did you find?”

“A worm! Or a carcass of one - it’s above ground and looks dead. Grayhawk found it while doing a run out to the drill site. I was riding onboard and spotted it out a ways in a clearing. Grayhawk flew us in low to peak at it,” he explained handing the picture to her.

“Oh my God!” she exclaimed as she looked at the image, “It’s in great condition! No open wounds, the body looks almost fully intact.” She reached out a hand to pat him on the shoulder, “Go get the Major - have him prep one of his dropships. I’ll go Advisor Oum to see if she’ll clear us an expedition out to it.”

Advisor Oum looked at the image with Brittany Landers standing over her shoulder, “It is in good condition, Ms. Landers. You want to go out there, else you wouldn’t even be here.”

“Yes ma’am,” Landers stated not trying to cover her excitement.

There was a part of Oum that didn’t want her to go but she couldn’t think of a legit reason not to other than perhaps an excessive expenditure of resources. Even that was a weak argument as a nascent but strong farming ecology had been started around Brevity colony. They had food stores to keep the colony well fed, even if they didn’t have emergency rations left over from the ship Brevity.

But the worms were a scientific curiosity and maybe something could be learned about the animals - anything - that might better prepare the colony of Brevity in case one ever got too close to go on a rampage.

Not that they had much to worry about on that front. Since the first sighting of the first worm after their initial landing, only one other worm had been seen and a few scant seismic readings from their survey pods. And even those couldn’t be verified as being worms; assumptions were just being made.

“Alright, Ms. Landers. If the Major clears it and a pilot doesn’t mind, then you can take a small team out there. How far away is this carcass?”

“About four miles. Just a tad east of the mining site,” Landers explained as she was half out the door.

Oum waved her on, “Very well. I want 12-hour updates sent to the listening tower and forwarded to my office.”

“Yes, Advisor! Thank you!” the woman shouted back as her figure disappeared outside.

DROPSHIP TWO

July 1, 2186

“Grayhawk” was the callsign for Flight Lieutenant Justin Bauder. He was just a year younger than Pharaoh and had been the one to take the high-altitude pictures of the carcass as he was returning from a delivery run with Private Rogers out to the iron and gold mining site.

The military combat transport-turned-cargo hauler and civilian shuttle landed thirty meters from the worm carcass. The light brown-gray skin was mottled with deep wrinkles, calluses, and comparatively tiny mandibles across its body - each of which were about the length of a man’s arm. Those mandibles now hung limply at its sides.

“Jesus, this thing reeks,” Private Ortega said as he stepped out of the side of the dropship. Landers was right behind him but didn’t add any additional commentary. Privates Ortega, Rogers, and Brown had come out as research site security along with one Corporal Shana Graack whom Landers hadn’t met before today.

Landers turned to help the rest of her research team pull the equipment free of the dropship: tents, remote survey gear, a miniature sized DNA analysis table, electronic microscopes, power freezers for organ storage, and appropriate food stuffs. The unloading process was fairly quick and Grayhawk dismounted from the cockpit of Dropship Two.

Landers approached the carcass - it was easily out of the ground by twenty-five or thirty meters. “Look at the condition it’s in,” she mused aloud.

Rogers nodded at her, “Told you it was in good shape.”

“You were certainly right,” she replied as they closed on the body. She snapped on a pair of gloves and reached a hand out to touch one of the mandibles. Along the arm-length protrusion was hundreds or thousands of little fuzzy feelers. One of Landers’ associates came up to inspect the mandible with her, Rogers stepped back a bit to give them room.

As the two scientists were drooling over the dead body, Rogers looked up to take in how tall the worm was even on its side. The monster was easily three or four times the thickness of human’s height. And every couple of feet was another fuzzy mandible.

“Hoooooly hell at the claws on this thing,” Ortega shouted.

“Don’t dick around, private,” the corporal shouted at him. This caught Rogers’ attention and he started marching to the front of the worm.

“Seriously! This scares me to death,” Ortega continued.

Rogers made it around one of the splayed-out jaws on the worm’s front. Stretching out from its mouth was one of the massive tentacles he had seen scooping up the cows like nothing a year and half ago. The long tentacle actually had a trio of razor-sharp bone-white claws. Each claw was easily a foot longer than a man was thick.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Rogers added.

Graack looked at him, “Yea you were with Landers when you saw the first one, right?”

“Sure was. These claws were popping cows into its mouth like popcorn on show night. The fifty did next to nothing against its thick hide,” he confirmed, referring to the .50-caliber automatic weapon mounted on their LAVs.

“Hey Ortega, get a picture,” Brown said as he stepped up close to the claw and hoisted it over his shoulder with some serious effort, despite the PAF.

“Private!” Graack barked, “Stop. This thing might have some nervous reaction you’ll trigger and pull you inside and we wouldn’t be able to do shit about it.”

“Oh I think this one is well and good expired,” Landers said coming up behind the Infantry. She hooked an arm inside Rogers’ crooked elbow and guided him over to Brown. “Go ahead, Ortega - take your picture.”

Brown smiled as he took off his helmet, “See Corporal? The doc says it’s perfectly safe.”

Graack rolled her eyes and threw up her non-rifle-holding hand in surrender, “When you all end up worm food I’m filing the report under ‘mass suicide.’”

About that time Grayhawk walked up, having removed his helmet and added to the conversation, “Get everyone in. I’ll setup my mission recorder to photo us all.”

The term “photo” wasn’t really true anymore as a photosensitive sensor wasn’t the only thing capturing imaging data. A more complex capture device was required than the 21st century digital cameras and phones. The Flight Lieutenant setup a portable directional holo-imager. After setting a 5-second timer and gathering the scientific team of a half-dozen together the group posed for the picture - Brown with the clawed tentacle over his shoulder, Landers hooked into Rogers’ arm, and one of the scientists holding another clawed tentacle seductively while making a kissy face at the hideous thing.

NILE SYSTEM

July 1, 2186

Edge of Nile solar system

It emerged from hyperspace quieter than a mouse in an empty cathedral. The fact that anyone might have seen the hyperspace signature was highly unlikely unless they were looking right at the egress point. Which was possible, yet was irrelevant.

Once an analysis of the system was complete the cold calculating brain’s logic plotted a parabolic course that would intercept it with the second planet in the system. This was the sole habitable world for humans. The predictable and stable orbit around the star made it easy to perfectly predict a flight plan to come into the atmosphere.

As it closed on the distance to the planet, knowing the journey would take several days, it began scanning the rest of the system for any other signs of human habitation - space stations, ships, orbital relays - anything at all that may have indicated how far out from the second planet the humans had reached.

BREVITY LISTENING TOWER

July 4, 2186

Specialist Hope Irizarri sat at her station listening to the radio chatter of the mining team out digging up the iron and gold from Nile’s ground. She didn’t have much else to occupy her attention given that there was no HyperCOM out here at the ass-end of human space.

Can this even be called human space? We have no fleet, no communications; this place isn’t much more than a spit of defiance in the face of the Kamikaze. Her thoughts were somewhat more dismal than those of her compatriots. But it's a job. Better than whoring like my old friends back on Earth.

One of the civilian operators had a crush on her and flirted with her constantly. Sometimes she appreciated the attention, but some days it was just too much. Today was one of the days it was starting to wear on her as hour six of watching orbital scan reports scrolled by with nothing more than recording a thunderstorm in Nile’s northern hemisphere several hundred kilometers east.

The spunky civvie was saying something else to her just as an alert on her screen went off. Orbital Four had identified a high-speed ballistic object entering the outer atmosphere of Nile. At first Hope had thought it was just another tiny asteroid that was entering the thick atmosphere. She re-checked its entry vector however and saw that it had made a course correction.

Hope double-checked its inbound trajectory and cross-referenced the other orbitals. Orbital Three had caught it coming in for planet-fall and had actually captured its first course correction as it moved around Nile’s moon. O-Three didn’t have a visual before it started lighting up from entering the atmosphere, however. She immediately called up Major Decatur.

Decatur would’ve killed to have something to do beside decide how he was going to distribute training schedules for his troops. Endless, mind-numbing patrols and civilian interaction exercises were wearing him down. And his Infantry. They were killers - trained to hunt down the enemy and blow them into stardust. Not decide for whom and for what their modular heavy vehicles were to be used.

Farming or earth-moving today? Decatur groaned equally at the thought and his personal radio as it beeped for his attention.

“Decatur, go ahead,” he called.

“Major, Listening Tower - we’ve got one unknown bogey entering atmosphere. It’s hot and confirmed on course corrections; it’s not a natural object - definitely under power,” Irizarri spoke.

Decatur’s blood ran cold. This was classic Kamikaze tactics: send in one ballistic and suicidal starfighter first to see if the human colony on a world could be exterminated. If not, then greater forces would arrive to finish the job. Usually in the form of a cruiser with orbit-to-ground weapons.

“Set all hands under alert condition one, sound the air raid and get the Advisor up to the Listening Tower,” he called into his radio as he was already making for the door out of his office.

He switched over to the pilot-scramble frequency, “Pharaoh and Nutsbe, mount weapons racks and scramble your birds. Tower is tracking an unknown hostile coming in atmosphere under power and at speed. How copy?”

“Loudly. Gearing up,” Pharaoh replied.

“Gearing up, Actual,” the second pilot - Marshall "Nutsbe" Chaffin - replied right after.

Graack - along with the rest of the Infantrymen that had escorted the scientists out to the worm carcass - had given up on wearing her Frame. It was too hot and far too boring to be in their gear constantly. Besides there wasn’t any aggressive animals except the tri-jaws when they got into heat. The Infantrymen did, however, still keep their rifles slung over their shoulders.

Graack became distantly aware of a distant rumble. It started to increase in volume steadily but rapidly. She realized it was coming from Brevity. Turning to look in that direction she could barely make out the distant figures of two dropships hauling serious ass almost directly to them.

She turned to shout for her dropship’s pilot, “Grayhawk! Two of our birds are coming in, hella-fast!”

The younger man ran past her toward his ship. As he clambered up the steps into the cockpit Graack was right behind him. Making contact with the seat, the pair of other dropships blew past them easily approaching the speed of sound for Nile’s atmosphere. Despite the incredibly high speed they moved Graack was able to recognize the under-wing weapons mounts had been racked.

“Dropship Two to Dropship One - what’s going on, boss? Over,” Bauder called into his headset. He flipped on the cockpit audio for Graack.

“Hot unknown entering the atmosphere under power, Two. Clear the channel and standby for combat orders. Over and out,” Pharoah stated in a clipped professional voice.

Graack bounded back down the steps into the troop bay and out the side hatch. She called out to her team, “Infantry! Get your asses in your Frames! Possible imminent hostile contact entering the atmosphere!” The other three Infantrymen began moving to their collapsed Frames to activate them.

Landers ran up just as Graack was getting her own Frame online and primed, “What’s going on? Hostile contacts, you said? Kamikaze?”

“Don’t know what kind of hostile contact, just that our two dropships at Brevity were loaded for combat,” Graack replied.

“Are we evacuating or staying here?”

Graack shrugged, such that she could in the PAF, “I haven’t received orders to evac you yet but that’s a likely possibility.”

Decatur listened to the radio chatter and kept an eye on the LIDAR screens that were tracking his two dropships and the unknown contact. He kept one ear of the headphones on. Advisor Oum was to his left, ever shadowed by Ilarion Chuvnik, and doing the same.

“I’ve got good track on it,” Pharaoh called into the comm.

“Same. It should be breaking through that cloud cover any second,” Nutsbe replied.

Half a minute of silence passed. It was one of those moments where whatever happened next was fully in the hands of his pilots - all Decatur could do was pray and hope for the best.

“Visual! Boy that bastard is coming in hot. Too hot,” Pharaoh commented.

“Pharaoh, Actual. What’s happening?” Decatur called.

“The contact isn’t braking at all, it’s almost completely a fireball; lots of smoke, can’t make it out clearly…” her voice strained at the end.

“I’ve got solid lock on air-to-air,” Pharaoh’s dropship copilot called.

“Confirming lock as well,” Nutsbe’s copilot added.

“Hold fire - she’s tumbling. Repeat: contact is out of control, it’s spinning end over end,” Pharaoh said. “It’s leveling out now and altering course… slowing down.”

Advisor Oum looked at Decatur, "Out of control and now slowing down?  That's not Kamikaze tactics, is it?"

"Not that I've ever heard of," he confirmed. It was more typical for the leading suicide fighter to stay high-speed to quickly eliminate human aircraft. It was additionally curious that the unknown contact hadn't made any form of action to intercept the dropships.

“Actual, Nutsbe. We have solid lock on enemy contact, it looks like the smoke is clearing,” the second dropship pilot said.

“Actual, I think… I think this is a human ship. We sure this isn’t one of our orbitals that lost control of itself?” Pharaoh asked over the radio.

Decatur looked at Specialist Irizarri for an answer, “Negative, sir. All orbitals are still in atmosphere and providing good tracking. And O-Three caught it coming around the dark side of the moon.”

Decatur nodded, “Pharoah, Actual. Confirmed not one of our orbitals; they’re all still operational.”

“Copy that, Actual. Update on course, this thing looks like it’s going to crash into the sea,” Pharaoh replied.

“Damn. We don’t have any water vessels. How will we save it?” Decatur mused aloud, not really meaning it to be answered right away.

The Advisor obliged him anyway, “We need to track it all the way in, Major. If we have a good lock on its crash site we might be able to build vessels to get out to it later.”

“We don’t have much of a choice,” Decatur said, then reactivated his mic to his pilots, “Dropship flight, Actual. New mission: follow the object all the way to its splashdown. Don’t let it out of your sight, we need good track for future recovery.”

“Copy, Actual. Moving to full-monitor mission,” Pharaoh replied.

“Dropship Three copies on monitoring,” Nutsbe also confirmed.

Pharaoh watched the object finally make its violent splash into the nearest ocean. She brought her dropship in low and slow to get a good view of it. Her co-pilot, the former captain of the Brevity, Aegeus, was craning his neck as well to see what remained after the big splash and resulting steam from the hot object cleared.

To her amazement the… probe or whatever it was, actually had deployed a payload of crash-bags that looked to double as floaters. The big orange spheres bobbed and buoyed as a convenient cradle for a large silver/gray cylinder. It was textured and clearly of a human design.

“Actual, Pharaoh. We have solid lock on the object. Looks like some kind of probe sent from Earth. It’s definitely man-made, no questions about it,” she stated.

“Pharaoh, Actual. Sounds great. You have a visual?”

“Five-by-five, Actual. She’s deployed crash bags and is floating on the surface. I might be able to hook her with a cargo claw if we can get one fitted on my bird,” she said over the radio.

“Solid copy, Pharaoh. Have Nutsbe stay near the object so we can track it and get you back out there ASAP,” Decatur said.

Just as Pharaoh was about to acknowledge his orders something caught her eye in the water. It was a series of pale blue lights - six in a roughly hexagonal pattern - that were rising up beneath the probe. “Nutsbe pull up!” she called into the comm. As her dropship gained in altitude a large “mouth” splashed up out of the water.

She wasn’t sure what the hell to call it, but the thing coming out of the water had a roughly turtle-like look to it. The thing came up just enough that the lights that she assumed were its eyes didn’t quite break the water’s surface. It closed its mouth around the probe before again submerging beneath the inky deep blue waves.

“Uuuuhhh… Actual, we’ve got a problem…” Pharaoh said into her mic.

BREVITY MILITARY HQ

July 4, 2186

"So, what you're saying, Flight Lieutenant, is that a whale came up out of the water and ate our probe? Likely the only only probe we're ever to receive from Earth?" Advisor Ying Oum with unveiled annoyance.

"I guess that's what you'd call it, ma'am. It was huge - maybe the size of the extinct Humpback whales on Earth," she explained.

Oum shook her head in frustration and turned away from the pilot to look out the small window the briefing room had. Decatur leaned back in his chair, rubbing his hand across his mouth and chin, "Well we don't really have any options about it. It was completely out of our control. It crashed down into the water and the local, massive, wild life ate it."

Oum turned to him, "Is that a joke? Is any of this funny?"

"Maybe in an ironic sense, it is, Advisor. Here we are, floundering on this new world and our one shred of a piece of hope from Earth is cast away into the deep sea. It survives all the rigors of a multi-year space journey just to be eaten by a water-based life form. It is a bit funny," Decatur replied, now rubbing his forehead.

Oum watched the recorded video feed from Pharaoh's dropship camera for a few seconds more, "I don't want this made public yet. The combination of the loss of such a probe and the fact that very aggressive large water animals exist could hamper our efforts to exploit the sea as a viable resource."

Decatur frowned and his lips cut sideways in a bit of disapproval, "What do we tell them, then?"

"Nothing," Oum stated flatly.

"That's not going to work," Pharaoh cut in, "There were the civvies out at that worm carcass - they already heard what happened over the radio. They think it's the Kamikaze. And the civilians will talk, Advisor. We're going to have a lot of upset people not not a lot of time if we don't explain this to them."

"The morale implications could be worse if we tell them-"

"'Could be worse?!' Are you listening to yourself? This kind of lying is what lead to the Final War on Earth!" Pharaoh shouted, standing fro the seat she was in.

"Stow the attitude, Lieutenant!" Decatur said in a raised voice.

Oum walked across the room to confront the pilot, "You will do I say."

"The hell I will! Major-"

"Flight Lieutenant, you're dismissed," Decatur said pointing to the door, now standing as well. The woman came to quick attention and popped off a rapid salute and damn-near stomped out of the briefing room.

Oum turned to Decatur, "You need to reign in your people, Major."

"I'll talk with Pharaoh - but she is right. We can't lie to these people. As much as we don't like it this is something that isn't our fault. We have no sea vehicles and no way of tracking that... whale or fish, whatever it was. So it we're lucky the thing will expel the probe - one way or other," Decatur said as he sat back down.

Oum breathed heavily through her nose in frustration, "I suppose you're right - we can't make the mistakes of our forefathers on Earth. In Old China they had a saying - 'wàn shì kāi tóu nán.' It means 'All things are difficult before they are easy.'"

"And a word spoken can never be taken back," Decatur smiled crookedly.

Oum eyed him, "I wasn't aware you knew Old China's teachings."

Decatur shrugged as he turned off the looping video of Pharaoh's dropship cam, "I've read a little philosophy. To prevent repeating the mistakes of the past, we have to understand it." Decatur then raised his tablet from the small desk at the front of the briefing room, "Let's decide how best to tell our people what happened."

BREVITY COLONY SQUARE

July 5, 2186

Ying Oum stood at the podium at the front of the colony's central gathering place. The large grass field had some small benches and now well-worn foot paths, but the colony itself didn't have a large surplus of chairs to lay out in rows like on Earth or other larger, more established colonies. Instead the people gathered were mostly standing or sitting on the grass itself. The podium Oum had used, which was the simple wooden one made from local trees that she'd always used for public addresses, was only raised up from the ground by a small stair platform that allowed a single speaker. The colony square had a slight incline so the audience could all easily see her and she them.

About half of the colony's total population, all those not working at the mine or otherwise critical for the colony's survival, had been invited. She decided not to spend any more time waiting as the crowd of more than 600 stirred in impatience, talking all the while.

"Good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming to listen to this important news," she began. As I'm sure many of you witnessed or heard by now, there was a bit of commotion yesterday. We detected a probe that entered our atmosphere. Our military forces quickly and expertly followed the then-unknown object to it's landing in the nearby sea. We determined it was a probe sent from Earth, we assume, one year after we left - well before we actually arrived here at Nile.

"Despite our tracking efforts, before a recovery could be made, a large unknown sea creature swallowed the probe whole. We have since lost track of it. I tell you this, not so that you'll despair in the loss of this priceless gift from home - so that you'll rejoice in knowing that Earth hasn't forgotten us. And in that regard, we must not forget Earth," she paused for a moment. "For the time being, until our biologists can make a better determination of what other life lives in the sea, we ask that you don't take any expeditions there. In time, we are looking to establish a fishing village. For now, that is on hold for everyone's safety. I'm now open to having questions asked."

A man near the front of the crowd stood up from his place on the grass. "Advisa," he called for attention, his African accented English was thick, "How do we know it was from Eart'?"

"The pilots who pursued the probe had cameras aboard the dropships; video recordings show that the probe landed intact on the surface of the water while staying afloat with large orange flotation devices. Along its side was the flag of Earth," Oum explained.

The man had a look of dismay, "Is dere no hope to recover dis?"

Oum drew her lips into a line before answering, "For the time being, all we can do is hope. That hope being that the digestive system of this particular animal is not particularly potent and that it will, eventually..." she looked at Decatur, "Expel the probe." Oum couldn't keep the slightly crooked smirk from her face as she used the man's own word from the day before.

She turned back to the man asking the question, "Perhaps then, if the probe is still active, it will send out a transmission we can detect."

Another woman a ways away from the first questioner stood, "Do we have any idea if the Kamikaze know about us?"

Oum shook her head, "We have no reason to suspect that our location has been discovered."

"'But we don't know' is what you're saying," she pressed.

Oum hesitantly nodded, "I'm saying we don't have a way of knowing - therefore, we don't have a reason to suspect we have been discovered."

"But this probe might have told us that," the woman's voice was starting to rise.

"Maybe. It might have told us that the Kamikaze have finally been defeated, and Earth is coming to re-establish contact with us. We simply have no way of knowing," Oum was forcing herself to remain calm in what she could see was the budding of panic from this woman.

"We need to do something. You need to do something! We have to know!"

The first questioner turned to the woman and began to shout, "Now you calm down! Quick talkin' dis crazy talk!"

"I will not! We could be staring death in the face right now!"

"And what will you do? Move the whole colony?!"

"Yes! Yes - we should move," the woman was starting to fray emotionally at suddenly being questioned.

"Wit' what?! And where to?! The Kamikaze have ships, dey will see us from orbit anywhere we go!"

By this point Decatur had already signaled two of his Infantry to move in on the man while he and another moved toward the woman. Oum couldn't hear him from her location on the podium, but she knew she had to regain control of the audience. She began talking again to refocus their attention on her, "As I said, for everyone's safety, we are keeping  the fishing village on hold. But we will begin surveying the surrounding sea as quick and safely as possible. I know we have a lot of talent and skill among you, those who worked fisheries back on Earth or other colonies - and we want to see you put those skills to use for yourself and the colony."

Now the man and woman had both sat back down, having been subdued. Oum spoke once again as Decatur returned to standing beside the podium, "Were there additional questions?"

BREVITY ADMINISTRATION BUILDING

Former Landing Zone command building

July 5, 2186

"There was terrible," Oum said.

"You haven't made many public speeches, then," Decatur replied.

"Excuse me? I've made dozens all across the PAC - I never had anyone question me in the way that woman had," she rebuked.

"Well I suspect those speeches were from a tired and complacent people as a result of the sheer exhaustion as a result of the Economica Collapse. They probably listened just enough, applauded and cheered just enough to get through the speech and return to whatever meager lives they had. But these people," Decatur said opening his hand toward the window, "These people are volunteer settlers. They're very brave and very independent. Sometimes that independence can be... boisterous."

Oum shook her head, frustrated that - despite the culture gap between the AWDI and PAC - some of the colonists seemed angry at her even though they were all working together. "This is why I was hesitant to tell them about the probe; I didn't want this very thing to happen. I didn't want there to be malicious whispers and dissension being caused."

Decatur put his hand on her shoulder as she leaned on the desk, "I know. It's never easy. But as someone who is a descendant of people whom had their leaders time and time again lied to them, I understand that woman's concern - misplaced though it may be."

"The PAC doesn't question our leadership. The Final War and the Economica Collapse proved that we needed to be more honest with our people, to better guide them. And the people knew we were working to do just that."

"Which is why you were chosen for this mission, Ying. You are honest and dedicated, you just have to prove it to them. To be frank we've had it pretty easy. No major diseases, no plagues, no riots - you haven't yet been tested and this was your first one. I think you passed, it'll just take time to have word spread," Decatur removed his hand and stepped back.

She turned, "I don't think I understood the challenge before me when I so confidently told Earth Command I was ready for this and wouldn't fail."

Decatur shook his head, "We rarely are. But don't count yourself out. I think, for the most part, you're doing really well."

Oum turned to look at him, "Only for the most part?"

Decatur smiled, "There haven't been food riots, yet. That's a good sign."

"Barren planet" image originally hosted on Beyond Earthly Skies at http://beyondearthlyskies.blogspot.com/   I am not the original artist nor do I own the image showed. The image used after being located under the "Public Domain" search filter.

BREVITY ADMINISTRATION BUILDING

Former Landing Zone command building

July 17, 2186

“As you can see, Advisor, the effort and diversion of equipment to construct a road leading to the hydro-electric plant along the Green River will make a more efficient energy delivery system,” said Esteban Tarifa, the lead civil engineer of the colony. “Once the road is laid down, power lines can easily be added using the metals we’ve been exhuming from the mine.”

“Why not more solar panels to power our habs?” Oum asked.

“Because we’re running very low on them, ma’am. Lower than I’d like to admit, really. I would prefer to keep the ones we have for replacements if our current panels we’re using get damaged. At this point we haven’t found any materials we can use to manufacture new panels. We may never, and having and endless supply of power - if not as efficient a supply - from the hydro-electric would reduce our dependency on the panels. Meaning they’ll wear out more slowly,” Tarifa explained.

The man had proven him as competent and an effective leader here on Nile. Oum knew he wasn’t exactly favored by the Brazilian Hegemony on Earth and had her concerns about his character when setting out on this expedition. Despite this, the last two years had proven he operated better when not under the thumb of whatever rulers he had back on Earth. While Oum made demands of him she had given him more unilateral authority in civil engineering matters than the Hegemony had. As such, he had excelled. Indeed the man had found his calling, she felt.

At least there haven’t been food riots, said the voice of Decatur in her mind. She had to admit that was largely due to the efficiency and guidance of Tarifa’s planning for farms, ranches, processing stations, power plants, and housing fabrications.

“Very well, Esteban. Draw up some more specific plans on how you’d like to route the road from the plant. I do want to be careful about where we place it. I don’t want to have us plant a road down right in the middle of some place where the local wildlife can destroy it and we sink more resources into maintaining the road than utilizing it,” she added.

“I agree. That’s why I was hoping to use one of the dropships to make survey flights between here and the hydro plant,” he explained.

“I see. That’s entirely the major’s decision, but I’ll set up a meeting with him,” she said then reconsidered. You don’t have to be the middle-man for everything. “Unless you’d just like to seek him out yourself and let me know what you two decide.”

“Um,” he seemed a little caught off guard by the offer, “Certainly, Advisor. I can do that.”

“Very good then. There was another-” Oum started to say when the comm on her desk began beeping with a red light. It was an emergency priority alert from the listening tower.

She tapped it on, “Oum here.”

“Advisor, we’ve got incoming communications from deep space, coming out near the hyperspace point. It’s an automated signal citing it’s from Earth Command, requesting a response,” said the person at the other end.

“I’m on my way, get Major Decatur,” she said and ended the call. “I’m afraid the road project will have to wait for a little bit, Esteban. I’ll get back with you as soon as I can.”

“Of course! What’s a message from Earth mean, ma’am?” he inquired.

“I’ve got no idea, though I’m sure we’ll know soon,” she said.

BREVITY LISTENING TOWER

July 17, 2186

“What’s the word, Specialist?” Oum heard Decatur ask as she cleared the last steps into the control room.

“It’s an automated repeating signal. It’s awaiting confirmation of receipt and is sending valid clearance codes, sir,” Hope Irizarri explained.

Decatur saw Oum enter and nodded at her, “Advisor.”

“Do we know anything else?” Oum asked as she nodded at Decatur.

“Yes, ma’am. The signal contains a schematic detailing the vessel. It’s identified as a Charon-XLS rocket, meaning ‘extended length supply.’ If the transmission is to be believed,” she added.

“Any reason to think it’s not legitimate?” Oum asked.

“No ma’am. The signal is on expected Earth Command frequencies. It has a text message as well stating it’s addressed to ‘Nile-colony command staff or colonial government’ adding that it’s an automated re-supply vessel from Earth Command,” Irizarri stated.

Decatur looked questioningly at Oum, “Might as well send a response.”

“You’re not concerned about the Kamikaze adapting new strategies - that this could be some kind of trick?” Oum asked him.

“It could be. But just a couple weeks ago we had a probe from Earth - maybe it was meant to establish itself as a homing beacon for this ship. Or maybe it carried a message telling us to expect this one. With how paranoid Earth Command is then they might send in this ship with a coded set of commands to expect a transmission from us. If it doesn’t receive one then maybe it hypers out back to Earth or another colony. Our window for operation here could be very tight, Advisor,” Decatur suggested.

“Indeed. If we’re just getting this message now then this vessel is probably 6 days away, assuming it hypered in at the same spot Brevity did. At light speed we’re talking a few hours - so sending a signal right now we’d be waiting the better part of a day to hear any reply from it,” she said.

“Very true. I say we do it. This doesn’t fit with the Kamikaze at prior tactics at all. They prefer to come in on a stealth trajectory and surprise attack undefended colonies using as few resources as possible. But they always attack, that’s been their M.O. for decades,” Decatur said.

“Very well then. I suppose being cautious to the point of paralysis is just as dangerous as acting reckless,” Oum agreed. She turned to Specialist Irizarri, “Send a reply, Specialist.” Decatur nodded at her.

“Yes, ma’am. Standard acknowledgment signal sent. It’ll be quite a number of hours before we hear a response. I’ll alert you you immediately as soon as we hear more,” Irizarri stated.

“Thank you. In the mean time,” Oum said turning back to Decatur, “Civil Engineer Tarifa would like to discuss using a dropship.”

BREVITY ADMINISTRATION BUILDING

Former Landing Zone command building

July 17, 2186

It was late evening now. Oum’s comm beeped at her again, the red light flashing. She pressed the acceptance key, “Oum here.”

“Listening Tower ma’am, Specialist Irizarri here. We have a reply from the incoming ship. It’s got a data dump that it sent, including a couple video files addressed to you or the governing body. It also stated that it’s set a course to enter orbit and will arrive in approximately 5 days and 19 hours.”

“Very good, Specialist. Thank you. Can you save the video files to the network so I can access them?” Oum asked.

“Yes ma’am, give it about three minutes and they’ll be ready for you,” Irizarri said.

“Excellent, I’ll contact Major Decatur - no need for you to,” Oum added.

“Understood ma’am. I’ll keep you apprised of the situation,” Irizarri said before ending the communication.

Oum called Decatur and asked him to come over. Ilarion was the ever-present shadow, of course. Oum wasn’t... dissatisfied with him but she had started to see his presence as less necessary. Indeed she’d come to trust Major Scott Decatur and his Infantry implicitly. And the colony was, as a general term, in good spirits despite the minor incident at her public address after the Earth probe.

Decatur arrived and she pulled up the first video file which wasn’t encrypted. The image appeared and it was Admiral Bron, of the Allied Western Defense Initiative’s space navy. He was in his full dress uniform and he spoke in good spirits, “Greetings from Earth to our brothers and sisters on Nile. I sincerely hope this message and gift finds you in good health. Earth hopes that Nile is prospering and as a show of that hope we are sending a supply vessel with food, supplies, and parts. We have no way of knowing what you’ll need or how much of it - so we tried to anticipate the harder-to-come-by items such as spare parts for machinery or replacement parts for computers. Given Nile’s ecosystem we don’t believe you’ll have found it difficult to grow your own food but we included that as well. We also have a data dump of news from around Earth and the other colonies.”

Oum smiled at this and looked at Decatur, her spirits greatly lifted. The Major offered a smile as well as he nodded. Even Ilarion offered a smirk.

“This vessel is a one-way courier for you. Typically we have our supply ships run both directions, so they be reused. Given the necessity of the secrecy for our mission this specific vessel will crash itself into the Nile star once the cargo has been unloaded to the colony. The basic process for this is as follows: the vessel will enter orbit and send self-piloted landers loaded with supplies. You’ll call these down from the rocket at your discretion. Once the last one is unloaded the ship will then begin its self-destruct mission and leave orbit,” Bron continued. “There is a second message stored as well which is classified Top Secret under the Earth Command security protocol. I advise opening it in private but the decision is yours. Earth Command isn’t giving an order on that particular topic.

“Good fortune from Earth. And God speed to you one and all. Admiral Bron on behalf of Earth Command, over and out.” The video showed the Earth Command emblem and ended.

“Always good to get gifts from home,” Decatur couldn’t hide his smile.

“Very true,” Oum added. “It’s a relief. But I’m sure there’s less-than-good news on the second file.”

“It wouldn’t be Top Secret for news on a victory parade. I’m afraid the war with the Kamikaze is going badly,” Decatur confessed.

“Let’s find out,” Oum said as she opened the file. It prompted for her secret clearance code which had been sent with her from Earth Command. It wasn’t written down anywhere or stored on a computer - it was completely recalled from her memory.

The code was accepted and the video file opened after a short delay for the decryption. Admiral Bron’s image reappeared. “Governing body of the Nile colony. This message is classified as Top Secret by Earth Command. However, since we can’t exercise any authority over you it is your prerogative to keep this message that way.”

The video continued, “Several months after the Brevity left Earth one of our long-range scouting missions came across a system which contained a habitable world. However, it had already been decimated by the Kamikaze. Further investigating found that a large space conflict had occurred between a Kamikaze fleet and another force. A force that was not human in origin. With this news we know there is at least one other intelligent species among the stars. Closer inspection seems to indicate that there is at least two other intelligent species. The wreckage we could recover suggests two very different styles of design practice for these warships. And given the debris pattern we believe the two were allied against the Kamikaze in their confrontation.

“The habitable world did, at one time, have some kind of colony on it. It appeared there were three major settlement zones which were subsequently completely destroyed by the Kamikaze when the other alien space fleets were destroyed.

“This news comes as a mix of potential good and potential bad. Whether or not these aliens would be friendly towards us is unknown. They very well may be as equally xenophobic as the Kamikaze are. There’s no point to this information other than to let you know. Earth Command doesn’t like to keep its colonies too much in the dark except when it’s absolutely necessary. However, as it stands this is not known to the vast majority of other colonies. We wanted you to be aware.”

Bron continued, “As such we have an additional module on the Charon rocket we’ve sent to you. It contains a new prototype missile-defense system that will remain in orbit and is solar powered. You can call this module down to the surface with you if you prefer and use it as a land-based defense platform. If not, then before the Charon collides with the local star it will drop the defense platforms in a sustainable orbit. The choice is yours. God speed, Nile. Admiral Bron, over and out.”

Again the message the same as the other. Oum leaned back to look at her military commander. “Thoughts?”

“None good. Without more information I’d just as well take this as all bad news. Not one but two more alien species out there? Also fighting our enemy – which it sounds like they lost? I don’t think that bodes well for humanity,” Decatur said candidly.

“Indeed. So this new missile system: keep it in orbit or bring it down here?” she asked.

“Well...” Decatur paused, “I don’t know how to fight a space battle. Even so I don’t think one missile platform is going to do us any good. Hypothetically, if we were attacked by the Kamikaze - or another species in light of this news – they’d see the platform in orbit long before they arrived. A couple kinetic strikes from the deep solar system would blow it away before the missiles would do any appreciable damage. Hell, maybe before they could even return fire. I say bring it down here so we can deploy it how and where we want. And it gives us the option of maybe reverse-engineering those missiles to make more. We’ve found a lot of natural resources here and have a decent manufacturing hub: might be possible.”

“Seems like a sound idea to me,” Oum replied. She leaned back in her chair a bit, steepling her fingers, “Now what do we tell the people? Do we tell the people?”

Decatur put up his hands defensively, “I’m staying out of that one. If you want the Infantry on-hand to do crowd control I’ll order it. But if we should tell them now? I don’t know. I might wait a little bit. Let the supplies come down, get everyone in good spirits again before delivering the bad news – that way they’ll have their minds on something: news from home, maybe distant relatives sent mail, eating a favorite food we don’t have here, reading new stories, or playing new music: whatever.”

“Maybe you should be running this colony. Do you want to deliver this bad news as well?” Oum laughed, only half joking.

“A solid ‘no’ on both options,” Decatur said standing up. “You should tell the people we’re expecting resupply within the week. Carry on, business as usual in the mean time.”

Oum nodded, “Thank you, Major. I think I’ll take your advice.”

Image originally hosted on Pixabay at https://pixabay.com/en/science-fiction-starry-sky-space-1412096/ I am not the original artist nor do I own the image showed. The image used after being located under the Creative Commons license.

BREVITY COLONY SQUARE

July 23, 2186

All too recently this same podium had been set up in the colony’s central square. The foot paths were the same as they had been weeks before, the benches still looking nearly pristine, and the people present were gathered to listen to the colony’s leader update them on the situation. Whereas over 600 had gathered at her last called meeting this time it barely half that number. Many were occupied with their ongoing colony work and others still were assisting in with the new supply rocket which had come from Earth.

“Good morning and thank you again for attending, Brevity colony,” Oum started. “I know many of you have already picked up the data stores from our incoming probe, I know I’ve enjoyed listening to some of the new music coming out of Old China. This has been a refreshing and welcome gift from Earth.”

Oum paused briefly before continuing, “It has also brought some additional news from the central governments back home. Shortly after we left from Earth it came to the attention of AWDI and PAC commands that there are other alien intelligences in the galaxy, not the Kamikaze. Earth informed myself and Major Decatur in an encrypted transmission from our supply ship. We weren’t given much in regards to detail except that at least two additional non-human intelligences engaged in combat with the Kamikaze at some point in the past. In light of this, Earth has sent us some defensive weapon systems to help protect our colony here. Major Decatur and his people will be working to deploy it in the near future should the need arise. While this is surprising, perhaps even shocking news, there is no immediate threat to us. This information was discovered years ago several months after we left Earth. So far as we know these other intelligent species have not made contact with Earth or any colony.”

Oum paused again to let the crowd think on the information. Several groups were murmuring among the crowd, worry and concern evident in their inflections. “As always, I make myself available to you for any concerns you might have. We’re all in this together and we need every one of us feeling confident in our endeavors within the colony. Major Decatur has agreed to answer questions as well. Does anyone have any questions now? I’ll tell you anything I have knowledge of.”

Several people raised their hands among the crowd. Oum pointed to a woman near the front, “Yes, ma’am, you in the green shirt?”

“Did Earth Command ask you to keep this information secret from us?” she asked.

“They advised that we handle the information dissemination as we saw fit. The Major and I didn’t want there to be secrets among us, hence why we’re telling you now,” Oum replied.

She added, “Will you make this data file available to the public?”

Oum nodded, “Before coming out this morning I had it copied to the colony’s public network share. It is available for everyone to view at their discretion.”

The woman sat down and Oum invited another man to speak, “What kind of weapon system?”

Oum motioned to Decatur who stepped up to the podium, “It’s an automated defensive missile system. Coordinated with our satellites we can use it to shoot down any hostile craft that enters the colony’s airspace up to about 2,500 kilometers.”

Another man stood, not waiting to be called on, “Are we inviting the Kamikaze to attack us? I mean, are we giving them reason to target this colony?” A ripple of anxious concerned voices rolled through the group.

Decatur shook his head, “No, we are not. We don’t have a HyperCOM here so the quantum entanglement method that the Kamikaze has used to track other colonies down is still not a factor. Our orbital satellites have not registered any strange activity within the Nile system. We are as safe as we’ve ever been, now perhaps more so.”

“Well what about these other aliens? Do we know if they’re coming to find us? Was it in a nearby star system?” the first man asked, now on the track of seeking information about the aliens.

“I’m afraid Earth didn’t tell us what star system they found this wreckage in. As for the other species themselves: we have no idea. Anything we assume about them are just that: assumptions and speculation. Earth did not provide us with a technical readout of the alien vessels they found. Everything we know is on the network share and that’s all we’ve got I’m afraid,” Decatur replied to the man.

“Do we know if our new missiles are even going to work against these new aliens?” the man continued.

“No, we do not know,” Decatur said flatly. The man grumbled as he sat back down, shaking his head.

Oum returned to the podium to continue answering the next set of questions as best she could. Over the course of the next half-hour a couple dozen questions were answered – or at least acknowledged since no one on Brevity knew much about the new aliens. For all she knew Earth had made contact with them and there was a grand alliance against the Kamikaze. Thankfully, before long, the questions changed back over to ones she could answer. Namely those about the colony’s current business: the supplies from Earth, someone floated an idea about creating a preservation museum for items from Earth, a few questions were asked about the plans for the new hydro-electric damn, and the like.

After the majority of concerns were allayed she stepped down from the podium where the Major leaned in to whisper in her ear, “This turned into a real town hall. They took things better than I expected.”

“Indeed. I’m not sure we could’ve had better colonists. I’m starting to think our best people didn’t go the Fanrong or the other early colonies,” she commented with a wry smile.

“No kidding,” Decatur said resuming a more upright position.

As the crowd dispersed a younger man, a scientist by the name of Garner Moreau, if Oum recalled, approached her. Illarion stepped before her and held up a hand, though he did so rather gently and not in the forceful manner he would’ve when this colony was first founded. The man stopped, looking past Illarion as if his muscular bulk wasn’t there. He called out, “Madam Advisor. May I have a few minutes of your time?”

She nodded and approached the scientist. He was one of their dual-subject specialists, a biologist and geneticist. Decatur shadowed her out of curiosity. “Yes, please.”

“I’ve got a situation developing in my lab that I feel you should be made aware of,” he stated.

“Is someone in danger?” Decatur asked.

“No, there’s no physical threat posed to anyone. This is more of an ethical concern I felt I needed a higher authority for as it will, eventually, effect the whole colony one way or another,” Dr. Moreau stated.

Decatur nodded, “Then if this isn’t a security concern I’ll leave you to it, Advisor Oum. Doctor, if you’ll excuse me.” The Major disappeared behind Oum’s peripheral vision. Oum nodded at the scientist to continue.

“Over the last couple weeks we’ve made significant progress in combining Earth DNA with the DNA local here to Nile. They are remarkably similar - though Nile’s species are rather hearty as you’ve seen with our farming attempts,” Moreau explained. Oum nodded in acknowledgement. He continued, “We have successfully created a new species with our genetics work, a Earth-Nile hybrid species. With the ongoing concern over alien species – such as the Kamikaze and now these newer unknown extraterrestrials – I thought I should approach you about how to handle this situation.”

“You’re concerned that crossbreeding would be seen in a poor light?”

“Precisely. There’s the ethical dilemma of ‘just because we can does it mean we should’ that, as a scientist, I don’t consider often. We merely look at a problem and decide on if the potential outcomes are worth investing resources into investigating. The potential political fallout of such decisions are well within your realm authority. My most senior subordinate, Dr. Heying, is the one spearheading this research and is in favor of pushing forward with it. I, on the other hand, didn’t want to exceed my realm of authority given the potential fallout,” Moreau detailed.

“I see,” Oum mused. She had rightly suspected that Dr. Moreau didn’t want to deal with the fallout of his decision making. If things went badly he would prefer to avoid the wildfire of vitriol that would come this way. In such a small community as Brevity that would indeed be damaging. Oum, however, was the woman in charge. If she ok’d this course of action then it would be on her shoulders. She was fine with that, of course, the PAC had entrusted her to make these decisions. “I’ll need to consider it. Could you and Dr. Heying agree to meet with me at a later time? We can do so in my office or at the lab. I’d simply prefer to have you both with me to weigh the pros and cons of our options.”

Moreau didn’t seem to think Oum would say that. He nodded, “I uh, of course. Yes, that’s quite fine. I will talk with Dr. Heying and we will contact you as soon as possible.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Oum said. The two bid farewell and she hung around the colony square for a while more.

She had found herself more frequently, though still perhaps not often enough, occasionally speaking with several of the colonists. Sometimes the colonists made small talk and they discussed any number of ongoing topics: their children, health concerns, perhaps starting a local mercantile economy (instead of the largely communist planning and execution they’d done so far), interests in setting up civilian emergency services instead of the military one overseen by Major Decatur, and other topics. A couple times she’d been approached by a farmer about having elections for leadership. The colony was so small that Oum flatly refused. She’d been given full executive and legislative control of this mission. And until such time as she saw fit it would remain that way.

In the not-so-distant past Earth had referred to the totalitarian rule of smaller nations by a single authority as “tin pot dictators.” Oum wondered if she was one such dictator. She wasn’t too authoritarian, she didn’t believe. The people trusted her and came to her with concerns, as Dr. Moreau had. They heeded her council more often than not. There was no crime on Brevity, there had been no mobs or protests, morale was high, the community was tight-nit… Oum settled on the idea that if she was a dictator she was a benevolent one. She also believed it was merely out of necessity.

When would this necessity end? When the Kamikaze are defeated? When Brevity expands to a second and third city? It eventually will and you know it, her inner voice said to her.

Sighing outwardly as she returned to her office in the Administrative Building, Ying Oum knew that one day – sooner or later – she’d need to set forth a specific governing policy. Earth Command had given her overall authority of the colony mission. However, as that mission turned into a new nation in earnest, her authority had to be continually ratified by the people. Even Old China had riots and issues it needed to reign in from the local people, despite the then-Communist Party’s absolutist rule.

Ying looked at the time, it was only a little after 1300 hours. The day stretched out before her as her schedule looked filled into the early evening. Fortunately tomorrow’s afternoon schedule was fairly open. No doubt an hour or two would be taken up with Dr. Moreau’s concerns. That would be for tomorrow, however.

BREVITY COLONY OUTSKIRTS

July 23, 2186

Early nightfall

Anthony Drake, one of the colony’s ranchers and general handy-man, stepped out from the back door of his hab unit. His was slightly larger than those closer to the colony’s center since he was responsible for looking after the so-called “space cows” here on Nile. The scientific name of the local life was called “bovine niloticus” - the Nile Cow. The animals were remarkably similar to the cattle he had rustled on Earth in his past life. He lamented that his old family home had been more decorative than this one, yet he had little to complain about otherwise. His wife and two sons were with him – that’s all he needed: his family, his God, and his job as a rancher. The planet and climate didn’t bother him much as all that could be adapted to.

Walking barefoot into the remarkably Earth-like green grass he looked up at the alien night sky. Guess it’s not fair to call it alien since this home? Besides, I’m the alien here. The sky was clear, no clouds, and no moons this time.

One of the cows in pen bayed loudly. Then several more calls went out. Anthony didn’t register it at first, but when the staccato reached a higher frequency – one he’d associate with panic if this had been Earth – he decided to investigate. He grabbed a light from inside the back door and shouted to his wife in another room, “Honey I’m checking on the cows. They’re being whiny tonight.” She shouted some acknowledgement back to him.

Anthony stepped back outside and walked over to the cow pen. The animals were definitely upset about something. The wood-poled fences were enough to keep the creatures inside. About thirty of the animals were loose and running along the far fence in serious distress. He swung the flashlight around looking for the source of the problem but couldn’t see anything. Smelling anything through the festering cow dung was impossible so he had to rely on his sight.

“Damned cows, stop yellin’ for a minute,” he said snappily to the distressed animals. Not that they’d listen to him. He wanted to listen to see if anything was making any odd noises. The alien cattle could’ve been set off by the power grid in the barn snapping off, they seemed especially sensitive to electrical currents in the air.

About that moment he could hear a loud clattering – almost a snapping sound – coming from the barn. He hopped over the wooden fencing to get closer and look inside. A few meters from the unpainted brown open double-doors he stopped. Looking inside with the light something moved. He didn’t get a good look but it sure didn’t look like a cow. Anthony’s fight or flight instinct kicked in, and since he didn’t have a weapon, he turned to run.

Making it just a couple steps, his right leg was pulled out from under him. Landing harshly on his left side and left arm he lost his breath, having it forced from his body. As he was pulled across the slick night grass all he could hear was incessant clattering like the snapping of jaws.

Ashley Drake called her husband’s name again as she approached the back door, “Anthony!” No reply, as before. “I swear if you’re playing some stupid jump-scare trick on me again we’ll have cold rations for a week. I won’t cook a damned thing!” She hadn’t been too concerned, he’d only been gone twenty minutes or so. These cows were stubborn as a mule when they got “whiny,” as her husband called it.

Stepping outside now she shouted as best she could manage, “Anthony! Where are you?!”

Silence was her only reply. She began walking somewhat more cautiously toward the cow pen, that’s where he said he was going after all. In the distance she could barely make out a flickering light on the ground. Getting closer she realized it was the flashlight that her husband had pulled from the magnetic anchor at the back door. It wasn’t really flickering so much as the cows’ feet were crossing on front of the beam.

Approaching the fence and looking over she called again with more concern now, “Anthony! Where are you? Are you in there?” Still no reply.

In the moment Ashley realized that the cows were milling about aimlessly. The dots connected in her head, Wait a minute: didn’t Anthony say the cows were whining? Why are they calm now?

Her instincts kicked in and she turned to run back towards the hab, as fast as her legs could carry her. The denim of her jeans made a furious fipp noise as her legs propelled her forward with every step. Rushing in the back door and slapping the lock controls she moved to gun locker in her room.

Moving quickly she entered the code into the gun locker's panel. She pulled free the IAR-9 used by the Mobile Infantry – the Infantry that she was a part of.

"Milky Way above Shenandoah National Park. Photo by William McIntosh"

I do not own nor claim copyright of the image. It was found using an online search under the Public Domain license.