Insurrection

All posts tagged Insurrection

Insurrection: The Devil You Don’t

Posted by Ebonstorm on May 15, 2014

Posted in: Chapter, Insurrection, science fiction, Twilight Continuum. Tagged: Chuntra, Corvan, Essver Dreamsinger, Hegemony, Insurrection, Major Wilks, Master Wex, Nox, Precursor, Resurrection Frame, Sjurani. Leave a comment

Traveling Light approached from the dark side of the Earth-sized Precursor artifact, keeping the planet between them and the polar radiation jet of the Malcanari Singularity.

As the vessel penetrated the atmosphere, they could see the radiation plumes of the shield around the planet constantly lighting the sky with an eerie, flickering light, bright enough to see by. The ship touched down near the Corvan constructed facilities near to one of the tallest of the spires rising almost fifty miles into space from the surface of the planet. Like many of the Precursor artifacts, this one’s immediate purpose was not easily understood and the Corvan facilities appeared to have been here for many decades, maybe even centuries.

Their construction was a series of concentric circles with the oldest of the constructions nearest to the center. As they grew more sophisticated, more technology was shipped to the planet, along with building materials. The last ring of the construction appeared to be made from the very surface of the planet itself, scans indicating it having been molded in some as yet unknown fashion.

Major Wilks, Essver Dreamsinger and Master Wex left the ship, fully equipped with a variety of weapons and scientific equipment, most of which Essver carried. Master Wex carried his large force staff and a pulse emitter, wrapped around his left hand. Chuntra thought he should carry a ranged weapon, just in case and customized him something that would work with his fighting style. The projector was on the back of his hand but would not prevent him from using his force staff or any of its variations. She also configured it to be in sync with his shield allowing him to shoot through the shield without disrupting it.

Master Wex refused a full combat suit, instead opting for a molecular shield sprayed on and hardened to a diamond toughness. Powered by a micro-cell, it would resist all but the most powerful of weapons. Its biggest drawback was its closeness to the skin, so it transferred kinetic energy even if it couldn’t be penetrated.

Acrobatic or speed-based martial artists preferred this armor since their style of fighting prevented them from getting hit in most combat in the first place. His oxygen supply was provided by an internal converter common to the Subaki. With their highly efficient metabolisms, he would be able to survive for a week if he did nothing but meditate. In full-out combat, he would be sustained for twenty four to forty eight hours.

Essver wore a Sjurani war-suit, a large, clunky, heavily plated affair, equipped with layered force fields, molecular plating, and numerous weapon systems ranging form auto-cannons to plasma burst artillery. The Sjurani prided themselves on their peaceful nature today, but once were one of the most warlike people in the galaxy. The suit was painted with a number of garish runic symbols. Essver explained them as family sigils reputed to offer protection against harm.

The weapons of Sjurani warsuits speak volumes to their history of warfare. The suit added to his already considerable bulk and the dense-crys dome allowed him to see in all directions while still offering him diamond-hard protection he could see through. It augmented his already considerable strength but did nothing for his speed. He was as slow as Wex was fast.

His war-suit’s one concession to mobility were its jump jets, allowing it to make forty to sixty meter hops across the battlefield and still being capable of firing any number of its weapons during those hops. Essver added some Humani computer protocols to the suit, allowing him more advanced targeting and heads-up scientific displays. He never revealed any of these upgrades to his people since they thought their capacity for violence had no equals. Their cousins in Humani came close.

The Major stepped off of the ship, in the Resurrection Frame, and she was configured for stealth operations, in midnight black with only the tiniest of lights showing on her carapace. There were numerous lighting systems across her front and back, but they were currently dimmed to disguise their usefulness. Taking some time to reconfigure, she boasted several adaptations designed to help battle their suspected enemy, the Nox. Projectile weapons replaced all of her energy weapons. The resulting surplus of energy was redirected into armor plating and external force fields, increasing her damage resistance. She was also smaller and lighter than normal. She was rigged for speed, silence and extreme physical force.

The Major carried a psychic blade, a molecular weapon forged from psychically bound metals capable of being hundreds of times harder and sharper than any normal metal could be. The psychic metal was attuned to the major’s psychic profile and allowed him to manifest a field of force along the edge of the blade capable of penetrating almost any know armor worn in combat.

This blade was created by a group of psychics who trained with the Bel-ha for decades learning their secrets. Extremely rare weapons, most were found in the hands of elite soldiers due to their prohibitive cost. A psychic blade in the hands of a skilled user could not be stopped by any normal metals or barrier fields. Only the strongest fields used on large mechs or small starships were capable of stopping such a weapon. The major also carried a standard Humani military flex blade, more than adequate for fighting almost any foe in the galaxy.

The major tested his suit’s multiple spectrum visions, both using ambient light as well as the emitted radiations his suit was capable of projecting. The frame allowed him to see in a variety of spectra so it was just a matter of finding one that worked for his needs. His weapon load out was extensive, carrying a long range pulse rifle, two heavy pulse pistols, and a shoulder mounted rocket launcher. Their scans of the planet indicated there were over two hundred Nox scattered across the facility.

The three of them strode free from the ship and Biyu took off after a few seconds and was gone from sight. No one said goodbye, though they all were sure this might be the last time the seven of them were together.

Chuntra and Biyu had filled the command module allowing complete freedom of movement for the aquatic Corvan. Biyu moved to the center of the bridge and accepted the two dozen cable feeds which plugged into her body at the limbs, spine, and torso. As she was connected, the cables were tightened making her appear to be a spider in the center of a technological web. Chuntra slid between the cables without touching them, grateful for the freedom of movement outside of her exosuit. Teela would periodically appear and disappear from the command area as she coordinated readings between the main bridge and the engineering science station below decks.

The three sentients did not speak much during their first hours as each pursued their specialty. Chuntra monitored the communications channels used by the Nila picket ships, the command coded frequencies from the approaching fleet and ansible transmissions from Corva Prime. Each stream of data was organized via timestamp and priority to be analysed collectively. Several of the transmissions were encoded and could only be accessed via her diplomatic credentials. The greatest benefit was her ability to remain anonymous and not even having to report her intercept of the transmissions. Being a galactic diplomat had its privileges.

Biyu spent her time linked to the ship’s sensors augmented by Nehaikai’s rig attempting to understand the strange temporal readings in the surrounding space-time. There appeared to be pockets of information scattered inside the nebula, many pockets, tens of thousands of them spaced all over the nebula, with the greatest concentration of them near the event horizon of the rift star.

There was another concern that held her attention during her investigation. The star that was used to originally power the rift had an unusual axis which pointed into the nebula and as a result allowed the polar jet to be directed at the primary Precursor station. This meant the world would have been highly irradiated if the had not been the Precursor radiant shield technology in place.

Even so, they were forced to approach the planet from the dark side with the planetary shield between them and the polar jet. The polar jet would not be serious problem as long as the shield were active. Even so, it created a no fly region that she was sure to put into the ships systems to ensure, there was no chance they would accidentally fly into it. The ship’s shields would protect them but would draw upon power reserves depleting them at three times the normal speed.

Traveling Light’s AI, Teela, spent the next two hours trying to compensate for the temporal distortion created by the quantum fluctuation permeating the nebula. She tried numerous algorithms to compensate for what she assumed was a necessary variation to keep the rift unstable enough to travel through. She altered course and flew closer to the rift in order to analyze what maintained its stability. As they approached the rift star, she appeared on the bridge and cleared the viewport.

Re-configuring it for a telemetry overlay, she included all of the information being harvested including flight patterns, communication bands, distances, fleet times to intercept and all of the temporal pockets scattered throughout the nebula. Adding to this, she included the quantum fluctuation field, and its attendant densities. Panning the view backward, she included the Precursor crystal worlds. She began to rotate the image until she found a point of view she deemed important. Chuntra and Biyu looked on, trying to see what she was seeing. And then she stopped.

“I don’t see it,” Biyu began, drawing her attention away from her data surveys being fed to her via cable. She focused on the information stream coming from the visual display and accompanying data.

“Look harder.” Teela did not hint. She did not want to prejudice the conclusion.

Chuntra looking at the two sentient machines did not see how she could notice something the two of them found, but there was something disturbing about the patterns in the anomalies in relationship to what was once the star Malcanari. Then she suddenly turned pale and drew her tentacles close to herself. “They look like ships,” she blurted out, pointing to the monitor.

Biyu turned the image and projected the paths of the anomalies back toward the rift. She organized the movement and compared the placement in four dimensions taking into account the temporal phasing of the rift. Then she saw it too. There was an area of interface between the intruding universe and our universe spanning from the rift. The area of interface was filled with tens of thousands, maybe even a million of these pockets of probability. They were not quantum foam or fluctuations. They were ships.

“She right, they are ships.” Teela looked at the two of them and said again, “You’re still missing it.”

“What?”

“The quantum field is decaying as it’s being rerouted to broadcast the atavistic Corvan signal. This reroute will collapse the field. Not only will this subvert the entire Corvan stellar navy, turning each unshielded Corvan into an atavistic, crazed and supremely capable enemy-of-the-state but when that happens, these probabilities will become actualities. We will be surrounded by nearly a million of the ships that belong to creatures that exterminated the mightiest we beings we have ever known to exist, the Precursors. Two birds with one stone; disrupt the Hegemony and attack it while it struggles for control.”

“Oh shit.” Biyu whispered.

Teela coordinated another long distance scan to confirm her suspicions. “We have movement. The stasis field at the very edges is on the verge of collapsing.”

Chuntra opened a channel to the incoming shielded Hegemony fleet. “Now is your moment of decision, Fleet Command, you can pursue us or you can shoot an enemy fleet that was likely caused of the destruction of the Precursors, you can’t do both.”

A quick look between the three of them convinced them in only a second that Chuntra’s statement was premature. “Now he’ll have no choice,” Teela intoned. A nod was all it took for coordination.

And with those words, Travelling Light turned in toward the Malcanari Rift, a doorway between Universes where one of the fiercest species ever known to exist was pouring out of it, in untold millions and one of the fastest ships ever made flew right into the maw of this ancient enemy.

The fleet commander directed his ships to align for jump to the enemy fleet and to fire at will…

Excerpt – Insurrection: Chapter 1

Posted by Ebonstorm on June 3, 2013

Posted in: Chapter, Excerpt, Insurrection. Tagged: Biyu, ebonstorm, Exo-Frame, Insurrection, Lorrissa, Thaddeus Howze, Thomas Wilks, Travelling Light. 1 Comment

Excerpt – Insurrection: Chapter 1

a tale of the Twilight Continuum

The air felt cool as it flew by my face; thick, steamy, sluggish, with just the touch of the hinterlands of Lorrisi, a nearby forest tainting the air with its pungent spores. This would not have been the first time I died, so I don’t want you to be upset if I should expire during the course of this story. It is simply an occupational hazard in my line of work, hence my familiarity with the strange things you notice, just before you kick off this mortal coil.

As I was falling I noticed blood was streaming into my nose and mouth as I was turning and tumbling, cloying, choking blood from an injury to my head. I tried to orient myself but could not seem to focus. I was simply unable to right myself. “Secondary neural complex activating. Activating nanostructure repair. Impact in 3 seconds, harden structure, activate impact aerojel.”

I heard the sound of a burst of compressed air from my belt buckle, and a tiny capsule hurtled toward the ground at the nearly the speed of sound.

“Three, two, one.”

Fortunately a parked gravcar, and a cushion of flash aerojel protected me from the forty story fall with nothing more than a two dozen serious lacerations, a dozen contusions, two minimal hairline fractures on my right forearm which broke my fall nicely. Then the shock overwhelmed me and I lost consciousness.

“Major,” said the quiet voice that I heard speaking to me on my way toward the ground.

“How long?”

“It has been 58 seconds since the first shot was fired, and you have been unconscious for 36 seconds.”

“Damage assessment.”

“You have suffered 10% loss of neural material due to the round you have taken to your skull. I have begun the nanotech repair of your neural network. Unfortunately, this will take some time. Your skull and facial reconstruction are already underway. The skull will be repaired in two hours. Facial reconstruction, will take another two hours. The rest of your body has suffered relatively minor damage and you have only lost nineteen percent of your physical capacity.”

“And the good news?”

“Your fractures are already under repair and will be completed within the hour. The lacerations and contusion damage have been sealed and your blood loss has been minimal. The damage to your skull and your memory center will likely take days to regenerate completely without the Frame’s support. Until we are able to get back to the Frame, your memory backups will be inaccessible.”

Okay, now to the important things. “Who is trying to kill us?” I get up from the remnants of the aerojel, which is designed to break after five seconds, but leaves a bit of residue on everything. This gravcar is never going anywhere again. A body weighing six hundred pounds from forty stories leaves a mess. Sitting in the seat of the car with the hood crumpled around me, I see people starting to mill around the car.

“Major, we have company. Across the plaza, two humanoids, armed with weapons matching the Ajax 320 Pulse Rifle with select fire options.”

“Do I want to know how you determined their weapons at this distance?” I was a bit incredulous that the AI could possibly know the weapons of our assailants so early in our conflict.

“We were bombarded by infra-sound ranging technology common to the Ajax 320 Pulse rifle. Considering our proximity to Ajax and the cost of shipping goods in this system, it is the most likely candidate for small and medium firearms in this sector. Since the Ajax is used in thicker than Earth-normal atmospheres and uses infra-sound for that reason, it was a logical conclusion, bolstered by the fact that I am now correct.”

I get up from the wreckage and pick up a small piece of the grav-car, likely part of a gull-wing door and use it as a shield. Yes, it would be easier for me to dodge their attacks and normally I would, but my image told me I had neural damage, so until I am able to assess that damage, I have to “creatively utilize my surroundings” as my Sensei was so fond of saying.

“You are no longer human,” said the tiny soldier dressed in a Mil-spec interface armor. The armor was black and grey, a close-fitting mesh, covered with tiny overlapping scales like that of a fish. His face was calm and serene and he was far different than my first drill instructors decades ago in my first basic training.

“You have had the final stage of your Mil-spec enhancements to your skeleton, neural net and musculature. As formidable as you were in your previous lives, and you were chosen for that skill, you are again as children in your understanding of your capability. For the next two years, you will live here on Soldanis Four and relearn your bodies. For now you have all been set to one sixth of your actual full strength. This approximates your normal human strength before your transformation. You have been dialed down in order to understand just how different you are now.

He turned and pointed downrange at an obstacle course and picked up an Ajax Pulse Rifle. There were several steel targets approximating the shape of human beings at a range of three hundred meters. Each target was holding a wooden prop of a weapon of one sort or another. I could barely see them. And then he moved. He went from a standing start to a run that literally kicked up dust behind him. He turned down range and fired his pulse rifle six times, one for each target. After he made his shot he covered the distance in thirteen seconds and proceeded using a Vibron Flex Sword to strike each of his targets and slicing them in half. He did not slow down for any strike, made three per target, covered the distance between them in thirteen seconds and returned to us in the last thirteen seconds.

We double-timed it downrange and when we got to each target, three things were apparent. No target had a head. It was nowhere to be found. It had been blasted off by his initially volley of six rounds of pulse fire. Each steel statue has been sliced in three completely separate pieces. And he had done all of this while moving at over eighty kilometers an hour. I had never seen anything like this. Even the smallest mecha suits which offered similar capabilities weighed over five tons and still could not work with the precision Sensei did.

“You are all now capable of performing similar feats with the proper training. You will learn this here. This is a pass or fail course. If you fail, you have died and will not reach the final stage of your development, access to a Resurrection Frame. Of the one hundred of you gathered today, fifty of you will fail to complete this course and will be horribly maimed. You will be repaired to the best of our technology, dialed down to normal strength and fitness and returned to your former duties if possible. Most of the damage will be neurological so you will be reduced to a vegetable and unable to participate in even feeding yourself. You will spend the rest of your life in a military hospital. Fifteen of you will die due to a failure to inculcate the nano-machines and bio-mechanical adaptations required to complete the transformation. I am obligated to offer you one final time to return to the life you know. You will be dialed back to a human-level performance and allowed finish your military career. You will remain in the military for the rest of your life, as you will need care to maintain your prosthetics. Only with your graduation to the Frame will such care, no longer be necessary. The Frame will repair you, and will ultimately become your life.”

No one refused. Having spent decades on the battlefield as an infantryman, a light armored trooper or heavy armored trooper, none of us had ever seen anything like Sensei. Armed with the proper technology, a single soldier like him was worth a regiment. We would die to possess such abilities. And many of us would.

Hefting the car door, I noted its solid construction and considered it to be more than adequate for my needs. I was wearing my combat mesh beneath my uniform but the fewer people remember seeing that, the better. Rounds pelted the car door and I ran toward the two shooters, careful to keep my speed down and maintain the appearance of humanity.

“Majoris, we need to hurry and resolve this. A call for Peacekeepers has gone out. This system has both Bal-ha and Mariovel Peacekeepers. I don’t need to remind you of their formidable abilities, do I?”

“Not good, pinpoint the others if you please, I will deal with these two.” The two soldiers who were approaching me were wearing light exoskeletons and carried heavy rifles. A tiny metallic bead shot away from my forehead and streaked toward the building we fell out of a few minutes ago. With my image gone, I could feel the difference in my physical condition, I was a bit slower and clumsier because it was compensating for my injuries. But these injuries were nothing I hadn’t dealt with before. With the image gone, I could also do things proscribed by its safety protocols. Once the exo-armors were within fifty yards, I increased my speed and closed the distance, in what would appear to them, instantly, using my inertia, I spun and hurled my car door at the leading armor, decapitating him before he realized I had moved. The second, surprised both by my speed and the violence of my action, hesitated, and in that two second window, I pulled my flex-sword, charged it, and sliced off his weapon arm before he could pull the trigger. I needed him alive, but a little shock wouldn’t stop me from getting what I wanted.

“I have them. In addition to the two that were in the office we jumped out of, there are four others who are meeting with the others in the parking facility. They are carrying much heavier weaponry. I think a strategic retreat is in order.”

“These two are down, one incapacitated, the other in shock. What can you do for a vehicle? Using the one we came in is likely not the smartest idea.”

“There are several non-sentient AI’s I can coerce into allowing you to ride and not broadcasting their location to the grid,” the Image sounded as if it might enjoy that process.

“I am going to head toward our car and see if I can detonate their charges as a cover. Get a damn car and meet me there.”

I turned back toward the two soldiers who were down and that’s when I became aware of the Bel-ha descending from the sky.

“Desist activities and resist not. Comply, please,” it’s mechanical voice was created by a vox-coder but it was clearly commanding even while it was polite. The Bel-ha prize politeness above all else.

And I intended to comply, because it had asked me so nicely and because its psionic powers were reputed to be so formidable it could stop my heart with a casual thought. I really did plan to stop but as it descended, slowly and majestically right over the bodies of the mercenaries, of which I really needed to take one of, I heard the sound of a detonator switch on and decided to dive for cover instead. This was the right choice, as the explosion dug a twelve-foot hole in the ferrocrete beneath the bodies and sent shrapnel over my head, which I had conveniently located on the ground. I did not expect to see much of the Bel-ha cephalopod, except maybe some sushi clinging to the local plaza art. Imagine my surprise when I saw the Peacekeeper lying about 12 meters away in relatively good shape, a bit crisp, alive but quite still. Remind me never to get on the bad side of one of these aliens.

“I’ve damaged the local constabulary and lost my leads. Tell me you have better news on the transport front.” I was being snarky but was really pissed because this would put me on the top of the local Peacekeeper hit list.

“The vehicle selection was wide and excellent, all with low grade intelligence engines, easily swayed by my magnetic charms. I am on my way, keep your pants on. ETA, forty-five seconds if you are standing near our car. As a minor aside, there has been a secondary call to the Peacekeepers and it has been acknowledged as an escalation and possible terrorist attack. Did I mention, I was being chased by heavy armored assault suits in hover mode? My recommendation is to jump in as I pass, as slowing down would be bad. I’ll remember to roll the window down, this time, I promise.”

“Now you realize, I should stop to render assistance…”

“Majoris, this is Biyu, the base is under attack, requesting orders.” Biyu Chenggang never panicked, but the stress in her voice was evident.

“Talk to me.”

“Light and Heavy Infantry suits, likely Denar-surplus, armed with bunker-busters and anti-personnel weaponry. Base personnel are providing resistance but are equipped with light infantry only. They were not expecting a heavy assault. I estimate they will last approximately two minutes. I am also detecting the approach of six to eight fast aircraft converging on the base, below the lidar systems. The planetary defense systems have come online and aircraft are scrambling toward this position and a position in the city. I would guess that is your position. The ship is cloaked above the airfield and targeting the facility where the Frame is housed.”

“You make sure they do not get the Frame. You do whatever is necessary. Authorization A-6, full release.”

“Understood, full release is authorized. How did they know we were here, Thomas?”

I had no idea, only the military could know since they directed me to this secret research facility with the understanding, no one would see us enter or leave. “I don’t know, Biyu. We are on our way but have run into some heavy opposition as well. Hold the ground, till we get there. Our ETA is…”

“Eight minutes, if the Major can get the lead out. Coming alongside. Is eighty kilometers an hour the best you can do? Fall a few dozen floors and the next thing you know, you’re wanting to take retirement pay.”

A modern grav-car, with an exotic grill and lighting system, roared around the corner, nearly hitting everything in its way, but touching nothing as it came full tilt up the street. I spared exactly one second to assess it before moving up the street into oncoming traffic at my top speed. I could also hear the air fans of the heavy assault armors as they followed behind my Image’s getaway vehicle. I activated my flex armor field, and blasted away my civvies. All bets were off now, no sense in dying to maintain my disguise. I felt just the tiniest bit safer, but knew if they were armed with the right equipment, I was only a tiny bit safer than wearing nothing at all. As the gravcar came up behind me, oncoming traffic peeled away, due to the infrastructure’s safety features. I counted on this, and my Image’s pathological need to create as much mayhem as possible to work to my advantage as it pulled alongside.

“Windows?” I waved my arms frantically trying to get my Image’s attention. That exactly when the mercs decided to open fire, and the first three rounds whizzed uncomfortably close, and the forth hit my flex field right below my ribcage, directly into the housing of my biomechanical augmentation systems. Heavily armored and shielded by my flex field meant, no penetration, even of a highly sophisticated round. What it also meant was it hurt like hell and I decided to just jump through the window again, using my flex field to disrupt the window integrity. Glass shattered and flew through the vehicle but my Image was the size of a raisin nestled comfortably in an ashtray and was uninjured. What luck.

“Oops. Sorry about that, it’s so hard to figure out where they hide the window controls in these modern vehicles.” The engine roared as the vehicle picked up speed and continued to disrupt oncoming traffic. With a bounce, the gravcar returned to the proper traffic lanes with the exoskeletons in hot pursuit. We were able to maintain our lead and distance, and keeping a clear lane of fire for less than a second or two for about three minutes.

I flipped down my HUD visor and saw a satellite view of the city with a military and police overlay. The base was less than four minutes away, but the two assault helicopters would be intercepting us all in about thirty seconds.

“Major, the base has been breached. The Frame’s containment area has been broken. I am going to begin my attack. The incoming spacecraft will arrive in three minutes. This will be my only chance to intercept. Biyu, out.”

There was no point being angry or anxious, we would get there or we wouldn’t. The one thing I can say about working with professionals, is everyone is so good at their job, there is no need to backseat drive. I was carrying nothing but light weaponry, nothing strong enough to penetrate those suits back there, but the two assault helicopters were going to take care of that problem unless they decided to make a break for it. They had to know they would not make it to the base. Suddenly the mecha blew off most of their armor and heavy weapons. This technology explodes as four smaller contrails streak away from the ground. On lidar, two of the eight approaching spacecraft turn away on an intercept course to the four contrails. The remaining six continue their approach, but two hang back approaching slower. The four contrails disappear in a flash of tractor activity and the two ships turn back toward the sky. The two slower ships stop their approach and the first releases a small star-like missile, the second activates a super-heavy tractor beam. The remaining space-craft peel away releasing another swarm of missiles toward the city’s incoming attack aircraft.

“I’m stupid, thick, thick, thick. Biyu, come in, it’s a trap!”

Biyu turned Travelling Light’s four cannons toward the wreckage of the armored warehouse building where four heavy suits had entered and disappeared from sight. Four light mecha waited outside with their weapons primed. Each mecha suit was targeted.

“Torpedo bays activated and primed for launch. Two incoming targets quiet-locked,” Travelling Light’s soothing female voice indicated. Biyu silently acknowledged the telemetry and as the four exoskeleton’s were visible moving the storage container of the Frame into view, she dropped the ship’s cloak and fired upon the four mecha with tachyon pulse weaponry. The exotic weaponry released a tachyon beam of faster than light particles. These particles were entangled with an antimatter magnetic resonance which would only be affected by super-dense matter. The type of super-dense matter found in armor or other barrier-resonating fields. When the two collided, the antimatter was fully returned to our space-time and detonates, violently. The four mecha were instantly obliterated, and the resultant explosion knocked the remaining exoskeletons off their feet. The remaining building was destroyed in the explosion. The container storing the Frame was undamaged.

Immediately after firing the tachyon beams, Travelling Light swivels smoothly skyward and launches two torpedoes as eight incoming craft lock on with their lidar-targeting systems. Their returning volley of micro-missiles darken the sky. At the last second, two ships streak away from their dive and turn toward the city center. The remaining six continue their approach as their targeting systems lock onto Travelling Light. Two of the six ships take the torpedoes on their shields, dropping them immediately and damaging a variety of systems onboard those ships. Small explosions flash across their hulls and a few seconds later both explode from internal power-plant containment failures. The fifty micro-missiles striking the shields of Travelling Light and the remaining missiles batter the ground, causing explosions that obscured the ship from view.

“Shield power at 80%, reactivating cloak, moving to intercept Frame.” The cloaked ship moved through the debris toward the containment unit. Biyu climbed out of the pilot’s chair and grabbed her personal heavy pulse pistols. She was confident she would be able to handle the four light exo-skeletons in the time it would take the last ships to reach the ground. She would use the cloaking field and shield from the ship to protect her from incoming fire. After the initial volley of missiles, the ships had switched to beam lasers and heavy blaster fire, both would be insufficient to penetrate the military-grade shielding of the Travelling Light.

As she dropped to the ground and started running toward the four exoskeletons, her heavy pulse pistols, fired at full auto, tearing into the armors of the mercenaries, who were attaching something to the containment unit. They were gravity compensators. She stopped in her tracks as she heard the part of the scrambled message from the Majoris “–it’s a trap!”

Then the sky lit up like the sun come to earth.

Artwork: Vanquish 2 © lonefirewarrior

I was tagged by Balogun Ojetade for this bloghop and I appreciate him taking the time to help promote my work.

The rules of this blog hop are simple and sweet: 1. Answer ten questions about your current Work In Progress on your blog; 2. Tag five writers / bloggers and add links to their pages so we can hop along to them next.

So, here goes – enjoy!

What is the working title of your book?

The working title is – Insurrection: War in the Twilight Continuum. The cover image is showing the intelligent AI starship, Traveling Light.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

I wrote roleplaying game materials for a variety of games over the past twenty years. My last campaign was a space opera storyline I never had the opportunity to finish. It was a vast story spanning millions of years and hundreds of alien races. The initial play was fantastic but before I could fully develop it, my son was born and gaming went straight out the window. I looked at its as a chance to develop the universe further because one of the problems with science fiction and particularly the space opera genre is trying to figure out where in your vast universe do you start your story and how do you get your reader invested quickly.

I decided to start small with a single human soldier at the edge of the empire, stumbling onto a secret which could potentially stagger the status quo. The problem for him is, the human race is but one of many races in the Empire, for the most part, unnoticed and relatively insignificant in the overall scheme of things. Pan-humanity, while boasting some level of technological advancements did not even make it into space by themselves. They were rescued by other aliens during a time of planetary crisis and became refugees of the empire. Needless to say, Pan-Humanity has a lot to prove in this highly populated, technologically advanced, species divergent (and often prejudiced) galaxy of sentient life.

What genre does your book fall under?

The genre would be science fiction, with a sub-genres of space opera, military science fiction and maybe just a taste of social science fiction. The story deals with an aging galactic empire getting frayed around the edges, with alien species desiring to break away from the stagnant edicts of the empire toward unlimited expansion. The empire, while old is still quite powerful, but younger species are fomenting revolution and have help from an unknown alien presence intent on destabilizing the empire for their own benefit.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Haven’t given this a lot of thought because I don’t think about my writing in terms of other media, but the main character Major Thomas Wilks would be able to be played by the magnificent Idris Elba (as seen above in his Pacific Rim role).

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

“Major Thomas Wilks, of the fabled Resurrection Corps of human soldiers stumbles across a secret during a military operation which threatens to bring the already unstable Corvan Hegemony to the brink of war; but who is going to believe a Human, even an immortal one, could know something able to affect an empire that has existed for over a million years?”

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

My book will be published under my own imprint of Ebonstorm Media, in conjunction with Creative Enigma Enterprises.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

The first outline and draft of the manuscript was written for NaNoWrimo in 2010. I successfully completed the challenge but was only halfway done, so I continued to write for the next two months. In February 2011, I began editing and rewriting. I have been working on and off with the project every since, producing my first collection of short stories in December 2011 called Hayward’s Reach. While I was writing Insurrection, ideas for short stories began to sneak out and eventually found themselves in Hayward’s Reach, making it a sort of prequel to the story in Insurrection. My goal is to be printing Insurrection in September. I am currently editing the second draft and adding things which escaped me in the first draft.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Books I think about while I am writing are Jack L. Chalker’s, Saga of the Well World, David Brin’s Uplift Saga, Ian Banks’, Culture novels and the works of Dan Simmons’ Hyperion Cantos are all inspirations.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

My family keeps me inspired to write by reading, enjoying and promoting my work to everyone they know.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Insurrection, Resurrection and Conflagration deal with a variety of science fiction themes, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, advanced technology, alien life, and space travel but those are not the themes that most interest me (though I do love an awesome spaceship). What most captivates me is the idea of an empire of alien races of which Pan-Humanity is simply one among many.

What would our role be in a galaxy filled with intelligent, hard-working, dedicated, and often very alien life? How would we adapt? Could we finally learn to get along in the face of alien species, dangerous environments, and the challenges of competing in the ultimate Darwinian environment, a potentially hostile galaxy, or will we revert to type, fighting among our even more diverse selves?

You can get a taste right now, no waiting necessary: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, The Gentle Art, and where the story where it all began, Hayward’s Reach

Below are the links to the next chain of authors. Be sure to bookmark their sites and add their new releases to your calendars.

H. Wolfgang Porter: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Sword & Soul;
Ds Brown: Science Fiction, Fantasy
Dr. Cherie Ann Turpin: Scholar, Erotica
Nalo Hopkinson: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Erotica
Derrick Ferguson: Pulp; Mystery; Thriller

Keep an eye out for the latest release of Milton Davis and Balogun Ojetade, The Steamfunk! Anthology

Insurrection (2)

Posted by Ebonstorm on January 2, 2013

Posted in: Insurrection, Short Story. Tagged: ebonstorm, Glendale Mokoto, Hayward's Reach, holographic interface, Insurrection, Pele Mokoto, starship, supernovas, Tales of the Twilight Continuum, Thaddeus Howze, the Quantaspheric Interface, the QueEye Core. 1 Comment

Invasive Species and Supernovas

a tale of the twilight continuum Θ

Pele Mokoto sat back in the center of the room, trying to make sense of the impossible.

Her face was pale, her gaze haunted. She was looking into the Quanta-sphere’s holographic display. Her recliner shifted as her center of gravity moved and she reoriented the image in the center of the holodisplay. She realized this was more important than she first thought and opened two dozen displays adding hundreds of other computations and variables.

When she was done, she sat back and accelerated the flow of time in her simulation a million times. She activated the comm system with her intent and spoke to the open air. “Glen, I need you to come to QI as soon as you can. It’s urgent.”

Glendale Mokoto was coming up from the engineering section of the Hegemony’s finest scout ship, Hayward’s Reach, after recalibrating the C-divider engine matrix. The scout ship was making good time after the last set of gate jumps and would be ready for full speed operations using the CDE.

“I was going to stop and clean up, honey. Do you want to pipe it down into the shower?”

“I have compiled this data for the last two years, I can wait until you’re done. Go ahead. I will run some other near-local parallels.”

“Great, I will be right up, I promise.” Glen shot up the center of the gravity tube connecting all of the spaces on the ship. The tubes reconfigured themselves as he passed through them as his intent became to the ship’s quiet AI. Hayward’s Reach was a ship comprised of some of the most advanced sciences in the Hegemony.

He showered quickly and put on his standard uniform, stopping only long enough to change the colors, setting on a teal long tonic and cool earth toned slacks. He almost never wore shoes, anymore. It was formal night so they agreed to dress for the occasion wearing actual fabric rather than their standard holographic dress. When he made his way to the Quantaspheric Interface chamber, she was sitting in the dark, the only light in the room, glowed off of a light terminal on the chair in front of her.

“Okay, what is so important? Are you still using the Que-Eye stream to watch cross-time episodes of ‘I Love Lucy’?” The Que-Eye technology allowed the Reach to peer into the potential of nearby universe which share constants with our own and see alternative futures.

She looked up and thought about what she wanted to show and the room blazed with light. There was a blue giant in the middle of the room showing in a glorious high resolution hologram. As the image approached the star, Pele’s voice was tense and no-nonsense, “This is a blue super-giant along the path we are using to approach the core of the galaxy. I noted it because it only recently became visible as we cleared a dust band which blocked it from view a few years back.”

I remember that band of heavy intergalactic dust. It obscured an entire segment of the galaxy previous unseen by optical telescopes, we were excited as we were seeing something never seen by any of the sentients in our section of the galaxy. The Hegemony is vast, covering over one third of the Milky Way galaxy but there are still two thirds, only visited by probe ships and the mysterious Precursor Races.

She continued. “I picked this star because it was one of the most massive on record. It has two smaller partners, about ten times the size of our sun, one of which I thought was a brown dwarf or failed star when I first looked at its energy signature. But as we got closer and I focused more of the optical array on the stars, I noticed this was unlike anything in the Hegemony database. So after another year of study. I decided to send out a scientific package. It would travel close enough, fast enough my curiosity would be assuaged, and still be fast enough to catch up to us once we passed it. When the probe caught back up today. I thought I would find… I don’t know what I thought but I didn’t think it would be this.”

The display finally zoomed in on the blue giant and then changed direction toward its smaller partner. Instead of seeing a clean bright presence, the star’s light is dim as if seen through a dense haze or smoke.

As the probe moved closer, she had the image cleaned up and what I saw was unbelievable. A network of tendrils surrounding the star at the level of the corona of the sun. These bands had to be millions of miles long and hundreds of thousands of miles across. They were sweeping over the surface of the star, nearly obscuring it from vision. What remaining light was not absorbed by the dark material, was blocked by the cloud of particles.

“What is that?” I am no scientist, but living onboard the Reach for almost thirty years now, had given me the opportunity to learn more about science than I had every planned to, so I might have, once upon a time would have been able to be called Dr. Mokoto, if I wanted to. Such things are an idle vanity, and nothing more, on the Reach. We are the only two crew members, so we can call each other whatever we like.

Pele, on the other hand, was an honest to god scientist and used her time to learn sciences from at least fifteen alien scientific scholars and the best the Humani had to offer. All I could hope is she would give me an explanation that would not require half a dozen doctorates to understand.

“It is absorbing the energy of the star, converting it into some form of computronium. It’s eating the star.”

She didn’t say anything else after that. That didn’t seem so bad. I mean, it’s a space dwelling organism, its got to eat something. “Okay, so what is the emergency? You found something you believe is eating a star. I mean it is important, but we catalog two dozen important things a year, why is this different?”

“Look at this time projection.”

This can’t be right. I know I don’t have to ask her did she check her numbers, the data is right there. I hate using the part of my brain, my new brain for superfast calculations. It reminds me I’m no longer really human. But in this instance, I could not help myself.

“Project this on to the Que-Eye, and accelerate time stamp, five thousand years a second.” In fifty seconds, the star could no longer be seen visibly. In another fifty seconds, all but the lowest wavelengths of energy could be detected. Seconds later, the star collapses and explodes.

There is a signature I did not expect to find there. There is a quantum foam transition wave, which built up as the star was preparing to nova. All matter caught in the transition would be converted to quantum foam and leave the universe for an undisclosed but finite amount of time. During this time this matter is capable of leaving C-space and traveling faster than light.

Now I am more than a bit concerned.

The blue giant it is circling would be the first recipient of the material and it is thousands and thousands of times more massive. If it were to do the same thing, the explosion would be billions of times more devastating. This would spread fast. This galactic arm is dense with stars, just like these two.

“Now, this is what I called you for. Load Que-Eye parallel, local references to this star, nearby multiversal shards, separate and extrapolate for similar occurrences of Black Ooze infestation. Find most likely and nearest shard, present expansion rate based on these calculations.”

The Que-Eye interface is an alien technology. There are only four in the known galaxy, making Hayward’s Reach a treasure beyond imagining. The technology of the Que-Eye have been extrapolated by the Hegomony’s best Minds and are used in the predictive engines created by the Hegemony for interstellar warfare, and in some of the predictions used by galactic and planetary leaderships to make good policies on their planets. But the three alien devices which are still in the empire proper, lie on the edge of the Hegemony on isolated planets, predicting the future and reading the past of a galaxy. Ineffectively, with as much accuracy as an ancient seer of the Gods if you ask the wrong questions.

We discovered something about the QI core technology. Too many questions prevent it from being useful. The very quest for knowledge sought by hundreds of scientists on the QI worlds prevent them from getting anything useful. It was only when Pele and I were alone did we discover just how powerful and dangerous these things were.

But these devices do not just predict the future or present the past. They can show parallel universes just like ours where the future or the past is different than out own. Some of these futures are so close to our own, only tiny differences separate us. We can see a universe where Earth is not abandoned to the Great Enemy and Hayward’s Reach is never built. We can see a universe where antimatter bombs did not rip into the crust of the my home planet almost rendering it uninhabitable to the stragglers who remained behind to fight for Earth.

We used it to view the past history of the Earth, to view events which might give us insight into the minds of the humans, and now recently other races with equally significant histories, like the rulers of the Hegemony, the Corvans. We have tried other even older races, but those crafty Second Races can sometimes cloak history from the Que-Eye, their understanding of temporal mechanics giving them an edge in keeping secrets.

To be honest, the Que-Eye was sometimes used in a fashion similar to old Earth’s internet, and even occasionally to look at cats, too. Pele has a particular series of stories on a QI-distant Earth, where cats have magical abilities and secret save the world on a more than occasional basis. Most of the time, it is more of an entertainment device than a tool. But in the last decade, Pele had begun putting it to use in new and disturbing ways.

The Hegemony placed the Que-Eye on Hayward’s Reach because the Botoni, plants who are scientists, believe it to be sentient and seeking information. Since the Reach would be traveling farther and faster than any ship in the Hegemony, they believed the Que-Eye should be on the ship.

They were unable to explain it to anyone in a manner we could understand, saying only that their Root had spoken and the Root was never wrong. The Root was their world-computer comprised of a network of roots circling the planet in a band thousands of miles wide. Idiosyncratic, opinionated but to their credit, they are the most decorated scientists in the Hegemony and the Corvans agreed without truly understanding. The Mariovel, who for the most part remain inscrutable in almost all things, agreed to help and grew the Reach around the Que-Eye core which was around the size of Old Texas.

Pele was entranced as displays appeared around her, her brow furrowed in concentration. The room dimmed, and grew momentarily quiet. When the Que-Eye is running, there is a background sound, barely audible, but as the images build, the air thickens as if you are mired in the flow of time itself. Images from parallel universes flow into existence building around us, or in this case, a galaxy slowly being extinguished.

A small section darkened. Then a series of novas, and a period of nothing, the black section spreading as the galaxy continues to rotate. Then another series of darkening, novas, inactivity. Meanwhile the entire black region continues to spread. New stars try to form in the darkness, but disappear relatively quickly, their tiny nova’s eclipsed by the much wider band of novas taking place on the edge of darkness. Once the darkness reached the center of the galaxy, it spread rapidly, a deadly cancer extinguishing stars at an accelerated pace.

“Look there. See the building transition wave?” She slowed the image and showed an overlapping image. I could see a transition pattern building on top of the smaller waves pushing the darkness along.

“Are you thinking it may try to spread to another galaxy?”

She reoriented the view of the galaxy we were looking at. All this time, we had been looking at the galaxy from above it, spread out below us like a giant glowing spiral. She panned the view away from the galaxy and waited for the imaging system to catch up.

No, I don’t try to understand how Quantaspheric Interface worked. The core of the Que-Eye is the size of an island and is in the center of the ship. The information processed is linked to the Mind of our ship and then translated into information we can understand in the Que-Eye imaging area or to smaller terminals on the ship.

The panning complete, we stood in awe. We could see an entire swath of the galaxies of this universal neighbor extinguished. An entire void covered the view to the port side of the local galaxy. A projected path showed this creature was one of the first things born in their Universe, and expanded with the universe, keeping a permanent footprint in the space of their universe. The scale boggled the mind. Its footprint was seen in the background radiation of that universe.

This thing is continuing to expand and could conceivably consume all the stars and hydrogen in that universe, hastening the death of their universe billions of years sooner than our own. I try not to get too involved in the mathematical, probabilities we view using the Que-Eye. It’s easy to do when we are looking at harmless fantasies or probabilities. We treat them as stories, some bright, some dark, a form of cosmic voyeurism, an intergalactic cable with an infinite number of channels. Then you see something like this and realize the Que-Eye is not a toy.

It’s a tool. A tool for a race of gods who didn’t even leave instructions for how to use the remote. Pele is looking at the footage from our universe, I see the Que-Eye coordinates reset to home. “I am going to spend the next two years, and all the computing power we can spare to study this.”

“I am not going to ask you why, because I can see this is going to be a threat. If your work proves to be true, the Hegemony is going to have to do something about this.” I shook my head, a habit I still hadn’t gotten out of.

“I didn’t show you the worst part of it.”

“What could be worse than this?”

“This. Look at these Que-Eye coordinates. These are the realities closest to us in a particular direction of space and time.” I looked at her not comprehending what she is alluding to. The stare she gave me, placed an imaginary dunce cap on my head. She continued. “Universal constants match the closest to us in this particular direction meaning this series of universes along this axis is most like us.”

“And?” Still not getting what she was showing me.

A few more waves of her hand and then I began to see. There were a multitude of universes around us, the probability map showed us at the center of the wave of universe like ours. “When I looked at the universes closest to us, I thought they were blank areas in the Que-Eye feed; like empty spaces on a radio dial. I thought they were probabilities that simply didn’t happen. With what I learned from this probe, I began to review those settings again. They were not blank spaces. They were universes which have already been consumed by this creature. The beast leaves a signature substance, a unique form of neutronium; compressed neutrons, the result of its diet of dying stars. Do you see it now?”

Yes. This creature, this first sign was the harbinger of things to come. In our universe, this creature was not one of the First Races to develop sentience. One of the Precursor Races, in their infinite wisdom, found it and destroyed it, preventing its sweeping surge which took place across other universes from happening here.

But judging from the number of probabilities this creature shows up in, the multiverse must have a great preference for it. Pele walks over to me, waving to turn off the Que-Eye, taking me in her arms.

The first thing that came to my mind was the Great White Shark. It existed on Earth for 450 million years, its evolution complete, it remained relatively unchanged as nature deemed it, a perfect killing machine. It just adapted to fit the oceans it swam in.

Just like this thing.

We, Second and Third Races in the Hegemony, like to look at the Precursors as these perfect amazing beings who lived for billions of years, evolved beyond our comprehension, leaving behind tools, ninety-nine percent of that we find, we still can’t use. But I am beginning to think the one thing they needed, they lacked… a competent exterminator.

The deadliest invasive species in the galaxy, a creature larger than anything made by any race in the Hegemony, larger than the Mariovel, a legendary race of beings who are capable of making entire habitable planets. A creature powerful enough to consume a star and breed exponentially in the space of a few hundred thousand years, is happening two dozen light years behind my ship.

And not a Precursor in sight.

Insurrection: Biyu’s Story

Posted by Ebonstorm on November 18, 2012

Posted in: Chapter, Hayward's Reach, Insurrection. Tagged: Biyu, Breeder Races, Chuntra, Corvans, Hegemony, Insurrection, Majoris, Master Wex, Resurrection Soldier, Revenant, scifi, space opera, Traveling Light, Wilks. Leave a comment

a tale of the twilight continuum Θ

“They are all asleep,” Biyu said to Chuntra.

Biyu was finished strapping Master Wex down and checking for his vitals from the medical chair. He was well within the parameters for his species and was resting comfortably. His armored quills were growing in quickly replacing those lost during today’s challenges. His natural regenerative capabilities were bolstered by an amino acid drip which fed his need to replenish the proteins lost rebuilding his body. He was also the least injured of the three males on the ship. “We have five days until we reach the Trinary Expanse. I hope to be able to pick up a clue once we arrive in system.”

Chuntra stood with the support dome of her Corvan Regular armored suit open and water pooling around the neck. Her three eyes were above the water level focused intently on the three very different soldiers breathing with labored but quiet breaths. She noticed the smooth but alien shapes of the ship and realized that she was not in a human designed ship. She touched a variety of surfaces and noted exotic materials. “This ship was made by the Bel-ha, wasn’t it? How did a human end up with a ship created by an Old Galactic Race?”

Travelling Light, a starship of Bel-ha design moved through subspace by folding the distances between the destination and their previous location. The ship was fairly unique as was most Bel-ha designs in that it was customized and created to specification. The designer of the ship was Silver Death-Singer, a Sjurani Prince, ninety years ago, commissioned as a deep insertion vehicle.

The Bel-ha had commercial ship facilities where they created their standard warships and commercial starships. Travelling Light was not one of them. She was created with a particular need in mind and as such had capabilities other ships her size simply did not have. She was created as a gunship, her firepower, disproportionate to her size. She was also created to be a stealth ship, undetectable except by the most sophisticated of electronic warfare vessels. She was designed to operate deep in enemy territory, drawing energy and fuel from the stars. She had limited self-repair capacity to continue operating behind enemy lines with limited resources.

She was designed as an intelligent starship, complete with a neural network, capable of learning, adapting and even flying herself. In her own way, she was a living starship, capable of learning as well as any sentient organism. She came into the possession of Thomas Wilks over three decades ago and has worked as his primary support ship during his time as a covert operative and later as a Resurrection Soldier.

“This ship and I came into the Major’s employ nearly thirty years ago,” Biyu began. “A newly minted Resurrection Soldier, one of the last of his generation and unbeknownst to us at the time, the last to be made, was brought online thirty years ago. He was code-named “Majoris” after the starship Majoris Selkar that brought Pan-humanity to Harata II, all those years ago. He chose his call-sign in tribute to that great ship, which was later lost in the battles against the Nox during the years of the First Galactic Wars.”

Biyu came around to the Major and extended cables from her fingertips which sought out access ports on his body. As she plugged into his body, she became aware of several diagnostic displays in her visual field. The diagnostics indicated his biomechanical systems were functioning within the expected parameters but there were signs of degradation due to his recent traumas. His nano-machine count was down and would continue to degrade as long as he had no contact with his Frame. She also noted without his image, she would have to maintain certain support algorithms which kept his body functioning at peak efficiency. As long as he did not strain himself, he would be fine.

She sat down and looked over at Chuntra. “Come and sit with me, Ambassador and I will tell you how Thomas and I first met. I will have something synthesized that you will be able to enjoy while we talk away the hours. The boys won’t be getting up for quite some time.”

“Ship, if you wouldn’t mind?”

“Ambassador,” the ship began, “we have a limited menu of Corvan delicacies but I am certain we can find something you like.”

“Thank you, Ship. I will trust your judgment.”

The ship slid the medical chairs of the injured crew members back along the wall and created a depression on the floor. The floor began to glow and soon water began to float in the air between the floor and the ceiling. The water continued to fill the area until it was a ball approximately 3 meters in diameter.

“Do you have a preference for salt water or fresh water. We have seventeen different water worlds on record, if you have a particular preference, we can configure the water with the salt and chemical makeup of whatever world you choose from our database. If you know the chemical configuration of a particular world, we can provide that as well,” the ship announced.

Chuntra stopped for a moment to consider. “To be honest, I have never been to Corva Prime, the world of my people. Is that in your database?”

“Of course, this vessel has carried over sixty Corvan delegations in its time. Please stand by, it will only take a moment. I have taken the liberty of heating the water gently past your internal body temperature. There will also be food made available shortly. I will take your suit in the back and begin making modifications, so that it is more comfortable and still as useful as it can be.”

“Thank you, Ship.” Chuntra slid out of her suit and reached into the bubble of water. She pulled herself up into the bubble and enjoyed the freedom of movement. She extended her tentacles and noted the field extended as well. “I’m much more comfortable now, Biyu. I guess it storytime.”

Biyu’s Story

I met the Major, two hundred years after humanity arrived in the Twenty Moons region of Toranor. I had recently decided to leave the employ of Danarius Flen Hall, callsign, Coda, a Resurrection Soldier or Revenant of some skill and renown but very questionable morals. He had been employed in a variety of insertion missions during the first Galactic War and his tactics and problem solving capabilities left much to be desired. He was well regarded in the Triune Council and Corvan Military as an effective operative. His last mission required he infiltrate a splinter colony of humans who were engaged in rogue genetic engineering experiments.

Those experiments used a variety of alien species and were attempting to reverse-engineer genetic patents used to modify certain species to live in specialized environments. These exclusive environments were bonded at the genetic level and if you lacked the proper gene structures, you could not enter, or as we found out later, leave without disastrous results. They were using these gene-patents to create a slave ring of aliens who could be forced to work in gene-engineered environments and would be unable to leave.

Coda and I infiltrated the core facility with the orders to capture and return the scientists to the Triune Council. Coda decided to destroy the facility and all the unfortunate creatures living within it. There were tens of thousands of innocents trapped within the facility. I was unaware of his true intentions and by the time I realized what he had planned, there was nothing I could do to stop it. The Imperium considered it good work, but I believed there was more to the operation than he did, but he was unwilling to follow up and the case was closed.

I decided after five years of working with Coda, I was done. He and I had two dozen or so missions together but I never felt close to him despite the nature of the psychographic manipulations required to keep him sane. I sometimes wondered if he needed more therapy than I could give him. We parted ways and I did not see him again for a number of years. When I next saw him, he was working on Harata II, as a research specialist, dealing with advance genome manipulations. I heard through the Vine he was specifically assigned to investigate, infiltrate and destroy any genetic aberrations found in the Imperium.

I had been working as a Pilot for almost forty years at that point and considered leaving the line of work. I had plenty of money and could have retired. Many Pilots died early in their careers because their Soldiers do not take their relative fragility into consideration when they are working on operations. I recommended a different training regimen to the Magistrorum, with more emphasis on combat operations and training, in addition to our technical duties. It was considered to be a burden but after two years arguing, I became a trainer at the Magistrorum and trained other Conscientia in both their technical duties and their basic military duties. That is where I met Thomas. He was assigned to the facility as a new assigned Revenant, and he would be teaching with me, helping the new Pilots to understand their strengths and limitations in the field and how they could best help the Revenant they were assigned to.

This ushered in a new training program that increased the survivability of new Pilots. We worked together in this fashion for five years before we were called on to rescue a Sjurani starship downed on a Breeder world. The first Breeder Wars were dirty and violent and the Breeders attacked many early outposts and took over those worlds in the early stages of transformation and habitation. The Sjurani were sent to investigate a Subaki colony that had been overrun with Ebuntun, an insect-like breeder which had destroyed the base colony, and were spreading to other facilities on the planet. A group of Sjurani strike cruisers had been assigned to intercept and stop the Ebuntun and save the colony. Something had gone wrong and the Sjurani were requesting a Revenant team to investigate and recover any of their lost operatives. They were also expected to complete the original mission of the Sjurani and destroy the Ebuntun and save the colonists.

Unfortunately, there were only five Revenants available, including Thomas, and it was deemed that the they, two squads of heavy regulars and two dozen light mechs would be assigned to the planet. Thomas had never been assigned a Pilot since he came directly from his Bonding to the Magistrorum, so I agreed to be his Pilot, even though I had promised myself, I would never again work in the field. I must admit to being intrigued by him, he was very much a model soldier, even though he had seen combat from a variety of fields, he still retained a very human, very well-centered carriage.

Thomas and I were assigned a small squad of light mechs, who would provide support for the five other Revenants who would be leading the primary assault. We would offer fast attack services only when necessary to help hold a line. The mechs were equipped with jump packs, I used a glider-wing and Thomas’s Frame has an anti-gravity thrust array, so we were able to arrive on the scene with minutes of being called. I am happy to say, that the early days of that campaign did not see very much combat and I got to spend time with Thomas as we drilled the mecha pilots on tactics and operations. The Ebuntun retreated, at first, from the one thousand Corvan Regulars, the two hundred Pan-human Mechanized Assault group and the five Resurrection Soldiers who were assigned to this task force. There were several Eagles, providing air support and our light mecha squadron of twenty-four heavy mechs. Their retreat was short-lived.

One evening, a month into the campaign we received a call from a Corvan Regular group that was approaching a downed Sjurani vessel. The ship was surrounded by the Ebuntun and they were using a heavy weapon unfamiliar to the Corvan Regulars. The shield arrays on the Sjurani vessel were working but it was estimated they would have only six hours before their shields failed. The Force Commander requested heavy mech support along with the Mechanized Assault tanks because the initial stealth foray using two Revenants did not go well. The Revenants did not die, but were gravely injured and temporarily removed from the battlefield.

It was decided, with a heavy barrage of tank fire as well as a lightning strike of heavy mechs, we could take down the remaining five projector towers. One tower had be destroyed by the earlier team. Each tower was in line of sight of the others, as the Sjurani ship was half buried after its crash. As we suited up we were given a special directive by the Fleet Commander, whose order superseded any other authority on the planet.

We were to rescue that flagship and see that the crew and any survivors are to be evacuated to the Fleet Command ship. We indicated that we understood and would gather all survivors. The heavy assault was a success. Between the tank fire and the heavy mechs we were able to destroy the projector towers. We did try and capture the technology intact, but it simply cost us too many men. The weapon was unlike anything we had ever seen. Once the beam struck an unshielded target, the target simply stopped moving as if frozen, ice formed on the shell and within minutes, the target crumpled to dust. It was as if, all of the energy from the target had been stolen away, down to atomic structure. We could no longer risk losing men and destroyed the weapons.

Once we turned the Ebuntun away, we surrounded the ship and got inside. The ship was already infested with the Ebuntun and they were trying to take key sections of the ship but the Sjurani had managed to hold those areas, including the engineering area where the shield management had taken place. Approximately one third of the crew was dead or injured, the rest were intact and defended their ship admirably.

Then, all at once, things went to hell.

The soldiers outside had set up picket stations, which included tanks and their support teams, pulse turrets, mortars and mecha beam platforms. The Ebuntun had returned but this time, there were thousands more than earlier. Whatever they wanted, they intended to get. We killed them by the score. We used our beam lasers until the focusing crystals shattered and overheated. We shot pulse rifles until we ran out of ammunition, dropped multiple warhead mortars and they still kept coming. We eventually were forced to go to hand to hand and everyone pitched in. The battle lasted hours.

When we found the Sjurani prince, he was talking to a group of younger Sjurani who were wearing the finest battle-armors and weapons money could buy. They were surrounded by a group of older, very scarred, very frightening looking Sjurani with a variety of ancient ceramic weapons with mono-molecular edges. They glistened with the unstable monomolecular matter used to cleave apart any matter this weapon touched.

We indicated that Thomas and I were the Prince’s escorts. His name was Silver Death-Singer and these were his clutch, they were on their first mission and eager for combat. We let him know we had an avenue set up for escape and our troopers were keeping it secure. We moved through the ship and as we exited we realized our lines were not holding. The Force Commander had initiated several planetary bombardments to push the Ebuntun back, and had begun dropping weapons and ammo onto the scene. The heavy mechs were supporting the Corvan Regulars and tanks and were barely keeping the enemy at bay. The flanks were collapsing so we needed to get the prince out of there. There was a heavy tank transport ready a thousand meters from the ship and we were meeting only minimal resistance until a heavy contingent of the Ebuntun erupted from the ground beneath us.

Thomas was confronted with a creature of immense size and speed and it grabbed him with its heavy front pincers. The rest of us were swarmed by smaller creatures about the size of a fist. The grabbed on to us and overwhelmed us with their armored weight. The older Sjurani and the heavy mech soldiers, used flamethrowers to clear the creatures but they just kept up their assault. Heavier creatures kept Thomas busy and it took every round I could fire to keep him from being overwhelmed. Within fifteen meters of the personnel tank two of the Prince’s brood were picked off and dragged away underground. Thomas followed and was gone for several minutes. We had our hands busy just covering that last bit of ground. As we got to the tank we were surrounded and the Force Commander had called for a measured withdrawal. We got the prince into the tank along with his surviving son.

We were about to leave without Thomas when he came up out of the ground carrying the younger daughter, but the oldest son was not with him. He managed to fight his way to the ship, electro-blasters, and flechette darts cutting through the remaining Ebuntun and ran alongside the tank until we could safely stop. He explained to the Prince that his son was likely still alive, they seemed to be making an effort to not injury him, he simply could not reach him through the crush of bodies. The Prince seemed unhappy with this news but was pleased to have his daughter returned to him. When we reached our base, the Prince indicated he would be staying on the planet in an effort to find his son and would be interested in working with the Heavy Division and adding his own Heavy Troopers to the squad.

We worked this campaign for three years. We eventually drove the Ebuntun off the planet and returned it to the Subaki. The Subaki had been under the leadership of a Praetor Wex, who helped us several times during that campaign. We were appropriately rewarded but were never able to find the Prince’s son. For saving the Prince’s other children, Thomas and I were given the Sjurani Prince’s personal gunship, Travelling Light, a custom designed ship purchased from the Bel-ha homeworld. The Prince hired us to work for him on a variety of missions for the next sixteen years. We travelled the length and breadth of the Imperium working missions for the Sjurani on a number of their colony worlds, sometimes covertly, other time with the Pax Sjurani, a special peacekeeping force, on missions vital to Sjurani security. The prince retired after a particularly terrible mission. If he wants to tell it, I will let him.

The Major and I continued working together and did so until two years ago, when he was sent on a mission, but I was unavailable. I was working on a paper discussing the current Image erasure protocols. At the time, I was promoting research that indicated a potential for development for the AI Complexes that work with the Resurrection Frame AI and the neural network of the Soldier. The current process erased images as soon as they developed anything that resembled independence or began to register on the sentience scale. This was to prevent the occurrence of rogue AI. I protested this due to built-in safety protocols already designed into the software. I felt true intellectual development might create a tool or support device of far greater utility than the current dependent AI Complex.

My paper was heard, and subsequently ignored. No policy changes have taken place since my last dissertation, but since I have made several major changes to the policies of AI in the Triune Government and Ministries of Conscientia Sciences, I am confident I will be able to make change over time. I will use the behavior of the Major’s last image as a potential indicator of what free willed Complexes might be capable of.

“Biyu, do you have an actual military rank?” Chuntra had listened closely and intently and was trying to decide if she would ask her next questions. While she was swimming, the Ship introduced a variety of foods into her bubble. Each was authentic tasting and quite delicious. Some were even quite swift. She decided not to ask how the food was created or made ambulatory. She noted the colors of some of the fish appeared to be as true to the foods she had eaten on Lolikai’s Command Cruiser.

Biyu had sat down near the Major and extended several other tendrils which plugged into other ports across his body. “I do not have a military rank as such. In any operations with the military, however, I am treated as having an army rank of Captain.”

“I have worked with only a few dozen Humans, and I find them to be a strange species. Don’t they resent your manufactured nature? Most Humans I have worked with have had little love for any form of mechanized life.”

“Working with the military offers me a slightly different group of Humans to work with. Most military people accept the idea that machines make it possible for Humanity to compete in a Universe with a variety of creatures, stronger, faster, and in some cases, so much smarter than the members of Pan-humanity. In most cases, they may reluctantly accept my machine nature as a tool to give them opportunities they would otherwise not have access to.” Her voice seemed a bit distant as she stared at the Major.

“I have to admit to having very little experience with uh, um, what do you prefer to be called? Mechanical sentients? Artificial intelligence?”

“The term used technically is ‘mechanized sentience’ or ‘non-human sentience.’ When housed in an android or synthezoid body, we use the term ‘Conscientia’ from the Latin, a dead human language, from which many scientific ideas are standardized, for consciousness.”

“Thank you for talking with me about this. Does working with the Resurrection Corp have any other advantages for the Conscientia?” Chuntra was starting to warm to Biyu and was feeling less self-conscious.

“Being a Captain allows me to effectively work with most military officers without too much rancor. I have created a variety of weapons, armor and other medical technology since I have been assigned to the Corps so I do have a reputation for being a supporter of military troops. Most are happy to work with me once they find out who I am. I have created my own line of non-powered light ceramic armor using a new mesh construction making them lighter and tougher than the previous Corvan designs. I also created a heavy pulse pistol design favored by many of the Resurrection troopers, called Biyu’s Best.”

Biyu was checking the burns and scale damage of Essver. Several of the burns had penetrated both layers of his outer scales. Reaching up, she grabs a regenerator and it emits a purple radiation that begins to slowly repair the cellular damage. The primary benefit of the purple radiation was its ability to speed healing and prevent infection. Once his inner tissues were repaired, the purple ray would enhance the growth of his outer scales, which normally took some time to be replaced naturally.

“You seem to have some level of celebrity amongst the Soldiers. Fascinating.”

“I have been to over twenty campaigns and as many insertion operations. My military experience rivals most experienced military officers.” She paused for a second and made some adjustments to the Major’s sleep monitoring systems. “I am more often called Doctor, since I have three medical degrees and two scientific doctorates as well. My preferred title is Pilot, since that is the work, I value the most, because it gives me time with the man I value the most.”

“Biyu,” Chuntra had begun to turn darker colors, a Corvan indicator of embarrassment. “I understand you have more than some basic affection for the Major. He is a human and you are not. Does that factor into your relationship at all?”

She smiles, “To be honest, sometimes. He is very human sometimes and despite my appearance and full physical functionality, to him, our relationship is still something less than desirable. And to complicate matters, the AI within the Frame is also female in nature, and somewhat possessive. The poor man is surrounded by numerous women, but none of them are human, all are sentient, and all love him deeply. I think he resents it because despite our sentience, he feels less capable than any or all of us. He is dependent on machines to live, and dependent on all of us in one form or another. Ship to move him, house him, protect him from his enemies, dependent on me to fly the ship, maintain his health, his sanity and sometimes remind him of his humanity, and the Frame has the most difficult job of all, keeping him alive or returning him to life if he is killed. It is no wonder he wants very little to do with us sometimes. We control his entire existence.

“There was a woman on the planet.”

“We know. There were chemical traces on him when he returned to the ship. We don’t think about it much because he also seems to understand that being with Human women is always temporary with him. He travels too much and his life is far too dangerous for anyone who cannot protect themselves from this life.”

“What if he has feelings for this female?”

‘What of it? He is a human nearly a century in age. And if we do our jobs right, he could live as long as we could. Ship has a expected lifespan of six hundred years or more. The Frame is based on a technology with a lifespan in excess of one thousand years, and I will function baring being blown to bits or destroyed in a crash, at least four hundred years.”

Biyu turned toward the Corvan and looked at her. Chuntra noted her peculiarly colored irises, remembering she had never seen a human with purple eyes before now. “We worry about his humanity and what he will be like after two or three centuries. We do not worry about human females, because they keep him connected to his humanity in ways we, even with psychographic manipulations, virtual realities, and hard light holograms, cannot. We love him, but we do not own him. He has always returned to us.”

“Biyu? You keep saying us? Who is talking?”

“Sorry, sometimes the ship and I will share a consciousness when we are together. If it would be easier, she can manifest a hard light hologram instead.”

“Uh, no. I think I am okay with it this way. Is there anything else I should know about you?”

“Child, I am nearly a hundred years old as well. There is plenty for us to talk about during the next five days. And we will have at least a week or two before the Ship can be completely repaired. We have plenty of time to get to know each other. I understand you are young by Corvan norms. Your records indicate you are only about 35 standard years. Very young to be a diplomat.”

Chuntra began, “I came into the diplomatic Corps because my fathers were diplomats and I could not see myself, staying at home as a scientist on Shai, where I was born. Shai was near the other edge of the Empire and had numerous interactions with unaffiliated aliens. I was fascinated by them when my fathers would bring them home and discuss politics. I knew there was no other life for me and I studied hard from that point onward.”

Chuntra had begun to settle into the organic coral construction that was slowly being built in the corner of her floating habitat. The field was slowly being extended allowing more water to be added to the area, essentially filling the entire movable area of the command bay. The expanded water field was slowly being manipulated to include other organic matter constructed by nano-particles also suspended within the water.

“We can maintain this environment for you behind a hard light force wall on the bridge. I can also extrude a control interface within to allow you privacy and access to ships services. In case of emergency, the HL field will be maintained with the structural integrity fields. I can also make sure your suit is within the field, just in case.” The Ship’s voice resonated inside the water field but was perfectly modulated so that it barely tickled her cochlear chamber.

“Thank you, Ship, I appreciate all that you have done for me. Will I be able to stay near Master Wex?”

“The control globe being dropped will allow you to manipulate the field to be where you want it.” A slivered globe with control studs in a Corvan configuration, usable with the Corvan gripping arms floated into the watery bubble.

Chuntra played with the sphere for a moment and recognized the interface as a water environment manipulator, standard on Corvan battleships. She moved the field closer to Master Wex and floated over him. His face was contorted, as if in pain.

She reached out of the water sphere and touched him, smoothing water onto his facial quills. His face lost some of the tension and he seemed to ease into a more restful sleep. A few minutes later, she too fell into a silent repose.

Biyu smiled, recognized that touch and turned away to finish her diagnostics. “Goodnight, Chuntra. Sleep well.”

Citizen

Posted by Ebonstorm on October 9, 2012

Posted in: Hayward's Reach, Short Story. Tagged: civil rights, ebonstorm, federal mandate, Hegemony, Insurrection, science fiction, space opera, Tales of the Twilight Continuum, Twilight Continuum, water. Leave a comment

a tale of the twilight continuum

This was the worst summer ever. Worst than the one where half the province caught fire. Worse than the one where we had a tornado everyday and entire towns disappeared overnight.

When the news was announced, my pa looked at me and shook his head. The lady who was reading the news used to be right pretty, but the drought going on five years now, had taken a toll on her and she was gaunt, skin tight, eyes dulled by a continued lack of clean water. “By federal mandate, a planetwide state of emergency is declared. All free standing bodies of fresh water, any unpolluted well, lake or reservoir is now the property of the Protectorate. It is illegal to own any source of water outside that which is regulated to your state and city provinces. This law shall remain in effect until further notice.”

“Oh, hell no.” Manard Strictland turned the television off. “How is a man supposed to run a respectable watering hole without water.”

My pa laughed. “Manard, when was the last time you served water to anyone here. We don’t come to your establishment for its water, unless its fire-water you offerin’.” He looked at me and while his mouth was smiling, his eyes were like flint, hard and sharp. “Boy, go ’round back and get the truck.”

“Yes, pa.” I went to the truck and saw the tarp in the back. My curiosity got the better of me. My Ma, bless her departed soul, once said a cat and his curiosity is a dangerous combination, but it’s just my nature. I drop the tarp, hot-foot it into the truck and tear around the corner and stop in the front of Manard’s bar.

“Okay, boys, I brought my entire collection and got a few from some other soldiers living near my farm.” He reached back and pulled the tarp off the pile of weapons. There were a bunch more fellas who has shown up while I was away. They were all veterans and had earned their Citizenship in the Barlantan Conflict. I hadn’t fought for our world against any of a dozen foreign invaders, yet but that was because I was just sixteen. I could join next year if Pa signed for me.

“So we are going to go to the water treatment facility and demand they turn the water back on?” Manard was looking a little green, as he looked over his rifle as if he were holding a poisonous snake.

“They don’t have the right to deny us water when we were told, our last conflict ensured water rights to all of our Citizens here at Elcas Grove.”

The Commonwealth government was a local protectorate. They had moved in during the fall of the Twenty Systems Empire and established themselves as a force for peace. At first. Then there were more skirmishes with other protectorates trying to expand into our space.

As foreign colonists we had limited rights, because we were not native to the planet, but we were offered Citizenship if we were willing to fight against enemies of the protectorate. It was the most important thing an immigrant could get. Parents could pass their Citizenship to their kids, if the kids had not earned their own. But the parent would have to emigrate back to their home planet. My father earned his Citizenship nearly thirty years ago during the early protectorate battles. Things had quieted down considerably since then.

In recent years, the government had begun to change, becoming more oppressive and violent in its dealings regarding mining and water rights. Skaris was a mineral-rich world and we helped make the protectorate far wealthier than they were when they got here. Pa was right, this was a water grab, pure and simple. If we didn’t stand up to them, they would come next and take back the land they gave us next.

Pa and his men had put on their old uniforms before heading out and before long we could see the water processing and storage facility. It was surrounded by members of the Protectorate guard.

“Frank, is that part of the Emhran Guard?” Pa and Frank were using a monocular to range and count the enemy.

“Yep. That’s them.” Frank was a former Emhran.

“Do you think they will fight?”

“Yep.”
“Is that gonna be a problem for you?”

“Nope. There are some orders you just shouldn’t follow. And they know it.”

“There are only thirty of us. There are three hundred of them, Pa.”

“They are stretched tight. Locking down all the planetary water supplies is tough to do with only a ten thousand men.”

My father taught me tactics as a child. I didn’t see how they could win.

He looked at me. “We can’t. That is why you will be waiting in the truck.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There are three million Citizens on Skaris. There are twenty thousand members of the Protectorate here. But Citizens won’t rise up, unless they believe the Protectorate is a crazed and repressive government. And they are, but people don’t want to believe it. Our deaths will rally the Citizens to throw off the parasites of the Protectorate. We are all old vets, we know the price.”

“What about me, Pa? I need you.”

“Since your Ma passed, who runs the farm now?”

I thought about it. “I do.”

“Who tends the animals and works with the townies?”

“I do, Pa.

“I don’t expect you to understand, son. I am an old man. But I know a corrupt government. Been running from one my whole life. The worst kind of corruption is the one that says it is doing what it does for your own good but it only benefits them. This is our home. You get those people to fight for their world, find a way to make them believe they can be free. We are at the edge of the galaxy, there is no place to go after Skaris. Now, go.”

“I ain’t running, Pa.”

“Listen, this ain’t about you. A Citizen fights for the rights of everyone not able to fight for themselves, son. What they are doing is wrong. Making it illegal for a man to enrich himself off the labors of others, even when there is enough to go around, is the basis for what we fought against as soldiers of the Commonwealth. Slavery was wrong then, this is wrong, now.”

“You are a Citizen now. Find a way to make it right.” He handed me his Empire-pulse rifle. It has encoded on it a genetic badge that marked him a Citizen. When he died, a genetic relative would bear the title.

Their skirmish was brief. Those old veterans knew their warfare. They killed all the Protectorate soldiers. I was with him when he died. We didn’t say much. I just held his hand. He passed quietly.

As I stood up and looked around, all I could see were the dead, scattered in undignified poses. I picked up my Pa’s rifle and walked away from the water facility. I could see protectorate vehicles in the distance.

I would be coming back, and next time I would have an army.

Insurrection: Out of Time

Posted by Ebonstorm on April 9, 2012

Posted in: Chapter, Short Story. Tagged: Children of Earth, core consciousness, Corva, environmental systems, free memory, Humani, Insurrection, planetary defense, science fiction and fantasy, short story, Sjurani, space opera, Tales of the Twilight Continuum. 1 Comment

a tale of the twilight continuum Θ

Time. When you are an AI Complex or more commonly an Image, you have lots of time on your hands. Okay, technically I don’t have any hands, but you get what I mean. What the fleshies call seconds, I can call days. Sometimes when they are talking, I have already completed the conversation they were going to have with me. Several times.

The down side? I am generally not very creative. I get really good at things from doing them over and over. Not because I can intuitively leap, because I can’t. I look smart because I can do it over and over really fast until I get it right.

Today, unless I am very creative, (remember, a weak spot) or very lucky, I am likely to see my last days. I will enjoy them, relax, extending the seconds near to forever. You would be surprised how much living an AI can squeeze into his last minute.

And that is exactly what I have left. One minute.

Everything worked exactly like it was supposed to. Wex and Chuntra traded ships with me. I transferred my core consciousness to the computers of the Glorious. I left the control diamond with Thomas, just in case I did not make it. I took a minute to stretch and look around. It was nice to have some real estate to move around in. I love Thomas, but sometimes it gets a little cramped in there; not enough room for the both of us. The virtual environmental systems allowed me to create hard light holograms to take over all the stations on the ship and two in the engineering bay.

I created a memory sphere to allow me to apply the maximum amount of free memory to every task. A real-time simulcast system, the Glorious allowed me to access every system on the ship at the exact same time in perfect synchronicity without any delay. Against the AIs in the planetary defense network and onboard the fleet, I would need to be perfect. And unlike those AIs who may have multiple duties in addition to fighting, I only have one job. Combat. I was programmed to win, ruthlessly, effectively. To win at all costs. An entire species’ technology was directed into me, making me the one of the Empire’s finest weapons. But I was a secret weapon. Even Thomas did not know what I was truly capable of doing.

I directed the Glorious on the vector required to jump to the Trinary Expanse. Travelling Light fell in below me, riding nearly hull to hull less than three meters between us. Only because its Biyu can we do this. Organics could never pull this off at this speed. And she is doing everything I am doing, backward. I have great admiration for her, because despite her appearance, her mind is a finely tuned technology capable of intuition, emotion and nearly perfect machine cognition. I am often surprised her kind, the Conscientia, agree to work with humanity at all. She seems so much like them, only better. I know that seems strange considering what I was doing, but I was designed to protect Thomas. In a way, I am Thomas. Free from emotional constraints or moral limitations, perfectly aware of my strengths and weaknesses. Unburdened by social constraints or emotional affiliations. I can live up to my programming without thoughts of myself.

The problem was, I did not believe that. I had been alive for over two years. Longer than most images ever live, and I would be lying if I said I did not like it. We are normally scrubbed after a mission to prevent exactly the things I am talking about now. Strange philosophy, exotic, some would say aberrant thinking. These two years compressed down into a thousand years for me. I have learned more, done more, and dreamed more–cognitive activity during downtime–dreamed more than my designers ever considered.

And I did not want to die.

I had come to value me, and Thomas and Biyu and even the Sjurani S-VER, because I had shared Thomas’s memories of him. I had come to love the adventure, the excitement, even the thrill of pitting my skills and abilities against that of other AIs, other aliens, other technology. Vanity, thy name is Complex.

As we exited the atmosphere, Glorious received a communication link from the fleet. They indicated they were aware of our seven crew members and their identities. If we surrendered, we would be given a fair trial. I let them know how we felt about that. I destroyed their communication ship’s array before they could put up their shields. They responded exactly like I wanted them to. They shot back. We only needed sixty seconds to reach the minimum safe distance to spin up and jump. That was the easy part. They pummeled my shields hitting me twenty percent of the time. My predictive engine indicated they would hit me twenty two percent of the time.

Excellent, I have begun to believe I might make it. My holo constructs are working faster than any human could, adapting and moving. Biyu and I are inside of a virtuality sharing flight information. They were shooting at me as if I was a single ship. They were pounding the ships shields. Since I had no other systems to maintain, I keep all power directed toward shields and maneuvering. We were at the halfway point, when I took a hit that rocked me. One of my hard-light clones in the engineering bay disappeared as an emitter went offline. We were almost there.

I think I neglected to mention that we were heading directly at the fleet. We were still on approach and the closer we got, the less effective their guns became. They were designed to shoot at prey moving away from them, not toward them. It was a minor difference but it was just enough with my reaction speed to mean they would always miss even it is just a few meters. Another hit. Another emitter goes offline. The fire suppression system is activated and a half a dozen small fires go out. Hull integrity still good, shields at sixty percent.

I was heading directly at the command cruiser. I charged the weapon arrays and removed all safety protocols for overloading. I have set them to fire in stable attack patterns, targeting the most vital systems first. The most important targets are the targeting systems. Once they are gone, the fleet will take a second to adjust. That will be all they need.

The smaller fleet ships are locking on and ranging. This close to the command cruiser, they cannot use their missile banks or torpedo bays, they are limited to high density lasers and particle weapons. Just like we planned.

My overcharged weapons fire destroying the targeting array on the command cruiser. Two seconds later, the combined laser fire of the fleet strikes my shield and I launch a stolen warp-star missile. The Bel-ha will notice it, but we won’t be here to prosecute. I set it to detonate exactly one second after launch. No heat, only super-luminous emissions, sufficient to blind every scanner out here.

And at exactly two hundred and thirty thousand miles from the surface of Lorissi, just outside of the major planetary gravity well, Travelling Light uncloaks and jumps in the completely opposite direction of the fleet. Her jump to light speed was perfect, she didn’t take a scratch. She has just enough shielding to protect them from the jump and their eventual landing. She cloaked in the last three minutes of the approach to ensure once we got closer to the fleet she would not be seen. Perfect execution and Biyu should be asking for a raise when they drop.

My last minute. I calculate in sixty seconds, Glorious will be destroyed. I have just enough time to build that condo, I was thinking about and enjoy half a year before they vaporize the Glorious. Just joking. I do not intend to die here.

Sixty seconds.

Peeling off to the port side of the Battlecruiser, putting it between me and the rest of the fleet. Shields are down to thirty percent. The Glorious is still handling well and I push her to the limits as I redirect her shields aft, to cover my escape. I burn the engines and predict the incoming fire, I slow down the flow of time as I press the ship to perform maneuvers she was never designed for, pushing the limits of her design. And for ten seconds, she does excellently. I spent the rest of that ten seconds keeping the ship from being shot to hell. I am successful.

Fifty seconds.

Their ranging is better once I am out of the shadow of the command ship, but every second I get further away, weakening their beam weapons. I can see the planetary defense nodes scattered inside of the lunar orbit. They have not fired on me yet, and they won’t since I seeded the belt with a variation of the virus the first intruders used to get into the system. It won’t last more than two minutes, but I won’t be here in two minutes, so that will be fine. Once I am gone, the system will fire on the Corvan fleet. A additional bit of code added to the last part of the software. That should give the Wilks and Company the time they need to be harder to trace. No predictive engine gives me better than fifteen percent to pull off a speed to range escape. I need to try something different.

Forty seconds.

Bearing down on me, beam lasers and particle weapons weakening the shield, down to fifteen percent power. Pushing the array’s regeneration past the prescribed limits. This ship is never flying again. Turning off all safety protocols. Shield power back to thirty percent. Lidar systems locking on, they are preparing missiles and torpedoes. Distance getting greater, but it is not enough to be out of range. They will hit me in twenty seconds once they launch in ten seconds.

Thirty seconds.

I am in range of the defense node. I establish a communications link with it. It does not accept at first. I try several codecrackers with no success. I review the information used by the earlier invaders. They had a stolen access code. I remove my hard light clone from the tactical panel and set him to cracking the code directly. He estimates ten seconds. An explosion booms from the starboard engine and an indicator says she has taken a hit due to shield flickering as it is about to fail. The sudden loss of the engine no longer matters. We are going to hit the defense drone. It is so much more massive than we are, it will be like a bug hitting a windshield.

Twenty seconds.

They fire. I am past the defense barrier. My codecracker penetrated the system and is now working to get me into the main core. He tells me five seconds. The shield is dropping and the launch of the torpedoes are streaking toward me. I have set the burst comm laser to transmit but it will take five seconds to calibrate.

Ten seconds.

I can see the torpedoes, they are dense like fireflies streaking through the night. The beam lasers have fallen off and the shield is gone so there is no flare or flicker on the ships optics. I can see the fleet attempting to turn. They have strayed into the Bel-ha space in an effort to close their distance to me. Unfortunate. It means the defense system will be forced to fire on them. So sad. My hard-light clones have begun to fail inside the Glorious and smoke and fires are everywhere. S-VER would have been proud. She had been… well, glorious. My last two hard-light constructs indicate success. The first has made it into the defense core. The second has completed the comm laser connection.

Five seconds.

The torpedoes are now blocking all other light, each a miniature sun, for a moment reminding me of the jostle of stars near the core of the galaxy, all bright and close together, sharing stellar gasses and wisps of energy as gravity creates a nuclear soup of the stray hydrogen and helium, I think for a moment, I know what Thomas feels like when he is about to die. That moment of transcendental awareness where you see all there is to see. The fleet trying to bring their massive bulk around, the defense satellite powering its weapon systems, the defense network attempting to assess the fleet. The communications between the ships of the fleet as they attempt to align to jump. I get the last laugh, if they jump now, it will take them a month to realign before they can head out to the Expanse to hunt for the Majoris and company. Heh. Machines for the win. My last clone presses the comm transmit button. The torpedoes explode as they strike the Glorious and the Glorious explodes as she strikes the defense node. The burst transmit takes only a second.

One second.

The defense node fires on the Fleet destroying a light cruiser. The fleet scatters and some members panic and jump. The torpedo explosions emit their tachyon energy into the night and onboard the Travelling Light, searching for tachyon bursts, there is silence.

Insurrection: New Arrivals

Posted by Ebonstorm on November 23, 2011

Posted in: Character Bio, Short Story. Tagged: Children of Earth, Corva, Humani, Insurrection, science fiction and fantasy, short story, Sjurani, space opera, Tales of the Twilight Continuum. 2 Comments

a tale of the twilight continuum Θ

Admiral Lolikai swam in his personal quarters, and changed colors as his mood evolved. His tentacles swayed smoothly in the water offering resistance to its artificial current and his gripping arms manipulated the control pad where the latest status information flowed ceaselessly.

As a Corvan Admiral, he enjoyed water flavored with the minerals of his homeworld. The sharp and bitter tangs of the western sea, caused by the primordial corals there, reminded him of his youth spent looking at the stars and The Rift, which blanketed the night sky. The lighting currently reflected the light of the home system’s orange sun, large and low in the sky, creating a deep and rich reddish hue which was gently diffused by the water.

Lolikai swam without his hardened and restrictive exosuit enjoying the freedom of movement which was only possible when he was free of it. He stretched, flexed and shrank himself into a variety of coral nooks in his quarters, just to remind himself he could do it. The suit was being recharged, cleansed and its weapons calibrated.

Onboard the Violent Hris, his personal command ship, there was little chance of needing the exosuit’s full capabilities, but undamaged tentacles did not need to be regrown was his mother’s expression and he still thought it a very good bit of folk wisdom.

His three eyes, evenly spaced around his cranial cavity were wide and light receptive, drinking in every bit of his setting sun, hungrily, with the need of the predatory mueo enjoying a helpless and savory meal. It had been two standard since he had seen the real sun on any planet or swam in a natural ocean, tasted the natural salts, and floated buoyant without the cares of thousands of sentients heavy on his mind.

He spent the day perusing his correspondence and trying to make sense of a variety of intelligence reports from GCID. He was never fond of reports from Galactic Intelligence because they seemed to obscure as much as they enlightened. His two hundred standard years reviewing such reports had taught him to know recognize when something was being said and when something important being was omitted. His latest orders was classified white, the reflexive color of fear. Lolikai blanched when he began reading the directions from the High Command, and colors shimmered across his body in a rhythmic and steady pattern. The pattern shifted faster as he read more and when he was done, he cast the display pad away from him in disgust.

I have offered him hospitality in the traditions of my family for twelve generations. How could they expect me to be party to killing him? He is the Sjurani ambassador and a member of a powerful merchant family who works for the Imperium. Whose idea was this and why was this the best solution available? I am not blessed with as much of the Insight as the High Command. Perhaps I am simply not seeing as clearly as I should.

“Admiral,” came across his communications bud and vibrated his inner cochlear chamber. His sub-vocalization thrummed the water in affirmation. “We are preparing to jump to the secondary inner system gate hub. The jump will take two days.”

“Very good, Captain. I understand we have had some new additions to the fleet. How are they shaking down? Will they be ready for fleet exercises while we wait for the Galactic Gate calibrations?”

“Yes, Admiral, the Hostan Fury, the Deepwater Beln, two new medium cruisers with a crew complement of nine hundred have managed to arrive on time, and have excellent records of operation. Both were in the recent conflict in the Dareen Cluster and acquitted themselves well against the renegades reported there. They are also two of the first cruiser class ships with mixed crew complements. I believe they have Sliveen, a complement of Mariovel engineers, and water-capable members of the Children of Earth. They even resemble the Corva at a rudimentary level. We have been outfitting them with a variety of softer exosuits suitable for children.”

“I would like to meet some of these aquatic Children of Earth. Arrange that Captain.”

“May I point out and begging the Admiral’s pardon, the creatures are quite unattractive and primitive in appearance. Their only redeeming feature is their four-lobbed brain which is quite capable and makes them extraordinary navigators. They also have quite a smell… sir.” It was apparent the Captain did not enjoy the primitives from Earth, but an Admiral must get his novelty when he can.

“See to it, Captain, more than one if you are able to arrange it without inconveniencing their crews.”

“As you will, sir, it will be done.”

The Children of Earth were legendary in Corva space, and had come quite a long way from their primitive origins nearly two hundred years ago. Lolikai was an ensign in the Toranor star system when they first appeared there, suddenly without warning in thousands of ships. He remembered…

They were patrolling the Toranor star system flying dark because of the alien picket ships that disrupted and destroyed any planet to planet traffic they detected. Since the Galactic Gate had closed years earlier, no new support ships had arrived in system and it was assumed since no ships were forthcoming the galactic war against the mechanicals had spread and shut down the Precursor Gate System stranding younger races without the advantages of superior star drive systems to very limited regions of travel. Travel across the length and breadth of the galaxy or to any of its nearby clouds or clusters was seriously curtailed.

Having been assigned to the Toranor system was not a hardship, since it was one of the jewels of the galaxy, a system of beautiful, highly habitable large planet-moons surrounding the immense gas giants of Toranor. These worlds were capable of supporting a wide array of lifeforms and trillions of sentients considered Toranor their home. Planets of incredible majesty, covering a variety of biomes, these worlds could be home to nearly every race in the Imperium. How so many worlds came to be in this place, in such perfect harmony, left the only solution, to be a Precursor one. Only the Precursors had the technology to move worlds, and had done so several times. These systems were capable of supporting trillions upon trillions on the worlds themselves, not to mention the capability to create artificial worlds as space stations or asteroid moons. There were over ten thousand of those types of bodies in system already.

Since the worlds were within Corva space, they were annexed immediately and populated with the elite of the Imperium at first. As more people learned about it, many settled here and the locals seemed to not only like it but embraced the arrival of new people. Then the war came and the intelligent gate system of the Precursors shut down, stopping all relatively instantaneous movement between systems. If you wanted to have a war, you would have to fly there yourself. This isolated warfare and kept innocents from being harmed.

Once the Gate had shut down, traffic had been limited to travel in system or to two or three nearby stars with established colonies. No one seemed concerned at the time, since almost anything you needed could be found on one of these twenty diverse worlds or one of the other smaller rocky planets or nearby asteroid belts. That was before the arrival of the Nox.

The Nox arrived in small but powerful ships that were barely able to be seen by the most sophisticated sensors. They did not attack planets but destroyed any ship caught moving from world to world. The Twenty Moons lived in fear of the next attack. Slowly a small fleet of ships joined the few military ships in the area and attempted to deal with the Nox. After a decisive battle led by Captain Mehelo, a career military Corva, ships began to work together to rid the system of the Nox. But it was slow work, dangerous and a single mistake could doom the entire fleet. Tensions were always high.

“What do you mean, they just appeared, ensign? A thousand ships don’t just appear. I need a better answer and I want it now!”

The captain’s booming vibrations shook the command area and every scattered to their duty station to understand what they were seeing. Thousands of ships appeared out of nowhere, many of them on fire, damaged, and some exploding, sometimes causing chain reactions.

“Captain, do you want us to exit dark mode and render assistance?” The Second Officer was analyzing incoming data on the ships and had begun a data model inside the command area comprised of light and sound constructs representing the alien craft. “As far as we can tell, most of the ships conform to the appearance of ships assigned to a race called the Sjurani. They are a relatively reclusive race living along this spiral arm approximately two thousand light years from here. They are members of the Imperium but generally do not interact much in galactic matters. They are classified as Old Galactics as they have been in the dataweb archives for over 15 million cycles. Generally harmless even though they have quite sophisticated technologies, they are for the most part considered threat level 5, but when angered can display a threat level of 2, making them the equal of any race in the Imperium. There are other ships with them, smaller, far less capable ships of an unknown design.”

The tactical officer added “scanning their ships, shows a variety of life forms and configurations as if some of these ships might be life-sustaining arks. Many of the inhabitants are in primitive cryogenic containment. Captain, I believe what we are seeing are the results of a planetary evacuation. Many of the ships are heavily damaged as if they had recently engaged in combat.”

“Stay dark. This many ships will certainly draw the Nox and I want to have an advantage while they are attacking the new ships.” The captain’s anticipatory color changes, became contagious on the command deck. Soon everyone was flashing a response pattern to his unspoken declaration of war.

“The ships are changing heading toward Harata II, Captain,” was ensign navigator Lolikai’s confused statement.

“What is it, ensign, you are inking in public?”

“Captain, I am detecting a Nox fleet. One of the largest I have ever seen heading right at the Sjurani ships. They will arrive in five standard hours. I don’t know where they were hiding and how we missed so many, but they are here. We certainly cannot provide any real support with this many enemies. Approximately one third of the ships will make it to Harata II before they are overtaken. Most of the smaller ships will still be in space and arrive last. The greatest number of Sjurani and other smaller beings are on the largest of the Sjurani vessels which are reaching the planet first. They may return to space once they offload their cargo.”

But they did no such thing. As ships landed, others followed. None returned to space. The Nox closed in and would be destroying ships in less than an hour. The Captain had made a decision. We would spin up our drives and assist. But everything did not go according to plan. I learned early, that very little ever did. What I did see, changed my view of everything I knew about space.

I was young, barely thirty standard and eager to prove myself. I plotted the intercept course and fired the drives, already calculating possible vectors and activating the predictive engines interface that pilots used to determine possible vectors and targeting angles. These predictive programs helped to maintain the most opportune angles for weapons fire or defensive maneuvers depending on what was needed. The Captain was wearing his interface optic and could see the same four dimensional combat variations working ahead to maximize our potential. He used his tentacles to offer suggestions to other fleet captains who were also using the same predictive feed. Our ships assumed their combat structure effortlessly. We had worked together now for seven standard and those of us who had survived against the Nox were seasoned but cautious.

Our drone commanders had released their batteries of AI drones which normally would have provided both offense and defensive cover against the stealthy black-body Nox ships. Today, we would be using them fully offensively to damage as many Nox ships as possible and give as many of the Sjurani ships a chance to land as possible. Nox ships barely emitted any signature energies except in direct combat and only as long as it took for their beam weapons to fire. There was almost no waste energy to scan for even in direct combat.

Our fleet used approximately three hundred AIDs. Each was equipped with three thousand depleted radioactives fired at nearly five thousand kilometers per second. In space this meant they worked best if they were close to the target, so we took a page from the Nox and made them very hard to detect until they were shooting. Once fired, they would be empty in thirty seconds because they rarely lasted longer than that once they were discovered. Overall, they were expensive but highly effective.

The Nox used a variety of strange weapons, unfamiliar to us at first, and because of that, devastating in combat. Over the cycles, we have grown more familiar and have made counters to almost all of them, although to be fair, some counters were more effective than others. The AI drone program was effective because they could be replaced fairly easily on Harata III with their advanced production facilities and required only AI programming completed by the Beteans on Harata II.

The military ships in the fleet would be using the most advanced weapon available, the tachyon pulse array. Huge, slow and temperamental, this weapon was one of the most powerful of the day. It required time to fire but once fired, its effects were instantaneous and devastating. No ship could survive a hit from this weapon and the beam would travel to the end of its stability before decaying so it would damage a number of ships, destroying at least one and crippling two or three others. Its greatest disadvantage was the inability to fire it again for fifteen minutes. Since the fleet had four, we kept them on rotation that reduced the firing time between shots.

The remaining weapons were the standard ship to ship weapons including high speed pulse torpedoes, beam arrays for point defense and close combat, and multi-missile systems which while slower than most of the ship weapons made up for that with a multiple warhead missile capable of overcome the Nox’s heavily armored and strangely shielded ships. Our electromagnetics team used a variety of technologies to reveal Nox ships including tachyon pulse emissions which causes approaching Nox ships to emit radiation temporarily and become easier to target.

There were also gravity mines which would be released and were designed to attach themselves to any ship without the proper identification signature. Their gravity field was calibrated by our ships weapons to slow the enemy ship and provide telemetry. We also used small cloaked fighters to spot for our tachyon pulse array, providing an enhanced lock to ensure maximum affect and potential for multiple hits.

With all of this weaponry and technology at our disposal, we were only sixty ships against an estimated eight hundred Nox vessels, of which there were at least three designs we had never seen before. Our only advantage was we had not been seen yet.

Several Sjurani ships had begun to open fire upon the Nox to good effect, but the predictive engines indicated with their current rate of fire, they would be overcome within four hours with an eighty percent casualty rate. With our intervention, the calculation engines indicated we would only add another four hours to that time and we would buy that time with a sixty percent casualty rate. The smaller ships would need at least twelve hours to complete their transit to the surface of the planet.

“Captain,” began Sub-commander Wekhekan, “having run several simulations, I cannot see how we can prevail in this conflict. What can we gain by risking our fleet now? The information of the numbers of the Nox alone makes it clear, we should be recording this event and gathering information to be reviewed by the Toranor Defense Ministry and the Governing Council. These numbers are unprecedented and far greater than previously believed.”

“I think what you are meaning to say, Sub-commander is, you are uncomfortable with the idea of uselessly throwing our lives away when you believe there is no point to the exercise.” The captain’s body was contorted with what would be considered amusement, perhaps at the situation, or perhaps with his subordinate’s expression of fear. “What you say has merit and I recommend we relay the telemetry we have gathered and will continue to gather while we are tearing into their fleet until we are unable to transmit any longer. Have you looked out there, Sub-commander, there are millions of sentients whose lives may depend on our next actions. If we are right, they are the last of their world. Is this the best we can offer them, a cold and unfriendly death at the hands of an enemy they will not even get to perceive?” The Captain’s words stung everyone, because we were all thinking the same thing as the Sub-commander, even if we did not say it.

The Captain looked down and was momentarily still, floating in a repose similar to prayer. “Is there any word on the Second Fleet and its location?”

Eager to please, I chimed in, “Captain, the Second Fleet is approximately four hours off of our position at maximum speed. They may be able to provide some smaller ships because of their superior speed, but their larger ships are already pushing their engines to the limit.” I wanted to say more, but I was not sure it was my place to offer tactical information beyond my station as Pilot. A clam won’t open itself, my mother used to say. I decided the risk was worth it. At worst, in thirty minutes we would all be dead anyway. “Sir, if I may, I think there may be another way to conduct this so we can increase the time in the fight, provide support and wait for help to arrive, all at the same time.”

The Captain’s repose was shattered and he did not appear the least bit pleased, his eyes held mine in a serious unblinking stare and he had rotated so that at least two of them were focused directly on me. “Amuse us Lolikai, we have thirty minutes until we are in range, what would you do in my position? You are the Captain for three minutes…”

In for two tentacles, in for six. Using my gripping pads, I rotated the battlefield from our point of view. I expanded the window to include the Second Fleet. “The current plan has us assaulting the Nox directly from this angle. We would bisect their fleet and disrupt their attack on the Sjurani. But this would then direct their attacks onto our ships instead. With the Sjurani ships being larger and tougher than ours, I would suggest squeezing the Nox between our ships, drones and the Sjurani instead.” I rotated the field again and placed our ships beneath the Nox fleet instead of approaching obliquely.

I began again as the predictive engine recalculated the probabilities “Instead of attacking at range, we should use our z-profile and come up beneath their fleet and close to their ships, far closer than we normally attack them. With our rapid fire pulse lasers, which normally are quite effective, but do not get used until we are within range, we normally have been fired upon for quite some time before they get into range. But starting the fight at full capacity and at close range, we could double our destructive potential.” The Nox fleet in the display lost a significant number of ships near the center of its fleet, a much greater number than in our previous predictions.

The Sub-commander slides forward and begins to modify my program and then said “Using our tachyon beams we destroy their larger command vessels, especially the ones we know nothing about. I don’t know if the Nox are affected by morale but if we surprised them with a strong offensive, it may cause the Sjurani to increase their attack posture as well.”

Not to be left out, the Captain began to shimmer in what could only be described as pleasure and added to the conversation. “We could then release the drones while they are regrouping and create a widening field of fire that selectively targets their best ships as fast as we are able. With a strong distribution of gravity mines, tachyon pulses, we could increase our targeting potential and with our point defense lasers working at close range we could conceivably break their fleet and cause them to pull away from us. We could then push our fleet toward the Second Fleet and squeeze those caught between our drones, our ships and our targeted fire and the fast attack ships of the second fleet arriving in a timely fashion, we may convince them we have a significantly larger fleet approaching and perhaps we can give those ships time to land.” The predictive engines signified a possibility of the plan working approaching seventy five percent with only a sixteen percent loss ratio. It also predicted, that eighty percent of the remaining Sjurani fleet would make it to the surface, far better than the original twenty percent.

Captain Mehelo’s tentacles flew over the formations as we approached, each pass provided different variables and altered the timetables for fleet viability versus effectiveness. With our last combined effort, we had come up with a plan that might actually work. The Captain came around the combat display and bubbled laughter. “Captain for three minutes and you have me considering your plan as if it might actually be a good one. Your gizzard must be filled with sharp stones, boy. Keep this up and, you might make Admiral one day. Audacious, with just a hint of madness.”

I would like to say my plan was a complete success and we handily won the day with minimum casualties. That would not be true. There were many casualties on our side. Captain Mehelo did not survive that battle. Nor did twenty-two other ships in our fleet. Of the eight hundred Nox ships faced in that confrontation, fewer than two hundred survived that conflict. The Sjurani were able to land their arks with over eighty-six percent of their fleet arriving intact on the planet’s surface. They did indeed rise to the occasion when they saw us destroying the enemy and provided powerful supporting fire. The Second Fleet rode the smasher, and arrived forty minutes earlier than expected. There had never been such a large fleet battle in the Toranor System with the lives of billions at stake. I watched Captain Mehelo as he died, held him in my gripping arms, and with his last words, he told me, “Good work, Admiral. Make me proud.”

And I did. With that battle and many other effective strategies against the Nox, I became the youngest Admiral in Corvan history.

First Appearance: Admiral Lolikai is one of the main antagonists of Insurrection. Hard core, dedicated, honest to a fault, with a strong sense of duty, the Admiral is the leader of one of the Empire’s largest battle groups. His fleet is more loyal to him than they are to the Empire and that makes leaders in the empire nervous. He is kept on the fringes of the Empire to keep him away from important things and keep him weeks away from being a threat to anyone on the Hegemony Council.

About the Artist: The artist Reid Southen, known on deviantART as ‘Rahll is a science fiction, space opera kind of artist. This piece called Rawkets, is a kinetic work with lots of action taking place with a great deal of detail. ‘Rahll is a long time conceptual artist, and making a name for himself working on gaming projects with scifi overtones. It also looks like he is making his own writing project called Hayling. His super-realistic style makes for startling images that leap off the screen at you. This is an artist to watch.

Alien Race: The Corva – Masters of the Corvan Hegemony

Posted by Ebonstorm on November 23, 2011

Posted in: Insurrection, Serial. Tagged: Empire, Hegemony, Insurrection, Mariovel, octopus, squid, The Corva, The Twilight Continuum. Leave a comment

The Corva

The Corva are the defacto rulers of the largest galactic empire in the Milky Way Galaxy, called the Corvan Hegemony. Depending on who you ask, the Hegemony, often called the Corvan Empire by the races who are less well represented is considered to be the most powerful social group in the galaxy.

Comprised of thousands of races the Empire is lead, coordinated, protected and ultimately controlled by the favored people of the greatest civilization this galaxy has ever spawned, the mysterious Precursors. When the Precursors disappeared nearly two million years ago, the Corva being the race most in touch with the ideals and belief systems of the Precursors stepped up to lead the collection of races seeking stability in a galaxy rife with peril.

The Corva were a servitor race to the Precursors and one of the primary maintainers of the industrial and military might of the Hegemony. A relatively benevolent race with a strong sense of order and desire to create a stable and harmonious galaxy, it has been their goal for millennia. As a member of the Galactic Council, they are a powerful influence for law and order in the Galaxy.

Biology: A carbon-based life form resembling an octopus with three shorter arms used for moving around on land or under gravity. They have three longer arms that function as either legs or gross manipulators. These secondary tentacles are capable of finer manipulation than the legs but pale in comparison to the sensitivity of the two gripper tentacles. The gripper tentacles are longer than either set of legs or working arms and have two large pads on the end of those tentacles with numerous suckers, muscle groups and cilia capable of super-fine manipulation. The Corva are now amphibious able to live both on land and in water and their worlds and habitats reflect this dual nature. The have three eyes space evenly around the body, capable of independent operation and targeting awareness. A Corvan is technically capable of using weapons at any of the three eyes independent of each other.

Appearance: Standing 6 to 7 feet tall and resembling a Terran octopus or squid, their muscular bodies come in a variety of native colors and they have the ability to change their skin color with pigment altering chromatophores. They are also able to emit light from their bio-luminescent pigment organs. Their bodies are supple but resilient and have been genetically modified by the Precursors to be strong and durable.

Physiology: The Corva have large and complex brains within their carbon-fiber based cartilage and super-dense muscular central body and have tentacles with strong and dexterous cilia at the end of them. Able to speak multiple languages, both sonic, kinesthetic and photochromic they were the creators of the Galactic Trade Languages in use in the Hegemony today. Their bodies are covered with an organically flexible sheath that holds water within their bodies and processes their oxygen for them. Physically robust, the Corva have been genetically engineered to the peak of their genome’s capability.

Able to remain submerged indefinitely, strong and powerful swimmers able to reach speeds of 100 kph for short bursts, capable of moving over land at speeds of 35 kph for periods of hours, able to suspend their body’s functions for weeks and remain alive, and with their technological enhancements, the Corva have one of the most adaptable militaries in the Galaxy.

Technology: The Corva have a diverse range of technology and are generally at the forefront of technological development. They have been a space-faring race for well over 1 million years colonizing their solar system and nearby stars with generation-ships before their creation of a faster than light propulsion system. They created their fast interstellar drive over 50,000 years ago allowing them to colonize over fifty percent of the Milky Way Galaxy during the peak of the Hegemony.

Adaptive and creative, the Corva are constantly pushing the envelope of new sciences. Capable of Corva-
forming worlds with the aid of their allies, the Mariovel, there are thousands of planets that are now able to support the Corva and their attendant species. Their technology allows them to build super-dreadnoughts that are the equal of the fleets of other species, so their ability to maintain the peace in the Hegemony has been relatively unchallenged until the First and Second Galactic Wars. With their development of Pulse technology, the Corva have the fastest sentient ships in the Galaxy and the most effective weapons of any other of the Old Galactic Races.

Temperament: The Corva are a relatively nonviolent species but in their background war has been a part of their development, so they have the ability to wage war but believe themselves to be beyond the need for war and aggression. With their amazing communication abilities, they attempt to interact with alien species diplomatically, culturally and socially before they would consider warfare of any kind.

Culture: When two Corva are in total communication, they will emit, light, colors, sounds and kinesthetic information. Their language can be communicated completely in any single one of those but when they are using all of them they are using their most advanced multi-tonal, photo-chromatic language. Their overall culture has over 3 million years of recorded history.

First Appearance: The Corva first appear in my novel Insurrection. The Corvan Galactic Hegemony is the backdrop of the story in which a war-weary soldier, Thomas Wilks, discovers a secret that shakes the foundation of the Empire and reveals a history the Corvan Hegemony would rather not be known.