Talisman of Earth Read online

  He felt like...prey.

  Looking more closely, Rhodes could see the faint traces of digitalization. Focusing on those, he was finally able to speak. “That is very realistic. Even a little better than in the sims.”

  The Valgon warrior spoke with Rax’s voice. Its complex, multi-beaked mouthparts moved eerily. “Dr. Weller let me borrow the expertise of one of her software engineers for a day last week. These tablets are each projecting a motion-tracking, ultrahigh definition hologram. All of them together are wrapping my entire body. It is quite an illusion. Like in a sim, it’s an illusion you can touch. The best thing about this, though, is that it’s an illusion that can actually touch you back.”

  The hologram-wrapped Rax abruptly kicked out at Rhodes, nailing him directly in the chest. Rhodes was lifted off of his feet, the wind knocked out of him. The shock of it didn’t last long, and he immediately tucked into a roll and was back up in a low, ready stance.

  “Damn it, Lieutenant!” He gasped, an excited and fierce smile on his face.

  “Who? I am Sergeant at Arms Seerkal of House Keers,” said the Valgon warrior.

  So that’s how he wants to play it, thought Rhodes, his smile growing more ferocious.

  The Valgon charged Rhodes, and the Commander dodged to the side. Although he moved fast, the holographic enemy was not a real Valgon. He was a Kenek: Thicker in the middle, bipedal, and a little bit slower over short distances than a progeny of the Valgon warrior caste.

  Part of Rhodes noted this, but the other part of him was more convinced that an actual elite Alliance fighter was trying to strangle him.

  Rhodes sent a roundhouse kick into one of the Valgon’s left legs. It moved as if it was hit, but the enemy retained its balance. Some kind of programmed hit box told the hologram that Rhodes had connected, but the leg he hit must not have been masking one of Rax’s real legs.

  The warrior lashed out with a claw. It grazed Rhodes’ back. A glancing blow, it was nevertheless back up by enough momentum that it pushed the Commander down into the gym floor padded mat. He caught himself with his robotic left arm. The powerful synthetic muscles bunched and pulsed with enough force to flip Rhodes over onto his back. From that position, he curled and kicked up with both legs into a crouch.

  The Valgon was already on top of him, wrapping Rhodes with all four of his thick arms.

  No bear hugs from a giant muckbug today, Rhodes thought. He twisted, corkscrewing out of the impending clutch, and simultaneously threw an uppercut into the neck plate of the warrior—-with his metal, superpowered left fist.

  The Valgon skittered backward, flipped over by its significant momentum, and crashed onto the floor with a boom. Rhodes felt the entire room quake, and a moan rose up from the lump on the floor.

  “Holos off!” Rax choked out. The illusion blinked away, leaving the big Kenek curled almost into a fetal position on the gym mat. “Damn it, Rhodes. Nearly took my head off.”

  Rhodes rushed to his friend’s side and instinctively held out his left hand to offer him help. Rax growled and slapped the metal arm away. “Get that thing away from me,” he huffed, pushing himself onto his knees.

  Gray flopped down onto the mat next to him and leaned back on his arms, letting his legs spread in a big “V”. He shook his head ruefully and said, “I didn’t want to hit you that hard. I’m sorry.”

  Rax rubbed the side of his thick skull and ground his jaw. He grumbled, “I am going to need some painkillers. Doc Martell has some Kenekkari traglath plant extract.”

  “That’s some powerful stuff,” said Rhodes.

  “If anything is broken, you will owe me.”

  “Whatever I can do for you.”

  Rax grinned, gruesomely, through his pain. “If I see Dr. Weller on my way to Sickbay, I will tell her you took out some of your sexual frustrations on me.”

  “Now you know better than that,” Rhodes rebuked.

  “Right. That was never really going anywhere, you two. It is Sorakith now, eh? You like her frills?”

  “What? You want me to take another swing at you?” Rhodes joked. Sort of.

  Rax puffed, “Next time I will just generate a holo of a punching bag around my body and be done with it.”

  They both laughed at that.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Chief Engineer Cassidy Falken floated across the broad zero-G volume of the antimatter impeller, from starboard to port, while PO 3rd Class Mukesh Patel, along with Senior Nuclear Technician Mate Jana Haley and Senior Electrical Mate Carlos Williams, both CPOs, monitored their stations in the engineering compartment. They watched Falken gracefully navigate her way to the access panel for the coolant chamber using hand-and-footholds. She moved in zero-G with utter confidence. It wasn’t second nature to her; it was her nature. In her specially-fitted white radiation protective suit (RPS), with its white gloves on both hands and feet, self-contained breathing pack, and golden reflective visor, she looked like an extra-lean and tall astronaut from the old days of space exploration. Like a giant spider of ice, she angled herself languidly into the corner, fitted one foot and one hand onto grips on opposite walls, and began opening the panel with her free hand and foot.

  “So surreal watching her work,” mused Haley.

  “Magical,” Mukesh said, his face reddening even as he spoke.

  Williams snickered, “Buddy, you are not going to forget that for a looooong time!”

  “I can hear you. Stop foistin’ around and watch your meters!” Came Falken’s voice.

  Patel reddened further. A shade of ruby seemed to show through under his brown skin. He was absolutely florid.

  “Magical, for foist’s sake!” Falken added, removing the panel and attaching it to a brace on the wall. She gazed into the access, a deep box filled with a mile of interlacing tubes and dozens of sensors, with some holo displays hanging above. The Chief shook her head and sighed. Gulliver knew that two of the sensors were bad, but they were worse than bad. Both had visible scorch marks. Total burnouts that probably happened during the last coolant flush a week beforehand. There was no repairing them. Falken would have to rearrange the other sensors to take up the slack of the failed ones.

  On the other side of the bulkhead from Falken, nestled against the coolant chamber, was the antimatter storage unit. There, several large magnetic storage rings moved over 200 pounds of artificially-created antimatter in concentric circles, keeping it from contacting any normal matter. A constant stream of antiprotons was siphoned out of the rings and sent through the feed line, known as the antimatter impeller, where they collided with equally tiny amounts of normal matter. This generated energy at 1000 times the efficiency of nuclear fission and more than 300 times the efficiency of fusion. It was the level of power demanded to operate an Alcubierre warp drive and keep the Talisman cruising along at 100 times the speed of light.

  More than ninety-nice percent of the energy coming out of the impeller sped the ship through space-time, while the mere “trickle”—- the runoff—- left over was enough to run every other part of the Talisman. A mere couple centuries ago, and the power used by this single ship could have run an entire city on Earth. It was amazing.

  But Falken didn’t have time to be amazed.

  She pinged Gulliver angrily, impulsively, “What good are you if you can’t keep this from happening?”

  “I do not understand, Chief Falken. Is your interrogative meant to be rhetorical or do you wish me to formulate a response?”

  “Formulate a response and send it to me in ten to the thirty-eighth years,” she growled in her mind, and then cut off the link.

  Patel and the others at the engineering stations heard Falken’s voice addressing them. “I’m going to be in here a while. Someone run up to Weller’s team and borrow one of their little sample drones.”

  “Uh, what for, Chief?” Williams asked uneasily.

  “So I have somewhere to put the junk I tear outta this thing! That’s what!”

  “Aye, sir,” gulped Williams.
He turned to leave the compartment, but Haley and Patel were already jammed side by side in the hatch, each trying to be the first one out and away from the Chief’s wrath.

  Captain Lancer scrutinized the latest data logs sent her by Chief Falken. The projections were grim.

  Engineering team absolutely needed a dozen vital replacement parts to ensure the Talisman could keep going for more than a few months. Not to mention, if any one of those parts broke before then, it could start a catastrophic chain of failures.

  Not only were there many required fixes, but there were also scores of various items that were essential to be replenished and restocked. The Talisman was a sturdy ship, built to last and keep a crew alive for long periods of time. However, in the modern age of space travel, long voyages were measured in years as opposed to decades. The advent of FTL travel had changed the priorities of what tech on a ship was the most reliable under long term stress. As a Moderator class support vessel, she had heavy defenses to allow her to enter dangerous battle zones and help those in need. Talisman was a very fast ship, able to accelerate nearly as well as a much smaller Star Navy fighter craft, like the Kenek-designed Vesper. Other systems just weren’t made to function for a century at a time without stopping at a star dock for resupply. Food, air, and water were all recycled, but the ship wasn’t a perfect closed system. Atoms and molecules were constantly being lost through various means, and some of them just couldn’t be funneled out of the vacuum.

  Reina was determined to keep her crew alive and get the Talisman back to Earthspace. She knew that in order to fill Falken’s “grocery list of life-or-death” it was going to take a lot more than diverting course a few hundred million miles here or there to load up on a few gases or solids from random suns and planetoids. What they really needed was to get their hands on some other League technology. Even some Alliance tech could work. But the distances and odds were against them.

  The Captain flung her tablet across her stateroom, immediately regretting it. There were only so many holo tablets aboard the ship, and they were one of the many things the Chief couldn’t just make without resupply.

  She rested her head on her hands and prayed to Infinitus for a miracle.

  Doctor Kyra Weller believed in miracles, but not the kind those many worshippers of Infinitus did. The miracles she believed in were those that humanity, or any number of other intelligent species, could create. Science opened up worlds, star systems, and galaxies. One day, the universe itself would be traversable in some way. And it would all be due to the inventiveness of curious minds.

  As she skimmed over dozens of reports from her sizable staff, all from the previous week of studies, her thoughts drifted far away and long ago.

  Her mother, Danika Weller, left her husband with Kyra and her two sisters in tow and moved to France just a few short years before Donal Banyan brought together over half of the world’s nations into a single, massive entity that would be the United Powers, and a couple decades before the arrival of the Torrent.

  The early 25th century had been a time of upheaval throughout most of the world. Wars raged in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, constantly spilling across borders. Countries with more resources fought their battles with robotic drones driven by simple AIs, against rebels and insurgents or enemy nations who could afford little more than lives. As these conflicts raged, the demand for natural resources and technological know-how helped raise the United States from a period of near total economic collapse that had lasted fifty years.

  Before Kyra had earned her second doctorate, France had become part of the European Provinces of the United Powers. Along with all of North and South America, Australia, Greenland, India, and most of Africa, the United Powers functioned as a peaceful, self-sufficient political entity driven by an economic engine focused outward on developing the Solar System. Mars colonies that had been left to fend for themselves for decades finally received the help they needed, and the Red Planet began to flourish under a UP banner.

  Once all of her children were grown, Danika Weller took a position as a science advisor with the UP in North America. Kyra Weller followed her mother across the Atlantic, while her sisters remained in Europe.

  The last news she had of Earth was that tensions were building between the United Powers and the IAS, Incorporated Asian States, a less stable merger of Russia, China, and numerous other Asian and Middle Eastern nations. The UP had a tremendous upper hand, though, with their enhanced technological capabilities given them by the League. If war was to erupt again, Kyra supposed it would be a dramatically one-sided proposition.

  Kyra Weller watched through a broad viewing window as Sorakith squared off against Gray Rhodes in the gym. They were practicing the martial art of Sik’nath, the official hand-to-hand combat form of the League. Developed by the Althorians, and perfected over several thousand years, Sik’nath bore some resemblance to a cross between Krav Maga and jiu-jitsu. There was an emphasis on avoiding attacks, but every defense was active and resulted in a counterattack that used your opponent’s momentum against them. It was dangerous to practice, and Kyra’s medics often had to mend broken bones that resulted from Sik’nath sparring.

  Rhodes moved well, as always, but Sorakith avoided nearly every advance that he made. It was no secret how she did so: Althorians possessed a telepathic ability far beyond that of any other recorded species. They were able to read another sentient creature’s thoughts almost as easily as one might read a book. It wasn’t some magical power. The Althorian homeworld had evolved a biology that incorporated a metal in the nervous system of its animal forms which created a “sixth sense”, creating a map of electromagnetic fields surrounding them. Over great spans of time, the Althorian ancestors’ EM sense became so fine-tuned that they were able to envision the exact patterns of another individual’s mind, and from there intuit what they felt and meant to say.

  Having an Althorian in a room with you was like having a lie detector and a hypersensitive EM measurement device at hand. Every ship in the League Fleet had to have at least one on board. Sorakith was the Talisman’s.

  Kyra always admired her. In addition to serving as the ship’s communications officer, Sorakith was also the crew’s counselor. Able to instantly sympathize with anyone, she was easy to trust, despite the fact that she could “read minds”. Everyone knew that Althorians had a rite of passage when they came of age, and part of that was swearing an oath to never look into someone’s thoughts without their consent. To do so would be to disregard Althorian law and bring dishonor to one’s family line for ten generations.

  Luckily, an Althorian’s ability to know someone’s emotional state, or uncover their level of honesty, didn’t quite cross that line, which meant that it was still extremely useful to have one around.

  Rhodes feinted left, swung his right leg around and brought his metallic left arm across Sorakith’s shoulders at the same time. She fell backwards and down to the mat, where Rhodes held her, gently, while they both caught their breath. They stared into each other’s eyes for a moment that made Kyra uncomfortable. She kept watching the two anyway.

  Rhodes grinned, “You saw that coming. You let me take you down.”

  “Perhaps, Gray,” Sorakith said casually, “Or perhaps you are finally learning something from me.” She pecked him on the cheek and heaved him off of her, rolling back up onto the balls of her feet in one fluid motion. “See if you can repeat that, if you dare.”

  Rhodes chuckled and stood up, squaring off across from Sorakith with a wary look on his face.

  Kyra admired Sorakith, but she was also a little jealous of her, too.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Rhodes relaxed in his bunk, replaying the past day in his head. Sorakith made him smile and feel warm inside. Maudlin, but true. And she was a revelation when it came to Sik’nath training. There was absolutely no replacement for enhancing one’s skill in that martial art under the tutelage of an Althorian.

  As quickly as the rush of pleasure washed
over him, it was gone, however. Mostly, thoughts of happiness served as an impetus to reflection on what gave him his greatest contentment: His daughter Valia and his wife Kina.

  Any hopes he had of sleeping in the near future dashed, he sat up in bed and picked up his tablet. Five of the crew members had formed a ragtag band of amateur journalists and entertainers during the previous few years, and they produced a regularly published journal they affectionately dubbed “The Talisman Tribune”. Their team’s numbers had swelled to almost two dozen members in the ensuing years, and the Tribune’s biweekly update was eagerly awaited by most crewmen.

  Maybe I’ll just catch up on the last issue’s installment of Lieutenant Ayler’s World War II dogfighting fiction, he thought. It wasn’t the most astutely written piece, but it definitely captured the harrowing and valiant life of fighter pilots.

  As he tabbed through the holos to the creative section, a specific headline caught his eye. It read: Survivors of Post-Ravage Mars—-Where Are They Now? By POFC Deven St. Peel.

  Unable to bring himself to page past it without a nagging curiosity, he scanned the article.

  Everyone knows that our own Deputy Commander Rhodes is himself a survivor of the devastating attack on Mars by the Alliance over four years ago. His survival was an act of fate, and he surely would have chosen to stay and fight had he not already been launched away from the surface on his way to a star dock. But what ever happened to the other nearly seventy known survivors of Mars that were on that pod with our honorable Commander? And could it be possible for anyone else to have survived on Mars during the Ravaging?

  Gray flipped away from the article, suddenly bowled over by a monolithic wall of guilt. He nearly slung the tablet to the deck.

  So much for enjoying some antique Grumman F6F Hellcat versus Mitsubishi A6M Zero warplane action. Rhodes would be lucky if he managed to experience REM sleep once in the next two days, at this rate.