A Call to Arms Read online

  Most, but not all, of Gallus was woodland or tropical rainforests. The southern continent – a small mass slightly larger than Madagascar, and dotted by hundreds of archipelagos – had a mountain that was almost the size of Olympus Mons – the range it belonged to was bigger than the Himalayas. A cataclysmic seismic event some tens of millions of years earlier had created a vast system of valleys and ravines on the northern continent. Twice the size of the Grand Canyon on Earth, it could be seen from a high orbit. This same continent was home to the only real desert Gallus sported, and was also the current site for Kincaid’s research outpost.

  Situated near the edge of the southern woodland regions, where the dense foliage started to gradually give way to the more barren terrain of the desert, the settlement that Kincaid was in charge of was nothing more than a collection of pre-fab cabins arranged in a city grid-like formation and surrounded by tall sensor stalks that collected data on everything Commonwealth science could measure – everything from temperature to radiation levels.

  “Damn,” Kincaid murmured as the results of the test – soil samples – came back, the holographic display lighting up like a fireworks display. Kincaid exhaled in mild annoyance. The results were mixed – much like his report to the Commonwealth Colonial Authority.

  “Not what you were hoping for?” Doctor Kingsley said, her bushy hair, followed by the rest of her head, rising above the dividing half-wall between their work stations.

  “No,” he said unhappily, leaning back into his seat. “These samples are even worse than the last bunch.”

  “So we’re not going near the desert?”

  “No, deeper into the woods, I suppose,” he said. The soil samples, taken just twenty kilometres from where their camp was, were far too acidic to be of any practical use to a new colony; the samples tested yesterday were taken closer to their camp, but weren’t much better. The soil could be repurposed, of course, through modern means, but that would have repercussions for the existing vegetation and wildlife, which would require further looking into – time and resources that Kincaid and his posse didn’t have. To say nothing of the resources required to actually repurpose it to begin with.

  This was a pattern that had repeated throughout most of their exploration of Gallus. In the five sites they’d worked on, where the soil samples had been promising, other factors – such as semi-intelligent carnivorous plant-life, intelligent carnivorous animals, carnivorous insects, or just plain inedible food – had gotten in their way.

  There were none of those here – in fact, the largest form of life they’d found was an insect, a herbivore, a sub-species of one found throughout the planet. However, the soils in this region were unsuitable for growing foods that humans could eat safely, and the flora that did grow around here was even more inedible than anywhere else on this continent.

  “Have you thought of asking for a terraforming team?”

  “Not since you asked me yesterday,” he told her. Unlike Mars or Sigurd, Gallus IV wouldn’t require much in the way of work by terraformers, but it was shaping up to be the only shot humanity had of taming and settling on this world anytime soon.

  Kincaid placed his hands behind his head. “I suppose I’m running out of other options.”

  “It is a big planet,” Kingsley admitted, her blue eyes dazzling. “There are lots of other areas we could examine and get lucky.”

  “But we’ve already exhausted all the likely candidates for initial settlements,” Kincaid reminded her, leaning over to switch the holo-display off. “I’ll contact them tomorrow and –”

  “Chief!” Doctor Bennett ran in through the far door, panting slightly. “We’ve got incoming.”

  Kincaid turned to look at the youth – despite being 33, the exobiologist was still the youngest person on Kincaid’s team of thirty. “What are you on about?”

  “Somethings entered orbit,” Bennett answered. “But it isn’t one of ours.”

  Kincaid was out of his seat in a heartbeat and making for the door, Kingsley scuffling to follow suit, both of them blinking against the high morning sun as they emerged into a frenzy of activity.

  The mid-morning sun was set high against a turquoise sky, with barely a cloud in sight; the sounds of the forest around them – alien in origin though they were – sounded Terran enough to remind Kincaid of his native woodlands in Alaska. But that was another reminder of the dilemma Gallus posed: Earth-like enough to be tempting, alien enough to kill.

  “We’re not cut out for a first contact situation,” Bennet was complaining behind Kincaid, undeterred by the larger man’s long gait. “We should contact High Command immediately.”

  “Let’s just find out what we’re looking at first, shall we?” Kincaid implored, casting a withering glare at the excitable Bennett. “Good, now –”

  A crackle of thunder exploded all around them, and the sensor tower standing just meters away from them exploded outwards, unleashing a torrent of metal and plastic debris in all directions. Another thunderous roar splintered a pair the hardened pre-fab buildings like brittle timber and rained fiery death on the now-screaming scientists.

  “We’re under attack!”

  Amidst the chaos of orders and counter-orders, often competing with screams for help, Kincaid tried to exert some control over his people, even though he was well and truly in over his head. Who attacks a science outpost?

  It was a question he would never receive an answer to.

  2419-2422: The Shots Heard ‘Round the Galaxy

  “The N’xin Hegemony has shown us a few things since they made contact with us; first, despite their advanced technology, their morals and temperament are nothing like ours – they hold no regard for alien life whatsoever. Secondly, and perhaps more telling, they are willing to back up their threats and protect their interests with the utmost lethal force. Well, I can promise the people of the Commonwealth that from this moment on, so are we!” – Senator Nazim Rashim, April 15, 2419

  Captain Jerome Orbach had only been the superintendent of the shipyards – if you could call half-a-dozen drydocks and a single space-station a shipyard – for a few months, but, in that time, the shipyard had become a hive of activity as Calder II rapidly expanded to meet the demands of a Commonwealth preparing for war.

  And a war is coming, make no mistake about that, Orbach thought to himself as he stood beside the viewport of his office, overlooking the construction unfolding in the vacuum beyond. Currently four of the berths were taken up by naval vessels undergoing repair or refit, and an expansion project underway would soon give the Fairfax Shipyards the ability to not just repair, but build new warships as needed.

  Eventually. Although the expansions were advancing, they were behind schedule by almost six weeks, and, if this manpower shortage didn’t fix itself soon, they were going to fall further behind… not that Orbach felt that the personnel shortage was going to be fixed anytime soon. The Navy needed more personnel, desperately. We may not be officially at war, yet, but that’s just a formality.

  Indeed, if not for the fact that the N’xin Hegemony hadn’t attacked any major colonies – or violated the fixed borders of the Commonwealth – than war would have been declared some time ago, in all likelihood. Intelligence on the motivations of the N’xin was still piss-poor, but it seemed that their main beef with the Commonwealth was the sense that humanity was encroaching on their borders… not that they would share what their borders were, so any attempt at appeasement – a dirty word since the Second World War – by the Commonwealth was apparently fruitless.

  I don’t know why the Commonwealth insists on taking bloody noses. While he understood – but didn’t condone – the hesitancy of the people of the Core worlds to go blindly into a war against a foe of unknown capabilities, the message their reluctance was sending to the fringe colonies wasn’t good: You’re on your own, folks.

  “C&C to Captain Orbach.” That was Lieutenant Klein, her thick German accent articulating the t’s hard. She was currently
the Officer of the Watch, up in the Control Centre three levels above his office.

  “Go ahead,” Orbach said, reaching across to his desk and hitting the intercom button.

  “Freighter Grenada just came out of FTL, a hundred thousand kilometres away. Their automated systems are sending a routine query, requesting permission to dock.”

  Orbach frowned. They weren’t expecting any arrivals for at least another day – and they never got a single supply freighter…

  “Hail the freighter, find out their cargo and destination.”

  “They are transmitting, sir, but their transmissions are garbled. We can’t make out anything they’re saying – it’s just static and white-noise.”

  It was strange indeed that a ship couldn’t send a coherent, standard transmission… but could send automated queries. Not strange, impossible.

  “I’m on my way,” he said, marching for the door. It was a 33 second journey to the C&C, but by that time the Grenada had closed the distance to the shipyard to a mere eighty thousand kilometres.

  “Try the emergency channels,” Orbach ordered as he stepped off the turbolift before the doors had even finished opening, nodding a casual salute to the sentry standing watch over the doorway. Unlike the bridge of a warship, the C&C of Fairfax Station was completely circular, with a round Operations table – whose top was a giant holographic projector – in the centre of a recessed area in the middle of the room, and additional consoles lining the outer bulkheads of the room.

  “We have been,” Klein said, standing up from her console and gesturing to a holographic display of the incoming freighter. “Our best theory at the moment is that a power conduit in their forward section is surging and overloading their comm system.”

  “Their power emissions are normal,” Ensign Huang, from the main sensor station, added to the conversation. He almost looked regretful for seemingly making a liar out of a superior officer.

  “Have they provided a valid security code?”

  Klein arched an eyebrow. “It is an older code, sir, but still valid.”

  Orbach frowned – this was getting fishier. But regulations were clear – the freighter’s identity and status could not be ascertained or confirmed, so Orbach had no choice but to be overly cautious as it approached.

  “Train weapons onto the freighter,” he said instinctively. “Invite them to stand to.” He turned to face Huang. “Mr. Huang, pull up the service record of the Grenada. Find out where its last position was, and when.”

  “Should we power up the weapon systems?” Klein asked, but Orbach shook his head. Regulations gave him the latitude to do that, but he didn’t want to appear too provocative. He was merely being prudent in an unexpected situation. Besides, if I’m wrong, it’ll only take a 2.3 seconds to bring the weapons to full power…

  By now, the Grenada was at sixty thousand kilometres and was closing fast – much faster than regulations allowed for, at any rate, and did nothing to assuage Orbach’s nagging suspicions. He was about to order weapons charged when Huang pre-empted him.

  “Sir!”

  “What is it?” Orbach asked, his pitch matching that of the excited Huang, whose brows were knitted in apprehension as his eyes darted over his display terminal.

  “The Grenada was reported missing twelve light-years from here… almost three weeks ago.”

  “Ms. Klein, begin powering up weapons an–”

  That was all Orbach could get out before the Grenada, now less than three hundred kilometres away, turned into an ever-expanding molten fireball of fiery gas and debris.

  *

  “This isn’t good.”

  Captain Celina Yuen watched from the partially-dismantled bridge of the cruiser Reverent, fear reaching out and squeezing her heart so hard she thought it was going to explode out of her chest - many years ago, as a young teenager, she had watched with rapt attention as an assembly dock in London had disintegrated, killing all three hundred workers... including her father, who had moved the family there to work for that division of McIntyre Industries.

  It had been a violent, shocking scene that had scarred scores of people… but – and this could have been the decades since then talking – the sight unfolding in front of her now was even worse.

  A stunned hush had fallen over the bridge as they watched the destructive fireball – far too big to have just been caused by the freighter’s engines detonating – expand, engulfing the outer defence turrets, and enveloping the first two drydocks – both of which were occupied by vessels in a similar state of repair as the Reverent.

  “What’s the status of the ship?”

  Lieutenant Singh looked up from the Engineering console – one of the few still functioning – looking surprised – or terrified. “If you’re asking if this ship is combat ready, the short answer is no.”

  Fairfax Station’s shields, tightly hugging the outer hull of the station, flickered as the explosion tickled them, but they continued to hold as the fireball subsided. In its place, glittering chunks of scorched debris tumbled and twirled leisurely, ricocheting off each other in a deadly dance.

  “Have we got any form of propulsion?”

  “Negative, Captain. All engines are off-line awaiting final testing… and with our current manpower shortage, it’ll take us six hours to get the sublight engines primed – more if you want FTL.”

  “At the moment I just don’t want to be a sitting duck,” Yuen growled, stepping forward towards the viewport at the front of the bridge, being mindful not to trip over equipment or tools. Yuen watched in apprehension, anticipating a N’xin fleet to decelerate and finish what they started… but none did. Long seconds went by, but there was no follow-up.

  Their act of terror, now sweeping through the star system like a plague, was obviously enough. She’d heard of such attacks before – meant more to inspire fear than actually damage anything vital – but she’d never actually witnessed anything like it before.

  She rubbed her forehead tiredly, as if to subdue the headache that threatened to overcome her, and did a quick calculation, taking stock of what she had in the way of a crew and auxiliary vehicles: she had a compliment of 73 people on board, three EV worker-bees and a single Beta-class shuttle. Not much to work with… Not that she even knew where to begin. So much to do, so little to do it with.

  “Status of Fairfax?”

  “Undamaged, Captain.”

  Yuen nodded cautiously, her mind racing, her memories of that terrible day in London – the mayhem, the chaos, the death and destruction – flashing through her mind again. At barely fourteen years of age, she’d been powerless to do anything about it.

  “Fairfax Station requests that we send all available resources into clean-up duty.” Singh said. “And they’re sending out a general SOS.”

  Yuen let out a long breath, her anxiety abating as she settled on a course of action. Action was good – if you had a plan, you could focus on that, on getting results. It was good for morale to have a goal to work towards. “Get emergency crews to the shuttles, then.”

  *

  “These attacks by the N’xin are getting more ambitious.”

  “And more frequent… Assuming they are the attackers,” Admiral Peter Jankowski said, frowning heavily as he regarded the holographic display of the remains of the Fairfax Yards in annoyance, his heavy-set frame releasing a heavy sigh. “We have no definitive proof they’re behind it, Captain.”

  Fairfax Station was intact and fully operational, the crew aboard more than a little shaken but alive. The cruiser Reverent was also partially functional, and Captain Yuen had had it detached from its drydock in near-record time; the ship was now flying in formation alongside the Cheyenne, which had arrived on the scene to assist in the clean-up, as well as offering additional protection to the compromised facility.

  Captain Min-Seo – born and bred in Seoul, but had made living amongst the stars since a nasty divorce at the turn of the century – stood resolutely quiet behind the admiral, half-
shrouded in the darkness in the far corner of his office.

  Min-Seo had been the master of the Burke – an older ship that was only had a decade of front-line service left in it – for a good number of years, and was a burly man with a craggy face, whose impatience with Jankowski was worn on his sleeve.

  “Who else could it be?” he asked archly.

  “Pirate groups are active in this area,” Jankowski murmured sullenly, not used to explaining himself. “You’ve also got the various alien marauders –”

  “Which haven’t been seen in some time,” Min-Seo said, his eyes narrowing to slits as he folded his arms across his chest. “And there’s no way your generic pirate group could pull this off without substantial internal assistance, and I don’t think we’d have a security breach that big.”

  He left unsaid their mutual belief that there was no way that there was any human being around that would sell their species out to the N’xin – or any of the other hostile alien species the Commonwealth knew about.

  “True,” Jankowski conceded with a nodded salute. “Captain, I concur, it most likely was the N’xin… but without any actual proof, we have nothing to offer the Senate to confirm our suspicions.”

  Min-Seo hissed vexingly. “And without any proof, they won’t do anything about this.”

  “Exactly!” Jankowski bit out, hitting the desk in front of him heavily. The Commonwealth Parliament was as slow as a sloth when it came time to develop – much less implement – a new policy, and something like a war with an alien species was bound to take even longer for the shifting alliances in the Senate to come to an agreement. “In the meantime, we continue to clean up these messes and try and let the diplomatic corps do their job.”

  Min-Seo gestured towards a viewscreen that showed the debris field, a silent testament to a failed struggle. “They’re doing such a great job right now.”