Short Story 1

I got three comments and an IM from Brandon. Nikki, you've been outnumbered. This is the shorter of the two that I have lying around. It also provides some back story for the next one. Both of these stories should be kept from GW staff. I've stolen a good quantity of intellectual property to make them. Comment comment comment...

“The Last Hope”

VEET...VEET...VEET...VEET...VEET...
Groggily he awoke. A few blind swings later and the keen wail of his alarm was replaced with the soft feminine tone of his personal AI, Cassandra.
“Good morning, Colonel. It is currently... six-oh-two, July seventh, thirty-seven twenty Earth time. Would you like me to call in your adjutant?”
Colonel Sven Sjoliq swung off his meager cot and gathered his uniform.
“Yeah, sure. Send him in. Just give me five.”
“Affirmative.”

Corporal Gveld Slorno had been Sjoliq’s assistant for fourteen years now and was privy to the Colonel’s most secret plans. He knew that today would be a big day for everyone. He waited for the retinal scan and walked through the door to his C.O. He had been chosen because of his ties to Sjoliq – both were from the bustling coastal city of Båtsfjord and knew each other before they enlisted in the United Earth Space Fleet. And both had been preparing for today since birth, enrolled in a program that would solve all of the Alliance’s problems…

Corporal Slorno walked through the door as his superior was strapping on his sidearm.
“Are you ready for today’s ‘event,’ corporal?”
“Since birth, sir.”
“Excellent.”

As the two men strode toward hangar B Colonel Sjoliq reflected: The early 2700’s were an important time for the United States. The upstart capitalists and their Middle Eastern allies had built the first viable trans-light drive – the Johanson-Kuumar solid-state warp drive – in the 61st state, Cuba. In the following centuries the Americans and their fellow democracies formed a union. Suddenly countries like the European Union and Australia, who previously had only been as far as Mars, were colonizing new planets. Even the new Restored Union of Soviet Democratic Sub-States had control of Titan and its hydrocarbon oceans. Scandinavia had nothing but the fjords that Russia had polluted.
After nine hundred years of strife, the Norway-Sweden-Finland Alliance formed a program that would culminate in today. Sjoliq and Slorno were the sole survivors of a hundred-embryo genetic modification experiment. They were genetically and mechanically enhanced and would save the Alliance from extinction by opening the way for more “diplomatic solutions.” The United Earth governments had ignored Scandinavia for a millennium. They could not ignore a billion corpses and a dead planet.

“Colonel Svenwic Sjoliq, serial number four-five-nine-three-two-oh-seven-one-eight…”
“And Corporal Gveld Slorno, serial number three-four-three-eight-oh-two-one-one-nine.”
“Processing… Present retina for scanning.”

Both men walked up to the computer port and waited for the security AI to scan and accept their retinal “fingerprints.” They walked through the heavily armed portal and to the SCE-1 shuttles that would take them to the UESF flagship/foundry Bal Cora. This ship was the lifeblood of the United Earth expansionary fleet and had constructed every trans-light starship, including most of itself. The core of this ship was a reactor complex the size of a large asteroid. An overload in its current orbit would destroy every orbital facility and many ground based structures, as well as the moons. Mars could not survive and millions would die without the Bal Cora, but the UESF had to realize their mistake.

Hangar B was a cavernous gash in the side of the SBS Bjorn. Ringed with point-defense cannons, this was the starboard fighter, bomber, and shuttle maintenance and storage facility on the battlecruiser. Their shuttle, the Spine, sat approximately fifty metres from the door where they had entered. In addition to acting as a wall, the transdimensional void shield covering the colossal entrance to the hangar acted as a fluid bubble that let similarly shielded objects in and out. If the containment units failed, that simple barrier could flay the ship like a tornado full of razors. More than one ship had been torn to shreds and vaporized as some catastrophic impact destabilized first the void shield then the fusion reactor.

Sjoliq and Slorno climbed aboard the Spine and activated the reactor. Once through the void shield they headed for the artificial warp gate that would take them from orbit over Luna Base to the tiny moon Deimos, just over Mars. In an instant the Spine elongated, and blinked from sight. The windows automatically faded to black. The human psyche will collapse explosively if it is exposed to even a glimpse of this alternate dimension, as the UESF scientists realized after no less than twelve pilots’ heads burst in the first week of testing.

After twelve seconds the warp gate over Deimos flashed a sickly purple-green and the ten-metre Spine emerged as a silver smear on reality before consolidating into its original form. As soon as the Johanson-Kuumar drive shut down Colonel Sjoliq and Corporal Slorno were headed to the Bal Cora.

It was nearly a million miles away, just visible over the blue-brown atmosphere of Mars, but the foundry ship was an artificial moon and its gravitational influence had shifted whole seas for the last four hundred years. The only component that had not been replaced or renovated since its initial construction was the central reactor core. That one power plant requires so much hydrogen that in the hundred years between its creation and the invention of a viable warp gate the Bal Cora orbited Jupiter so the reactor didn’t starve to death. Now a planet-sized warp gate sits in the Crab nebula and condenses and transports hydrogen to keep the ship alive.

After an hour-and-a-half of uneventful travel, the Spine entered Shuttle Bay 16C on the northwest hemisphere of the Bal Cora. The meaningless bureaucratic paperwork and myriad security systems were the most time-consuming part of the docking procedure, but once the foundry ship was certain that Colonel Sjoliq and Corporal Slorno were harmless, the plan went smoothly.

Sjoliq smiled at the irony as he set his ship down. He had just easily bypassed a system designed specifically to prevent a scheme like his from unfolding. The Colonel and his assistant left the shuttle in the care of the hangar’s automated maintenance robots and stepped into one of the high-speed maglev lifts to the inner barracks levels. Colonel Sjoliq glanced at his chronometer: 9:30 AM Earth time. Precisely on schedule.

The ten minute trip would take them one thousand kilometres into the ship: three-quarters of the way to the core. On the way to Habitation Deck 147, Corporal Slorno tapped into the station security systems network and planted Hugo, a covert AI, into the central computer. Hugo had been designed ten years ago be Alliance hackers specifically to circumvent the Bal Cora’s security AIs and cover the tracks of any invaders that the UESF didn’t need to know about. Hugo would also transmit real-time maps, security feeds, and other useful data into a PDA in one of Slorno’s cargo pockets.

They climbed out of the lift and consulted Hugo to find the best rout into the reactor sublevels. The first objective was the monstrous generator that controlled the void shields. Corporal Slorno glanced at his PDA and silently jogged down the hall. Colonel Sjoliq followed his adjutant nearly a kilometre down the tunnel to an iron-barred vent in the wall. Slorno nodded at Sjoliq and pressed a few buttons on the PDA. As soon as Sjoliq had a solid grip on the iron grate, it detached from the wall with a soft click.

The pilots climbed through the hole and into the vent, gingerly replacing the grate when they were in. Hugo guided them through the duct and into a wide maglev shaft. This was a supply train line. It ferried food, ammo and other provisions from the deep internal warehouses to the surface decks. This lift would take them the remaining three hundred miles to the center of the Bal Cora. But first they had to stop only one hundred miles deeper to get to the void shields. Hugo stopped an empty train bound for the core and they clambered in.

When he awoke, the biosensor displays on Sjoliq’s jacket pointed out that the supersonic speed and high acceleration caused him to black out and that the necessary stimulants had been pumped into his bloodstream. Slorno was slower to recover.

“Sleeping on the job, Corporal?”
“N-no, sir. The blackout has lost us time.”
“How much?”
“It’s 1:00 PM Earth time. We’ve been out for three hours, sir.”
“Damn! Where are we, Corporal?”
“Warehouse 4-AH, adjacent to the primary void shield generator.”
“Excellent. Arm the first device.”
“Yes, sir.”

Corporal Slorno pulled a football-sized piece of metal out of his backpack. He connected a wire from the PDA to the device. This small, unmarked item was a one-kiloton nuclear fusion device that could be exploded from any distance by remote. After taking a moment to arm the device, Sjoliq and Slorno moved out into a small corridor and down to the generator.

The void shield generator was housed in a cavernous hold. A luminescent plume of electric blue energy rose from the top of the machine and vanished into the ceiling, eliminating the need for artificial lighting. Corporal Slorno wedged the device under a plasma conduit and they both ran back to the train. When they reached the supply train, Corporal Slorno instructed Hugo to reduce train speed and they swept down the shaft.

At the base of the shaft, Colonel Sjoliq and Corporal Slorno hopped out of the supply train and crept the remaining three kilometers to the core. At 3:00 PM Earth time, the two men that could save the Alliance walked on a catwalk under the kilometer-thick containment shield to an access hatch. This hatch led straight to the inner sanctum of the Bal Cora.

Inside the iron and granite shield was a hollow cavern containing the heart of the Bal Cora. The reactor itself was held aloft by vast pylons that carried plasma, the lifeblood of the starship, to the engines and other vital systems. A small warp gate inside the containment shield siphoned refined hydrogen directly from a nebula into the almighty power plant. The men crawled along a pylon and crouched next to the warp gate. With the second device planted, Corporal Slorno crouched down to end this abomination.

A loud crack followed by a warm mist stopped Slorno in his tracks. He turned around just in time to see the remains of Sjoliq’s head fall wetly to the ground. He spotted the sniper a half second before he fired. With a crack and a juicy splash Corporal Gveld Slorno, the Scandinavians’ last hope, fell messily in two.