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[Story] THE GATE TO BABYLON
THE GATE TO BABYLON
PROLOGUE: The Battle at Deneb
{=------------------------‹§›------------------------=}
Air smelled of sizzling wounds and gun exhaust. It was thick with particles of debris dusts and the sounds of shouting, screaming, and the all-too-familiar shrieking of SkyCommand pistols spitting out luminous, cyan-colored bolts of energy.
The year was 4437. The system: Deneb, and the chokehold Itani station in the system was under attack.
On one side of the station’s single docking port was a line of Serco Commandoes. They were humanoid in form, but modified beyond anything what a “natural” human might recognize. They seemed to be just as machine-like as they were man-like. Scars running up and down their body exposing crevices of gray, yellowish flesh. Armor amalgamated with their body pierced through their skin with spikes and weapon holsters. Many of their eyes glowed with the lights of replacement vision-organs—winking in and out of orange colored-irises that focused in with precision on the enemy ahead.
On the opposite side of the port was a mass of huddling Itani soldiers, many of them standing no taller than a head below the smallest Serco. Their skin was tan and their eyes blue, and each had close-trimmed hair and uniforms. As the Serco charged, firing their brutal and awesome-looking weapons at the dwindling IDF force, the Itani returned fire with hand pistols and long, sculpted weaponry that spat repeating rounds of purple energy. Sercos came and fell, but others took the place of the dead ones.
The inside of the massive room flashed with the lights of the firefight. Overhead hover-turrets in the port flew in with the buzzing sound of anti-gravity engines, taking passes at the galloping Serco assault. One Serco, sneering at the Itani craft, pulled a contact grenade from his chest and launched it at the turret. It stuck to it by the organic glue that coated its explosive-containing shell, and as the Itani turret came for another pass, the grenade burst, splitting the turret in half.
The debris hurtled toward the Itani force, striking any who were not able to dive out of the way first. The Serco soldiers barreled forwards, tossing gas shells to smoke the whole area, defeating the IDF’s vision. The cyborg warriors split off in different directions, each like a wolf to his own prey. Through the smoke were heard the repeated sounds of automatic gunshots, the half-machine roar of the Serco, and even the sound of ceremonial blades piercing the organs of screaming, fallen Itani.
All was quiet. The smoke began to fade with the circulating air of the station, and the Serco proceeded forward through the station. They stepped over the bodies of their hated enemies, looking for the last few that had stayed quiet.
The tallest Serco, covered in armor plating and augmented machine-organs, gave signals to half of the group. Those fifteen soldiers headed away immediately according to their leader’s order, while the others circled up around him, ghastly weapons pointed forward.
“Search for the reactor,” the Serco Commander ordered through the mental networks of the assault team, echoing clearly through their cerebral implants. “It will be in the inmost part of this station. Set the charges in its core and signal when you are ready for the chain reaction. We will meet you in the space outside. The rest of you, come with me. We are to search for any civilians seeking escape. By my honor, the Itani here will not step past our muzzle.”
They proceeded through the smoke.
{=------------------------‹§›------------------------=}
Elsewhere on the station lay an infant in its wall-mounted capsule crib. Sounds of the firefight echoed all the way to the civilian quarters, but now the sounds overlaid on that were the sounds of rushing families, fearful and huddling together as station officers beckoned them towards the escape pods all the way at the other end of the port. From the other side, the Serco warriors were coming.
Two armed officers struggled down the hall from the room, saying to a shrieking, kicking mother:
“Please, we must go now! There is no more time! They’re coming—”
Fearful for their own lives and conscious of the Serco advancing outside, the two officers held the civilian woman by both shoulders and manhandled her, kicking and shrieking, towards the door. She lunged at the living room, screaming at the officers who held her tightly:
“Where is my child? I need to find my child—!”
But a rocking explosion from the station’s hull muffled her pleas causing dust to fall from the ceiling and the floor to shake. The officers looked at each other in split-second confusion, and within moments their in-ear comms were buzzing with transmissions from all over the station and the Border Patrols outside, crackling with network interference from the invading Serco jammers. The voices said:
“Serco Terradon receiving fire from…. SVGs colliding with station—struct… integrity below thirty per… IDF, get out of there! Serco Terradon—receiving fire, but advanc—we need support!”
And then:
“Wait—warphole opened—incoming ships… at least a—undred! Incoming ships—My God, it’s them. They’re firing—Serc… pushing back. IDF assisting. Everyone, fire!—We have a code zero alpha black—I repea—we are code zero, alpha, black! My God, it’s them—we’re… saved—it’s the Order.”
The two officer’s eyes widened at the three codewords echoing in their ears. Neither said anything. They hauled the kicking woman outside, imagining the scene outside that their IDF brothers were now seeing.
But the babe was left inside, crying. The sound it made was silenced by the sound-proof glass of the capsule it lay in.
{=------------------------‹§›------------------------=}
The Serco assault team advanced through the levels of the residence quarters. Only a few hidden IDF snipers took shots at the progressing group. And when they did, the team shot as one at the new targets, taking each out instantly.
But the leader looked ahead with his orange-colored, augmented eye. The iris zoomed in to see something through the smoke of leaking ventilation and coolant ahead. A black, still, human-like form right in the path of the Serco assault.
The leader relayed the image to his team members through their neural network and soon every gun was pointed in one direction. But none fired, for the shape made no move and it gave away no detail as to whether it was a standing piece of debris or a soldier.
So the Serco moved closer, using their upgraded vision to search through the smoke and look for a heat signature. But there was none.
Then the form disappeared.
The leader stopped. He stuck up his bald head and swept his augmented vision all along the hallway, zooming in on any nooks or corners for an Itani to hide in. The other Serco did the same, covering all their flanks and slowly, progressively, pointing their guns in every direction at once.
Then a roar came from one of the Sercos; a deep-basso electronic sound echoed over the metal walls, and a flash of light appeared. The Serco went flying. And then the leader spotted the distorted blur across his field of vision. He calibrated his iris, but he picked up only the slightest trace of a heat signature, floating in the air. It was gone as soon as he had spotted it.
Then another basso burst and flash of light. Two more Serco were launched into the air, thrown against the walls like toys. And another. Finally the leader spotted a human form in skin-tight, black-and-silver armor running up the wall. The Serco Commander raised his rifle and took a shot, but the form weaved the other direction and disappeared beneath a shimmering, transparent curtain.
One of the other soldiers flanking the group spotted the same thing on the opposite wall and sent his image of it through team’s neural network. But the next second it, too, was gone.
The Serco started firing their weapons wherever there was a blur. Only the eldest of them recognized this pattern of attack—the younger ones were taught about it, for this foe was legendary among the Serco, but living it—and surviving it—was much less heard of. As the outer flankers were picked off, the cogent rows of warriors disassembled into a chaotic mess.
The leader caught one of the attackers the moment he saw him going for the nearest flanker. With Serco-made reflexes he lunged at the crystal-like, light-refracting form, and tackled it to the ground.
The cloaking shield fell away like a mercury liquid, revealing shining, black armor beneath that was only large enough for an Itani. The massive Serco wrestled with a foe that was three-quarters of his size, trying to subdue him with all his massive, machine-borne strength. But the enemy wriggled free an arm with a burst of suit-assisted energy and pricked the Serco in a neural center with a poison-laden wrist-blade.The Serco commander threw up his hands toward his head, letting out a terribly painful shriek and crumpled to the ground. The poison would cause massive cerebral pain and, in a few minutes, electric hemorrhage. As the brain hemorrhaged, a toxic mixture of blood and implant-coolant would soon vaporize the neurons of the Serco leader as it steadily filled his brain cavity.
The other Sercos looked to their fallen leader in shock, for they had seen this giant take straight-on shots from Itani rifles and fight undaunted. The black scorpion leaped from the fallen Commander’s arms and disappeared once again from his crushing strength, and the Serco who saw this, for once in their lives, were filled with pure, unadultered fear.
And then the firefight stopped. They looked around them and saw nothing. But they heard a voice echoed to them through their own neural network, Itani in character but understandable to them, distorted so that it was as inhuman as it was unrecognizable:
“We are the Order of Akan. We have come to cleanse our race of the technological abomination known as the Serco. We will rid the universe of your presence, though it may cost us our lives.”
Then five black warriors decloaked around the Serco team, on the walls surrounding the Serco against the laws of gravity, wearing golden crests as insignias upon their foreheads. The five touched two buttons on their wrists in unison.
And through the hacked neural networks of the Serco team, a remote pulse blazed from the twin buttons on the black armor of each black warrior to each of the cyborg invader’s implanted neurons. The Sercos’ own legs crumpled beneath them. Every synapse in their skull, organic or machine, vaporized instantly. Their glowing irises flicked out before their electrified hulks hit the floor.
{=------------------------‹§›------------------------=}
A firefight raged three station levels down as the remaining fifteen Serco mowed down fleeing civilians and officers who ran for their escape pods. Civilians fell with burning xithricite rounds in their backs; miniature mortars clouded the path with fire and smoke. The last remaining IDF returned fire through the confusion, but each one fell to the cyan blasts of the Serco. On the backs of those fifteen Serco were the blinking lights of charge transmitters, waiting for their mental command to burst the station’s reactor core and destroy the whole structure and anyone in it. Even if one of the Serco died now, they were still a living bomb.
One Serco, reveling in the firefight, dove to the left to avoid an Itani blast. He rolled over his shoulder into a room with an open door. Standing, he pointed his massive, ghastly-looking muzzle in all directions—before realizing that the room and its adjacent hallway was empty. He was in an Itani’s living quarters, safe from the fight outside.
Realizing that he may have a fresh kill hiding beneath a bed somewhere in a room here, the young warrior pushed himself up against the hallway, slowly bursting into each room and pointing his gun inside, ready to fire on any Itani woman or child he saw.
But no prey was to be found. These quarters had been evacuated.
So the Serco turned around and was about to rejoin the fight when his scanning vision spotted a heat signature on the left of the main living room. A small one.
Walking up to the source and switching to normal vision, he saw a babe in a wall-mounted crib, squirming in its blankets but muted for the sound-proof glass of the capsule it was in.
The massive half-human, half-machine warrior smiled over the Itani infant. Slowly, sweetly, he cocked his rifle over the glass and loaded a single round into his gun’s chamber.
But he did not hear the footsteps behind him.
A metal blade plunged into his shoulder via the hand of an unseen attacker, and the Serco shrieked in pain. He reflexively grabbed for the knife, unable to spot in the short time who had done it. But too quickly for him to cock his gun again, a neural-borne pulse ran from the tip of the blade into his brain, and he immediately fell over dead. Every synapse exploded.
The attacker uncloaked over him, a shimmering, transparent shield falling away to reveal black armor and a golden crest. The Akanese crouched over the Serco and pulled out the blade. The Akanese replaced the special knife in a hidden slot over his breast. He stood to leave.
And then he noticed the infant.
Pausing, he peered closer into the glass. The babe squirmed, revealing its toothless mouth in a soundless scream. Outside he heard his brothers dealing with the other Serco still left. The battle would soon be over.
But who would abandon their own child in this place?
The Akanese touched two latches at his neck and, with a hiss, the visored and golden-crested helmet slid off.
He was a young man no older than twenty-five. His skin was pale for an Itani, and so was his blonde hair the marked sign of a different genetic makeup than most other of his Itani race. Though he did not consider them, per say, to be his brothers, as were the ones who fought outside.
So, in reality, he should have no care for this child. It was an Itani civilian—progeny of those who refused the cause of cleansing their own race and his. He and his brethren loathed this arrogance and were tired of it.
Yet despite the loathing of those who did not follow the orthodoxy of his Order, he stared at this tiny child, and wondered what mother would abandon her own infant. And, more important, now that he had saved its life, what he should do with it.
During that thought the comm in his helmet carried the voice of the fleet commander to him:
“Sathis—Sathis Isun. Come in.”
Sathis extended the comm unit from his helmet, speaking into it.
“This is Sathis. I hear you commander.”
“Victory is ours. The Abomination frigate and fighters have been destroyed, and the remaining Abomination presence is fleeing from our ships as we speak. Have you cleansed the Deneb station?”
“The last ones are falling at our feet now, sir,” he said as he listened to the outside firefight, which had nearly fallen dead. He could see by his wristpad that all of his comrades’ life signals were positive.
“Good,” said the commander. “Did you test the neural pulse?”
“Yes, sir,” Sathis said. “We had to engage and occupy our enemy during the remote pulse for the appropriate signal to be hacked, but once we found the signal, the weapon worked as planned.”
“And the blade? Did you require it?”
“Yes. Alone I was not able to lock the right signal for a remote pulse against a single attacker. My assessment is that it is easier to find a common signal among the Abomination when they are in groups, for that means there are more signals. But it is difficult, if not impossible, to find the signal alone. Five of us were present for us to sift out a suitable signal, and even then we had to entertain the invaders for at least a few minutes.”
“How many Abomination did you face?”
“Thirty. I believe one-to-six should be our group success ratio, at least, for this prototype.”
“That ratio is insufficient, so the weapon will need refining. But your test otherwise is successful and your mission a job well done. Did you prevent the reactor from being charged?”
“No,” said Sathis. “Abomination presence got there before we did. This station has ten minutes left.”
“Affirmative. These are your orders: protect any and all civilians who are either still on that station or in the escape pods. If there are any rogue enemies, neutralize them and ensure the safety of our lost brethren. But not at your own or your team’s expense. Get yourself out of there. We are waiting for your team.”
Sathis stared down at the infant in the capsule. He paused, gazing into the babe’s eyes and its open, soundless mouth.
“Sathis?”
“Yes, sir.” He said, snapping back to attention. “Understood.”
“Very well. Once your team is accounted for on our ship we will leave this sector immediately. Fleet Commander out.”
Sathis replaced the comm back in his helmet. He looked to the door, then looked back to the infant. An infant would be a cumbersome thing to bring onto his fighter. The idea of taking it seemed too costly overall to save it. And this child was abandoned. It obviously would not be missed.
And yet he considered the possibilities longer. He considered the future that might lay with this child—his future. His biological tests had revealed that he was infertile, as much of his Akanese brethren were becoming. Tests had proven similarly for his future wife. The Order theorized that it was a symptom of inevitable inbreeding. Genetic restructuring solved this problem however, so there was no need for alarm.
But he had wanted an offspring he could call his own. One that wouldn’t be bound by the laws of genetic commonality that now ruled the Order, thanks to the rising up of Kadnazar Vim. It might be heretical to Vim to bring one of “impure blood” into the gene pool, but the other edge of that sword worked in Salith’s favor. He could be a true parent, forming this child as he wished. This child would not be circled among the infertile families for so-called “communal parenting,” which was the new trend in the Order’s lawgiving. As much as Kadnazar Vim was Sathis’s cousin and longtime friend, Sathis did not always agree with his policies. Sathis wanted to raise a child.
A child he could call his own.
And since this child would be adopted, essentially, it would not be bound to the laws of communal blood. He would have parental authority over it, like in the days before infertility.
Sathis Isun’s comm transmitted once again—his comrades said that they were ready to launch for the carrier ship and go home. They only waited for him.
So the young Isun clicked open the glass capsule and replaced his helmet. He took the babe in its blankets, held it close, and then raised his cloaking shield.
Ten or so minutes later, he joined the fleet of black ships outside. They cloaked together and disappeared through the warphole. Behind them the reactor of the Itani station exploded, and the station split open with the light of a small star as the fusion core obliterated itself.
{=------------------------‹§›------------------------=}
OOC:
Hope you enjoy it. This one will take a few installments, so expect updates. I will write more whenever is possible. This is just the prologue, so keep that in mind for the next installment.
This'll just be a fun project for me, and an anvil to hone my writing tools on. So comments and critiques are welcome.
PROLOGUE: The Battle at Deneb
{=------------------------‹§›------------------------=}
Air smelled of sizzling wounds and gun exhaust. It was thick with particles of debris dusts and the sounds of shouting, screaming, and the all-too-familiar shrieking of SkyCommand pistols spitting out luminous, cyan-colored bolts of energy.
The year was 4437. The system: Deneb, and the chokehold Itani station in the system was under attack.
On one side of the station’s single docking port was a line of Serco Commandoes. They were humanoid in form, but modified beyond anything what a “natural” human might recognize. They seemed to be just as machine-like as they were man-like. Scars running up and down their body exposing crevices of gray, yellowish flesh. Armor amalgamated with their body pierced through their skin with spikes and weapon holsters. Many of their eyes glowed with the lights of replacement vision-organs—winking in and out of orange colored-irises that focused in with precision on the enemy ahead.
On the opposite side of the port was a mass of huddling Itani soldiers, many of them standing no taller than a head below the smallest Serco. Their skin was tan and their eyes blue, and each had close-trimmed hair and uniforms. As the Serco charged, firing their brutal and awesome-looking weapons at the dwindling IDF force, the Itani returned fire with hand pistols and long, sculpted weaponry that spat repeating rounds of purple energy. Sercos came and fell, but others took the place of the dead ones.
The inside of the massive room flashed with the lights of the firefight. Overhead hover-turrets in the port flew in with the buzzing sound of anti-gravity engines, taking passes at the galloping Serco assault. One Serco, sneering at the Itani craft, pulled a contact grenade from his chest and launched it at the turret. It stuck to it by the organic glue that coated its explosive-containing shell, and as the Itani turret came for another pass, the grenade burst, splitting the turret in half.
The debris hurtled toward the Itani force, striking any who were not able to dive out of the way first. The Serco soldiers barreled forwards, tossing gas shells to smoke the whole area, defeating the IDF’s vision. The cyborg warriors split off in different directions, each like a wolf to his own prey. Through the smoke were heard the repeated sounds of automatic gunshots, the half-machine roar of the Serco, and even the sound of ceremonial blades piercing the organs of screaming, fallen Itani.
All was quiet. The smoke began to fade with the circulating air of the station, and the Serco proceeded forward through the station. They stepped over the bodies of their hated enemies, looking for the last few that had stayed quiet.
The tallest Serco, covered in armor plating and augmented machine-organs, gave signals to half of the group. Those fifteen soldiers headed away immediately according to their leader’s order, while the others circled up around him, ghastly weapons pointed forward.
“Search for the reactor,” the Serco Commander ordered through the mental networks of the assault team, echoing clearly through their cerebral implants. “It will be in the inmost part of this station. Set the charges in its core and signal when you are ready for the chain reaction. We will meet you in the space outside. The rest of you, come with me. We are to search for any civilians seeking escape. By my honor, the Itani here will not step past our muzzle.”
They proceeded through the smoke.
{=------------------------‹§›------------------------=}
Elsewhere on the station lay an infant in its wall-mounted capsule crib. Sounds of the firefight echoed all the way to the civilian quarters, but now the sounds overlaid on that were the sounds of rushing families, fearful and huddling together as station officers beckoned them towards the escape pods all the way at the other end of the port. From the other side, the Serco warriors were coming.
Two armed officers struggled down the hall from the room, saying to a shrieking, kicking mother:
“Please, we must go now! There is no more time! They’re coming—”
Fearful for their own lives and conscious of the Serco advancing outside, the two officers held the civilian woman by both shoulders and manhandled her, kicking and shrieking, towards the door. She lunged at the living room, screaming at the officers who held her tightly:
“Where is my child? I need to find my child—!”
But a rocking explosion from the station’s hull muffled her pleas causing dust to fall from the ceiling and the floor to shake. The officers looked at each other in split-second confusion, and within moments their in-ear comms were buzzing with transmissions from all over the station and the Border Patrols outside, crackling with network interference from the invading Serco jammers. The voices said:
“Serco Terradon receiving fire from…. SVGs colliding with station—struct… integrity below thirty per… IDF, get out of there! Serco Terradon—receiving fire, but advanc—we need support!”
And then:
“Wait—warphole opened—incoming ships… at least a—undred! Incoming ships—My God, it’s them. They’re firing—Serc… pushing back. IDF assisting. Everyone, fire!—We have a code zero alpha black—I repea—we are code zero, alpha, black! My God, it’s them—we’re… saved—it’s the Order.”
The two officer’s eyes widened at the three codewords echoing in their ears. Neither said anything. They hauled the kicking woman outside, imagining the scene outside that their IDF brothers were now seeing.
But the babe was left inside, crying. The sound it made was silenced by the sound-proof glass of the capsule it lay in.
{=------------------------‹§›------------------------=}
The Serco assault team advanced through the levels of the residence quarters. Only a few hidden IDF snipers took shots at the progressing group. And when they did, the team shot as one at the new targets, taking each out instantly.
But the leader looked ahead with his orange-colored, augmented eye. The iris zoomed in to see something through the smoke of leaking ventilation and coolant ahead. A black, still, human-like form right in the path of the Serco assault.
The leader relayed the image to his team members through their neural network and soon every gun was pointed in one direction. But none fired, for the shape made no move and it gave away no detail as to whether it was a standing piece of debris or a soldier.
So the Serco moved closer, using their upgraded vision to search through the smoke and look for a heat signature. But there was none.
Then the form disappeared.
The leader stopped. He stuck up his bald head and swept his augmented vision all along the hallway, zooming in on any nooks or corners for an Itani to hide in. The other Serco did the same, covering all their flanks and slowly, progressively, pointing their guns in every direction at once.
Then a roar came from one of the Sercos; a deep-basso electronic sound echoed over the metal walls, and a flash of light appeared. The Serco went flying. And then the leader spotted the distorted blur across his field of vision. He calibrated his iris, but he picked up only the slightest trace of a heat signature, floating in the air. It was gone as soon as he had spotted it.
Then another basso burst and flash of light. Two more Serco were launched into the air, thrown against the walls like toys. And another. Finally the leader spotted a human form in skin-tight, black-and-silver armor running up the wall. The Serco Commander raised his rifle and took a shot, but the form weaved the other direction and disappeared beneath a shimmering, transparent curtain.
One of the other soldiers flanking the group spotted the same thing on the opposite wall and sent his image of it through team’s neural network. But the next second it, too, was gone.
The Serco started firing their weapons wherever there was a blur. Only the eldest of them recognized this pattern of attack—the younger ones were taught about it, for this foe was legendary among the Serco, but living it—and surviving it—was much less heard of. As the outer flankers were picked off, the cogent rows of warriors disassembled into a chaotic mess.
The leader caught one of the attackers the moment he saw him going for the nearest flanker. With Serco-made reflexes he lunged at the crystal-like, light-refracting form, and tackled it to the ground.
The cloaking shield fell away like a mercury liquid, revealing shining, black armor beneath that was only large enough for an Itani. The massive Serco wrestled with a foe that was three-quarters of his size, trying to subdue him with all his massive, machine-borne strength. But the enemy wriggled free an arm with a burst of suit-assisted energy and pricked the Serco in a neural center with a poison-laden wrist-blade.The Serco commander threw up his hands toward his head, letting out a terribly painful shriek and crumpled to the ground. The poison would cause massive cerebral pain and, in a few minutes, electric hemorrhage. As the brain hemorrhaged, a toxic mixture of blood and implant-coolant would soon vaporize the neurons of the Serco leader as it steadily filled his brain cavity.
The other Sercos looked to their fallen leader in shock, for they had seen this giant take straight-on shots from Itani rifles and fight undaunted. The black scorpion leaped from the fallen Commander’s arms and disappeared once again from his crushing strength, and the Serco who saw this, for once in their lives, were filled with pure, unadultered fear.
And then the firefight stopped. They looked around them and saw nothing. But they heard a voice echoed to them through their own neural network, Itani in character but understandable to them, distorted so that it was as inhuman as it was unrecognizable:
“We are the Order of Akan. We have come to cleanse our race of the technological abomination known as the Serco. We will rid the universe of your presence, though it may cost us our lives.”
Then five black warriors decloaked around the Serco team, on the walls surrounding the Serco against the laws of gravity, wearing golden crests as insignias upon their foreheads. The five touched two buttons on their wrists in unison.
And through the hacked neural networks of the Serco team, a remote pulse blazed from the twin buttons on the black armor of each black warrior to each of the cyborg invader’s implanted neurons. The Sercos’ own legs crumpled beneath them. Every synapse in their skull, organic or machine, vaporized instantly. Their glowing irises flicked out before their electrified hulks hit the floor.
{=------------------------‹§›------------------------=}
A firefight raged three station levels down as the remaining fifteen Serco mowed down fleeing civilians and officers who ran for their escape pods. Civilians fell with burning xithricite rounds in their backs; miniature mortars clouded the path with fire and smoke. The last remaining IDF returned fire through the confusion, but each one fell to the cyan blasts of the Serco. On the backs of those fifteen Serco were the blinking lights of charge transmitters, waiting for their mental command to burst the station’s reactor core and destroy the whole structure and anyone in it. Even if one of the Serco died now, they were still a living bomb.
One Serco, reveling in the firefight, dove to the left to avoid an Itani blast. He rolled over his shoulder into a room with an open door. Standing, he pointed his massive, ghastly-looking muzzle in all directions—before realizing that the room and its adjacent hallway was empty. He was in an Itani’s living quarters, safe from the fight outside.
Realizing that he may have a fresh kill hiding beneath a bed somewhere in a room here, the young warrior pushed himself up against the hallway, slowly bursting into each room and pointing his gun inside, ready to fire on any Itani woman or child he saw.
But no prey was to be found. These quarters had been evacuated.
So the Serco turned around and was about to rejoin the fight when his scanning vision spotted a heat signature on the left of the main living room. A small one.
Walking up to the source and switching to normal vision, he saw a babe in a wall-mounted crib, squirming in its blankets but muted for the sound-proof glass of the capsule it was in.
The massive half-human, half-machine warrior smiled over the Itani infant. Slowly, sweetly, he cocked his rifle over the glass and loaded a single round into his gun’s chamber.
But he did not hear the footsteps behind him.
A metal blade plunged into his shoulder via the hand of an unseen attacker, and the Serco shrieked in pain. He reflexively grabbed for the knife, unable to spot in the short time who had done it. But too quickly for him to cock his gun again, a neural-borne pulse ran from the tip of the blade into his brain, and he immediately fell over dead. Every synapse exploded.
The attacker uncloaked over him, a shimmering, transparent shield falling away to reveal black armor and a golden crest. The Akanese crouched over the Serco and pulled out the blade. The Akanese replaced the special knife in a hidden slot over his breast. He stood to leave.
And then he noticed the infant.
Pausing, he peered closer into the glass. The babe squirmed, revealing its toothless mouth in a soundless scream. Outside he heard his brothers dealing with the other Serco still left. The battle would soon be over.
But who would abandon their own child in this place?
The Akanese touched two latches at his neck and, with a hiss, the visored and golden-crested helmet slid off.
He was a young man no older than twenty-five. His skin was pale for an Itani, and so was his blonde hair the marked sign of a different genetic makeup than most other of his Itani race. Though he did not consider them, per say, to be his brothers, as were the ones who fought outside.
So, in reality, he should have no care for this child. It was an Itani civilian—progeny of those who refused the cause of cleansing their own race and his. He and his brethren loathed this arrogance and were tired of it.
Yet despite the loathing of those who did not follow the orthodoxy of his Order, he stared at this tiny child, and wondered what mother would abandon her own infant. And, more important, now that he had saved its life, what he should do with it.
During that thought the comm in his helmet carried the voice of the fleet commander to him:
“Sathis—Sathis Isun. Come in.”
Sathis extended the comm unit from his helmet, speaking into it.
“This is Sathis. I hear you commander.”
“Victory is ours. The Abomination frigate and fighters have been destroyed, and the remaining Abomination presence is fleeing from our ships as we speak. Have you cleansed the Deneb station?”
“The last ones are falling at our feet now, sir,” he said as he listened to the outside firefight, which had nearly fallen dead. He could see by his wristpad that all of his comrades’ life signals were positive.
“Good,” said the commander. “Did you test the neural pulse?”
“Yes, sir,” Sathis said. “We had to engage and occupy our enemy during the remote pulse for the appropriate signal to be hacked, but once we found the signal, the weapon worked as planned.”
“And the blade? Did you require it?”
“Yes. Alone I was not able to lock the right signal for a remote pulse against a single attacker. My assessment is that it is easier to find a common signal among the Abomination when they are in groups, for that means there are more signals. But it is difficult, if not impossible, to find the signal alone. Five of us were present for us to sift out a suitable signal, and even then we had to entertain the invaders for at least a few minutes.”
“How many Abomination did you face?”
“Thirty. I believe one-to-six should be our group success ratio, at least, for this prototype.”
“That ratio is insufficient, so the weapon will need refining. But your test otherwise is successful and your mission a job well done. Did you prevent the reactor from being charged?”
“No,” said Sathis. “Abomination presence got there before we did. This station has ten minutes left.”
“Affirmative. These are your orders: protect any and all civilians who are either still on that station or in the escape pods. If there are any rogue enemies, neutralize them and ensure the safety of our lost brethren. But not at your own or your team’s expense. Get yourself out of there. We are waiting for your team.”
Sathis stared down at the infant in the capsule. He paused, gazing into the babe’s eyes and its open, soundless mouth.
“Sathis?”
“Yes, sir.” He said, snapping back to attention. “Understood.”
“Very well. Once your team is accounted for on our ship we will leave this sector immediately. Fleet Commander out.”
Sathis replaced the comm back in his helmet. He looked to the door, then looked back to the infant. An infant would be a cumbersome thing to bring onto his fighter. The idea of taking it seemed too costly overall to save it. And this child was abandoned. It obviously would not be missed.
And yet he considered the possibilities longer. He considered the future that might lay with this child—his future. His biological tests had revealed that he was infertile, as much of his Akanese brethren were becoming. Tests had proven similarly for his future wife. The Order theorized that it was a symptom of inevitable inbreeding. Genetic restructuring solved this problem however, so there was no need for alarm.
But he had wanted an offspring he could call his own. One that wouldn’t be bound by the laws of genetic commonality that now ruled the Order, thanks to the rising up of Kadnazar Vim. It might be heretical to Vim to bring one of “impure blood” into the gene pool, but the other edge of that sword worked in Salith’s favor. He could be a true parent, forming this child as he wished. This child would not be circled among the infertile families for so-called “communal parenting,” which was the new trend in the Order’s lawgiving. As much as Kadnazar Vim was Sathis’s cousin and longtime friend, Sathis did not always agree with his policies. Sathis wanted to raise a child.
A child he could call his own.
And since this child would be adopted, essentially, it would not be bound to the laws of communal blood. He would have parental authority over it, like in the days before infertility.
Sathis Isun’s comm transmitted once again—his comrades said that they were ready to launch for the carrier ship and go home. They only waited for him.
So the young Isun clicked open the glass capsule and replaced his helmet. He took the babe in its blankets, held it close, and then raised his cloaking shield.
Ten or so minutes later, he joined the fleet of black ships outside. They cloaked together and disappeared through the warphole. Behind them the reactor of the Itani station exploded, and the station split open with the light of a small star as the fusion core obliterated itself.
{=------------------------‹§›------------------------=}
OOC:
Hope you enjoy it. This one will take a few installments, so expect updates. I will write more whenever is possible. This is just the prologue, so keep that in mind for the next installment.
This'll just be a fun project for me, and an anvil to hone my writing tools on. So comments and critiques are welcome.
Very good so far, can't wait for the rest of the story. Definitely curious what part the infant will play in the story.
One nitpick: unless you're writing something that's going to happen in the "future" of VO, you should change the date--the current ingame year is 4435. Otherwise, it's great. Good work!
One nitpick: unless you're writing something that's going to happen in the "future" of VO, you should change the date--the current ingame year is 4435. Otherwise, it's great. Good work!
Thanks MSK. I did want to set it in the future just a little bit. Maybe that's unnecessary—I figured it good partially because of what the story entails. But it doesn't have to be. So I'll think about that. So thank you.
ohhhh thats awsome
nice work seraph :D rock on dude
nice work seraph :D rock on dude
wait, idf doesnt exist anymore does it?
theres the regular itani army
then theres the highly trained coalition forces [ITAN]
and lastly is the special forces [SKV]
and i thought that the order of akan was too big for inbreeding to be inevitable, they were able to keep a fairly large fleet.
other than the minor things that dont really matter, i think it was pretty good.
theres the regular itani army
then theres the highly trained coalition forces [ITAN]
and lastly is the special forces [SKV]
and i thought that the order of akan was too big for inbreeding to be inevitable, they were able to keep a fairly large fleet.
other than the minor things that dont really matter, i think it was pretty good.
Not guilds. The IDF is the Itani Defense Force, the best thing the Itani can call a military. No relation to the guild by the same name.
What he means by the inbreeding is, barring relations with the generic itani populace, the akanese would be among themselves only. As time went on, th gene code would become more and more aligned until it was something like inbreeding. Now, if that could be done in the span of a thousand years or not is another issue.
Interesting story. Possibly based off Lecter's Akanese Neural Spike arc?
What he means by the inbreeding is, barring relations with the generic itani populace, the akanese would be among themselves only. As time went on, th gene code would become more and more aligned until it was something like inbreeding. Now, if that could be done in the span of a thousand years or not is another issue.
Interesting story. Possibly based off Lecter's Akanese Neural Spike arc?
No, moldy.
The IDF was around as a real entity during the wars on Terra II. Currently the Itani military is the IDC, the "Itani Defensive Corps".
Further to the point, the IDF was under Akan's control. The IDC is under the authority of the Order of Eo.
The IDF was around as a real entity during the wars on Terra II. Currently the Itani military is the IDC, the "Itani Defensive Corps".
Further to the point, the IDF was under Akan's control. The IDC is under the authority of the Order of Eo.
In light of MSK's post I think I might change IDF to IDC. I think I remember the name being IDC being in the backstory anyway, and I've been gone for so long that I forgot the IDF guild disbanded.
Edit to moldy: as for inbreeding, I've heard the Amish peoples have encountered some problems with that, and they've only been around for a couple of centuries or so. So my time span for the akanese might actually be wanting (I might be wrong about that Amish bit though).
But then again we don't know how many of the Akanese there are, and we don't know how closely tied their relations are (maybe they "convert" new people from time to time?). And these unknown variables would influence how quickly the effects of inbreeding might show up.
Edit to moldy: as for inbreeding, I've heard the Amish peoples have encountered some problems with that, and they've only been around for a couple of centuries or so. So my time span for the akanese might actually be wanting (I might be wrong about that Amish bit though).
But then again we don't know how many of the Akanese there are, and we don't know how closely tied their relations are (maybe they "convert" new people from time to time?). And these unknown variables would influence how quickly the effects of inbreeding might show up.