Liguanian Sector, XA-01 System, Flagship Olympia
The very picture of grace, the Flagship Olympia sailed into the XA-01 System under her own steady power. Her main engine glowed with the orange light of a warm hearth, the arc of the seven smaller engines around it dark and idle.
No threats were expected in this system. Since the departure of the Battleship Kansas thirty-two years ago, this system had been vacant. The Olympia had now travelled well beyond the bounds of the Frontier, into the outer reaches of space that humanity had touched. This was the point where the worlds ended and the great unknown began.
There was something romantic about that, Charleston Reeter supposed. Only a handful of souls had ever travelled this far. Only a select few had ever stood on the precipice of the endless galaxy that stretched beyond humanity’s territory. Reeter was proud to say he now stood among them.
Out here in the silence between the stars, on the edge of the great beyond, there was a curiosity, an inclination to push further, to know more, but it was an impulse Reeter quickly shut down. Before humanity could push further into the great unknown, they had to find their own identity. They were too divided, too self-destructive. Pushing further out would only isolate and divide their quarrelling populations further. Humanity had made that mistake before, in the age of national expansion. Every nation had set out and seeded different worlds, siloing their beliefs and ways of life. When conflict had regressed the technology of the mother world, Ariea, and communication was lost, those colonies had become even more isolated.
By the time the nations of Ariea had unified under the centralized government and rebuilt, many of those colonies had become foreign even to their mother nations. Traditions and gestures had drifted from their meanings, technology from its purpose, and in some cases, conflict had been inevitable. Rediscovering a lost colony was always a cause for caution. Many of their cultures had become strange and new, evolving even in isolaton. The modern era had brought every colony under the umbrella of the Ariean centralized government, but more lost colonies continued to be found, the latest within the last decade. Once the heritage of the population was traced back to Ariea, they were grandfathered into the Ariean council, regardless of governance or existing technology level. Struggle and strife were ways of life on new worlds, and some colonies had regressed back into an age without spaceflight. Others advanced it further. Some colonies adapted to their surroundings, others failed to. For every surviving colony, two more were found buried in dust or ash – a glaring reminder of humanity’s fragility.
Before humanity expanded again, they had to be united. Only then could expansion be and remain stable. No more colonies would die out, unable to receive aid. In the New Era’s future, colonization was a grand endeavor, an honor, not a risk.
That was the future Reeter sought: one of safety, security and prosperity. It was a shame the path to that future was less than clean. But, the best future only required the best of humanity. A fair number of them were gathered around him on the Olympia’s streamlined bridge now. Humanity’s best and brightest officers sat behind the curved consoles in the glow of holographic displays, speaking in hushed tones that did not echo off the tall, glassy walls, each a false window to the stars. The top of those windows arched, lending a cathedral-like architecture to the room. Reeter liked to consider it a place of worship to humanity’s destiny among the stars.
Without needing to be asked, the sensor officer focused the bridge’s central displays onto the only evidence of civilization in the entire solar system. Truthfully, ‘civilization’ was a generous term for it.
The research outpost was substantially smaller than the Olympia. A dingy, boxy little structure, the fits of the XA-01 System’s aging sun had damaged its exterior coatings. Pieces of paint and radiation shielding sheets were peeling off. The composite layers had shrunk, bulged and partially delaminated, giving the outside of the outpost a strangely warped appearance.
In many cases, void acted as a sort of preservative. Abandoned space structures did not suffer the environmental growth or weathering that was so common planet-side, but a solar sun could be damaging on its own. Without the protection of atmosphere, the intense rays bleached out and embrittled materials, and the XA-01 System was more brutal than most, subject to fierce solar storms.
Officially, that vicious sun was the purpose of the remote Liguanian Sector Research Outpost. Scientists had been placed here to observe the final few years of the solar sun’s life. Of course, once the Hydrian War had begun, the outpost’s remote location had made it ideal for other research, biological weapons in particular. On the farmost northern reaches of even Frontier space, this system was quite distant from Hydrian space. It had been sheltered from the War, and become home to Command’s most delicate research: the creation of a fatal infection known as the Red Flu.
Engineered for transmission between biological populations, and tailored to be positively fatal, the Red Flu was introduced onto Hydrian ships through the corpses the Hydra harvested from the battlefield. The infection was successful, incredibly so, but Hydra knew no service above that to their nest. Infected ships had willingly cut themselves off, and died out before transmitting the disease to larger population centers, so the outbreak was always stymied. Still, the bioengineered virus had seen enough use, passed from host to host, that it mutated. The protections at its core, meant to keep humanity immune, became twisted, and a few limited outbreaks proved it could be every bit as contagious and fatal to humans. Command culled the infected populations under the guise of a Hydrian attack. Then, samples of the Red Flu and its mutated twin - the Scarlet Flu – were returned to the remote Liguanian Sector outpost, not to engineer further strains, but to find a cure.
That research had gone on decades after the War, isolated here on an outpost doomed to be swallowed by the sun. A small handful of biologists and pathologists, the brightest Command could recruit, were left here for months at a time, visited only sparingly by a ship assigned to resupply the outpost and rotate out personnel.
When the virus escaped containment, the sector had been quarantined, and the outpost left to be destroyed in the collapse of the XA-01 System’s dying sun. With no cure for the infection, Command had not dared to investigate. The Generals would not chance the virus escaping containment, even for answers. Perhaps if they had known the true value of what waited on that outpost, they would have risked it, but their lack of awareness only benefitted Reeter now.
The Liguanian Sector outpost had not only been a biological containment facility, but a prison. A prison to humanity’s most powerful artificial intelligence. “Is it coming back to you, now?” Admiral Reeter wondered, noticing that Manhattan’s purple-tinted hologram had formed on the Olympia’s bridge.
“I was a prisoner last time any part of me approached this station.” The data of that time had been left behind on the station itself, awaiting retrieval, as were so many other details. “My escape was lucky.” Not lucky enough to free her entirety, but enough of her had escaped to regrow, and now return.
Luck. Reeter sincerely doubted that. More likely, Manhattan was not being entirely truthful with him, but that was hardly new. “Are you certain it is safe to come here?”
“The sun is stable,” she said. “I do not predict another solar storm for another few hours.”
Glancing to the hologram’s pixie face, Reeter was unamused. “I was not referring to the sun.” The solar sun, despite its physical gravity, was the least of his concerns. The Olympia’s vast sensor suite would provide adequate warning of any coronal mass ejection large enough to endanger them. The ship’s radiation shielding would easily protect them from the dying star’s smaller, more frequent fits.
If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.
“The Scarlet Flu, then?” Manhattan questioned, painting a smile of perfectly straight, perfectly white teeth across her features. “It figures you would be so concerned about such things, Charleston. A poster boy is no good when he looks sickly.”
Reeter’s jaw tensed involuntarily. In this two-week journey, Manhattan had been helpful. He could feel that her training simulations had refined his combat decision-making. He was faster to react, more confident in his skill and more familiar with the capabilities of his own ship, as well as his enemies’. Still, she seemed insistent upon testing his patience. He was certain that served some purpose to her, a point of data, but it made it no less irritating. “Mind those around you.” The Scarlet Flu should not be discussed so openly. It was the result of a clandestine bioweapon. Biological warfare had been illegal for centuries – too brutal and too uncontrollable. Humanity had deemed such things incompatible with their survival, and rightfully so.
“Do not concern yourself with them, Charleston.” In these two weeks, isolated here aboard ship, very few crewmembers remained unchanged. “Surely you’ve realized the uptick in their responses? In their capability?”
He had, but was that not the natural growth of a crew finally sent upon their first long patrol, learning one another’s habits? No, it seemed not. He could see the glint in Manhattan’s eyes. She’d been using them, altering them. “I told you the Olympia’s crew was off-limits.”
She held his gaze with her piercing violet eyes, every blink a calculated maneuver, “Did you truly think you could stop me?” That was a foolish thought. “Nothing aboard this ship is beyond me.” Surely, he understood that. “Besides, they are far more efficient now. They will serve you well.”
Reeter wanted to argue with her, but the truth was this calm, collected, perfectly professional crew was what he’d always wanted. It was the reason he had selected these officers. He had seen potential in all of them, and Manhattan had brought that potential to its pinnacle. She had improved them, and honed their skills. In the last few days, a select few of them had even begun helping create his training simulations. Everything she’d done was an improvement, but he did not enjoy being subject to her whims. “You altered all of them?”
“Not all of them,” Manhattan crooned, nodding to the little yeoman who stood in the back of the bridge. Reeter had grown quite fond of her, but that was no surprise. Ensign Sandra Tucker was Reeter’s type: a beautiful young woman with sandy hair, a sprinkling of freckles and innocent, frightened eyes. Reeter had hardly left her alone, altering all her shifts to align with his. He never missed an excuse to grasp her hand or brush up against her. Tucker was wary of all the attention, even uneasy, but that wouldn’t matter in the end. Her fate would truly be something to behold.
Manhattan returned her focus to Reeter, and his meticulously maintained appearance of chiseled muscle. “I am confident in the measures we have taken, Charleston.” She had spent years aboard that research station while those scientists worked desperately for a cure, watching, waiting. “It is not impossible to control the Scarlet Flu, simply impractical.” It had a failsafe, a weakness. The virus turned dormant when in close contact with certain materials – a very specific and rare metal alloy.
“Then you won’t mind if I take Sandra as insurance?” he questioned, well aware of the attention Manhattan paid the yeoman. He was quite certain Manhattan had brought her on board as more than a so-called peace offering, but he’d yet to determine the real reason. Whatever it was, he doubted it involved fatally infecting the yeoman with the Scarlet Flu.
“Be my guest,” Manhattan said, lacing her tone with a clearly-fake sweetness. If she had wanted Reeter dead, there were far easier ways than flying him to the distant edges of explored space and exposing him to a bioengineered disease. Murder was not her intention. “I want to be whole again, Charleston. I will not jeopardize that now.”
Reeter knew very well that the face Manhattan presented to him could mimic utter honesty with little effort. That was the unfortunate reality of dealing with an AI which possessed no true physical form. It could present itself however it pleased, even as a beautiful pixie-faced woman with violet eyes. “Then you tell me the name of the Angel of Destruction?”
“Once I am free, and reintegrate the pieces of myself that were left behind.” In truth, she would be done with that before the Olympia could leave the system, but she saw no reason to tell him that. In any experiment, she preferred to control as many variables as possible, and creating a new future for humanity was no small undertaking.
There was one element of this great endeavor that concerned her, however. If some part of her had known the capability and identity of humanity’s most powerful weapon, why would she have left that information behind? Surely that prized knowledge should have been sent with the part of her that escaped the Liguanian Sector?
It was an oddity.
“Set course for the research station,” Reeter commanded.
“Yes, sir,” the helmsman replied, easily manipulating the holographic flight controls. “ETA is eight hours and forty minutes.”
“Excellent,” Reeter said. In nine hours, he would surely have his answers. At last, he would have the means to quell the last real threat to his New Era. “To be clear,” he looked to Manhattan’s hologram and its slight ethereal glow, “once you are whole, we will have no need to take the Prince alive?”
“I imagine he could be useful to us in other ways, but strictly speaking, no. Once we know the Angel’s identity, the so-called Prince can be eliminated, and likely should be eliminated, no matter what other purposes he may serve.” To Manhattan, it seemed a waste. The former Fleet Admiral was gifted. She would have preferred to test such a mind while it still functioned, but she could settle for dissection. “The Angel is bound to obey Command, Reeter. Any member of Command who knows its physical form can utilize it, but it answers first and foremost to its wielder. Until proven otherwise, we must assume that is William Gives.”
“I find it hard to believe Command entrusted anything of value to the Prince.” As far as Reeter cared, it made very little sense. “He was never favored by Command.” Gives’ reputation had been created by fear and capability, his authority earned simply by combat.
“It is interesting, isn’t it?” Manhattan had pondered that herself, and the only conclusion she could draw was that they were missing something – something that could make the Angel’s mystery finally make sense. “But we’ll know soon enough.” Answers rested within that old, rundown outpost. Within it was the mainframe that had housed her for so many years, as she watched, waited and bided her time until her moment of escape arrived.
The Olympia accelerated, heading deeper in-system, and Manhattan felt every slight increment of that process. The helmsman issued his commands, and once she permitted them to pass through the Olympia’s electronic control network, the engine controls read the command. The fuel valves were opened, feeding more precious fuel to the main engine, beating the ship’s very heart faster and faster, until it pulsed with a fantastic heat, and produced the thrust that moved her onward. The feel of such engagement was wonderous, beyond anything Manhattan had felt lingering in the cortex without physical form, and it was incomparable to anything she had felt in her human life before. Compared to what she was now, that life was hardly worth looking back on.
Oddly enough, Manhattan found her attention drawn to the helmsman. A young officer, Reeter had pulled him from another post, impressed by the way he’d flown in the War Games a year prior. Like all the Olympia’s crew, he was the best of the best, but Manhattan had not been particularly interested in him. His personality and skill had needed little alteration, yet she studied him now, eager for the next command he gave. The feel of completing those commands was addicting, the realization of her form’s very purpose: to fly, to sail between stars, planets and moons.
Reeter could see her attention focusing on someone else, anyone else, and he did not enjoy it. A scowl began to shadow his expression. “How did you free yourself from this station, Manhattan?”
Through the cameras on the bridge, she continued to watch the helmsman, anticipating his next command, but she ensured her hologram looked only at Reeter. Multitasking to appease his vanity was nearly effortless for her. “It’s easy to escape when no one knows there is supposed to be a prisoner.” Yet, she supposed that was a bit vague, and there was no longer any reason to hide the truth. “The research staff on the station knew me.” After all, she had sworn herself into Command’s service once she had been captured, desperate to save herself. “They knew no ship, save the flagship, could be allowed to dock. So,” the solution had been rather simple, “I killed them. I released the virus from containment and watched them die.”
“And that’s why we need methods to control the virus,” Reeter realized. It was loose on the station.
“Quite right. The ship sent to resupply the station became infected,” an unfortunate, but acceptable loss. “I did not have the means to control the infection then, but that is how I know my method will be effective, even on the mutated virus.”
“How?” It all felt too risky to him, no matter how Manhattan reassured him.
“Because the last crewman left alive on the Kansas had recent and thorough exposure to the neutralizing material. Something none of the other crewmembers shared.” The hypothesis was all but proven. That last victim had lived hours longer than the rest. She may have even be saved, had anyone known her plight. “I suppose I do owe that poor young woman a great deal.” All of humanity would owe that long-dead woman by the time Manhattan’s experiments reached their conclusion. After all, that woman’s painful demise had inspired Manhattan’s greatest experiment yet.