Chapter 026: Date?

Liberator’s initial campaign is often called the Last Genetic War. He quickly overwhelmed the Western Quadrant. This region was decimated by the War of Purity and the subsequent rampage of AI/MOLOCH - once most of the remaining military assets of the Quadrant withdrew to reinforce other fronts, Liberator quickly defeated the rest of them with several legions of supersoldiers and a small fleet of deserters from the Commonwealth’s Navy.

In the meantime, the increasing paranoia and heavy-handedness of the Commonwealth’s government began taking their toll. Desertions became a plague. Soon R. Adm Harrison’s forces were bolstered with enough deserters to restart her rebellion, with Commonwealth forces in the South Quadrant quickly collapsing, fleeing or joining the rebels. The Jovian-Mercurial colonists of the Eastern Quadrant rose in arms, with more than a dozen rebel organizations allying themselves and creating the Rebel Council.

Soon the representatives of Liberator, R. Adm. Harrison and the Rebel Council met and struck a deal. The Rebel Council became the face of the rebellion, planning to become the interim government of the Commonwealth before the free democratic elections. Liberator became the commander-in-chief of the Council’s armies, while R.Adm. Harrison became the leader of its fleets. The March to Terra began.

Encyclopedia Galactica

Book 7, page 347

***

The sensor feed left no doubts. The standard electromagnetic sensors could detect even the smallest object with a temperature higher than the background one. Detecting a wing of voidcraft leaving their secret hideout on the other side of one of the planets in the system was child’s play.

Innocent wasn’t on the bridge, but he quickly confirmed everything once he received the data.

“Fifty-six fighters, and eight corvettes.” Lena concluded. “Certainly of the Truthseekers design. Depending on their types and configs, our situation varies from not good to horrible.” Space fighters were at worst a nuisance to capital ships, but they could be a real problem when all you had was a ragtag bunch of cruisers and destroyers.

“Yes. Judging from their current acceleration they are going for a bombing run in… forty-three hours.” The Captain looked like he’d just bit a lemon.

Bombing runs were the standard form of engagements of fighters. Trying to go for a dogfight against fleets was suicide unless the enemy was decisively crippled earlier. Instead, it was much smarter to fly past the fleet at high speed, launching lots of missiles right from the edge of safety. Such salvoes were typically significantly faster than normal, due to being launched from an object coming towards an enemy with high velocity. Thus stopping them was significantly more troublesome than normal.

“But why? Why an attack?” Lena inquired. The Captain responded with a scarce shrug.

“Bombing runs can at best weaken us.” He explained. “Even if we lose a ship or two, we’ll still be shepherded in their preferred direction. However, such an assault is sure to maintain the feeling of us being pursued.” He gazed at the screen for a while. “Ah, so we’ll have more company later on. Clever. Even for the Seekers.”

“Uhm, what?” She tilted her head, confused..

“You’ll know in time. Or you won’t, which will spare me the shame of overthinking something.” He gave her a wry smile. “For now, we need to figure out how to survive what’s coming.” Innocent entered the bridge. “Time to work.”

***

When Tiriel said that she forgot something in her workplace and asked him to accompany her, Christopher initially wanted to refuse. After thinking it over, he decided that denying such a request to play a computer game would be a repetition of his old self’s social mistakes.

The fact that within six hours they were going to be attacked by the Truthseekers’ voidcraft only made it worse. Finding a way to not think about it sounded like a good idea.

He left his spot in front of the screen in the living room - not without some internal ramblings - and began his long walk through the corridors of the Echo. With Tiriel at his side. Tiriel wore her favourite humble light green dress covering everything from her neck to her knees. Together with tight-fitting white gloves, high boots reaching above the ankle, and a flowery circlet on her forehead.

Compared to her, Christopher’s clothes were painfully plain. Just a T-shirt, trousers and boots. He felt a bit out of place, as if they were characters from completely different stories.

“This reminds me of our walks on Texia.” Tiriel commented after a while.

“I remembered the landscape a bit differently.” Christopher replied. His tone came out a bit colder than he wanted, so he quickly corrected himself. “And there was probably a river instead of some pipes.” It wasn’t a good joke, so she didn’t laugh. But she did smile.

She has a pretty smile.

“Well, that’s the closest equivalent achievable aboard the Echo.” She considered for a moment. “If we could use the overlays, we could at least make it look like a long and moss-filled cave with some rare holes in the ceiling allowing some meagre surface plants to grow here and there. Instead, here we are. The techno-mechanical hell of our own making.” She smiled wryly, making Christopher wonder whether or not she meant it.

I have no idea what she’s thinking. And I refuse to use my meta-empathy on friends. Why are people so damn complicated?

“Ok, so what is it about?” Christopher rushed head-ony. “Because I’m not blind and I know you have some nefarious, prankish agenda in inviting me for a walk. You certainly didn’t do that because of my sense of humour or impeccably manly beard.”

“It’s just something that a ‘perfect candidate for a wife’ would do.” She gave him her most mischievous smile. It took him a few seconds to recognize the words as his own. Once he did it, his jaw dropped.

“Wait, how did you….” She interrupted him mid-sentence.

“Next time you decide to have a talk like that, you should check if there’s someone in the kitchen.” She grinned, which managed to calm Christopher’s internal panic. She certainly didn’t feel insulted with what happened. “I was preparing a cake to celebrate Kivanna’s one year anniversary of getting out of that disgusting Plesja. And you were pretty loud.”

“Oops.” Christopher scratched his head. “I know this wasn’t…”

She interrupted him again. “There is nothing to apologize for.” She said. “What you said about me was actually rather flattering, and the fact that you weren’t aware of my presence simply means that you were speaking your mind. I’m starting to see a pattern there, you cheeky peasant.” Christopher sighed, though only internally. Was he going to remain a ‘cheeky peasant’ to her forever?

“Your assessment on Nekia and Kivanna is, as far as I’m aware, factually correct.” Tiriel continued. “And when it comes to boys talking about the girls…” She shrugged. “Boys will be boys. Besides, we girls had a similar talk about the other half of the Echo’s crew, so it goes both ways.” She winked to him, leaving him painfully curious as to what conclusions the girls arrived at.

He looked away from her. She took advantage of that to reposition herself closer to him and lean towards his ear. Without interrupting her graceful walk forward for even a second.

“For your information.” She whispered. “The ‘marital sexlife’ with me could be better than you think.” When he looked at her, shocked by her statement, she had already backed away. There was no indication of her saying something outrageous barely a few seconds ago.

“So… why did you decide to bring me for this walk?” She had an agenda in teasing him like that, Christopher was sure about it. She wasn’t randomly inviting people to accompany her for long walks with no other reason.

“Who knows? Maybe I’m just trying to find a way to reward you for your kind words?” Her grin was truly impish. Her words gave him an idea on how to get back to her for her continuous teasing.

“If you wanted to invite me for a date, they were simpler ways of doing this.” His counterattack succeeded. Tiriel went silent for a few steps, with a complicated mixture of emotions on her face. Most of it was surprise.

“That’s… extremely cheeky, even for you.” She replied finally. “Not exactly possible, but you definitely got me with that riposte. I admit that much.”

“Not exactly possible?” If she doesn’t swing that way, I’m going to look at her relationship with Nekia in an utterly different light.

“Uhm, I’m part of a nobility? And my family has a landed title?” She replied, her face returning to her typical, slightly mocking look. “It’s not like we, nobles, do not go on dates. But with other nobles or commoners with notable achievements. And always with some family-paid background checks, to ensure that the other side isn’t a douche that would then ruin your family’s honour and reputation with their action.”

This honestly sounds like feudal-era marriages, just with a spin to focus it on meritocratic achievements and non-douchebagism rather than pure pedigree, huh.

She glanced at him and sent him a wide grin.

“Of course, trying to check your background would require finding you in the historical records of the 21st Century. And I don’t think that you achieved something important enough to be remembered. Peasant.” She chuckled. Before Christopher managed to answer her, she ran, forcing him to exhaust himself in futile attempts to catch up with her.

Ten minutes later they arrived at the large set of doors signed as ‘Enviro Section’. Tiriel looked flushed. Christopher felt like he was about to die. His lungs were burning. The elf had kept sprinting with a maximum speed for ten minutes straight. Even with his supposedly improved body, ten minutes of constant sprinting as fast as possible was a lot.

“Now that’s what I call a warm-up.” Tiriel said while doing some light stretching exercises, simply to salt the wound on Christopher’s pride.

“I’m… not… answ...answering that.” The petty officer managed to utter. He was bending forward, his hands resting on his knees, while he was still trying to catch his breath. Tiriel waited long enough for Chritopher to recover before entering the Enviro section.

They put the hydroponics together with general life support? Oh, wait. We ran through the citadel entrance en route here. I guess that if the artillery round reaches so deep, losing life support is the least of the crew’ worries!

The second he stepped through the door, an overlay installed itself on his UI. The smooth, black floor was replaced with grass, the walls with fences, and the ceiling disappearing. Instead, there was an open sky above them, with a sun hanging in the middle of it.

“Err, Tiriel?” The elf looked at Christopher questioningly. “Isn’t that… sort of, you know… illegal?”

“You mean the overlay outside of the quarters?” She replied with a question. “Yes. Yes it is.” She beckoned him to follow her, and walked deeper into the Enviro Section.

I guess people really don’t care about things like that, huh.

The fences were see-through, naturally. The space behind them was filled with trees, bushes and other Earth plants, making the sight rather familiar to Christopher. You could see through them, too, which allowed Chris to see the contents of the rooms they passed by.

“Wow, I feel like a Superman.” When she looked at him and he saw her brow raising, he decided to clarify. ”A fictional superhero with like every possible superpower, including X-ray vision that lets him see things through walls.”

“Spraying X-rays everywhere with your eyes doesn’t sound healthy at all.” Tiriel replied. “And the name somehow reminds me of transhumanism. Or Reich’s ubermensch experiments.”

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

She just had to ruin my mood. I’m ok with the former, but reminding me that there is an unironic neonazi country that’s counted as a powerful and influential one is the mental equivalent of a groin attack.

“Well, he’s technically an alien.” He replied, receiving a much more cryptic stare in return. “What?”

“Nothing.” She returned to looking towards the direction of their walk.

The rooms they were passing by were full of plants. Each had a frame of several layers in the middle, each layer filled with plants in various stages of growth. Christopher recognized most of the plants, though not all of them.

“So… hydroponics.” He said. He remembered that was the place that Tiriel worked in while aboard the Echo.

“Officially, it’s the agriculture department of the enviro section.” Tiriel replied. “Also we’re doing aeroponics instead of long outdated hydroponics. But for some reason lots of people are still calling it hydroponics.” She sighed. “People are so unreasonable sometimes.”

“Err… aeroponics?” Christopher asked about an unfamiliar word.

“Hydroponics means growing plants without soil, by using mineral nutrient solutions in a water solvent.” Tiriel replied with an official tone. “In short, you keep the plant in a tank of mineral nutrient-rich water. With aeroponics, you keep the plant harnessed and hanging up in the air, but you spray its roots with water and a carefully tailored combination of nutrients. The biggest difference is that aeroponics require several times less water than hydroponics, which in turn requires several times less water than traditional agriculture.”

“Oh. Now that I think about it, I might have seen a documentary about it.” The fact that the agriculture seven hundred years in the future used the perfected form of a technology already available in his time really drove the ‘Wall of Faith’ nail in.

A woman left the room ten meters ahead of them before turning in their direction. Tiriel nodded towards her and received a similar gesture in response.

Normally, Christopher wouldn’t really bother to notice a random passerby. During their run to the Enviro Section they saw several other crew members. The Echo’s crew was rather diverse - while the majority were humans, there were enough Variants, transhumans and even occasional aliens to make things interesting. However, after several months aboard the cruiser, Christopher simply got used to it.

The woman he just saw intrigued him for two reasons. Firstly, he never saw a person looking like a human but with skin of greenish tint and flowers in her hair. Secondly, her worksuit carried rank badges of a Lieutenant Commander, making her one of the top officers of the cruiser.

After a few seconds Christopher also concluded that she looked like she missed her morning coffee.

“Tiriel, how nii…” The officer yawned loudly. “How nice to see you, especially with… uhm, is that your boyfriend?” She looked at Christopher. The fact that she was silently assessing his worth was obvious.

“More like a very audacious serf of mine.” Tiriel grinned at the officer. “Petty Officer Christopher Hall, head of my recovery team, accompanying me to kill boredom.” She turned her head towards Christopher. “And that’s Lieutenant Commander Ava Taim, head of the Enviro Section.”

Christopher decided to play things officially and stood at attention. He was yet to officially greet Lieutenant Commander before she spoke.

“At… ease.” The yawn in the middle of her answer could probably be heard on the other side of Echo. “Well, I’m not interrupting you. Have fun and don’t break anything. I need to take a nap.”

She quickly departed, leaving the two of them alone. Though not without one last yawn loud enough to wake the dead.

“Since you are probably curious, she is a Variant.” Tiriel said while glancing at Christopher’s face. The look of surprise and curiosity on it left no doubts about his emotional state. “One of the more experimental ones. Someone had an idea of checking out if a humans can be modified to photosynthesize, producing at least part of the energy required to live from the sunlight. Today the majority of them live on various agricultural-oriented worlds, taking full advantage of their special qualities in order to increase the food exports of their worlds by around point zero zero one percent.”

Yeah, if you create an entire world with agriculture in mind, the amount of food eaten by its population will be a small percentage of the general production to begin with. And as far as I know, food availability is an issue only on the few poorest worlds out there, so eating less is not a great boon on that field either.

Sounds like a critical research failure of the team in charge of the project.

“Of course, this also means that if they cover their entire body with something like our work uniform, then they are going to be missing some of that additional energy produced by photosynthesis. Which led to them often being very tired when the end of their work shift is close at hand. ” Tiriel continued. “Needless to say, the relationship the greens have with nudity taboo and general common decency suffered a lot.” Her face was so perfectly neutral and emotionless that it reached the levels when it became almost creepy. “Because, apparently, using stims or eating more sweets is too complicated.”

“Wait, so you are saying that…” Christopher stared at her for a few seconds, before he managed to formulate an answer. “Oh. She’s still wearing clothes aboard the Echo, right?” She wasn’t naked after all.

“The Guild’s regulations and the life insurance you have signed while joining the crew specify what sort of protective clothes you should wear while on duty or during a combat situation.” Tiriel’s face remained neutral. “They speak nothing of what you should wear during your free time.”

It took Christopher’s entire willpower to not laugh loudly. Resisting the urge to ask Tiriel what places is Lieutenant Commander’s Taim frequenting off-duty came even easier, as the risk of some terrifying punishment was too great.

“Since you seem curious, let me inform you that she doesn’t leave the Enviro section off-duty.” Tiriel informed him, once again with a mocking smile on her face. “And in order to not antagonize people nor cause any sort of moral outrages, only active workers of the section are allowed in during that time. Since you won’t be visiting this section often, I believe that you won’t have many occasions to see her, neither naked nor clothed.”

And it’s ME who can read minds here?

“I think I prefered the time when your smile was less impish and more elvish.” Christopher replied, deciding to not bring up the gross violation of his mental privacy. “And when you weren’t trying to steal Innocent’s mantle of the Echo’s chief jester.”

“Well, both of those smiles are genuine.” Tiriel answered, smiling yet again. “And Innocent’s recently too busy with his work to make jokes. Playing with missiles, acting as the ship’s chaplain, continuing the psychological treatment of the slaves we’ve liberated from Yunqi’s ships... “ Tiriel’s answer was cut short, when she saw Christopher’s face. “I’m sorry.” To his surprise, her mood instantly switched from cheerful mockery into sadness. This wasn’t something he expected to see.

“You’re sorry for what?” Christopher inquired.

“As a reward for showering me with kind words in front of other people I’ve decided to take you on a walk.” She replied, speaking faster and lighter. “To keep you from worrying about the battle. But I’ve managed to bring your attention back to really bitter things. And our last battle. Which most certainly made you remember what’s going to happen in around two hours. Am I wrong?” She balled her fists, almost daring Christopher to disagree.

“No, you’re correct.” Christopher sighed. He did make a mental jump from one battle to another. “Well, I appreciate the fact that you tried. And I admit that it did work until now.”

Getting to see her flustered and angry over failing in something, even in such a minor thing, is enough of a reward for me. Who would have thought that she could make a face like this one?

“So… you didn’t leave anything in the enviro section?” Christopher asked.

“No, I did leave something, but it’s not something that I need to have right now.” Tiriel clarified. “Calling you over for a completely fake reason would feel like lying to you. Ugh.” She bit her lip. “Can we go back, without aggravating my shame anymore?” Christopher responded with a scarce nod. Tiriel was certainly not in a mood for talking.

After a few minutes they marched past the door leading to a small office. Inside, Lieutenant Commander Taim was sitting behind the desk on which the upper part of her body was resting together with her head. The snoring was audible on the corridor outside.

I’m starting to think that the genetic modifications for the Variants were a case of blessings coming in a package with curses. And that geneticists who were responsible for at least half of them deserve a lifetime in jail.

“Hello there!” The unexpected and cheerful voice coming from behind surprised them both. They turned towards the source of it. It was Ryan in his work clothes, now covered with various tools. “Wait, I’m not interrupting a date, right?”

“No, you aren’t.” Tiriel replied coldly. “What are you doing here?” The tone of her voice made Christopher wonder if she was angry generally, or was her coldness directed at Ryan. Was she having issues with his rapidly changing love interests?

“I’ve been fixing temperature control in one of the aeroponics halls.” Ryan replied. If he noticed how cold was Tiriel’s demeanour, he didn’t show it in the slightest. Unless the ‘temperature control’ was a joke about her cold approach. “But it’s working now, and I’m en route to a routine maintenance of a conduit AB-72-34. Which means passing by our quarters. If you’re returning there, we could walk together.”

“Hmm, why not.” Christopher decided against commenting how everyone didn’t seem to care and were totally laid back so laid back in the wake of the battle. There were other ways of travelling through the Echo that were faster than a casual stroll with friends. “Tiriel?”

“The more the merrier.” Tiriel answered, but she still didn’t sound very merry. Christopher arrived at the conclusion that she was, in fact, much more bothered by the failure of her plan to repay the petty officer for his honesty.

***

“Okay, so while we are talking about it, I have one question.” Christopher said. Without sprinting through the tunnels of Echo, the return journey felt much longer. Enough for the talk to start, with the subject of Variants taking the stage.

“Who the hell thought it is a great idea to make all those… weirder Variants?” He continued. “Like the greens? Was absolutely nobody smart enough to point out how stupid this idea is?” Only after saying that did Christopher notice how insensitive this was. Thankfully, neither of his companions seemed to care.

“Hype.” Tiriel replied. Her earlier irritation had mostly faded away. The stoic elf personality was in charge, leading to short and composed answers without mockery. “Humanity 2.0 ended with fabulous success, so everyone boarded the ‘Gene Modifications Are The Future’ train and forgot to slow down before the curve in the tracks.”

“That’s quite graphic.” Ryan commented. “Not incorrect, but graphic.”

“Yes, it is.” Tiriel nodded. “It was a bit of a collective psychosis that caught even the scientists. Especially the scientists, in fact. The steady deceleration of scientific progress due to the Wall of Faith bore frustration, so the idea that genetic modifications were the key to break through it spread widely. And once PR specialists and politicians caught wind of that, this disease spread throughout the population.”

“Oh, I think I know where this is going.” Christopher took over the talk. “By the time the scientists actually made some progress with the project, the issues and difficulties became glaringly obvious. However, at this point, trying to call everything off would be a PR nightmare, so they kept pushing forward in hopes of everything actually working in the end. So the Solarian government kept racing a bus with them behind the wheel and both scientists and already created Variants in the passenger seats towards the edge of the cliff. From which they fell off.”

“In short, yes.” Tiriel nodded. “Just add the fact that when politicians boarded the bus, they also had a genius idea of asking the society what sort of Variants they’d like to see in the flesh.” Christopher looked at her with pure horror on his face. “It made sense in the context, as Humanity 2.5 was supposed to diversify Mankind. Asking people what sort of subspecies they’d like to ‘be’ wasn’t stupid. But as the genetic modifications hype reached absurd levels, people thought that everything was possible. So they demanded everything.”

“And since everybody involved in the project was too scared of telling them how much it’s impossible, they tried to do that in hope that it’d somehow work. And sometimes it did, though often with side effects. Like Lieutenant Commander Taim's permanent lack of energy.” Ryan summed it up. Since he wasn’t with them when they met her, Christopher concluded that he visited the Enviro section in the past. “I got that correctly?” Tiriel nodded.

“It reminds me of the Bay of Pigs.” Christopher commented. The looks he got in exchange reminded him that there is no way they could know of such a small event. “Essentially, the United States wanted to kick out a dictator from Cuba, a nearby communist country. They trained and armed a bunch of emigrants from said country, planning to use them to stage an uprising in Cuba. They were supposed to have air support and so on. But the president changed, and the new one demanded the direct US involvement to be cut down a lot to avoid the scandal. In the end the emigrants’ support dwindled while the tasks remained the same. The entire landing should have been scrapped at this point, but bureaucratic inertia and fear of telling your superior that he was wrong kept it going. End result was the United States' total disgrace.”

“That certainly sounds like something born of a similar mindset.” Tiriel admitted. “Just add fanatical popular support that made the planners and government backers unable to back down, and this example will be perfect.”

“What about half if not more of the Variants being species straight from fantasy, though?” Christopher decided to finally ask the most important question. The one that kept haunting him for months now.

“The first cultural reaction to the Wall of Faith becoming mainstream knowledge was a sudden spike of popularity of sci-fi films and games, showing all the wonderful prospects of achieving the godlike post-Wall of Faith technology.” Tiriel replied. “When this didn’t seem to happen, the public lost interest and switched to fantasy-themed entertainments as a way of escaping the issue altogether. ”

“And the Variants happened during that fantasy phase?” Christopher asked.

“Yes and no.” Tiriel shook her head. “It was more a repetitive cycle for several decades, and it started even before the rise of the Solar Commonwealth. With the majority if not almost all of domestic issues fixed, the entertainment as a whole began shifting into fictional stories, so these changes had a lot of cultural impact. In a way, the Humanity 2.5 took inspiration from the fantasy phase, while the Humanity 3.0 was a strictly science-fiction mov…”

Ryan grabbed Tiriel by the arm and pulled her towards the edge of the corridor. The sudden spike in the engineer’s emotions was strong enough for Christopher to understand even before Ryan shouted his warning. He lept towards the opposing side of the corridor just in time to avoid getting run over by a crates-filled pallet which drove past them at high speed.

Ryan dropped on his knees right beside the railway and pulled a large metal plate away, uncovering a hidden switchboard and some levers. He quickly pulled the largest one. The light on the monorail going through the middle of the corridor died out.

“What was that?!” Tiriel was still dazed, yet lucid enough to ask the question.

“A malfunction of the rail.” Ryan explained while standing up from the hidden switchboard. “Holy shit, at least fifty kilometers an hour! I hope it didn’t run over any…”

Then the world exploded.