Chapter 03 – Run

“Brace for impact!” Cirakari shouted. Not that there was much I could do.

Just as it had happened with the GIX, in a fraction of seconds, we heard explosions coming from outside. It was like molten steel drops had been raining on one of those warehouse roofs made of zinc, deafening and disorientating. The Peregrina’s armor resisted most of the impacts, but five of them tore through the ship faster than I could process.

I was knocked out for a few milliseconds after the impact. The first thing I noticed when I regained consciousness was the hissing of air leaking through the glowing red-hot holes left by the projectiles. The second thing I could comprehend was that I was drenched in an astonishing amount of blood. I ran my hands over my body to check if it was mine, and thankfully, it wasn’t. When I looked up to the upper deck, I saw the deformed body of one of the officers. The projectile had entered through his right shoulder with such energy that the entire shoulder region was pushed into his own body. The arm had fallen near where I was lying. With every acceleration, more blood drained from his body. I hadn’t even seen his face when I entered the ship, much less known his name, but may he find peace in the afterlife.

“Stop accelerating, I’ll try to seal the holes!” I shouted after the shock effect wore off.

“Ok.” Cirakari replied. “The repair kits are marked and signaled, can you find them?”

“Yes! I found them,” I replied while grabbing the nearest repair case.

I opened the case and found tools I'd never seen before. Inside, I found what looked like a futuristic hot glue gun, some metal plates, and a device resembling a barcode reader. I didn’t have time to read the manual, so I followed my instincts.

I brought one of the metal plates close to the hole and the air suction stuck the metal to the structure. I took the “glue gun” and pulled the trigger. A thick, silvery substance came out of the tip and infiltrated the small cracks that remained between the plate and the ship’s inner hull.

“Did I do it right?” I shouted to the rest of the crew.

“Yes, it’s great,” replied the third officer, whose name I still didn’t know.

From time to time, the ship made evasive maneuvers. Sometimes Cirakari warned before pulling the joystick, but there wasn’t always time for that. She threw the joystick hard to the right, the RCS screamed angrily as the ship spun on its own axis. I felt like a hamster that put too much speed on the wheel and ended up being carried with it.

“Holy shit, they got the Avenger and the Jiùxīng.” Gulliver screamed, I figured that those were the names of the other ships involved in the rescue. More unknown souls that passed away in this crazy nightmare.

“More projectiles incoming!” Cirakari shouted.

I barely managed to grab hold before another barrage slammed into the ship. This time, fortunately, the armor held up better. Stunned by the sound and vibrations, I held my breath, but no new holes opened up.

“Strike 1!” Gulliver shouted. “Strike 2! The hostile has been neutralized.”

✹✸✶✸✹

I collapsed on the floor, letting my body do its work now that the adrenaline was decreasing. The three remaining officers got up. Cirakari knelt beside the fallen officer.

“Mankind sends their regards, Louis.” She whispered, wiping a tear from her eyes.

“Are we safe?” I asked.

“Yes, for a few more days at least,” she replied.

“I’m sorry about him,” I said, still panting.

“He died protecting humanity. We have no choice.”

“I wish I could say I understand what you’re saying, but honestly, I have no idea... When I left Earth, we had just signed an agreement for the non-militarization of space. And now that I wake up from cryogenics, TRAPPIST-1 is already colonized and there’s a war happening to protect humanity?” I finally had to ask; there were no more excuses to postpone this moment.

“Gulliver, take us back to the Broodmother,” Cirakari ordered. “I have to talk with Mr. Almeida.”

She jumped from the upper floor onto a platform, then came down and sat beside me. We both stared at the bulkhead splattered with blood and decorated with my poorly made patches.

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“I hope all this was worth it,” she said.

“But why? What happened?”

“To be quite honest, I was hoping you could explain,” she exhaled and turned her head from side to side, relaxing the tension in her neck. “About twenty years ago we started detecting retrograde burns from ships like yours. We thought it was another attack by the Overseers, but we quickly realized those ships were being deliberately destroyed.”

“Overseers?”

“Yes, don’t you know who the Overseers are?” She was genuinely surprised.

“I have no idea.”

She narrowed her eyes and tilted her chin up in a suspicious look. “The aliens who subjugated the human race,” she said like a kindergarten teacher telling a child not to eat modeling clay.

“You’re kidding, right?” I replied with a sarcastic laugh.

“I think you’re the one who’s kidding,” she replied, with a serious expression gradually turning to anger.

“I’ve never heard of any aliens, I swear.”

“Where did you come from?”

“From Earth. I boarded Genesis IX to colonize TRAPPIST-1.”

“I think you’re late,” she mumbled. “How long ago did you leave Earth?”

“150 years,” I said. We stared at each other in silence for a few seconds.

“So the Overseers didn’t exist on Earth 150 years ago?” She finally broke the silence.

“No, we had no knowledge of them,” I explained. “How many other ships have been destroyed?”

“Eight,” she closed her eyes for a moment. Then sniffled and raised her eyebrows before speaking again. “We decided to rescue your ships after the Overseers destroyed the third one. We failed in all attempts. You’re the first person we’ve managed to rescue.”

“That high-g burn on the GIX, that were you?” I asked.

“Yes, we were burning towards your ship when their first interceptor arrived and fired against the Genesis IX. We managed to take it down and attach the anchors. Then we did another burn to avoid the next wave of attackers and started the rescue,” she explained. “We soon discovered that the computer automatically woke the crew. The only way to avoid creating complete chaos was to keep everyone locked in their chambers. That was why we blocked you out of the terminal.”

“When I joined the colonization efforts, I had already made peace with the fact that I would leave everything I ever knew behind. The crew of the GIX and the other Genesis were the only people I had left,” I said in regret.

“I’m sorry to hear that, I can’t even imagine how you must be feeling right now,” she tried to comfort me.

“What do these Overseers look like?” I asked.

“Does it make any difference?” She asked in a somewhat rude tone. “I’m sorry, this isn’t your fault,” she apologized, shaking her head. “But this is a sensitive topic and a cause of discord within A.U.T.N. We’ve never seen them. They communicate through digital avatars; we have no idea what they look like.”

“And what about those interceptors you mentioned, did you never manage to capture one?”

“Not exactly. Fights in space tend to turn ships into a deadly cloud of debris, but we’ve managed to fetch a few for studies,” she paused briefly. “The thing is; the ships are operated by humans serving the Overseers, as far as we know, they never actually came to TRAPPIST-1.”

“So, are you saying that humanity back on Earth just accepted vassalage to an alien race? Seems really far-fetched to me.”

“Don’t forget that you have been a popsicle for the past 150 years.”

“If humanity was subjugated by the Overseers, how is A.U.T.N independent?”

“Independent?” Cirakari let out a fake laugh of disdain. “The first colonies of Vielovento were created by humans loyal to the Overseers. But in the first few years problems with food rationing and water transport from Emerald led to an independence war. The war against the Overseers' loyalists quickly expanded to a fight between the colonies themselves.”

“Yeah, it seems like humans haven’t changed,” I added.

“The Overseers were quickly defeated. They had just a small contingency and the forty light years of distance from Earth made it impossible to resist the rebellion,” she finished. “But that was a long time ago, since your ships started closing on TRAPPIST-1, so did the Overseer’s interceptors. Worse than that, four years ago we detected an Armada with four antimatter-powered cruisers. These recent attacks were so shocking that the nations of TRAPPIST-1 stopped fighting each other and formed the A.U.T.N. We’re not truly independent; we’re more like quarrelsome rebels.”

“What are Vielovento and Emerald?”

“The F and E planets, respectively. We thought it better to give them names instead of letters.”

“You said their cruisers are powered by antimatter?”

“Yes, all Overseer’s ships are powered by antimatter.”

“So that’s how you colonized TRAPPIST-1 long before we even arrived. When we left Earth, we only had access to nuclear fusion engines; antimatter was still science fiction stuff.”

“And it’s because of these antimatter engines that the Armada will arrive here at TRAPPIST-1 in the coming weeks,” she concluded.

“I’m sorry, I wish I could help somehow, but I have no idea how I can be useful.”

“Well... That’s a shame,” she said as she stood up. “The ’Alliance’ part of the A.U.T.N is fragmented. We invested a lot in these rescue missions. If you add up all our losses, it must have exceeded ten percent of the fleet, not to mention all the officers, like Louis, that we lost.”

“Divide et impera,” I recited.

“What did you say?”

“The Roman saying, divide and conquer, a strategy to cause internal discord in the enemy to fragment it, and then attack one fragment at a time.”

“Hmm...” Cirakari looked at me with a furrowed brow. “I’ve never heard of these Romans. Are they real or fiction?”

“Real, they were an ancient empire that dominated much of the European, African, and Asian continents,” I replied.

“You seem to know a lot of things that we don’t know here in TRAPPIST-1. My optimistic side wants to believe that this is an advantage good enough to have justified all the losses we’ve had,” she said as she climbed to the second floor. “Come, use the vacant seat up here. We’re going back to our cruiser.”