Chapter 007: Physical Violence

The Confederation of Mankind is one of the two contenders to the mantle of a joint representation of Mankind and of direct successor to organizations such as League of Nations, United Nations, Council of Nations and Solar Commonwealth. It is also the largest and most powerful interstellar power in the explored part of the Galaxy, with tens of thousands of inhabited worlds and population counted in trillions. Its status as a country is, however, debatable.

It is also known by its old name, the Great Alliance, which describes its nature better. The Confederation started as a loose alliance of the Frontier warlords who temporarily paused their wars to pool their resources together in a desperate attempt to halt the advancing armies of the Solar Federation. While they succeeded in repelling the attack, their forces were not enough to liberate the Coreworlds from the totalitarian grip of the Federation, leading to the stalemate that continues to this day: the beginning of the Long War.

The domains of the Unification Wars-era warlords evolved overtime. Today, the Confederation of Mankind is a loose assembly of over ten thousand members, including countries, sub-alliances, transnational corporations, and various NGOs. The endless rivalries and wars between them are silenced only during the alien or solarian incursions into the Confederation’s space, with the peace lasting only until the common threat is successfully repelled.

The ten thousand members of the Confederation are divided between fourteen factions, ideologically and religiously aligned power blocs vying for control over the Confederation’s politics. Each of them dreams of the day when it will succeed in reforging the Confederation in its own image, gaining the ability to focus the Confederation’s entire might on its ultimate dream - the liberation of the Homeworld and the reunification of Mankind.

Encyclopedia Galactica

Book 2, page 97.

***

Lieutenant Commander Athalia was an uncommon sight on the Echo’s command deck. As the chief medical officer of the cruiser, he reigned over the sickbay - and he preferred to not leave it unless something critical happened. Too many shadowed corners in which assassins could dwell.

From time to time, however, he had to leave it. Normally it was caused by some idiot sticking the wrong thing in the wrong place or not following Athalia’s drug prescription to the letter. Sometimes also because of Fouquet’s hobby. Occasionally, though, Athalia had to address Captain Keller about something. When it happened while the Captain was too busy to visit the sickbay, it was Athalia who had to visit him. Connecting through the shipnet was impossible, as Lith refused to get even the most basic implants.

After all, THEY could track him through them!

This was one such case of the lieutenant commander being forced to face his fears.

He found the Captain in the bridge’s lounge. Flights, especially through star systems, could be incredibly boring, as they not only took days to traverse but also all threats were detected solar hours away from the ship.

Keller was reading a book and drinking what looked like orange juice from a somewhat peculiar cup. If the medical officer remembered it accurately, it was hand-crafted from a skull of some alien beast. Lieutenant Nowak’s birthday gift for the captain.

That man had peculiar tastes in Athalia’s opinion. And lieutenant Nowak was just plain insane, even though she disguised it quite well. Though she was still the number two on his ‘I want to dissect them’ list.

“Well, fancy seeing you here.” The Captain spoke before Athalia could open his mouth. “It’s about our newest recruits, am I correct?”

“Mhm.” Athalia voiced his confirmation before sitting down on the chair at the opposite end of the table.

“I assumed you’d crave to know the details as soon as possible.” The Captain nodded, his eyes raising from the book to focus on the medical officer. “Both of them Awakened successfully. I reanimated Technician Welch in 56 seconds. He has developed into a Supreme-class technopath. How very fitting for his post. The one you chose for him.” Athalia’s hopes for the Captain reacting somehow were greeted with failure. “In the meantime, Petty Officer Hall remained in the state of cardiopulmonary arrest for twenty-seven minutes. Since I got to him in two minutes, I prevented any lasting damage from occurring.”

“Good, good. It looks like placing you there was a splendid choice. Any idea why reanimating Christopher took so long?” If that’s a way to suggest it was my fault, I swear I’m going to…

“That’s because I didn’t succeed in doing so. The heart started beating again on its own. Or, to be exact, I presume that his ‘third gift’ concluded that it was done sleeping.” He pulled some papers from his briefcase.

“You can see the point of injection on his heart right here.” Athalia pointed towards the first one of them. “I’m still analyzing the blood samples and I already found traces of a compound similar to hyperadrenaline and of what I can only describe as ‘organic nanomachines’. Mostly burned out, I believe that they produced a highly concentrated and well-placed electric shock within his heart, which restarted it. I also…” Captain raised his hand.

“Lith, I’m a ship captain, not a medic. What I see on those papers of yours is just a colorful mess on which I wouldn’t tell the kidney from the brain. I get it, you are trying to explain this in simple words, but you can just as well skip this and get to the point. Do you have any idea what that thing is?” Straight to the point, right. As if we couldn’t linger on the subject that I have something to talk about!

“Nope. Seriously, if one tenth of what Christopher is telling us is true, you should ask Innocent that question.”

The Captain rolled his eyes, exasperated by the remark. “You’ve known him almost as long as I have. You should have noticed already that he is… painfully dogmatic. On a question of this gravity, he will stubbornly decline to make any judgment before he will submit the case to the Church’s higher-ups. After which they will spend an ungodly amount of time checking out every angle of the situation and turning to every expert imaginable. And once they conclude that, they’ll spend an even more ungodly time debating the issue. This means that their judgment will have a satisfactory chance of being objectively correct, but we’ll have to wait for it for at least twenty to thirty years.”

Lith reminded himself that it was not a suitable moment to quarrel about the ‘objectively correct’ part. Though even he had to admit that there was little to criticize in the methodology and scale of such operations.

“And before that, the only answer I’ll get from Innocent will be ‘Regretful Answer: I do not know.’.” Captain continued. “ I need a non-religious analysis, and I want it now.”

“Oh, come on. You expect me to answer in any other way than ‘I do not know’? I’m a genius surgeon and geneticist. This is scarcely my field of expertise! I can’t even take a sample to analyze!” He said that before biting his tongue. Captain noticed the slip.

“You tried?” The ‘against my explicit orders’ was implied in the tone, without mentioning it openly.

“Yeah. I tried. I woke up an hour later, in my office, with a photograph of myself next to a huge screw in my hands. I must have removed it from the wall while unconscious. This confirmed two things. One is that it’s either a potent teleempath, or can control people via some other means. Second is that it possesses a sense of humor akin to your pet metal priest.”

“While I’m not sure if we’re ready for another Innocent aboard Echo, this seems to imply that whatever this ‘third gift’ is, it is either human enough or knows us enough to be capable of playing with words. That’s… interesting.”

Understatement of a century, especially when one was more or less aware of Mankind’s history of trying to communicate with entities even remotely similar to that one.

There were exceptionally rare cases of ‘something’ extradimensional sneaking into the Realspace. Mankind at this point was vaguely cognizant of three other dimensions - besides Hyperspace there was also the Void and the Abyss (more formally recognized as Voidspace and Darkspace). Each of them was incomprehensible to Mankind, though each of them in its unique way. With four dimensions confirmed, more of them could exist.

Most of these incidents occurred when someone was behaving like a moron and meddled with things supposed to stay untouched. There was a reason any research about any dimension aside from the Realspace was explicitly forbidden. Things from the Outside were too alien to establish a meaningful communication with them and typically trashed everything around, purely accidentally, before returning home. Thus it was a futile waste of resources and lives that could be better spent elsewhere; one typically attempted by people who watched too many science fiction films and not enough horror ones.

That this entity seemed both material and capable of understanding humans enough to pretend (the alternative sounded too eccentric to even think about this) to be linked with one of Mankind’s religions was… unusual and interesting.

There was also another option. That it was something of this world but was imitating an extradimensional, attempting to fool or manipulate them into... something. Which was the less interesting and more suspicious option.

“Monitor the situation. We need to know what we’re dealing with, but we have to find it out discreetly. And until we know anything for sure, we will assume that we have a dangerous an potentially hostile entity aboard the Echo.”

“Eh. Religious revelations from entities of dubious nature and origin, impossible medical conditions… I miss the old times when we were busy with more natural, human things. Conquering worlds, driving our enemies in front of us while hearing the lamentations of their women, that sort of thing.” This provoked a burst of solid, heartfelt laughter from the Captain.

“Yeah, sure. Tell me, are you missing out on your psychotherapy session with Innocent? You seem to be losing your touch with reality. Again.” Lith decided to not answer this question, because of its malicious nature. ”So, what did you tell Christopher?”

“That he has an extremely rare case of an ability that can evolve.”

The Captain went silent for a few seconds before responding. “You know, besides your medical expertise, there is also one more thing that you contribute to the Echo. One extremely significant thing. You are the only one of those who know the Guild’s secrets that can do it, as I shouldn’t be doing it as a captain, and both Innocent and Eva refuse to do it on moral grounds.”

“Oh, what is it?”

“You lie.”

***

Christopher returned to the quarters, trying not to think about his time in the sickbay. Maybe save for the moment when Athalia told him about the whole ‘sorcerer’ thing. It was unbelievable. Shocking. Secretly slightly exciting.

Mostly exciting.

When he entered the quarters, he saw Tendrik and Ryan watching a film. On the monitor, a group of space marines-looking people boarded a ship and were busy shooting some very authentic looking space monsters. They stopped watching it the very second they spotted him.

“Christopher, you’re back!” You don’t say, Tendrik. “We were so worried.” Ryan nodded in agreement.

“I can see that.” This came out wrong. “Like, seriously. Chill out guys, everything’s ok. I’m alive and well, right?” They glanced at each other with a surprise on their face before redirecting their eyes towards Christopher.

“You know that you were pretty much dead for almost half an hour, right?” What? Why did that crossdressing excuse… why did Lith not bring up how long it took?!

It was at this moment that Christopher reminded himself that however weird Lith was, he DID save Christopher’s life. What’s more, his assessment of Lieutenant Commander Athalia’s medical skill kept rising up with their every meeting. He quickly resolved himself to be less of a jerkass towards the medic.

“Athalia got here in two minutes, so he placed you in some harness that automatically massaged your heart and pumped air into your mouth. That was scary.” Tendrik looked as shocked as he looked excited. The former had a few days to fade away, after all.

“Two minutes? That’s sorta weird.” Christopher responded, choosing to overlook the length of his ‘death’ for now. Ryan answered with a nod and a thoughtful face. He seemed to have noticed the same thing.

It took at least twenty minutes to get to their quarters from the medical area. Either Athalia was the world’s best runner, or he was already somewhere near.

Oh well. Perhaps they placed him there just in case. Who else could have medical issues during Hyperspace entry than the two newcomers who had never visited it?

“Uhm, I think the weirder part here is something else.” Tendrik didn’t notice, so Christopher shook his head and moved to another subject.

“So, I heard you went through Awakening too, Ryan. What did you get?” He was curious. Athalia only mentioned that this happened without specifying.

“Technopathy.” Ryan answered. The name told Christopher nothing. “I can make machines do things. Watch this.” Ryan pointed towards the monitor. After two or three seconds of pause (possibly generated by activation of neuroamp) the channel changed.

“Um, that’s all?” That was underwhelming. The same thing could be achieved faster by using comm-implants. Then again, his power wasn’t anything flashy either.

“Well, mostly. I can also feel where the issue with a machine is, despite not looking at it with my own eyes. Which means it’s redundant while on Echo, as the Internal AI does the same thing. Might be helpful outside of it, though. And you?”

***

Five days and twenty-seven minutes after the Echo’s entrance into the Hyperspace, Captain Keller ran into the bridge, accompanied by Commander Drathari. The combat alert siren roared in the background.

“Innocent, talk to me.” The captain said while sitting on his seat, not looking tired despite being woken up in the midst of a well-deserved sleep and forced to run through the labyrinth of Echo’s corridors.

“Quick answer: Potential contact on the spatial sensor array.” The tactical officer, who was the officer in charge of the so rudely interrupted bridge shift, answered without letting the main monitor out of his view for even a second. “At least two kilometers long. Gravitational sensors estimate its weight to be around ten million tonnes. We will pass by it in twelve minutes, seven million kilometers away from it. No hints of movement. No communications. No signs of active power sources.”

“You ran it through the system?”

Innocent was too good of a tactical officer to answer the question negatively. “Confirmation: Yes. Displaying results now.” A few seconds later Keller whistled.

“That will be interesting. Ring the deceleration alarm and plot the interception course.”

***

The hit was powerful enough that it forced Christopher to take a step back, even despite his successful block. Rukh wasted no time. He closed the distance almost instantly, raining hits on Christopher’s stomach and chest. Despite the impact-absorbing suit, he could feel every hit.

He tried to counterattack with a straight punch to the face, but Rukh saw it coming and took advantage of the momentary lapse in defense. The hit Christopher received made him reeling. He got his guard up in time to receive another barrage of blows. Which lasted until Lieutenant Nowak had enough of it.

“So, how was it?” He asked while taking off the protective suit. Despite the protection it offered, he could still hear something ringing. Can’t someone pick up that damn phone?

“He is superior to you in terms of skills, strength, speed, and reaction time.” Lieutenant Nowak was as merciless as indifferent in her answer. She was stating a fact. It wasn’t her problem that the actual state of affairs was this bad for Christopher. “But I have to admit that you are unrivaled in getting hit. You didn’t do anything more than that, to be honest.” Ugh, can she stop kicking me while I’m down? “However, staying upright despite being kicked and punched so many times and not being able to respond requires balls, I concede that.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” Not like he could expect anything else from her anytime soon. Or ever, actually.

He finished taking off the suit and had a moment to look at Rukh, who was still struggling a bit with his helmet.

Despite a few days passing by, he still has had only a few opportunities to see Rukh. Their team’s bodyguard was extremely asocial. Or didn’t like his teammates. His luck with evading the quarters when someone was there was so superb that Christopher began suspecting Tendrik wasn’t the only person who planted some hidden cameras around the place.

He was also a ‘biological' furry. He looked more like an anthropomorphic wolf than human-animal hybrids like Nekia or Tiaa. This amazed Christopher as much as it ruined his plan of publishing his memoirs from the future, under the pretense of it being a sci-fi story. He could already hear the screeching of people who regarded furries as the worst thing under the sun after communism.

“Well, you should take it slowly.” Lieutenant Nowak noticed who he was looking at. “It took him almost two weeks since he started training here to hold a conversation with someone. For two weeks all we got from him was ‘I came here to train’ and ‘can I borrow those weights’. It was amazing, in its own weird way.”

“Mhm, well I can’t wait for the day when his interactions with his de facto superior will consist of something else than physical violence against said superior.” Especially as it goddamn hurts. The way Rukh moves is too fast, too precise. It’s barely human at all.

“I will share with you a very important secret of the universe.” Lieutenant Nowak leaned towards Christopher, her tone going down to a confidential whisper. “Violence is never an answer. It is the question. And the answer is yes.”

I’m beginning to understand why the marines are referring to her as the ‘Berserker’.

“Great. So, uhm, can I know why this even is a part of my training? I can understand teaching myself how to shoot.” Especially as I have results in that field. My eyes are much better than they used to be, and my eye-hand coordination was well trained in computer games. Though I still suck in the technical part of gun-handling. “But this? I’d be dead five times over if not for the protecting gear.”

“That’s the point.” She answered. “You are decent with a rifle, and your training is going ok as a whole. You are putting in a lot of effort, I give you that. A year or two and you’ll be a fine addition to the crew. However, your circumstances are unusual, and your body is above the human average. Thus, the sooner you get to learn that in combat you are no one special, the better. And having the youngest marine trainee aboard Echo mop the floor with you is a very good way of achieving just that.”

She is grinning. I’m about to collapse on the ground from exhaustion and pain and she is grinning. Ugh.

WARNING

PRIORITY MESSAGE FROM:

Chief Petty Officer Tiaa Sistonen

All petty officers in charge of the Recovery Teams are to assemble in thirty minutes [17:35 Standard Terran Time] in the briefing room on the Hangar Deck.

Time left: 29:56

Estimated Travel Time: 17:23

I guess that includes me. Ugh.

***

“And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the Pristine Jewel.” Chief Tiaa said, pointing towards a huge and blocky ship presented on the monitor. It looked like a gigantic metal cigar. With its industrial and blocky texture in the color of rust, the name ‘Pristine Jewel’ was the last thing that came to mind.

Christopher felt out of place. Everyone in the room but him looked like a veteran. While he… he could pretend to be a child of some people present, with a reasonable chance of succeeding.

“It was designed and built for the Tavian Republic by an outside contractor to serve as a heavy passenger and cargo transport vessel. The merchant fleet of the Tavian Republic inducted it into its ranks five years ago, however, the ship vanished in the Hyperspace three hundred and twenty days ago. Because of a wave of disappearances that occurred in the subsector around that time, it was commonly accepted that a pirate warlord went on a rampage in the subsector. We are about to have this claim verified. And by ‘we’ I mean eight recovery teams led by me, and five marine squads led by Lieutenant Nowak.”

Well, I always knew this day had to come eventually. My first boarding. No way I’m qualified to do that! It’s not even two weeks since I got transported here. How the hell am I supposed to do stuff like that?! At least the marines will get there first, so it should be safe.

“Unfortunately for us, we are on a tight schedule here. All thanks to this.” She replaced the picture on the display with a jumble of colors that Christopher couldn’t decode. Judging from the murmur around him, he was the only one with this issue. Was it some star map? “Hyperstorm designated EVA-II(B72) will reach this area in three days. We are two days away from our next stop, the Texia system. If we take into account the slower acceleration of a civilian ship such as Jewel, we have less than twelve hours left for this boarding if we want to safely exit Hyperspace with the Jewel before EVA’s arrival. Because of that, we will land alongside marines, rather than waiting for their confirmation that the coast is clear.”

The murmur grew stronger. Only his lack of experience and the crippling feeling of inadequacy stopped Christopher from joining it.

Tiaa raised her hand, silencing the petty officers.

“We have two prime objectives here. The Pristine Jewel is powered down. We see no outside damage, and the probes we sent showed next to no damage to the interior. This leads us to believe that the ship itself is salvageable. We are going to divide our forces into four groups. Group One is composed of recovery teams two and three, together with a squad of marines, will attempt to access the Engineering Deck to reignite the main reactor and run diagnostics on the ship’s systems to find out if we can get it out of the Hyperspace. You will be escorted by one squad of marines.” It made sense. Getting the entire ship to fly out with them on its own was the biggest prize possible. You got the cargo and the ship itself. ”The second group, formed by teams four and five, together with another squad of marines, will seek to reach the bridge to access the ship’s databases and take control of the Jewel’s computer systems. For that reason this group will be accompanied by Lieutenant Commander Fouquet.”

A wave of nods. Save for landing alongside marines and the restricted time it was a fairly standard operation, so no surprises there.

“Group three will be composed of two marine squads under the personal command of Lieutenant Nowak, recovery team six and Lieutenant Commander Athalia.” And thus… ends the standard operation part. Taking the second best computer expert - like Fouquet, supposedly - with the boarding party made sense. But Athalia? It was rare to see him outside of the sickbay, much less on a different ship. “According to the data we got from Tavia before our departure, the Pristine Jewel carried two thousand crew-members and seven thousand passengers. The most likely place to find what remains of them is the Passenger Deck, and that’s where the third group will go to hopefully find some answers. That is if the second group will not find them in the archives.”

Ah. I think she mentioned something like that during the training. It’s easier to wipe out the ship’s databases and security footage than get rid of the bodies, wash the blood splatters, and collect all the spent casings and so on. Archives are better, but the physical evidence much more likely.

I guess I did learn something during the training, huh.

“Finding out the cause of the Jewel’s disappearance is the second objective, by the way.” Tiaa clarified the issue before carrying on. “Group four will be the recovery teams one and eight, together with me and a squad of marines.” Really? And here I was, hoping that they will exclude us from this operation after all… “We will land near the main hangar and establish a bridgehead in case we have to bring in reinforcements. Which is, let me stress that once again, VERY. UNLIKELY. The rest remains on standby aboard the Echo. Questions?

“Cargo?” One of the petty officers raised a hand and asked.

“Seven hundred thousand tonnes of various low-value cargo, primarily metals from the Republic’s mining world of Texia-III. Of no importance to this mission. Though it should provide us with a lovely bonus if we get the ship back to the Republic.” The irony of returning a lost ship to the totalitarian regime that wanted to seize their ship a while ago wasn’t lost on Christopher. The future was weird.

“And what about…” Someone else inquired into details of the mission. The questions went on for a few more minutes. Finally, the meeting was over. At least for most of them.

“Petty Officer Hall, I’d like to have a word with you.” Chief Tiaa said, interrupting his speedy evacuation from the room.

Why do I feel like a primary school kid who was just ordered by his teacher to stay after the lesson for a talk?

“I am conscious that your team suffers from a fatal lack of experience and training.” Chief Tiaa started speaking once everyone but them left the room.

“We are doing our best with training, however eventually we will also need to address the experience part. The Pristine Jewel is a convenient opportunity for you to start your career as a recovery team for real.”

“I hope you are right, chief.”

“Just in case I’m not, I will accompany you, at least during the landing.” What? “Recovery Team 8 will land near Recovery Team 1, taking a different entrance. Consider that a live boarding exercise. I will instruct you during the boarding and examine your performance as a petty officer, then we’ll join my team and the marines, and proceed according to plan.”

How much of this is Tiaa being protective of her daughter and how much genuine care, I wonder? Probably both at once, I guess.

“That’s a relief, chief.”

“Oh my. Christopher Hall, answering quickly and formally. You must be worried about the entire thing.” She smiled. “Don’t worry, everything will be ok.”

Well, we all know how well that went with the Hyperspace entry. Let’s hope it will be different this time.