Chapter 027: Waking Up

Magnetic Acceleration Weaponry (abbreviated MAW) is the most common ship-based weapon system, using ferromagnetism to propel solid rounds made from iron polymer with a speed approaching 0,15c. Even without a warhead, such rounds are capable of causing immense devastation through sheer kinetic energy.

Ships defend against MAW rounds in several ways. Evasive maneuvers are the simplest one - unlike energy weapons, the MAWs’ fire has sublight speed, which together with the seconds-long delay in observed enemy position limits anti-ship MAWs’ effective range to approximately one million kilometers.

Once the round finds the target, the next line of defense are shields. Particle shields are deployed in front of the ship and can intercept several MAW rounds before being depleted. Once that happens, the ship can retreat or activate the magnetic shields, which can deflect an incoming projectile, offering a chance of completely negating the attack.

The last defense is the armor. From one (on destroyers) to three (on capital ships) armored shells, created from alternating layers of hyper-resistant composites, thermoset ceramics, and impact absorbers. Despite that, the sheer firepower of large caliber MAWs (counted in TNT kilotonnes) means that unless a ricochet happens, ships receiving a direct hit will either be outright destroyed (if armor is pierced) or severely incapacitated and knocked out from the battle (if it’s not).

Encyclopedia Galactica

Book 9, page 456

***

EGS Echo, Medbay

06:12 13.07.2610 STT

Cadet Christopher Hall

He opened his eyes to see the ceiling of the medbay, once again. It was honestly starting to get irritating. On the other hand, he was alive - and that was quite a relief, especially when he really thought that it was the end of him this time.

To his surprise, there were no twintails in sight. Instead, Tiriel of all people was sitting next to him, reading a paper book. She wasn’t yet aware that he was conscious. He tried to say hello to her, but discovered that his throat refused to listen to him. He still made enough of a gurgling sound to make her notice him.

“Oh, so you’re back.” She put the book away. “Do not try to speak, Athalia is still cooking up replacement vocal cords for you. Subvoice through the computer.” If he lacked vocal cords, this sounded like the best option.

Implant intercepted the nerve impulses going to the vocal cords and generated a voice recording on its basis that was then sent through the network to the people nearby .Sounded a bit plainer than real speech, but was otherwise useful. As certain plesjan executive officer found out.

“What happened?” Christopher decided to ask the question right away. “Why did she try to kill me?”

“Apparently, it was an assasination attempt of the Seekers.” She replied. “Innocent must have missed one spy.” She knew now who Innocent really was. They had that talk a while ago. Everyone was shocked, to say the least.

The fact that Innocent managed to miss someone was equally shocking. Had the Seekers found a way to screen people from meta-empathy?

“Bad news: the Seekers really want you dead.” Tiriel continued. “Good news: They want you dead, which means that you are somehow a threat to them.” This wasn’t reassuring. Could he expect more attempts on his life?

“And before you ask…” Tiriel gave him a wry smile. “...I decided that you might like waking up to see someone other than Lieutenant Commander Athalia, so I asked him when you were going to wake up.”

“Thank you.” It was a nice change. Athalia was a bit too… clingy recently. Christopher had no real problem with being treated by him - he seemed to know what he was doing really well - but other than that… he certainly preferred seeing Tiriel sitting next to his bed.

“No problem, Chris.” Her smile was more reassuring now than wry. “By the way, how did she lure you out there? Innocent was rather dodge’y on the subject.” Christopher suddenly felt slightly anxious. She felt somewhat... strange.

Did she get suspicious due to him keeping the reason for the meeting a secret? Was she trying to find out if he tried to have a secret date? It sounded like something that Nekia might have asked her for.

“She sent me a love letter.” He answered truthfully. She raised one of her brows. “I planned to respectfully decline, if only to practise doing that before Nekia asks me the big question. When I got there, she suddenly pulled out a gun and tried to kill me, that’s all.”

“Lured out with a false promise of love, how romantic.” She commented. She seemed to be back in her funny mode. “Anything you learned from that?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “That the only women who can ever be interested in me are those who don’t know the world and those that are planning to kill me. Which, more or less, coincides with my pre-time skip experience. Add me being who I am, and the results are...” He paused. She was staring at him in a way she had never stared at him before.

“That is a pretty… grim assessment.” She finally said. “Very grim. Are you sure that you are one to go self-derogatory, despite becoming a role model for Nekia, despite saving her and Kivanna from a person with a hundred times your experience in being an officer, and despite saving the entire team and half of the Texian soldiers accompanying us by making us successfully escape a squad of marines? Marines, mind you. These guys were elites, if anything it’s Colonel Nowak that is unreasonably powerful.”

“Well, I mean, it was all just me improvising, I never really had any plan, I was just trying to avoid…” She interrupted him.

“Christopher Hall.” He swallowed the rest of the words. She sounded serious. Extremely serious. Regal, almost. “Did you ‘improvise’ during the incident with Plesjans?”

“Uhm, no, but I got orders from…” He tried to say, but she interrupted him again.

“And who decided how exactly said orders would be executed?” That would be him. “See? Do not even try to argue with me about the Hastati, or I swear to Eru I am going to punch you despite you being technically infirm.”

“Ok, so you might be right.” He conceded.

“I AM right.” She refused to let go. “You are doing very well. You are reliable, you are diligent, your circumstances make you stand out, and now you managed to avoid assasination right after you got most of the people under you from safety against all odds. Sure, you lack knowledge and skills, but it’s absolutely understandable for a person with your length of service, and nobody is looking down on you for that. So please, try not to let whatever happened to you in the past drag you down and be slightly more confident about what you’re doing.”

She did have a point. Now that she summarized it briefly, he did have a number of achievements. What made them feel bland was that he remembered most of them as himself running around in a daze and trying to hide from the bullets.

“Besides, you are actually quite popular.” She informed him. “Not enough to have a fanclub, but I am fairly certain that you would have found a girlfriend in no time. Actually, I am surprised you have not found any.” The talk was progressing in a strange direction, and Christopher really didn’t know what to do with that.

“Well, I’m simply not looking.” She stared at him with ‘why?’ clearly visible in her face. “No, not because I’m looking down on myself. I’m hoping that my journey ends with me returning home. I don’t think that it would be easy for anyone from the 27th Century to live in the 21st one. Besides, I don’t even know if bringing anyone with me is an option.” Or if he himself going back to those times was an option. Angels were awfully evasive on the subject.

“So you are not interested in relationships, as they would most likely be cut short by your return to your times.” She said thoughtfully. “Some of the girls out there are going to be dejected.” She was clearly making fun of him.

“I just think that when you are going to have a relationship, it’s best to be serious about it.” He quickly replied, trying not to blush - he felt really uncomfortable with the subject. Especially due to the whole ‘biologically back almost to the puberty years’ nonsense. Way too many beautiful women around him.

He was slightly curious if it worked both ways. If some woman from the 21st Century was time-skipped into the 27th Century, would she be facing the same problem? His assessment was ‘probably’. It’s not like only the women got prettier, men seemed generally more handsome as a whole as well. Which certainly didn’t improve Christopher’s self-assessment.

“And here you are, thinking that you are not good boyfriend material.” Tiriel sighed. “Notify me if you ever change your mind. I will send the word, and you are going to have a queue of prospective girlfriends lined up outside of the living quarters the next morning.”

“Now I think you are going too far.” Christopher replied.

“And so are you, just in the opposite direction.” She winked at him. She stood up. “I am going to go now. I presume that Lieutenant Commander Athalia is most interested in having a talk with you about the next step of your treatment.”

***

EGS Echo, Crew Deck

12:18 13.07.2610 STT

Cadet Christopher Hall

A few hours later Christopher left the medbay, with a completely new set of vocal cords. Apparently indistinguishable from the original ones, at least after he said no to Athalia’s idea of giving him some ‘superduperawesome’ set of special vocal cords that he refused to describe in detail.

Christopher had enough superpowers. And he felt rather comfortable with his normal vocal cords. Especially as he had to spend time getting used to these ‘indistinguishable’ vocal cords that did, in fact, feel somewhat strange.

He returned to the quarters. Tiriel, Tendrik, and Ryan were gone, either sleeping or going to work. Kivanna was nowhere in sight. Rukh was there, laying on the couch and watching a film. About space marines, of course.

Goddamn workaholic.

It was an unexpected sight. Rukh visited the quarters only to sleep. Christopher never saw the insides of his bedroom, but it was probably super austere. Unless Rukh was tinkering with weapons and had set up a miniature workshop in his room. It was certainly a possibility.

Well, I can at the very least take advantage of the occasion.

“How rare to see you here.” Christopher mentioned. Rukh turned his head towards Christopher. The petty officer had seen him a few times already, yet his visage never ceased to surprise him. Why did someone think it was an excellent idea to make some bizarre, furry human-wolf hybrid? And why didn’t he get sent to a mental asylum after proposing such a thing in public?

The whole point of both Humanity 2.5 (which created Variants) and Humanity 3.0 (which created Transhumans) projects still evaded him. Humans in the 27th Century were doing well. Why change them so much?

He could understand some Variants - at least those made to live in environments inhospitable for baseline Mankind, for example in high gravity. Transhumans like Mechanists or Virtuals made perfect sense, as cybernetic augmentation and mind upload had been Mankind’s dreams for quite a while and granted obvious benefits. Besides, the idea that future humanity would somehow refrain from altering their bodies with implants or merging themselves closer with computers was, frankly, foolish.

But the rest? Most of them felt as if they were made for aesthetic reasons. That’s where Christopher’s ability to understand ended. Not like he couldn’t understand body alteration for aesthetic reasons - it wasn’t his type of thing, but he could at least imagine it and was ok with it if it interested someone. Attaching functional cat ears to your body was similar to getting a tattoo, just more radical. But making a new subspecies, with differences going much deeper than the way they looked, with no utilitarian reason?

Was he changing into some purist slash human supremacist? At the very least he was still sane enough to know that Rukh wasn’t to blame here.

“Yes.” Rukh avoided cooperating. Which didn’t surprise Christopher at all. There was notable progress in Christopher’s attempts to socially rehabilitate the marine trainee. But it was far from over. “I’m waiting for something.”

“For?” Christopher prompted. Rukh seemed uncomfortable with the talk. His first reaction to Christopher’s question was a lengthy silence. Then he (probably) remembered that the man asking is his superior, and he offered the bare minimum of an answer.

“Cookies.” Unfortunately, his answer failed to enlighten Christopher. Tiriel wasn’t in the kitchen, and he couldn’t think of anyone else in their team capable of doing something as sophisticated as cookies. At least not without causing a gas leakage, at least two explosions, and an enormous fire. “Victory cookies.”

He will not make it any easier, will he? How the hell am I supposed to get what he means if he is so goddamn mysterious about everything? Can’t he just NOT be a weirdo for once?

“Care to elaborate?” The look on Rukh’s face was more or less possible to read, even under the fur and with its wolfish build. Or, perhaps, Christopher began using meta-empathy unconsciously. Which, according to Innocent, was possible. “Ok, you know what? Have it your way. I’m not interested enough to spend the next three hours prying the explanation out of your head.”

The quarters’ doorbell rang. Christopher stood close to the entrance, so he turned around and opened them. He could hear Rukh rising from the couch in the background, from which he deduced that the doorbell signaled the ‘cookies’ arriving.

The guest had him frozen. In front of him stood two-and-a-half meters of smooth composite surfaces and hexagon-shaped ceramics, with its humanoid form compromised by the existence of four arms. Its face was visible through the glass, but it was only remotely human. It was two-dimensional and seemed to float behind the visor.

“Deeeliveryy.” The figure said, it’s voice sounding like the guest wasn’t sure if it wanted to sing or speak, so it went for a fusion of the two forms of communication. ”Sign here, pleaaaase.”

Is there someone normal left on this ship? Someone? Anyone?

Twenty seconds later Christopher was left in the quarters with Rukh and four packages. Two medium ones, one signed with his name and one with Rukh’s name. One smaller box signed ‘Tiriel’. And one big box signed ‘Recovery Team Eight’. Once he put them all on the table, he turned towards Rukh. The marine seemed torn between his desire to grab his package and the fact that Christopher was standing right next to it, which meant having to get close to someone.

“Care to elaborate now, please?” Christopher interrupted the silence. Now I’m curious.

“It’s… a martial tradition from Colonel Nowak’s world. Unless she is just pulling everyone’s legs.” Rukh answered. “Looking through the recordings and counting our achievements took her a while.”

Achievements? What?

Christopher opened his package. Its shape resembled a tube with the length of his hand. Inside were four compact packages, each of them a ten centimeters wide and three centimeters high cuboid made of plain gray paper.

He pulled out one of them. There was an inscription on the side of it, saying ‘Hastati Shieldbearer’. When he opened this small package, he found a cookie inside. This was enough to connect the dots.

They are celebrating kills with COOKIES?!

“Before you get angry for a reason I can’t understand, taste it.” Christopher decided that he can at least do so much to celebrate the first actual real world talk he had with Rukh. Thus far the wolfman was rather scarce with words. Even in the GoI.

A few seconds later he was desperately trying to get the remains of the cookie from his mouth, as it turned out to be the most bitter thing he ever tasted. Rukh was laughing in the background, with the sound resembling barking.

“You thought the cookie you get for killing a human being would be sweet?” Rukh grabbed one of his cookies. To Christopher’s amazement, he gobbled it up, though not without some resistance. “See? That’s how real men eat cookies.”

Oh no, you don’t!

Five minutes of indescribable torture and two cookies later, Christopher reached for the last cookie, curiously named ‘Nekia Sistonen’. Rukh was still struggling with the last of his cookies, his resolve wavering somewhere between the third and fourth cookie.

“I don’t remember killing Nekia… urghh… Sistonen.” It cost him every ounce of remaining strength to stop himself from vomiting. He refused to step down - he was going to defeat Rukh, or die trying.

“Yeah, that one… ugh…” For a few precious seconds, Christopher thought he won. But Rukh stopped himself from puking. “For saving someone. It should be… sweet.” Finally, he swallowed the one last cookie. Two seconds later he was running - fast - towards the toilets.

“Ha, fool.” Christopher commented and tasted the last cookie. It was, indeed, sweet. And tasty. Presented against a background of bitterness, it was twice as good as it would normally be.

“Having fun?” Christopher turned around towards the source of the voice. He found Tiriel standing in front of the entrance, with a small transport robot carrying several packages next to her. Most of them seemed to contain groceries and similar things.

“Uhm, how long were you there?” The edges of her mouth were trembling, as she was obviously trying to suppress the coming burst of laughter.

“I came in right around the time when you were starting your little measuring contest.” Her mocking tone made no doubts as to what she thought they were measuring. “It was so hilarious that I just could not bring myself to interrupt you.” She added while coming closer to the table. Once she grabbed the small package addressed to her, she made one final comment. “Men are the same everywhere, are not they?” Someone saying ‘are not they’ was the weirdest thing done with the English language Christopher had ever heard.

“That’s quite a cruel thing to say.” Christopher replied, though he was fully aware that this one time she was certainly right. The elf ate her cookie quickly. “How does it taste?”

“Like victory.” She replied. “Because I received it for preventing Tendrik from getting a reason for putting even more implants in himself. I see that as an absolute win.”

Yes, of course. Because we all know that’s what was on your mind when you were ready to leap towards him to save him while being under fire from at least two squads of veteran marines.

“Do you know what’s in that package?” Christopher pointed towards the one that was addressed to their team.

“Strong alcohol. Plus small cups. There is enough alcohol for seven toasts with every member of our team.” The happiness disappeared from her face. Christopher figured out why. Seven toasts. Seven dead soldiers of the squad that accompanied them. “During one of my basic combat training sessions with her, Colonel Nowak mentioned that they normally recount the life of the person in question before the toast, but we barely know anything about them, so... I guess it will be a silent remembrance.”

Damn it, now I hope that we will get some time off without further battles and casualties.

Seventy-two minutes and six seconds later, the Guild’s fleet led by Echo entered the Lyria system.

***

EGS Echo, Command Deck

14:20 13.07.2610 STT

Commander Lena Drathari

“You know, I actually didn’t see this coming.” Captain Keller admitted. “That’s going to be the first time in… a while.” Commander Drathari sighed in the background. For some reason the Captain was still out of his normal state of mind, though the effect was either lessening or he got better at acting.

In front of them, the bridge’s main screen displayed the Lyria system. It was an unremarkable backwater. The lack of any Garden World was one thing. But here, none of the planets possessed any sort of interesting traits. No alien ruins, no notable natural resources. Merely balls of dirt surrounding a red dwarf. No gas giants, no notable asteroid belts. The few asteroids here and there were all floating alone, making any large-scale mining operation a pointless waste of time.

The system was a part of the Republic of Triana. However, the Republic’s control over the system was limited to placing a small logistic station in the orbit of the third planet and occasionally sending in a destroyer or light cruiser to check if the station was still there. The only real importance of the Senla system was that it was on the outer border of the explored and integrated part of the subsector, meaning that once the Republic grew stronger it could be used as a basis for further expansion.

Of course, things were a bit different right now. Although the station was still there, it wasn’t on its own anymore.

“Summary: One battlecruiser. One heavy cruiser. Two light cruisers. Four destroyers.” Innocent observed. “All ships but the battlecruiser remain unidentified. However, since the battlecruiser has been identified as a Seekers’ Neil deGrasse Tyson-class, I’m willing to risk a bet that the Seekers of Truth have recently created a new set of designs. So recently that their new battlecruisers and above are still in construction. Also I have detected no attempts of communication, so the infiltrator remains silent.”

“That’s the Seekers for you.” The Captain commented, massaging his temples. “Their penchant for plastering names of ancient singularitarians over absolutely everything never changes. Just as their habit of ignoring the fact that ninety nine percent of people they immortalize this way would have preferred to have nothing to do with such a bunch of cartoon techno-villains. Though, what worries me more is that they consider this operation important enough to send their brand new ships here.”

“I’m actually surprised that they decided to face us openly.” Lena commented. “Sure, we will almost surely die if we engage them in combat, but at least theoretically we could have defeated them.” It felt like a 180 degree shift from Seekers’ past behaviour.

“It’s certainly nothing as simple as that.” The Captain commented. “Seekers don’t act simple. Also I believe we could destroy that fleet, with manageable casualties, though it is a gamble.” She didn’t comment on that. It was a rather incredible boast, but if there was a tactician captain out there who could do that, it was certainly Captain Keller.

“Why do I have a feeling that it is a gamble that you are planning to take?” It sounded like a perfect occasion to try to push Seekers’ away from their plan.

“Because I am going to take it.” The Captain smiled towards her a bit. “You are starting to read my mind. That’s the type of an exec a captain like me needs.” He was correct. Reading the Captain’s mind was a part of the exec’ job description. Of course, Lena Drathari had barely scratched the surface of that particular mind.

“Oh? And how do you plan to defeat them?” She was genuinely curious. She had a lot to learn from him when it came to tactics.

“I always liked Admiral Dunecki’s tactical rulebook.” He replied. “Feint Number Six and then the Rocket Punch to knock the battlecruiser out.” It sounded like a good way of winning, though there was a weakness to that plan.

“If you like those tactics, they almost certainly know that you are going to use it.” At this point she fully accepted the Seekers’ insane ability to predict things.

“Well, I like this combination… but I made sure to almost never use it.” He winked at her. “I have one or two tactics that I keep in reserve just in case I run into the Seekers. Of course, there is a chance that they managed to foresee that as well. You never know.” He turned to face the display. “Of course, the real problem will be approaching them. If they don’t want to, they can simply avoid contact.”

“Maybe we should pretend that Hao won and try to approach them?” She decided to drop an idea. Keller took a glance at Innocent. The priest shook his head.

“Regretful Statement: Less than one percent chance of it working.” The robot replied. “They probably gave him a list of words he is expected to use in communication to prove it’s truly him. Plus several more words whose usage is tantamount to the ‘I was taken prisoner’ message. Since neither them nor Hao were stupid enough to write them down, we’re in the dark here.”

The priest glared at Keller. He didn’t say that aloud, but there was a clear ‘see? we should have let him live’ message written on his face.

Keller didn’t comment on that.

“Well, let’s approach them for now.” Captain said. “And time to make some preparations. Even if they stay where they are, it’s four days for us to prepare. We should start by negating their technological superiority. Innocent, are you ready to tinker with things that no one has ever tinkered before?’

“Answer: I’m getting paid for overtime, right?”