Ep.#3.7 - Birth of an Empire , page 1
The Frontiers Saga Part 3: Fringe Worlds
Episode #7: Birth of an Empire
Copyright © 2023 by Ryk Brown All rights reserved.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
CHAPTER ONE
It had taken less than an hour for the Aurora to retrieve the Traverna’s ejected power reactor compartment, remove the pod, and transport it and its rescuers to the Atlantis.
Nathan and Breyanna were at the Atlantis’ main hangar bay, the one reserved for guest shuttles like the Mirai. This time, they had come over on the Seiiki, the other of the Aurora’s two shuttles and the one Nathan had always treated as his personal transport.
One of the shuttles from the Scott, the Tara, was there as well, and Jessica and Kit were the first ones down her aft cargo ramp, followed by Jokay and Abdur guiding down the creation pod they had just retrieved, with Mori following behind them.
“Nice work,” Nathan congratulated as he and Breyanna approached. “And before you ask, Captain Rezhik and the rest of the boarding team have all been transferred into their new host bodies. They’re all going through post-transfer medical exams now.”
Jessica looked visibly relieved. “You don’t know how hard it was to leave them behind. I mean, I knew they would be transferred and all, but still…”
“Yeah, that was kind of hard to watch,” Nathan admitted.
“So, that’s it?” Breyanna asked as the pod floated by. “That’s where I was made?” She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling a shiver come over her.
“Are you okay?” Nathan asked, placing his hand on her shoulder.
“It’s just that I still have memories of my parents, my childhood. And now…”
“Those memories are who you are,” Nathan explained. “That thing didn’t create you, it just made the body you’re currently residing in.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“It isn’t. Trust me, I know.”
Breyanna cast him a curious look.
“This isn’t my original body.”
“You’re a clone?”
Nathan nodded.
Breyanna pondered this for a moment, watching, while the Ghatazhak floated the creation pod toward the exit. “Where are they taking it?”
“To medical,” Jessica replied. “The Ghatazhak Doc wants to take a look at it before engineering begins tearing it apart.”
“He’d like to see you as well,” Nathan told Breyanna.
“What for?” Breyanna wondered. “I feel fine.”
“He probably wants a baseline physical exam. You are a prototype, after all.”
Breyanna sighed. “Don’t remind me.”
“Maybe you should go with them, for now,” Nathan urged, signally Mori.
“Ma’am,” Mori greeted.
Breyanna willingly followed Mori and the others, disappearing through the exit.
“That woman is dangerous, you know,” Jessica warned. “Possibly as dangerous as I am.”
“Well, she’s seen firsthand that we wish her no harm, and that we’re her best bet if she wants to survive,” Nathan said.
“We should test her skills,” Jessica suggested. “See how good she can fight. How good she is with weapons. More importantly, how much self-control she has over her survival instincts.”
“Agreed,” Nathan said. “But first, we have a meeting with Telles.”
“About?”
“About how the Ghatazhak are still alive, and how they found us,” Nathan told her.
“This should be good.”
* * *
Breyanna followed the Ghatazhak team guiding the device that had created her current body into the Atlantis’s medical compartment.
It was as if they had left the ship and entered a hospital trauma center. There were four beds at angles from the corners of the main room, with the feet of the beds toward the center. Each bed was surrounded by carts and trays, the likes of which she had never seen. Over each bed were imaging devices hanging from their ceiling mounts, and at the head of each bed was a sophisticated system designed to monitor and display everything about the patient.
A man wearing a medical uniform entered from a side room. He was in his thirties and was about the same weight and height as everyone else aboard, except he obviously was not in the same physical shape as the Ghatazhak. “Right over there, gentlemen,” he said, pointing to the far side of the room. An excited grin came over his face when he spotted Breyanna trailing the group. “Oh my God, are you…her?”
“Uh, I guess,” Breyanna replied, feeling a bit apprehensive.
The man looked Breyanna over in amazement.
“Are you the doc?” Mori asked.
“Doctor Keondre Cavins,” the man answered as he continued looking Breyanna over. “Chief Medical Officer…well, the only medical officer, really. The Ghatazhak don’t get sick very often, and when they get injured, they heal incredibly fast.” The doctor smiled broadly. “I can’t wait to examine you.”
“Uh, okay.”
“Sorry, that didn’t sound right.”
“No, it didn’t.”
The doctor looked over at Mori, then the other two Ghatazhak, realizing that he didn’t recognize any of them, even though they were wearing Ghatazhak uniforms. “Who are you?”
“I’m Mori Brill,” Mori replied. “That’s Jokay Deeks, and Abdur Quast. We’re from the Aurora.”
“The Aurora?” The doctor looked confused. “The ship that was lost five hundred years ago?”
“They didn’t tell you?” Mori realized.
“They don’t tell me anything, unless someone is sick or injured, which rarely happens.” He began to recall the details, and the reality dawned on him. “The Aurora was not lost?”
“No, it was not.”
“And the rest of you?” the doctor asked. “There were eight Ghatazhak assigned to the Aurora when…well…”
“They’re all alive as well,” Mori assured him.
“Oh, dear. I must get complete scans of all of you and get a recent consciousness backup. And right away.”
“Whatever you say, doc,” Mori agreed.
The doctor turned back to Breyanna. “Are you tired?”
“I could use a nap,” she admitted.
“Excellent,” the doctor replied, becoming exuberant. “Come, lay down. You may sleep while I perform a deep tissue scan of your entire body.”
“I can’t wait,” Breyanna droned as she headed for the nearest bed.
* * *
The captain’s ready room on the Atlantis also served as the ship’s command briefing room. Much like the Aurora, it was directly connected to the ship’s bridge, but also had a transport connection of its own.
Just like the bridge, the ready room had large view screens all around its perimeter. These screens could display anything, including the same panoramic view that the bridge view screens typically displayed.
In the middle of the room there was a conference table with seating for eight. At the aft end was a small kitchen, and a door leading to a dedicated head. At its forward end was a desk, with several chairs around it. This was where General Telles spent most of his time.
The transport door opened, and Nathan stepped out, followed by Jessica and Kit.
“Very nice,” Nathan commented.
“Great view,” Kit added.
“There’s no couch,” Jessica complained.
General Telles touched a button on the side of his desk, and a couch slid out from the side wall, just below the view screens.
Jessica smiled, heading straight for the couch and making herself comfortable. “I’ll bet you were thinking of me when you designed this.”
“I was thinking I needed a convenient place to take naps,” the general admitted.
“Don’t you have quarters?” Nathan wondered.
“I do, but I rarely use them.”
Nathan and Kit took seats across from the general.
“So, first things first,” Nathan said. “How the hell are you here?”
“I would’ve thought the first order of business would be the condition of the Aurora,” the general said.
“I updated him on the way up,” Jessica told him.
“Of course.” General Telles leaned back in his chair. “I’ll try to be brief. A few years after the Aurora was lost, we became aware of the Alliance’s desire to get rid of the Ghatazhak, as well as Deliza Ta’Akar.”
“Why?” Nathan wondered.
“Takara was one of the powerhouse worlds in the Alliance, and Deliza was quite vocal about her oppositions to the proposals made by the Alliance senate in the early days of the great war. Getting rid of her would make the sweeping changes they were proposing easier to pass. But before they could get rid of Deliza, they would first have
“That’s not the Deliza I remember,” Nathan argued.
“She was far wiser than any of us realized,” the general said. “She had supported Doctor Sorenson in her attempts to determine the truth about the Aurora’s loss. She came to believe, as Abby did, that you were alive and well in a different place and time.”
“Yes, she told us about that,” Nathan said.
“Doctor Sorenson has been revived?” the general inquired.
“By Jakome Ta’Akar, who also save Vlad’s life by cloning him.”
“Jakome is a good man,” the general said. “Very much like the original Casimir.”
“I noticed,” Nathan said. “It was kind of freaky.”
“Then, the doctor is with you?”
“She is,” Nathan replied. “She’s on the Aurora now. She helped us develop our AICC network for real-time long-range comms.”
“Of course.”
“Then, you remained in contact with Deliza after your death?” Nathan asked.
“Not directly,” the general replied. “It was too risky. But we did monitor her, right up until her death.”
“So, where did you go? How have you lived all this time?”
“Deliza made it possible for us to liberate the Ky-Blago from the Dusahn ship graveyard. She even convinced the Alliance that it was the work of the Jung. By that time, they had joined the war on the side of the Ilyan. Once in our possession, it became our new home. We established several surface bases on worlds beyond all known colonized systems, and we spent decades moving from planet to planet, while we worked on overhauling and eventually upgrading this vessel.”
“That must have cost a fortune,” Jessica commented. “How did you fund all of this?”
“Deliza,” General Telles explained. “She set up several shell corporations as fronts to fund and supply our operations. To this day, the Ghatazhak receive ten percent of all Ranni Corporation’s profits.”
“And the Alliance never caught on?” Nathan asked in disbelief.
“Deliza was very good at business,” the general said. “With the help of an AI, stocks were traded so quickly it would have been impossible for even the Alliance’s best financial inspector AIs to decipher. And to be honest, as long as whatever corporation we’re under is paying its taxes properly, the Alliance doesn’t really care.”
“They don’t care that they’re funding a potential enemy?” Kit wondered.
“The Alliance has become so vast it is impossible to monitor all such things. Again, as long as they’re getting their cut.”
Nathan shook his head. “I can’t believe Jakome never said anything.”
“Jakome does not know about us,” the general explained. “He never has.”
“How is that possible?” Jessica asked. “I mean, if ten percent of Ranni Corp’s profits are going to you…”
“Ranni Corp represents only six percent of House Ta’Akar’s holdings,” the general said. “And Deliza left explicit instructions regarding our financial arrangement. All without revealing the truth, of course.”
“Because doing so would put Jakome and House Ta’Akar at risk,” Nathan realized.
“Precisely,” the general agreed. “Deliza was both mother and daughter to Jakome. Grandmother, great grandmother…she was everything to him, in ways he could never fully understand. It was as if it were genetic which, in a way, I suppose it was.”
“Boy, is he going to be surprised,” Jessica chuckled.
“You are still in contact with him?” the general asked.
“Who do you think is bankrolling us?” Nathan said.
General Telles chuckled as well. “Why am I not surprised?”
“Apparently, Deliza left him with instructions to watch for any sign of the Aurora’s return, and if found, to contact us and offer support.”
General Telles paused, just gazing at Nathan. “It really is quite amazing that she was correct, that you are all alive and well. Did Abby’s son survive as well?”
“He did,” Nathan replied. “He’s flying Dragons for us as we speak.”
“I’m sure his mother feels quite vindicated.”
“On that, yes,” Nathan agreed. “But she still has a very large axe to grind with the Alliance Science Academy.”
“Of course.”
“Which reminds me,” Nathan said. “Surely you do not adhere to the Alliance’s rule about jump lengths?”
“We do not,” the general confirmed.
“What’s your single-jump range?” Nathan wondered.
“Whatever we want it to be,” the general replied, a proud look coming over his face.
“No way!” Jessica exclaimed.
“I suppose that’s not entirely accurate,” the general admitted. “Nearly one hundred years ago, our AI invented a new type of jump drive, one that uses the same amount of energy for every jump, regardless of distance.”
“How is that even possible?” Nathan wondered. “I mean, I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t understand how the jump drive works, but I do know that the further you jump, the more energy is required. Doesn’t the amount of energy dictate the decay rate of the outer jump field?”
“I, too, do not fully understand the physics of it. According to our AI, no human mind could. Not even Doctor Sorenson’s.”
“Well, I sure as hell am not going to be the one to tell her that,” Nathan laughed.
“It’s all just theoretical, of course,” the general continued. “We have yet to test its maximum range. Our AI admits that even his understanding of the physics begins to break down beyond one hundred thousand light year jumps.”
“One hundred thousand?” Nathan was flabbergasted. “Have you jumped that far?”
“We have not,” the general admitted. “Our longest jumps to date have been about half that distance. However, we usually limit our jumps to under twenty-five thousand light years, especially if jumping through uncharted space. You’d be surprised how many cosmic anomalies are out there. Especially as you get closer to the core.”
“So, how far have you been?” Nathan wondered. “How much of the galaxy have you explored?”
“All of it,” the general replied.
Nathan’s eyes narrowed, studying the general. Lucius had always been a hard man to read. “Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
“Well, we have traveled its entirety, from border to border, so to speak. But we have not visited every system. That would take thousands of years. What we have done is create a far more detailed galactic map, complete with inventories of naturally hospitable worlds. We have also created known safe navigation routes from one side of the galaxy to the other, so to speak.”
“You’re saying you can go anywhere in the galaxy, in a single jump?” Nathan asked.
“Theoretically, yes,” the general confirmed. “Again, we prefer not to take such a risk unless absolutely necessary. So far, it has not been required.”
Nathan was speechless. After a moment, he began shaking his head in disbelief.
“Is something wrong, Captain?” the general asked.
“I think he’s just trying to comprehend what this means,” Jessica said.
“It means the Alliance’s gate network, and its hold over humanity, is obsolete,” Nathan exclaimed.
“Only if one believes that long jumps do not damage the inter-dimensional barrier,” Kit added.
“Even that is a moot point,” the general said. “The Alliance’s argument was based on the enormous amount of power required to make jumps greater than ten light years. This ship jumps tens of thousands of light years using the same amount of energy most ships use for a single light year jump.”
“You know what else this means?” Jessica said. “It means we didn’t need to steal those gates.”
The general’s eyes widened. “You stole a jump gate?”
“We stole two of them,” Jessica boasted.
“Why?” the general asked. “I heard you were fighting pirates.”
