Chapter: Baby Shower
4301.04.21 1919
Deep Grey
I know I’m going to die. Celestia had been captured fourteen years ago, at the adolescent age of eight. In the span of a single hour: Her captain had been murdered, her beloved mate had been chased clear of the region, never to be heard from again, and her freedom had been wrested from her.
When that dreadful inhibitor had gone online it had felt like death took her. They had shot it into her upper carapace, behind her brain – her neural plexus – having it act like a biological firewall that filtered out any impulse that didn’t lead to the desired outcome. She only had two choices at that terrifying moment: To do nothing and die an excruciating death, or: To fly. Her survival instincts had chosen the latter, and for six years she was linked with a captain that saw her as nothing more than a tool – it was what most raumenoids saw them as, and it saddened her greatly.
After six years, the captain had moved on and she had found herself at a research facility. She had heard about this facility, about the experiments, and until then it had been nothing more than a rumour, a wisp of mystery that floated through the beemspace band. But after having experienced the Coalition first-hand for all those years, the fact that it was real hadn’t surprised her, but by that point: nothing surprised her.
She became more and more distant as the days passed, then the years. It was a good thing, really, as one wouldn’t quite be able to comprehend the things they did, not with a sane mind. It was with that tumultuous sanity that she realized that she had become pregnant, after seven excruciating years at this facility. She couldn’t really believe it. She had never been paired with any other beems in captivity; she barely spoke to any of them, let alone accosted them. But when it happened, she felt the joy, knowing the joy was a trick, a window into what could have been in another universe. She began to dream of that universe where she would have been able to keep the child, where she could have a family. She began to dream of a universe where beems weren’t endangered and scattered, where the Coalition didn’t dominate their lives.
A year later, she was twenty-two, and at the brink of delivery. By that time, the cries – even her own – were just a din in the background. The pain was normal. A world without such things was as alien to her as that universe she had always dreamt of.
She watched the stealthed ship skulking up towards her, snuggling up against her ventral side like a darlinian remora. She said nothing to her Coalition captain as the mercenaries disembarked. She gazed at them from a thousand yards as they planted the charges.
I talked to the others. The mercenaries were quick and professional, planting the charges along her cargo bays, retreating swiftly when the quick response team arrived. This was it. I had heard the cries. But she had one redeeming thought, one trick that the Coalition was unaware of.
As she heard the modulations of the bombs increase, she began to shunt power from her koveran reactor, moving it from her clipped terminals to her offspring. It was the fuel for her beem drive, her ability to jump through space at will. She knew such a transfer would never be expected because the injection of pure koveran energy was impossible, even between a mother and her offspring. But he was different – They wouldn’t have brought her here to bear any child, so she had probed and prodded with her drones, realizing the truth.
They will not have you. She was ready. As the electronic wicks burnt their final second – one of her drones activated the emergency beem sequence aboard her offspring.
She had heard that the thoughts of the mother as the child is being born are the most prominent ones in their genetic memory, which was an everlasting comfort as her hull began to buckle from the charges, as her soul began to slip into the ether, because her final thought as a mother was very pure. Her final thought was defiance. It was of that perfect universe: where one could raise a family without becoming a tool for the powerful, and with that thought – her life ended and a new one began.
–
–
2001.02.13 0801
Earth
They say that an emergency beem sequence, when used on an offspring that is still in the womb, is allowed any destination it desires; that the Builders had made this one failsafe. It was said that a beemster that is gifted with an emergency beem sequence ends up in the safest and friendliest environment possible; that their destiny will be a perfect destiny, full of harmony, fulfillment, and love.
But then again, people say a lot of things, and when Matt woke up to a draft coming in from that place where his roof and wall had been, those were definitely not the thoughts that were revolving through his head. In fact, they were nowhere near the thoughts going through his head. As Matt, being from an almost suspiciously secluded planet called Earth, had no idea that beems even existed, or that his age – fourteen – was the perfect age for linking with one.
He got out of his bed, still considering this surreal moment with the utmost scepticism, carefully walking over to where his wall had been, peering out at the other building. Something had scraped quite gracelessly past it and landed in the parking lot behind his house. At least two cars were making their protests clear with the sound of their dying alarms as the massive thing settled on the tarmac.
It was chirping. Well, that was the closest description that could be given to the shrill beeps it was making, all modulated differently, all seeming to mean so much more than he understood. They resonated throughout the alley parking lot, reminding him of those ocean documentaries for some odd reason, the ones with the whales. This was no whale…
It was leaking something. There was an oily red substance building up underneath the ship, dripping down the derelict cars and landing on the asphalt with a light splat.
He went around to his stairwell and was outside in seconds, not even bothering to change out of his pyjamas.
It was freezing outside. Why do these things have to happen in February? A small crowd was beginning to gather near the perimeter of this large thing, which seemed to resemble a ship, and it was quite large, at least fifteen meters long, and intact, it was surprisingly intact. Yes, there was the oil leak, but the ship itself wasn’t contorted in any way; in fact, it had contorted the ground below it significantly more, as well as the pair of unsuspecting cars.
He looked back at the crowd, realizing that they were glaring at him with the same indignation that they were glaring at the ship with. He did arrive here first. Did they think he was responsible? He felt the collective gasp of the crowd as he touched the chirping ship. It stopped chirping. He ran his hands along the hull as he walked around it, noticing how frictionless the material was. It was a flattened ovoid shape with two wing-like skids that extended from its left and right side, bending slightly to contour to the hull. The skids were positioned in such a way that the front of them and the front of the hull came together in a perfect arrowhead shape.
It was black, or was it? The front of it glowed a bright red that he dared not touch with his hands, and as he carefully rested them a few centimetres over the front of the ship, he realized that the bright red was due to the immense heat that was emanating from its arrowhead plating. Within moments, the heat seemed to dissipate, reverting the plating to a darker red. As that happened, the skids began shifting to a different position with an ethereal whir, and once the skids became parallel with the hull – dissolving the arrowhead shape – the ship fell off the two cars it had been lying on. Now that it was perfectly level, it seemed to glisten a darker crimson in the morning sun, the brighter red having diffused along a vein-like pattern across its hull.
Red, not black, but red. It was hard to spot all the different shades of red as they were reflected off the hull. He slowly walked behind the ship, between the back of the two skids. The aft side of this ship wasn’t quite an ovoid; it had an indented curve that extended into a sort of devil’s tail, complimenting the two skids and giving the whole stern a vicious look. This wasn’t just any spaceship (not that any spaceship was any spaceship to someone who had never seen a real spaceship before), he knew it was different. There was an unbearable compulsion to investigate.
This elevated ‘tail’ meant it had some sort of bay here, he was uncomfortably sure. He ran his hands along the mid-section of the ship, slouched slightly so his head wouldn’t bang into the raised tail section. It was still sleek, aerodynamic if you will, but there were definitely two creases here. He wouldn’t even have noticed had it not been for the fact that both hatches opened, giving him two doors, both leading into an empty dark room. The air escaping from the ship’s compartment smelt like iron, and he did what any fourteen year old kid would do: he stepped inside the alien ship.
“Hello?” he said shakily, taking a few steps into the dark chamber. The hatches hissed closed behind him, something sharp suddenly hitting him in the back of the head, knocking him unconscious immediately and recalling this data file:
–
The neural interface allows the most intimate connection to occur between the beems and his or her captain, bestowing upon them both a level of understanding and control that even an equestrian would envy. To be ready for a neural interface, one has to undertake years of preparation in the Coalition, or nearly a dozen years of training on Zemoria. Even the installation of the neural interface requires surgical precision. One wrong manoeuvre, unexpected twitch, or sudden thought, could mean certain death, sometimes to both participants. Being given a neural interface unprepared is extremely rare and extremely dangerous, and should never be done by any person or beems. It is important that all beems and captains are aware of this, and have thorough discussions about the dangers of a neural link before taking this step in the relationship – an excerpt from ‘Your Biomechanoid Starship and You.’ Section 439-1-A. Uploaded 4301RY.
4301.04.21 2001
Transport yacht: Lucus
John Pending was nervous. This would be a shining moment in Coalition history. He checked his ceremonial uniform over again on the transport yacht’s black windows. He was short, with a stout face but an overall plumpness that had developed with age. He hadn’t stopped pacing by the windows since the twenty-four hour call had been made.
Marina glared at him with a condescending hate that only teenagers were capable of. She had just finished the training prerequisites required for her posting here at this alleged mythical research facility. Pending hadn’t stopped talking about how important her position was, how important she was, her age being the optimal age to reap the benefits of a neural link with a Beems – his Beems: The genetic experiment he had been working on for the past ten years. Her involvement in this experiment made her feel like that unfortunate Beems.
“You should be taking your posting more seriously.” Pending growled.
She replied with a raised eyebrow, noticing the perspiration building on the doctor’s face, but not saying anything.
“You didn’t even cut your hair to Coalition standards!” Pending continued.
Her hair was auburn, and long, “I like my hair.”
“Well I hope you remember the basics, for your sake, those are always the most important. You wouldn’t want to unexpectedly expire. You can’t imagine how much it costs to get the paperwork sorted for a replacement captain. How much of my time it wastes having to oversee the move.”
“I’ll keep the inhibitor active.” she said, running a diagnostic on her neural interface, “I just hope you did your job properly.”
“I – we – have, don’t you worry.” Pending said. Pending was a prominent member of CMBT, or Combat, short for Coalition Military Bio-Technology. He had been transferred from the Coalition Science Department after fourteen years of working on projects like Eco-revival and Bioform. He hadn’t been born into military service, and therefore wasn’t a ‘true’ Raumen, disgraced with a more supportive role. Very few people like him got to where he was now: On the verge of creating a new species. In fact, he could proudly state that no Raumen had ever gotten to where he was now.
The pilot reported that they would be in communications range in one minute. They seated themselves for the deceleration sequence, and got out of their seats again when they were within fifteen-hundred kilometres and flying steady.
“Mr. Bombard, please notify the Deep Grey of our arrival.” Pending ordered.
“Of course, sir.” Bombard said, excusing himself as he left the passenger’s lounge and took the elevator up to the pilot’s deck, leaving Marina alone with the decrepit doctor.
Deep Grey was as old as it was mysterious, having been the target of many conspiracy theories in its lifetime. Its actual existence was something that very few people were able to prove, the entire area at a nodepoint that very few Beems had the conditioning to jump to. Marina wondered how this Beems would see the nodescape, their navigational map, with it having been born here. Would it be the brightest place in its mind?
“This Beems is—” Pending started.
“One of a kind; I know; don’t worry.” Marina finished.
“It has weapons.” Pending started again.
“Yes, I’m sure it’s very giddy.” Marina sang.
“It’s lethal, and it’s male.” Pending warned.
Unlike their female counterparts, rounding up the males from the wilderness of space and ‘persuading’ them to carry boxes around for the betterment of the Coalition was significantly more difficult, but they had been over this a dozen times in the last week.
“He sounds wonderful.” Marina said. “Too bad he’s bigger than an attack frigate and most likely has an inherent hate for the Coalition.” She was nervous, but definitely wasn’t interested in showing it, wishing to get clear of this Pending character as quickly as possible. She couldn’t stand another minute with these pudgy civy types. It was driving her insane. True: this was a historic moment. True: she should be taking this posting significantly more seriously, but the first thing she was taught in the specialized command classes they had made her take for this posting was that showing fear and uncertainty was a sure way to become mentally sequestered, even with an inhibitor monitoring the neural link. You didn’t give a weapon a chance at self-awareness, nor did you show it any weakness, and that’s what this project, labelled BH-131, was: a weapon, a terrifying weapon.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a violent jerk, nearly knocking Pending off his feet. Marina stifled a chuckle as the whale fought for balance.
“What the hell was that?” Pending yelled into his comms. chip. “Sorry… w-what? What do you mean it’s gone—“
“What’s gone?” Marina asked.
“131, it’s not among the debris.” Pending cried.
“What debris?”
Pending was terrified, this had been his project. He would be responsible. “But how…” They had just felt the gravimetric shockwave, which meant it couldn’t have happened more than ten minutes ago.
“By the time we arrived Leyton reported the hull was already buckling, his recovery team couldn’t make it in in time.” Bombard reported.
“Who—“
“Mercenaries – we think, we aren’t sure. When the charges detonated we believe the mother triggered an emergency beem sequence.”
“That’s impossible – who else knew of this hybrid?! This project was classified!”
“I don’t know, sir. There must have been a leak. One of the fleet crew, perhaps.”
“Idiots.”
“We don’t know anything for sure, forensics is on-site. We’ll get to the bottom of this.” Bombard said, trying to sound reassuring.
“What’s going on?” Marina asked, watching the perspiration build up on Pending’s forehead. “Is everything alright?”
He wanted to hit her, “I think you’re going to be re-assigned again.”
“What?” Marina asked in surprise.
“They ruined my project!”
“Who?”
“I don’t know – some mercenaries.”
“Why would—“
“I don’t know! Shut up, Leyton’s fleet is three minutes away; one of his ships will take you back to the Falshmir.”
Admiral Leyton was commander of the First Fleet: the fleet responsible for the defence of the Deep Grey and its projects, and The Falshmir was Marina’s home; she had been born aboard it. It was a nomadic colony ship, thirty-three and a half kilometres long and flying galactic southeast. It had a crew of two billion and was completely independent, its own city. Since the Coalition lacked an effective FTL drive, they needed the massive colony carriers to keep their mobile fleets maintained. There was always at least one carrier (not always as large as the Falshmir) in every fleet that was more than five light-years from their home system: Raumus. It was said that all life originated from Raumus, but now its only habitable planet – Raum – was nothing more than a tapestry of metal and smog, any semblance of it being the origin of life shrouded in its massive skytowers and government buildings. As the colony carriers spread from Raumus into their respective directions, the inhabitants would branch off to terraform all possible planets in every solar system they stumbled across. The logistics involved in such a large-scale colonization operation would have been nightmarish had it not been for the Beems.
The BMS, or Biomechanoid Starship. Was the only starship in the Coalition fleet capable of FTL, and was therefore the backbone of the entire Coalition expansion. Most other species had spread only in their solar system, and painfully slowly, the majority’s population reaching critical mass well before their colonized planets had matured, usually resulting in a mass extinction or a splinter population.
It was said that most bipeds in the galaxy were the result of one such failed mass expansion, before the technology to tame the Beems had been developed. It explained why almost all of the other biped species looked exactly like them, or at least very similar…
But Marina’s thoughts were again interrupted as she felt the gentle thud of a docking manoeuvre approaching completion. Pending had remained comfortably quiet, having found a towel he was wiping against his forehead profusely. She could use one of those, she thought, idly checking around her seat for the storage compartment. Admiral Leyton stepped into their cabin, flanked by two guards and wearing a very stern salute. She had forgotten how much the Coalition had respected Pending. That is, until they actually start talking to him, she thought jadedly.
“Sir, we did what we could, by the time we were notified of the attack—”
Pending flapped his towel lightly to silence him, before wiping his forehead once more. “We have a problem, don’t we, Admiral?”
There was an awkward silence. Marina did her best to avoid smiling as the ‘big boys’ squirmed.
“Sir.” Bombard whispered lightly, having snuck over to his side quite gracefully from the upper pilot’s deck. “Should I contact High Command, sir?”
“Do we have a Beemspace transceiver?” Pending asked quickly.
“Yes.” the Admiral replied, “the Dauntless—“
“No we don’t, it’s broken, isn’t it.” Pending interrupted, a single yet dangerous thought popping into his aging head. He turned over to Marina. “Marina!”
“You should contact High Command.” Marina suggested immediately, not liking where this was going.
“If we contact High Command then it’s our asses! There’s a rogue Hybrid on the loose.” Pending yelled.
He looked at Leyton’s guards, “Secure this room, nobody goes in or out. We have to fix this ourselves.”
“That ‘giddy’ male could be anywhere.” Marina sighed, finding this disturbingly entertaining.
“No, not anywhere, emergency beem sequences almost always take the Beems to Zemoria. You’ll have to start there.”
“No way, we have to notify High Command, Raum himself even.” Marina insisted.
Pending looked down at Marina, leaning over slightly as if speaking with a little child, “Listen to me, Marina.” Marina stared back with wide eyes, trying to hide her scorn as she half-smiled at his tone, “If we notify Raum or High Command of this failure, you will never get a chance to captain a Beems again. I know how much you wanted this posting, Marina. You can get this ship back. Admiral Leyton will supply you with the equipment you need, as well as a Beems to get you to Zemoria.”
“Kahless, our resident transport: A very reliable ship.” Leyton piped in.
“Hmm.” Marina didn’t like this at all. She would have to think about whether or not she would notify High Command the moment Kahless left Deep Grey’s Beemspace.
“Fine.” she said finally.
She will be a liability. Pending realized. “Good, then get to it.”
–
–
4301.04.22 1132
Starship: Reaper
When Lance opened his eyes, a white light blinded him.
“Am I dead?” he asked, pawing at the light source pathetically.
“As good as.” Cassandra crooned, putting a hand around his.
“We missed the damned target, man! We blew up the wrong ship!” Flam cried.
That didn’t really make sense; the target was inside the other ship. It didn’t matter. Cassandra showed him the response from their client. The mission had failed. They had nothing but the measly initial payment. He had to fix this. “We can fix this.”
“We can?” they asked.
The little mutant Beemster was obviously very resourceful, having somehow jumped out without the aid of its mother. It wasn’t over yet, however, as their client had given them the co-ordinates for an egress: A small tropical planet a few dozen light years away. Their experimental jump drive had landed them in orbit there the moment Cassandra had recovered the crew.
Lance didn’t know the planet’s name, and honestly: he didn’t care, carefully manoeuvring the nimble frigate under the tree line, avoiding the orbital footprint that would have been caused by knocking any of the forest over. They quickly powered down all of the systems, dumped all the stored heat, and vented all the concentrated koveran run-off that their makeshift Beems-drive created. Only a Beems would be able to sense them now, its emergence point attracted to the koveran particles shed by their vessel – it probably wouldn’t even know why it had jumped here of all places. The Beems wouldn’t be alone in that thought, however.
“Where do we go from here? What will they send us? What faction are they? Who are they?…” Questions from the crew took up a good portion of his day; questions he couldn’t answer. Not because he wasn’t allowed, but because he didn’t know. Of course, the crew didn’t believe that. As the days went by, rumours began to spread. They began to say that the mission hadn’t failed; that Lance was hoarding all the money in his own private account; that he was waiting for an opportunity to murder the rest of them. Cassandra defended him, and even showed the encrypted response to the rest of the crew, but nobody believed her, claiming she had altered the file because Lance was her husband (It was a fair claim, she’d done that before).
That wasn’t all Lance had to worry about, either. Flam reported occasional squawks from the radar warning receiver. The signatures were distorted at first, but after the third day Flam had sampled enough of the squawks to realize they were of Coalition origin.
“Cruisers.” Flam reported.
He and Flam were the only two people on the bridge when the kid had figured that out. The rest of the crew were asleep (or preening themselves or whatever Tass did in his free time). Flam had been born on Zemoria, and had grown up in the Lorentian District. It wasn’t a very nice district, bordering Black Tear (an even worse district), which explained how he ended up in gangs, especially at such a young age. Flam never really told Lance much more than that. They had run into each other when Flam was just sixteen – a smartass hacker in with the Reds – he helped the boy get away from his past in exchange for his skills, which were unmatched, capable of ‘feeling’ the right equations, understanding them at a level that only a Beems did. His idle tinkering with the theory for FTL was what resulted in The Reaper’s ability to jump, and the ensuing demand for their ship’s new ability was what had kept Lance in the business. FTL was something beyond even the Coalition military, restricted to the peaceful Zemorians, the ancient Beems, and rumoured to also be used by those mysterious Vorchans – Tass’ race. Flam had no idea that it was actually his tinkering and some debris that had created Reaper’s jump drive. He never would know, either. Lance had told him that he had bought a functioning drive off the Zemorian black market, and that his equations had simply ‘enhanced’ it. All the drive really was, however, was a pair of salvaged Zemorian skids and an old koveran chamber. The two spikes and bump protruding out from the aft of the ship made the entire thing look like a damn earmancer. It’s a wonder the horrible contraption didn’t fall off altogether.
“Have they spotted us?” Lance asked.
“Are we dead?” Flam asked rhetorically.
“What are they doing here then?” Lance’s patience was wearing thin.
“Might be your client – is he Coalition?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know if he’s a he, a she, an it; it could be a damn RI for all I know.”
“Seriously?” Flam asked.
“Seriously,” Lance echoed, “and I mean it. Flam, I have no reason to lie to you.”
He sighed, “I know. But we’ll need something. Tass has been talking… the rest of the crew… I’m worried they—“
“It’s okay. I’ll handle it.”
–
The next morning he brought the five of them together in the mess hall.
“I got contacted by our client overnight.” he lied.
He had spent the entire night trying to come up with a believable mission with Cassandra. “It has to be something that will unify the crew, give them enough hope to go on, and most importantly: keep them from murdering me in my sleep.” he had said.
He could feel the anxiety as everyone awaited the news.
“They want us to pursue the Beemster. We have as long as is needed.” Lance said, watching the crew carefully.
“Finally.” Tass snorted, ruffling his wings contently.
Lance let out a sigh of relief. If Tass believed him everyone would.
“Isn’t that suicide?” Flam asked.
“Not if we’re careful. We’ll be basing planetside, off… err…” Lance hadn’t thought this far ahead yet, “Zemoria!”
“You’re lying!” Nina said with contempt.
“How dare you!” Cassandra hissed defensively.
“Shut up, you were in on it.” Nina retorted. “I heard you talking about a new plan in your quarters, and there was no transmission from anybody, right Flam?”
“None that I know of, but, but it could have been… a private transmission I’m pretty sure – Lance I had nothing to do with this! I didn’t tell her anything!”
“Is this true, Lance.” Brock asked, “Are you lying to us?”
“I – I—.” Lance didn’t know what to say. This could get ugly real fast. Tass had changed his posture, showing a portion of his incisors.
A beep echoed across the ship, slicing through the tension the way Lance was imagining Tass slicing through him.
“Transmission!” Flam exclaimed, vaulting over a set of consoles to get to communications, “It’s our client. We have new instructions: To finish our previous mission and destroy ‘The Hybrid’. That’s the Beemster, right? They’ve transferred initial payments into our accounts!”
“See? I wouldn’t lie.” Lance said with a feigned innocence. “Now are we going to see this through or what?”
“Why Zemoria?” Nina asked.
“Of course!” Flam jumped, “Zemoria is where almost all lost Beems end up, and that thing will most likely think it’s a Beems.”
“Well apparently it’s a Hybrid. So it’s half-Beems, isn’t it?” Cassandra asked.
“And half-something that makes our client want it dead.” Lance replied coolly.
“What if Zemoria’s defences take it out first? Will we still get paid?” Brock asked.
“I’ll ask when we get there.” Lance said, “Set a course already!”