*
The command center of the I.S.S. Monitor was surprisingly intimidating.
Seth took a second to re-orient himself. It was a sterile, gray room. There were two consoles near the front, flanking a large viewscreen. A row of panels near the back displayed various information about the ship: energy levels, hull integrity, and visual images from cameras stationed on the exterior bulkheads. Two dark red plush seats were bolted to the floor in the middle of the room.
This wasn’t what he expected. He could still remember the command center he saw in the dream of the gnostin. There were fewer screens and panels. Everything he recognized was in a different spot across the room. It was all wrong.
The controls should have been similar enough. There were very specific steps that needed to happen before take-off, and they were all relatively universal. A trained pilot would know all of this. A trained pilot would understand what all the control panels did, and could move from one ship to another without any problems. But all Seth knew was the exact instructions he’d been given. He knew what buttons to press, not what they did. It was like the gnostin trained him to fly a very specific ship...and it wasn’t this one.
He couldn’t let that stop him.
Seth ran from panel to panel, trying to figure out which was which. When he found something he recognized, he tapped in the orders he remembered from the gnostin dream. He engaged the life support systems, which would keep atmosphere pumping through the vents across the ship. He began cycling the Heilmann Drive. Once that was done, he sealed the airlocks, engaged the diagnostic systems, and fired up the impulse engines. With that last step, Seth felt the ship shake beneath his feet. It was lifting off.
His heart skipped a beat as he realized what was happening. He had control of the ship. This was it. This was the last step. Seth ran over to the main pilot’s console and sat down. Everything else he had to do, he would do from here. It had controls for both the impulse engine and the Heilmann Drive.
First, Seth needed to take off from the station. He had to pilot the ship far enough away from the surface of Europa that a Heilmann leap wouldn’t damage the station or the moon itself. Then he had to leap before the fighter squadrons could shoot him down. That was it. In theory, it seemed so simple.
Seth remembered the workers in the repair bay. Taking off while they were still in the bay would kill them. Hopefully, they were smart enough to leave on their own. But he had to make sure. He stood up from the pilot’s console and hurried to the communication controls. He tapped a few keys on the panel. The view-screen at the front of the room flickered to life, showing a camera feed from outside of the Monitor.
He hoped to see an empty repair bay. Instead, the workers were still there. And they weren’t alone. Commissar Absalom and four Republic soldiers were standing in the doorway, talking to them. The discussion looked heated.
So the Commissar managed to escape the dance hall... Seth wasn’t surprised, but he was disappointed. Absalom was the only one who could stop him. All the other soldiers were paralyzed by their training and their upbringing in the Republic. Absalom was different. He was born and raised on Vangelia. He was a fighter, and he knew plenty about betrayal and deception. If he was back in the game, he immediately became the most dangerous obstacle in Seth’s path.
The exterior cameras on the Monitor were designed for use in space, so they were not paired with microphones or other sound recording equipment. Seth could only watch the argument between the Commissar and the workers unfold.
“Get out of there!” Seth yelled at the screen, though they couldn’t hear him. He ran back to the pilot controls. His fingers found the command to open the main gate of the repair bay. With a few quick motions, he could begin decompression and force all of them out. But he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to see the workers die.
As he watched them, he realized that they were standing up for him. They were stopping the Republic soldiers from advancing on the I.S.S. Monitor. The two men who helped him board the ship were standing in front of the laser rifles, refusing to budge. Commissar Absalom was yelling something. Seth wasn’t sure if he was chastising the workers or his own soldiers.
For just a moment, Seth felt good. He wasn’t alone. There were others in the Republic who agreed with him. These two men, down in the repair bay, were willing to stand up to their government to help him escape. It warmed his heart.
Then the screen flashed with crimson light. The two workers fell to the ground. Thin plumes of smoke rose from their bodies. They were dead. The soldiers killed them.
Seth’s entire body trembled. His skin went flush. All of the fury he felt before returned to him, redoubled in strength. Absalom murdered two people because of his ridiculous belief in the Fall. He thought it was right: he thought that humanity deserved to be struck down from the heavens, and he was willing to destroy anything in his path.
There was no longer a reason to hesitate. Seth didn’t care what happened to Absalom and his soldiers. They could freeze in space and Seth wouldn’t blink back a single tear. His fingers flew across the pilot console, sending a command down to the station to open the repair bay airlock.
A loud klaxon broke through the silence. Red lights flashed within the bay. Absalom’s soldiers, who were about to approach the jetway onto the I.S.S. Monitor, panicked. They ran for the door near the back, where the dead workers still smoldered. Absalom tried to turn them back, to force them on ahead in the face of impending decompression, but they wouldn’t listen. This time, the soldiers refused the orders of their manic commander. They pushed him back towards the door before the repair bay gates opened up into the vacuum.
Seth was disappointed. In the heat of the moment, he wanted to blow them all out into space. He wanted to end the threat of Commissar Absalom once and for all. And Seth wouldn’t have even needed to feel guilty about it. If Absalom remained and was killed by the decompression within the repair bay, it would be because of his own foolish stubbornness.
As it was, the commissar and his soldiers managed to escape before the bay doors slid open. They would live to see another day. Seth jogged over to the communications controls and changed the display on the view-screen. Now he watched through the camera on the top of the I.S.S. Monitor. It showed the repair bay slowly creaking open.
Seth returned to the pilot’s console. He positioned his hands on the impulse engine controls. Slowly, he maneuvered the ship towards the opening bay doors. It was shaky at first—Seth had never flown anything bigger than a hovercab—but the buttons were intuitive enough that he found his footing by the time he was a few dozen yards in the air.
The ship lifted past the repair bay doors, into the low atmosphere of Europa. Seth’s hands shook as he piloted the Monitor away from the station and towards the depths of space. By now, the fighter ships docked at Europa were taking off. Maybe they were in the air. They probably had orders to shoot him down on sight, and there was nothing he could do to defend himself. Even if the Monitor had weapons, they were at a separate console, and Seth could not operate them while flying the ship.
This should have been victory. Seth had the ship, he was approaching a safe distance to leap away from Europa, and nothing had managed to stop him yet. Just when he was about to let himself feel a little victorious, the viewscreen at the front of the command center started to flicker.
Seth looked up. The familiar face of Commissar Phaer Absalom filled the screen, dwarfing Seth at the pilot’s controls. The commissar looked uncharacteristically downtrodden. The rings under his eyes were darker than usual. His face was slick with sweat. His brow twitched. He was rubbing his hobbled leg with his left hand and wasn’t even bothering to hide the movement.
“Stop this right now!” Absalom shouted. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Didn’t I tell you back on the station?” Seth asked. “I’m s
aving this ship.”
Absalom scoffed. “No, you’re not.” He gritted his teeth and stared through the view-screen with his piercing blue eyes. “You are a traitor and a mad man. I should have never trusted you. I know that now. That was my mistake, and I will rectify it today.”
Rage surged within Seth again as he remembered everything he had to do to get control of the I.S.S. Monitor. He betrayed everything he believed in and became a stooge to the Republic. He helped bring about the Fall. He convinced people that it was right. Then, he killed some of his own allies when they tried to stand up to him. And those were just the first of many to die because of the Spatial Preservation Act.
Seth leapt to his feet, away from the pilot’s controls. He glared at Absalom. “You think this has anything to do with you and me?” Seth shouted. “This is about the fate of the entire galaxy! This is about all of humanity!”
“Yes!” Absalom exclaimed. “Yes it is! Tell me, Mr. Garland, do you remember everything I showed you? Do you remember what that precious Heilmann Drive of yours does? It is going to destroy the fabric of reality!”
Seth refused to believe it. “That’s just fear talking,” he said. “You can’t just give up on everything we’ve done in the last two thousand years because of one problem you don’t know how to fix yet.”
The commissar’s face turned bright red. The last few strands that held together his composure snapped and he yelled from the screen. “We have reached too far, Mr. Garland! You say that I am a coward, but you are wrong. I am the brave one, the one with the God-given strength and resolve to change the face of the galaxy to save it rather than let the hubris and indulgence of our species destroy it. By Aesu, even if no one else will stop you, even if I am the only one willing to stand in your way, I will destroy you before you can doom us all.”
There was nothing Seth could say to respond to the commissar. The policies of the Republic, the disturbing reports from warped space, and the religious devotion instilled in him since childhood had blended into a righteous fervor. If Absalom truly believed that the Fall was imposed upon man by God, there was no way Seth could ever reach him.
Absalom wasn’t done. Now he attacked Seth’s plans. “What do you think you’re going to do with a single tiny ship? Even if you somehow manage to leap somewhere... You’ll end up dead sooner rather than later. Someone will shoot you out of the stars, or steal the ship, or perhaps in a moment of self-reflection you will realize what you have done and take your own life. Just give up now. What can you accomplish? ”
“I can save this ship,” Seth said. “And I can find someone who can figure out how to replicate it. I can start research on a real solution to warped space. And I can rebuild the trade routes without the Republic!” He felt his pride swelling with each proclamation. Even though he didn’t know how he would ever back up his boasts, it still felt good. He decided to go even further. “And then I will come back with a fleet of ships and we will conquer this crippled Republic that has stood in the way of human progress too long.”
Absalom stared at Seth in disbelief. “Well, then I can tell my pilots that they are about to turn an arch-traitor into stardust.” With that, the commissar shut off the connection and the view-screen went blank.
Seth scrambled back to the communications console. He didn’t know what most of the buttons did, but he’d managed to get a video feed from one of the cameras mounted on the hull before. Now he wanted to see the view from as many of them as possible. He scrolled through the available viewing settings and selected one labeled “ALL EXTERIOR”.
The view-screen at the front of the room flashed to life again. This time, it was divided into four quadrants, each one displaying a different angle outside of the Monitor. At first, Seth thought he could breath a sigh of relief. There wasn’t any movement on any of them. The entire base, and the surrounding icy surface of Europa, was entirely still.
A shimmer of movement on the bottom left quadrant. There was action at the exterior spaceport. Ships were taking off. Seth squinted. Just as he feared, they were low-atmosphere fighters. Standard Republic fighters were equipped with kinetically charged lasers and two missiles—more than enough to take down the fragile Monitor.
In the top right, the doors to a docking bay slid open. A soft orange glow poured from the bay. Something was lifting off. Seth recognized it instantly. It was the ship he took to Europa, the I.S.S. Everest, a medium-sized intra-stellar cruiser. It was a warship and police vessel. There were probably six different weapons systems it could use to prematurely end Seth’s rebellion.
They were coming at him from both sides. There was no escaping with the impulse engines. Maybe he could outrun the Everest at sub-light speeds, but the fighters would overcome him in mere minutes. He would be within missile range in seconds.
There was only one way to get out alive. Even though he was still within the atmosphere of Europa, he had to leap away. Seth rushed to the pilot console and began preparations.
The Heilmann Drive was ready. The energy cells were full. The hull bracers were engaged. The combustion module was primed. All Seth needed to do was put in the coordinates for the leap. A new set of controls appeared on the pilot’s console. It was nothing but a number pad displaying the digits 1 through 8.
Seth froze as he realized that he didn’t know how to plot a Heilmann Leap. And he didn’t know where to leap.
In all of the excitement, chaos, and desperation, this was the one problem Seth never anticipated. He’d overlooked it entirely. He wasn’t even sure why. Maybe he assumed that Heilmann leaps were calculated by the ship’s computer. Maybe he figured there would be pre-programmed options based on the major trade routes. Maybe he just thought it would be more intuitive.
None of those things were true. Even looking at it, he couldn’t fathom how spatial coordinates would be represented by a string of numbers without zero or nine. Apparently, the Heilmann Drive used its own proprietary number set system for calculating leap distance and position. And it was nothing like Seth had ever encountered.
Seth glanced up at the view-screen. The fighters were closing in on one side. The Everest was approaching from the other. He could already start to see the lights on the large ship. It wouldn’t be long before it could target him. He had to do something. He had to get out of there somehow.
His fingers reached towards the number pad. What was the worst thing that could happen? He would program the Heilmann Drive for a leap outside of the galaxy. No ship had ever returned from beyond the galactic rim. Of course, no ship had ever survived being utterly annihilated by the Republic fleet either. In this case, the devil that Seth didn’t know seemed preferable.
He still hesitated. Leaping out of the galaxy wasn’t really the worst thing that could happen. If Seth accidentally leapt through a colonized world, he would destroy it. The Monitor’s Heilmann Drive would carve a thin hole through the planet and incinerate it for fuel. The planet’s orbit would destabilize and everyone there would die.
It was so unlikely. There was no way, of all the places and paths in the galaxy, his random coordinates would end up taking him through a colonized world. It was less likely than picking a needle out of a haystack on the first try. Seth couldn’t let such a remote possibility deter him. One leap and he would be away from the fighters, away from the missiles, and then he could take the time to learn how to actually plot a course with the faster-than-light drive.
With that in mind, Seth started typing. He didn’t even know how many digits were in an accurate set of coordinates. It didn’t matter. He was going to keep putting them in until the console stopped letting him There was no rhyme or reason to the numbers he picked, just the first ones that popped into his mind.
4-1-2-1-5-8-5-4-1-3
Suddenly the control panel stopped responding. Every light turned green. Then it all faded out, replacing all the other controls wit
h two buttons. One said “leap”. The other said “cancel”.
Seth glanced up and saw the missiles coming. There was nothing else to do. It was leap or die. Closing his eyes, he slammed his hand down on the “leap” button.
A sick feeling filled his stomach. It was the same discomfort he always felt on a Heilmann Leap. Before now, it was something he was used to. He could trust that the ship he was on would be at its destination and the mild nausea would be worth it. But Seth didn’t know where he would end up. Most likely, it would be some empty patch of nothingness in the middle of the galaxy. But what if he’d gone outside? His spine tingled. Even he was afraid of the universe beyond the rim.
Everything was still. The nausea passed, as it always did. Seth placed his hands on his legs and rubbed the fabric of his uniform. He was still in one piece.
Finally, he felt brave enough to open his eyes. He was still in the command center. The lights were still on. The air was still breathable.
Seth looked up at the view-screen. He expected and hoped to see nothing but empty space, dotted with a few stars. Anything else from a random leap would be odd. And if there weren’t any stars... Well, then he would know he was beyond the rim.
At first, he was relieved. He saw a few distant dots of light but little else. It seemed as if his plan worked. He was in the middle of nowhere. Now he would be able to comb through the documentation on board the ship and hopefully figure out how to program a real Heilmann Leap.
Then, something caught Seth’s eye. There was a strange, red-colored light in the corner of the upper-left quadrant of the view-screen. It wasn’t a faraway star. The color was too vivid. It looked artificial, but that was impossible.
Seth tapped a few buttons on the pilot console and switched to the impulse engines. Very carefully, he started to turn the ship. He twisted it around so that the camera could catch more of the light source. Almost as soon as the image on the view-screen started to come into view, Seth felt his breath catch in his throat.
The light was the tip of an antenna, which stretched out from a massive metallic sphere. More lights dotted the sphere, blinking in and out of existence with a random persistence. There were wide doors near one edge of the sphere, and a large glass observatory atop the structure. Even the observatory was much bigger than the Monitor.
It was a space station.
As far as Seth could tell, it was in the middle of nowhere. It floated between the solar systems like a deep space outpost, but looked far bigger than any outpost Seth had ever seen.
How was this possible? Seth couldn’t even remember the numbers he’d typed into the console to program the leap. And yet they’d taken him here. Even if the station was big, it was nothing more than a speck of dust in the vast expanse of the galaxy. Leaping to such a remote and unknown location with a set of random numbers was functionally impossible. Unless, of course, the numbers weren’t random at all.
10.
In the hundreds of years leading up to the Fall, power outside of the People’s Interstellar Republic largely flowed into the hands of a few dozen interstellar corporations. These corporations, which were not permitted to operate on Republic-controlled worlds, were nevertheless allowed to use the Republic-administered trade routes to make a fortune. They moved resources from planet-to-planet, allowing worlds to specialize and flourish. They generated massive amounts of wealth within the galaxy, though they retained most of it for their shareholders.
These shareholders were heavily monitored by the Republic. The High Council knew that these corporations were the only interstellar organizations with any leverage other than the PIR. If there was any force that could harm the Republic, it would be one of these businesses. The High Council placed spies in their ranks, traced every aspect of their finances, and used their exclusive control of the trade routes to keep these rival powers in check.
Of course, the shareholders of these corporations never truly had any interest in challenging the PIR. The Republic operated the trade routes very efficiently. Privatized faster-than-light travel would be more expensive, and would cut into their profit margins, so they tacitly permitted the PIR’s espionage.
There was one exception. There was one company that remained remarkably evasive of the Republic’s meddling. Its employees were well-paid enough that they refused to turn traitor. Its headquarters was hidden away, beyond even the grasp of Republic operatives. It was only incorporated on two colonized planets. Both corporate charters featured entirely separate and distinct shareholder lists. All of the names on both lists were fictional. There didn’t appear to be a single real person who owned any part of the company.
At first, this terrified the High Council. Certain that it was a shell group for carrying out the illicit activities of other corporations, they focused all their attention on this illusive organization. But as time passed, senior officials in the Republic began to lose interest. The company wasn’t doing anything interesting at all. It dabbled in various businesses, but never established a foothold. It spun off any subsidiaries as soon as they became bloated. Every few years, it seemed to change focus. One moment it would be trading in ore, the next it would be manufacturing computer chips. Its profits, which were significant, disappeared into the pockets of the shadowy owners. It never attempted to consolidate any power, never grew, and never asserted itself within the interstellar community.
The High Council grew bored and tired of spending valuable resources chasing a phantom corporation that didn’t seem to have a direction, let alone pose a threat. By the time of the Fall, most people in the ranks of the Republic had forgotten entirely about the mysterious company. It was just another small business that ran a couple shipments every day on the trade routes. Only a few elder statesmen could even remember the days that it was relevant. Every so often, one would make a half-hearted inquiry and find that information was just as scarce as it was before. There were no legitimate owners, no known headquarters, and still no apparent purpose.
The name of that corporation was Lachesis Technologies. And it had a purpose, but it was much larger than anything the narrow-minded bureaucrats of the Republic could ever imagine.