Once a Myth

The Eriador was a wreck. Armored plates were missing across her scoured hull, some holes vented what little atmosphere that was in the ship into space. John sat in his cockpit VR and watched through the few unbroken cameras as the battle ensued. “Erin, how are we doing?”

“Not good, the ship’s back is broken. All four reactors are offline, two are slag, one was hulled by shrapnel, and the last had it’s coolant line severed, forcing it to shut down. We’re running off a backup micro-fusion reactor near our matrices.” Erin whispered in his ear.

John chuckled, “Glad I’m no longer Human, being a replicant has it’s advantages.” He stated as he took a sip of his coffee then swiveled his combat chair around and stepped out of his cockpit VR and into the main ship VR environment. It took a moment for the environment to fade in, Erin was standing by the buffet table watching the permanent holo-tank that hovered above it.

It was a copy of the ship VR from The Missive of Dissent, although changed to fit the frigate class ship both he and Erin were installed into. He was a cloned replicant, made from a backup of Commodore Alex Smyth. A Human mind saved into software and stored in a computer matrix.

Erin was an AI copy of Kara, the original artificial intelligence over the Dissent. A little over three years ago they were both brought online to help defend the Alandran system from two alien races intent on wiping out the local population for the ore their planet was rich with. Much like Alex and Kara, their matrices resided in the most heavily armored section of The Eriador.

Now they were in the middle of another battle for the same system. Looking into the holo-tank he saw that Erin was watching the battle through what few sensors were still functioning on the backup reactor. Those sensors wouldn’t normally be tied to the backups, but he knew that it would be trivial for Erin to tie them in with the multitude of repair bots onboard. “Well, we may be out of the fight, but it looks like the rest of the fleet is bringing the pain.” He said, as he watched the holo-tank.

Erin nodded reflexively as she watched the battle as dots and triangles, zeroes and ones, some of it extrapolated due to distance and lack of proper sensors. “Yes, we’re the only ship out of the fight so far. The Howron have lost six vessels and the Ulraar are down two, it looks like they are trying to make a tactical retreat.”

She then tapped on a blue triangle in the holo-tank labeled NHR Day of Reckoning. It took a mil or two for the holo-tank to connect to other cameras and sensors on nearby vessels to give them a view of the massive battleship. Even the Missive was tiny compared to the monster that was the flagship of the New Human Republic.

Whistling, John stared into the holo-tank, “Oof, looks like the Mashita Cannon is about to make something very unhappy.”

Erin nodded watching the action from a camera that was mounted on an Alandran frigate designated Evin’Shala. The massive battleship was built around a huge particle beam cannon that was its primary weapon system. The Eriador itself could be dropped into the barrel of that insanely huge cannon. Space itself seemed to ripple in front of the vessel, just before a beam of invisible particles reached across light seconds towards the enemy fleet.

Eleven seconds later it struck the huge triangular vessel that appeared to be the flagship of the Ulraar fleet. Shields around the vessel became briefly visible before disappearing, then the beam connected with the armor of the vessel, tearing it away as if it were tissue paper. The beam continued through the ship, melting the metal and vaporizing everything else under the hellish heat of the cannon.

What was left of the once dangerous vessel slewed at an angle, more scrap than vessel now. The enemy fleet began a full scale retreat. Erin brought up the command channel, Admiral Benton was ordering wings of Alandran frigates to launch all available torpedoes at specified targets. She appeared to be targeting Howron vessels.

“Makes sense really.” John stated. “If the Howrons keep loosing more than the Ulraar, maybe we can drive a wedge in their alliance.”

Erin shrugged, “From the intel we received from the New Human Republic the Howron practically worship the bugs. For almost a century they uplifted them, gave them the stock ships they breed deep in their own space, and defended them against the first Human attacks. Breaking that alliance will be hard.”

John nodded, “Yeah, maybe it’s because the pinecones barely have any point defense, the torpedoes would have a much better chance of connecting on them.”

The torpedoes were having a much better chance with the Howron ships. Dozens of torpedoes found their marks, penetrating the pitifully weak armor and imploding inside the monstrously large vessels. Four more pinecones stopped accelerating out of the system, debris fields forming around the vessels as they seemed to deflate in on themselves.

“Now Monty!” Admiral Benton stated firmly across the command channel.

John and Erin immediately frame jacked back down to their normal operating speed, at their current perception of reality they could just see the one hundred and fifty ripple torpedoes appear from wherever they came from to directly behind eight of the Howron vessels and two of the Ulraar. Traveling at a considerable fraction of light speed the torpedoes slammed into the vessels, releasing unimaginable energy. Even the immensely large Howron organic craft were vaporized as the speed of the torpedoes were transferred into kinetic energy in milliseconds.

The remaining eleven craft activated what they used for faster than light travel and left the system at their fastest possible speed. Erin listened to the command channel, automatically frame jacking to biological time frame, awaiting Admiral Benton’s orders. “Stand down, I repeat, all members of the defense fleet stand down! Let them think they’ve gotten away, let the cloaked scouts follow them.”

John grinned looking over to Erin, “Well, other than us, that was a textbook defense.”

“Yeah, getting focused by that fleet was not part of the plan, we’re lucky we managed to get out of Howron torpedo range, sadly the Ulraar torpedoes are far better.” Erin stated as she watched the holo-tank.

John stared at the fleet roster, thirty one Alandran frigates, twelve Human destroyers, four light cruisers, two heavy cruisers, and one battleship. Not to mention the Missive of Dissent, Eriador and Aldburg. The bugs and lynx must have thought they would face similar resistance to what they faced three years ago, thus they doubled their fleet size to wipe out the Alandran home world.

What they didn’t expect was a full Human battlegroup to join in on the fight. After seeing what the Day of Reckoning could do to one of their own battleships, it was obvious they didn’t have the numbers to win this battle. Now the fleet had two cloaked, not stealthed, but cloaked frigates following them to wherever they refueled and repaired. That would be valuable intel for the future of this war.

A voice transmission came in through the holo-tank, it was Alex from the Missive, “When the good Admiral stated she wanted you to be bait, I don’t think she meant for you to be that enthusiastic about it.”

“Yeah yeah, laugh it up. You coming to get our matrices or are we going to have to get out and push this floating junk yard?” John retorted.

After a brief pause Alex answered, “Yup, spooling up the ole ripple drive now, we’ll be at your location in t-minus five minutes. Sadly your new ship isn’t quite ready yet, you’ll be sitting in the dockyard another six weeks while the heavy cruiser hull finishes completion.”

Erin beat John to the punch on answering, “Fine by us, we’re tired of flying around in this tiny tissue box. We’ll both feel better once we’re encased in proper armor and shields.”

“Roger that, the New Human Republic was overjoyed when Luke brought them the plans the rebellion supplied me with. Cloaking technology is something they could only dream of here, they were more than happy to send a supply ship with Warsteel and nannites to help us finish our ship construction at an accelerated time table.” Came Alex’s voice over the holo-tank.

Erin continued, “How’s Monty doing with the particle accelerator by the way?”

Kara answered her, “Still building it, she hopes to have it online within the year. Even then we won’t be able to outfit every vessel built with Warsteel, her accelerator is simply too small and its yield will be too low.”

John sighed, “Too bad the New Human Republic can’t bring theirs with them. That would help out tremendously.”

Alex chuckled, “Be kinda hard bringing an accelerator ring .4 au in size over forty light years.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s going to be such a waste destroying it. I mean, I understand, but damn, that was decades of work and nearly a planet’s worth of material.” John said as he put his hands on his hips.

Alex’s voice came through the holo-tank, “Can’t be helped, they can’t have the bugs getting their hands on the tech. Cutting them off from their adamantine supply is going to hurt them quite a bit, the last thing we need is for them to get their hands on nannites.”

Changing the subject a bit Alex continued, “Looks like the new adamantine alloy held up pretty well. Yeah, your ships scrap, but with the regular graphene composite armor that you did have you probably would have been vaporized.”

“Yeah, don’t remind me. The new alloy held up well considering how thin it has to be on these frigates. Still not as good as Warsteel, but pretty good.” John stated.

Extracting their matrices took a few hours. They were embedded in the new alloy that Monty had christened Diamondine. Why she called it that, who knows, it definitely didn’t look like a diamond, maybe because it used carbon in the form of graphene or something, Monty was a strange bird after all. The armor encasement suffered some damage and didn’t want to open.

After their extraction the ore haulers from the Missive brought them aboard and plugged them into the main system bus, in the same ports that once held Monty and Kelly. That thought brought a smile to John’s face, well in vert anyways. Those two were inseparable, both literally and figuratively. Their matrices were housed in Monty’s lab in orbit above the first planet.

Kelly still used her middle aged Kel’Taraan android on the surface of the planet to run the ministry of secrets. An organization that stood in the shadows and helped shape events all over the planet. Her official title was Spy-Mistress after all, being sneaky was just part of the job description.

No one on the planet knew she was now a replicant herself. The first non-human replicant in fact. It was a little harder for the New Human Republic to wrap their heads around the idea that he, Alex, and Luke were all replicants and not biological humans. The quality of the android bodies probably added to the confusion when they all first met.

Luckily Humanity here had already fought their war of rebellion against the Imperium and understood why Alex had fought his. They didn’t have the deep-seated animosity towards replicants or artificial intelligence. Surprisingly, they actually had quite a few artificial citizens, the AI controlling NHR Day of Reckoning was one such citizen.

John hadn’t had much contact with him, but he knew his name was Greg, which was quite odd to the rest of the group. Ships AI had always been female, harkening back to days of sail when all vessels were considered female. Apparently they broke tradition here and many ship AI’s were either, depending on their preference.

Erin had told him Izzy was smitten with Greg, which he thought was hilarious at first, but then he had to consider that as far as companionship, the three AI that Kara created, Riven, Izzy and Valarie had very few options. Until the floodgates of Humanity opened of course, now there were hundreds if not thousands of sentient AI’s for them to interact with.

Most of them were still in NHR space at the moment, only this small battle group had made the trip to Alandran space. Kara had speculated that after Luke and Ally made their way to NHR space to deliver the auto-factory plans to the Humans for new ships, shipyards, armor, cloaking and replication technology they decided to send the battle group to see if we were full of shit.

To their surprise and relief, the fleet was met by the Missive of Dissent and over twenty Alandran frigates when they finally arrived. Only to receive word from the scout drones sent to nearby systems and sitting in deep space that a large fleet was heading their way. The past few months left them working out a defense strategy, and Admiral Nar’Vala passed command to Admiral Benton, who had the more powerful fleet and more combat experience.

All in all, the defense was nearly perfect and things were off to a good start. John grinned as the personal VR faded in to the common VR that he and Erin had spent so much time in. They both had memories of being Alex and Kara, which was weird, but they had both diverged from their progenitors over the past few years. Now Alex was more like a brother than a clone.

Walking over to the buffet table he held out his hand only for Alex to pull him in for a huge bear hug. Kara and Erin hugged, and while they were similar in body size and shape, Erin’s hair was shorter, with streaks of pink and purple these days. He wore his hair quite a bit longer than Alex’s close cropped cut, although they both kept their original physique.

“We thought we lost you two back there for a mil or two.” Alex stated.

John rubbed the back of his head, “Yeah, pulled the same trick we did in the last battle, we had enough capacitor charge for about a three seconds of ripple drive. It got us out of range of the pinecones, but the death triangles came in on a different vector and their torpedoes did intercept us.”

“Just glad ya made it through buddy. We’re in route to shipyard three now, and will be able to install you into the armored core later today.” Alex said.

John smirked at Alex, “Trying to get rid of us already?”

“Admiral Benton wants an in-person meeting with all senior officers in twelve hours, the meeting point is in our Embassy on Alandra. Scuttlebutt has been very quiet about this meeting, if something bad is going down and we have another fight, I’d rather not risk your matrices.” Alex shrugged.

_____________________________________

Alex and Kara stepped off the transport ship, well, their android bodies stepped off the transport ship. Alex put his arm over Kara’s shoulder, he was so happy she finally gave in to creating a body in ‘real’ space. This wasn’t her first visit to the Alandran capital of Najicore, but she still didn’t quite seem comfortable in her new body.

The embassy was huge, which was unsurprising as it had to incorporate a space port for incoming transport ships to the much larger vessels in orbit. Their vessel sat in docking bay twenty two, they checked the map displayed on the wall of the exit ramp they found that they were on the far side of the circular space port.

Walking wasn’t a problem for them, android muscles didn’t tire, but they did need to pick up the pace if they were to arrive on time. Dropping off John and Erin had taken longer than expected, mainly because Kara didn’t trust the automated systems to connect them into the armored core properly.

After a brisk walk they arrived in the secure meeting room of the embassy. It was outfitted with individual desks for each ship’s Captain and first officer. Admiral Nar’Vala saluted them both as they arrived in the typical Alandran style, fist over heart. Alex and Kara saluted back crispy, right hand to forehead, before grinning to her.

The Alandran space navy had grown into an impressive fleet of small vessels, they were a long way from being able to defend themselves without aid, but they were making huge strides in the right direction. Alex and Kara had passed over control of the first two shipyards as well as a dozen auto-factories, forges, and thousands of mining drones and hundreds of ore carriers.

They in turn had built ship after ship with the tools given to them. All crews were given the long nap for training, then put into service as soon as the ships passed space trials. He couldn’t have been prouder of Admiral Nar’Vala, who sat nearest the presenters desk. Beside her sat Riven in her android form.

Looking around the room he saw so many new faces. Oh, he had met them all from time to time, and being a replicant meant he had a near perfect memory, so he knew their names. But he had very little time to rub elbows with the new Captains and officers, that was Admiral Nar’Vala’s wheelhouse, his was more an as a Human ambassador role until Admiral Benton’s fleet arrived.

Looking to his left he saw holographic versions of John and Erin, who for obvious reasons could not be here in android form. As their android bodies were destroyed in the battle and were probably being broken down for raw materials by salvage bots right now. To his right sat Monty and Kel’Taraan chatting quietly amongst themselves.

Human guards in jet black power armor stepped outside and sealed the extremely thick armored doors. Admiral Benton called for the meeting to come to order, after ensuring the room was secure of any eavesdropping by checking her tablet. “This meeting of the combined fleet will come to order.”

You could hear a pin-drop in the room as all attention was brought to the Admiral. “I would like to congratulate you all on a near textbook defense of the system. Our scouts are still following the enemy fleet, which is not traveling to the system of Arlerus, but towards Ulraar space. At 10c it will take them the better part of a year to reach the first system we have designated as the Lamnar system.”

Continuing she activated the holo-tank in the background. “That is not why I called you all here today. Turning around she pointed to the giant holo-tank, I received word this morning that the first exodus fleet from New Human Space will be launching by the end of the week. According to Kel’Taraan the first Human Settlements in the southern regions will be ready to receive them once they arrive.”

The holo-tank showed a massive fleet of vessels, most of which were standard transport vessels bringing colonists and supplies to the Alandran system. Surrounding the fleet was another Human battlegroup which was much larger than the one sitting in orbit. Alex smiled as he saw the small frigate joining them. The Aldburg was joining the fleet back to the Alandran system.

“Our battlegroup has received orders to defend Alandran space until the exodus fleet arrives, which leads to our next problem.” The admiral stated as she pressed a button on the small remote in her hand. The holo-tank showed a video clip, it started with a large panning shot of hundreds of Howron vessels.

A strange barking language spoke over the image, subtitles appeared at the bottom of the holo-tank. “The New Human Republic has attacked one of our client species, the Alandrans. We have no choice but to consider this an act of war! We and our allies, the Ulraar are amassing the single largest fleet in our history to take the planet back from our hated enemy. In less than a year we will crush the pitiful Human fleet and bring the planet back to it’s rightful owners! Join the Imperial Navy today to join in on history!”

The video switched from the view of the Howron fleet to a silver throne where a Howron sat impassively staring back into the camera. He was adorned with jewelry and lavish clothing, then the camera backed away to show the throne room as a large room held up with ornate columns, hanging between each one was a flag. Alex noted one of the flags was of the Alandran royal family, meaning they must mean peoples they conquered.

Then the image faded to a crest of the Imperial Howron family before going to black. “That, ladies and gentlemen was the press statement intercepted by our cloaked scout vessel in Howron Prime which was recorded less than an hour after the battle. We assume that had they won today the statement would have been very different. We have less than a year to prepare for a massive fleet to attack this system, and we have no illusions as to what will happen should we fail to defend it. Both our species hang in the balance, and we must prepare.” Admiral Benton said as she laid down the remote to the holo-tank.