He was there when it appeared, that massive, glowing edifice of a ship, hovering before him, before them, before them all.
Its beauty struck him. Or was it the power it radiated? Was it the mystique of its origin? Or of its structure? Pulsating, ribbed, almost as if it were made out of sheer plasma; no human hands had any part in its creation.
Human hands, hands with guns, hands on controls behind fighter ships, behind battleships, behind weapons.
Human.
All of them, with the exclusion of this thing, this portrait of color, this magnificent being, this monstrosity.
He was there.
He was here.
And it was here, too.
He stared at it, like all the rest, amazed, frightened, struck dumb. Their hands on their weapons didnt move. But their eyes did. They did even as the object soared out from the core of the being, shot straight and true at the ball of light so many, many miles away. They did even as the being disintegrated into nothingness.
They did even as the light began to flicker.
He was here.
His hands were on the controls, still, throttle and yoke, his feet on the rudders. But his mind was elsewhere. It was being drawn on by something. He felt out of himself, out of his mind, even. Where everyone was grounded, he was already gone somehow.
The faintest of beeping noises could be heard in the cramped confines of the cockpit. The fighter rolled haphazardly through the vacuum, its sole occupant unconscious. Had he ever been conscious? Perhaps, in some form or another.
Air was going to his lungs via the fixture in his helmet. Slowly, easily it slipped in and out. He was alive, of course. Unconscious, but alive.
So was the ship, miraculously, drifting even still towards some unknown point across the edge of infinity. Its power core was functioning, plasma engines on standby, weapons, used by human hands, still armed; missiles locked into firing position, decoys ready to deploy. For all intents and purposes intact, pristine, preserved.
As was he.
He was here.
He was where?
The single coherent thought burst through his mind, jumpstarting his waking self. His eyes shot open, his chest heaved, his hands clenched around the controls, the air was sucked in forcefully.
Where was he?
Scanning out the canopy, he could see nothing but stars, with a bit of colorful gasses in between. Alien, unknown to him. Where was this place?
The fighter kept spinning; he didnt feel it, the inertial dampeners were still functioning, but the moving stars gave it away. He hit the gyro-stabilizing function on the yoke and the fighter halted its motion in all directions, using the present position as a reference.
Instruments. What did they say? Well they were all in the green when he looked at them, but that didnt tell him much; so it was all working, that was good, almost a given, but what about his position? He was in a fighter, not some fancy science vessel. What good would a fighter have with scanners like that?
His eyes shifted up to peer out the canopy again. The stars were so strange; he could recognize no constellations from here. He couldnt recognize anything.
He couldnt see any ships either.
The ships, the two armadas, where were they? Werent they staring each other down? Wasnt he all that stood between them and that little ball of rock they were defending?
They were here.
They were there.
He was there.
He wasnt anymore, that was for damned sure. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise? Or the worst curse conceivable? He figured hed find out, soon enough.
Easing the throttle forward just a little bit, the fighters engines started humming, propelling it forward at a marginal speed. The yoke was much more responsive now that it didnt have to rely entirely on thrusters to rotate the ship.
So he rotated it. And there it was.
So beautiful to him. Not monstrous. So nostalgic, so lovely, so precious, yet so detached.
Was that Earth?
Well if it was he might be in trouble.
But if it wasnt, then he was in even more trouble. And at this rate, he didnt have much to lose, did he? He lost his fleet, his objective, his bearing, what else?
His life? Even theyd have use of prisoners by the end of it all.
And so he keyed his comm. unit, broadcasting across all channels into open space, hoping with all his might that some human voice would greet him in return.
This is Lieutenant James Doyle of the 92nd International Volunteers Squadron, is anybody reading me?
You sound a little lost, Lieutenant, a female voice crackled over the channel, And yes, we read you.
Doyle felt the ice run up and down his spine.
What- Who is this?? he blurted out, Where is the Primary Fleet?
Hah, sounds like somebody got out of medical a wee bit early, eh? another voice said.
Medical? he thought. Who are you? What faction are you from??
Orbital Spa and Cruise, of course, that voice replied.
Spa? Cruise?? the Lieutenant started shaking, Dont you know theres a war going on?!
Well, yes, but the people still need their entertainment.
The Hell is this guy talking about? he wondered, Spas and cruises in the middle of
The Solar System, also known as the Fire Pit of the Universe. The same Solar System that was engaged in a bloody civil war for over a century straight, with no foreseeable end to the carnage.
And that was Earth in front of him.
But these people dont sound Russian
Was it Earth?
No, its not he said aloud over the channel. He could see the landforms, the oceans, the colors, the same, but different, similar, but
Lieutenant Doyle, a mans voice boomed over the hazy subspace radio.
What? Who?? Who is this?
This is Doctor Matthew Cook of the Pryce Institute for Advanced Scientific Research.
Those words in a single phrase had never crossed Doyles ears before. Then again, he wasnt exactly an expert on universities, labs and the like, but where on Earth would an institute still be intact?
Pryce Institute? he asked, Where are you based??
Our primary research facility is located at Planet Los Angeles, in the California System.
P-planet what??
Was that a joke?
There wasnt any time to dwell on it; a piece of twisted metal smacked into his fighters shields and went tumbling off in another direction. Lieutenant Doyle lifted his gaze to find himself in the middle of a debris cloud. A big debris cloud.
Whats all this debris, he muttered, still transmitting, There wasnt enough ships in the whole damned system to make this much
The implications were mind rending. Not that everything else already wasnt.
He put his little snubfighter into a few maneuvers. It responded as accurately as it ever had, as it ever did, when in the middle of harrowing fire fights over Mars and Jupiter. Just as precise as when he was about to face his last mission.
His last mission.
He winced badly; a pain shot through his head, like his train of thought hit a brick wall and derailed itself. All concentration was lost, and in the intervening moments he forgot where he was going. Or where he was. Did he know where he was?
But the cloud of debris thinned out and disappeared, almost like the stopping of rain back home.
Home
The pain wracked his head again, but this time he fought for control, gripping the yoke and throttle with far more force than was necessary. Teeth clenched, he tried to blank his mind of all thought, but it merely drove him to focus on the pain instead. He pried his eyes open, trying to give his troubled mind something else to think about.
Not more than twelve meters ahead was a rotund ship with multiple engines in the back, displacing the same kind of space as a cruiser.
The pain yielded somewhat.
What the... what kind of ship is that..? he sputtered, his forgotten voice still dancing over radio waves.
It flew straight towards what looked like a massive ring in space with claws. The ring suddenly burst forth in light, and the ship slipped inside.
And was gone.
What in Gods name what is this some kind of gate..? Gate to what?
A second ship approached him from the rear. His primitive scanners picked it up rather late for his tastes, or was he simply not looking? Either way this was much smaller, streamlined with pointed edges, a defined cockpit, cannons
A fighter?
Wha.. Who the- Identify yourself!! he shouted hoarsely, What kind of ship is that??
Haha, a beauty, that's what! some gruff voice replied.
The ring started glowing again.
No you dont! Doyle screamed, instinct kicking in. His hand mashed the throttle to the firewall and the little fighter skipped into the ring, just behind the strange craft.
Darkness.
Light.
Darkness.
And the stars were different.
Jesus H. Christ, he barely found the presence of mind to say, What in Gods name is going on here...
They were not the planets hed lost friends and family on, fought tooth and nail for, killed for, murdered his fellow man for.
They were not his planets.
That cant be Mars? he said, looking at one in the distance. It had a vague reddish hue, but seemed too rocky, too coarse, not the sandy wasteland scattered with bodies he remembered.
Four pieces of metal caught his eye, his fighter pilots reaction time darting them on the target. They were arrayed in a ring, cut out in the middle, reasonably sized for a ship to traverse through them, with more rings down the line, stretching out into the darkness. Hed never seen anything like this. How could he have?
Without a meaningful objective, he set out on a path following the line of rings at some distance.
Crossing a system in a modern fighter is nothing new, or spectacular.
Crossing a system in a fighter designed for space-carrier operations and powered by a non-recharging core and fuel was no joy ride.
He kicked the afterburners for just a bit, gaining some momentum, and then cut them, letting Isaac Newton take the driver seat into the abyss before him.
It was just as well, since Doyle was hardly in the driver seat by now. His eyes were locked on the world he was passing, that strange and foreign ball of mud. The planet that was not his own.
Peripheral vision caught a second sphere off to the left, and he jerked up in response. It was still rather distant, though how far he couldnt tell with his sensors. But it was blue. Entirely blue.
What kind of planet is covered in water like that?
He was left to his own thoughts; the radio was beginning to lose consistency in transmitting, even with the button still mashed down unconsciously.
What felt like hours went by. Disconcerted about being so far away from any notable base and on limited fuel supplies, Doyle kicked in the afterburner again and increased his drifting speed. While he was going reasonably fast, it would still take hours upon hours to get anywhere.
The planets haunted him. The third haunted him even worse.
Small, white tint, rocky.
That cant be Pluto, can it?
Pluto. The Fleet.
Is the Fleet still
The little rock was partially surrounded by a haze of some sort.
Some kind of gas? he muttered to himself, This cant be Pluto or maybe the gas was... Charon? Or
He was irrevocably lost. No planets like these ever existed in any textbook or on any star chart he was aware of. No Humans ever went here, bore witness to these places, stepped foot on them.
Yet they had. Or was he just talking to ghosts?
I need to get out of here
Maybe theres another one of those warpthings
He set course towards the Blue world and kicked in the afterburner yet again, wheeling the fighter around. A habitual glance at the fuel gauge warned him that he was rapidly depleting his reserves with these long burns.
Cant keep this up, Ill run out of afterburner but where is this place, these people? Planet Los Angeles??
Its tha blue one.
Doyle rocked in his ejection seat.
Blue?
Blue planet, thats Los Angeles, the strange voice repeated. The accent in his voice was beyond the Lieutenant, but by now that kind of thing took second place to all the other crazy developments.
You mean that planet is Thats preposterous! he shouted, his hands trembling, Since when did a planet like that exist?!
Prospet- what-?
This is some kind of trick, or dream, or Doyle began babbling.
A flash of light punctuated the stars below.
There There, another one of those warp things. My God, who built them?
A famous company named Ageira Technologies, the strange voice piped up again.
Ageira? That sounds Japanese So many strange names
The only favor theyve done us is ta make tha trade lanes disruptable, the voice cackled.
Whats a lane?
To this the voice simply burst out into laughter, and the transmission cut off.
Another one picked up.
Attention, Lieutenant Doyle, a womans voice came through, Please respond.
The proper address shook him out of his mental chaos and brought him back to the present. Whenever the present was.
What- Hello?? he nearly yelled into the mic, This is Lieutenant Doyle of the 92nd International, who is this??
On further thought he added:
Where is this?
Lieutenant Doyle, this is Denise Ellis of the Pryce Research Vessel N102. Weve been tracking you for some time.
Whats an Alliance research vessel doing out here?
Where was here?
Lieutenant Ellis replied cautiously, Do you know where you are?
Well, I- its I
No
No, I dont he replied quietly, But Wheres General Roberts? Or Rockford? The Jesus Christ, whered that Coalition Fleet go?? The images of a massive armada of vessels, blackening even space, burned into his mind what seemed only moments ago, came to mind.
Whered everything go? he started getting panicked, shifting in his ejection seat and trembling at the joints, They were we were staring each other in the face, we were backed into a corner, and then the-"
Monstrosity.
That that thing
Lieutenant, Ellis continued, If it werent for the readings were getting from our science station, wed dismiss you as a madman.
Seriously, whats wrong with ye, Mister Alliance? that strange voice cropped back up on the channel.
Whats wrong with me? Doyle blurted out, Whats wrong with you, you people??
Can you tell us where you are, Lieutenant? the voice identified as Ellis asked again.
Im-, uh
He looked around. Blue planet, fake Pluto, not Mars.
Wheres Earth? he asked with such a whisper it was barely audible.
Immediately a tidal wave of other transmissions came through; his voice was projecting across all general frequencies, even though to him it was still locked into the command channel with no longer existed. As a result, everyone heard him.
In your dreams!
Somewhere over the rainbow!
Back in Sol, one came out of the masses, Didnt you read your history?
Sol
The Lieutenant simply parroted the phrase back in his mind, his eyes at a dead stare.
History? he managed to ask.
Yeah, you did go to school, right? the voice said with a chuckle.
School. The United States Space Naval Academy, Lagrange Point Four
Hah, well I guess they didnt cover pre-Exodus history, huh?
Pre Exo-What??
Lieutenant, Ellis broke back into the conversation, The communication protocols used in your transmissions havent been used for quite some time.
What the Hell are you talking about, Lady?! The tenuous links to sanity were blowing in the breeze, We were just using this coded channels no more than a few hours ago
His eyes snapped back into focus. Hed reached the warp ring; just a mile or so off his nose. Miss Ellis was continuing to talk through his headset, but his mind wasnt between the speakers.
What makes this damned thing turn on, he said aloud, Maybe I can hitch a ride somewhere else maybe home?
Home. Yes, maybe home.
A large shape, looking like a crudely slapped together hunk of metal with engines, came barreling towards him from the right. He reacted, by the book, by wheeling over his nose and training his guns on it.
Wait a minute-
Hey, you! he shouted, Activate this thing!
He didnt know whether it complied with his abrupt order, or if it cared, or if it even heard, but the lumbering transport approached the ring and was greeted by the light.
Hah!
The exultant yell leapt from his throat as the Lieutenants fighter was encompassed by the light.
And appeared amongst new stars.
Different stars.
His confused spirits sank to the bottom of the bucket.
I suppose those are lanes. Too bad I cant use them, Doyle mused.
It was funny that this thought occurred to him first, instead of the host of other questions, problems, and gut-wrenching fears that could have applied. This was probably the result of severe mental blocks,
striving to hold back the flood of imminent insanity.
Somewhere in the back of his mind he thought maybe he was insane.
Once again, with no idea where to go, he simply kicked his lost Alliance machine into open space. There was a large station situated over some rocky planet with a ring, but he was too hesitant to go anywhere major; he had no idea who these people were, or what they were after, and as far as he was concerned hed be damned if he let them get a hold of his ship.
His ship. His precious little ship; the only thing familiar to him in an unfamiliar universe.
It was going to be his coffin. Instead it was a vehicle of life.
The pain in his head lingered; a physical manifestation of his minds desperate attempts at blocking out thoughts. He tried to pay it no mind, instead concentrating on his instruments for the first time in what felt like forever.
They were disconcerting. Hydrogen Fuel level was down to 45%, Afterburner mixture was down to 14 seconds of available burn time before it gave up the ghost. He hated it, but hed have to stop somewhere, eventually.
Just not yet.
The stars shifted ever so slightly as Doyle cruised through the vacuum towards a small moon in the distance. He was trying to conserve fuel best he could, but even at a drift, the power core of the fighter sucked up fuel just keeping it running. It was the price paid for a carrier-based ship equipped with a basic jump drive.
In his perspective, a jump drive was a very primitive method of space manipulation requiring massive amounts of energy, for relatively little payoff. A single jump for a fighter like his could suck up as much as half the Hydrogen power in his tanks, for a gain of only a few thousand kilometers. As a result, they were short range skips in space, suitable only for lightening attacks and withdrawals. The jump drives on the Sleeper Ships, meanwhile, were massive constructs capable of traveling much further, on sustainable power cells.
And so he was adrift, with the computer gradually warning him of his impending fate.
Thoughts tried to ram against the wall hed set up in his mind, to no avail other than to render him lethargic. But when the moon finally crept up to fill the entire canopy, a small glinting shape finally caught his attention.
A station?
Just a small one. Nothing major; hardly like that massive thing he saw floating around earlier. Perfect for being subtle; and for a quick getaway if need be.
Or was it abandoned? If it was his fuel gauge would have something to say about it.
He thumbed the transmit button and started saying, with a slight bit of nervous stutter:
This is Lieu- er This is James Doyle, requesting permission to dock with the station.
A few seconds went by with no reply. The Lieutenant started to feel sweat make its way down his back; why wouldnt they respond if all the others so far had heard his messages? Even on a coded frequency?
This is Thunder Bay, we read you, came a shrill voice, almost metallic, Bay Two is cleared for landing.
Uh, thank you, was all he managed to say.
One of the doors on the stubby end of the station folded inwards, revealing a small alcove perfectly sized for a ship like his or any fighter for that matter. Not knowing what their docking protocol was, he put on his landing lights and eased the fighter inside. Reaching down, he pulled out the lever which activated the landing gear; a faint metallic hiss and three green lights gave him the go-ahead to set it down on the hull below.
No sooner had the little skis absorbed the shock of landing had the doors been shut and oxygen pumped into a repressurizing hangar. His computer gave him an affirmative beep, a backup sensor in order to keep him from accidentally venting his cockpit.
Taking a deep breath, James Doyle of the Western Alliance popped loose the seals on his helmet, pulled it off, and opened the canopy.
The first impression was one of disorientation. On his way out of the pit, his leg seemed to hit nothing, wobble, and give way. And by the time he was on all fours the contents of his stomach were across the floor.
He felt horrible; the change was so rapid he could hardly concentrate on keeping upright. But worst of all he was afraid of what it was, or what caused it, and this fear was threatening to pull the plugs in the dam.
Oly ****, boy, a man said, running up to him, Didnt your parents ever teach ya to never drink and fly??
Trying to hold back another heave, Doyle looked up at him and made out a blurry figure before him. The guy was dressed in rather informal garb, some type of vest, slacks, with lubricants and other mechanical detritus on his face and hands.
Im amazed you landed that thing in here so smooth, bein like that, the man chuckled, revealing a crooked set of grinning teeth. His slicked up hand went down and grasped Doyles, hauling him to his feet.
The Lieutenant was too busy trying to keep his feet on the ground to hear what he man said, but it didnt matter, since the man was already gazing over his shoulder at the fighter behind him.
The blazes is that thing? he muttered, leaving Doyle behind as if he didnt see him standing there. Look at this What kinda ship is this?
Doyle shook his head violently, trying to knock this odd onset of nausea and lack of equilibrium away, and managed to succeed to some extent. He found himself breathing pretty hard as well; it was if the wind was knocked out of him.
Good God Almighty, the strange technician continued, Look at those engines! And, and the markings! Is this some kinda kit-bash ship or somethin son?
Wha What? the pilot groaned.
You must be some kinda historian or somethin with roundels like that, eh?
Historian?
History
What are you talking about? Doyle said between clenched teeth.
Old Alliance general marking; the point where they gave up usin individual country symbols towards the end of the War.
End of the?
Yknow what this reminds me of? One of those Borderworlds jobs. Yknow, the the, uh the Dagger! Thats right, Dagger! Look at it, placement of everythings so damn close!
Doyle swallowed hard and managed to compose himself enough to respond more coherently.
Its Its a
Minuteman! the technician shouted triumphantly, I knew I remembered it from somewhere! I read a lot about ships, ya hear? Old stuff, new stuff, all kinds a stuff, always pays off sooner or later. Ill be damned! Is this a kit?
A what? No, no it was given to me just a few days ago, Doyle replied, I lost my other one
Two?? the man nearly yelped with excitement, I never knew any of these were left over! In mint condition! And you had two?? Hell, boy, tell me where you get your stock from!
Look, Doyle said, trying to cut off the mans direction, I just need a refuel, main tanks and afterburner, thats all, just a-
Names Jax, the technician said, offering his hand. Im the head honcho around this place.
Er, Doyle, James Doyle
So Jimmy, a refuel eh? Well itll be a little tough; not like they make the right fuel mixtures and probes for stuff like this anymore eh? Well, that is if its in original condition, no mods n such. Extra work then, itll cost you a bit.
James bit his lip, Money?
Makes the world go round, yes it does. A lot, Jax responded.
I uh
Doyle pulled out a small card from one of the pockets on his flight suit. It was attached to his Alliance dog-tag, with several minute bar codes inscribed on it.
All I have is this
The hell is at? Jax blurted out.
Er, my uh
Lemme see, the technician grunted, snatching it from his hands. He scratched his head for a few seconds, and then his eyes bugged out.
Damn, youre loaded with antiques arent you? But there aint no Alliance banks left over, sorry buddy.
Doyle winced. Sir-
Call me Jax.
Uh, Jax, I really dont have-
Jaxs jaw dropped. You tellin me with stuff like that youre a beggar??
Doyles throat contracted dryly as he swallowed.
Well Jax whispered to himself, scratching his chin. He turned back towards the Minuteman Fighter and let his eyes soak up the photons for a bit, while Doyle simply sat, fretting out the thought of being forced to steal the fuel himself.
Never in all my days did a Junker get the opportunity to have a look-see on somethin like this, son, Ill tell you that. Jax looked over with a wry grin. Ill take that as payment.
The Lieutenant heaved a sigh of relief, Thank you
Dont mention it, Jax cut him off. Ill take extra special care of this one, he said with a wink, You just make yourself at home here in Thunder Bay and Ill get you all sorted out though its amazing you made it this far without any Cruise Engine on that thing
Cruise what?
Jax shot him a glance. Yeah, you dont look so good. Theres a rest station over there, by the way I came in. Go nap or something.
Yes, nap, sure Doyle was in no condition to complain as he half-stumbled towards the doorway.
James Doyle found himself in the middle of an inferno; he quickly rolled off to the side of the spot where the hunk of metal crashed against the groaning floorboards and staggered to his feet, eyes wide with fright.
A mess, a total mess. The place was coming apart at the seams; what was worse the low level of oxygen present was causing little fire sparks here and there. All itd take was one whiff of a dense pocket in the middle of combustion
My God! A survivor! a silhouetted figure shouted from across the room. Doyles eyes, nearly blinded by the bouts of fire erupting left and right, quickly locked on, and instinct told him to make a break for it.
The figure grabbed him by the arm and yanked him out a doorway just as the entire room he was in caved in on itself.
Who are Lieutenant! Nevermind! Follow me, we need to get the Hell out of here!
General Rockford?
Doyle barely had time to process the identity of the figures voice before he realized the man was already half way down the hallway, at a sprinting gait.
Wait! he yelled after the Generals fiery specter, Where are we going?!
Hangar, theres a shuttle, move it!
Doyle didnt aim to disappoint.
Disappoint 'who'?
Where am I?
He rounded a corner to find the young General ramming himself, shoulder first, into a door that wouldnt budge.
Help me out with this, Goddamnit, before we both die!
Doyle, his mind on autopilot, acted by sheer reflex to his new set of orders and rammed into the door. The weak brackets on it gave in, or more like bent and split thanks to the nearby smoldering wall, and flew off its hinges, a tumbling Lieutenant in tow.
Now, soldier, now! Rockford hollered, dragging Doyle to his feet while still running. The Alliance pilots feet managed to find their way across the ragged floor and prop him up, and before he knew it, he was running in formation with the General towards a rather large shuttle, seated in a rapidly disintegrating hangar bay.
With a quick glance above him, through the smoke and skeleton roof, he could see nothing but swirls of orange and red. It was around this point he felt the gale of venting air shove him in the back and almost cause him to lose balance.
He looked back up.
The General, running. The shuttle, sitting nearby, boarding ramp open.
A Minuteman medium fighter off to the right.
Is that my?
He almost hit the door, were it not for it sliding open, but he hit Jax on the other side anyway.
Shee-it! the technician yelled as they collided and nearly knocked him off his feet, Where the bloody Hell did you come from??
Doyle managed to stop his legs and found himself staring at Jax, wild-eyed, panting, sweating, legs shaking.
W-w-what??
Didnt you leave??
Doyle couldnt swallow; his throat was too dry.
What do you mean leave?? he asked hoarsely.
Jax bit his lip and looked behind him. Well, I guess somebody stole it then.
Stole wha-? Doyle didnt bother finishing the sentence before barging past the man and making a beeline for the hangar.
His fist nearly smashed the console when he hit the open button and the door whined up into the ceiling. Inside was the hangar hed landed in.
His Minuteman was exactly where he left it.
Jax skidded to a stop behind him and let his jaw drop, muttering, But it was just gone
Doyle spun on his heel and stared lasers at the tech, What the Hell do you mean it was gone? Or stolen? Its right here!
B-but it wasnt
Fire. Swirling red and orange. Rockford.
A dream??
I didnt take it anywhere-"
His Minuteman, to the right.
Doyle felt even more nauseous than he did the time he fell out of his cockpit and doubled over, his stomach regurgitating nothing.
God, son! Jax said, sort of stepping back, What the bugger is up with you??
He felt worse. Worse. At least there wasnt anything to left to eject from his throat but the heaving hurt all the same.
I-I dont know
Jax looked around him, as if expecting some kind of help, but finding not a soul decided to help Doyle to his feet and escort him back to his bunk.
He only succeeded in dragging him; Doyle was already unconscious.
James Doyle found himself awake in the dimly lit guests quarters on Thunder Bay Depot, laying on his back.
He shot up to a sitting position and felt the cold sweat on his back and forehead. Was he awake? Was he asleep? Was?
He stumbled out of the bed and made his way down the hallway, lit by a few flickering florescent panels above. The door leading to the hangar bay where his fighter was parked was no more worse for wear, although the control panel looked a little dented in.
He dented it just slightly more.
And there was his Minuteman.
Still there Thank God
Thank God? For what?
He tried to swallow, but yet again his throat was too dry and hurt instead. The bay was well lit, but not terribly active. Some station-worker was moving some boxes on a cart along side the opposite wall, and some silhouettes were moving about in one of the control rooms situated high above the ground level, but otherwise it was vacant.
This was Thunder Bay Depot.
Where was that?
His head ached; little pulses of acute pain shot out here and there but the rest of it had settled into a dull ache that hed nearly forgotten about. As for the rest of his body, he didnt feel like hed rested at all; his muscles felt weak, even flimsy, and there was an overall feeling of imbalance that threatened to bring the floor a lot closer to his face.
But his fighter looked fine.
He limped his way across the floor to it, dragging his feet behind him. It was the only familiar sight, the only recurring factor, the only reliable object in his mind right now.
It was here.
But it was also there.
Where was there?
It didnt matter now, he was too exhausted to dwell on it; he reached out and touched the little snubfighter on the nose with his hands, reveling in the familiar feel of Alliance manufacture.
His fighter.
Jax came up from behind, giving Doyle a start which somewhat broke him out of his weak lethargy.
The tech looked haggard, bug-eyed.
Is is there something wrong, Jax? Doyle asked innocently.
Jax just stared at him for a few moments before finding the words to speak.
Its a lovely ship, and all that, Mr. Doyle, but ah, he said uneasily, Its not exactly the most comfortable ship Ive worked on
Doyle just stared back, still confused.
Well, I, ah Jax continued, Put in a gate communicator, but it kind of fizzled out and refused to work Made a conversion probe for it and refueled it on a synthetic mixture but the engine didnt start, and uh
And what?
Its kind of cold
Cold?
To the touch
But it was room temperature, Doyle muttered, What are you talking about?
Jax looked over at the Minuteman and shifted in his boots, bit his lip, then walked over and laid his hand on the nose of it.
He cussed and yanked his hand away from it, hollering, That aint room temp, God it feels even colder than last time!
The implications bounced around in Doyles head but couldnt find a logical conclusion. In the end he just found it rather frightening, and the urge to leave bubbled up rapidly.
Its fueled?
But it wont run, Jax replied, holding his hand.
Did you restock the cargo bay?
If by restocked you mean shoved rations and **** in and slammed the door shut, yeah
The Lieutenant just felt even sicker, and the intense urge to hop in that ship and get the helmet on his head swelled to the breaking point.
I guess Ill set out then Are you sure I cant repay you anything?
Jax glared at him, without response.
Shaken, Doyle slowly limped over to the cockpit and climbed inside, one leg after the other. He moved the helmet out of the way before sitting down and started strapping himself in, completely disregarding the sweaty state of his flight suit.
He hit the Fuel Starter and Engine Start buttons.
And the engine core roared to life within a few seconds.
Jax took a few steps back and looked terrified.
Trying to wipe the terrified mans face from his memory, Doyle checked all the instruments, found everything running satisfactorily and keyed his headset.
Uh, Thunder Bay control this is James Doyle, bay Two, requesting takeoff clearance...
There was no answer.
Control?
Cleared, came the terse, hurried reply.
Doyle watched Jax sprint towards the exit and slam the door shut behind him; whether or not his haste was in fear of being vented into space or fear of Doyle he didnt know.
But his ship felt room temperature to him.
Even the new panel, crudely constructed, that was supposed to let him communicate with those gates was operating, with little readouts blinking here and there.
I dont know what he was going on about, Doyle mused as the air vented and the massive bay door split open.
Clearer thinking seemed to come along with his improvement in health.
Trying to comprehend the things that had occurred to him in the space of only a day or so would be difficult for anyone. Doyle turned out to be the unlucky one given the task of sorting things out.
The first thing that occurred to him was that, of course, there were people here. They were humans too, no crazy mutants or aliens or junk like that. Theyd apparently colonized this place, wherever it was, and had built up a whole infrastructure of jump gates and space highways capable of launching them to entirely different systems.
Such technology was far beyond Doyles imagination, and his time. In fact, the closest hed ever come to such technology was an experimental jump gate constructed by the Alliance, and even that was only capable of launching from one planet to another, all within Sol.
On top of that, the ships these people were flying were of an entirely alien design; their formats betrayed no links to the death dealing weapons Doyle had become accustomed to after a centurys worth of stellar war. Their weapons systems, while he had not seem them in action, were no doubt entirely different, and their propulsion was also off; some kind of cruise engine was developed, whatever that was, but it certainly wasnt the Jump Engine on his Minuteman.
The Coalition did not exist here, nor did the Alliance, apparently. These people seemed to have no clue about what Doyled been through what seemed like ages ago, but only recently; they were human, but they were not from Earth. Earths troubles, its war, its death, were somewhere far, far away.
He simply didnt know how far.
However, given their reactions to him thus far, only a select few had any idea who he truly was, or what he was doing here. As a result they seemed to pay him no second thought, and given the circumstances, the Lieutenant liked to keep it that way. He could use this to his advantage and scout this place out. Of course, his ship might stick out like a sore thumb
His ship.
It was there.
It was here.
It was also there.
His ship was the only common factor in his life for the past 24 hours; it had seen him stare down the might of the Coalition, had seen the alien behemoth appear and fire at the Sun, had seen the facsimile of Earth, had been in that burning maelstrom, and was now out in space, under his control. It was the only place that felt natural, the only spot where things seemed to be right.
He felt better when he was in it.
But it was more than that; he felt great in it. Nausea, most of the headache, the feeling of unbalance, all of it disappeared within a few minutes after he took off from Thunder Bay.
It felt cold to the touch for Jax
Something was obviously wrong with his ship... Or was everything else wrong? He couldnt tell. He needed answers which nobody had given him, some kind of foundation, proof, evidence, anything. He needed to know where he was, and why he was.
He needed to return to that planet.
Jax had done an awfully good job on a ship that practically burnt his hands; the fuel mixture hed created was causing no problems for his ship, and the little box meant to interface with the jump gates and lanes was up and running. Max fuel, provisions stocked, equipment ready, shields up, weapons armed.
He was ready.
Doyle had sent the little fighter into another prolonged burst of afterburner straight for that larger station hed bypassed earlier, using the time to brood over the countless questions which filled his head. Time actually moved pretty quickly, and the station loomed rather large before he brought his snubfighter to a stop.
Well, thats the lane, I guess.
The first ring of the jump lane sat before him, split into four segments quite detached from one another. How these four little bits of metal managed to hurl ships at superluminal speeds was beyond him, let alone how they stayed in formation with no noticeable form of propulsion, but that was another matter. Green lights on one set of them indicated, or least must have indicated, that this was the correct set to fly through, as opposed to the ones flashing red. It was basic logic, thankfully still applying to this strange place.
Hopefully applying to this strange place.
Doyle examined the box that Jax had installed. Looking as if it were patched together from a lunch tin and some wires, it had a clear set of controls: Search, Decode, and Transmit, in that order. At a loss for detailed instructions, the fighter pilot decided to shoot from the hip; what else was he supposed to do?
Within a moment after hitting the Search button, the green lights on the ring stopped flashing and shone solid. Pressing the Decode button didnt seem to have any noticeable effect, but the Transmit button was followed by a brief flash and a slight kick in Doyles cockpit. A band of shimmering light circumscribed itself around the inside of the ring, beckoning him forward.
A little nervous twitch and a short burst of throttle and he was through the ring.
And a few seconds later, after a proverbial explosion of light and fireworks which nearly blinded him, the Minuteman was spat out in front of a larger jump gate.
Doyle was incredulous and cranked his head around, peering over his shoulder. Sure enough, in the far distance, was the ringed planet with the station in orbit. Hed traveled such a long way in a flash, without any use of fuel by his Jump Engine, without any afterburner spent.
Thanks to four little bits of metal.
Incredible.
Well this might speed things up, he mused, looking back around to the larger gate. He figured the process was probably the same, so he punched in the three buttons and was met with the yawning opening of the gate, accompanied by its own florescent ring of light and fire. He tightened his grip on the yoke once more and smashed the throttle forward.
One small step for a man.
One small step to somewhere different.
Was it different? It certainly wasnt the system hed been in before, nor was it the system with the Thunder Bay station. The stars were different, there was no ice cloud, no planet covered in water. Nothing but stars, and the faintest haze of orange.
Not that this was any stranger than what hed already gone through, this was nonetheless a bit unsettling; what had he done wrong? Did each gate go to multiple locations based on some code or preference?
He twisted the yoke slowly, spinning the fighter around in order to further scan the space behind his ejection seat.
The sight nearly rocked him out of it.
Fire What?
A burning planet. A smoldering rock in space, superheated, boiling, scalding. He felt as if he could feel the heat from so many kilometers away, through his ships hull.
Where is this?
He knew where this was.
He was here.
Oh God
Pilot!
The commanding voice of a military officer crackled through the subspace radio, further adding to Doyles turmoil.
Then its
I-I read you, General..! he barely managed to reply.
Lieutenant..! Damnit I dont even know your- Forget it, damn am I glad to see you! The middle-aged man sounded just as flustered as the traveler he was speaking to. I thought you didnt make it out of that hangar back there! Sucked out of the place or something, Jesus, Im glad you made it!
Wha Sir, is-"
Pluto, son, Pluto, those bastards whacked us, bad!
Pluto??!
He was there when it appeared.
That massive, glowing edifice of a ship, hovering before him, before them, before them all
Lieutenant Doyle peered up past the smoldering remains of what was once the last Alliance stronghold and saw nothing but an orange maelstrom, centered on Sol.
Sol was the maelstrom.
He was back.
General Rockford he muttered, incapable of completing the sentence.
Itll be alright, Lieutenant, the General said, voice still rather loud and shaky. It was an admirable attempt at soothing the situation by appealing to seniority and leadership but there was really nothing that could make up for the tragedy of what had transpired.
I
Lieutenant, Rockford continued, We need to get out of here, quick, before any residual shockwaves come and crush us like empty tin cans. Remember how to parasite?
Parasite. Remember how to
Yes, thats right, parasite, a method of deploying strong magnetic clamps on the bottom of conventional landing gear in order to latch onto a larger ship. It was a band-aid solution to short-range fighters in order to make them effective escorts of convoys; simply latch onto the target to be escorted with engines idling and detach when it became necessary to engage enemy interceptors. The long trips in the cramped space of a snubfighter were draining on the nerves and the body, but at least said fighter could take advantage of the larger ships jump drive and fuel reserves.
Yes, Sir! Dropping gear now, the Lieutenant responded, flipping a switch on the front console. The slightest rumbling could be felt through the seat as the electric motors cranked down and locked the landing gear, comprised of skids. He then pressed in the switch and it lit up, indicating that the mag-clamps on the skids were now active. One of screens flashed green, notifying him of the successful gear actuation and mag-clamp operation.
It felt really good to do something so mundane and familiar.
Doyle checked his short range scanner and easily picked up a friendly bug. In fact it was the only bug within his ships scanner range. Not that his scanner was very powerful, but that was an eerie reminder of
Hurry up, Lieutenant!
Y-yes, Sir!
He flew his fighter a short distance towards the bug, correcting for three-dimensional orientation, and soon found what he was looking for. It was an odd craft, reminiscent of a small sleeper ship in general shape. It definitely bore the markings of the Western Alliance, circa 2200 A.D., and was definitely giving out a friendly transponder return.
Music to his ears.
Go for parasite, standby.
With the precision of his military training, or at least what degree of it he was imparted, James Doyle set down his beleaguered fighter on top of General Rockfords ship. A satisfying clink and faint hiss indicated that his maneuver had been executed satisfactorily, and that his fighter was now essentially glued to the larger ship.
Good job, Lieutenant! the General said in a rush over the radio, Now hold on tight, this babys a bit different!
Different?
An explosion of light rivaling that of the death of Sol barraged his canopy. Reflexes sent his hands to shield his eyes, but this was only so effective. Straining against the cascade, Doyle managed to see individual bands of light streaking by among the general haze.
This is a long-burn FTL drive, Lieutenant, a very distorted voice spoke through his headset, Same thing mounted on the Sleeper Ships, only a lot smaller. Experimental.
Experimental?
Whats this ship for, Sir?
The General hesitated for a moment before replying, To save the Brass.
While he had gone through infinitely more trauma than this little bit of information could ever cause, a pit still formed in his stomach.
To save the brass.
Cowards. Leaving us to fight those Reds to the death so you can run away after our colony ships?
It was understood that we needed information from the front up to the very last second, Rockford continued, his voice still very distorted by the incredible warp forces acting upon the combined masses of his ship and the Minuteman, So naturally they picked the Command Staff as the messengers. VIPs I guess.
So you mean were-?
Were so far away from Sol right this second that you wouldnt be able to tell it from any of the other stars in the galaxy.
Incredible.
Theres nothing left back there, Lieutenant, the General continued, the severity in his tone making it past the interference, We need to warn the colonists what happened. Were the only ones who can.
What happened..?
General, Doyle stammered, What was that thing..?
God help me I dont know, Lieutenant, but what I do know is that the Coalition is the least of our problems now.
In fact they no longer existed, for all intents and purposes.
Neither did Earth.
Ill pull us out of this initial jump in a minute, Lieutenant. You can dock your ship then and we can get down to preparing for the long haul.
Sir?
Were talking something like a thousand lightyears, son, Rockford said gruffly, We need to get into cryo-pods just to make the trip feasible.
So were going to-?
Where the Sleeper Ships went, thats right, Lieutenant. They call it the Sirius Sector.
The Sirius Sector.
Is that what its called? Was that?
He looked down at the side of his cockpit.
There was the box Jax had installed.
Oh My-
-God! Rockford nearly yelled into the radio. The Lieutenants eyes, bloodshot though they were, shot up and stared through the canopy.
It seemed to defy all logic; it was facing them, looking as if it was stationary, yet their ships were traveling far faster than the speed of light.
Pulsating, ribbed, almost as if it were made out of sheer plasma.
No human hands had any part in its creation.
Lieutenant is that-?!
A ringed planet sat outside of his canopy, amongst a starry backdrop.
A large station hung in its orbit.
A set of metal rings arced away from it like some sort of pathway.
Lieutenant James Doyle of the 92nd International Volunteers Squadron was a comatose body strapped into a free-floating Minuteman spacecraft that was in high orbit above a ringed planet.
His mind had finally caved in on itself; after repeated mental assaults by absurd circumstances and harrowing experiences, Doyles psyche was no longer able to simply forgive and forget, nor was it able to continue functioning with its recent explosion of stimuli. After several bouts of what could only be described as space-time warping, the Alliance pilot was in no condition to keep operating, and as such his mind shut itself down in an attempt to force a fresh restart and piece things together.
The only thing Doyle was aware of was that he existed. His thoughts were too shattered to form any cohesive ideas, his mind too exhausted to start generating thoughts to begin with.
While it is conceivable that his journeys were instantaneous in nature, and that the presence of his ship in each place provided some stable mental foundation, the physical effects of this kind of warping on his body was as yet unknown, no doubt having some kind of effect on the situation.
In any case, perceived time for Doyle dragged out to immense proportions; minutes seemed like hours, seconds seemed like days. He hardly realized he was staring out the canopy for the better portion of his lethargy.
Eventually, however, Doyles mind began the aching process of recovery. The human mind is surprisingly resilient in such instances where it is given room to recuperate, and here was no different. The beleaguered pilot began to take note of his surroundings, the canopy bow, the box Jax had installed, the planet in front of him, the slow thrumming of the idling engine. Thoughts began to coalesce once more, rationality returned, as did emotion but in a much subdued state.
He was back again. He was back at this place, wherever it was, with the strange people and their highly advanced technology. For whatever reason he could not hope to fathom, he had been sent back to his proper place and then shoved right back. It was like being thrown into a cell and being given brief glimpses of the outside through the cracks in the door.
With a groan, Doyle sat himself up in his ejection seat and tried to stretch, although this was thwarted by the tiny cockpit. The fuel gauge of his ship was still reading in the range of 86%, and all systems appeared nominal. The box Jax had installed was still functioning, albeit if a few flashing lights indicated operability.
God he muttered, Here again
It was a little difficult bringing his arms up to grasp the yoke and throttle, but he managed it all the same. He twisted the fighter around a bit to look at the surroundings.
Yep, definitely back.
Now wheres that gate
Hmm? Hello? came a voice through the speakers.
Doyle bit off a curse; of course, he was back with these people who could hear any transmission he made, no matter what encryption he used. The push-to-talk button on the throttle had been clicked down so that it locked into place until pressed again, transmitting his voice wide out into the open.
Goddamned transmitter, he said with a groan, mashing down the button. He couldnt risk being detected out here in this place; his anonymity thus far was his ace in the hole, the one thing that might keep him alive long enough to truly figure out what was going on.
It was now his duty, if not his destiny, to figure it out. Either that or he simply had no other choice.
In any case, the line of rings was now recognizable as a trade lane, and would be far more fuel efficient to use than trying to skip across the whole system on nothing but inertia. Doyle set a course for the nearest set and punched the Search button. On cue, the green lights on it went solid, and the Transmit button sent the ribbon of light coursing through the four pieces.
He had to get to that planet, the one that looked like Earth. He needed to know. He had to know.
Before he knew it, Doyle was sitting at the massive jump gate again. Naturally he was apprehensive; the last time he tried this thing it sent him to what was left of Pluto. That image had, ironically, burned into his mind, and it still haunted him even after his restart. But he knew what he had to do, and hit the Search, Decode, and Transmit buttons.
The gates four prongs spread open like the gaping maw of some giant beast, and within its gullet laid a glistening portal of light.
He gripped the yoke tightly and increased the throttle.
One small step for a man.
One giant leap in the right direction.
This was certainly the system he had been in before, the one where he saw the false Pluto, the world covered in water, where that one woman tried to
Contact him.
Hed have to consider that for later; whoever those people were detected him as some kind of aberration and would no doubt be looking for him. Whether or not they would be on his side was obviously up for debate, but there were more important things to deal with.
He needed to find that planet, the one that looked like Earth.
What was it? Where was it?
Doyle looked down at the communications section of his cockpit and frowned. Keying that unit on virtually any available frequency seemed to broadcast it universally as far as these people were concerned. He couldnt send anything privately, or restrict who to send it to, not that he was aware of any groups here to begin with.
I have no choice, do I?
Shifting a little in his ejection seat, he keyed the comms.
Can anybody here tell me where, uh
Uh? Whats uh? Damnit, Jimmy, the planet!
The, uh Earth like planet is?
He didnt know what else to call it. Would that be sufficient?
California Minor is at coordinate E-6, an unknown voice responded.
Suddenly Doyle realized how stupid this course of action was.
Coordinate Echo Six of what exactly?
He had no star charts, no maps. The inertial navigation system in his Minuteman had long since been confused; it was only designed to track its course within the scope of a single star system, and how far had he traveled from that?
Er, perhaps you mean another planet? the voice asked in reply.
I guess so, Doyle muttered, in reality wishing he hadnt said anything, It looks like, uh It has oceans and continents on it
He heard a faint chuckle, and no more responses came after that.
Goddamnit, it was through another one of those gates I remember, he said to himself after switching off the transmit button, It has to be somewhere around here...
The lanes Damnit, of course! They lead right to them, just ride around and look for it!
As hed reasoned before, not a lot of people seemed to care about his presence, so he figured that using the lanes wasnt too much of a danger. For now at least.
He took a lane to another gate, but didnt believe that it was the one he was looking for; hadnt he crossed this entire place from another angle?
So he took another. It landed him in front of the water world.
No good, he thought, How big is this place, anyway?
He saw the next series of rings ahead and started pushing up the throttle when something off to the left moved in his peripheral vision. His eyes shifted over to focus on the object, and at that moment he almost wished he hadnt.
My God
It was quite a large ship, its design reminiscent of the others hed seen in this place. Huge cannons were mounted all over the prow which was shaped like the knife edge of old sailing vessels. It was cruising around very slowly, with no real obvious objective.
I hope its just on patrol, he whispered to himself as he kicked in the afterburners to close the distance to the next ring.
Another jump landed him in front of a barren-looking world with a station in orbit. Nondescript. A few ships were floating about but none of them appeared to pay him any attention. There was sporadic chit chat over the comms, but nothing directed at him, nor anything that sounded like any kind of alarm or danger.
So he took another lane.
And landed in front of another gate.
I hope this is it, he thought while nervously punching the buttons on the box, Dont feel like getting sent back to Pluto
A smoldering rock in space, superheated, boiling, scalding.
He shivered and kicked his little snubfighter into the light.
The first thing that caught his attention was the rings dead ahead. The second was the haze of debris fields that seemed to glisten in the light of the nearby star. The third was the planet he was looking for.
James Doyle heaved a sigh and gave himself a mental pat on the back. Hed made it this far, though God only knew how.
Just a few more lane jumps.
His mind seemed to toy with the idea of this being some sort of closure, when in reality it was only the slightest sliver of it.
Jump number one. It spat him out in front of a large station with numerous craft speeding about. It gave him the impression of a traffic jam rather than the operations of a military in space, but then again it appeared that space travel was common for these people.
It was common for Doyles people, too. Only they were wedged into small ships as refugees.
In any case, a second set of rings pointed directly at the planet. His heart started racing as his little fighter skipped around between the mass of ships and hit the ring.
But the cascade of light didnt last long; with a massive jolt that was but barely absorbed by the inertial dampeners in his fighter, the fiery tunnel split apart and spat the Minuteman into open space.
His heart was only racing more as he instinctively spun his ship, and his neck, around as far as possible in order to survey the situation.
Beams of light, obviously weapons discharges, were dicing through the stars from all directions. The wings of small fighters flashed the light of the star at his eyes while they rotated around to dodge a massive blast from what looked like a destroyer.
Doyles military instinct kicked in, and he finally looked down at his sensors readout, something he hadnt done at all while he was in this strange place. But it was no use; the screen was nothing but a massive coursing wad of unknown contacts with flickers of false targets, obviously decoys of some sort.
Only the LPI would work with foreigners! a gruff voice hollered over the radio.
When it comes to you people its welcome! another retorted.
This situation, like all the rest, made absolutely no sense to the poor Lieutenant. But what did make sense was the fact that ships were exploding less than ten kilometers from where he was sitting.
Anxiously he looked over towards the planet. Silhouetted against its nostalgic surface he saw the next ring of the lane. Without a moments hesitation he sent his fighter screaming towards it and started mashing the buttons on the box like there was no tomorrow.
It looked so much like Earth. Like the pictures hed seen of it before it had been burned and scarred by the scourge of war.
Yes, he remembered the standardized Alliance version of events quite clearly.
The Eastern Coalition was a big, bad supergiant that was angry at the Western Alliance over them having sheer monopoly over humanitys space assets. Eventually they came to grips over the issue when the Coalition began a massive space construction program. Somewhere along the line somebody issued an ultimatum, presumably the Coalition, which was flatly refused. In the inevitable clash that came, it was decided by both parties that if they could not have access to Mother Earths resources, neither should the other.
It was bludgeoned by the full weight of mankinds nuclear arsenal.
After that, things seemed to be a perpetual fight with scraps spanning the entire Solar System; it was almost as if there was nothing left to fight for except for the sake of fighting. But that was another story.
This planet was fresh, alive, with sprawling cities clearly seen on the shadowy fringes where their lights shone. It had multiple space stations in orbit, and was bustling even some one hundred thousand kilometers into the vastness of space. For all intents and purposes, for a soldier like Lieutenant James Doyle who was born into and knew nothing but death and struggle, it was Utopia incarnate.
But why was it here?
Doyle mused over several ideas, none of them substantiated. Perhaps this was the future? If so it was clearly devoid of the Coalition, which was good, but it was also devoid of the Alliance; he didnt know what to make of that. Mankind had prospered rather well, and had expanded past Sol. Earth was now the bastion of all that humanity hoped to achieve.
But was this Earth? Its landmasses had changed dramatically; it would have taken millions of years for them to have done that.
Whats more, Earth was destroyed.
It had to have been.
Hed seen the Sun explode.
Hadnt he?
A painful headache once again wrapped itself around his mind like a coiling snake. He knew he couldnt answer these questions himself; it was foolish to even try. He needed input from something or someone else.
He needed to check the surface.
It wasnt hard to see how things worked around here. There was a series of rings in a band around the planet, with vessels going back and forth through them in regular intervals. He knew for a fact that no ship of his era was very well equipped for re-entry into an atmosphere, since all available resources were put towards combat and travel capability. There were dedicated shuttles for such things. But here it seemed that these people had developed a method of piercing the atmosphere with a kind of channel which let ships of all shapes and sizes enter the atmosphere with no trouble. It was also a convenient method of regulation, he realized.
So there was his first objective: sneak through one of those rings. He knew hed have no kind of access, nor could he ask for it, so his only alternative was to try to slip in with another vessel. He could do that.
Flying in the atmosphere was another problem entirely.
Space fighters were by no means exempt from atmospheric duties in his world, but they were duties in atmospheres far less dense than that of an Earth-like planet. As a result, control was mostly reliant on thruster output with minimal correction, meaning the pilot was flying a rocket rather than an aircraft. He had no idea how the ships of this place worked, but in his case hed have a very difficult time of it.
So there was his second objective: fly in there without dying. Easier said than done.
But Doyle was adamant. It was his destiny, after all.
He casually maneuvered his Minuteman towards the rings. Yet again, nobody seemed to take much note of him, not even the patrols of clearly police or military fighters roaming about. Perhaps he was merely lost in the shuffle? In any case, he caught sight of a small freighter that was on its way to the planet and quickly slid his snubfighter behind and slightly below it.
The radio was practically worthless; there was no way to regulate what transmissions he received, so it was a cacophony of sound. Still, he reasoned, somewhere in there he should have heard a request for landing clearance.
On cue, the protective arms of one of the rings, similar to the jump gates, opened up and beckoned the freighter forward.
Taking a deep breath, the Lieutenant followed it through, closing his eyes in case he met a rather dreary high-friction end.
He was through.
He was also falling.
The effect of gravity on his body was as startling as it had been on Thunder Bay, but in that case he was on the floor and was sick out of his mind. In this case he was in a hunk of metal essentially free falling towards a city below.
Biting off a curse, Doyle kicked up the throttle and yanked back on the control column, but found that he had overcompensated, sending his fighter into a backwards loop, still falling. The dampeners working overtime, he tried to angle his fighter towards the ground again and stabilize his fall.
There were wings on his Minuteman, but they were hardly aerodynamic.
Lucky me.
After falling a good ten kilometers, he began slowly pulling back. Thankfully the little fighter responded and began to pull up into a glide. But it was a harrowingly fast glide pointed at the cityscape below.
Trying to bleed off speed by snaking as he went, the Lieutenant was finding himself pouring all the training and experience hed ever received into just flying. Compared to the firefights hed been in before, this was not without a large touch of irony.
The city got much closer. His instruments were not adjusted for this kind of atmosphere, so he had no method of determining speed other than eyesight. It would serve him well enough, although the only times he ever had to do this was when flying in reference to another ship, not an entire horizon.
The ground got much closer. The switch from a maze of buildings to a maze of streets and crisscrossing ships in air streets was very abrupt, and caught him off guard.
Damn! he shouted, mashing the yoke to the side in an effort to dodge some ship or another cruising along. The maneuver upset the delicate balance hed achieved and sent the fighter spiraling down.
Watching the buildings start to rise above him, Doyle felt an icy chill run down his back. After all this, was it really going to end this way? A hard-deck kill?
Hed be damned if that happened.
Fear rapidly turned into anger and resolve, and the throttle found itself mashed into Afterburner. The Minutemans engines screamed and sent it off on a horizontal tangent, though still with some spin to its motion.
Doyle flipped down the landing gear switch; what good it would do him he hadnt the slightest idea, but it was better than bellying in.
The fighter skirted around the corner of a skyscraper and was now perilously close the ground, but the lucky pilot found comfort in the large stretch of elevated walkway that rolled out before him.
The unlucky pilot also found great discomfort in the large number of civilians moving along said walkway.
People started running, some were clearly screaming, as the fighter careened towards them. By some form of miracle the rear end of Doyles ship didnt clip the heads off of people as it came down, and those further along the walkway had time enough to get to the sides.
With a very audible and unsettling bang, the Minuteman hit the ground, bounced up, and hit down again, the metal pads grinding away sparks behind it until the little ship came to a stop.
Doyle was nearly frozen in his seat. Did he just manage to do that?
Suddenly desperate for fresh air, he yanked off his air mask and threw the canopy open, taking a deep breath of rather industrial-smelling oxygen. But it was oxygen nonetheless.
He made it.
A grin cracked along his face for the first time in 24 hours; hed accomplished something. Hed survived.
People began to gather around his ship, pointing, talking to each other, staring, some of them looking exceedingly angry, but the Alliance pilot was in a state of bliss, surveying the cityscape around him.
And then he saw it.
It was painted like the other buildings, a shade of bronze or gold. It towered towards the heavens to the same extent as the highest buildings nearby. Twin searchlights were perched above its curvaceous form, and it was ringed with windows. In the dead center sat an illuminated blue star with blue and red stripes shooting out from the side, and below it in bold yellow letters sat the tell-all moniker.
Liberty.
Doyles jaw dropped, eyes dilated, body rigid.
Thats the
The ASF-1. The Liberty.
Pieces of the massive puzzle began to fall into place, and the realization was so sudden and so wrenching that Doyle entirely forgot about the miracle that had happened just a few seconds prior.
The Liberty
The Liberty
It stood upright, the same way it had launched from Pluto so long ago. Or what felt like so long ago.
What was long ago.
It made sense. This was the ASF-1, there was no doubt about it. It landed here, this New Earth. Its people had grown, prospered, started anew, just like the Alliance had intended.
Earth was dead, but humanity lived on.
This was their legacy. His legacy.
Some one thousand lightyears away.
The Liberty
Tears came to his eyes in spite of himself. The emotional impact was impossible to explain, for never in the history of any mans life had such a series of events taken place, nor was it likely they would ever be repeated.
This was his future. This is what he fought for, what his friends had died for, what his family died trying to get to.
Lieutenant James Doyle of the 92nd International Volunteers Squadron fell back into the ejection seat of his Minuteman, tears streaking down his face.
The crowd got closer.
A miracle just as potent as the last one occurred: he managed to overcome the emotion of the moment and realize what was going on.
Stumbling as he sat up, Doyle yanked the canopy down and slapped the air mask to his face yet again. The people outside started to slow their advance, and the ones in front began to back away.
It was for the best, since he punched the throttle to max power.
The snubfighter left behind a hail of sparks as it rocketed down the walkway scattering people in its wake and then shot towards the heavens.
With tears still blurring his vision, Doyle looked over his shoulder at the ASF-1 as it slid past.
He knew where he was.
He was far from home.
Finding the rings to exit the planets atmosphere wasnt terribly hard; ships swarmed to and from them like a horde of insects. Managing to find an opening behind a small pod-like ship, Doyle followed it up and through the atmosphere at max afterburner. The little fighter and its pilot who had come so far were once again bound for the stars, somewhat reassured but still seeking solace.
But the police were seeking nothing but the ship and its pilot.
Not more than thirty seconds after hed escaped the planets atmosphere, the storm of voices had returned over the radio. But one voice seemed to overpower all the rest, as if the transmission was pointed directly at him with full intensity.
This is Officer Charles of the Liberty Police to unidentified vessel. You are to cut your engines immediately and disengage all weapons systems. Failure to comply will lead to the use of force.
Doyle would have kicked himself had the time or the room in his cockpit. If they hadnt noticed him before, they certainly would now after hed snuck through those regulatory rings and, whats more, nearly crash landed atop the citizenry of this place.
Would they believe him if he told them their story? No, they would most likely call him a madman and apprehend him for that stunt hed pulled.
Would he be able to flee? Unlikely, his ship was nowhere near as capable as theirs.
Would he be able to stand and fight? Against a highly advanced army of fighters in front of what appeared to be their most important planet? Hardly.
He had to try something. Anything.
Biting his lip, the Lieutenant gunned the throttle and gave it every ounce of power the Minuteman could provide. While the scanners were obviously useless, he managed to look over his shoulder and see a pair of small fighters following behind him, flashing blue and red lights. They remained stationary, matching his speed with apparently little effort.
I repeat, the Officer said more forcefully, Cut your engines now, or suffer the consequences.
What more was there to do? If they could match that, what else could he possibly use? His Jump Drive?
He looked down at the button on his console, shielded by a plastic guard.
God help me.
Doyle flicked the guard up and mashed the button, well aware of the fact that with no coordinates locked hed be jumping into open space in front of him.
The EWS on his console blared, indicating the rapid approach of a solid object at his dead six o clock, presumably a missile of some sort. He hit the countermeasure deployment button on the yoke and looked over his shoulder.
The wad of chaff and burning flare spat out the back of his fighter. The bright light of a fast-flying missile came streaking towards him. It reached the chaff, seemed to disappear inside it, and then came barreling out the other end and detonated right on top of him.
His eyes shut tight by reflex; he knew he was a goner.