Inevitability by Dvalin Andaral

Published on Kiith Iopia on the 18 February 2000

Soft, thick rubber soles reduced the sound of his steps on the metal deck of the main computer chamber. Regardless, it was enough to break the stillness in yet another nearly abandoned station on what had been called the Kharakian Colony Ship and was now being termed the Hiigaran Mothership.

Stillness, indeed; there was little else in these long stretches of empty corridors, aside from the painfully bright lighting along the central passageways and the eye-straining red lighting in areas on the “night cycle.”

There was activity aboard the ship, of course; the science and engineering sections, the simulators, the command and intelligence sectors.

It was simply that this action was isolated, as each active region aboard the Mothership was separated from each of the others by substantial cargo bays. He often thought of them as havens in an inhospitable desert of inactivity.

The reawakened biologists among the Sleepers had been roused to study samples of Imperial crewmen. These crewmen were the those who had failed to survive interrogation after the initial encounter over a charred and lifeless Kharak – more Hiigara to most crew than the world that they would inevitably fail to reach.

Engineers adapted and redesigned technologies captured on Imperial vessels along the trek toward the Galactic Core, as well as those samples provided by the Bentusi Tradeship. Fortunately, these efforts could largely be pursued aboard the Mothership Proper, instead of the subsidiary “hot labs” that had been constructed to insure that weapons testing did not inadvertently destroy a large portion of the Mothership’s interior. The hot labs were vulnerable, as Imperial strike craft had proven time and again. Each time the Imperials had proven this, critical personnel had been lost – personnel irreplaceable with the lack of a substantial pool of talent to draw upon.

The best of the Sleepers were awakened first, naturally; it had been the “advice” of Fleet Intelligence, which might as well be called Fleet Command for the power of the department’s head. The first to be awakened were, unfortunately, the first to be risked in battle with an enemy they knew too little about and, as such, the first to be lost.

Too many Kharakians had died already, too large a portion of the fraction of their nearly-extinct race – with each lost fighter, corvette or frigate, the genetic legacy of the Kharakians diminished. What would the children of this fateful exodus be if their ancestors were reduced to such a number that defects and deficiencies began claiming the generations to come?

Fleet Command drew a breath, held it a moment and then released it; focus. He needed it, if he were to review the current state of things.

The simulators.

Few military personnel were included in the Sleepers; the bulk of them were going to embark and take up the barracks directly above the partially constructed hangars when the Colony Ship’s hyperspace test was completed. They had been aboard the Scaffold when the Imperial patrol fleet had appeared over Kharak, when the first major blow had been struck against the Kharakians. This left the task of fleet defense to those who had been prepared as Sleeping reserves, who had training far inferior to that those lost with the Scaffold underwent. Already, this had shown itself in engagements with Imperial strike fleets. Kharakian pilots were, at best, the equals of Imperial pilots. The remainder of the time, losses outnumbered kills. More lives were being wasted.

A conscious effort was made to push back the gloom; he could not succumb to it, if they were to succeed. A fatalistic officer dooms those he commands, as the Sobani had taught him.

He focused on command and intelligence.

Here, fortune had treated the wayward children – or perhaps orphans? – of Kharak kindly.

Karan.

She rested before him, suspended in a cloudy solution that was lit from all about. She held no interest for him, though some pilots seemed to very well fantasize about the woman.

Her skin had paled far from the Kharakian norm, but was not the ‘ivory’ shade that would be required to look enticing. Instead, she looked sickly pale. Some had envisioned womanly curves and grace; here, there were protruding veins supported by tubing that fed her nutrients, oxygen. Muscles had atrophied to the point that her thinness was that of one skeletal. Her voice? She had none. A mask prevented the computer core from drowning in the solution she was suspended in. The voice most heard was one computer simulated, given the slight huskiness to appease her desire for appeal. That explained the lack of emotion some pilots claimed to have noticed; a computer-generated voice would never be as personal as that of another Kharakian.

However much the pilots’ wished to dream that she was desire incarnated, it was not true. It was true, however, that without her they would have been defeated by now. She was the interface between the Command Corps and the fighting force. She provided orders, interpreted battle plans and distributed necessary intelligence or targeting information with an efficiency unmatched by both purely technological or biological systems.

It was this intelligence that he studied on two displays, comparing the clarity of the image.

The Bentusi had provided the “Unbound,” as they seemed to refer to the Refugee Fleet, with a trading device. It included an interfacing system that had provided the first real exposure to holograph generation systems. Already, engineering had designed units to replace traditional displays aboard pre-contact vessels. Newer ships were fully outfitted with these devices.

It was the same with artificial gravity; the Mothership and all subsidiary vessels had lacked it during the hyperspace trial. After capturing operational samples with the Imperial frigates over Kharak, engineering had managed to produce a system that was immediately implemented onboard all capital vessels within the fleet.

Whatever the case, his current concern was the image before him. One floated in the cool, vaguely metallic air of the central computer core, ghostly. The other rested on a two-dimensional, flatscreen display.

Hiigara.

Was this gleaming planet of emeralds and sapphires, of greens and blues really worth the death of Kharak, worth the death of their species?

He did not have to face the question quite yet, but it was inevitable that he would, sooner or later.

Fleet Command tapped a few keys to change the displayed image from that of an intelligence briefing to the feed of a camera drone. Several modified Scaffold Tugs (Salvage Corvettes, the crews called them, to escape the dull but more accurate name) were gliding toward what appeared to be a freighter.

The freighter would, if intelligence was accurate, hold another sample of technology necessary to the survival of the Kharakian Refugees in their trek. Fleet Intelligence had been certain of the report when he had noted the ‘strong recommendation’ that they salvage the disabled and drifted vessel. It didn’t seem to matter that such was the established policy or that the tugs were already en route.

A vessel such as this should have, at the very least, anti-fighter mass drivers capable of repulsing light attacks. The Refugee Fleet would not have to rely on the overly vulnerable, life-wasting strike craft it had constructed, as these would be more effective than the anti-fighter weapons currently in use. That was the hope, anyways; without it, the Kharakians would continue to sustain overwhelming casualties.

Again, fatalism had seeped into his thoughts. He turned off the displays and simply stood there, staring up at Karan Sjet.

She would not be aware of his presence here, nor care; the purpose of the computer core was to translate commands through the fleet, to maintain systems at the approximate baseline. Sjet had no access to the sensor systems; while she may have been able to serve as a secondary Fleet Intelligence, the potential benefit of additional sensor analysis had been deemed too little to counter the risk of losing a highly efficient communication node.

That was the report of the committee that had reviewed that option, anyway. Far too much of the Colony Ship’s design process had been controlled by committees.

At the very least, though, the Kharakian government was not nearly so contemptible as the one described by Group Captain Elson. He had simply confirmed the view of the Exile Fleet personnel: the Imperials were not worth humanitarian consideration. Before, any escape pods or disabled craft that could not be salvaged were often left to drift, with the unstated but acknowledged curse to a lingering death of starvation or a painful death of asphyxiation.

Elson had, additionally, directed the Fleet to the site of a recent rebel engagement with an Imperial patrol fleet, to the location of a derelict rebel freighter that he said contained captured Imperial weapon prototypes. He had, evidently, decided that the recovery effort would put too much of a strain on already-limited rebel resources. Fleet Command had no reason to complain.

A miniscule shudder could be felt through the Mothership as the carrier-sized freighter was drawn into the capital ship bay, and another as the hangar door settled against the Mothership, sealing that chamber.

A moment was taken to imagine the events currently taking place, so that Fleet Command might further familiarize himself with the protocol.

Defense drones would position themselves at the Mothership end of umbilicals, propelling themselves with magnetic levitation systems through the micro gravity environment. These drones would then force open the docking ports or airlocks that the tethered vessel would have scattered over the hull. As confirmation of the thought, more shuddering could be sensed through the deck plate as shaped charges blew open access ports.

Now, he would simply wait.

Defense drones were basic in their design; a drive system, infrared sensors and radar systems to map the ship and identify crewmembers aboard the vessel being captured, an anti-personnel projectile weapon and a contact grenade launcher. The drones would propel themselves through the ship, mapping the interior and eliminating all enemy resistance. Only surrender or destruction would halt the process. The Command Corps could signal when either end was reached.

It was fortunate that the design committees had decided to equip the Mothership with these systems and, additionally, that the production centers for defense drones were operational during the Mothership’s hyperspace test. Marines would have embarked after the test, but they too were lost when the Scaffold was destroyed.

They wouldn’t have been necessary, it seemed; no effort had been made by the Imperials to get aboard the Mothership and the drones were effective enough at clearing vessels the Fleet decided to capture or secure.

There were no alarms, no announcements on the ship’s speakers notifying him of the securing of that freighter; the interior of the ship must be complex, that it would take so long for the drones to clear a derelict vessel. The former signal would have indicated that the drones had met with resistance, had signaled the presence of Imperial marines or drones. He had expected the complexity, of course; the cargo bays aboard such a ship would have to be greatly troubling for the drones’ navigation systems.

More explosions could be detected.

A secondary set of airlocks? It could also be that automated defenses had successfully destroyed several defense drones. That would be an irritant, certainly; the Mothership barely had more than the amount needed to secure a vessel of this size that showed active resistance. Still, no alarm accompanied the reverberations – no communications from the drones indicated the presence of opposition.

His thoughts turned to the lack of need for comparable systems aboard the Mothership – automated turrets and the like.

If an enemy had successfully boarded the Mothership, they would have already neutralized her drives and weapon systems to insure that they could go about the task properly and clear the ship with methodical efforts. If the Mothership had been disabled, no number of marines or defense drones could have kept off a determined enemy with far greater manpower.

Once the Mothership was boarded, defeat would certainly be inevitable - unless the enemy used subtlety to come aboard, but such a thing would certainly never happen. After all, Fleet Intelligence would see through the duplicity, no?

The sounds of running footsteps echoed through the corridor approaching the main computer core. These were not the soft padding sounds of fleet personnel boots, but instead much like those of Kharakian marines.

There were none among the crew.

Fleet Command wondered why he would be hearing the sounds, then, until another sound reached him; the pinging of rounds, the sharp, loud cracks accompanying the firing of light ballistic weapons.

The bootsteps came closer, along with the yells from a race his fleet had engaged in battle repeatedly. Imperial boarders? It.. it couldn’t be. How could such a force have gained access to the Mothership?

Simple shock clouded the mind of Fleet Command as he stared blankly at the only door into the computer core’s chamber. It slid open, allowing a full detachment of uniformed Imperial marines to storm into the chamber. Another order was yelled, this time to him. In response, the still-shocked Fleet Command simply stared at them.

Flashes were seen and then cracks heard as a weapon discharged; there was the dull thud and heavy pressure of impact, causing the commander to fall back to the metal deck.

Warmth spread from the point of impact in the center of his chest, and then numbness after. His mind raced, but it could not outrace the advancing numbness, the deadly loss of blood.

Moments were left to him.

Another sharp sound of weapons-fire was heard, followed this time by the sound of plastics being penetrated. Another burst and he heard liquid flowing readily. A slight tilt of his head brought the sight of Karan’s suspension chamber to him. The milky fluid was now crimson, flowed from the spider-webbed cracks that radiated outward from the impact points of those rounds.

His final coherent thought was one of reprimand; he should have expected this end, should have expected that such a powerful, deceitful force as the Empire would be able to mount such an operation.

After all, defeat was inevitable.

At the least, there was beauty in sacrifice, even if it meant the emptiness of oblivion for an entire world. He had answered his question.