A Wildfire Chronicles Installment
[ Future Technology ]
"Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." — Herodotus
En Route to Port Expedition, Liu Xiu Special Economic Zone
"Pawn to F3," the small relay speaker announced onto the bridge of the Lycia. Almost immediately, the small, holographic projection of a halberd-bearing, be-armored foot soldier took his fateful steps across a field of light-form grass and cobble, proudly announcing his movements with the resounding beat of his pale ivory cuirass. It was, all-in-all, a miniature field of battle only recently cleaned of yet another painful defeat for the army-in-white.
Davide leaned back in his chair idly; 'He really is a bit thick, isn't he?' he mused to himself, propping his legs across the corner of the projection table with an absentminded rub of his thigh. Old age, it brings terrible wears; it also, however, brings a modicum of wisdom. While he knew he was in no way the maestro of chess, he knew damn well he was better than his fellow crew mate, Gagliardi. 'Better let him stew a minute; I wouldn't want to hurt his feelings anymore than I already have,' the voice behind his eyes nearly chuckled as he took a moment to rest his eyes. Nearly eighteen hours straight spent locked-up in the bridge; sure, it was more spacious and a bit more luxurious than the foreman's driving pit at the bow end of the massive, bulk freighter, but it was still a pain to look at the same four walls for such a lengthy span of time.
"Davide," the speaker announced, Gagliardi's rough tones pushing through the array in a half-spoken crackle, "you fat fuck, move already!"
"You can't rush brilliance, Gags," the bridge captain depressed the small button on the side of his chair's armrest, boasting his faux-arrogance. 'Not that it takes brilliance, in this case.' In truth, he truly hoped "Gags" wasn't making the same mistake, again, for the fourth time in the past week; briefly, Davide regretted ever mentioning chess to the man after they'd set-off from up the Lanthe. Even so, he wasn't about to pass-up an easy victory, one way or another; the win-to-lose ratio was what mattered, and he was still in the lead by a magnitude over the positioning helmsman. 'Might as well tempt his play,' he thought, pressing the transmitter's switch once more: "Pawn, E5." For what it's worth, he knew, it'd be a hollow victory if the temptation proved too much.
Parting a single eye open, he watched as his own foot soldier, war axe in-hand, marched across the field to his post, banging an empty fist against his helmet - or, in the least, attempting to, Davide presumed, the empty wrapper of a Jupiter crunch bar disrupting the projection just enough to cover the single pawn in a field of static. For all his supposed brilliance, Davide knew as much as the next he truly was a bit of slob; the Lycia's bridge served as the penultimate testament to that fact. Strewn everywhere were candy wrappers, styrofoam cups filled with empty peanut husks, and all manner of domestic detritus he hadn't bothered to mop-up in the months since shipping-out. 'Speaking of which,' Davide's eyes canted upward to the clothesline strung from a hook on the rear wall of the bridge to a broken and upturned metal shutter across the interior of the bridge's wrap-around window, 'looks like my pants are finally dry.'
With a resounding series of pops ushered forth from his spine, Davide stood from his chair, giving an idle tug to the back of his drawers; another pop resounded, this time from his right knee - aching and swollen with arthritis. "Fuckin' hell," he cursed into the emptiness of the bridge, snatching the bottom of his safety orange-colored NAVOS uniform from the impromptu clothesline before righting himself against the drive console to begin the arduous process of righting them. Just as he managed to slide his right into its appropriate legging, having reached the conclusion Gagliardi was near dumbfounded - or, in the least, trying to impress purely by the possible, if unlikely, inference he might make regarding the length of his turn - the relay speaker from the bow barked-in with a static-filled utterance.
"Pawn to G4," Gagliardi's tone spoke of confidence, "See how y' like that; I know what you're thinkin'. Ain't going to get another one over on me - not an ounce."
Worn and aching, suddenly realizing the chess console never seemed so far away to his aching joints, Davide tried not to shake his head at the misplaced and unwarranted blustering in his cohort's voice. With an absent tug, he removed the clothesline, letting it fall to the floor as he made his way back to the console. With the faint squeal of the polyester cushion, he tried to elevate his legs once more, failing due to the grinding bite beneath his kneecap; defeated, in the least, by his own body, Davide leaned back again, depressing the small lever on the side of his seat. "How many times have I— Well, fuck," he bothered to press the transmission switch before continuing: "How many times is this, Gags? I mean, just since we've been out here."
Immediately the speaker responded, filling the bridge with a flat response: "Twenty-six."
"To zero," Davide responded in kind, releasing the switch just before he could be interrupted.
"Twenty-six games total," the helmsman gave in retort to the point of defensiveness.
"Yeah," Davide responded, "but I've won every single game. And, Gags, how many times have I warned you to actually think about the moves you make? If you're not going to think about how you play, we might as well not even both—"
The faint squelch from the speaker interrupted the Lycia's bridge captain: "Just move, you fuck'r. I don't want another lecture; I know how to play this fucking game by now. Get off my ass, old man."
'Old man.' He mulled the words over in his mind, chewing absently on the soft tissue inside his cheek. Davide had one daughter, a girl about the same age as Gagliardi, 'Twenty-seven this passed March.' A grandson had been the most recent confirmation of his age; sure, a bit more than thirteen months, but still a tell-tale sign. "I guess grandpa is old," he chuckled to himself in the silence of the bridge, "Maybe I can teach him chess instead."
The correct move, he knew; yet, staring at the projection of knights and soldiers and great, towering bishops, he really wondered if it might be best just to prolong the whole ordeal. 'Not like it's going to hurt my pride,' he murmured silently, 'What's he going to do: brag about winning one time?' Of course, Davide thought, Gags would likely completely dismiss the twenty-six losses in favor of a solitary victory; it was his nature, he knew. In the eight different routes they'd flown together, he'd gotten to know his helmsman rather well. Not exceptionally well, but enough to know he was recently married and he and his were expecting; little things, really, were the hallmark of Gagliardi's life. He worked as a "positioner" for the larger freighters, made his make, and spent it spoiling a babe-bloated spouse that worshiped the ground he walked on. 'Good life,' Davide thought, 'Reminds me of myself at his age.'
Just as he pressed the transmitter, the primary communication console lit-up, immediately followed by a hailing: "Unidentified freighter, this is Port Expedition traffic control. Please respond; we have your course plotted as indistinct along your current vector, need some info on our end."
"One minute, Gags," Davide announced to the positioning pit, "Goin' to switch open all comms." He smirked briefly, 'Eventually he'll learn.' As he began to stand, he pressed the switch: "Queen to H4. Twenty-seven."
As he reached the communication's console to activate Lycia's ship-wide communications network, he caught his helmsman's cursing; with a faint chuckle he depressed the small icon on the touch-screen before him, sending-out the appropriate information package and permissions suite in reply to Port Expedition's traffic control. A flip of the hail-switch opened direct voice communications, briefly muting the communications array in the bridge: "This is Davide Boriello, bridge captain of Lycia. TII-class Ultra Large Freight Carrier en route to Zindar in Jiwao-geosynch. NAVOS Freight and Cargo."
"Davide," Gagliardi blurted-in as the hail-switch fell into the "off" position, "Mind checking your 'jay-see' readouts? Getting an anomaly on my en—"
"Boriello, Davide; Lycia under NAVOS," Port Expedition's traffic control officer interrupted Lycia's internal communications, "Yep, got you en route to Zindar. Mind givin' us your HIN?"
"X4NA705," Davide pressed to hail once more, "That's 'X-ray,' 'four,' 'November,' 'Alfa,' 'seven,' 'zero,' 'five,' Port Expedition."
"Davide," once again Gagliardi intruded, "Give it a look, seriously; makin' me nervous enough bein' in this constellation."
"Yeah," he responded, "just give me a second; little busy at the moment." Even so, Davide took several steps from the communications console to flip open the core diagnostics. Briefly scanning them, he noted the aberration: "You talking about the yellow-singer? That's normal, given how long we've been out. Don't pay it any mind, you're just getting pre-position jitters."
"Thank you, Lycia," traffic control began, silencing any further discussion regarding the slight abnormality displayed across the vessel's jauntcore diagnostics, "What you boys got on that thing anyway?"
"Toiletries," Davide chuckled over the hail, "Toiletries for the Tetheri."
"That's one hell of a case of the runs," traffic control's reply was filled with a series of cackles, "You take it easy; be careful with that thing, she's got a wide ass. Carry on to Relay Number Six, you know where to go from there."
Before even the possibilities of truncation of systematic niceties, Gagliardi broke into the pause between Davide and the traffic crew, shouting, "Listen, look at the fucking screen!"
"For fuck's sake," Davide turned and flipped the screen again, "It's normal, I already told you..." As his eyes fell onto the small, digital simulacrum of a dial, he noticed the reason for Gag's concern. Immediately he checked to confirm the metrics were switched to the appropriate measure then, more out of habit than any other sense of expectation, he lightly tapped the edge of the screen. "I see it," he uttered flatly, "We're getting some high color capture, but its still within normal limits. Three thousand instances a picosecond. But again, it's—"
"It's still rising," was the statement that finished Davide's statement for him, echoing out into the bridge like a klaxon. Looking down, sure as it was, the dial continued to creep upward, closer and closer to the orange - a range of capture instances which was bifurcated by a single red line indicating the system's automatic, emergency shutoff point.
Davide stood, watching as the small, digital finger continued to slowly, but certainly, climb. As it passed the median of the yellow region, indicating over 4,750 color capture instances per picosecond, he flipped down the keyboard from beneath the screen. "I'm going to try a hard flush," he began to type, "then do a manual bootstrap, see if this is just a bug. Keep watch down there, she'll stay reading until I boot again." He didn't need to hear Gagliardi's compliance; instead, he quickly pressed the appropriate keys, causing the dial to flutter down slightly, indicating an inhibitor flush across the jauntcore's capture singularity, before the screen flashed black and began its boot cycle. Lines upon lines filled the screen for little more than three seconds before the NAVOS Freight and Cargo insignia appeared, spinning text over text in bright, hazard orange, before fading to the diagnostics screen.
"Don't know if it was a bug or not," the bridge captain issued, "but the inhibitor flush has got it dropping again. We'll just keep an eye on it and see how she—"
The bridge captain cursed as he suddenly felt the back of his skull impact solidly against the roof of the bridge cabin; for a moment, he was unsure what had occurred, his body swimming in a lethargic trance as his eyes blinked in involuntary spasm. 'The fuck was that?' his mind managed to collate as he fought for consciousness and sense; as he scrambled for the console to support himself, his eyes began to focus: the console was below him. As the realization filled his mind, he felt himself sliding forward, rolling over the internal architecture of the bridge before slamming into the metal shutters of the vessel's broad panes. "The fuck happened to art-grav?" he questioned, "Gagliardi, you all right down there? You have a-gravity?"
"N— No," the helmsman responded after a moment, "Had to cling onto pilotage just to keep from smackin' into the glass. I think we've stopped movin' though; is that normal?"
The sudden blare of the ship's alarms interrupted further recourse; jerking his head downward, Davide gripped the shutters and vaulted himself to the floor, managing to roll across the console in the process, spinning to bring the jauntcore's diagnostic readings into view. The screen devolved into static as the dial's finger reached the shutoff line, indicating 12,876.26 color capture instances per picosecond. He was almost pleased, expecting the core's emergency fail safe to shut the entire thing into capture inhibition; instead, his eyes were met with a sudden flash of digital flame beyond the plastic screen as his stomach vaulted in response to Lycia's inertial correction systems suddenly halting.
As he watched, the diagnostic screen - all of the screens - were consumed in a tapestry of scarlet and orange imagery; strange symbols emerged from the flames, dancing as they were licked and burned, obliterating white icons into lettering. It took him several moments, but Davide managed to capture in his sight the strange phrase just as it, too, began to dissolve: "Ahu Akadra'ilu Akan'qaarnaijk." Gaze transfixed, the bridge captain floated, mesmerized and silent, as the flames rapidly came to consume and obviate the strange language that danced before him; one by one, each letter was replaced with one in a tongue he understood. His mind leaped outward, grasping at each vowel and consonant as a new sentence, one in Galactic Standard, emblazoned itself into a circle around a small icon of a flame, transposed upon a screen black and void: "May Wildfire consume all impurity."
The screen before him suddenly flashed, sparks flowing forth from it and the whole of the bridge's consoles in a geyser of minute embers and the fragrance of dense ozone. Davide pushed himself back, fleeing the cascade even as specks of flaming debris found their mark upon his cheeks and arms, singing black tiny scraps of his flesh and attire. Even so, the pain seemed to jerk his thoughts back to their present circumstance. 'Have to get to the core,' his mind roared, 'Get to the standalone terminal; do a manual shutdown and flush.' Yet, even as the figments of thought filled his mind, his arms working to assail his path to the bridge's exit, the faint echo of rushing air began to assault his ears - the faint symphony of atmosphere being vented. 'No turning back now,' he commanded himself, forcing the bridge's hatch open with three furious pumps of its pneumatic override, 'Not going to let there be a second time.'
As he tugged himself along, floating free through the corridors and narrow stair-steps down to the jauntcore, the sound of rushing air continued to assault his senses. 'The emergency supplies should kick-in when we drop below fifteen percent,' he recalled, before immediately doubting his own knowledge: 'Assuming the fuckers haven't sabotaged those, too.' There was no time for doubt or self-pity - no matter how tempting; despite the circumstances, he was well aware of the worst case scenario were the core to go critical - were the instances of color capture to approach 26,000 per picosecond. He'd heard rumors of the forges responsible for the core's fuel going-up - rumors that he knew, of course, could never be true. 'No one would use this shit if it were true,' he assured himself; no one would use a fuel capable of such devastation in the instance of an accident. 'Of course,' he continued to himself, 'Adrena junkies dope theirs with anti-matter; so who the fucks knows?'
Rounding the last bend of the final corridor to the jauntcore chamber, Davide's heart sunk.
Pushing himself forward, he halted himself before reaching the door - the thin, red-hot ring around its edge evident even as the vacuum began to consume the interior of the freighter. 'Blast-welds,' he remarked, 'Sealed from the inside.' Of course, he knew what it meant; there were only so many ways for such to occur - only so many options and avenues. 'Last port of call for maintenance,' he recalled, brushing the thin wisps of salt-and-pepper from his brow, 'A little piece-of-shit corporate hold-out just that side of the Delta-Gamma line.' It had been required; it was a NAVOS hold-out - a new one, but a small one - in one of the frontier colonies. Despite the rumors about the Gamma Frontier, NAVOS, TransDelta, and have a hundred-dozen corporations were willing to risk it - willing to throw money at the frontier enclaves for a chance at the profits projected from the periphery sectors.
'Anything for the cash,' he thought, 'Anything for profit.'
Port Expedition Traffic Control
Port Expedition, Liu Xiu Special Economic Zone
"Hey," the administrative supervisor announced, "isn't that one of yours?"
The Coordinator First Class took a look to the small blip on his screen his supervisor indicated, noting the flashing icon that succinctly indicated a full-stop; with a quick glance, he picked-out the hull identification number: "X4NA705." The vessel's HIN was marked under NAVOS Freight and Cargo's heading, its name known as "Lycia." Pausing, the coordinator ran the tip of his finger across the screen, pulling down a brief outline of the vessel and its recent actions in the system; immediately he noted his name attached to the bottom of the small dialogue as the last point of contact. "Yes, sir," he issued, double-tapping Lycia's icon, causing a zoomed-in view of the vessel to appear on the massive, projective screen high above, "I cleared her not fifteen minutes ago."
"Where's she set to make berth?" his supervisor asked tersely, leaning over the coordinator's shoulder.
"Says 'Zindar' station," he gave in reply, "Enclave under the proprietorship of the Grand Republic of Tetheran, according to the books."
"Is— Is she venting atmosphere?" one of the coordinator's fellow traffic control officers suddenly queried, drawing his eyes upward to the screen. Small plumes, white as ice, seemed to be streaming-out from various points across the massive freighter's bulk, giving the appears of a bloated comet too massive for its own tail.
"Did she send out a mayday?" the supervisor queried openly.
Standing, the coordinator canted his head back, taking a wide step in the same breath, looking upward to the massive screen. While the distance and natural aberrations of the vacuum caused disruption and artifacts by resolution, the atmospheric venting was quite obvious. 'What else could it be?' he questioned himself. Around him, he noted several officers free of duty or traffic had shifted their gaze to the screen - watching and attentive. "No," he responded to his supervisor's question at last, "No mayday or emergency signal of any kind." Even without such, the coordinator knew - as well as his supervisor - the appropriate course of action; already his superior officer was dialing the Security Division requesting emergency response to a ship named "Lycia" which, now, sat still, venting atmosphere in the middle of the Port Expedition trade station constellation.
After several minutes, his supervisor finally called-out over the stillness of the traffic control center: "Security Division are scrambling assistance, but they're holding back for a few minutes due to the recent elevated secur—"
The traffic control center suddenly became brilliant, white, and illuminated by the screen high above that sat focused on Lycia; the screen projected white nothingness - a nothingness which remained for what, the coordinator believed, was the longest six seconds in his lifetime. Even so, as the illumination began to fade, the disastrous calamity made itself clear. Situated where once sat the NAVOS Ultra Large Freight Carrier was an ever-expanding halo of blue-white ferocity, at the center of which sat a broiling froth of a bauble - toiling and turning in the vacuum.
"We've got debris inbound!" shouted a nearby coordinator.
"Where's it headed?" the traffic control supervisor barked, rushing to the telemetry console, nearly flinging the young officer from his seat only to answer his own query. "The shit has hit the fan," the supervisor announced, "Most of its small - few meters at most - but the blast is still going to shake something fierce. Send out an immediate alarm and get me the Administrative Council liaison on the line, now!"
As the center suddenly became alive, the coordinator continued to stare up at the screen, watching as the thin ring of brilliance slowly expanded, stretching and deforming under the weight of stellar winds and minute, vacuum perturbations. The small sphere of turmoil at its heart - once churning and writhing - had diminished considerably, now little more than a pin-prick of light amongst a sea of stars. He barely stirred when the alarms began to sound across the center, only taking absent notice as his supervisor began barking to the Council liaison to get word out to the constellation - particular ports nearby - to brace for the quaking and possible debris. He found himself unable to look away; unable to escape the fascination at the epicenter of the destruction.
It took his supervisor's sudden slap to bring him to attention. "Listen," the superior announced, "The Council liaison wants you to meet him down in the lobby; they're going to want to know everything you know about that ship. Get a dataslip of all traffic you've cleared today and report to the liaison."
The coordinator nodded briskly and repeatedly, at last forcing his supervisor to release him. Even as he stepped to his console and queued-up his clearance reports, he watched the epicenter projected high above. To the tune of the traffic control center, he watched a second ember fall on Liu Xiu.