Star Force: Earth Evacuation Read online

  “That was the reason we didn’t push further in, but it’s not like we didn’t have plenty of lizard systems rimward to take. Even when we had an advantage that fighting was nasty. The jerks didn’t know the meaning of the word surrender. Rumor has it the trailblazers had to teach it to a mastermind before it finally saw the light in time to avoid getting killed.”

  “What?”

  “A lizard General, more or less, changed sides and brought his army over with him. That’s why we have lizards in Star Force now. All the rest this side of the border died fighting despite us offering them a surrender option each and every time we fought. I never once encountered or heard of one who accepted. They always fought to the death and I don’t expect the V’kit’no’sat to be any different…except that they’re the ones winning and we’re losing.”

  “Is surrender an option for us?” she asked tenderly, then shrugged in apology. “Not that I’m suggesting it.”

  “We don’t have permission to live according to their rules. We’re offspring of Zen’zat. Have you not figured out what that means yet?”

  “You’re saying that even if we surrendered to them they’d still kill us? Every last one?”

  “Yep.”

  “That makes no sense. Why hold us accountable for what someone else did if we were willing to do whatever they wanted us to do now? Why fight and lose more of their ships if a surrender was offered? Are you sure they wouldn’t at least consider it?”

  “As a ruse, maybe. But we have to die.”

  “And our dying is more important than their troops living?”

  “I don’t know how they think, but you’ve seen the images of what they did on the Ribbon?” he asked, referring to a giant space station orbiting Titan that was invaded during the first attack on the Solar System before they tried to go after Earth.

  “Everyone saw that,” she said, referring to the dismemberments and other gruesome forms of assassination they used against the civilians they caught.

  “Don’t expect any different treatment if you tried to surrender. They want us all dead.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Did they make any demands when they got here? Did they demand that we submit to them, turn over our weapons, yadda, yadda, yadda?”

  “I didn’t hear about any of that on the news.”

  “Because it didn’t happen. They’re here as exterminators and we are not their equals. We are illegitimate offspring that have to be exterminated. It isn’t very complicated. We simply aren’t allowed to exist and they’re here to remedy the error.”

  Jenn put her head in her hands. “There has to be some way. Something more than this constant fighting and evacuation.”

  “Dying.”

  “You’re doing a wonderful job of cheering me up.”

  “I wasn’t trying. You’re usually upbeat enough that you bounce back on your own whenever you get stressed out.”

  “Do I? Doesn’t feel like it.”

  “One of the things that attracted me to you,” he said, glancing back at the vid screen and seeing close ups of the various V’kit’no’sat races surrounding the pyramid with multiple smaller ships landed on the stair step tiers and flocks of Pterodactyls flying overhead almost as if they were gloating that they’d just taken it back.

  “What’s the long term play here, Brad? We just keep running…you and I?”

  “And Sarah,” he added.

  “That’s not what I mean. Are we going to be evacuees forever?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Does Star Force still need younglings?”

  Brad looked at her closely, trying to judge her emotions from subtle cues that he’d learn to pick up on long before she’d ever been born.

  “You mean should we be creating more population when we’re having trouble evacuating everyone we have now. You want to start living rather than running.”

  “Exactly. I don’t mind the small quarters and temporary structures, but are we here to move on again or are we here for keeps?”

  “I don’t think anything is at ‘keeps’ stage right now, but I don’t think they’ll be coming here until they finish in Sol and that will take years.”

  “So am I wrong to want to add another to the ranks or would that actually hurt Star Force, meaning someone would have to be left behind that otherwise could get out?”

  “Have you asked?”

  “Asked?” she said, frowning. “Asked who?”

  “Star Force,” he said, walking over a couple steps and started to touch the vid screen, altering the settings into an interactive terminal. “They have active lists to request such things, and the state of reproduction is always one of them.”

  “The what?”

  “Hold on a sec and I’ll show you,” he said, sifting through the depth of the Star Force information net, but fortunately he knew what to look for. “Here we go. Epsilon Eridani reproduction quotas…and quotas for Arrakis.”

  “There are quotas?” Jenn said, standing up and walking beside him so she could see for herself.

  “Recommendations. If we’re overpopulated it’s to let people know to stop getting knocked up, and vice versa when we need more population. Right now we’re…wait, that can’t be right. It’s saying we’re level 5 green, both for the system and the planet.”

  “Green meaning?”

  “Green means more population desired, yellow means our trend is neutral, and red means we’re overpopulated and the babymakers need to take a chill pill,” he said, throwing a side glance at her. “Green 5 is as high as it goes, but that makes no sense with all the extra population being crowded in here.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Checking population statistics,” he said, digging into other databases and finding what he expected. “Continued increase in population for the star system, now at 157% of pre-invasion levels. Damn that’s a lot of people,” he said, seeing the 2.7 trillion mark that also included the Hycre planet, but its population was estimated at only 4 billion.

  “So why do we need more?”

  “I don’t know, but this isn’t a mistake. They’re wanting as many infants as possible.”

  “Do you think we’re going to be here at least another year?”

  “I think that’s a safe bet, but I wouldn’t say for sure. The V’kit’no’sat are determining a lot by how many ships they decide to send.”

  “All things considered, do you expect us to be here a year from now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you expect the V’kit’no’sat to be here a year from now?”

  “No.”

  “Then would you mind assisting me with this? My roommate is no help,” she said with a coy smile.

  “How much help do you need?” he said, with his eyes tracing her outline from head to toe and back again.

  “Let’s play it safe and make a week of it. Think you can handle that?”

  “Once a day?”

  “I’ve had some trouble in the past, and repetition seems to be the key.”

  “As you wish,” he said, tugging her by the waist towards the exterior door, “but my place so Sarah doesn’t cut in. I don’t think I have enough stamina for both of you.”

  Jenn lightly jabbed him in the abdomen, then he grabbed her by the hand and pulled her out of the tiny set of quarters and over to his where they started the process of adding another Human to the Star Force population.

  8

  November 7, 3605

  Epsilon Eridani System

  Arrakis

  “Ugh, what’s taking her so long?” Sarah complained to Brad as they both sat outside the room where Jenn was giving birth.

  “How long does it normally take?”

  “For her, annoyingly quick. I’m the one that spent hours in labor.”

  “Not doing that again?” Brad guessed.

  “Twice was enough, thank you. My part in maintaining the population. Two per female is a neutral growth rate.”

>   “Is that why you did it?”

  “Honestly, the first time was an accident…or to be honest more like carelessness. The second time was intentional, but neither had anything to do with the population. I’m just trying to make conversation so this goes faster.”

  “We’re sitting here talking. Jenn’s the one that has all the difficulty.”

  “Doesn’t feel like it. This is taking forev…” she said as the door suddenly opened and a medtech stepped out, waving a hand.

  “All clear, you can come in now.”

  “Finally!” Sarah half yelled, storming in faster than Brad and getting to Jenn’s side as soon as possible. She sat down on a stool next to the thin medtable on top of which Jenn was laying and put a hand on her shoulder, waking her up. “Hey, you ok?”

  “I’ve been better. Stupid baby was huge, but I got him out. Commando genes I guess.”

  “I’d apologize for that,” Brad said, grabbing another stool and perching next to Sarah as he looked across to the far side where there was a smooth pod in which the baby was now cradled with all manner of nurturing technology within, “but we don’t get any genetic alteration. Tired or sore?”

  “Tired. They had to use a regenerator to fix some stretch damage he busted up on the way out, so there’s no more pain, but I’m tired as hell.”

  “Number 7,” Sarah said, looking at the baby inside the clear bubble top as it squirmed around a bit. “Was it worth it?”

  “Ask me tomorrow.”

  “How long before you can leave?” Brad asked.

  “I’m already cleaned up, but they said I can stay as long as I need to recover my strength. The little guy goes in an hour though, so if you want to have a chat with him…”

  “There’s nothing I could say that he’d understand,” Brad said, standing up and walking over to the pod where the new Human was receiving a mix of atmospheric and patch nutrients to ease his transition into the galaxy now that he was off Jenn’s life support. “No hair?”

  “Some do, some don’t. It’ll grow later,” she said with a yawn. “Hard to believe we started out this way, isn’t it?”

  “My earliest memories are from age 4.”

  “I don’t remember anything prior to 6.”

  “I do,” Sarah differed. “I remember some of the first obstacle courses. The kind we get at 2.”

  “You remember being 2?” Brad asked.

  “Not much, but a little.”

  “A question,” Brad said, looking in the direction of one of two medtechs across the large room sitting at a work station.

  “Shoot,” she said, looking at him.

  “Do you know why the reproduction quotas are green 5?”

  “Because we’re emptying the maturias. All the older younglings are already evacuated and the staff that handles them are either being sent with them or soon will be. There are a couple of Galactica-class ships set up to operate as mobile maturias for the transit, so when they come in and pick up some of the infants we have more slots available. No reason not to use them as long as the system is secure, which is why there’s a population boom request posted. We’re expected to lose a lot of people in this war, so the more we can get started in the maturias now the better.”

  “How long before he goes?” Brad said, pointing to his son.

  “I don’t know. Priority is going to the older ones, but I think about 40% of the infants have already been taken, hence the open slots. As many people as we have here, they can’t keep up with the demand.”

  “Are they trying?” Sarah wondered.

  “Oh yeah. Birth rates have skyrocketed. We’re quite busy.”

  “Just Humans or everyone else?”

  “I don’t know about other systems, but we’re mostly Human here. Second highest are Bsidd, and they don’t reproduce.”

  “What do you mean they don’t reproduce?” Jenn asked.

  “They have queens that lay eggs. Most of the Bsidd you see can’t reproduce.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “I did,” Sarah said, raising an eyebrow at Jenn.

  “How many eggs?”

  “They’re tiny, so thousands, even millions if they want to work at it. They develop outside their body for the most part, which is why they can reproduce so much faster than Humans.”

  “So not fair,” Jenn said, leaning her head back against the pillow.

  “Kiritas are similar, but with bigger eggs, except they don’t have queens. Their entire population can reproduce, which was a major problem before they joined Star Force. Most people don’t realize it, but overpopulation can kill civilizations. The quota recommendations are one tool to help control that.”

  “Star Force rescued the Kiritas, didn’t they?” Sarah asked, trying to remember back to obscure maturia information given to them. All of it and more was available on the public databases, but one had to actively look for it there and she’d never had an interest in the subject matter before.

  “The story goes that the Kiritas sought out Star Force and asked for their help in exchange for whatever they wanted. Their homeworld was dying of overpopulation, everyone was starving and whole sections of Kirit had broken down into anarchy. It was a very ugly situation that took a long time to remedy, because back then Star Force was tiny. Today we’d squash a problem like that in a year tops.”

  “Brad, can I bother you for a lift back to my quarters. My legs are trash right now.”

  “You can rest here as long as you like,” the medtech repeated.

  “I know, but this little guy and me are heading different ways and there’s no reason to hold either of us up. Brad?”

  “Happy to,” he said, getting close enough to her that she could wrap her arms around his neck, then he reached underneath her body and picked her up easily as she nearly melted in his grasp with her head resting against his neck. He could feel her fatigue and knew from personal experience that even the slightest regenerator use left one feeling drained if it wasn’t attached to a supply unit, for it would cannibalize tiny bits of tissue from the rest of your body to repair the damaged areas.

  “If that’s what you want,” the medtech said, getting up and walking over to them. “Thanks for bringing him this far. We’ll see him on safely from here. Do you want him to…”

  “No identification,” Jenn said, knowing what he was about to ask. “Keep it anonymous.”

  “Very well. You’ll be able to change your mind over the next month if you wish and there will be an easy link to your comm profile. After that the birth record will autodelete.”

  “Not my first time,” Jenn said sleepily. “Let’s go, Brad. I’m trusting you not to drop me.”

  “Not a chance,” he said, nodding at the medtech as he carried her out of the room and intended to take her all the way back to their quarters in such a manner, despite that being better than a 30 minute journey as Sarah lagged behind a bit.

  “How bad was it for her?” she asked after they were out of sight.

  “Bad enough we almost had to intervene. A quarter of an inch less and we would have.”

  “Do you know why the baby was so big?”

  “For sure, no, but it was probably a laggy birth switch. There are a lot of parameters the body uses to determine the time, and if some of those are suppressed they have to have the pressure on them build up until the body can’t ignore them, and the longer the time goes on the bigger the baby gets.”

  “What would you have done if it was bigger?”

  The medtech cringed. “Cut it a bigger opening to get him out.”

  Sarah bit her hand, not liking that idea one bit. “Ouch.”

  “She wouldn’t have felt it, but that kind of thing is always rough on the body.”

  “Ya think?” she said, walking away then belatedly turning her head back. “Thanks.”

  “Make sure she eats plenty the next 24 hours.”

  “I will.”

  Four days later and Jenn still wasn’t back to normal, but the fa
tigue had diminished enough for her to do some light running…which then replaced it with another type of fatigue, but she knew that sitting on her ass for weeks would be a bad idea and the sooner she got to doing at least a little training the faster she would recover. The regenerator worked wonders, but it couldn’t give you fitness, only rebuild missing parts. It was up to her to strengthen those parts and get her mojo back, and while she expected to have plenty of time to work on that now that she’d temporarily quit her job for the latter stages of her pregnancy, fate conspired to throw another wrinkle into her life.

  “What is this about?” she asked when Sarah showed her the comm message they’d both received.

  “An evacuation ship is taking everyone from this city further away from the fighting…if we want to leave. If not we’ll be relocated to Corneria individually,” she said, referencing the most developed planet in the system. “I guess they want to clear out this area so they can house more people coming in from Earth.”

  “Why not just use the ship to go get them?” she said, frowning as she read through the message.

  “I…actually that’s a good question. Maybe it’s a ship they don’t want getting that close to the fighting?”

  “Or maybe Epsilon Eridani is getting too full to take anyone else. If it was, they’d have to send people further away and that would mean ships couldn’t make as many trips.”

  “Damn, you’re probably right. So they drop them off here because it’s closest, then…”

  “Then they are expecting this system to fall eventually.”

  “Do we go or stay?” Sarah asked.

  “Is Brad on the list?”

  “I assume so. It said the entire city.”

  “If he is, then we go. If not, I’m staying with him.”

  “And me with you. They don’t say where the ship is going though.”

  “Does it matter? The further away from the damn Dinosaurs the better. How long before we have to decide?”

  “9 hours and 43 minutes.”

  “Shit. I’ve got to find Brad. Why the hell didn’t they give us more warning?” she said, running out their quarters’ door as her legs protested mildly, but Jenn ignored them as she hurried to get to the makeshift training center where she knew he’d be.