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Trading in Chaos 1: Star Hawk- The Birth of a Ship
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Star Hawk: The Birth of a Ship
(A Trading in Chaos Novella)
By: R.M. Miller
Star Hawk: The Birth of a Ship
(A Trading in Chaos Novella)
R.M. Miller
Copyright © 2013 (R.M. Miller Author)
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or
stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Cover Credit
Copyright: 123RF Stock Photo
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Epilogue
Authors Letter
Prologue
An alien ship slips between the chaos of hyperspace and the dark star field of normal space, one moment nothing existed then the next the matte black ship obscures the brilliant pinpricks of distant stars. It hangs for a brief moment lost in the greater darkness of the outer edges of the star system, as its pilot scans for a specific set of emissions.
The dark form hazes as it transfers back into the color filled chaos of hyperspace, the second planet with it's twin moons continues in it's orbit. The people who live there blithely unaware of the shift of their future to a darker road.
Chapter 1
Landing City, New Eden 2915 A.D
“The generation star ship, Freedom, was the second colony ship to exit the Sol system in 2413 A.D. in search of a new home among the distant stars. After many generations and a few disappointments from worlds that appeared to be colonization prospects Freedom arrived in New Eden orbit. After the initial survey of the world, showed it was capable of supporting Terran lifeforms, the colonists named the small blue colored moon Serenity and the larger white moon Joy.” Droned the cracked voiced history Professor from below her office, Tara finished grading the final test and stretched. By this time in the day she would normally be deep into the ongoing project of her current crop of students, being a teacher who preferred hands on instruction, much easier and more enjoyable than boring class work. Alas, she thought with a chuckle, her current crop of students had managed to fatally terminate their programming project and the hardware it ran on as well. So she had popped a quiz on them instead and judging from the scores she could see how they had managed to fail so......spectacularly. In fact she was starting to wonder how they had managed to pass the exams to get into her class in the first place!
“Unfortunately twelve years after landing the population was brought to near extinction by a disease called Shadow-cat Fever, this native disease was initially dismissed as a threat but underwent massive mutations due to interaction with Terran organisms. It has left a lasting legacy among us even today, the individuals known as Felden. These individuals were caused by a shift in their ancestors DNA to include segments from the native animal known as a shadow-cat Now the popular belief that Felden are a new species is in fact a fallacy as they are unable to breed true, in fact two Felden parents are ninety-nine point nine percent more likely to produce normal Terran children. Although Felden and Terran partners will produce Felden offspring ninety-nine percent of the time, even two Terran parents have a fifteen percent chance of having Felden offspring.” Professor Travis, taught both History and Comparative Biology 101 and often got off topic when his two fields crossed.
Tara herself was a Felden, the term was short for Feline Eden and they made up almost a third of the planets current population. She was one of the rarer Felden's who resembled the Eden Shadow-cat’s coloration, it only appeared once in ten thousand Felden births. A chilly fall breeze drifted through her open office window along with Professor Travis's voice as he got back to teaching history. Tara stood and closed the window contemplating her reflection in the Dima-glass, tall pointy ears, barely discernible blue-black stripes against black base fur, vibrant violet eye's with slitted pupils, and just the barest hit of ivory white from her fangs edging past her upper lip. Her facial features other wise were very similar to a normal Terran, she raised a hand to touch her reflection. It was slender boned, almost delicate, longer than a Terran hand of the same size would be but similar in shape except for the dainty claws at their tips of course. Tara flexed her hand and watched as the inch long knife sharp neon-purple painted claws extended to their full one inch length, her claws were abnormally small other Feldens claws normally reached two inches but had been known to reach three or even more on rare occasions. Wrapped snugly around her waist was the four feet of her prehensile tail like a warm fuzzy sash, now while shadow-cat’s did have a long silky tails theirs were NOT prehensile that was attributed to Terran genes from an ancient ancestor kicking in. Her bare feet flexed against the near-oak flooring, eight toes and the rough pads of her feet felt every change in the texture of the wood as her toe claws extended slightly they were also painted a neon-purple. Her feet arched up sharply leaving an illusion of invisible high heeled shoes, Tara shook her head bemused causing her braid to bounce against her back, that was more than enough day dreaming she decided smiling.
Are you done for the day? Arien's mental voice whispered across her mind, this was the reason that so many Terrans still feared and hated Felden's. It wasn't the visible changes that caused such discord but the internal invisible ones, Felden had abilities that Terrans had firmly regulated to myths and trickery.
Yes, just finished grading the last of my tests. Tara replied grabbing her long coat off it's hook on her way out of her office door. Tara herself was a moderately strong telepath, weak empath, and moderate telekinetic, in fact having all three talents was as rare or rarer than her coloration! Of course her telekinetic ability was only considered moderate due to the degree of control she had over it, in terms of lifting capacity it was minor barely five ounces but she had perfect control of those five ounces no matter how many separate items it was made up of. Truly strong telekinetic talents could lift up to ten pounds, as long as they didn't mind the short duration, minimal control, and the pounding headache at the end of doing it! The biggest fear among normal Terran's was in fact the telepathy, which Tara thought was ridiculous given the fact that the vast majority of Terrans were impossible to read without a strong talent and physical contact. Arien was waiting in the hall as Tara exited the stairwell, her fellow Professor taught Appreciation of Vocal music to freshmen. Tara smiled as she shrugged into her coat and snugged the belt, leaving only the bottoms of her cream harem style pants and a small slice of her crimson shimmer silk shirt visible past its royal purple protection.
“You're acting like there was already three feet of snow on the ground! You do know the first snow fall is most likely months away right?” Arien giggled, her own outfit of smokey gray sweater and skirt of pale blue a perfect complement to her cream and silver coat.
“Bah! You're right it's not cold out but I don't want my shimmer silk shirt getting ruined by errant debris or something. After all the darn thing cost me nearly a quarter of my paycheck!” Tara replied as they headed out of the side entrance. The e
arly fall afternoon sun was like liquid gold as it illuminated the bare limbs of Terran oaks and New Eden silver aspen, truthfully it was a bit to warm to be wearing her coat but she hated carrying the darn thing and it did keep her outfit safe from any unexpected tragedies!
“You are looking dressed up for a Friday at work, what's the occasion?” Arien asked as they strolled down the tree lined path towards the subway station.
“A date of course! Why else would I be wearing a shimmer silk shirt? Certainly not to impress the neanderthals masquerading as my class this year!” Tara snorts in disgust contemplating the recent dismal failure of her students scowling at the remembered smell of burning electronics.
“That bad huh? So who is the lucky man? That hunky bronze Felden from the Orbital construction crew? What was his name?..Brent? Brian?..no it was B something though.” They scan their Ident cards at the gate and head for their platform as Arien continues murmuring names to herself.
“Bishop, his name was Bishop, and no it isn't him since he settled down with a nice Terran girl and they are expecting their first kid soon.” Tara sighs remembering her short fling with enjoyment. Since they had left campus before the end of the school day the station was mostly empty and no students were near enough to eavesdrop on their conversation. That was the last thing she needed to deal with, rumors about her love life flying around campus was a calamity waiting to happen if the Dean heard about them.
“So who is the lucky male then?” Arien asks as while they strolled past empty terminals towards their destination.
“A friend from my younger wilder days.” Reaching the platform they settle onto a battered bench to wait for their train, Tara can feel a small smile spreading across her face as her thoughts turn towards her up coming date.
“A fellow rebellious teenage hacker friend?” Arien's question was almost lost in the whoosh of a passing express train two platforms away.
“Hardly rebellious Arien! We simply had a craving for ancient cartoons and information, okay so maybe we hacked into government and private databases to find our fixes but what do you expect we were teenagers!” She couldn't help but to chuckle at the remembered antics.
“And the definition of rebellious would be what again?” Ariens dry inquiry causes Tara to move from a chuckle to a full laugh, only the quiet arrival of their train saved her from an immediate reply.
“Okay so we were rebellious, but it was mostly typical teenage hardheadedness.” She conceded slipping into a vacant seat as the train began to quietly accelerate away from the station.
“Yup, so your teenage rebel sweetheart?” Arien probed as she thumped down beside her. The few people on board their car were all Terrans, and it hurt as they all moved further away from the two Felden. The xenoplague had decimated the colonists population, the only reason the colony hadn't slipped into a slow death by inbreeding was the emergency sperm and egg bank on board the slow ship Freedom. Literally millions of unrelated individuals had donated to the colonies safety and diversification program as a way to give their offspring a chance that they themselves could not afford, colony ships were not cheap and the ticket price had been enormous. Of course there had only been so many women available to become mother's, so even three hundred years later the total population of New Eden barely topped two million. Only a third of that population was Felden, and almost half of those Felden lived in Landing City so it wasn't uncommon for a Terran to never have met or even seen a Felden in person while growing up. Even in Landing City the Feldens were out numbered by about two to one, fear and distrust was an unfortunate reality for most Feldens it was very rare for it to escalate to physical violence though since only an idiot wanted to tangle with some one who had what amounted to knives on all of their fingers.
“His handle was Bright.....oh he absolutely hated it!”
“Oh? Why did he go by it then?”
“Because it was what everyone else called him, and before you ask they called him that because it was usually his bright idea to do something monumentally stupid. Well that and he had the most amazing golden hair and golden brown eye's!”
“So what is this hunky sounding teenage rebel doing these days? Teaching like you?” Arien's vice was incurable curiosity and match making and her vice was in charge of her brain it seemed.
“Nah, he's working for the Man now. One of the Space Agencies, as a trouble shooter.” Her reply was a bit absent minded. Her mind being far to busy with remembered escapades during her teen years to devote much attention to the conversation.
“Really??!! Did he have any information about that ship from Earth?” Arien demand was excited she nearly vibrated with her need to know.
“Actually, yes, yes he did. It was a courier ship, one that had faster than light capability via what they called a subspace drive. It's apparently a recent discovery and still has a number of dangers involved so it's only being used for exploration ships at the moment. Anyhow this particular ship was detailed to check in on all of the various generation ship's destinations. They dropped off a device they called an emergency message drone and a data dump of all the discoveries since Freedom left the Sol System.” Tara conspiratorial reply was nearly a whisper as she leaned in close to her friend.
“Wow! That is a lot of information! Wait a minute! Why did he tell you all of that, I mean it's going to be public info soon but still!” Arien was plainly being eaten alive by curiosity.
“Well, who do you think they got to convince the Terran data to talk nicely with our computer systems?” Her sweet tone held a false ring of humility even to her and since she was grinning like the Shadow-cat who caught the canary well...
“Oh so this is more of a work date, than a date date?” Arien sounded absolutely disappointed by this possibility she even sighed at the perceived wasted opportunity.
“No, we just hadn't kept up with each other really and after working together on this project well....” Trailing off as the train began to slow for her stop.
“One thing led to another.” Arien finished for her, a matching cat got the canary grin slowly growing on her face.
“I suppose you could say that.” Tara chuckles moving towards the doors.
“Still going jogging tomorrow? It's a free-day after all.” The train coasts to a stop and the doors open up behind her as she turns to give Arien another grin.
“I'll call you in the morning, but I wouldn't plan on it if I were you!” Tara takes a step backwards onto the platform waving a jaunty good-bye as the doors slide shut.
New Eden System, 2915 A.D
Far beyond the skies of the world called New Eden, silent ships sink from hyperspace to scan the star system for new threats that may have appeared since the scout ship had left. When they were positive that the system was still undefended they slipped back into hyperspace and relayed to the massive but relatively fragile harvesting ship's that it was safe to proceed. The massive ships drop into normal space and begin the slow trek into the system from the hyper limit. It would take the leviathan ships almost twelve hours to reach the target planet, it would then take them less than half that to harvest the target of its telepathic population. The crews were already prepping to turn that portion of the population into the ship-minds that were needed to fight their species inter planetary war, the rest of the population would be slaughtered to prevent a future war. The Tri-Let may not have changed much in the previous five thousand years but the war they had fought for the last thousand of those years had taught them to leave no survivors from the harvested systems. The dark ships swam through the darkness invisible except when they obstruct the light from distant stars briefly in their passage, shortly a once living world would become a cinder and the people that lived upon it dead or enslaved.
Landing City, New Eden 2915 A.D
Tara was surprised when her com-bracelet chimed as she exited her train, it was a call from Ty hopefully he wasn't going to have to cancel their date.
“What's up Bright Boy?” she asks moving th
rough the thin foot traffic heading out of the station until she finds a small bench sitting under an Eden Willow, the long limbs and velvet soft needles provided at least the illusion of privacy.
“Change of dining plans Shade Kitten, I managed to snag us a table at Tokyo Revival!” he was obviously pleased with himself and she couldn't fault him, the Tokyo Revival was a new gourmet restaurant in the high rent sector of the city it was also Japanese themed including anime music and pics. Tara could not help herself, she squealed in excitement at the prospect of dining at the exclusive restaurant.
“I sounded like a fan girl didn't I?”
“Well I won't lie to you I heard a distinct squee, so I am guessing the change meets with your approval?” Ty's chuckle is completely masculine
“Of course it has my approval! How did you manage to swing that...you didn't hack their reservations system did you?” Her voice has a slight tinge of accusation towards the end.
“No, but my boss knows the owner and we are currently in his good graces so when I mentioned off hand that we were going out for dinner. He of course has heard the security recordings while we worked on the data transfer so...” He trails off suggestively, expecting her to fill in the blanks.
“So your boss set us up with the reservations as...what? A bonus?” Tara left the evergreen shade behind as she headed back into the station to catch the train to the new dinner location.
“A subtle job well done I think, also it appears that he thinks you're a good influence on me and wants to encourage a long term relationship.” Ty seemed like he wouldn't mind that particular outcome. Tara admitted to herself that he was one of the few guys she had ever been even semi-serious interested in when contemplating a long term relationship.
Trading in Chaos 1: Star Hawk- The Birth of a Ship