Ep. 1 - Recalled to IZ

The Chromosome wars

Episode 1 - Recalled to Iz

Prelude: Master’s Apprentice

A sterile laboratory backlit with fluorescent tubes. Walking toward an elderly man in a labcoat is a bipedal robotic frame, stumbling and catching its own balance as it avoids a collection of children’s toys. The old scientist smiles as he looks up from his screen pad, mouthing “Very good” as an electric laugh comes from the robot. The name tag on his coat reads ‘Dr. M Rain.’

In another scene the scientist plays a simple melody on a keyboard, looking over his glasses as he says;

“Repeat after me.”

The robot frame sings back the notes like a bird.

Later, they are reviewing images of the 21st century and the word ‘love’ flashes across the screen.

“What is love?” The robot asks as its head swivels to look at the scientist.

“Love is many things... a special bond between individuals that brings them together.”

“I love you...you... you...” The robot’s voice echoes and fades as the screen is overshadowed with the movement of the planets orbiting the sun, coming to focus on the second planet and its ambulating satellites.

[Title: 3000 years later]

Within a gloomy chamber, two figures are addressing one another. The smaller one is a female, dressed in fluted shell armour except for her exposed head. The other is some feet taller and gowned in a velvet black hood.

“Repeat after me...” A strange voice requests, like the hollow pitch of vibrating crystal or metal.

The female echoes back the hypnotic melody, the passing clouds of the planet underneath them evident in the clear panels of the chamber’s floor.

Nodding its hood, the cloaked being extends a hand toward the other, crystal clear like the floor supporting them. Entwining her fingers into the others, the woman speaks.

“I love you.”

Act I: Profits of conflict.

Scene I – Tortuga Asteroid, orbiting Chronos.

Within the shadows of a simply furnished chamber, a red light began to wink in the profile slab surface of a desk.

Reaching across from his concave chair, Chip Kilst opened the laser relay message, the dancing lights of a hologram coalescing into the face of his Syndicate mentor, a Mr Lamont floating above the desk. After the initial small talk between the associates, Lamont had a request for his pupil, an urgent matter that could embarrass the Syndicate if it were to be uncovered.

Due to his isolation aboard Tortuga Asteroid in the Outer Zones (OZ), Chip listened as Lamont informed him of the escalating conflict between Ares and certain colonies that had been usurped by a religious movement known as the ‘Decussate Crusade’. The Decussate claimed that they, the carriers of a double X chromosome, were a superior genetic being than the Y chromosome remainder of the colony populace. Rumours of ‘chrome’ massacres had been circulated by news relays.

The crusade was now fighting for Parthenos-6, a heavy industries colony that had once been the home of both Chip and his bodyguard, Clave. As soon as the colony was mentioned, Clave had moved his eyes suspiciously toward the hologram bust, recalling silently the bitter-sweet memories he had of his old home colony.

Once Lamont had explained the recent hostilities, he came to the point of his offer: The Syndicate, like the rest of the Zones, had lost communication with besieged Parthenos-6, cut off from some valuable data records they needed to retrieve before either the Supervision Army (SA) or the Decussate zealots should chance upon them.

To make the situation more troublesome the data records were being held by a market controller, a Minister Gao, aka ‘The Hydra’. By holding onto the Syndicate records, he was blackmailing the Trans-Zone Bank (Syndicate) to extract him from the war-torn colony as well as the data. Gao was known to both Chip and Clave, a minor politician that had been indirectly responsible for introducing them together during a murder scandal a year earlier.

Lamont had chosen Chip and Clave to retrieve both Gao (alive) and the sensitive data from Parthenos-6, using their local knowledge of the colony plus their anonymity within the Syndicate’s network to help them extract both parcels as soon as possible.

Accepting the task, Chip noted down the timetable given by Lamont for a division of the SA’s 4th fleet, which would be leaving the Chronos Zone within one Ares rotation (24 hours). He would have to find a pilot on Tortuga in the meantime whom could carry them to the fleet’s launch coordinates before the carriers jumped into the Inner Zones.

If Chip was successful in this endeavour, he would be officially recognized as a Syndicate employee, giving him steady comfortable employment and a guaranteed diamond credit income for the rest of his life.

Clave had other ideas...which revolved around learning why Gao had sold him out a year ago on murder charges, forcing him to join Chip in living on the frigid extremes of the Sol system...

Scene II – Umbra of Chronos/Tortuga Docking Bays

Meanwhile, in another part of the 6th Zone, a lone corsair is struggling to stay ahead of an SA squadron that has been chasing them since they broke away from an inspection blockade. With his focus aligned on the distant umbra of Chronos, Gary Goodspeed (the pilot) called back over his shoulder to Walt, prompting the technician for an update on the glancing hit they had just sustained.

Sweeping through holograph projected blueprints like the pages of book as he diverted energy around the dead circuits, Walt gave instructions to his ‘Ego’ assistant, an ethereal projection named ‘Genie’, to hold the new connections together whilst he work on switching the deflector shields back on.

Warning screens on the console began to highlight the edges of a floating asteroid field, the corsair’s Ego ‘Ed’ advising Gary to be cautious of their drift. Diving under one of the larger rocks before gracefully turning aside to blend into the shadow of another, Gary flicked his gaze from the wandering debris outside his canopy to the scanning patterns on his console. The SA ships had pulled back from the Umbra of Chronos, a dangerous sector of unseen peril for those whom were not aligned with the pirate chiefs of the Blue Star revolution.

Watching the enemy fighters depart back towards their home moon, Gary and Walt were almost comfortable with their escape until a waiting relay light began to flash. Opening the call as they sat in near darkness, an Ohrn pirate chief stared out from the flickering holograph, none other than Chief Nobuno whom they were heavily in debt to. The five limbed creature’s scillia hide waved in colours as it communicated, translated into a crackling voice that demanded they return to Tortuga and deliver their cargo. He (?) had been angry with them since their previous delivery had been damaged.

Assuring Nobuno that the cargo was intact, Gary promised that they would meet with the Ohrn pirate after docking. Once the call had ended, Walt returned from the storage bay to confirm that nothing had been damaged in the escape. However, he wasn’t sure if the corsair could hold together in their next duel with the Supervision Army.

* * *

Ed’s laser guidance carried them into the soft glow of a docking bay, one of many that opened like a hive in the base of the asteroid known as Tortuga. Spider limbed catchment hooks locked the corsair into safety, turning to position their hatch with a telescoping airlock coming out from the surface.

The profile of an advanced SA shuttle held in another ship cradle nearby diverted Gary’s attention from the docking sequence, calling Walt to come and have a look at the sleek design of its smooth shell frame. At first they suspected that some Ares official had come to Tortuga, but re-evaluated the presence of the shuttle to mean it had been recently stolen and traded with a ranking pirate.

Before they could open the seal and leave the craft, an Ohrn guard beside a team of shock collared slaves was waiting to unload whatever materials they had smuggled through the blockade. Tortuga, being composed of aggregate ice and rock, was extremely cold, and the slaves were layered in ragged space suits stuffed with anything that could retain body heat. A fate for those whom were unable to pay off their habitat expenses to the pirates.

The guard’s translator gurgled for the two spacers to accompany him back to Nobuno’s chambers, escorting them away from the activity of the loading dock to meet the tyrant being.

Scene III – Chief Nobuno’s quarters

The pilot & technician were soon led before the large Ohrn chief, introduced into the low light of his cold chambers where mineral ores shimmered behind his retinue of sycophants and shock-collar slaves. Chief Nobuno’s heavy girth was floating within the rejuvenation waters of a vertical bubbling cylinder tank, speaking in colours with the guard that had arrived with them before it composed its five limbs and narrowed a pair of black eyes toward Walt and Gary.

Speaking through the crackle of a projected translator device, Nobuno informed the pair that the cargo had come through undamaged, improving upon their last mission for the pirate chief. Gary laughed off the past delivery as a once off mishap, assuring Nobuno and the rest of the crowd that he and his ship were still capable.

With the mood softening back to small talk, the chief asked if either of them had noticed his new acquisition, a shuttle hijacked from Ares that was now resting in dock. Nobuno had plans to ride on the shuttle within 12 hours, his first opportunity to sit within the sleek profile ship (due to their physical structure, Ohrn have difficulty operating space craft and tools designed for Homo Astra, so it was known that the pirate chief would have one of his staff operate the shuttle).

Both men agreed they had noticed the smooth profiled ship on their return, congratulating the floating Ohrn on owning such a vessel. As they were complementing the encephalopod creature, the liquid contents of the rejuvenation bath were drained, allowing the cylinder seal to rise back into the ceiling. Standing now on his own five limbs, Nobuno picked up the conversation again by offering Walt and Gary another job opportunity.

On queue with the pirate’s words, a door panel parted from the wall to reveal a curious pair of men whose appearance hinted at connections with the Syndicate, an agent accompanied by a stone-faced swarthy bodyguard. Nobuno introduced the men as clients whom were looking for a quick passage to the moon Phoebe.

Both parties introduced themselves, with Chip explaining that they had to reach Phoebe in time to attach themselves to a SA convoy that would be leaving for IZ. Confident that he could deliver them to Phoebe before the deadline, Gary and Walt agreed to escort the duo.

What Gary hadn’t told his new acquaintances was that the unreliable state of his corsair might be too dangerous to complete the job, especially if they were going to return into a patrolled sector of the 6th (Chronos) Zone.

However he did know of a ship that could easily make the journey...

Scene IV – Passages of Tortuga/The Vapour Lounge

After leaving Nobuno’s chambers, the four men spoke further about the mission to reach the departing fleet. It had become evident through Walt and Gary’s hesitant answers that their corsair ship might be too unstable due to the damage it had recently sustained, and their lack of diamond credit to maintain its upkeep.

The passages of Tortuga soon led them into a Vapour Bar known as the ‘Last Cloud’. Seating themselves under a broken ceiling light to remain inconspicuous as the conversation turned to other methods of leaving Tortuga, Gary paid for a round of ‘huff with Walt, placing his diamond over a reading light on the table to adjust his credit before unhooking a ventilator mask from the wall.

The two space jockeys explained that they had seen a craft more than capable for the trip, an Arian shuttle that belonged to Nobuno. Gary had been sorely tempted to take the ship and leave Tortuga before meeting with Chip and Clave, and if they were serious about hitching onto a jump ship and not being shaken apart in the transition to IZ it would be their best option, aside from the trouble it would cause within the pirate colony by stealing it.

* * *

After debating a few methods for taking the Shuttle without gaining too much flak, Gary had steered the crew from Last Cloud’s to the observation portals of the docking area, motioning toward a well crafted shuttle whose hull rippled with a pearlescent shine in the cool glow of service lights.

They guessed that it would be guarded before Nobuno’s maiden flight, possibly low on fuel due to the recent loss of one of Tortuga’s water reservoirs after an asteroid collision. Walt was also concerned that the shuttle’s Ego would refuse to operate itself on their behalf without some official prior consent from whomever controlled it. He could try and remove Ed from the corsair, and plug it into the shuttle’s cortex in the hope that Ed would dominate in the ego clash without being subsumed (split personalities or schizoid behaviour). Otherwise, they would have to try and convince the shuttle’s Ego that they were its friends.

The four agreed to meet again near the docking bay, an hour before Nobuno’s first shuttle flight.

Act II: Leaving Tortuga

Scene I – Clave’s Room/Docking Bay/’Last Cloud’ lounge.

While the others made preparations to leave the pirate asteroid, Clave was also packing his accoutrements. Stripping down his rifle and opening its moulded case to secure it for travel, a thin transparent tablet was waiting inside, placed there by some unknown hand. The sight of it made Clave paranoid that he was being tracked somehow, recalling the odd presence of a man in Nobuno’s crowd that he had caught numerous times observing him for too long with a lingering gaze.

Placing the tablet over the reading light of a narrow bench in the cramped cabin, a holograph recording of a gloved hand traced a stylus over the plate, reading -

“Once you have found the (Syndicate’s) data in Parthenos-6, destroy it immediately! – from an old friend.”

After the holo-note had been read, Clave swept it from the holo-deck to the floor, crushing the glass like material under the heel of his boot to be certain no one could read its contents. He was sure that the Syndicate would assassinate him if they were to discover some outside agency was trying to contact him, just like the factory controllers of the Colonies from which he had escaped previously. Closing the gun case and setting it beside his other luggage, he ruminated on whom the messenger was, and more importantly, what clique he represented in the tangled machinations of the Zones.

* * *

During this time Gary had returned to the docking bays alone, casually walking around the corridors to disguise his real motivation in learning how much security had been assigned to guarding the shuttle. As he had guessed there were two guards, Ohrn; one inside the ship and the other without to oversee the airlock access passage, armed with a modified mining laser.

Feeling confident with this information, he returned to the vapour lounge ‘Last Cloud’, searching the overcast tables for any pilots whom might know more. A small number were gathered around Kenji, an old veteran whom had been employed by the Blue Star pirates for many rotations. Introducing himself to the company, Gary asked if anyone else had noticed the new shuttle in dock.

Kenji nodded that he had, especially seeing as he had been chosen as Nobuno’s pilot for the test flight. Hours earlier, he explained, the shuttle’s ego had been broken to obey his directions (and Nobuno’s). He answered Gary’s questions about when it would refuel and its present condition, warning the inquisitive pilot to stay away from the shuttle, suspecting that Gary was trying to usurp his position as the chief’s shuttle chauffeur.

Toward the end of the conversation, Kenji informed Gary that he had overheard some gossip concerning their mutual friend Walter Stark. The rumour suggested that his (Walt’s) father had resumed command of an SA fleet in the Inner Zones, and was looking for his errant son during the fleet’s tour.

With a final warning from Kenji to stay away from the shuttle, Gary excused himself from the vapour lounge to finish his own packing... and plotting...

Scene II – Tortuga Docking Bay

Reconvening in a passage stairwell near the docks, Chip, Clave, Gary, and Walt reviewed their options for taking the shuttle. Chip had made it clear thus far that he was not overtly concerned with upsetting Nobuno or his pirates in order to acquire the shuttle, however he didn’t want to embarrass his employers by doing anything rash like blowing up the water tanks to cripple the asteroid.

Offering to disable the main systems to trip the automatic switches onto auxiliary mode, Walt assured the others that basic life support would still be in effect. Leaving him to his task, the remaining trio paced cautiously toward the airlock access, well aware of the first Ohrn guard that was positioned close to the portal.

Without warning, all lights around the docking area blacked out, replaced seconds later by the flashing red lights of the auxiliary life support. Objects and occupants of the halls drifted from the floor in zero gravity, rebounding off of one another in confusion. Swimming through the chaos of events, Clave led Chip and Gary directly toward the back of the Ohrn guard, placing a rifle to its bulbous head and squeezing the trigger, showering the other side of its personal space in viscous blue.

Emerging from the panic behind them, Walt and his holograph assistant Genie quickly tapped into the deactivated airlock, giving it temporary power from an energy cell so it could unclamp the gates at either end. Now free to progress down the passage, Clave prepared his rifle to deal with the remaining Ohrn whom would be waiting for them on the other side of the shuttle’s airlock.

Others pried back the gate, using its diminishing shape to cover themselves as Clave raised his barrel, searching through the strobing red light for his target. Breaking from cover, the Ohrn gripped a modified laser to repel them from the ship until both its limbs were sheared off by the quicker gun now in Gary’s hand. Without hesitation, Clave finished the guard off with a deadly grouping of shots, the floating corpse and appendages kicked back out into the airlock corridor as they settled into position within the Arian shuttle.

Seating himself in the man pilot’s console, Gary’s flight jacket spine connected with the synapse uplinks in the chair, stirring a plethora of glow-bug beacons around his position. A voice reverberated through the ship, a laconic tone that asked the pilot to identify itself before being allowed access to the controls. It was the shuttle’s Ego.

Walt had extracted Ed from the corsair previously, keeping it on life support inside a console box. He listened as Gary began to sweet-talk the other Ego, watching a contingent of dangerous looking figures amass outside the access gate. The shuttle Ego was resistant to Gary’s smooth charm, their debate to allow him access making the technician (Walt) increasingly nervous that he would have to use Ed to bypass the obstinate Ego before the pirates reached the second gate. Clave was already aiming at the gate portal.

In a turn of events, the Ego, which had up until this moment identified itself as ‘Slave-2’, became friendly when Gary allowed it to choose its own name. Dubbing itself ‘Telemachus ‘, the craft allowed Gary access to its flight systems, releasing itself in time from the ship cradle to drift away from the lights returning along the bay as they came back online. Nonetheless, another object was floating in freeform, approaching as they narrowly avoided scraping the shuttle past a ledge that orbited slowly before them, overshadowing their escape.

Relaxing his right hand over the thrusters control, Gary kept his crewmates in suspense as the shuttle drifted away from the presence of Tortuga, the same closing gap that had threatened them colliding with the corsair that had been following in their wake, disabling it from further pursuit.

After this, he was free to charge the ion thrusters and send them rocketing out of the pirate asteroid’s range, now on a trajectory course with the moon Phoebe.

Act III: Space Jump to IZ

Scene I –Fourth Fleet, 2nd Division departing from Phoebe

Hours later, Telemachus and Gary had steered them toward the patrolled sectors of Chronos, approaching a small pitted moon that showed signs of settlement against the infinite darkness beyond. With only 15 minutes to spare they had made it to the launch co-ordinates of an SA armada waiting in parallel formation. The larger carrier ships were attracting a flotilla of merchant vessels that would attach themselves before countdown, the wave of the carrier jump engines taking them across the time threshold and delivering them alongside them, across a distance that could take months or years by their own limited effort.

The practice of civilian merchants clamping onto the hull of SA freighters was tolerated, with the help of bribes and the wealth of idle trinkets that traders would return with to the secluded 6th Zone (Chronos + moons), so it was easy for Gary to float out of the shadows and merge with the civilian flotilla waiting for the jump.

Once the final SA frigates had taken position, the buzzard trading ships began to quickly clamp themselves to the hull of the bulky freighters, swarming at prime positions for comfort and an easy release upon their arrival. The shuttle embraced the carapace armour like the rest of the flotilla, the internal panels of banked lights dimming as Telemachus shut down unnecessary power.

A deep continual bass echo began to emanate through the warship they had clamped onto, transferred through their own hull as the jump engines began to charge. Then their senses began to hum, vibrating in and out of focus like a strobe light alternating their being between this world and the unknown. The effect was often disturbing for first time travellers, but the crew of the shuttle were experienced to the disorientating effect of long distance travel.

Fading like ghostly curtains from the lonely orbit of Phoebe, hours of flashing time drew them across the fathoms of space, suspended in their seats as the vibrations weighed down their bodies into becoming motionless spectators of the eerie journey.

Scene II – Arrival outside Parthenos-6

Revealing itself as a protracted mirage of mirrored illusion that jettisoned out of the void, the 2nd division fleet solidified as the stretched images came together. The temperature differentiation of the fleet’s hulls steamed in the warmth of the Inner Zones, falling away as ice particles as though the armada had dropped a diadem cloak behind itself.

Standard procedure would be for the warships to reverse their facing position: the jump engines operated by bending space away from the direction they would travel, making it necessary for the generators to be forward when in use. To protect these same engines from being targeted meant that the vessels would pivot 180° before engaging with hostiles.

Some merchant ships were impatient for the manoeuvre, detaching themselves from the host carriers to fly away between the shifting canyons of colossal SA warships. Gary hadn’t released the shuttle yet, observing the movement of the smaller craft as they rose to avoid the armada from the shadows of the cockpit. There was something concerning him about the speed at which the SA ships were turning, keeping him from launching like the other merchant ships.

From out of nowhere, a burning ray punched across a background vessel, cutting a jagged horizontal line as it broadsided the gunship, the whole effect come and gone like sudden lightning. It was then that Gary realized the fleet had arrived too close to the front lines and were taking evasive actions. In the emergency many of the merchant ships were being crushed against the sweeping flanks of the reorganizing armada.

Keeping track of the shifting elements outside their shuttle, Gary warned the others to secure themselves as it was about to get rough. Telemachus gave updates of their host’s protraction via hologram display, a 3-D model turning in sympathy as the numbers adjusted. Flexing his gloved hands around the control wheel, Gary was hoping they would have enough time to launch after their host had finished manoeuvring.

However, before this could be accomplished the carrier took a direct hit, piercing heat rupturing the armour panels, the great ship tilting under the concentrated force until it began to implode in a wave that was spreading toward their shuttle. Releasing the clamp as he engaged the ion engines, the veteran pilot inverted the ship and kept ahead of the travelling destruction, aware that if he tried to make a break for open space he would probably collide with the other flotsam.

So he remained parallel to the implosive wave that bubbled along the hull armour, facing it through the canopy as the landscape collapsed like a bridge. Responding immediately to an opening through the wall of evasive ships, Gary accelerated away from the ruined frame and into temporary safety.

The mission wasn’t over yet: Walt and Gary had made a deal to deliver Chip and Clave into the colony Parthenos-6. The trailing length of the artificial industrial settlement glowed with distant portals, their blue pricks of light clustered along a great spire as it dominated the scene, behind the arcs of laser bombardments cutting in both directions from the front lines of the Supervision Army and Decussate Crusade.

Going wide from the main engagement, the shuttle wove its way through the free floating debris of ruined ships, side thrusters maintaining the ship’s angle around the tighter passes. With luck and some skilful piloting, Gary had brought them around to the umbrella shaped flare at the rear of the colony, a half sphere of gargantuan solar panels that overshadowed the spire of blue lights.

Asking where he should bring the shuttle in, Chip and Clave released their seat harnesses to come forward and point out any number of available bays. As Telemachus magnified his lens scan of the colony’s surface to help the three find harbour, SA knights and squires were being driven back over the panelled segments by a strange new type of Space Armour, smaller and much more mobile as they swarmed before the retreating Arian forces and cut them down with gunblade weaponry.

The sight of Gary’s former allegiance (SA) being massacred temporarily froze his thinking, before Chip motioned toward a large open bay ahead. Changing course after it had suddenly erupted with escaping gases, Clave alerted him to a better alternative that appeared to be unoccupied.

Thrusters flaring as the craft dipped under the bay opening to elude the battle outside, their relief turned to desperate alarm as something moved alongside them, striking a pose as the edge of its gunblade aligned to cut them down. One of the strange new ‘angel’ armours was waiting in the docking bay with them!

At that moment the superstructure of the colony shifted as it began to lose power, causing the shuttle to wedge itself into the harbour wall after collision...

"The Chromosome Wars"

The Chromosome wars

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Episode 1 - Recalled to Iz