9 Tales From Elsewhere 3 by 9 Tales From Elsewhere

Author:9 Tales From Elsewhere [Elsewhere, 9 Tales From]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bride of Chaos
Published: 2015-05-12T22:00:00+00:00

CHILDREN OF SACRIFICE by Jim Lee

Wormhole technology came less than 150 years after the first crude human ventures into space. It opened virtually the entire galaxy to hole-punching scientists and their swarms of robotic survey-drones. But operational realities, especially the Time Incongruity Factor, put frustrating limits on manned travel.

These restrictions slowed, but never stopped, development of the Trans-Solar Colonies. The outward push, inevitable from the day the first habitable world was located, was shaped by the strangely incomplete and yet profound isolation the TIF enforced on each new world. And so humanity advanced, in fits and spurts, hopping from one earth-like world to the next and then the next.

Few people thought about this much—these were simply the rules by which the wormhole game was played. Fewer still, by far, saw any reason for concern.

Then the alien moonship came gliding past the local Oort Cloud and the outer planets of Alpha Carinae. Curious, but not suspecting it was more than a natural oddity, the colony on Zahir’s Planet directed two patrol craft to investigate.

They were the first human ships destroyed, but hardly the last. For five days, the rest of humanity did what it could to help—sending a stream of combat-drones and automated supply vessels full of arms, ammunition, spare parts and medical supplies into every outbound hole which reached the Confed’s most distant member.

In return, a series of info-drones carried back words of thanks and increasingly dismal battle reports.

The one thing Zahir’s Planet needed most, its sister colonies and the distant homeworld could not provide.—all but one, that is. Surabhi was barely close enough to pull it off—and they had one old colonizer ship in reserve there.

It was taken over, given a hasty overhaul and crammed full of equipment. Supplies and the precious cargo were added; a crew was picked. Colonial defense gave the old ship a brave new name and hurried it to the mouth of the Alpha Carinae hole.

The shipload of young heroes fired up its fusion drives and disappeared behind the well-marked event horizon. It a galaxy-striding neutral observer had been possible, said super-being would’ve seen the rescue ship reappear, a split second later and almost 20 light-years away, to play its key role in the first all-out space war in human history.

That was one perspective. But the view from aboard the S.S. Hakata Bay was quite . . . different.

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Celeste Luang moved from one set of readouts to the next, mechanically running through the pre-insertion checklist they’ve shoved into her hand. Like her crewmates, she was a combat pilot and a volunteer. There were only eleven of them, so all would be spending numerous shifts like this, tending the irreplaceable cargo. But Luang wished this shift had found her in the fighter bay, on the bridge or even at one of the engineering stations. This place, for reasons she could hardly express, made her uneasy.

She moved to the intercom and waited. Like her crewmates, she was young and unattached—this was a dangerous, one-way mission. She was

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