Eve of Destruction

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Nereid, not far from Spung base. 2250, 19:30

“Captain!”

As one of his team members hurried toward him, the STARDOG officer jumped to his feet. “Yes, what is it?”

“We just received a message sent from the larger transmitter. Your plan was brilliant!”

Yeah, I did come up with a pretty good plan, didn’t I? he thought. But he quickly wiped the thought from his mind. You could congratulate yourself until you were blue in the face, but a swelled head made an awfully easy target out on the battlefield.

A chill went down his spine as he remembered the first time he’d heard about the plight of the Andromedans. It had started with a relatively simple occurrence - one of his soldiers had been captured and thrown into the prison block of the major Spung base. But during the first few days of her stay there, she had gathered up the courage to speak to one of the guards, a young male. “Why are you doing this to us?” she’d asked. “What do you gain by acting as the Spung’s foot soldiers?”

Shocked that this was how their situation had been perceived, the youngster, who identified himself only as Ilya, explained that the lizard-creatures had captured the Andromedans’ entire next generation and intimidated the adults with threats of genocide, forcing them into this mess against their will. He was amazed when the soldier said that her platoon needed to hear the truth . . . but he was interested, too. And when the young STARDOG was eventually executed, she was able to slip her comlink to Ilya before leaving her cell. He’d been keeping up the communications with her platoon for almost a month now, and the group had begun to formulate a plan to free the hatchery.

But if the plan was to be implemented, a larger transmitter would have to be acquired by the Andromedans; and this necessitated another sacrifice from Captain Band’s strike team. One of his soldiers had volunteered to be captured and put into the prison block on the main base, concealing a long-range transmitter on his person and delivering it to Ilya. The idea was for the transmitter to be set up in the Andromedan slave quarters, which, Ilya had assured them, were rarely the object of Spung searches. But they had heard no feedback on the mission - positive or otherwise - until this message had come in.

Due to the potential consequences for the captain’s unit if they were found to be helping the enemy - or, at least, the species many people felt to be the enemy - these efforts had to be kept in the utmost confidence. Only his small team, a group of fifteen young men and women, knew that their purpose in infiltrating the nearby Spung base that night was two-fold. First, of course, came their ‘public’ mission - the one they’d been sent here to accomplish. But what no one outside the strike team knew was that they were also planning to check out the schematics of the place, trying to find some way to help the Andromedans free their hatchery.

Shaking his head in wonder at what would drive people to actually steal another race’s children, he turned back to what he was doing - and, for the first time, noticed his first lieutenant standing there with a suspicious look on his face. “What’s wrong?”

The lieutenant looked at him doubtfully. “You didn’t quite get the whole story on that transmission.” Noting the curious expression in his captain’s eyes, he continued on. “When we first received the message, it was a surprise to find that we weren’t speaking to Ilya. The face on the other end of the line belonged to an older male - one that we’d never talked to before. When we began to outline our plan, he looked at us as though we were crazy! I mean, you’d think that Ilya had never told anyone about our communications.” He grew grim. “Off the record, sir, I still stand by my original opinion about this whole business. There was something fishy about this from the start . . . ”

The captain didn’t need to hear any more - he’d listened to the other man’s views on the subject time and time again. “What do we have to prove their story? For all we know, this person we’ve been communicating with for almost a month could be a pawn of the Spung, just trying to get us into the base so they can spring an attack on us. This whole thing could be a setup! How much do we really know about the Andromedans, anyway? No one had ever heard of them before they showed up in our galaxy - at the same time as the Spung. We can’t afford the risk of bringing our team into that base. I say forget about the whole idea, including the prison break, and try to live to see the end of this war.”

Although he knew that some of the comments were typical Uranusian pessimism, the captain also realized that the lieutenant held a very valid point. You could end up getting them all killed, and yourself in the bargain! It probably is best to just forget about it. But deep in his heart, he knew he wouldn’t be able to do that. If someone had taken your son away and was using him to force you into this, you wouldn’t want everyone to just forget about it. And you know you can’t just forget about it, either.

Spung slave quarters, 2250, 19:30

As Radu headed back toward the slave quarters he and Harlan had so recently vacated, he felt his stomach beginning to churn. Horrible stories of the enslavement filled his mind, and as his ears confirmed his suspicion that the inhabitants of the room had indeed returned, he found himself standing in the corridor outside the room, unable to reach for the door’s handle. You won’t gain anything by stalling, he told himself firmly. If someone else catches you standing out here in this uniform, you may very well find yourself headed somewhere a lot worse than the slave quarters! Steeling his courage, he opened the door and quickly stepped inside.

The first thing that struck him was the “normalness” of the room. True, the small points that had tipped him off before were still there, and it would seem just a bit ‘off’ to anyone familiar with the Andromedan style of outfitting their living quarters. But in general, the place seemed much less threatening when it was filled with chattering people just off their session in the palucid mines.

The mines were the main reason the Spung wanted the UPP - palucid was their main fuel source, and many of the gas giants’ moons were full of the obscure mineral. That was where the younger Andromedans spent most of their time; and when there were no immediate causes for battle many of the older community members were sent there, too. You could spend days in the mines, he’d heard; sometimes a shift would be completely forgotten about, and only remembered weeks later. The images he’d seen in holotapes of small children - mere hatchlings, really - who’d been underground nearly all their lives began to flood his mind. I’m not sure which one’s worse, he thought grimly. Spending the rest of my days in a dark pit somewhere, or getting blown to bits on the battlefield by the people who I’ve always been taught to think of as my allies.

When he looked more closely at the group assembled in front of him, he noticed that many of them seemed to have surrounded a single young male, maybe old enough to have just gained adult status. He was protesting something, saying something about how he should have been the one to make the transmission, but Radu couldn’t screen out enough of the chatter to identify his exact words.

“Who are you?”

The strange voice brought him abruptly back to reality, as he turned to meet the curious eyes of a young female about his age. She wore the pale blue stripe across her torso that symbolized priestess-in-training - one day, this girl would be qualified to perform all the ceremonies of Andromedan religious life. But that wasn’t what caught his attention. It was her probing blue eyes - the ones that were focused so sharply on his own.

“M-me?” he stammered nervously.

“Yes, you. I’ve never seen you before, and I know almost everyone in the base. Who are you?”

“My name’s Radu 386.” He racked his brain, trying to think of a normal way that he could have gotten onto this base. “Uhh . . . I . . . I just brought in a prisoner from the battlefield. The killcruiser I was stationed on was destroyed in the fighting, and - and that’s why I was transferred to this one.”

“Oh,” she said, still sounding a little suspicious. “Well, I’m Cira 218. It’s a pleasure to have you join our community.” As though she realized that the required statement of welcome was not exactly appropriate for these surroundings, her face suddenly hardened. “Hah! This is a pretty pitiful excuse for a community, if you ask me. Almost two hundred of us confined to a few little rooms? Having no chance to do the things that we would normally do to fill our day - not even any time allotted for morning prayer? This is pathetic. Frankly, I’d do anything to be able to get back to the way we had it before we ever met those abominable creatures.”

“Uhh . . . shouldn’t you be careful about what you say in this place?” He had visions of the Spung coming in and sending both of them off to the torture chambers for such traitorous talk.

“Are you insane? They can’t hear us in here! And even if they could, the Spung on this base don’t care about slave talk. They know that the hatchery’s far too heavily guarded for us to organize a platoon to go in and retrieve it.”

“The hatchery’s here?” Radu was astounded. Not only had he and Harlan been transported to a Spung base, but they’d been transported to the Spung base. Well, at least you know where you are now, he thought. Although it’d been deserted soon after the war ended, the main Spung base on Nereid (one of Neptune’s smaller moons) was still very much in existence during his time. This was the base that held the Andromedan hatchery - the focal point of this entire conflict.

“Yes, the hatchery’s here. It’s not any big secret - the Spung aren’t trying to hide the fact from us. But you should see the corridors near it! During the day, it’s impossible to even get close to that section of the base, the security is so heavy. They even have a few guards on it during the night - and when something gets to that state, you know you don’t stand a chance of getting a platoon in there.”

Radu nodded. One of the details that had always stood out to him when his group had been learning about the war was the fact that the Spung had basically abandoned all security procedures on this main base once night fell. They left a few guards out, enough that an Andromedan battle platoon wouldn’t be able to make it far without being detected. But after the majority of the slaves had been shut into their quarters for the night and the Narya had been given their nightly assignments, much of the base was left deserted as the Spung barricaded themselves in their rooms. The way that his instructor had put it was, “You would have thought that they believed we would go in and throttle them with our bare hands . . . ” Not that the idea didn’t occur to many, but the security was too tight to allow a large group to move around undetected, and no one would have been foolish enough to try and carry out a plan alone.

In fact . . .

Not even noticing that Cira was still talking, Radu cut her off in mid-sentence. “How many, exactly, is ‘a few guards?’ ”

“Literally? Not many. I think that a unit with one good fighter would be able to make it aboard if we could make it there . . . but there are security guards posted all through the corridors, specifically on the lookout for battle platoons.”

Radu was astounded - the solution was so simple, he didn’t see how anyone could have missed it. “W-well, if there are so few people, why don’t we just organize a small group - maybe two or three? They wouldn’t be as easy to detect, and they’d be able to take care of the guards easily once they got there. If someone could set the controls to cloak the ship and send it out into space, maybe we could find some way to send out a transmission to some of the other bases - tell them that the hatchery was safe. All over the system, we’d be able to turn against the Spung. It’d be an empire-wide rebellion!”

Cira stared at him as though he’d suddenly grown an extra head. “A group of two or three? Are you insane? A small group like that would never be able to accomplish anything!” The argument had caught the attention of some of the room’s other inhabitants now, and Radu felt himself starting to blush as he realized that a crowd was beginning to form around them. Ignoring them, Cira continued her tirade. “You know as well as I do that individual endeavors have never proven to be successful - what in the Great Spiral Galaxy were you thinking?”

The girl’s monologue was suddenly interrupted as one of the older community members cleared her throat. Seeming to realize that she’d been speaking entirely too loudly, Cira turned back to Radu with an embarrassed expression and began stammering as she tried to come up with a change of subject. “You - er, you may want to designate your sleeping quarters now,” she said finally. “If you don’t do it soon, you’re going to find yourself groping around in the dark - the Spung cut the lights in here a few hours before they go to bed. Remember, they don’t think we’re very intelligent, and they know that dim lighting calms most primitive creatures.” At Radu’s blank expression, she threw up her hands in disgust. “Just don’t say I didn’t try to warn you!” With that, she turned and walked off.

Shrugging, Radu headed toward the sleeping mats. He paused for a moment, though, as an all-too-familiar sight caught his eye. A few young adults, maybe two or three years older than him, were talking and laughing - completely ignoring the outsider who was watching them. As he looked closer, Radu realized that this was the same person who’d been making the fuss about the transmission when he first entered the room. This guy certainly has some guts, he thought, a bit surprised at the respect that he already found himself feeling for the stranger.

He’d found it mind-boggling that the young community member had dared to stand against the majority. But he’d also assumed, without any real visual proof, that there had been others beside him. It was inconceivable that someone would try to hold a position like that on their own. And the more he watched, the more he was sure that this stranger held a position similar to the one that he himself had held in his own community. The outcast. The misfit. The one that never heard more than partial conversations from groupmates that fell silent as soon as you came into the room. He was causing that commotion . . . alone? Without anyone to back him up?

As Radu pictured the scene again in his mind, he confirmed that the young rebel had indeed been standing alone - an action that would never have occurred to most of his species. Where does he get the courage to do that? he thought, shaking his head in amazement as he turned the corner.

What he had failed to notice was the other outcast’s reaction to his attempted persuasion of Cira. How he had been nodding, agreeing, with every word he said . . .

Nereid, not far from Spung base. 2250, 21:45

“All right, team,” the captain was saying now, “let’s review the plan. Once we get inside, you four are going to head off with Lieutenant Akar to check out the design of the base and see what would be the most productive way to do what we need to do.” He turned to the others. “The rest of you are coming with me. We’re going to take care of those prisoners.”

He took a last look at his assembled crew; proud, eager young men and women, some of them not even old enough to have graduated Starcademy under normal circumstances. How many aren’t going to make it back out tonight? he was surprised to find himself thinking. He quickly forced the question out of his mind. To survive a battle, you needed to concentrate on the positive. Focusing on the negative was as good as making a death-wish.

“According to our plans, we’re inside the base by 22:00,” he said finally. “Let’s go.”

Spung slave quarters, 2250, 22:00

Radu sat up, suddenly wide awake. For possibly the hundredth time, he tried to assure himself that he’d just been having a crazy dream, that he was safe in his room on the Christa instead of inside the slave quarters of a huge Spung base . . . but once again, his feelings of relief were dashed as he realized that it hadn’t been a dream. He was still in the base.

But as his initial terror faded and he decided he was ready to attempt sleep again, something caught his attention. Two voices - one vaguely familiar, the other strange, and with the canned quality that suggested it was emanating from a comlink. Curiosity conquering his fear, he got to his feet and headed toward the sound of the conversation.

“I tried to get permission to make the transmission tonight,” the familiar voice said angrily, “but they said I didn’t have enough seniority to use the larger transmitter - completely ignoring the fact that if it hadn’t been for me, they would never have received the transmission in the first place!” As Radu got closer, he was able to place the voice. It belonged to the headstrong young male who’d been causing the uproar earlier that afternoon. “I’ve been pushed aside my whole life because of this independent streak,” the stranger continued under his breath. “But haven’t I finally proven that it’s good for something? I mean, if I had been able to find someone to help me, we would have freed ourselves by now!”

“Well,” the voice from the comlink said, “we were relieved that the mission to get you the transmitter was successful, but from the way that other person responded to the plan, it didn’t seem as though there were many people willing to help you.”

Radu’s eyes narrowed as he got a closer look at the device itself. He’d seen the design before - it was a small instrument, voice-only transmission, meant to be activated by hand and clipped inconspicuously to the user’s collar. Its intention was to allow its wearer to carry on a communication without it being obvious . . . in fact, as Radu listened, he fancied he could almost hear the footsteps of the man on the other end, as if he was hurrying down a corridor while simultaneously transmitting the message, trying to be inconspicuous.

But what had caught Radu’s attention was the basic look of the device itself - it was a STARDOG design. What would one of my people be doing with a STARDOG’s comlink in the middle of the war?

“Ilya, you left the door of the prison block unlocked, didn’t you?” the voice was saying now.

“Of course I did - I’ve left it unlocked every night since we first came into contact,” the Andromedan said, seemingly oblivious to the fact that his young listener’s mouth had fallen open in utter astonishment.

Out of all the rumors, all the stories that had circulated among his groupmates when Radu was younger, he never would have fathomed something like this. His amazement had been growing with every word the stranger spoke - from the moment when he was criticizing the way the other community members acted toward him to the point when Radu realized that he was actually watching a secret transmission to the STARDOGS - the other side of the conflict. “He’s a traitor . . . ” he whispered incredulously.

A traitor? The other side of the conflict? he realized, amazed at what he had just caught himself thinking. But . . . but the planets in the UPP are our people! A sick feeling began to form in his stomach as the situation he was in became clear to him. If he were trapped here forever - although that thought alone made a chill run down his back - he’d be caught between two different sets of beliefs. True, the adults in the world he knew did accept the UPP as their allies. But they still felt a certain hostility toward them, an almost innate cautiousness that he knew he would never be able to imitate. He shuddered at the thought; yet another trait setting him apart from his own people.

The idea that a member of his species, the most by-the-book group in the universe, was willing to risk everything because he thought his own unique way of thinking could provide a way to free his people from their enslavement . . . Radu couldn’t imagine where anyone with the same independent streak that he himself had been so ridiculed for could have acquired the confidence needed to do such a thing. Sure, I was trying to get the others to see that there was a way to free the hatchery, he thought guiltily, but when Cira started to get angry, I backed down right away. He could tell that the one he was watching wouldn’t have backed down - and once again, he wondered at the enormous amount of courage it must take to stand alone against an entire community. He hadn’t been able to do it. But Ilya had been doing exactly that when Radu had first come in.

When he realized that Ilya had continued talking, he forced himself to focus back on the conversation unfolding before him. I need to find out more about this guy, he vowed. In just a few seconds, he’d developed not only a stronger sense of respect but the beginnings of a genuine liking for this strange person.

“Captain, where are you?” Ilya was asking now.

“We’re in the base with you. We’re planning to hit the prison bay first, but I sent out a smaller group to check out the schematics of the place and see which would be the best way to . . . ”

“What?” A look of horror was growing on Ilya’s face. “You can’t - not tonight!” As if he suddenly realized that he sounded panicked, he paused to collect himself again. “It’s just - just that I think I might have finally found someone to back me up. And if we’re successful, if we get the hatchery out of here . . . just trust me. You would not want to be here when that news got out.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, you’ve been in battle. You’ve seen the way battle platoons are . . . would you want to get caught up in the middle of one with no way out?”

The abrupt silence on the other end suggested that this STARDOG captain knew what Ilya was talking about. “I see your point,” he said flatly. Abruptly, he added, “Sirius out.”

“No - you need to listen to me!” Ilya said frantically. As he heard the ‘click’ that meant the comlink had been powered off on the other end, he shook his head and then buried his face in his hands. “They don’t understand!” he muttered. “They don’t understand the danger they’re in!”

Corridor in Spung base, 2250, 22:00

As the captain shut off his comlink, he felt a huge lump settling in his stomach. He knew that he shouldn’t have cut the young Andromedan off like that, but he needed to think this business over before he did anything to change his unit’s plans.

Yes, he had seen the Andromedans in battle before, and the sight was one that would forever remain in the back of his mind. As a matter of fact, Ilya was the first member of the species the captain had seen that acted rational - the only one that seemed at all sane.

However, despite the misgivings - the guilt - he felt at bringing his team into a base where there was the slightest chance of being caught in the middle of an Andromedan war platoon, he knew that he had to be realistic as well. The logical part of his mind was telling him that if Ilya had been telling the truth, that he’d been trying to find someone to help him this whole time, it was highly unlikely that a potential assistant had just fallen out of the sky.

I can’t tell Lieutenant Akar about this, he thought. I don’t know how much more of his pessimistic theories I can take! And at any rate, I have to be reasonable. We’re already in the base, he considered. Do I really want to bring my team this far and then just turn around and give up?

We’re going to complete this mission, he told himself firmly. Just remember what it is we’re fighting for.

“Captain?” Akar’s voice suddenly brought him back to reality. “Are we ready to split up?”

Forcing himself not to let his tumultuous thoughts show on his face, the captain rummaged through his pack until he found the roughly sketched map that had been compiled from Ilya’s loose description of the base.

This wasn’t the first time he had studied the map, but he had harbored a secret hope that once they were inside the base itself the strange corridors and sub-corridors shooting out from every direction would make a bit more sense. No such luck. The place was absolutely enormous, and seemed deliberately designed to be confusing. This point made more sense, of course, if one considered that there were two large groups of people - the Andromedans and the prisoners - meant to be secured within the base’s walls.

“As near as I can figure,” the captain said cautiously, “we’re right about here. The Spung living quarters are roughly at the end of this wing, near where we came in. The slave quarters are down at the far end of the corridor, and the prison bay is somewhere in between.” He handed the map to Akar. “We meet back here once you’ve gotten an idea of the best way to maneuver through this place. Expect to head back to our base in about an hour. Good luck.”

Click here for Part 3 of Eve of Destruction