:: 16.10.2003 ::
Chapter One
Colonel Damar Paktu loved the city lights of the Hiigaran metropolis.
New Tiir, as it was christened, was the most luxurious city ever built in the universe, as well as the largest. After the Landfall, dozens of alien races had helped to rebuild the cities of Hiigara. Most of the old Imperial Taiidani architecture was still up, which had allowed for instant colonization, but the New Daiamid had ordained that its own cities, starting from scratch and built in the old Kushan way, had to be built. With only five hundred thousand living members of society, the building of major cities would have been all but impossible without outside intervention, and those aliens who had assisted in building the towering skyscrapers of New Tiir and other cities were allowed to stay.
Looking around the hovertram, Damar saw that this cultural melting pot was still present. Most of the people in the vehicle with him were actual Hiigarans, but a surprising number were of other races, like I'ao, Corporate, and even the occasional Taiidani Republican, though there was many a Hiigaran that felt uncomfortable around these last aliens.
He sighed. It was the year 147 AHL, and the number of Hiigarans had amounted to almost that many millions. No longer were they a fledgling government struggling to survive in a harsh universe, but a strong member in the Galactic Council, with a voice that was heard.
They'd begun to settle on the other five planets in the Hiigaran system, as well as scientific outposts on the darkest moons in the sector. Unfortunately for them, most of the worlds of the galaxy had already been colonized by other races during and before their three millennia-long exile. By then, only a smattering of moons and planets were left, but the Hiigarans had accepted these worlds with much grace; after all, even though they'd only really wanted one planet out of the hundreds of thousands of habitable ones in the galaxy, they had been smart enough to diversify their population. An overcrowded planet became a decadent planet, and such Hiigara was not.
They were an increasingly larger and enlightened race.
And a powerful military force.
As a Navy officer, Damar only felt pride towards the constant military build-up over the past century and a half, and their forces had amassed to several hundred Carrier groups.
For fear of extinction, and finally under a strict government, the dissident Turanic Assembly was smart enough not to antagonize the Hiigarans.
The Taiidani Imperialists had not attacked them in years, though Damar was not the only one who knew that their enemies were far from silent.
During what became known as the Kadeshi Crusade, the Protectors of the Garden had finaly made peace with their long-separated cousins and had been repatriated into their own people. Since all the physical vestiges that had made the Kadeshi look different to the Kharakid were environmental, not genetic, the general population of Kushan descendants were practically indistinguishable regardless of their roots.
As for the T-Mat, well…they were the galaxy's bully, and they defended this title violently. The Colonel was not old enough to fully remember the bloody strife between his and their race, but the toll on both sides was catastrophic. The Bentusi had finally managed to pacify them, but not before they destroyed a large portion of the Hiigaran fleet.
As the hovertram arrived at the terminal stop, Damar expunged these memories from his head; such were not healthy things to think about. Especially not on nights like this one.
He'd received the message while on shore leave. Much as he had been enjoying the sands on the beaches of Kianta, a predominantly X'n colony, he could not afford to pass up this most important call to duty. The message had read simply, "Unleash Mind," which would have sounded like gibberish to anyone else. In fact, everyone else apart from himself, and sixty other handpicked individuals who'd received the same message.
He walked off the hovertram as it lowered to a stop on the streets of New Tiir, and walked through the massive dusk-cloaked city. To anyone who didn't live on Hiigara or any other world like it (worlds the Galactic Council had proclaimed to be Prime Worlds, as to their level in technology and standard of living; only twelve worlds came under such a category) the streets might have seemed overwhelming at first.
He was currently on the "ground level," at the foot of the huge buildings that almost eclipsed the sky. Since all transports were hover-based, there were no vehicles on this level, so one could walk pretty much anywhere unimpeded, except by the crowds of other people. Small private businesses, green grocers, Laundromats, and other miscellaneous minor yet essential businesses, were staged here. These were cheap livings for their custodians, but enough of the affluent community of Hiigara lived down at "ground level" to prevent its deprecation into slums. Another plus for this Prime World.
About twenty stories above him was a massed set of interconnected walkways, suspended in the air with no visible foundations. They spider-webbed and connected all of the buildings together in one mid-air boulevard. It could be accessed by the ever-present turbolifts that jutted out of the ground every fifty meters or so. As most buildings were at least sixty stories high, there were several of these levels, and the result was that little sun happened to filter down onto ground level; the streets were currently illuminated in garish fluorescence.
He worked his way through the crowd to reach his target building; the sign over the doors stated "Juraan and Co. Advertising," but he knew better. He passed through the automatic doors, and into a considerably quieter lobby. No one else was in here with him…in fact, there wasn't anything at all. It was a large, empty room. He'd have stuck around to see if his voice produced an echo, but he was too old for that and didn't have the time.
At the far end of the room was a trio of turbolifts. From his information, he picked the right one. He walked up to it and pressed the down button. The door opened after a pause, and an old attendant stood inside, stiffly standing. Damar gave him a slight nod as he entered, and the old man said, "Going down, sir? There's no basement."
This was it. Speaking the words from memory, he recited, "That's a shame. I heard this place had a gym where I could unwind."
The man smiled and nodded. With the turbolift doors closed, he procured a datakey and ran it across a section of the wall just below the buttons for the floors. A hatch popped open from the supposedly solid oak surface, revealing a single button.
"SUB 247"
The attendant pressed it, and the turbolift began barreling down into the earth. When Damar supposed they were about fifty floors down, the old man brought up his hand to his face and pulled. The fake face flapped off his real skin, and dropped to the floor. Underneath, his face was much more stern and rectangular, with a strong chin and hard eyes. He even straightened up to his full height to complete the transformation.
He rubbed his face and neck as he spoke to Damar. "Thank God you're the last one. That damn facemask was killing me."
Damar frowned. "I didn't think such disguises were required in Fleet Intelligence."
The agent shrugged; Damar assumed that the agent never smiled. "All part of the guise we're trying to set up, Colonel Paktu. No one can suspect in the slightest what we're doing."
That was all they said to each other for the trip, and after a while they came to a stop. The doors opened into a room that smelled sickly sterile. There were scientists of every kind buzzing around the room in lab coats, tending to consoles and microscopes. Damar wanted to see what they were doing, but the nameless agent behind him that followed pushed him forward.
They walked past all of the experiments and turned to the left, down another corridor. At the end was a small door flanked on each side by a guard that looked as if it were carved out of stone. Both of them gave Damar a close look as he walked up, but they opened the door for him, letting him pass into a massive conference room, with sixty men and women (all Hiigaran, Fleet Intelligence never allowed members of any other race into their folds, as was the case in most governments,) standing around the table, in loud conversation with each other.
Damar looked around the room, and found the person he wanted in conversation with someone in military garb, a General, from his rank patches. He walked up closer to her, and she took notice. She smiled warmly, and raced up to give him a hug.
"It's good to see you again, little brother," she crooned.
"And you as well, Sari," he replied amiably. "Tell me, is this what I think it's about?"
His sister's soft smile slowly faded. Only a few years his senior, Sari Paktu was one of the heads of Hiigaran Intelligence's biomedical corps. It was she who had allowed him to be a part of the meeting; he was the only one in the room who was neither an Intelligence officer nor an Intelligence liaison to the Navy. As children, the two of them had been very close, and even now, though they worked in completely different wings of the military, their bonds were still as strong as ever.
"It appears that way," she responded. "You're lucky I can pull strings in the department; they wouldn't have allowed me to tell you anything on the outside, and I hate keeping secrets from you."
He nodded, she really loved him.
Their reunion was cut short when a tall, ancient man stood at the back of the room, loudly clearing his throat. The seats were assigned, and he looked for the one with his name on it. He plopped himself into his seat and found himself sitting next to two other Navy officers, an Admiral and a General. His rank made him feel very junior at this meeting, but apart from the odd group of hackers sitting across from him, who could easily have been in their teens, he was the youngest person in the room.
The tall man introduced himself, and jumped right into the business at hand. "As most of you know, I'm Kersin Naabal, Director of Fleet Intelligence. I would like to welcome all of you to this conference of the most important nature."
He picked a small device from his black uniform's breast pocket, and pointed it away from his audience. It activated a holoprojector behind him, which displayed a hologram of who had become known as the Guide of the Kharakid.
"Karan Sjet'sa," he began, "was the first of our kind to achieve the state of Unbound. Though we hadn't realized at the time there was such a state, Sjet'sa did in fact become one with her vessel, the Mothership. While our technology was rudimentary, and she couldn't begin to parallel the mental and physical state of more advanced races like the Bentusi, this was our first step into this crucial evolutionary path."
He pressed a button on the device again, and the woman who was Fleet Command was replaced by another person, a man in his thirties. "You all should know Karan Sjet'sa, and you should also recognize this man, the second Hiigaran to become Unbound. Tasiin Limandatt'sa, using Bentusi technology borrowed during the Beastslayer project, attuned himself more precisely to his ship.
"What made him special, though, was that he, for some reason or another, had to Unbind in order to ward off his mental and physical deterioration. In a sense, he was too intelligent for his own good, ladies and gentlemen, and his Bound mind could not take the strain of his thoughts. Though he managed to formulate the principles of trans-hyperspace, a technology that is now in use throughout the Navy, as a Bound mind, he had to complete his project only as a part of a ship, to give his mind free rein. He was the first Hiigaran to display the evolutionary requirement to become Unbound."
He deactivated the holoprojector. "There are over 1200 documented intelligent life-forms in the known galaxy. Of that, 36 are Unbound. Some races achieve this evolutionary step considerably faster, like the Bentusi or T-Mat. There have been planetary reports of some low-technology races that are Unbound, using larger animals or trees instead of starships to free their minds.
"The project we have been working on for sixty years is achieving fruition; we have begun to show signs of success in our experiments to induce a state of Unbound on test subjects."
One person raised their hand. "Pardon me, Director, but did you say impose such a state? How safe is that?"
"Karan Sjet'sa responded well to our proto-neurolinkage technology. We suppose that she was genetically predisposed to evolving into an Unbound body in any event; she probably invented the technology she did in such anticipation. Most of us, however, are not gifted in such a way, so the same technology does not work as well. Currently, with the adjustments we're making, our hundred test patients are under stable conditions; I will show you to them later. However, their minds are not fully attuned to the technology; they have not become one with the computers we have hooked them up to. Fortunately, this is the first group that has fully survived the process, which is cause for celebration."
The Director rambled on about the specifics of their tests, but Damar tuned out for a second. Did he say, first group to survive the process? How many groups were there before them? How many lives were sacrificed to study the technology? Damar made a mental note to ask Sari about such questions later.
He brought his attention back to Director Naabal when his voice changed tone. "There is another reason for calling this meeting. Two days ago, an large, unknown taskforce of ships arrived in Karos, and they stole the Unbound technology placed on the…"
He immediately froze, and stared straight at Damar. Uneasily, Damar also noticed that everyone else in the room was looking at him, partially in fear, as they would fear someone who knew too much.
The Director blinked a few times, and continued. "Ahem, I notice that one of us in this room is not a member of Intelligence. Colonel…Paktu, is it?"
Damar stood and nodded. "Yes, Director. I have been authorized by Dr. Paktu, head of your biomedical department."
The Director gave Sari a sharp look, who merely shrugged, and turned his gaze back to Damar. "No offense intended, Colonel, but unfortunately there is some sensitive information you cannot know about. I will refer to the ship in question only in code. The Unbound technology on the 'Kharak'sa' has been stolen by an unknown force. Since they know where the ship was, we must assume that they know of this project, as well. A recon force consisting of Angel Squadron and the 531st Multi-Beam Frigate Brigade scouted the area once we'd received word, and found that they also sliced into the 'Kharak'sa's computer core and stole all the information it had about the neuro-linking technology.
"We suspect one of the elusive Imperialist warlords, they may be trying to one-up us and our forces by becoming Unbound and outmaneuvering our vessels during combat. I won't lie, people. Whoever stole that technology could prove to be very dangerous. And that is why we have had to accelerate our own research."
He stood up, everyone else following suit. "Now, if you will follow me to the research labs, I will show you how far we've come."
Brimming with questions, Damar followed everyone else out of the room. He had to find out what this 'Kharak'sa' ship was and why it was so important. Yet as he walked over to join Sari, he was pretty certain he could see the Director give him a most menacing glance that said, "Keep your fucking mouth shut."
