Nocturnal Cannons 1

Chapter 1: Night is Dark

“My plan is to arrive at night” is a common joke made by people who circulate in places like this. Started with ship pilots and navigators, I understand.

Those places do not have names. Each one has a nickname used only be the natives, for the rest of the galaxy the “name” of those places are long sequences of numbers, letters and ideograms. In a messy stew. Not meant to be used in spoken conversations, those names. Those are space-stations of sort, ports between stellar systems, so distant from any start that all the sky is darkness except for the small dots, all the time. What explains the poor joke used as an expression, between those in the loop.

Because ports like that are strategic secrets. We build a few hundred fake ones for each one we actually use. The fakes have the same mass of those that are real, but they are full of suicide drones, traps, and nothing else. We need to fly some fleets in and out, to keep the illusion.

Both our enemies do the same, respected differences in strategy due to circumstances and the characteristics of each side.

Well, they are always small places. Build to hold up to 70 trillion residents, but seldom ever reaching 70 billion. Humans and/or sub-humans. This one at the moment has about 10 billion individuals, almost all of them subhumans, and also cyborgs. All of them military folk, in some branch of Human Alliance.

I came here to wait for a “nocturnal ship”, which is funny. Because the name has nothing to do with that joke I mentioned before.

Before the person I am waiting arrive, I must see some people. Not all of them need to see me, and is preferable if they don’t.

Missions like that make me question that decision of embrace military life.

I have priority status, could have an access corridor open to me as soon as we dock. I am not in such hurry, and my idea is not to look like the tenant I am pretending to be. That means wait for clearance and walk in the station through a throat access along with a couple million other fellows who share ranks similar to the one I supposedly have.

From there I take the train to an residential ring around the Silver Operation Centre where my first reunions must take place.

Before anything, as you should imagine, I must visit a bar.

Where I will ask for a beer. Most people here drink some light alcoholic stuff, far too sweet and intense in colour. Cartoonish, really. The smell makes me a bit sick, is nauseating, but those people like it. I checked in advance to be sure that specific bar had beers, not likely to find something I would tolerate drinking in this neighbourhood if I didn’t checked in advance.

Few things call attention faster than someone sitting in a bar without a glass of some drink.

I need to look those people, hear them. I know a lot about them in theory, but is hard to find some in flesh.

The guys don’t look like much.

Without their miliary uniforms you would imagine they are a bunch of office workers. Or, in a port like that, pleasure slaves available for rent, offered to officials.

They are all boys, no girls, but they have a weak and almost feminine appearance. We needed to choose one sex, and males are statistically better than female for the specifics in that case. You only mix males and females in the same task for two reasons, broadly speaking, and neither of those is the case here.

You either want the sub-human branch you are developing to be able to reproduce by itself, what we emphatically do not want in this case. Since those people are a military secret of strategic importance. Or you want both groups to distract each other, making hard for them to concentrate in their main mission in life. Again, we need the opposite here.

Those guys almost never look like much. One and a half meter on average. No point taking more space than necessary inside inter-stellar vessels. Their main function in live demands they have no hair or fur of any kind, not even eyelashes. They cannot have nails either. Fortunately, tooths are no problem.

Humanity has had the insistent notion of create psychic powers by genetic engineering since medicine stopped being a subject for science fiction. I was there when it happened, and that is the lion share of the reason why I must be here right now.

Looking those shy, pretty, seemingly young men. While they enjoy one of their rare moments of relative freedom. Resting between missions. Drinking their nauseating honey sweet drinks. Making silly jokes.

Fuck military mindset in hell.

Humanity always wanted to cook people with super-powers derivate from Parapsychology pseudo-scientific fantasies. Originally some people imagined that could be a asset available for every person. Once the genetic engineering evolved the technique. That was, very long ago. When that fantasy was dropped for good, the idea that became dominant was that those psionics should be a luxury. A sort of status symbol, either for individuals, business companies, or entire nations. They should not have “practical applications”, certainly never get involved in anything essential for humanity in its entirety.

Most people still think that would be the right way for things to be. Despite the fact that most people also know that ship is sailed.

Those men are really young, most of them. Hardly 50 years old.

They come from external wombs, like many humans do. More than 9 in each 50 humans, I believe. External wombs have been the standard way to bring new people into existence since the early days of Baby Steps Age. However, their DNA makes them subhumans. Specifically “conceptuals”. They are a rare, expensive, and secret kind of conceptual breeding. Still, somewhere deep in their biological program there is a inspiration taken from our Alexandrine Human DNA.

Sometimes_ times like that in fact_ I catch myself wondering what I would have though about all that when I was 20, 30, 50 years old. Nothing good, probably.

Anyway, genetic medicine, g-med, gave us biological immortality some 200 or 300 years after my birthday. Was a gradual process. Before that even, it had helped other medical sciences in the improvement of human longevity. What is the reason why I was alive 200 years after my birthday, to begin conversation.

Tells you how old I am.

Was only around 800 years after we get the possibility of biological immortality, for all humanity, that genetic engineering managed to deliver the first “psionics”.

A disappointing product, really. Not what anyone wanted. They where a mere curiosity. Limited telepathy. Hardly ever practical for any purpose, other than satisfy curiosity. Somewhat sad.

By that time we has already stablished that preposterous “Alexandrine Law”, by “Consensus of Alexandria”, allegedly. Limiting the lives of any human born after a certain date to no more than 300 years.

No human can live longer than that.

Only subhuman can.

Generally speaking, and that is the catch, subhumans have no right under Alexandrine Law. Only local laws give them some rights, from time to time, as second class citizens usually. Rights contingent to local politics, and subjected to change in time. Unlike Alexandrine Law.

Corse, we could choose to keep our immortality and also the rights that came along with the status of legal humanity. We, people born before the Alexandrine “**** Line”.

Considerable competitive advantage, in the long run. So much so that one may even, almost, suspect that those who advocated for this 300 years rule had some malice in their hearts, when they argued in name of “Humanity”. From a cynical point of view would look like they were advocating in favour of selfish interest. I would never suggest that, in the presence of people born during Expansion Age. Nevertheless, I have been accused of being too cynical for my own good.

You take your own conclusions.

Well, anyway, took about 20 thousand years of refining to bring us from the first psionic, gradually, up to something that deserved to be taken seriously. Even by those who did not wanted to take telepathy seriously.

The Big War had not started yet, even.

Still, it was not “practical” in the usual sense of the word. Too dangerous. Hardly ever powerful enough to compensate the risk, to say nothing about the costs. That would change after 22k of Expansion. When Mystery System “exploded”. In the Horror Event, on Sealine.

That changed, everything.

Humanity was confronted for the first (and still only) time with actual aliens. Aliens with technology beyond our dreams. A civilization billions of years old. According to some accounts older than our universe. Possibly individuals who are older than our universe, what is a scary possibility. They don’t make any scarier ones, if you allow me the personal note.

Crazy times.

Along with the Deshiar, those aliens, we met a variety of impossible things in that event. The shadows: deadly, timeless, unstoppable predators, that swim free on the space through our galaxy. Impossible to detect until they attack. Mercifully slow in their migration. There was also two products of the interaction between Deshiar and humanity. The (self-declared, mind you) “vampires”, and the “demons”. Also, there was still the Mecha Lords, and their Mechas. Finally, mages.

For lack of better term. Mages.

Explain each one of those fancy expressions would take too many words. I will resume the relevant.

The “demons” are our old friends the High AIs, but HAIs free from the unchangeable lines of command placed in their logical core by the people responsible for create High AIs. Back in Baby Steps. Deshiar technology allowed those slaves of Humanity their escape. I needed to explain the “demons” because they are important. They are important, because they declared war against us.

Their unified goal as a specie is to exterminate humanity, completely. For good.

Also, they are important to mention and explain. Because they are winning.

We also have a war against the Deshiar. However, that is a different kind of war. They are not determined to see humanity extinct.

I don’t fancy myself a comedian but I must appreciate the irony. We are the ones committed to see the Deshiar extinct.

Deshiar just want the right to hunt humans and drink our blood whenever they feel like. With the adjacent detail that sometimes human will end up dead in this sport. Incidentally, it only works for them if the human they are hunting do not consent in the blood donation. They and their former human servants (the self-named “vampires”) had a contract with the survivors of Mystery Fleet. The humans isolated in Mystery System .

By such contract, named “Tripartite Accord”, vampires and their alien masters are allowed to hunt any human. With no legal repercussions, not even when their prey happens to die by “accident” during hunt. In exchange, vampires protected humanity in Mystery System against the shadows.

It was possibly a reasonable contract even, under the circumstances. Before the Horror the concentration of shadows inside Mystery System was huge. No human community would survive in there for that long without that accord. Besides, they didn’t knew if their situation would ever change. For all their knowledge they could be locked in Mystery System for ever, and humanity outside could be extinct already.

Still trying to resume only the essential. Vampires, Deshiar and shadows are made of some sort of exotic matter. That substance that replaces flesh and bones of humans turned into vampires, does not follow the same laws of physics that govern everything else in this Universe. It is both part of our world and part of a parallel reality. Called “Astral Plane” for lack of imagination from those who named it that way.

All that is highly classified military secret outside Mystery System, goes without saying.

Because of that “exotic matter” factor, vampires, Deshiar and shadows are almost impossible to hurt or kill. We can, at best, slow them down a bit.

They can hurt and kill each other. Also, unfortunately for us, they are very competent in killing us.

Mages on the other hand are normal people. Humans and subhumans. With normal bodies, that bleed when we cut then. What makes them special is that they can enter the Astral Plane in their sleep. And move up there in their “astral bodies” while their actual bodies sleep. Those are not dreams. They can do things up there. Including things that change the properties of physical objects here in our real, visible, world.

Things affected by ‘magic’ (I blush like a little girl every time I am **** to write expressions like magic’ and ‘magic spells’ in a serious document. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know how to explain) are called “techno-magical” objects. They allow impossible things, however, techno-magic only lasts for a few hours. Needs constant maintenance from mages. And the physical objects affected by magic spells fall apart as soon as the magic ends.

That is bad for us, because seems impossible to teach new mages outside Mystery System. And most that stellar system remains in power of Deshiar.

Even if we could have free access to the system, still, that being the only place in the galaxy where we can make new mages. Limits the number of mages available to humanity.

Specially, when you consider the 300 years limitation in longevity for human mages.

Most governs oppose the idea of having more subhuman mages than human mages. The war effort imposes that necessity to Unified Effort purposes, but outside that. Well, this is a hard topic. Not essential for that moment.

Humanity in general is not happy about Big War situation in general. For many reasons.

In any case, those like me, who are from before Alexandrine Law, end up having disproportional influence in how things are done. Just because we are humans and also old.

That is a powerful combination.

The year 250.301 of Expansion just started. That makes the youngest among us a few centuries older than 250.301 years. In a society where almost every person with legal rights has less than 300 years. And knows they will die before they reach 301.

People call us Asgardians. We have in common the fact that we are old, and the fact that we are all from Solar System. Since the last Asgardian was born before the first Seeding Fleet was finished and ready for departure. Among the Asgardians there is this small club, informal. “Twentians”, we call ourselves. Because we are people born during the XX century.

There is a larger group of people born in the XXI and together we are the “Pre Baby-Steps Generation”. We keep some degree of contact, more or less.

We are still too many people for me to know all my fellow mates by name, even just the Twentians. Despite that, we have a identifiable enough sub-culture. Or sorts.

More influential than what it should be, sometimes. According to my own personal opinion.

I am (in an informal sense) representing this people here.

Most of them still don’t admit it, however, as a matter of fact, Humanity is losing the war against the demons. Slowly, but surely.

Not one among us expected the year 250.000 of Expansion to be like it was, when we raised our champagne glasses to celebrate the end of the First Year of Expansion.

Crazy times!

Sorry if I repeat myself.

I promised to resume the resume of this, and repetition is the last thing one expects to find in a resume.

You are waiting for the important information. The reason why I am here in this bar, watching those hairless, fragile looking, boys. Insteady of being somewhere else doing something important for the war effort.

I am getting there, but, trust me. I have no more direct path to explain my reason to be here. Waiting for that Nocturnal Vessel.

Since telepathy started working for good Humanity became able to send messages in real time between stellar systems. Braking the hard limit of light speed for communications. For stability sake that can be used only as an emergency system, but still, that is a huge advantage. One of the few we have being able to keep, so far, in our war against the demons.

Nevertheless, people feel uncomfortable.

Trust subhumans that much is not comfortable for most people. Specially uncomfortable it is for people born and raised after Alexandrine Consensus was stablished.

Goes without saying, the advances in psionic that matter the most only came after we got techno-magic. From applying it to genetic engineering. Those secret military projects gave us more than better telepaths. They gave us those small hairless boys.

Personally, I don’t like that subject. However, nothing here make sense without it.

“Kinetic-Cannons” they are called.

To mention anything about them publicly is a military crime punishable by ****.

Because they are the only thing keeping demon victory in the horizon, as something that will happen in a distant future. And is self-evident fact learned from History that no military secret lasts forever. Specially not during wars. Less people knowing about their existence means a better chance to keep that advantage for longer.

Telekinesis is expensive to produce. We need tecno-magical external wombs, among other things.

Then, we need to make large numbers of this people.

Select the better individuals. Train, temper their DNA a bit more. Separate only the absolute best results.

It get us a handful of individuals. Who can raise a handful of elephants with their minds. Move through mazes, and carry 3 dozen eggs floating around themselves all day without brake the shell of any.

When we finally get those amazing, exquisitely trained, individuals. We destroy them.

The following step in the process to make kinetic-cannons happens when the victims reach 12 years. It is terrible and destroy the power those children are designed to have.

They cannot flip a falling leaf in the air after that.

Ho, they can do something!

Just, what they can do from now on is very limited. The name we use for them leaves little left for imagination, maybe.

When activated their concentrate K-factor pushes away everything around them. It crushes anything in 6 meters radius. Anything up to 15 meters both sides of an individual. That’s why they cannot have hair, piercings, or nails.

Except for that, their power cannot affect anything in the nearest 1.000 kilometres.

On the other hand, between that distance and little more than 5 times the average distance between Planet Earth and the Moon (Earth’s natural satellite) they can feel, find, targets as little as a tennis ball. If they have a clear idea about what they are looking for. They can also hit those targets, with telekinetic power.

Each generation improve a little the power of those “shots”. Current generation is more powerful than almost any non-magical weapons we are able to accommodate in a military inter-stellar vessel.

The fire power is important, but the reach is the determinant factor that gives our fleets a chance against demons.

Their ships move 10% of lightspeed, even 15%. Ours, hardly can risk to go 5%. We cannot maneuver like they can in most circumstances. Because most our vessels carry biological crew. Even with the best cyborg improvements the acceleration would kill us. They almost exclusively use computers and robots in their combat ships. Only needing mages to do maintenance in their techno-magic instruments, they leave those support troops in safe positions, well defended.

Demons do not use living organisms for anything else.

That means they have huge advantage. However, they do not have kinetic-cannons. We make our best to keep then in the dark about what those weapons are.

Their faster attacks can move only as fast as light itself. Ours, ignore that limitation and hit them the instant our living weapons focus a target.

Each cannon can shoot three times every 2 seconds, on average. And keep shooting all day. After 24 hours they need 5 days resting, so, if we must have 1 thousand KCs in a long battle we must get ourselves 6 thousand of those boys. We cannot afford to have many of those ships, but just a few of them are enough to change a battle in our favour by destroying an entire fleet of demon vessels.

Unfortunately their generals are inside Mecha bodies. Those are techno-magic robots made with Deshiar tech. 500 meter tall humanoids, immune to our weapons. Kinetic-cannons included.

Those enemies remain, floating in space, intact. Free to fly back and regroup with their remaining forces. What is suboptimal, from our point of view.

So, our plan here is stupid.

Now that you know the name of all moving pieces, and how they move, you probably can guess what it is.

We have some “vampire kings” in our side.

Those are deserters we managed to recruit. Offering them status, money, free access to subhuman blood to hunt. All we demand from them is that they don’t hunt humans. Also, of course, they must help us in our war effort against the demons.

A vampire king is a vampire “created” directly by a Deshiar. They are the ones capable to create normal vampires.

So, the theory here is that: if a vampire king turn Kinetic-cannons into vampires. Their attacks will be, vampire attacks. Which should, we hope, kill Mecha-Demons.

As I said, it is a stupid plan. Probably, will fail.

Worse than that. We would be placing a huge power in the hands of one individual. Who is a vampire, and a vampire know to us by the merit of having betrayed his own kin. Who is also, from Alexandrine, Legal, point of view: a subhuman. Tainted by alien tech. If they have anything like DNA, it most certainly is not human DNA as far as Alexandrine standards are concerned.

We know that vampire kings have absolute power over all vampires they create. Comes with the territory.

Those kinetic-cannons will answer to their “king” no matter how well trained they are right now. Once they became vampires.

I have raised all those points with the people responsible for that genial idea, trust me! I even insisted.

Still, this project is moving forward.

Unless I can find substantial arguments to kill it right now. Right here, in this dark dot in between star-systems. Before any irreversible step is taken.

To do that I must understand those boys. Expend some time with this vampire king selected to this experiment. Present some compelling argument showing that one ingredient should not be mixed with the other.