The Scythian Crisis

Chapter One

Chapter One

It had been days since the disaster yet everything remained in chaos. Cariad was exhausted. All her muscles ached and her hands were raw from helping with the relief efforts. Dragging the broken remains of buildings out of the mud left by the tsunami, constructing shelters, giving first aid... She’d forgotten most of what she’d done since the alien attack and subsequent deluge after the Nova Fortuna crash-landed in the ocean.

And while she’d worked, she’d been constantly tormented by memories of her techs, Florian and Cassie, and Giesen, the pilot, who had gone down with the colony ship. The first shuttle to arrive from the Mistral to transport the vulnerable out of danger had flown over the crash site. What the pilot had reported snuffed out the fragile flame of hope Cariad had nursed in her breast. All that remained of the ship was a debris field that spread wide across the ocean and a section of it that was washed over with waves.

Sweet Cassie and silly Florian and their unborn child, gone forever. Cariad had mentally berated herself over and over again for allowing them to remain aboard during the alien bombardment. They’d wanted to care for the fetuses growing in the reproduction facilities but it had turned out to be a useless task. The babies were dead now too, which meant the long-term survival of the colony was impossible.

Cariad hadn’t told anyone the fact. The timing seemed wrong. How could she tell the colonists that all the efforts they were making to recover from the onslaughts of fire and water were pointless? Besides, a more immediate and worse threat menaced them.

Cariad rubbed her eyes and tried to focus on the holo that hung in the air on the bridge of the Mistral. Everyone was watching the image in silence. Cherry and Phy had come up to the ship along with Cariad for the impromptu meeting to assess the alien threat. Addleson, the Mistral’s pilot, was also present as well as Anahi and Vasquez, whose disabilities meant they were living aboard the ship while the settlement was rebuilt. Addleson had informed the final attendee of the meeting, Aubriot, somewhat reluctantly, Cariad guessed. The ex-financier had obviously been getting on the pilot’s nerves.

The image of the alien ship grew more defined. Soft edges sharpened up and the blank face of the ship’s metallic hull was overwritten with dark line markings. Whether the markings were decorative or might serve some other purpose was a mystery to Cariad. They looked random, lacking any repeating themes and less regular than a child’s scribble.

The ship’s structure was a simple, smooth crescent, bulbous at the center and tapering to two fine, hollow points. Four protrusions appeared on the ship, above and below, fore and aft. Probably weapons, Cariad mused.

Still no one spoke.

Cariad regarded the half moon shape. This single, strange ship had shot the Nova Fortuna from the skies and brought the colony to its knees. If it hadn’t been for the Mistral, the aliens would have succeeded in their attempt at immediate annihilation.

Predictably, it was Aubriot who broke the silence. “That’s it? Is this holo created from the data collected before the battle?”

“No,” said Addleson, checking a console, “it represents all scanner readings from the duration the ship was within range.”

“What about after I hit it?” Aubriot asked. “What did it look like then?”

“I’ll remove data collected before the ship received a hit,” Addleson said.

The edges of the image softened marginally but otherwise it didn’t change.

“Funny,” said Aubriot. “No signs of damage. No scorch marks. Nothing.”

“Maybe the damage wasn’t detectable due to the range,” said Addleson.

The attack had changed the pilot’s previously relaxed, affable demeanor. He had become serious and grave. But then, Cariad reflected, so had they all. She recalled Addleson and Giesen’s friendly rivalry. Was he suffering from survivor’s guilt? It could easily have been him who had been trapped in the Nova Fortuna when the ship impacted the ocean.

Even Cherry seemed to have lost her spark. She was glum-faced and pale with tiredness.

Aubriot walked closer to the holo and directed the computer to spin the image.

As the alien ship rotated in front of him, Aubriot peered at it, looking from below and standing on tiptoes to survey the upper surface. “Nothing,” he announced when the starship had completed a full circle. “Not a scratch. Strange. And more than a bit disappointing. I was sure I got in four or five hits.”

Addleson checked his console. “The ship received four direct hits and one contact.”

Four glowing blue spots appeared on the ship in close proximity at its midsection, and a green spot lit up at the edge of the right-hand hook of the crescent.

“Yeah,” Aubriot said. “But what effect did they have? None that I can see.”

“Either the Mistral’s scanners didn’t pick it up or the damage was internal and not visible on the hull,” Addleson said. “Those are the only explanations.”

“Are they?” Vasquez asked, his wheelchair moving him into the open space at the center of the bridge. He faced them. “I can think of another one: we didn’t cause any significant damage.”

“Of course we did,” Aubriot countered. “Why else did they run? They’d already crippled the Nova Fortuna. They were winning.”

“Look,” said Vasquez, leaning on the arms of his wheelchair. “One thing we need to be very clear about regarding these aliens, and any others we encounter for that matter: we mustn’t imagine we can predict how they think. You’re trying to comprehend their behavior in terms of what humans might do. Only they aren’t human. What seems rational to you and I could appear insane to them, and vice versa. Retreating when your ship is damaged makes sense to us, but they might have retreated for an entirely different reason. Maybe they sped away because they were bored.”

Cherry said, “Or it was breeding time.”

“Exactly,” said Vasquez. “Do you see what I mean?”

Addleson threw up his hands. “I do see, but we have to start somewhere in reasoning this thing out. We have to try to predict what they might do next. Will they be back, and if so, when? And what are we going to do about it?”

“We have to try to protect ourselves no matter what,” said Phy. “Now that we’ve started to recover from the attack the next step is to build defenses.” She was propping her lean frame against a console, her arms folded across her chest. Like Cherry, she was wearing muddy clothes and looked like she hadn’t slept for days.

“Of course,” Cariad said. “We’re only trying to understand what happened during the battle and what we might be up against. Wait. I can think of a way we might be able to tell if we damaged the ship. Addleson, when it left, was it traveling slower, faster, or at the same speed as when it arrived?”

“Ah yes,” the pilot said. “The alien ship was traveling thirteen point oh-seven-three percent slower when it departed than its top speed as it approached.”

“Bingo,” Aubriot exclaimed. “Its engines were damaged. It was running away. Not leaving because they were bored,” he added, sneering at Vasquez.

The older man glowered.

“I’m glad we sorted that out,” Addleson said.

He took a breath to say more but Vasquez interrupted, “Have we?”

Aubriot bristled, and Addleson lifted his hands, patting the air in a conciliatory gesture. “The question is, where do we go from here?”

“For our own safety we have to assume several things,” said Cariad. “Firstly, we have to assume we didn’t damage the alien ship enough to destroy its occupants. That means that their friends and relations know all about us now, if they didn’t already. Secondly, we have to assume that the ship that attacked us isn’t the only one. They probably have an entire fleet. Thirdly, like Phy says, we also have to assume they’ll return.”

It was a heavy truth but it had to be stated. The alien attack had razed the settlement, and the tsunami that had followed had destroyed the bunkers the colonists had hastily built to shelter in. Though the Mistral carried supplies and medical facilities, it didn’t have room to hold the hundreds of people currently trying to survive on the planet surface. The aliens knew the colony’s exact location. All they had to do was return with a few more ships, defeat the Mistral, and attack the fragile shanty town that had been built at the settlement’s ruins.

Then the last trace of humanity’s first and only deep space colony would be wiped from the galaxy.

A heavy weight settled on the atmosphere in the room. Cariad guessed it was as good a time as any to drop the other bomb. She didn’t think it would be fair to allow anyone to labor for survival while under the impression that the colony might one day thrive.

“There’s something else we need to bear in mind,” she said. “When the Nova Fortuna went down, we lost the fetuses we’d been growing to replenish our genetic stock. Without them, the colony is going to face problems with inbreeding down the line.”

“You mean genetic diseases?” Addleson said. “The equipment in the Mistral’s medical bay might be able to deal with those conditions. We haven’t really got to grips with what’s in there yet.”

“Even if we can treat people,” said Cariad, “it won’t prevent the problems from reoccurring and worsening with each new generation. I could mitigate the effects by finding the optimal matches, but that would mean no one would be allowed to choose the father or mother of their children, and eventually the result would be the same.”

“You mean, even if we defeat these aliens and make them leave us alone,” Aubriot said, “we’re screwed?”

“Not you and me,” replied Cariad, “and maybe not even our great-grandchildren, but in the end, yes. I believe that ultimately the colony won’t survive.”

“Great,” Cherry said. “Just when I was thinking things couldn’t get any worse.”

It hadn’t seemed possible to Cariad that the darkness of the mood on the bridge could deepen any further, yet it did. She regretted giving her prediction. Maybe she should have saved it for another time, though she couldn’t think when a better one might arrive.

Anahi hadn’t spoken. She was sitting at a console, her visor pointing downward as if she was deep in thought. At Cherry’s words her head rose and she stood up. “Can I say something?” She clasped her hands in front of her. “When I and the other project scientists went into cryonic suspension, we didn’t know if we would wake up. We were fully aware we were taking a tremendous risk. And as it turned out, when I was revived I found that I’d lost my sight.

“I wasn’t the only one who was injured by the process. Others never woke up. Vasquez here lost the use of his legs. I think I can speak for him and everyone else who suffered ill consequences of undergoing cryo when I say it was hard for us to adjust to our newly disabled bodies, but we had two choices. We had to decide whether to give up or accept what had happened to us and carry on. Now, I see the parallels with what’s happened to the colony.

“We’re faced with another difficult situation that is not of our choosing. Certainly we’re faced with hard work. However, I believe we’re over-thinking this and complicating matters unnecessarily. The colony may ultimately fail, but we knew that was a possibility all along. We still have the same two choices: to give up or carry on. The answer seems simple to me. Isn’t it simple?”

Cariad nodded. The way Anahi had stated the problem made everything clearer. Around the bridge, the murmured responses came: “We carry on.”

“Good,” said Anahi crisply. “Now we only need to decide the details. We can start with the current state of the settlement.”

Cherry and Phy began to report on what had been happening on the planet surface. Rather than listen to what she already knew, Cariad decided to leave them to it. She wanted to go and see Ethan.