Endpoint: Book 1: Day Zero

1

Lost Oasis

As a dark shadow grows long across our galaxy, I know what I must embrace, what I must become.

Ryan McBain

In the darkened crew compartment, caramel skin glowed from reflected light off a data tablet. Long and lithe—measuring six feet in height—Khattara Uldago Eschala of House Menduvalli sat alone with her legs folded under her. The rightful heir of Centauri was tall by human standards, but childhood events had made her shorter than the average female from her home world. She was, in many ways, a contrast of convention. Although born of royal lineage, she looked away from it. Early on, her honor and her innocence had been stripped away. In their place, a trial by fire had fanned the spark of a warrior of legend. The hand found the hilt, but a bitter stone of betrayal remained and rattled through her heart.

She resisted much, not the least of which was any attachment to others. Fierce and unyielding, she had learned to conceal feelings and bury need. She was labeled difficult—no one dared tread on her, save one improbable fool. Now she sat separated by time and space from that same improbable fool—the one who had grown so precious. Her eyes—dark brown with brilliant violet edges—danced across the language on the screen. Her fingertips came momentarily to her lips, then moved down, toying with an Earth falcon amulet. She traced around golden wings that arced up to cradle a light blue headstone. Although it appeared like a priceless artifact from the pharaohs of old, the secret power it possessed was far more valuable. But in this moment, she wasn’t thinking of the value or the power. As her hand came to rest over her upper heart, she was thinking about the one who had given her the jeweled pendant.

Virginia, I’m not sure about this.

What is the source of your hesitation?

I’m just not sure I should be reading this.

Before I was assigned to you, the commander transferred a complete archive into my database. You have access to all libraries, records, and technology. This includes his personal journal. Ryan was very specific about your authorization level in a crisis contingency scenario.

Would you categorize our situation as such?

It is logical to acknowledge that our return is not certain. I have authorized access to his personal records and will translate into your native language.

Eschala thought for a moment. There’s so much I want to know, but first I need to know about the Daerk attack. Can you take me to that segment of his personal record?

I am accessing it now. Portions of it appear to have been modified recently.

Personal Record

CDR M. Ryan McBain

Date: Day Zero Endpoint

Day Zero began as a routine of routines, which looking back now should have been sufficient foreshadowing. I was outside on a vanilla EVA supervising automated drones. They were repairing exterior shield panels on Hadley’s orbital station. Riveting work, if you’ll excuse the pun. Being assigned to my brother’s post was a penance associated with the recent events that had clipped my wings. I’d gone from fleet command to robot command, and I wasn’t wearing humility particularly well. There was also a certain post-traumatic edginess that wept forward into the mundane daily activities of my work. I was a tiger in a small cage. The fight with Hadley the night before hadn’t helped matters. I was a grown man, and he was still treating me like his little brother. What I needed was a little encouragement and support. Instead, I got some kind of half-baked lecture on responsibility, focus, and sacrifice. I’d largely ignored earlier needling comments, but when he stepped up on his soapbox, I snapped.

I leaned back in my chair, and we stared at each other for several seconds. I think I said something about cheap talk from safe sidelines, and I asked him how many lives his focus had recently saved. The smoldering discourse had flared full blown, fanned in no small part by the whiskey, into a childish spat. His provocation, as always, was well played. Strafing down on target, he responded that he was too busy constantly saving his misfit little brother. I tipped my glass to swallow the last of it and felt the burn going down. With meticulous care, I placed the empty shot glass on the table and straightened my jacket. As our eyes met, I bolted up and dove across the table. I tackled his smug little face right over the back of his chair. I do feel badly for Station Safety & Security. 3S was called in to break up a bar fight, but upon arrival, they discovered the ruckus was between the station chief and its top military commander. They honestly didn’t know what to do. It certainly wasn’t our most professional moment.

Working the next morning—outside both the station and his oppressive regime—felt good. He’d left me a video message before our shift that was one of those I’m sorry... messages that progressed with twisted logic into ...but you made me do it. I remember thinking it was so typical. The only redeeming part of it was seeing the blossoming shiner that he’d have to explain all day. I replayed the message twice on mute; it was glorious. I so yearned for the end of that post. I wanted to get away—away from my life, from my family, from everything. I should have been more careful what I wished for. The stinging anguish over how we left it has never diminished over the years. I’d give anything if I could go back.

At 10:07 local station time, I was wrestling with a stuck panel caught on a crate when a thousand flashes signaled the entry of an armada—a massive armada. My head turned and had scarcely cocked in confusion when the silhouettes and symbols registered in my memory. Twice before I’d seen these ships. Before my eyes could grow large, the space erupted in a blinding flash of fire. Orbital platforms were hit first. There was a blast. As it turned out, the panel in my hand shielded me from most of the fire into our station. I don’t know how long I was unconscious. My eyes opened to an even greater nightmare.

Jagged and twisted debris floated everywhere. Our station, and my brother with it, was just gone. The aggressors had moved lower in orbit and were now bombarding the planet surface. I could see solid beams of light firing off hundreds of ships and converging through dozens of consolidating devices. The confluence from each formed a single concentrated cutting beam. Far lower, flashes and explosions marked the points where they struck the surface, slicing deep across the planet.

Suddenly, a massive octahedron-shaped vessel eclipsed the Sun. I saw it clearly as it passed over for what seemed like several seconds. It was different from the legion of cruisers and frigates surrounding the planet. Its charcoal color had a dull, matte finish, and it soaked up all light that touched it. There were no seams, portals, or markings on its perfectly smooth surface. I watched the ghastly specter silently sail past. I couldn’t take my eyes away from it; looking upon it felt like diving headlong with open mouth into a fountain of dread. Smaller frigate class ships buzzed around it in escort as it moved off toward the Sun.

Earth forces were immediately overwhelmed with the power and numbers of the attackers. A few ships from Fleet jumped in, but they were instantly bathed in a frenzy of fire. I could hear automated distress signals on frequency for a few moments before they were dashed into oblivion. More flashes announced the arrival of perhaps a hundred more ships in the aggressor fleet. The new arrivals were fatter and had a bottom concave focusing shape. These undersides were firing luminous, bluish-purple spherical objects. Hundreds of these sparkling projectiles rained down on every corner of the planet. Where each landed, there was a momentary blinding flash. There were so many that it looked like a bank of flashes from paparazzi. Even from orbit, I could see a warping distortion at the point of impact; the surface rippled, and a mushroom cloud rose off each. Massive planetary fractures and fissures were now visible between the growing clouds of debris.

The slicing beams and bombardment were literally pulling up, twisting, and skinning the planet. Our species had never seen an energy display of this magnitude. The atmosphere rapidly grew murky as the offensive continued to pulverize and chew up the crust of our Earth. After several minutes of bombardment, an angry orange cauldron of planetary mantle churned up through a continuous dirty brown debris cloud. The assault began to eject massive orange and yellow segments of mantle, hurling them away into space. The bombers moved further out into orbit to avoid the planetary spatter. Waves of coordinated fire on opposite sides of the planet pitched and chipped larger segments of mass into space.

As the dark minions worked feverishly to eradicate all trace of humanity, the one driving them in the massive black ship took position very near our Sun. The octahedron hinged open into two hollow pyramids, exposing a central core of brilliant light that looked like a small purple star. From my position at that time, I could only see a giant cyclone, which started pulling in the Sun’s corona. As it continued to pull and strip off Her fiery glow, She diminished first in luminescence and then in size. I was witness to an evil harvest as the dark ship slowly swallowed our star. I watched as Her glow flickered and faded. I strained to see any trace of Her, but She was gone. Her light and Her song were taken, just like billions of my people below. The dark ship hinged closed and vanished.

In less than an hour, it was done. The minion ships flashed away just as they’d come. All that remained was debris and dust veiled by darkness. I looked around, struggling to comprehend what I was desperate to deny. There was no light where our Sun was supposed to be. Our home planet had been scatter shot into the cosmos, as had our moon with all her colonies. My brother, my aunts, and billions of other lives on the surface had all been snuffed out. It was a perfect ambush by minions streaming from the seam of an evil void. In a single assault, the darkness had executed a nearly perfect genocide of our species—all save one.

They left me floating away like space garbage. As the level of adrenaline in my bloodstream diminished, I became aware of a physical biting. During the initial volley, I had been peppered by shrapnel from the blast that destroyed our station. The outer layers of my helmet visor had cracked, and an incessant chiming in my ear indicated critically low oxygen levels from a leak. Under the damaged suit, my body was battered and badly broken.

A piercing pain in my shoulder nearly overcame me when I tried to reach across and cover the suit breach in my upper arm. I panted as I struggled to look left, right, above, and below. There was so much death and destruction; my thoughts spiraled faster and tighter into an apex of dread. Heart pounding, I struggled and thrashed for the breach.

For several minutes, I tried but could not reach it. Pain and fatigue overwhelmed me. Dizzy and nauseous, I gazed at the space where my planet—my beautiful blue marble—should have been. I strained my eyes, doubting that the Earth, with all her people, could really have been destroyed. But everything I’d ever known was gone, and my life was leaking out into the vacuum of space.

In that moment, the inevitable registered in me: death…imminent. I closed my eyes and just tried to breathe. So many faces and moments washed past. After a time, everything became very quiet, except for the chiming, and I let it be in the background. As my mind drifted, the coldness of space permeated through me. It was surprisingly peaceful.

As I diminished, I could feel a presence and then a warmth. There was a blinding brightness, and all at once I could feel my mother come upon me. The pain was gone, and being in her presence was joyous. Her fierce rocking embrace surrounded me. I could smell her and feel the fuzziness of her favorite sweater on my cheek. Serenity wrapped around me like a warm blanket. My silent lips mouthed, Mom! I reached to her, and she whispered into my soul. I think of those words when I get low. A thousand times I’ve replayed them:

Brave boy, I love you so. The path ahead is rocky and steep. Draw strength. The flame of your candle will suffer the winds of a long and starless night. Face into it with courage. Know that all things with beginnings have an end. No power can ever forever divide us. Have faith. If you reach, you will find my hand.

I felt a rush and a separation from her. I reached for her hand, and suddenly there were excited voices and noises. Through the gurgle of blood in my lungs I cried out, Mom! I regained consciousness in freakish pain on the medical table of a Paavi ship. A kind hand assuaged my restless thrashing. Fear and confusion wept from my eyes, and I laid there a tangled mess. Helpless, I could only watch as the hands of an alien surgeon worked frantically and methodically to save me. Every so often, those surgeon’s hands would pause their purposeful urgency to softly touch my cheek.

In her eyes, I saw something. It was immeasurable love. That brilliant woman was my Paavi mother, and on that day in her saving hands, I was reborn. Though I didn’t yet understand the soft murmur of her words as she tended to me, I felt the message like a chord of truth reverberating through the hollows of my soul. I regained consciousness many times over the next few weeks, and each time I woke, I met those encouraging eyes. I had no idea what would happen next, but the healing power in her gaze eclipsed the terror and buffered the loss.

The Darkness came so close, but hope slipped through its fumbling clutches. And so, I was laid down at the base of the mountain. Narrow, thin, and fragile was the beginning of the path for the Arm Behind the Goddess. The climb ahead was relentless. Setbacks were a howling wind continually trying to blow me down. For most of the journey, my only companions were haunting memories that followed me all too closely. Often in each waking hour, I invoked the mantra of my life: Eyes forward; keep moving forward. Don’t stop; keep moving, just keep moving.

Higher along, several trails converged near the apex, and I would meet other survivors in the climb. Our paths joined, and these rebels became family. One such raven-haired warrior of legend would redeem me in ways I couldn’t have imagined. Over the past two centuries, victory over the dark armies has demanded ghastly acts I never thought myself capable of. I’ve waded so far into the evil ether that I’ve forgotten where I came from. Adoption of another culture to obscure my origin, close alliances with alien species, and becoming a guardian for beings I originally sought to destroy have blurred the lines. Nothing is clear anymore and I realize I’ve been drifting, lost in a vast gray sea. The beauty that is my perfect half defines the light, and in recent days, it was she who revived my humanity. A Centauri brought me back to earth. For this and for her, I am eternally grateful. As a dark shadow grows long across our galaxy, I know what I must embrace, what I must become. But I have no resolve to afflict her with this presence. In the most selfish moment of my life, I have blocked her from continuing on. Goddess forgive me; this I’ve done that the love of my life would survive.

Eschala read the last words of the entry over and over. Her mouth was slightly open, and her head shook gently. She looked to the side as the light of the tablet dimmed. Clutching it tightly in her arms, she lay down and closed her eyes. I shall take a moment before I return to this.

Understood. We are at best possible speed back to the fringes.

2

Rough Day

My people excel at creative thinking and take an oath. That means holding the line, even if it cuts through you.

General Lund

Many years earlier…

The side access door to the Military Command briefing room nearly came off its hinges. The Command Guard normally took care of opening doorways and access entries, but events everywhere this day were happening at an accelerated rate. The supreme commander of Earth’s aligned military bowled through the entry as his attachés struggled to keep up.

If there was a physical die stamp for creating military leaders, Major General Aiden Keim would fit it. The SC’s chest and torso were like a large barrel. The legs below it were spindly little things that moved the man much like small whirling propellers attached to a large ship. This wasn’t to say his movements were at all graceful. Over many years in the field, he had racked up countless injuries. Now fused joins and scar tissue all moved together in a gait like a lumbering foxtrot. Heredity and stress had both ganged up on him over the years. Light brown and thinning hair dusted his forehead. The only remaining evidence of the thick curly mane of his youth was framed in pictures. Weathered lines ran deep across his face like a road map that chronicled the stress canyons throughout his career. But the roughness of his face gave way to kind eyes.

Although he was a fair and thoughtful man, the twinkle in his eyes was the glint from a sharp, business-like edge. It took a certain will to knowingly send young people to their demise, and the general was very good at his job, although the guilt stayed with him. Even the bourbon couldn’t quell the voices in the silence of the deep of night. Today’s events were enough to cause the SC, as well as many others, to spree later in a vain attempt to drown out the memory.

He’d barreled fully into the room before a startled Command Guard shouted, "attenTION! Supreme commander!"

Everyone lurched up as the SC came to stand at the head of the table. He nodded as everyone sat—everyone but him. He leaned forward on both hands and scowled sourly across the room. President’s taking credit in the press for successfully repelling the Khrylic invasion. But make no mistake, the smile is for the media, and she’s making a very different face at me. So, let me make this very, very clear: We need to understand how Khrylic forces electronically defeated our defense net across the entire system, did so without alarm, disabled integrated battle systems fleet-wide, massed in near space undetected, launched a planetary-scale invasion unopposed, and somehow, he said, waving a hand in the air and raising his voice, have been miraculously repelled...with, with… he shook his head, some sort of dumb luck? An uncomfortable quiet smothered the room. I need answers. How’d this happen? And where the hell are they now?

The brightest eyes from leaders across the Unified Forces of Earth all looked down. There was restless shifting and a muffled cough. The eyes of the supreme commander searched the room for some spark of information, some data point that could reverse his dire sense of the situation. A fan motor from a projector display changed speed, and the subtlety of the noise only served to highlight the deafening silence. The inner ring at the table lay low and quiet. Looking out further into the secondary seats lining the room and the two rows of seating in the back gallery, the SC hoped to meet bright eyes, but he found no relief.

A man seated in the back of the room did, in fact, have answers. His head was also down, but he stared at the floor for very different reasons. Rings of shock washed through him as an incalculable loss racked down to his core. Languishing there, he sat alone in a room full of others.

The SC grimaced. Don’t everyone speak at once, he said, and looking to his immediate right, Dana, how the hell’d they breach your grid?

General Dana Bencix looked up through thin-framed glasses. A soft-spoken, small statured woman of Krio descent, her knowledge and words wielded great power and influence with the SC. Many years earlier, after surviving a blast that nearly took both her legs, then Major Bencix had continued to fire on approaching hostile forces. Although her logistics group wasn’t supposed to take fire on the front line, the younger Bencix found herself caught in the midst of a flanking force.

There were flashes of heat and oppressive pressure from a barrage of explosions. The booming of automatic rifle fire echoed and rang out so close. Rounds whizzed through the air, plinking and thudding as they landed all around. Urgent voices shouted, edgy with panic. One voice, however, was a tether of sanity in the face of mortal calamity. Cooled by logic and utility, Bencix’s even voice directed resources over her shoulder between bursts of return fire.

Rifle barrel pivoting dramatically, her rounds purchased additional seconds for her people. Wood splinters and dirt ricocheted around her from enemy fire. She turned her head, squinting, but the debris was merely an annoyance. She was undeterred. Her relentless fire suppressed the advance long enough for her men and women to converge and retreat.

The other side escalated in response, and the blast was deafening. She was aware of her own body in flight. Bencix regained awareness as she looked down at her lowered rifle barrel, its strap tangled around her wrist. A stinging pain shot through her lungs as she took normal breaths. A body was crumpled under her, and she could see the legs pointed out and upward.

Her staff scrambled around her, and she couldn’t hear what they were saying. As her body lurched, dragged backwards by her collar, she realized that the legs crumpled under her were in fact her own, if barely. She looked up just in time to see an enemy round glance through the shoulder of her sergeant. Looking back toward the onslaught, her left eye squinted gently. Resolve percolated just beneath her glossy stare.

Clumsy paws racked her rifle, and defiant to the last, she raised the barrel again. The enemy was very close and now advancing in the open. Firing quickly, she shot four of them before the remainder of the enemy dropped again for cover. She continued to fire while being dragged away by the collar of a smoldering vest. The major’s barrel only quieted when she succumbed to her injuries.

She woke some time later in a hospital and faced an even greater challenge: to soldier again with a missing leg. For days she wept quietly, looking down at the emptiness on the bed, where she could still feel the leg that should have been there. There was unimaginable pain in her recovery. She made it her business to become an expert at standing back up.

She regained mobility and sued to stay in the service. Through all the hearings that exposed the intimate details of her physical fitness, one officer stood with her. He was the one who had sent her on that mission, and he was the one she woke to in the hospital. His words echoed for a lifetime in her mind, confronting her doubts. "Dana, this ain’t hard. This ain’t nothin! You wanna know what hard is? Hard is shooting four enemy combatants after having your legs blown to hell. Hard is laying down suppressing fire in low visibility from all the smoke coming off your own burning flak vest. What could you possibly face that’s harder than that? Huh? You’re a giant! Don’t you ever forget where you come from. That’s an order."

He was then, just as he was now, her commanding officer. Bencix was part of the supreme commander’s inner circle. Their history, in addition to countless records still held to that day on encryption cyphers at the War College, had made her the best candidate for chief of electronic warfare.

After clearing her throat, she responded quietly. Apparently, they used sub-routines in a number of maintenance programs to plant segments of inert code. These fragments appeared more like code dust after various system events or compilations. Over a period of many months, these fragments represented enough data to form an active routine. The code fragments alone didn’t pose a threat or raise any flags, but when all the elements coalesced via an unknown catalyst program, the components compiled into an active virus.

The intruder spawned inside our firewalls. Our systems detected it, but as our defenses hunted the virus, it was quickly able to move through internals until it found the source system for our anti-virus protocols. Once there, we believe it decompiled into many smaller fragments and indicated a false kill of itself. Our defense systems registered and labeled the remaining data fragments as benign or neutral. One such fragment passively shut down our defense networks for what was classed as an extended maintenance window. When the window elapsed beyond our timing limits, the system initiated a module restart. The restart isolated the trigger indicators for network status that the code subsequently flipped again, spoofing the trigger mechanisms.

The SC squinted sourly at the chief for a long second. Dumb it down for me, Dana. You sayin’ some kind of secondary virus tricked our systems into thinking the net was on when in fact our entire defense grid was down?

Yes, sir. That would be an accurate statement.

General, when you return to your people, I want you to impress upon them the significance of determining specifically how this happened. More importantly, let them know their very survival depends on preventing it from happening again, because it does. This cannot happen again. Are we clear?

Crystal, sir.

Can anyone tell me what the hell did work?

The languishing man in the back heard a voice say, Sir, we’re your dumb luck. Only a moment later did he realize it was his own voice.

The SC’s head snapped like a hawk. Who said that?

Clearing his throat and speaking louder now, the man replied, General Richard Lund, Sir, skipper ED4.

Craning his head, the SC boomed, Make a hole for the Marine!

General Lund rose on tingling, unsteady legs. Upon standing, he realized that he couldn’t feel his toes. He pulled his dress jacket down and straight. The heavy wool material felt strange, and he realized that his fingertips were also tingling numb. He was acutely aware of his dull steps touching the floor as he navigated carefully toward the front. Two higher ranking generals moved aside so he could approach the big table.

The SC instantly recognized the face. Not just who the man was, but the state of the man. The wide-eyed and far-away look was haunting. The SC had too much familiarity with the kind of empty eyes that came as a result of loss—great loss. He’d already been briefed that smaller defense forces were the only groups to mount attacks, and he knew in general terms that there had been a heavy toll. Here was a sharp sting of sacrifice amidst extraordinary heroism.

General Lund’s eyes confirmed the briefing data. The SC looked at the approaching general with a small, tight smile because in that moment, he had a face to represent the group that, despite overwhelming odds, had squared off and ultimately defeated a far superior force. With an appreciation welling up within him, he stepped away from his chair and motioned to it. Quietly, he said, Right here if you will, Rich. Save the planet, and you get the big seat. Please, sit here.

General Lund moved down the length of the table and plopped down into the leader’s chair. He perched on the front edge and momentarily thought that the chair, much like the world, was rather large around him. The SC turned around and sat on the edge of the table with his back to the rest of the room. Looking down to the side at the general, he asked, still quietly, So, your guys launched in what, short-range small raiders?

Affirmative. The Wing is comprised of single pilot, heavily armed kestrels.

The SC nodded. kestrels, those are like...fifty-year-old ships?

The mark IX’s are approaching twenty-five years on the frames, but they have upgraded power plants, modern threat management systems, and current fleet weaponry, including short-range nuclear payloads. They’re classed as quasi-automated. Many systems are manual, and the ship’s been hardened with mechanical switches. Automation aside, it would appear that human intervention was the key in this engagement.

The SC nodded again. Which bases and groups engaged?

Everything. The remaining thirteen active squadrons launched from orbital and Terran-based positions to address the threat. The attack came during a shift change cycle, so everything space worthy went out. All my people went. All of them.

Lund swallowed, and after a short pause, he continued. One of our patrols initially discovered an anomaly that ultimately uncovered the network breach. After the call, several crews jumped in and located and identified multiple enemy vessels approaching the Earth. We took fire and determined that the armada was a hostile planetary invasion force. Subsequently, we targeted and engaged the remainder of our forces against prioritized enemy assets.

The SC tightened one cheek. How’d they do against the Khrylic advance?

General Lund shook his head gently and looked down at the table.

The SC nodded. Heavy losses?

With eyes wide as a galaxy, Lund looked off, nodding gently.

Can you brief us on what happened?

Ryan was nearing the end of a scheduled ten-hour patrol trip that had extended into a twelfth hour. The trip route included several passes around Mars Station and a perimeter cruise of the system edge defense sensors, or SEDS, located along more than twelve percent of the solar system’s quadrants. All equipment was functioning, and the only challenge was trying to stay awake at the mid-point. Near his shift’s end, Ryan stole a moment to look beyond the sensor edges, out into deep space. He stared, wide-eyed, into the endless expanse.

Without realizing it, Ryan raised his hands from the controls and up toward the glass. The vastness pulled at him. Inside the horizon of the mind’s eye, an ocean of possibilities extended ahead. A flashing system monitor broke through the intoxication, and he split his gaze between the console and the view outward.

Unlike most of his colleagues, Ryan looked for excuses to stay out on the edges for prolonged periods. He was reminded of the same feeling from his youth. So many nights, he would gaze into the high desert sky. Breathing the cold, crisp air, he’d take the entire sky in one field. With arms extended, his fingertips would reach for the stars. His eyes would close slowly, and the chill of winter gales would blow straight through him. He’d feel himself expand out,