terrible. The shaking was worse. The g-force was so great I thought my legs would be shoved into my chest and my brain would collapse. Then suddenly, there was a pfoof sound, and everything became smooth and silent. The escape pod was shooting through space, and we were in our own little go-cart. For the first time since the trouble started, I breathed calmly. I asked to anyone who could hear me, “Where we going?”
I heard a woman answer, “Who cares as long as we’re out of that exploding tin can.”
Suddenly, there was an explosion, then another, and another. We were being bounced and shaken again. It felt like we were inside a soccer ball being kicked down an alley. I yelled, “What’s happening?”
The same voice answered, “We’re being fired on. Those fucking assholes are shooting at us! Don’t they know we’re noncoms?” She yelled at the ceiling, “That means noncombatants, assholes!” Then almost pleading, she cried, “This is a life raft. Don’t you save women and children?”
That’s when the last explosion blew. At least the last one that I knew about. It was terrible, and sparks were pouring down on me.
*****
Everything was smooth sailing until the attack. We had no warning, but once it started, my world, as I knew it, ended.
My name is… Well, that’s part of my problem. I don’t know my name or who I am. I don’t know why I was on the ship, where I was coming from, or even where I was going.
One of the crew told me when we crossed into the Bode Galaxy—that’s the name of the new galaxy they discovered—using the Skeggsson wormhole. It was the shortest route, and it was smooth sailing. When war first broke out a year ago, I didn’t sign up. They talked about all the opportunities available in Bode Galaxy. The talk was you could make your fortune with a galaxy there for the taking. You could get rich! You could own your own asteroid loaded with any number of expensive minerals! Maybe that’s why I booked a passage on a merchant ship called the Emmanuel Fraser. The Fraser was a midclass space cargo ship. It regularly ran between our Milky Way galaxy and the Bode Galaxy. Most of its cargo was for the military, but a lot were staples for the pioneers that were settling on Aragain. That’s one of the first planets we are inhabiting in the new galaxy. I’m not sure why, but the planet Aragain was my destination.
Whatever my purpose, I was on my way to meet my future! Little did I know my life would change so drastically after the attack.
I was in the mess hall when all hell broke loose. First, the sirens went off, and a voice came over the loudspeakers, “All hands to battle stations! All hands to battle stations! This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill. All hands to battle stations! Look sharp!”
The surrounding explosions were deafening! Sparks were raining from the ceiling. Sirens were going off everywhere. I was being knocked sideways into the wall and then flung across and slammed into the opposite wall. A knob from a cabinet poked into my side when I hit it. Damn, that hurt.
My ears were ringing because the explosions were so loud and incredible! Every blast we took shook the ship and threw me around the corridor. I am five feet and seven inches tall and weigh one hundred and thirty-five pounds. I know because the ship’s manifest took all our statistics when we boarded, but even at my size, I felt like I was a stone in a jar being shaken by a toddler. Men were running up the corridors to their posts. One officer grabbed my arm and barked an order, “Yeoman, get to your station!”
“I don’t have a station,” I answered. “I’m a passenger!”
“Then stay the hell out of the way, go to your quarters, and keep your head down! And make sure you keep your revive unit close!”
Good advice. We declared war. I don’t know if our new enemy did too or if they even noticed a difference in our normally belligerent attitude. We were fighting for a little while before our official and formal declaration. Our leaders claimed the other side started it. We found a new galaxy and called it the Bode Galaxy. We colonized a few habitable planets, but the Bode Galaxy was where the Nayleans lived. They naturally took exception to us moving into their land and tried to boot us out. That’s when we claimed that the aliens invaded our colonies. They invaded us? Figure that one out when we’re the ones squatting on their turf. But does it really matter what we claim? It’s war! It’s called the Thought War because that’s what the Nayleans do—they “think” you to death. The Nayleans are telekinetic. They do not speak. They do not use their hands for manipulating tools or weapons. They do everything by thinking about it. They move things with their minds. Things may look like they automatically rise from a table and float to a counter, but it is really a Naylean thinking about it. We call them freaks, mutes, dummies, minders, floaters, dolls…it goes on. We even call them witches, warlocks, and sorcerers. When some people use any word referring to the Nayleans, they spit on the ground.
Nayleans look down on humans with both disdain and puzzlement. They know their own early ancestors didn’t have any telekinetic ability, and over time, higher life-forms evolved, and that allowed them to develop their nonphysical abilities. This is very similar to how humans gradually came to stand on two feet and develop an opposable thumb. That gave us the ability to make tools and continue to advance. For Nayleans though, they used mind strength instead of tools and weapons. Their mind strength can even be a weapon.
To a Naylean, mind strength separates them from animals. Animals do not possess telekinetic ability, and neither do the humans settling in their territory. Animals with no mind abilities are looked upon as a lower life-form, and so are humans. But humans also fascinate the Nayleans. For lower life-forms, humans have accomplished space travel and set up complicated structures and organizations. Nayleans find it amazing that humans have governments and can accomplish higher-level cultural goals. This is a feat that the Nayleans have never observed in lower-form animals, certainly beyond the single-purpose activities of ants or bees.
Regardless of the fascination with human evolution and skills, Nayleans decided that the human encroachment on Naylean territory could not be tolerated. Human presence is becoming too widespread and belligerent. To the Nayleans, it is the same as if a group of hostile apes came out of the countryside and moved into a Naylean town. What starts out as rude and uncivilized behavior turns into aggression and murder. To them, the human presence is an infestation.
But we humans are a resourceful group. Major advances came when scientists developed the revive terminal. It’s a more complicated version of a transporter but works on the same principle. When you get transported, all your molecules get “bio-sequenced” or put into a subatomic DNA-like stream. This stream actually sparkles and gets transported, and then you get reassembled and resparkled at the destination terminal. They teach how to do this in high school using experiments on frogs, poor things. It’s not a pretty sight when a high school kid gets their hands on a frog and a bio-sequencer, but it teaches them something. I’m not exactly sure what, except never be a frog caught by a high school kid in biology.
Well, some guy figured out how to store a copy of your sparkly DNA stream and put it all in a little box. It’s not actually a box; it’s more like a portable travel drive that stores your bio-sequenced self digitally. If you had an accident and, say, lost your arm or leg, you could be resequenced by using your bio info that was stored ahead of time in your little bio-travel drive. That way, you can be restored back to your original state.
At first, they called the bio-travel drive a black box because it was a lot like the recorders that store all of a ship’s data before a crash. They soon realized they needed something shorter to call it than its actual name. Would you believe it is a Sequencing Cellular and Atomic Revive Assembly Box? Whew, that’s a mouthful. That’s why it became known as a SCARAB for short. I was told that a scarab was actually some kind of beetle,
