Excerpt from Fire Unto Dark
In the endless blackness of space the pinpricks of light that contain all known life seem almost forgettable. In an instant you blink by Helmsbar, where humanity fought a twenty six year long war with the native occupants. In minutes you pass Caelum IV and the sixty two different races that inhabit its tiny system. In hours you exit the Xabsi Sector and leave the last vestiges of pre-warp travel behind.
To travel to the next occupied planet at highest warp capabilities takes nearly four months. To reach the next fully human colony takes a year. To reach the Gawa Sector it takes approximately four years, ten months, and twenty six days. This is assuming the warp paths set up by the Solar Confederacy remain clear. If even a part of the path is obstructed or closed down you can add anywhere from two months to a year onto that. Only then, after years of travel, do you reach the edge of the Solar Confederacy and its colonies.
It is easy, then, to understand why some do not look at the stars with awe and inspiration, but with loss. Each star like a marker, one light year, two, three. A constant reminder of how far you have come, and how far you have yet to go.
When Lieutenant Lillian Tor was assigned to the Pantheon Fleet she could barely suppress her excitement. A chance to travel the cosmos and see the infinite possibilities of alien worlds and races. Not only would she get to see it all, but she would come as a galactic peacekeeper. The Pantheon Fleet was the arm of the Solar Confederacy; agents of peace and order. Within the Inner Sanctum they were the Earth’s finest. Five years of space travel aboard cold and sterile combat cruisers had sucked away most of that excitement. Now, when Lt. Tor looked out the window she didn’t see potential, instead she saw only the passage of time; each star a day, or a week, or a month ahead of them.
The end of that long journey was quickly approaching and the stars that Tor saw were no longer unfamiliar and unnamed. Hundreds of times she had looked at them through star maps and strategic boards. They were fast approaching their target: the Gawa Sector. For five long years Tor had studied these stars, their planets, their inhabitants, and now they were spread out before her; visible with her own naked eyes.
Carefully she stepped away from the window. There was no time to become lost in thought. She gathered her senses and briskly took off towards the bridge of the monolithic Iconoclast. Tor was lucky, there were many in the Pantheon Fleet who had been assigned to ships like Tantalus and Ixion. Supply ships and fortifiers with cramped halls and little in the way of relaxation.
The Iconoclast was a juggernaut by comparison. Taking nearly a decade to construct, the Sigma Class combat cruiser was a one of a kind in almost every way. It would take multiple days to walk from the back thrusters all the way to the sleek nose of the bridge. Armed with a hundred different types of long range projectiles it would take at least a hundred fighters to even get through the barrage. Despite its combative abilities the ship was constructed primarily as a mobile fortress against enemies of the Confederacy. War rooms, barracks, R&D departments, dozens of sleeping quarters, multiple hangers; the ship was like a flying city; with a crew that could be a small military on its own on some planets.
Tor carefully made her way to the heart of the bridge; on some ships this would be as simple as stepping from one side of a room to the other but for the Iconoclast it was like crossing through an amphitheatre. Rows upon rows of seats stretched into the distance. Rows of engineers, pilots, consultants, tacticians, all answering to the ship’s captain. The seat, however, that dominated the center of the room was not that of the captain’s but of his superior; the Grand Admiral of the Pantheon Fleet: Jacob Stanisberg.
There he sat, like a mythic dragon protecting its horde. His body was rigid, his chest just barely raising and falling with each breath, his stony blue eyes focused, moving with a calculated swiftness. He was harshness personified. To gaze upon him as he gave orders to the ship’s crew was like trying to stare into the heart of a sun. He never roared or shouted, his statements were calm, but he never questioned. He never presented weakness or admitted fault. He did not speak, he commanded with an intensity that would slowly but surely burn through you if you resisted.
“Helmsman, keep the ship at a steady pace, the meeting will start momentarily.” Physically speaking he was nothing to be afraid of. Short and thin, his prime had long since passed and his body was beginning to wither away. What he had lost in physicality he had poured into an indomitable will. Soldiers who could break him in half bowed before him and councilmen who oversaw him averted their eyes when they chastised him.