Solicia

Solicia

Caroline Hough

First Published by Mirador Publishing at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 by Caroline Hough

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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All right reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission of the publishers or author. Excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

First edition: 2013

Any reference to real names and places are purely fictional and are constructs of the author. Any offence the references produce is unintentional and in no way reflect the reality of any locations involved.

A copy of this work is available though the British Library.

IBSN : 978-1-909224-88-9

For

Martin and Lynne

For

Andrew and Jo

But especially for

Alfons

Prologue

Alran had tears in his eyes as he stared out of the window at his home for what was surely the final time. The city was empty, quiet and desolate. There was no one in the marketplace; no children laughing and screaming in the streets, no sounds at all. He could not believe that it had finally come to this. His city, a tribute to the ancestors. The towering spires glittering in the sun like jewels in the desert, the streets teeming with cattle, and people trading for their livelihood. The children learning in the schools their scholars had set up using their own knowledge. Now all of it was gone. Their arrogance and their complacency had been their downfall.

‘High Chancellor!’ Alran’s personal assistant came skidding to a halt beside him, his footsteps echoing in the now empty stone corridors. Judging from his breathlessness he had been running. ‘We must go; they will be at the gates shortly. The last shuttle is ready to go.’

The panic in his voice roused the High Chancellor from his misery and his assistant’s words sparked confusion. He turned to Haran who had served him faithfully for the past eight years and saw the panic in his voice mirrored in his eyes.

‘Why would they be coming? How would they know that we are leaving today?’

Haran glanced nervously over his shoulder. All that stood between them and the gates to the city were 800m of deserted streets and three of Alran’s personal guard.

‘They’re savages but they are not stupid,’ Haran replied, exasperated that the High Chancellor would choose this moment to debate the savages’ moves. ‘They must have noticed the recent activity. They raided the west compound three days ago and made it all the way to the storerooms before the guards chased them away.’

‘We loaded the food stores a few weeks ago,’ Alran stated, unsure where his assistant was going.

‘Exactly, they found nothing,’ Haran replied taking a step towards his mentor and raising his hand before seemingly rethinking his actions. Touching the High Chancellor was forbidden by law, but he was getting desperate. ‘It made them angry and very confused. Then yesterday when they raided the southern gates there was nobody to stop them.’

‘Was anyone hurt?’ Alran cut in, concern in his voice. He had been so preoccupied with reassuring his people as they made their way to the transports, that he had forgotten the day-to-day duties that his subordinates had to contend with.

‘No. No one was there,’ Haran repeated exasperatedly, glancing over his shoulder and dismissing the High Chancellor’s concern with impatience that bordered on disrespect. His commander-in-chief was missing the point. ‘What they realised is that they now have complete access to the city. The shuttle’s sensors picked up a large number of them heading this way. We must go, High Chancellor.’

Alran nodded absentmindedly and took one last look around the room, empty now, but still his home. So many memories. He had married his wife in this house and his three children had been born and raised here. His family, he had to keep reminding himself this was all for his family, and the thousands of families that had lived beside him. His family had packed up all their belongings days ago and were already aboard the first of what his people were calling the ‘civilisation ships’, waiting for him. Alran sighed. He had not expected this day to come so soon. He reluctantly turned and followed his assistant into the corridor although his mind was still not entirely focused in the present.

He now knew how many of his distant ancestors had felt as they too had left, knowing that they would never return. But ultimately he knew that he was making the right decision. The people of this world were now so alien to them that their two peoples could never live together in peace.

‘We brought this on ourselves, Haran,’ he mumbled sadly as he caught a glimpse of doors banging in the breeze and curtains fluttering out of open windows as Haran almost pulled him at a run down the east corridors, the barriers of rank forgotten.

‘We were trying to help them,’ Haran argued half-heartedly. He was more intent on checking that the way ahead was clear rather than arguing with an old man who was clearly fighting an internal struggle. ‘They got greedy. They should have been content with what they were given.’

Alran smiled and shook his head ruefully. ‘No, that’s like telling a child to be content with one sugar bar when you still have three others in your hand. Of course they wanted more.’

They finally emerged from the building that had once been home to all the high ranking officials within the city and started to make their way across the courtyard, through the deserted streets towards the last remaining shuttle, sitting on the dock faithfully waiting for its master.

‘We should never have given them the technology in the first place.’ Alran was clearly still trying to grapple with his conscience. ‘We should have known they would hurt themselves, they were not ready.’

‘I don’t see them having to flee their homes,’ Haran grimaced as he ran half guiding and half dragging the High Chancellor behind him.

Alran’s mind returned to the day, seventeen months ago, when the Inner Circle had finally admitted that they could not stay on this world and had discussed the idea of leaving this galaxy and starting a new life in Andromeda. He could still see the nine chancellors that made up his Inner Circle, sitting around the marble table in the high ceiling conference room; the day had been sunny, beams of light streaming through the windows. However, that had not echoed the mood that was inside the room, the different emotions and responses that had come from his people were heart breaking and it had been the hardest decision he had ever made as High Chancellor. He had watched in trepidation as one by one the three interstellar ‘civilisation’ ships had been completed, each large enough to house a million stasis pods and each powerful enough to hopefully take them across the two and a half million miles of intergalactic void.

An explosion from somewhere west of their position jerked his mind back to the present and he looked up just in time to see a ball of smoke appear from one of the outer buildings. The ground shook beneath his feet and he grabbed at Haran for support.

‘They have breached the west perimeter; please High Chancellor we must hurry.’

As they rounded the next corner, the shuttle came into view, a sleek grey streamlined pod hovering just off the ground. Inside were the last sixty members of his people. The ones that had faithfully remained until the end to ensure the rest of the population made it safely to their stasis pods. The guards had taken up defensive positions around the shuttle, presumably when they heard the explosion. As the two politicians passed them and made it to the shuttle, they too abandoned their posts, one at a time.

Alran stood in the cockpit watching as the shuttle left the surface. He looked down at the city that one of his direct ancestors had helped to build and saw aspects of his people in every construction and its detail. It had been his home for nearly seventy years and now it lay empty and abandoned, a mere shell of its former glory. As they flew higher he could see a group of savages entering through the hole they had created in the western perimeter. The noise of the shuttle engines made them look up and it seemed to make them angry, they started waving their arms in the air and jumping up and down. It seemed almost comical to Alran, as they looked like stick figures dancing in the sand. Some of them even attempted to hit the shuttle with their spears, but they were never going to hit them, as the shuttle had already reached 600 feet. They left on a blazing trail of fire that for a moment seemed to subdue the savages left behind.

When he could no longer see the city, Alran turned his gaze forwards to the three ships in orbit. They were an imposing sight. Although they had been hastily constructed, all were streamlined and sleek, like a massive torpedo and all had hyperspace engines at the rear. As the shuttle headed for the first ship he had to lean forward to see, as the ship now took up the whole of the view screen. Thirty-six decks holding everything his people possessed from memorabilia to livestock, as well as equipment and technology that would not only hopefully see them across the intergalactic void, but would also allow them to start a new life in Andromeda. For the last week three million of his people had been ferried up to the three ships and entered the stasis pods that would be their home for the next thirteen hundred years. The people had been assured that the computer would maintain both their body and their consciousness. The aging process would be halted so they would leave the pods exactly as they had entered them, thirteen hundred years in the future. It had been advertised as a deep dreamless sleep.

As Alran climbed into his own stasis pod he hoped that one day his descendants would return and be able to reclaim this world for their own, but he also knew that would not happen within his lifetime. As the stasis pod closed around him and he felt himself drift into unconsciousness, his thoughts turned to his family and whether he would ever see them again.

*

On the planet the savages were furious to discover that nothing was left in the city and they started screaming in frustration, many turning their anger on each other. However, many were also delighted that they had pushed out the terrible strangers who had refused to share their many wondrous possessions. They had gone back to roaming the city after they had lost site of the monstrous flying bird, but stopped as they heard a tremendous bang above them in the heavens. As one they looked up and saw three bright white flashes in the sky and then nothing.

Chapter 1

The garden was beautiful; the dew on the grass was shimmering in the sunlight and the air was scented with the first touches of spring. Her feet were wet as she ran across the grass but she did not care. She laughed as her mother chased behind her, her black hair trailing in the wind behind her; she could not help but think she was an angel.

‘Taya!’

She looked behind, smiling and laughing, the sun reflecting the laughter in her eyes. Her mother caught her in her arms and they tumbled to the ground in a heap, out of breath but happy.

‘Taya!’

Her mother called her name again but this time it sounded distant and she was suddenly shaking her. This was not right; her mother was never rough with her. She tried to push her away. A shadow crossed in front of the sun and suddenly the garden did not seem quite as inviting.

‘Taya!’

Professor Taya Albright woke with a start and sent the papers on her desk flying in a whirlwind of whiteness.

‘You fell asleep,’ her assistant explained, rubbing his arm and looking around guiltily at the mess that his actions had created. Taya looked up, groggy and confused.

‘Sorry,’ she slurred, realising she had hit him. ‘What time is it?’

Taya had been burning the midnight oil. A prominent scientist on her world, Professor Albright was responsible for a project that she had spent the better part of her life developing, a project the government had termed, ‘Futuristic’, a term she found ironic since it was happening in the present. The project was a top secret experimental rocket that could reach speeds faster than light and make space travel a real possibility.

However, her research team had hit a problem; they needed more money and equipment to complete the launch pad. This money was supposed to be supplied by the government, but the military did not believe that the mission would succeed, or rather hoped that it would not, and were doing everything in their power to block the funding.

That was one thing that Taya hated about her world. Solicia (pronounced Sol-ee-sea-ah) was a world that had seen more than its fair share of wars and in the last decade had consequently ended up under the unofficial rule of the military. The fact that the military were the ones responsible for the start of the last war seemed to have been conveniently ignored. Science unfortunately, like all the other academic communities on Solicia, was closely scrutinised by their government and therefore the military. Taya and her staff could not even reconfigure a light bulb without the consent of the First Minister. Her meeting today would determine whether her department was able to launch a rocket into space and attempt to break the light barrier, or see their life’s work go to ruins. All she had to do was convince the First Minister that firstly it was safe, and secondly it was worth the money. However, the Minister was not who she was worried about. Like her, he was very much interested in science but the military leaders that would ultimately make his decision for him, were not. Her programme used over three times the amount of money any other science department did and seemed to produce three times as little results; a fact the military never stopped reminding her of.

‘It’s 6am. Your meeting is due to start in an hour, I thought you might need some Raffa and some time to prepare,’ Roesyn added, pointing at the cup of dark liquid he had set on the table.

But Taya was already on her hands and knees picking up the papers that were strewn across the floor. She knew it would be so much more practical if she used a data pad but that way just did not seem to allow her to express her creativity.

‘I must have dozed off. I only meant to rest my eyes.’ The panic was evident on her face. ‘I had so much to go over, my presentation, my notes….’

Roesyn grabbed her by the shoulders and she seemed to see him for the first time.

‘You’ll be fine, but I suggest you drink,’ he reassured her pointing at the cup, ‘and clean yourself up a bit; you’ll knock ‘em dead.’

Taya smiled wearily and nodded in consent. Downing the brown liquid helped clear the remnants of her dream from her mind and she smiled, feeling slightly embarrassed. She had not realised how much the dream had shaken her. Of course she had understood that it had been Roesyn that had been shaking her but that action manifesting itself as her mother had filled her with dread and she wondered whether it was a bad omen. This did nothing to help the nerves that were back in full now that she was awake. There was a lot riding on this meeting.

Taya and her colleagues at the Nova Science base new that faster than light travel was within their grasp and they also understood that travel between the stars would not just bring great scientific knowledge, but wealth and prosperity to a world that was in dire need of a bit of luck.

*

‘She was due here fifteen minutes ago,’ General Joa almost shouted at the First Minister making him spill his own Raffa.

Dagan, the First Minister, slowly mopped his robes and fed up with watching him pace the width of the room in front of his desk, replied, ‘Give her time, Lwaxor, you know how these scientists get carried away and forget everything else. This meeting is important to her and she will be here, so do me and my office floor a favour and stop pacing.’

The general seethed. Whether it was the use of his first name, something that was not done in the military, the subtle rebuke at his presence, or the fact that he was being made to wait, was never established as at that moment there was a thundering down the hallway and Taya burst through the doors nearly knocking them off their hinges and looking like she had just run a long distance race in the desert.

‘Forgive me, First Minister, I lost track of time.’

The First Minister shot an, I told you smile at the general and turned back to the professor. Rising from the chair behind his desk, he was about to open his mouth to reply when he was cut off.

‘Let’s get this over with then, I have better things to do than listen to your excuses followed by a feeble attempt to get more money for a project that already uses up more than its fair share.’

Taya, who was now standing in front of the First Minister’s oversized desk glared at the general, his insults evaporating all of her nerves and her sheepish manner disappearing in a flash.

‘This,’ she replied rising up to her full five foot seven inches, ‘is neither an attempt to waste government money, nor any business of the military, so if you have somewhere better to be then please be my guest and go there.’

The general’s face went bright red and his eyes seemed to bulge out of their sockets. He took a step towards Taya, glared down at her and replied through clenched teeth.

‘The military make it their duty to know exactly what you science types are up to and if you want to continue to use our rockets and launchers to aid your project to find little green men then I suggest that you rethink your tone.’

‘Little green men…’ Taya spluttered, standing her ground, but also going red, ‘are you threatening me? That manner might intimidate your cadets who think the sun shines out of your...’

‘Please, please,’ the First Minister almost begged as he stepped around his desk and placed himself gingerly between his two guests. ‘I hardly think that this conduct is becoming of a military leader or a learned professor. Why don’t we sit down and discuss the professor’s proposal rationally and like adults?’

The general did not take his eyes off the professor but he did take a step backwards and Taya imitated him so that the entire width of the desk now separated the two of them. He stood and glared at her with his arms folded. Dagan regarded him for a minute but obviously decided that was the best he was going get and he turned to the professor with a raised eyebrow.

Ten minutes into her presentation and Taya could see that she was losing both the general and the First Minister. She was a brilliant scientist and an enthusiastic speaker, but changing scientific jargon into simplistic language that even the knuckle dragging military types could understand, was a skill she had never acquired. So she decided to try a different track.

‘Look,’ she sighed, placing her hands on the table in front of her in a last ditch attempt to convince them of the importance of this mission, ‘faster than light travel is possible, all the simulations we have tried prove it. All we need now is to actually test our theories for real and for that we need to finish the launch pad. Think of the implications. We would have unlimited access to the natural resources of countless other worlds and who knows what else we will find out there.’

‘That is exactly what I am afraid of,’ Joa replied curtly. ‘What if your gallivanting around the galaxy attracts unwanted attention?’ he added looking dubiously at the ceiling. Taya knew exactly what he was talking about and just about refrained from replying that if they really did find aliens out there they would hardly come through the ceiling.

The general was in fact referring to an old legend told amongst her people of an alien race that had come to their world centuries ago. Whether these aliens were responsible for creating life on Solicia or whether life was already present when they arrived was a subject still under debate. According to the legend these aliens had brought the knowledge of fire to their world and with it the ability for people to build weapons. Ever since recorded history had begun the Solicians had been trying to gain the upper hand against their neighbours. Firstly neighbouring villages had fought over land then, those villages joined together when new threats came from across the seas and eventually entire land masses were fighting for control over the world. The last war had nearly wiped out an entire continent in the southern hemisphere when a small nuclear device, stolen from a science base, went off in low orbit and since then, for almost thirty years, the five main continents of Solicia had formed a somewhat distrustful truce. The war, which had been the biggest in Solicia’s history, had destroyed a quarter of its population and a once thriving world was now struggling to survive. The addition of resources from even neighbouring planets would greatly help both the ecosystem and the Solicians to recover.

The legend also stated that the aliens left Solicia after the natives turned on their benefactors and they ran back to the stars from which they had come. However, before they left they had issued a warning that if the Solician’s ever gained the knowledge that would take them to the heavens, the aliens would return and reclaim what was rightfully theirs. A statement that many of Solicia’s local population interpreted as a threat.

Taya could not believe that the general was placing so much faith in a legend that was told to small children. Yes, most of her people were superstitious, a trait that stemmed from so much conflict, but for government officials to actually believe they were descended from long lost aliens who had vowed to have their revenge was, to her, just absurd. While there was no evidence in the scientific community to suggest that this legend was true or false, the fact that these aliens had never returned in the five million years since known life had begun, made it very difficult for the academics to put any faith in the stories. It was far more plausible that early man had stumbled across fire and thought that whoever had managed to create it was sent by the Gods, hence the part about coming from the stars. As far as Taya was concerned it was a story told to ambitious children by adults who thought they were trying to disturb the status quo of life on Solicia, something that in many people’s minds would lead to yet another war.

‘That’s just a story!’ Taya spluttered indignantly, ‘a story that is millions of years old.’

‘Precisely!’ the general replied smugly placing his hands on his hips, ‘and since it’s been preserved for so long it’s obviously important.’

Taya’s eyebrows shot up and she gaped at the general, momentarily lost for words. ‘Oh, okay, then I guess that the Lybaling Fairy is important too then?’

The general seethed and the First Minister, who was once again sat behind his desk, had to cover his mouth to stop himself from laughing.

‘But if it is not a story then you might well have brought destruction to this world, ever thought about that?’

As Taya stared at the general trying to think of a polite way of answering his absurd question, it was the First Minister that came to her rescue. It seemed that he did not want to be sidetracked, and with a wave of his hand, dismissed the general’s comment, an action that did not sit well with the military leader and turned back to Taya:

‘How exactly have you managed to travel faster than light, I was always told that was impossible?’

Again Taya was lost for words. How was she meant to explain a concept that was so utterly alien to her people? Due to the legend, astro-physics was an area of science that was not widely publicised and certainly not taught in schools. The authorities felt that such knowledge would lead to advancements that could endanger life on Solicia. This meant that in some ways Solicia was a very backward world as they rejected any technological advancement. However, there were small communities within society that were extremely advanced, as shown by the scientific advancements in areas such as astro-physics and quantum mechanics. However, only a small proportion of the population had access to that knowledge and a lot of people did not even know that it existed. This it seemed, was unlikely to change as the academics were a community unto themselves and rarely socialised with outsiders.

This in itself created conflict. The authorities and the military often took control of the technology created by the academics but they invariably did not understand it and so used it wrongly and for their own gains as they shunned the help of the scientists who had created it. However, as they knew how powerful this technology could be, but not necessarily what it was designed for, they usually became highly suspicious when a neighbouring country gained technology they did not have. This suspicion and mistrust was the start of nearly every war in the planet’s history and inevitably affected the local populations who were drafted, or who were simply in the line of fire. These villagers had even less knowledge of technology than the military and usually ended up hurting themselves more than their enemy in conflicts that they did not understand or care to be a part of. As far as most of the population was concerned, although they knew light came from the sun it was still something that was there during the day and gone at night and since it was everywhere at once, nothing could possibly travel faster.

Taya fell backwards into her chair and eyed the First Minister, wondering how much he was going to believe before either his superstitious nature or his religious beliefs kicked in, as according to Solician doctrine anything that could not be explained by man, was an act of the Gods.

‘Okay,’ she started, bracing herself for the inevitable scepticism, ‘light is not just a thing, it’s waves that come from the sun.’

Both the First Minister and the general, whose curiosity seemed to be getting the better of his fear, nodded.

‘Well those waves don’t just appear here.’ She started waving her arms around the room. ‘The sun is millions of miles away and therefore it takes time for those light waves to reach us.’

‘These light waves,’ she illustrated once again by waving her arms around the room, ‘are not the same light waves that are up there.’

She finished off by pointing out of the window at the sun. The general narrowed his eyes but said nothing, waiting for her to carry on.

‘What you see up there in the night sky, the patterns of the stars, is millions of years old. You really are seeing history in the heavens. We won’t be able to tell what the galaxy really looks like now for millions of years when today’s light finally reaches us.’

Taya could tell by their blank expressions that neither of the two men sat before her had understood a word she had said.

‘Tell me again why you want to go into space in the first place?’ Unable to understand the science the general seemed to want to bring the conversation back to a level he could understand. ‘There are plenty of ways that we could use that kind of technology here on Solicia.’

‘Solicia is precisely the reason that I want to go into space. Thanks to your continued efforts to take us to war…’

The general pursed his lips but the First Minister laid his hand on the general’s arm gently restraining him, an action that did not go unnoticed by the professor who had been deliberately trying to annoy him.

‘…a large majority of this world’s natural resources have been lost. Pollution from your air vehicles is damaging the air, which in turn is having a negative effect on the soil. Without fertile soil we can’t grow crops and soon there won’t be enough to feed a fast growing population. The towns are starting to use more fuel than we can produce as many natural fuel reserves were destroyed in the last war and can’t be replaced. We need to find other ways to produce energy and quickly.’

‘And you think that these resources can be found on other planets?’ the First Minister asked curiously.

‘For pity’s sake,’ Taya murmured shaking her head, convinced she was surrounded by fools, deaf fools at that. Raising her voice she replied, ‘There is water on two of the moons.’

‘There is water on this planet,’ the general stated stubbornly.

‘Yes, most of which is polluted because of our inadequate pumping systems,’ Taya snapped back. She took a deep breath, trying to rein in her temper. ‘We have found other planets in our neighbouring systems that are very similar to Solicia which means that they will have similar energy reserves that we can mine. Who knows we could even colonise them. I am trying to save our planet.’

Both men pondered this statement. Even the general knew that his forces were ill equipped to go into another conflict mainly due to the lack of fuel sources for his few remaining vehicles.

‘What’s the worst case scenario if something goes wrong?’ The First Minister was nothing if not thorough.

‘The propulsion system overloads and we blow a small hole in the planet,’ Taya replied quietly and then added very quickly, ‘but that will never happen; our safeguards are more than enough.’

‘And if you don’t find anything then you have wasted resources that could have helped this planet,’ the general stated coolly.

‘I have already used those resources; the rocket has been built, so they are lost whether we launch or not. If we don’t find anything then you haven’t lost anything. All that will happen is that I will have wasted the majority of my life