Prologue: Farewell Vega

1300 GTT Minos

Vega, in all its pristine glory, was the very center of the universe, at least to the fragment of humanity that called her home. Cary Victor was one such individual. Though human by birth and a Terran by ancestry, he considered Vega his home. Victor had never seen the home planet of his ancestor. In fact, no one had seen earth for more than thirty years. Having spent all of his twenty two years in and around Vega, he was spared the longing for a world that he had never seen with his own eyes.
The fact of the matter was, he considered himself first and foremost a Vegan.
Earth remained a figment of history’s imagination, something beyond the tangible realm he had grown up in. You needed a sort of blind faith to believe in a planet you have never actually seen and Cary decided early on to expend his energies elsewhere.
“GTT Minos, bound for 3rd Fleet headquarters, Capella cleared for departure. Please stow you gear and fasten your seatbelts,” said the disembodied voice of the transport’s pilot. He sounded old and jaded, decidedly irritable, Cary thought idly.
Must be the long hours, boring flight and lousy pay, he chuckled to himself.
There were, of course, more plausible reasons for the pilot’s rough demeanor and Victor had no illusions about what they were.
The Neo Terran Front.
War was on the horizon, everyone knew that. It was no longer a matter of if but when. Thirty two years of peace were threatened by the NTF insurgency and it was beginning wear on the Vasudan / Terran alliance. They had a vision for the Terrans trapped in this region of the Galaxy and it did not include the Vasudans. Aken Bosch, the fallen Admiral and self proclaimed messiah of the insurgency, had captured the Polaris system in a stunningly brazen betrayal of his command.
There were plenty on both sides that stood to gain a lot by straining the relationship that was the cornerstone of the GTVA. The Vasudans had been dealing with their own disgruntled citizenry, The Hammer of Light, for a lot longer. Millions had died during the Great War. Despite the fact that he was probably headed for combat, Cary only thought distantly of the chance that he might die in battle and like other men his age, he felt invincible, immortal. He was proud, determined, resolute and uniquely unencumbered by the sense of loss that wore down the generation that came before him, the so called Lost Generation. In that respect he was something of an anomaly.
As the old Terran saying goes, rank hath its privileges.
Because of his father’s service record and contributions in the Great War, Cary grew up in the best of circles, among the politically connected members of Terran high society. He had been spared the darker legacy left by the Great War, a shattered society, a non-existent economy and millions of humans struggling to survive in the aftermath.
Cary Victor lived his life as a free Terran. He didn’t grow up in the shadow of the war with the Vasudan Parliamentary Empire, nor did he fear annihilation at the feet of the Shivans, the shadow raced that appeared one day in the blink of an unstable wormhole and disappeared nearly as quickly. They very nearly wiped out every single living creature in that region. But they were gone, forgotten.
A vanquished enemy.
The Galactic Terran had started to rebuild and the peace treaty with the Vasudans brought the promise of prosperity the likes of which the Terrans could only dream of.
His great adventure was just getting started.
But the shadow of turmoil was slowly spreading across the world of the Galactic Terran Vasudan Alliance.
He smiled as the roar of the engines thrust the lumbering spacecraft into the air. It was an Argo class transport, a bulk hauler normally used by the GTVA Marines. What it lacked in creature comforts it made up for prodigious capacity. It could hold half a dozen Myrmidon fighters and a company of Marines easily. He settled into his window seat in the forward officer’s lounge and tried to relax as the ship reached escape velocity fairly quickly.
Vega fell away beneath the rising Transport.
It was the adopted home of his father and mother. It was where they settled after the defeat of the Shivans. The destruction of the Shivan Destroyer, Lucifer, left them stranded out here on the far side of the galaxy, cut off from their ancestral home. It was where Armand Victor, Cary’s father, reclaimed what remained of his life after years of conflict. Vega, where other humans, longing for some consistency, shattered by the war and the sudden realization that few, if any of them would ever live to see Terra again, came together to form a new society.
Vega, where they united to build a new home for the weary remnants of humanity.
Cary could feel the power of the engines building beneath him as the ship accelerated. The cabin lights dimmed slightly as the power was siphoned off to the engines. He leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes.
There was a slight shudder as the spacecraft, buffeted by Vega’s considerable gravity field, broke free of the pull and turned out towards space. The clouded skies of the planet below briefly filled the window and Cary did his best to ignore the view.
He didn’t want to give into the urge to look back but he found it hard to stop.
He looked.
There was a cold, hard lump in his chest as he watched it fade from view.
A brand new Nugget, an Ensign fresh from flight school, leaving his home behind for the first time, Cary found that his excitement at the adventures that waited for him was mixed with a little anxiety.
“Now hear this, prepare ship for jump, crew to your stations. Seal all firewall bulkheads. That is all.”
No preamble, no pleasant commentary about the temperature of the Third Fleet headquarters or how the rings of the fourth moon of Vega sparkled, just a terse command to get ready for the inevitable jerking sensation of the jump to subspace flight.
Flight protocols certainly were abbreviated these days, things haven taken on serious overtones.
War has away of changing things like that.
The Neo Terran Front’s insurgency suddenly escalated from the minor nuisance that was marginalized by the press as nothing more than desperate acts of piracy by a few, with the staggering defeat of the GTVA navy at Sirius. Regulus and Polaris quickly followed and, if the rumblings he had heard from his friends were true, Epsilon Pegasi was next on the NTF’s menu.
Sure both sides were claiming victory, but like it or not, the NTF had finally forced the GTVA to take them seriously. Details of the battle were sketchy. The press was being kept out of the area unless escorted by military units or embedded in one, though those were few and far between.
Cary knew that his being immediately deployed to a front line battle group meant that something serious was happening. The insurgency had exploded in the face of a fledgling society struggling to grow. Despite the violence of humanity’s roots in this section of the universe, Cary had never known war until now.
The Great War was before his lifetime. He also had never known the blue skies and green fields of earth. He was born after the end of history. Even his father had a hard time remembering his home world after so many years being away.
When you are fighting for your very survival every single moment of every single day, you tend to focus on the now. He was a shipwright, a master shipbuilder. He had a keen eye for a straight keel and a true line as he put it. Wounded early in the war, battling against the Vasudan Navy, he was forced to find a new way to contribute to the war effort. An engineer by training, Armand Victor helped to design upgrades to weapon systems and propulsion systems that helped to turn the tide of war.
He shied away from praise, just saying that in those days everyone had to contribute to survive and that he only did his part.
After The Great War, Armand Victor, Commander, GTA (ret.) helped to design and build some of the newer ships that helped bring the stability to the region. He had a gift for design and function as well as the ability to maximize the limited resources available in those lean early years.
The Vasudans called him Shao’ Huraat.
The master builder.
High praise coming from a civilization as advanced in technology and steeped in traditions and craftsmanship as the Vasudans. To most Terrans, the subtly of art and design were lost and Vasudans (who were viewed with skeptical eyes and half hearted acceptance in spite of the treaty) felt them unable to really appreciate Vasudan artistry.
To the Vasudans, everything in the universe has to have a purpose.
Everything had a cosmic balance.
There was nothing that existed in the universe that was without function. That included the Shivans. Cary’s father often liked to quote Vasudan design philosophy when he was working.
To everything under heaven a purpose, was one of his favorites.
Vasudan ships are works of art. Deadly adversaries to be sure, but they are undeniably graceful and almost beautiful when compared to the brutish designs of the Galactic Terran Alliance.
Cary inherited his father’s respect for Vasudan culture and it often drew curious looks whenever he discussed Vasudans or the Great War. There are a lot of humans on this side of the Sol jump node that think that were it not for Vasudan interference that the jump node home would never have collapsed. Those are people that are too consumed by the past or by someone’s version of recent history, most likely NTF propaganda. The NTF h often loses its venom on the Vasudans, calling the treaty the primary culprit for the escalation of hostilities. Three decades of peace are now threatened because of the skewed perceptions of a handful of ignorant individuals.
Armand Victor, though he fought against them in the early days of the Great War, respected the Vasudans. He said that the Vasudans showed remarkable courage in the face of incredible tragedy.
He said all one had to do was imagine how you would feel watching your home planet burn. Imagine the feeling of leaving your once proud civilization behind, a smoldering ruin.
There is still some semblance of hope for those wanting to return to earth. Eventually contact may be reestablished, the jump node repaired. The Vasudans, unfortunately, no longer have that hope. All that remains is the legacy of their culture and traditions.
And their considerable courage.
Cary thought that it would be enough.
He never pretended to know a great deal about politics or the how’s and why’s of the Great War. All he knew was that there was peace until a year and a half ago. He hoped that humanity, having survived conflict before, would do so again.
And this time, Cary Victor would have a chance to do his part.