Black Hawks From a Blue Sun Read online

  Medical instruments line the back wall of the tent: a canister of oxygen, a diagnostic cart, stacks of paramedic’s bags, trays of cutting and injecting implements, and a trash barrel overflowing with drained ampoules and plasma bags. In the corner, a skeleton sits in a folding chair wearing the rags of a spattered white smock. A surgical mask hangs around the neck bones, and a head wrap still clings to the skull. An injector rests in its bony lap.

  Beckert looks in the trash barrel and selects one of the empty ampoules.

  Morphine.

  Every glass phial reads the same. He tosses the one he holds back to the barrel where it clatters noisily. He stares at the seated surgeon.

  “Guess you saved the last for yourself.”

  Beckert leaves the tent, confronting death on a scale he cannot comprehend. From the platform looking out, he sees almost all of the skeletons are slumped in the same direction, facing him. Their thin bones reach over one another as though the dying were dragging themselves across the dead, all to reach the medical tent for a painless release from life...

  Black Hawks From A

  Blue Sun

  F. Allen Farnham

  Salem, MA 2010

  Cadre One Publishing, LLC.

  (www.CadreOnePublishing.com)

  Copyright © 2010 by F. Allen Farnham

  All rights reserved.

  Library of Congress Control number: 2010905462

  ISBN : E-Book 978-0-982-7116-1-3

  This book may not be reproduced or transmitted in part or in whole by any means mechanical or electronic without the express written consent of the copyright owner.

  Names, characters, and events in this work of fiction are exactly that: fiction. Resemblance to any persons, dead or living, or events is purely coincidental.

  This book was produced entirely in the United States of America.

  Cadre One Hawk and Angry Ghost Image by Bob Cram, Jr.

  (www.bobcram.com)

  Photograph of Earth obtained from National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Image ID AS11-44-6692, “Close-up of Earth and Terminator”, Apollo 11.

  Used with permission.

  Copyedited by Cameron Chapman. (www.cameronchapman.com)

  Table of Contents

  The Origins of Cadre One 5

  A Summary of Angry Ghosts (Parts One and Two) 9

  Suovetaurilia 13

  Living Life Support 25

  The Dead Place 32

  Proof of the Slaughter 44

  Mud and Rubble 49

  A More Fitting Icon 52

  The First of Us… 58

  Aschimothusia 76

  Hunger is Universal 90

  Beckert’s Entourage 97

  Arlington Cemetery 107

  Worthy Shelter 112

  How We Died 133

  The Censure of Genia Mendes 137

  Savage Grandeur 161

  Mount Vernon 172

  Maiella Was Right 194

  Judicium Dei 213

  The Origins of Cadre One

  Orbiting an intense blue-white star, nestled into the perpetual night side of a massive asteroid, a small ring-shaped facility conducted illegal genetic research. The experiments went far beyond treaty restriction or moral boundary.

  Great care was taken to ensure the facility remained a military secret. It had to be remote, to insulate it from prying eyes. Regular supply trains would draw unwelcome attention, so the station was constructed with state of the art life support and recycling machines. Durable solar arrays harnessed the abundant energy of the blue-white sun. Expansive fields of methane and water ice blanketed the perpetual night side of the asteroid, providing ample raw material for the researchers’ daily lives.

  Where necessities could be procured locally, supply trains were better known as “sin wagons”, stocked to the roof with chemical recreations and perks for the isolated researchers. The facility’s discoveries and technical advances departed with the seven-year convoy, along with any researchers whose term of service had expired. Radio transmissions were expressly forbidden. Such careful devotion to secrecy and to covert operation imbued the enclave with life-saving anonymity.

  As an alien foe burned its way through the colonies on its path to Earth, the enclave researchers received transmissions from ships trying to escape the destruction. The calls were desperate, overlapping, frantic, terrified. They ended one by one, like someone clicking off a row of circuit breakers, until they ceased altogether. For months, the researchers searched the airwaves for human transmission and found only static. There was no question: Earth and her colonies were gone.

  The researchers turned to one another, contemplating their dismal and uncertain future. With local resources, they could go on but the food, air, and water systems that provided for their lives required constant maintenance. With no means of requisitioning replacement parts, everything would have to be fabricated on site. They set about renovating their limited spaces to accommodate anticipated needs. Work schedules grew longer each month.

  Worst of all possible problems, the balance of male to female researchers was heavily lopsided—out of the full staff of eighty, only six were women. Relationships strained under the wanted and unwanted attentions. Touches and gropes escalated to a brutal personal assault. Jealousy had turned murderous.

  The entire enclave was assembled to view the body of the slain woman, to witness the crime of passion bludgeoned into her. A shockwave passed through them as they confronted the violence of her death and the chilling possibility that they, the last survivors of humanity, might drive themselves to extinction. The enclave’s only law was formed at that moment as a warning to any who would repeat such a horrific act: “Anyone who harms, or allows to be harmed, another human is a threat and must leave.” The murderer was exiled by the other researchers, banished from the outpost in a small container to die alone in deep space.

  Such passion was a clear and present danger, yet there was no way to resolve the imbalance of gender. To minimize future incidents, the researchers worked on a pharmaceutical (derived from the chemical recreations of the “sin wagons”) which curbed libidinal instincts.

  The libidinal inhibitors had an unexpected, yet welcome, side effect of diminishing emotion as well. Users of the drug felt less bound by depression, loss, anguish, and fear. Without such distracting thoughts, the surviving enclave was able to better focus on what was practical. The formula was added to the food synthesizers. Productivity soared.

  For a time, resources held out. The limitations of reproduction were clear, however. A shallow gene pool, combined with chromosome breakage from the local star’s radiation, produced rampant defects in the planned pregnancies. With so much health risk to the females, and their inability for strenuous work during pregnancy, it was reluctantly decided natural childbirth was no longer a viable means of procreation. The enclave’s senior officers planned and executed a retrofit of several research labs to incubate future generations. To offset the genetic defects and to ensure strong workers, they applied their genetic experiments to their own children.

  Batch after batch of mutated embryos were culled from each crop, until a sufficient number of healthy embryos could be amassed. The new breed benefited from enhanced musculature, acute senses, sharp intellects, lightning reflexes. But in blundering through the genome, the researchers created many who were hopelessly insane, autistic, or sociopathic. These individuals were initially lobotomized to recover, at the least, their labor potential. With additional experimentation, the enclave learned how to integrate small chipsets into the lobotomized brains which could be programmed with menial tasks. These “reconstitutes” become the lowest echelon in a newly emerging society.


  Free from any kind of oversight or moral restriction, the enclave expanded on the syntheses of man and machine, advancing the combination of human brain and powerful processors. After years of experimentation, they were ready to try integrations with healthy brains—the progenitors of the Cadre Geeks.

  Bit by bit, art, music, and literature fell to the pragmatism of daily living. New machines required new programs to operate, cramping the already-stuffed memory banks. Data on life outside the enclave became unaffordable luxury, even data on their home world, Earth. With computer storage space so limited and the scale of their designs so large, all data not immediately required for survival was crowded from the system’s memory. Efforts were made to preserve Earth’s memory by verbal tradition, but each generation inherited a greater workload from the previous. Less class time was devoted to the verbal passage of memory in favor of more practical, useful instruction.

  The General of the enclave watched the effect on his people, saw how they were losing themselves in longing for Earth, for their ancestral home and its promise of a better life. He decided such distractions were ultimately counter-productive, and he ordered any remaining data on Earth and the colonies destroyed. There is no more Earth, he explained. No reason it should still be getting in our way. As he expected, productivity increased.

  The General maintained a basic file for himself and for future Generals, that should the opportunity arise, they might someday return. But over the decades, the file was repeatedly lost to system errors and failures. It had to be rebuilt from human memory. Details became abstracts; absolutes became approximations. Eventually there was no point to maintaining any file at all, and the knowledge of Earth became a verbal tradition, passed from one General to the next.

  For centuries, the outpost endured by enhancing their recycling processes and by scraping resources from the rocky asteroid. Yet it was clear resources would not last forever. Eventually, someone must leave the enclave to collect them.

  But how? From where?

  The enclave turned its telescopes to space and searched, receiving occasional broadcasts from enemy ships deep in space. Everywhere they looked, the enemy was nearby, and the frustrated people argued at length over what should be done.

  Gradually, they realized the alien ships were the best targets of all, abundant with machinery, fuel, life support, nutrients. Forced by their desperation, all of the enclave’s production bent to the new goal of capturing and collecting an alien vessel. The project was enormous, requiring solutions to myriad problems: acquiring a target, transport to the target and intercept, how to get inside the ship quickly, how to overwhelm the crew and take control, how to pilot the ship home, and how to do all of it covertly.

  Capturing an enemy ship meant risking lives and there was no misunderstanding that discovery by the aliens meant extinction. Phenomenal precautions were taken to conceal their soldiers’ identity during attack. The enclave planned carefully, designing a non-reflective transport, devising tactics, training the best soldiers, equipping those soldiers with overwhelming firepower, and accounting for every contingency they could conceive.

  For decades they toiled. At long last, a team of three highly-specialized soldiers (designated Gun, Geek, and Brick) was ready and the team was dispatched to wait along a deep-space lane of travel. The Geek (an advanced synthesis of human brain and computer) was the software expert, able to link into enemy networks and program them at the speed of thought. The Brick, with a hulking frame and brutal strength, was the remover of obstacles, demolitions expert, medic, and repair technician. The Gun, tall and commanding, was the weapons and tactics specialist, leading the team with unquestioned authority.

  When a bulk freighter passed in range, the soldiers awoke from their cryogenic suspension and pursued in their non-reflective craft. They studied the freighter exhaustively, listening for broadcasts, seeking a penetration point, watching for enemy activity in the vicinity. Once all was set, they ambushed, killed all aboard, and returned home with their quarry.

  Enriched by supplies from the captured ship, the enclave was sated. In time, however, even these resources ran low, and it became necessary to collect again.

  The enclave had grown.

  A Summary of Angry Ghosts (Parts One and Two)

  So far, Cadre One has kept its existence secret, and the aliens are mystified by recurring disappearances of their vessels. Lacking any hard evidence, the aliens whisper about Angry Ghosts taking revenge for Humanity’s extermination.

  Despite the enclave’s barbarism toward the enemy ship crews, there is no joy in the slaughter. Rather, it is a gruesome chore of phenomenal danger. Only the threats of starvation and asphyxiation drive them out again and again.

  Because they number so few, the enclave survivors depend absolutely upon one another. Life is always precarious—if just one of them fails in their duty, they face extinction. Such is their desperate existence.

  Routines are stale in the enclave. Perpetuating the species through the endless tribulations and genetic defects is a constant grind. It is a life of resource allocation, quotas, efficiency upgrades, maintenance, work, work, work. That is all they know, until a combat specialist named Maiella is incubated. Her emotions are strong enough to overwhelm the libidinal inhibitors. Her antics, often of great consternation to the Leadership Council, provide splashes of color for her teammates, Argo and Thompson.

  At times, Thompson has to use his strong influence to keep Maiella in his team, using her remarkable service record to justify her retention. Thompson deeply values her expertise and skill in the numerous dangers they have faced, but there is another reason, subliminal, why he does not wish to be parted—a reason inexplicable as the enclave has lost the words to describe what he feels.

  After a successful mission, Gun Thompson, Brick Argo, and Geek Maiella are welcomed home with triumphant cheers. Soon afterward, Thompson learns the enclave has suffered a crushing defeat in his absence. A trap, laid by the enemy, closed around several combat teams. Rather than submit to capture (and inform the enemy that Humans still live), the mission commander ordered all units to self-terminate. All combat operators triggered personal incendiaries and, in that moment, one half of the operator corps vaporized.

  Thompson is immediately promoted to replace the lost mission commander. Still reeling from the news, Thompson struggles through his raging thoughts and informs his teammates, Argo and Maiella.

  Summoned to a meeting of the enclave Leadership Council, Thompson contributes to the discussion of the enemy threat. Many on the Council advocate turning from the aliens entirely, heading out to deep space in hope of finding undefended resources. Thompson counters with a bold plan of his own, declaring they should commit all remaining soldiers to a single assault and capture the alien technology that threatens them.

  The lesser officers on the Council reject the suggestion outright, but the General is intrigued and silences the dissenters. At the end of the discussion it is decided Thompson’s plan will be implemented. Thompson and his team will not be a part of it, however, should the plan fail. Instead, they are to be dispatched to remote space in pursuit of a distant, unknown object tracked months earlier.

  Thompson suppresses his anger at being excluded from his own plan and readies his team, departing the moment his transport is ready.

  Thompson awakens from cryosleep to find a proximity warning light flashing on his console. His transport is strangely low on power, yet he manages to wake his teammates and land on the enormous vessel nearby. They cut through the hull and storm in, gunning down any heat source they see in the haze and smoke. They sprint toward the bridge of the huge ship and blast their way in. There, crouched behind a console, is a huddle of small humans, clinging to one another in terror.

  Realizing they have gunned down an unknown number of human colonists, Thompson and his team slump with shame and remorse. Not knowing what else to say, Thompson insists they return to base so that the enclave can benefit from the resources, and so t
hat he and his teammates can be judged for their crime. Suspicious, but deeply terrified of the soldiers, the colonists comply.

  Mixed feelings abound during the voyage back. Some of the colonists express hope that a strong, capable military enclave could give them the protection needed to set up their colony shelters and equipment. Others cannot reconcile the loss of loved ones from Thompson, Argo, and Maiella’s attack, believing they will be trapped into a kind of slavery.

  When they arrive at the enclave, the colonists panic. They attempt to fly their huge vessel away, but are cut off by the enclave’s captured warships. Defeated and distraught, the Colonist Captain, Keller, powers down and allows the boarding party aboard.