Authors: Max Feinstein
It was then that a chime went off from his desk
. Redic turned to see a new message window flash open on his display. He quickly sat down in his plush chair to quickly read the communique. Admiral Lin himself had sent the note, as per the signature at the bottom, but Redic could instantly tell something had been wrong with the man when he had written it. It was not in the Admiral’s usual friendly style and there was no casual joking remarks aimed at Redic himself. It almost seemed as if someone was impersonating the great admiral.
Redic had sent the Chief of Armed Services a request for information about the Fringe Sector. Mostly it had been about the loss of communication from Frontiera and Kapricara that had now spread further into the Pisces Sector. What he received back was a message that basically told him to mind his own business and not to involve himself in the operations of the Federation Military Forces. It tol
d him that the problems he was inquiring about were under control and in the process of getting resolved. No mention was made as to the spread of this problem to Rahias, where RedSky had a full team of scientists and engineers working on a variety of projects for the military.
Something was going on with the admiral and Redic made a mental note to watch the admiral further. He also had a bad feeling that whatever was happening inside the Federation was getting much worse and only gaining momentum. His personal corporate intelligence service had reported new fleet mobilizations as well as certain reinforcements heading towards the area in empty space were Rahias was located. For this reason he had ordered a surveillance mission of the military facility.
Suddenly another alert called out to him. This time it was of an incoming priority transmission.
"Pardon me
Governor Lawrance, but I have some pressing matters to attend to. I hope we can talk again soon. Thank you once more for all your help.”
“Of course, I completely understand. We can talk later,” with a cordial smile and nod the governor disappeared from the screen.
Redic quickly activated the feed, "yes Rela? What is it?"
"Sir, you have private flash traffic coming through
. It’s from CS Two Two," Relaza, his personal assistant, sang through the comm with her beautiful voice. Why she had not gone into a singing career was beyond Redic’s comprehension.
Redic
smiled at the news and moved his right hand into a concealed slot at the edge of his desk. The scanner inside tested his fingerprints, DNA, venous patterns, as well as oxygen concentration in order to make sure it was truly Redic himself. He made sure to avoid the panic switch hidden inside. Within seconds the transparent wall behind him darkened completely, allowing no light at all to pass, before his private data terminal activated and showed him the message waiting for him. CS-Two-Two was one of the many Core Survey ships sent towards the galactic core regions months ago. Now it seemed that one of the ships had found what he was looking for.
"Rela, please
contact Dr. Hamulson and let him know I would like to speak with him right away."
"Right away, sir
," came her reply almost immediately as she set to work establishing a subspace channel.
“Thank you Rela, oh and in the meantime could you put me through to Commodore Feloran,” Redic requested while rubbing his eyes gently
, feeling his stomach growl at that very same moment.
He thought about getting another mealbar to hold him over until later, but Rela accomplished his request in record time, as was always the case. Commodore Juani Feloran’s holographic image flickered to life
on the other side of Redic’s large desk. Like always the man’s dark bearded face was expressionless and he stood straight at attention looking directly at Redic himself. The scene would have been intimidating had he not known the fine officer for the past decade or so. Juani had previously been a captain in the Federation Navy, until such time as he was discharged from the service for the disobeyment of an order from his superior. In Redic’s mind his actions were completely justifiable and so the navy’s loss was RedSky’s gain. Now the experienced man was in charge of most of the corporation’s Space Defense Force.
“How may I be of service, Mr. Skyler?”
“Commodore Feloran, I have a mission for the RSDF. I’d like you to preposition a force to within striking distance of Rahias. How long with that take?” Redic inquired and studied the commodore for a second.
Without pause the man answered, “eighteen hours, sir. I’ll send the orders to our nearest
assets. Captain Delveko and his ships are the closest assets. They can be quickly redirected.”
“This will be in support of Federation Naval units already at the facility,” Redic added in anticipation of the other’s question, “I am also sending your forces a
shipment of new Berserkers. This should prove a perfect time to test them in a live fire setting.”
“Roger that. May I assume that chances of armed hostilities are certain then?”
“Let’s just say there is a very good chance of that. I wish the force to be prepared for the worst.”
“They always are, Mr. Skyler,” this time it was Juani’s turn to take a pause and he looked directly at Redic, “is this Threat Omega?”
At that Redic took a slow deep breath, “there is a high probability of that.”
“Very well, sir
, I shall make the necessary arrangements,” the commander of all RedSky Space Defense Forces said without a second’s hesitation before cutting off the subspace transmission.
With
the orders issued Redic let out a soft groan as he lifted himself out of the comfortable chair and stood up, stretching out his aching muscles. He could feel the pain and weakness starting the break through and looked down at his chrono. The symptoms were returning faster these days. A few months ago he would have gone another two hours before feeling the effects and needing to take his medications. The doctors had told him this would happen, but the progression has occurred even faster than they had estimated. It was a constant reminder of the hazards of being a man with his stature and one with many powerful enemies that would love nothing more than to have him out of the way.
Redic
inhaled a long breath and made his way slowly across the office towards the small kitchen unit built into the office. He walked to one of the corner cabinets and opened it. Pushing a couple of the glasses inside out of the away, he found the switch he needed. Once pressed Redic felt the locking mechanism retracted and a small compartment flip down from beneath the mounted cabinet. Reaching inside he pulled out a small white container.
The RedSky CEO frowned at the need for it, but pressed his thumb against its top nonetheless
. With a
hiss
the side of the small box popped open and slide out to reveal an injector unit and three cartridge ampules. Redic reached down to extract the small injector and checking the small display to make sure it was already loaded. Satisfied, he rolled up his sleeve to expose his left forearm and pressed the business end of the injector against his skin. He paused only for a second before pressing down to trigger the unit.
The
soft
puff
emitted from the device was barely audible to anyone except Redic. To him that lone sound meant life or at least a few more meaningful years he could spend with his family. The specially designed nanoparticle medication was the only one of its kind and the only thing keeping his system from succumbing to the disease. It was not a true cure, but for the moment it was the only thing available to him. That would change in time, but time was something he was running out of. With every new defense designed against it the sickness would mutate and transform into something slightly different. It was truly an ingenious feat of genetic engineering and Redic would have been thoroughly impressed by it had the virion not been designed specifically to kill him.
A slow continuous organic wave of rejuvenation washed over him at that moment as the microscopic machines now inside him began
to instantly repair the internal damaged caused by the raging infection within. The feeling was good enough to make Redic’s eyes close reflexively and his breath to catch inside his slowly healing lungs. It almost made him miss the sounding chime of the office doors parting open. He sealed his medical container shut and tossed it into the closest drawer just as the sound of tiny footsteps running on marble flooring reached his ears.
“Daddy!” he heard his son call out excitedly and turned just in time to see the boy run around the corner
, “daddy! There you are!”
“Hey Reddy, how’s my little champ today?” Redic smiled and leaned down to quickly pull the boy into his arms for a bear hug. Everything he now did was meant to
shape a fruitful future for the young boy. “I missed you so much!”
“Daaaddd,” the boy giggled, wiggling in Redic’s arms as he kissed his cheeks, “m
ama said we can go to the zoo today once you get done with work. I sure hope you are.”
“Oh did she now?” he laughed slightly and looked past the boy’s shoulder at the beautiful dark haired woman standing there, her ha
nds across her chest and a smirk on her face. “I guess we are going to the zoo then. She’s the boss.”
“And she says you both need to spend some time outside,” h
is wife, Michelle Skyler, shook her head at the remark and slowly began to move towards them. Redic smiled and met her halfway. Shifting the young Redcliff to one arm he wrapped the other around Michelle’s waist and pulled her to him. His family meant everything to him and having them so close just reminded him that much more about how much he needed to protect them. Redic felt his wife’s arms envelope both him and the boy in his arms and for a second all the problems in the galaxy vanished.
As all good things, they tend to not last forever, as Redic found out once again when a new signal sounded f
rom his work desk. Relaza’s voice called out to him as second later, “Mr. Skyler, I have Dr. Hamulson from GenLabs for you.”
Redic watched his wife tilt her head at him and lift her arms out in order to take Redcliff from his arms, “alright Red, go do your business thing. You better hurry up, though, or we are leaving without you.”
He gave her the boy after kissing his forehead and heard Michelle laugh softly as she walked away slowly to the other side of the large office. Redic watched her for a moment and smiled to himself at how lucky he was to have someone like her in his life. She had pulled him out from some of the worst times in his life and he hoped that one day he could repay her for that. Michelle had been the only person in his life that had kept him from spiraling down into a deep depression after the murder of his beloved first wife.
Sitting down at his desk once more Redic quickly activated the subspace transmission. The holographic projector powered up immediately and constructed the image of
Indigo Hamulson. The scientist was transmitting from halfway across Federation Space, but the marvel of subspace communication allowed Redic to talk with the woman as if she was in the next room. Indigo, probably named after her stunning eyes, was a rather young scientist at the head of one of the most promising projects being undertaken by GenLabs. While operating mostly independently, GenLabs was in actuality a wholly owned subsidiary of RedSky Enterprises.
“Dr. Hamulson, thank you for getting back to me on such short notice,” Redic said while leaning over the desk on his elbows.
The doctor smiled back at him and flicked her long red hair back behind her left shoulder, “no problem at all Mr. Skyler. How may I be of assistance to you this fine morning?”
“I’m actually inquiring about the progress of Project
Saturn. Have there been any recent developments?”
“
The project had actually seen a number of breakthroughs as of late,” the doctor looked down at a holographic command pad now being projected in front of her from her personal wrist communicator.
She typed in a series of commands and the keypad was quickly replaced with a floating video display, which
she held up for Redic to see. At first the image only showed a view of a land plot with barren light brown soil. For a moment nothing happened, until suddenly a green sprout appeared to break the surface. In just seconds the plant bud growth enlarged and grew further. It shot up vertically to at least three meters in what the accelerated timer at the bottom edge of the display showed to be around five hours. At that point multiple branches extended from the thickening trunk and began to fill with yellow leafs and violet flowers.
“As you can see,” she continued even before the video was complete, “the latest attempts have proven successful. Our previous ones were less so because of excessive heat generated from the rapid cellular replication
. We found that the heat produced was enough to actually trigger protein and nucleotide denaturation within the cells.”
“But this has now been
overcome, correct?” Redic politely interrupted her, knowing her penchant of talking for hours on end in excruciating detail.
“Sorry, yes we have altered the growth rate and genetics so that heat is no longer an issue. We can apply these techniques to other planet life as well.”