Signal Lost (Tau Ceti Awakened #1)

Chapter 1

War's End

What a world to die for.

Leucifia touched her hand to the display, summoning up the projection of the coveted planet.

It displayed Earth as it slowly rotated on its axis, and she reached forward to cup the image of the blue sphere in her palm.

It was a singularly beautiful, fertile, and vibrant planet.

A perfectly habitable land that her people had migrated across the galaxy for.

A millennium was spent traveling here from their shattered homeland. Decades were wasted currying favor with the humans. Years were lost to the inevitable war that broke out when diplomacy failed.

That planet, Earth, was so sacred and well protected that the humans themselves would not even let their own kind return home out of fear of ruin. And so, her people were trapped skyward. Forbidden to settle and breed and be more than a withering species on the edge of extinction.

She couldn’t stop the twinge of frustration that sank into her muscles, stiffening her fingers as she traced the coast of one of its many oceans with a clawed fingertip.

The verdant lands below matched her own coloration: sage green scales, with dark emerald dappling the tendrils that framed her face.

With an irritated flick, she dismissed the display, shelving the complex longing for a place she had never known. It was something she would process another time, if ever. The black expanse and glinting stars outside the sloping windows of the Icthian flagship were a much more welcome sight.

Visible stars meant they had dropped the ship out of cloaking, that something would happen today. Something other than lying in wait.

The Sovereign Fleet flagship had been in a slow, lazy orbit around one of Saturn’s moons as they all waited for the latest peace summit to complete.

This was not the first Saturn Summit, but it was the most successful attempt at reconciliation between the Federation of Sol and the Sovereign Fleet that she could recall.

They had been in orbit for weeks while dignitaries and ambassadors brokered a treaty. Tensions were still high, but all-out aggression had halted long enough for new routines to form. It was her first experience of what normalcy outside of war would feel like, and she was not adapting well.

If I am stuck on this ship with nothing to do for much longer, I am going to march into the medic bay and demand to be sedated.

Leucifia ceased her restless musing and set off for the armory. There may be no excitement today, but she was an officer, and officers were expected to stay armed and in uniform when on-duty.

Even if the only work on the docket for the day was yet another debrief.

The equipment room was quiet when she entered.

The only other person there was a short-statured infiltration specialist with scales as black as the sky.

Leucifia found her personal locker. The sparse nook contained little other than her uniform and a few stickers she had stuck to the interior, despite it being technically against regulations.

“So, are you finally going to take some time off? If, and it is a big if, this all goes over smoothly?” the dark-scaled Icthian inquired with a playfully cocked brow-ridge. “I know Ske’vi is already planning for a month to chase tail and scale if this is a day for celebration.”

Leucifia let the question hang in the air as she mulled the thought over.

“Not that I’m going to be … what do they say?” the specialist continued as she switched from their native tongue of Teelish to a grating attempt at English. “Nipping the bit?”

“Ah, ‘champing at the bit’. You may be mixing that up with ‘nipping in the bud’, I think.” Leucifia focused on keeping the sting of her own restless irritation out of her tone and out of her mind.

The last thing she needed to do was infect the rest of the squadron with her own stir-crazy frustration.

“And … I don’t know. Honestly, I never thought we’d see the end of this. ”

One final pat-down of her suit, and she was ready.

She had her emergency supplements packed in their respective pockets.

She had her flexible vertiblade sheathed on her hip.

Importantly, she also had her tiny waterproof bag filled with stickers stashed safely away inside the front panel of her jacket.

All accounted for. Though the stickers might snag her a reprimand if someone inspected her uniform.

“‘Champing at the bit’! Yes, that one,” the specialist said with a smile.

Her dark eyes softened as she stood to stand beside Leucifia.

“Look, for a communications officer, you really have poor communication skills. You’re shutting me out.

I don’t like it.” She stuck out her purple tongue and gave Leucifia a loving, but chiding, shove on the arm.

“Because I’m not sharing with you my plans to sample various carnal offerings, like Ske’vi?” Leucifia asked with a chuckle. She cinched up her sleeves and gave her comrade a little nudge in return. “I’m just focusing on the now. Task at hand. I’ll get swept away if I start looking too far ahead.”

“Dreaming is how we get by. You should try it. Unless worrying about your squadron has entirely fried your synapses.”

“Worrying about you is my job. And with how reckless you all are, it’s going to make my scales go dull early, and we’ve only been at this for,” Leucifia paused her playful scolding, counting on her webbed fingers.

“How long has it been since you and I took our oaths? Twenty years? Give or take a few?”

The specialist made a small noise of contemplation as she adjusted the holster of her vertiblade. “Just about. I’m just grateful we’re still here to worry you. There aren’t many of us left from our training days.”

“There will be none of us left if the Federation wins this war of attrition,” Leucifia stated flatly.

Too flatly.

The anguish and sense of loss emanating from the specialist bled into the Chorus, that visceral empathic bond between Icthians. Leucifia felt a pang of guilt in her chest. This was her fault. She had drowned the hope her friend had been radiating with her own frustration.

“Ready for this debrief?”

The shared sense of sorrow faded, replaced by a growing thrill of novel excitement.

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

The assembly in the Sovereign’s chambers was a colorful crowd. Icthians from every clade, humans from every one of the seven settled stars, all gathered to hear the decision that may bring the end of the war. The energy in the room was a palpable mix of anxiety and hope.

Even if she couldn’t sense the humans’ emotions in the Chorus, it was still easy to see they were excited. Hands tapping, smiles wide, whispers hushed and eager. All united, all wearing the uniform of the Sovereign Fleet.

Quite a lot of excitement for ambassadorial waffling. Perhaps I’ve truly become jaded. Maybe I should indulge in hopeful musing more often.

The heart of the room held the massive teardrop-shaped pool of the Sovereign. Leucifia craned her neck to glimpse into the water, but the leaders of the Fleet and the Council were so far below the surface that there was nothing to make out but darkness.

Deep maroon carved stone made up the floor, the walls, and even the ceiling of the spacious hall around the sacred pool.

The chamber, nestled at the center of the Flagship, was a single massive and meticulously maintained cavern of pure Bhrellan agate.

A vestige of their long-lost homeworld. A relic from an age when they were not trapped in their ships, forced to live without sky above or ground below.

With a swell, the surface of the water broke. First to emerge were the twelve of the Council, followed by the commanders of the Fleet. The mood in the room shifted in an instant. The twelve looked dour, several dignitaries looked browbeaten, and her commander looked absolutely furious.

There were no excited flares of color along their tendrils, no gleeful smiles, no cheerful chatter.

They brought with them a sense of dread, failure, and futility that permeated the Chorus.

The anxiety only amplified when every commander slicked the water from their scales, gathered their respective squadrons, and left.

No debriefing. That bodes ill.

Her commander did not need to say a word as he gathered the squadron.

Rel Parovek was a striking, tall figure with dark violet scales and bright indigo markings that dotted his long crown-tendrils.

They walked in silence as he stalked ahead, his tail flicking in obvious irritation.

The small squadron of twenty followed him out of the chamber.

Leucifia kept her focus on her feet, watching her pace carefully.

Controlling the flare of excitement building in her belly before it leeched out to spill over her comrades was a tall ask, but made easier with distraction.

Left foot, right foot, left foot, moving in sync.

They marched through the winding, semi-organic corridors of their flagship together in silence.

The humans in her squadron, though not able to feel the pulse of dread in the air, seemed to understand the gravity of the situation.

Their small, human-designed corvette-class ship was already being refueled and prepped when they arrived. It was a narrow vessel, made for stealth and speed. It was barely large enough to fit their squadron along its boarding ramp.

Their commander turned to face them, raising his voice to address the twenty souls awaiting his orders.

“The Federation has withdrawn from the peace summit. They have refused to cede control of the interstellar gates back to us, and they are disallowing passage for any Icthian that has not been defiled with their wretched ‘Pactbind’.”

Rel Parovek held a golden metallic circle in his clawed hand, lifting it above his head to show the crowd. A spiked, coiled protrusion along the inside of the curve glinted in the light. Fear and dawning realization echoed as they recognized the cruel implement.

Every Icthian prisoner of war that had been released back to the Fleet had that same device permanently affixed around their neck, rendering them debilitated and silent in the Chorus.

“The Federation fears anything they cannot control, including us. They will never allow us to settle until we have been brought to heel.”

One Icthian let out a soft sob. That pain echoed through the crowd in a reverberating wave. Small clusters leaned in close to wrap their arms around each other. Even the humans joined in the consoling, despite being deaf to the empathic connection.

The Chorus was so visceral and integral to her sense of self that the thought of having it wrenched away made Leucifia feel nauseous.

One human in the group held her fist in the air and let out a pained, but heartfelt cry in her best attempt at Teelish, “Skila T’eta, Almenes!”

Proudly, the rest of the squadron repeated it after her, their voices all resonating together: “Skila T’eta!”

That little human has adopted even our rallying refrains. It has been years since I last heard that mantra. “The grounds shift, and we press on.” The Sovereign would be proud.

The commander’s tail flicked with frustration as he spoke his next words. Leucifia could feel his palpable rage burning around her. It left prickling points of heat at the corners of her mind that threatened to grow into an inferno if left unchecked.

“I argued before the Council that we should reclaim our gates and hang the Federation transgressors responsible by the very ‘Pactbind’ they mean to control us with,” Commander Parovek said, his voice thick with disgust.

“However, the Council and Sovereign have chosen a different path. They will continue negotiations for Earth while we send a vanguard to Tau Ceti as a contingency. There, we will stake our claim on planets with potential habitability. This squadron will be the first in that vanguard.”

The chill of hopelessness replaced the heat of rage that had been building in her nerves.

Potential habitability was an overstatement.

That frigid expanse was desolate, and decades away from even potential planetside settlement.

Terraforming was technology they had tried to emulate, replicate, or outright steal for decades, but the Federation kept their methods closely guarded.

“We will be in cryostasis for transit. Without a gate, this will be direct travel at sublight speeds. Projections are roughly twelve years relative.”

The lack of time to react was for the best. Otherwise, she would find a coil of rebellion in her heart that could spur a wave of anger in the Chorus.

Fast and clinical movements were the safe choice.

Once again, she was putting her feelings aside to do what was needed for the survival of her people.

Even if it felt like they were walking towards certain death.

She could do what she was bred and trained for: keeping her squadron safe. She would do what was asked of her.

Leucifia waited for the others to file in before she took up the rear, closing the loading ramp behind them.

She made her way down the cryopods, securing her comrades’ harnesses one by one.

They all shared a brief and final touch as they pressed their foreheads together.

A parting wish of luck. Then the cryo technician dosed them, closed their hatch doors, and began their stasis sequences.

She took in a final warm breath as she sank back into the curve of her own cryopod.

The pod already felt icy, but whatever had been injected into her neck made the cold feel welcome.

Her eyelids grew heavy. Tension faded out of her muscles and her mind as she sank into the odd sensation.

Her own thoughts began flickering out of grasp.

The attempt to hold a thread of sentiment together faded, like trying to remember a dream.

The hatch closed, and one final thought fought through.

At least the Federation cannot reach us where we are going.