Into a new World
#1 of The Orphan
// {location unknown / archive incomplete}
// {exact date unknown} 4706 [Federation Calendar]
The city burned. The sky glowed as the rain of fire and death fell from the Federation ships and down on the separatist dwellings. The horizon was a flame as the air was filled with the screams of the dying and fleeing. It was the sound that kept him going. It was the sound that kept him hating his pursuers. And that hate kept him alive.
The orphan jogged to a halt and sighed, looking down at the Federation pulse rifle in his hands. He checked the ammo counter. Last bullet. This was exactly why he hated guns.
The sound of boots striking the pavement pulled him out of his thoughts. Turning around and taking a step back, the orphan's eyes glinted dangerously in the shadow his hood cast over his face. He gripped the rifle tighter as he saw the three troopers round the corner and bring their weapons to bear on him. He didn't give them any time to think.
The orphan fired from the hip and dropped the rifle, charging directly at his pursuers so quickly he almost overtook his own bullet. The shot hit the closest trooper in the neck, causing the soldier to cry out at the top of his lungs before dropping, only capable of making a wet gurgle. The second trooper tried to adjust his aim on the orphan, but was way to slow to register the human's movements. The orphan dodged under the barrel of the weapon, knocked it out of his face and sliced forward with his left wrist. There was a glint of silver at the last split second, followed by stream of blood that sprayed outward from under the chink in the trooper's armour between the head and the shoulder.
The last Federation trooper didn't try anything too clever. He merely cried out, blind firing as he tried to run. The orphan didn't regard him as much of a threat, an annoyance at best, but it was better to be thorough. He ducked under the stray shots the last trooper pulled off and reached under the hem of his trousers by his right ankle. There was a 'chink' of metal on metal as the human drew a slim steel knife from a concealed sheath and threw it in one smooth movement as he straightened up. The throwing knife snaked through the air before the point found its target in the Federation trooper's lower back. He cried out and fell to his knees, sobbing in pain. The orphan dashed forward and leapt.
He landed one foot on the trooper's shoulder and jumped off, grabbing a window sill just above him with both hands. Leaving the street below him, the orphan climbed swiftly and fluidly, jumping between handholds and kicking off crevasses until finally heaving himself onto the rooftop.
From his perch he looked around as he pulled down his hood. The world around him, the place he had considered home, burned like a hell he'd learned about a year ago. Back at the orphanage, things seemed so much more simple. Regular meals, protection, solace... everything had changed. He was supposed to be a protector. He was supposed to serve the greater good. Now he was reduced to running, fending for only himself... kill or be killed.
The orphan sighed, sitting down, feeling fear chill his bones as the realization of what was going on, what was happening, and what he was doing. He felt himself turning into what he swore he'd never become. The seven year old shivered as he remembered an important lesson he was taught a not too long ago.
"You're never too young to kill... and you're never too young to die..."
_You and me, we'll all go down in history - with a, sad statue of liberty, and a generation that didn't agree...
-System of a Down, Sad Statue_
// Holus, Kiandra System
// 12/04/4716 [Federation Calendar]
Reaching out from the planet's crust, over a thousand miles high and suspended in high orbit, the Haven docking station was the greatest feat of engineering in the solar system. The elevator ride from the ground took twenty minutes, and the station itself could hold up to two cruisers and well over a hundred thousand people.
And on opening day, that's exactly how many people showed up for the first commercial space flight to take place in the galaxy. The single cruiser docked, the Floating Spirit hung exactly forty feet from the station's main body, connected by dozens of translucent docking tubes to allow her passengers to board.
As one could imagine, the first commercial use for space travel was something of a galactic event, and 99.99 percent of the passengers were extremely wealthy aristocrats, corporate representatives and politicians from Holus. The 00.01 percent was an individual. One human lost in the mass of aliens that crowded the Haven station and the Floating Spirit.
The human wasn't an adult either. Seventeen years old, he had a pair of shining yellow eyes and wore a white hoodie with the hood pulled up, casting a shadow over his face. Over one shoulder was a backpack, and held in his other hand was a duffel bag. While the crowds shimmied slowly along, he edged onward, squeezing through the flowing forests of adults that surrounded him. As he progressed closer to the ticket desk, he must have been whacked by at least a hundred bags, stray hands, tails and even got stepped on a few times.
The ticket desk was where the passengers had their tickets checked by security. There were over a dozen of them, dotted all around the docking station, each at the entrance to the docking tubes that led into the Floating Spirit. When the human reached it, he couldn't quite understand the odd look the man behind the desk gave him.
The humanoid alien frowned, scratching his bald head. His pale skin turned to a confused pink hue as he inspected the boy's ticket. "Ehm..." he cleared his throat and looked at the boy as he pulled down his hood and held out his identification card.
The picture on the card was an exact match for Altair Leete. Seventeen years old, average slim build, yellow eyes and shorn black hair. Altair looked at the non-earthling with indifference.
"Say to me," the alien said in the little English he spoke. "Where you owner, son?"
The boy suddenly replied in the alien's native tongue, Tyran. "First of all, I'm not your son. Second of all, I'm a free human. My identification says so."
To any other person, Tyran would have sounded like absolute gibberish, but to the Tyr security guard it sounded perfect.
"Right." The security guard replied in Tyran as he checked the ID card again and turned to an embarrassed shade of red. "Guardian?"
"Going to see them now." the boy replied coldly, narrowing his eyes.
The Tyr looked at the ID again and saw in brackets beside the name 'Orphan - 1337'. The alien swallowed, nodded and handed back the ID and ticket. "I'm sorry. Continue." He sounded eager to let the human continue. Altair knew the alien was just eager to let go of responsibility over an Orphan.
Altair snatched his things back and continued down the translucent tube and into the Floating Spirit. Altair wasn't the kind of orphan often seen on movies and articles about the time between the twenty one and twenty seven hundreds. In 4699, during the depression of The Great War that wiped out most of humanity, Earth's government opened up project ORPHAN. Humanity's population dwindled into the mere hundreds, scattered all across the galaxy. To prevent complete extinction, ORPHAN's prime directive was to create 'test tube babies' and clone them a hundred times over. Altering genes a little, the project gave the illusion that each of the 'Orphans' were unique, when in actual fact they were basically the same. As an addition to make the Orphans more self dependent, the government had the children's brains hardwired with survival skills, basic combat, escape and evasion techniques and galactic languages. In short, each Orphan became extremely intelligent and self dependent from birth. Each took a creed to protect, and serve the greater good, but each had the mental potential to becoming a super spy or an ultra efficient assassin.
As one could imagine, that scared other galactic governments. Late 4706, after the success of the first Orphans, a second batch was grown. These didn't make it. Other planets' governments, mainly the Federation, a collection of millions of planets and indigenous peoples bound in alliance attacked the ORPHAN project and destroyed the ORPHAN 2s. Little under a million ORPHAN 1s were left; the Federation went about systematically tracking and destroying them too, using their military prowess and the use of mercenaries and a guild of bounty hunters with extreme hate for the Orphans in particular, known as the Chaos Guild. Altair was seven at the time, and where it not for his first Guardian and a Federal government re-election, he would have suffered the same fate as the ORPHAN 2s and half the ORPHAN 1s.
After the remaining Orphans numbering somewhere in the two thousand were granted permission to live among the stars, they were spread across the galaxy and required to be clearly identified. Hence the word 'Orphan' printed on their ID cards, followed by a designation number. Few knew why these children deserved to be hunted down as dogs, but it has become ancient history. With the first actual commercial trans-planetary flight about to happen, the event known as the 'Orphanage Massacre' was far from peoples' minds... but always remained fresh in Altair's mind.
The Orphan
Into a new World
// Holus, Kiandra System
//12/04/4716 [Federation Calendar]
At first Altair didn't hear him as his music player pumped the loud 'Twitch' music directly into his ears. He was aboard the Floating Spirit, and had been waiting for an hour now. Everyone had been shown to their cabins to drop off their luggage and were requested to congregate in the cruiser's restaurant where the captain would perform a speech before the maiden voyage. It had been the first place Altair went after he dropped off his bags.
He was standing by the television screen, gazing absent minded into space. He was in his own little world when a waiter tapped him on a shoulder. Altair jolted and looked over his shoulder at the Gaian. Gaians, naturally enough from the planet Gaia, from where the Federation emerged in 2760, were anthropomorphic animals. Sometimes known to humans as furs, Gaians were the most abundant people in the galaxy after the 'Orphanage Massacre'.
This Gaian was a dark grey furred wolf. He was dressed in a crisp, high collared white uniform all Floating Spirit's crew were dressed in. his expression didn't change as he indicated with one hand to a table set up for two people. Looking past the wolf, Altair saw the restaurant was starting to fill up. Empty seats were soon consumed by all manner of people who used the Federation's military ships to get to Holus for the maiden voyage of the first commercial trans-planetary cruiser. They were mostly Gaians, mixed up a little with more Tyr, Holunians, Khuul and Sigd.
"Sir, if you'd please like to take a seat." The wolf said in a monotone. "The captain is about to address all passengers."
Altair nodded and moved to the seat indicated to him. Sitting down at his table, Altair looked up at the captain's table, little under five meters away from his. At it sat four people, two seats empty. Altair spotted the owner of one standing roughly in the centre of the restaurant. He was a Gaian, a broad shouldered feline with gold fur and black spots. The feline stood in crisp white and grey uniform and had an insigne on his shoulder, designating him the captain of this vessel.
"Good evening, ladies, gentlemen and Sigd." The captain said in a pleasant tone. His voice was transmitted to small speakers built into each and every table in the restaurant, and amplified throughout the rest of the Floating Spirit over the intercom system. "I am Captain Alexander Swayde, and I welcome you to the maiden voyage of the Floating Spirit. As you all know, until now we have only had millitary ships with the ability for stellar travel. Because of this it as been hard to impossible for civilians to travel the stars. So Federation scientists have worked their butts off to create this." There was a murmur of amusement as the captain rotated on the spot, stretching his arms out to present everything around him. "A cruiser fitted with the first slip space drive in production. What is this slip space you ask? I'll try to explain without confusing you.
"Since its discovery fifty or so years ago by a Vedran physicist by the name of Rochinda, slip space has been the primary connection between solar systems for Federation military craft. Slip space is an extension of our reality, an additional dimension that's integrally intertwined with our own. The slip space is a place where quantum connections are invisible cords, some tiny and unstable, others large and strong connections hanging between huge concentrations of matter such as planets or suns. A spaceship that enters the slip space can harness the energy of these cords and ride them from one star system to another.
"The main benefit to moving through the slip space is that travel time between points has very little to do with the distance actually travelled. If a pilot is properly trained, and he or she calculates so the tear between normal and slip space unfolds just right, the ship could transit between solar systems in seconds. But put an untrained pilot at the helm and the same trip could take weeks or even months.
"Now because of the large energy expenditure of energy caused by slip space engines and the specialist training needed for pilots, this method may not be cheap, as many of your bank accounts may have noticed," again, a murmur of amusement. "But it is the beginnings of access to stellar travel for everyone in the galaxy." He paused to smile and make a short bow. "Our bridge crew is now preparing our first jump to Gaia in the Ligus system. It will take a few seconds, so until then, relax and enjoy your meals. Thank you." There was a polite smatter of applause as the captain left centre stage and walked to his table.
A few seconds was right. No sooner had the captain taken his seat, the intercoms spurred to life again and a female voice was heard all through the ship.
"Bridge crew to the captain. We are locked and ready. Repeat, Floating Spirit is ready for first commercial slip-space jump."
Altair saw the captain nod and bring the microphone on his collar closer to his mouth and say something unheard. The order must have been to commence the jump, as the voice came back over the intercom.
"Floating Spirit prepped. Slip space jump in five... four... three... two... one... mark..."
A split second later, space seemed to stretch. Altair felt ill, like something in the pit of his stomach was trying to escape from his digestive track. He looked out the side window and squinted. The stars, stationary seconds ago, seemed to rush by so rapidly they were no longer white dots, but white streaks. Now and then the streaks of light were broken by a streak of green or red. Then things really started to get strange. Altair's vision decided to blur and fall out of focus. Colours seemed to drain around him until everything turned to black and white. There was a persistent ringing in his ear, and a confused shout on the far side of the restaurant was cut out mid-cry as his hearing disappeared in a split second. The world stretched around him as all matter on board the Floating Spirit was compacted through slip space.
Then it was like an explosion inside his head. There was a flash of white light and the human gripped his temples for no apparent reason. The sick feeling faded, and his sense of up and down quickly returned. When Altair opened his eyes and looked outside, the stars were different. In his view hung a planet that looked like it glowed from the inside. It was remarkably like earth a few centuries ago. Now what was left of Earth was a dumping ground for excess waste, nuclear materials to add to the pollution clouds and plains of fallout. This planet was clean, crisp, fresh and extremely inviting. Dotted around the planet were pinpricks of light, the hull lighting of various Federation battle ships patrolling Gaian space.
This was Altair's travel destination. This was his new home with his new guardians, a family of Gaians waiting for him at the space port. He'd be the first Orphan to set foot on Federation controlled soil in over ten years... it's just a pity nobody cared... as usual...