Short Story: Under Sun, Stars, and Ships

Earth

28th October, 2622. 04:00

It was pretty normal to see the field by the rec center flooded with kids, especially with kids from Novis Paili Children’s Home located just across the street. What was pretty weird was that all the people got here around 4 o’clock in the morning. Then again, Malik was here at 4 o’clock, so he guessed everyone had gathered for the same reason he had. The big field by the rec center was one of the few places nearby where you could get a good look at the sky past the towering skyscrapers lined with cords of light. So if you cared enough to get a good look at the strange flashing lights in the sky, the field by the rec center was the place to be.

A constant stream of cars pulled up to the road to drop off their passengers before driving themselves away. Lots of different people were gathering here, some in pressed suits talking on their comms, a few others walking out from the shadows in-between the buildings half-focused on the HUD’s in front of their faces, and more kids from the Home wandering out of the gap in their fence and across the street. Following where they were headed, he could see a small crowd of boys he sorta knew from the Home gathering at the top of the hill.

Malik wished he had been the only one to think of this idea. Crowds made him nervous. But the other boys had already spotted him, and they didn’t need any new weaknesses to poke fun at, so he started up the hill to join them.

“It’s like a party!” Someone exclaimed, Malik thought his name was Tom but couldn’t remember. Someone whacked him across the back of the head, and Malik choked back a laugh, turning his face to the ground to hide his expression.

“It’s not a party, dumbass.” The whacking-girl said.

“Ms. Lydia says you’re not supposed to say that.”

“Ms. Lydia curses when something really bad happens, so I’m learning from the best.”

“Is something bad happening?”

“What do you think those lights are? I’ve been spying on other people’s HUD’s, the news says there’s ships in the sky firing at each other. It’s the Empire and the Rebellion.”

“A battle? Above Novis Paili?” Malik started, since the words had come out of his mouth even though he didn’t remember his brain telling his mouth to open up.

The girl turned around and looked at him sharply. “Well, yeah, I think so. I didn’t get a very good look.”

Malik took his focus off of the crowd and looked back up to the sky, the whole reason he got out of bed in the middle of the night. If he focused really hard on the lights, he could see a few bright spots that were much bigger than the surrounding stars, and bright flashes of light flashing around them like fireworks.

“But Novis Paili is supposed to be safe.” Malik’s stomach started to hurt. There has been a big battle like this one above the last city he lived in, the same city that took his family and left him stranded on a different planet in a children’s home.

The girl and the boy looked at each other for a few seconds.

“Novia Paili is safe. The ships look like big stars because they’re super far away, like how the stars are far away.” The boy started to lean down towards Malik, but it wasn’t clear why he was doing that.

Malik’s heart was racing. When he shut his eyes to block out the flashing lights in the sky, all he could see were brighter lights flashing in a different sky, a sky which didn’t exist anymore. He balled his hands into fists and knocked the sides of his head as if he could shake out the image.

“Kid, relax! Talia, can you find Ms. Lydia?”

“No, look, I think they’ve stopped or something.”

“Talia, what are you on about? Did you see Ms. Lydia come out here or not?”

“I’m serious, I think the ships have stopped firing, do you see any more flashing lights up there?”

Malik tightened his grip on his stomach and looked back up at the sky.

#

28th October, 2622. 07:00

The early morning sun just peeked over the edge of the horizon, lighting up the shop and filtering through the steam drifting through the air above Caris’s cup of coffee. Caris leaned over a flour-scattered countertop and through an open window which channeled a breeze through the front of the shop and out the open back door, where it would carry the scent of baking breads and pastries through the neighborhood to his west. The shop itself was more than a few generations old and had gone through several renovations, but Caris had managed to keep the vintage butcherblock countertops, the same ones his family had been working on for ages. In this generation, the countertops spent most of their time covered in flour and sometimes natural oils, fruit fillings, and frostings. The warm red stone tile floor beneath suffered the same loving treatment.

By this point in the day, the ovens were already midway through baking the second batch of the morning, the breeze assisting carrying out the ambient heat. The first batch was already on display in the front of the store and being carried off by delighted customers. Normally, Caris would move back and forth between the front of the house and the back, keeping an eye on business and the other eye on the kitchen. Not tha he didn’t trust his wife Kim to take care of the business, it just put his mind at ease if he knew what was going on, which she was kind enough to understand and tolerate. In fact, she was probably wondering what he was up to and might be back here soon to check on him if he didn’t check on her, first.

Today, he stuck his head out the window like he was waiting for something with barely concealed anxiety, scarcely glancing towards the ovens to monitor their progress, and getting flour all over his elbows. His mind was lost not in the clouds, but what was happening above them. Outside, what almost looked like absurdly large stars hovered in the air over the city, reflecting the sunlight. The firing had stopped, but what that actually meant, no one could say.

A harshly cheery jingly cut through the ambient background noise, and Caris hastily wiped his hands on his apron before reaching into his pocket for his comm.

“Paili’s Best Baked Goods, how can I help you today?”

As if remembering he had work to attend to, Caris moved away from the window. The ovens were almost smart enough to do their job without him, almost being the key word.

“I mean I’ve always got a lot of orders to fill, but I’ve got wiggle room on my stock. What are you looking for exactly?”

Caris moved to pull down some boxes down from the back shelf onto the countertop to unfold. They weren’t needed yet, but it couldn’t hurt to get ahead.

“I’m sorry, I think you’re breaking up, could you repeat that?”

A moment later, Caris dropped the boxes he was holding onto the red floors.

“A peace conference? Are you joking me right now?”

The boxes bounced slightly, and then slowly started to unfold themselves into a thin sheet of cardboard.

“...Yes, yes of course I can do it? Just how much are we talking about here?”

Caris left the boxes on the floor, and walked towards the walk-in refrigerator door instead.

“Uhm.... Looking at what we have in stock right now, I don’t have enough to make that much of just rolls. Can we plan for... 80 white rolls instead, and I’ll throw in some other pastries to even it out? How do scones sound?”

Pushing the comm back into his pocket and switching to his HUD to contiue the conversation, Caris started pulling out pans of risen dough from the fridge and briskly walked them to the countertops.

“3:00 pm today? Hoo, I think I can make that happen. Yeah, I’ll see you then.”

“Kim! Kim, close up early! I need your help back here today!”

#

28th October, 2622. 12:00

Greg shielded his gray eyes from the midday sun with his tablet and accepted his lunchtime burrito from the courtier before heading back inside the off-white warehouse. Time was money, and he could eat and give orders at the same time. The second burrito he tucked into the bag resting on his hip. His brother was always hungry when he got home from classes, and never remembered to get food on the way home even when he knew there wasn’t any food in their tiny apartment.

The warehouse was divided into quadrants of differing sizes. Equal sizes made sense in theory, but when your shipments didn’t always come in similar quantities and the content of the shipments wasn’t always anywhere near the same size, a bunch of quadrants of equal size stopped making sense. So the quadrants by the door were the smallest, growing in size the further away you walked.

Haris was stood looking in Greg’s direction next to one of these smaller quadrants when Greg passed him, hand on the back of his neck and moving from leg to leg nervously. Greg slowed down an infinitesimal degree to gaze past Haris and look over what quad 3a was carrying. Based on the size of the heavy metal crates, about three feet long and a foot wide and tall, and the stamps on the side which carried the insignia of that the alien species Greg could never recall the exact name of—Conclave? Concordia?— 3a was probably alien weapons... that’s right, Greg had earlier put Haris in charge of the Commander Shitwad’s special order of energy rifles.

Commander Shitwad had earned said name in honor of how he’d reacted when he realized the same organization he was buying weapons from was also selling weapons to the Empire, the army Commander Shitwad was fighting. Well, if he thought a goddamn smuggling ring was going to pick sides in a war, he seriously misunderstood the nature of money.

“Haris, is transportation secured for Commander Shitwad’s order?”

Haris looked relieved that he didn’t have to be the one to initiate the conversation, and nodded vigorously, sandy hair shaking into his eyes.

“Good, send it. We’ve got his credits already.”

Haris nodded once more, and ran off behind Greg, presumably to get the equipment he needed to load up the large boxes of guns.

Greg made a note on his tablet as to what time Haris had started working on sending Shitwad his order—soon he’d have to let Alyssa know to send Shitwad a signal that his packages are on their way before he got his panties in a twist over how long it was taking—and then tucked his tablet under his arm so he could unwrap his burrito.

Halfway past quad 5a, Lina bounded up to him from apparently thin air.

“Greg! Uhh! Greg!”

“Lina! You can just say my name once and I promise it works just fine.”

“Uhh yeah! We’ve just got a message from, the, uhh,” Lina paused to squint at something on her HUD, “That rec center downtown, you know the one. They’re backing out of the sale.”

Greg tightened his grip on his tablet at his side, knuckles turning white. “What the hell do you mean they’re backing out of the sale? They’re one of our biggest buyers of medical supplies, even the weird obscure shit. They never back out of a sale.”

“Yeah, well, I may be many things but a, uhh, mindreader isn’t one of them. They said something about not being able to afford it or whatever. What do you want to do?” Lina’s fingers twitched, relaying her racing thoughts even when her mouth was paused.

“Well we know the Rec center has always been able to afford it, lord knows nobody is interested in recreational activities these days, what with everyone we know dying and all.”

Greg glanced at his burrito. He was starving and seriously craving a burrito from his favorite hole in the wall, but tomorrow was payday, which meant that today he was flat broke. So, he’d gone with his second-favorite place which had cheaper, and shittier, burritos.

“Unless they replaced us with a cheaper, shittier vendor. Send Joey to fish around their place for a while and see what he can dig up. I’m not buying that their tax money stopped rolling in.”

“Yessir, Greg sir!” Lina practically leaped away to go find Joey, and then to do go knows what.

Greg stood at the end of the warehouse at his destination. Before him was an enormous ship, half sticking out of their massive floor to ceiling doors which were put into place for this exact purpose. The guns, missiles, explosives, medical supplies and humanitarian aid all made them money, but what brought in the real credits were the parts of ships they could get their hands on, either from grabbing it from one of the many graveyards drifting through space these days or by liberating it from someone who wasn’t making good enough use of their ship to begin with.

Wulfric was perched on the back of a mech, something he had borrowed from quad 8d, and reaching upwards into the underside of the ship. Wulfric, after some grunting and cursing, would pull out a panel or piece of wire and pass it to the mech, and the mech would gently set it on the ground a good 12 feet below. Greg might have been more angry with Wulfric for pilfering from their goods, but he had to admit it was a good system.

For a moment, Greg just watched Wulfric work, and rolled back and forth on his feet a bit to ease the pain in his arches. He lifted his burrito, opened wide, and took an aggressive chomp out of the middle. Sauce rolled down the side of his cheek, but Greg hummed in delight and for once ignored the mess.

“Wulfric, once you’ve got about 12 hours left on this project, be a dear and come let me know so we can start fishing for buyers. I’d hate to have this massive thing sitting in the warehouse for longer than absolutely necessary.”

“Yah! No problem.”

“Wulfric, I adore you.”

“Yah!”

From Greg’s left, a pair of mechanical burst open and the sharp heels of fine boots echoed throughout the warehouse. Greg straightened his back and wiped the sauce off of his cheek hastily, turning away from the sound and pretending to be absorbed in his tablet.

“A goddamn Peace Conference, what kind of hippie bullshit. Just the mention of a Peace Conference is enough to kill some of our business.” Greg’s boss, and in fact the boss of everybody present in this warehouse, was a tall and broad man who’s voice always seemed to carry even if he wasn’t necessarily trying. No matter who you were, you were always listening to the Boss. Aside from the Boss’s conversation, the room quieted to a soft background mumble of voices.

Greg quickly put two and two together. The Rec center must have gotten this news before he had. It had nothing to do with their budget or other buyers—there was simply no need to pay massive sums of money for something that they might not even need.

“There’s only one thing we can do about this.”

If the war wouldn’t be producing any more sick and needy, then what did the Rec center need with additional bulk quantities of general medical supplies? Greg swiped through his tablet and sent Joey a quick message.

“Send our best. You’ll know who that is better than I will. We’ll do what we gotta do if they’ve backed us into a corner.”

Greg needed Joey to stick around instead of reporting back what he could find out about the Rec center. They might not want the medical supplies now, but soon they would change their mind, and when they did, they would have a contact already in place to take their money.

#

28th October, 2622. 18:00

The Peace Conference was buffet style, because nothing eased diplomacy like debating going back and forth between two tables for food and looking like a pig, or choosing to abstain and hungrily watching everybody else eat. If Iris were in charge, she would have preferred a multi-course meal with full wait staff that didn’t require the diplomats to move at all so they could focus on getting along, but Iris wasn’t in charge here of event planning aboard this vessel. The only thing she was currently in charge of was arranging the blueberry scones, because nothing eased wartime tensions like neatly arranged pastries.

At least the room itself was well chosen. The room was a long rectangle, with a long faux wood conference table in the center topped with a pale blue runner, periodically accentuated with potted flowers in blues, reds, and purple. The Rebellion had adopted red as their primary color, a fitting choice since their platform depended on outrage against the Empire. The Empire had always used blue instead, the shades changing over the past few hundred years, but most recently they’d adopted a pastel, as if to say “Hey, we can’t do anything wrong, look at our cute colors.”

On one long wall of the room, a long buffet table was overflowing with food. Some roasted meats, but a lot of fresh vegetables and fruits, and several feet dedicated to pastries and rolls, which Iris had just finished arranging. Above the buffet table was a large screen designed to look like a window, with an identical screen on the other wall of the room. On their right, Earth was glittering below and half-shadowed, and on their right was only the vast expanse of glittering stars and battleships stood at a standstill, stopped firing at each other but not put their weapons away or lowered their shields.

Asha bumped into the room backwards, holding a large jug of water protectively, and Iris turned to face her.

“Ugh, Are you done with the breads yet? We have too much shit to do for you to stand here daydreaming.”

“The breads are done, and calm down, we’re ahead of schedule. Do you think if we snagged a few scones, anybody would notice?”

“This is not the event for all that. We’ll snag the leftovers after the talks are over, lord knows everybody else will be eating or drinking heavily depending on how the conference goes.” Asha delicately set the jug of water down on a small table near the door.

Iris looked at the jug, “Wait, are we doing drink service? This is a buffet.”

“I thought we were doing drink service. Buffet doesn’t always mean you get your own drinks, and these old dudes will probably spill if they try to lift that thing.”

“I don’t remember that being on the agenda for today.”

Iris and Asha both looked hard at the sweating jug of water.

“It’s probably fine,” They both said in unison, and then burst into quiet laughter with hands covering their mouths.

Iris shook her head to clear the last of her merriment and strode towards one end of the table stacked high with additional supplies. “Last touch! Each seat needs to have one notepad, one of these folders with all of the documents we have been sworn not to look at or somebody will probably kill us, and two pens. I’ll take left and you take right?”

Asha and Iris gathered up portions of each stack and started moving down the room.

“So how’s Ben?”

“Ugh, don’t even start. We had a fight two days ago over something so stupid.”

“Two days is kind of a long time to leave something unresolved, Asha...”

“I know. I don’t want to talk about it right now, ask me later when I’ve had something to drink.”

“Okay...”

Asha sighed, “Anyway... did you hear about the newbie?”

Iris straightened suddenly and stared at Asha, “They did not give us a newbie on this event!”

“Don’t look at me! I don’t make the decisions!”

“Ugh! It’s like they’re trying to set us up for failure here. Top priority event requires our best people, it’s not the place for training.”

“Yeah, well, you’re preaching to the choir, so feel free to stop bitching anytime, Iris.”

Iris’s mouth snapped shut, and she hunched back over the table to straighten a pen.

Asha sighed, “So, the newbie. I don’t know if he was around for the briefing or if he didn’t get an agenda, but he messed up printing the namecards badly enough that we had to borrow a printer from the East branch. It’s lucky East branch happened to be passing through here and could give us theirs.”

“Ugh!—”

“Ah! Don’t start! Let me finish. They sent him home, he’s not working here anymore or he’s not working here today, I don’t know which. So we won’t have to worry about him.”

“Oh! Well, that’s a relief if nothing else. Are you done with your side yet?”

Asha placed down her last folder, and carefully adjusted it so that it was at a perfect parallel with the table and the pen and notepad placed adjacent to it. “I’m done!”

“Hey, don’t you think it’s weird that we’re the only ones here? Our boss should have come check on us by now, and we usually have at least 1 guest arrive early to these things... And with how important this is, you’d think they’d be here super early.”

Iris stopped and checked her HUD. It was half past 7, and the conference started at 8. Where was everyone? “You’re right, that is pretty weird. Maybe they’ve been held up, some extra ceremony we didn’t know about?”

“But everything should have been in the agenda.”

Iris swiped around her HUD to pull up the agenda to event setup. “I don’t see anything on here.”

Asha was gesturing at the air in front of her own face, “Wait, no, look at the agenda they sent to the guests. It’s been modified.”

“What the hell do you mean it’s been modified? Nobody told us anything! I swear to god...”

Iris swiped through a few more windows to find where the agenda for attendees had been posted. There were security concerns with distributing a copy of the file to different ambassador teams, so instead it was posted to a private server which required credentials to view and higher security credentials to edit. No one should have been able to make changes, except maybe their boss...

Surely enough, it had been edited. Where previously, each party had been respectfully addressed, now it was riddled with racial insults and insinuated at schemes to throw the whole conference.

“No one was going to put shellfish in Captain Ross’s stew, we don’t even have stew on the menu and everyone here knows he’s allergic. And on top of all that...”

Iris scrolled down, “There’s just no way anyone would use these slurs at a diplomatic meeting... This was not our agenda. This is fucking crazy, when did this get sent out?”

Asha’s voice shook just barely, “About an hour ago.”

“This looks bad. It looks like we did this.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Iris could see flashing lights coming from the left window, which showed a live feed out their portside. The ceasefire had ended.

#

28th October, 2622. 22:00

In the open sky far above the surface of the Earth, large sleek ships drifted through space, starboard sides facing the other. Each ship fired intense beams of light which competed with the sun in the sky, but were no match for the translucent blue shields they battered against. Between them, two halves of a small commercial vessel drifted aimlessly in opposite directions, having been caught in the crossfire.

Small fleets of highly mobile fighters flew about each other like flocks of warring birds, bright flashes of red and green lasers flashing between them, until birds couldn’t take any more and burst into flowers of white and orange flames. Some shot off into empty space, carried by their own momentum, while some returned to the Earth filling the sky far below them. Such small ships would burn to dust in the atmosphere long before they reached the surface.

One large ship’s shields flickered, overloaded from the constant barrage. In the next moment, the Commander of the ship would have diverted power from the portside to starboard to make up their weakness, but they didn’t have a moment. The other ship fired, and this time their beam of white light shattered the flimsy shield.

Two halves of a large ship, accompanied by a field of debris and smaller ships adrift in space, drifted slowly towards the clusters of glittering lights that dotted the surface of the Earth.