Cast Adrift, #1, page 1
Table of Contents
Cast Adrift | (Cast Adrift I) | Christopher G. Nuttall
Cover Blurb
Prologue I
Prologue II
Chapter One | James Bond, Gammon System
Chapter Two | EDS Washington, Earth Orbit
Chapter Three | Pournelle Shipyards, Sol Asteroid Belt
Chapter Four | Star City, Earth
Chapter Five | Star City, Earth
Chapter Six | Earth Defence Force One, Earth Orbit
Chapter Seven | Star City, Earth
Chapter Eight | Star City, Earth
Chapter Nine | EDS Washington/Earth Defence Force One, Earth Orbit
Chapter Ten | Star City, Earth
Chapter Eleven | Star City, Earth
Chapter Twelve | Star City, Earth/Earth Defence Force One, Earth Orbit
Chapter Thirteen | EDS Washington, Earth Orbit/James Bond, Earth Orbit
Chapter Fourteen | Star City, Earth
Chapter Fifteen | Star City, Earth
Chapter Sixteen | Star City, Earth
Chapter Seventeen | EDS Washington, Earth Orbit
Chapter Eighteen | Delaine
Chapter Nineteen | Star City, Earth
Chapter Twenty | EDS Washington, J-25
Chapter Twenty-One | EDS Washington, J-25
Chapter Twenty-Two | Landing Field, Delaine
Chapter Twenty-Three | EDS Washington, Delaine System
Chapter Twenty-Four | Star City, Earth
Chapter Twenty-Five | F’Tran System, Vultek Space
Chapter Twenty-Six | EDS Washington, J-57
Chapter Twenty-Seven | James Bond, Delaine System/Government House, Delaine System
Chapter Twenty-Eight | Smallbridge, Delaine System
Chapter Twenty-Nine | EDS Washington, Delaine System/James Bond, Delaine System
Chapter Thirty | EDF Thunderous, Coriander System
Chapter Thirty-One | Star City, Earth
Chapter Thirty-Two | Multispace, Near Delaine
Chapter Thirty-Three | EDS Washington, J-25/Multispace, Near Coriander
Chapter Thirty-Four | Coriander System
Chapter Thirty-Five | Coriander System
Chapter Thirty-Six | Coriander System
Chapter Thirty-Seven | EDS Washington, Delaine System
Chapter Thirty-Eight | The Nest
Chapter Thirty-Nine | The Nest
Chapter Forty | EDS Thunderous, Coriander System
Epilogue | Star City, Earth
Afterword
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Appendix: The Alphans
Appendix: A Brief Outline of Alphan Earth
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Cast Adrift
(Cast Adrift I)
Christopher G. Nuttall
http://www.chrishanger.net
http://chrishanger.wordpress.com/
http://www.facebook.com/ChristopherGNuttall
Cover By Tan Ho Sim
https://www.artstation.com/alientan
All Comments Welcome!
Cover Blurb
Five hundred years ago, the human race discovered it was not alone in the universe when Earth was invaded and forcibly integrated by the Alphan Empire. Over the years, humans have grown used to their position within the empire, serving as soldiers and spacers for alien masters as well as building a place in the universe for themselves. But now, in the aftermath of a violent interstellar war that shattered the power of the Alphans, humanity has rediscovered its pride. Humanity wants to be free.
Facing a war they will lose even if they win, the Alphans give humanity its independence once again. Humanity stands alone in a hostile universe, facing alien threats that regard humans as nothing more than servants - or weaklings, easy meat for armed conquest. And if the human race cannot learn to stand on its own two feet, without its masters, it will rapidly discover that it has traded one set of masters for another ...
... And if they lose the coming war, all hope of independence will die with it.
Prologue I
Washington was burning.
The President of the United States gritted his teeth in helpless humiliation as Marine One skirted the edge of the disaster zone, heading remorselessly towards what remained of Joint Base Andrews. Giant pillars of eerie yellowish smoke rose from the ruined city, casting a sinister light over the countryside. The haze was so thick he couldn’t see the heart of the city, although he knew it was nothing more than a blackened ruin. The White House was gone. The Pentagon was gone. Congress and the Senate and everything else within five miles of the White House ... all gone.
His stomach churned. A day ago, he’d been the most powerful man in the world. His country had been the most powerful country in the world. He’d looked to a future of boundless optimism, a chance to make his legacy as one of the great presidents of his century ... he’d even regretted, deep inside, that he wouldn’t face a crisis that would ensure his name was forever praised or damned. The world had seemed safe and predictable ...
... Until the aliens arrived.
The President still couldn’t believe it. He’d been lucky - or unlucky - enough to be out of the city when the aliens had announced their presence, when they’d systematically wiped out the satellite network, dropped kinetic projectiles on most of the navy and, just to make it clear the planet had new masters, nuked Washington, DC. International communications had been shattered, practically effortlessly, but intelligence reports suggested the aliens had also nuked London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Beijing and five or six other cities. Not knowing burned at him as much as anything else. He’d grown far too used to having information permanently at his fingertips to make it easy to handle the fog of war.
And the nukes are gone, he thought. It was brutally clear that the US nuclear deterrent was no more. The ground-based missiles had been hammered from orbit, the nuclear-capable aircraft had been wiped out and the submarines were out of contact, presumed sunk. What few missiles they’d been able to fire at the orbiting spacecraft had been swatted down so casually that it was clear the aliens were used to much faster missiles. There’s no way we can hit back.
Marine One shuddered, again, as it started to descend. The aliens hadn’t landed everywhere, if the reports were to be believed, but they’d dropped troops around Andrews JBA and set up defences. The hastily-organised counterattack, drawing on a combination of soldiers, marines and national guardsmen, had been effortlessly smashed. The President wanted to believe that armed civilians and the remnants of the military would be able to wear the aliens down, but the surviving joint chiefs had made it brutally clear that further resistance would be utterly futile. The aliens controlled the high ground. They could bombard humanity into submission, while remaining outside the range of humanity’s remaining weapons. They’d shown a frightening - utterly terrifying - lack of concern for human casualties. Millions of people had already died, all over the globe. They could simply keep dropping nukes until the human race surrendered.
The President stared, feeling too numb to care as he saw the alien shapes orbiting over the airfield. Alien fighters ... he’d seen the reports. The USAF had sent F-22s and F-35s against the alien craft, only to watch the jets casually blasted out of the sky. There had been no survivors. His eyes narrowed as he saw armoured shapes - armoured combat suits and small hovertanks - moving around the edge of the base. The nearby civilian housing had been turned into rubble. He thought he saw refugees heading south, trying to reach a safety that no longer existed. The country was steadily sinking into chaos. It had only been a day - a day, his mind screamed - and America was already damaged beyond repair. He shuddered to think how long it would take to restore some semblance of normality ...
His skin crawled as he saw the figures gathered by the runway. No, things would never be normal again. It wasn’t just a crisis, not any longer. It was the new reality. The human race had believed, truly believed, that it was alone in the universe. The President had read the reports dismissing the very concept of alien life, insisting that even if aliens existed they’d never be able to reach Earth. There had been no truth, he’d been told, in any of the UFO reports. Grey-skinned aliens did not abduct humans for anal probing. The witnesses were hoaxers, or drunk, or simply misunderstood what they saw. Aliens simply did not exist.
And yet, they did. The figures weren’t human. They were ... just wrong.
The helicopter touched down with a bump. The President watched the crew spin down the rotors before they opened the hatch. He wanted to draw a gun and open fire, he wanted to carry a nuke into the very heart of alien power ... he knew, all too well, that it was impossible. The aliens would shoot him down in seconds and go on to make their demands to his successor. He wasn’t even sure who that was. The Vice President and the Speaker of the House of Representatives had both died in Washington. There had been no reason to think the United States needed a designated survivor. The Secret Service was working franticall y to discover who was alive, let alone where they stood in the line of succession. Too many government officials had been in Washington when the bomb fell. They were missing, presumed dead. The President had a nasty suspicion the aliens had planned it that way.
He stood, feeling his legs shake. He’d made innumerable diplomatic visits, during the course of a long career, but this was different. This was surrender. The President’s heart wanted to fight to the last; the President’s head knew a prolonged conflict would end in the destruction of the human race. He felt a wave of heat brush across his face as he clambered out of the helicopter. The aliens watched him, silently. He stared at them. All but one were concealed behind powered armour.
The unarmoured alien was ... alien. The President shivered. The alien was slightly taller than he was, with reddish-orange skin, bulbous eyes and a mouth that was curved in something that looked like a faint sneer. He - the President assumed the alien was a he - had no hair, no ears. He wore a blank tunic that seemed completely unmarked. He ...
“Mr. President,” the alien said. His English was oddly accented. “Have you accepted our terms?”
At least they’re not making me wait, the President thought, savagely. Damn them.
“Yes,” he said. The shame of surrender washed down on him as the words hung in the air. “We do.”
“Then we bid you welcome to the galactic community,” the alien said. “Come. We have much work to do.”
Prologue II
No human had ever set foot within the council chambers. No human ever would. They were reserved for the Alphans and the Alphans alone, for the very highest of their species. Even the servants were Alphans, a sign of wealth and power on a scale most sentient beings would have found unimaginable. No aliens - not even the few races the Alphans considered their equals, or their servants - were ever invited into the chamber. It was the very core of Alphan power.
Yasuke, Viceroy of Earth, took a deep breath as he stepped into the chamber. The invitation would normally have been the very pinnacle of his career, a promise - in so many words - that the ruling elite respected and trusted him. He had never had any doubt they cared for him - the core council cared for everyone - but respect and trust? That had been denied, until his invitation to visit the elite in the seat of his power. There was no greater honour for someone who hadn’t climbed to the very top of the ladder.
There was no formal protocol for greeting the core councillors. He bowed once, in salute, then looked around the chambers as the councillors studied him thoughtfully. Massive holodisplays dominated the room, showing a mixture of views from the tower to live feeds from right across the Empire. A newscaster was babbling about something in tones of great excitement, as if the broadcast was in real time. Yasuke knew better. The news broadcasts would have been cleared through a dozen different committees before going live. Events had probably already moved on. He made a mental note to check the government network before he boarded his ship. He’d need to know if something - anything - had happened that might change the core council’s policies before he could put them into practice.
He kept his face impassive as the live feed panned across a gleaming white tower. The city was dominated by white towers, each one housing hundreds and thousands of Alphans from birth to death. Their every need met by the government, they lived and died without ever making an impression on the universe. Even now, even after the Empire had come closer to defeat than ever before, the population seemed unmoved. They didn’t realise - not yet - that they’d built their towers on sand. They didn’t realise that the servile population was no longer content to be servile. None of them even understood how close they stood to total disaster.
We built our Empire on alien labour, Yasuke thought. And now those aliens want a piece of the pie for themselves.
He turned his attention back to the councillors as the chairman called for attention. There were nine in all, nine people who controlled the destiny of the entire Empire. They were wealthy and powerful beyond compare, yet - now - there were limits to their power. It had always been true, he admitted in the privacy of his own mind, but the vast majority of the population preferred to believe in the council’s omnipotence. There were very few races that would have stood in the way, if the council decided it wanted something. But now, the Empire was tottering and the scavengers were gathering. The war had smashed forever the perception of invincibility. It had been won, but the cost had been far too high.
The chairman’s voice echoed in the silence. “Viceroy. You wished to speak to us about the humans.”
“Yes,” Yasuke said, flatly. “The human problem is growing out of hand.”
He waited for the nod, then proceeded. “Five hundred years ago, we invaded and occupied Earth. We assimilated the humans into our Empire. Humans worked for us - work for us - on almost all of our worlds. We trained them to fight for us, we taught them to use modern technology, we encouraged them to build up a sizable industrial base of their own. They are no longer a first-stage race, if indeed they ever were. There is a strong case to be made that, five hundred years ago, they were actually a second-stage race.”
“Absurd,” a councillor snapped. “They had barely even reached their moon!”
Yasuke frowned, inwardly. He’d spent much of his adult life on Earth, climbing until his word was law right across the Sol System, but he couldn’t say he truly understood his human subjects. It baffled him that the humans, given rockets and surprisingly advanced computer technology, hadn’t settled their star system by the time the first explorer vessel popped out of the crossroads and advanced on Earth. If they had, they would have qualified for a certain degree of respect. They certainly wouldn’t have been summarily crushed and assimilated, whether they liked it or not. Instead, they had been too primitive to offer meaningful resistance when the invasion force arrived. Galactic Law was clear. Primitives had no rights.
And yet, they’d been strikingly advanced in other ways. Their computer technology had been second-stage, at the very least. They’d envisaged uses for GalTech long before they’d realised they weren’t alone in the universe. Their political systems and philosophical background had been astonishingly advanced, in some respects. It was almost as if they’d started advancing to a post-scarcity level without truly being a post-scarcity society. And then their development had come to a screeching halt. The invasion had ensured they no longer controlled their world.
“The fact remains, honoured councillor, that the situation is getting out of hand,” Yasuke said, coolly. “If you’ll permit me to elaborate ...
“The humans have been growing restless over the last hundred years. They increasingly see themselves as our partners, not our subjects. They have been offended, massively, when we have moved to put them back in their box. The rise of human political parties demanding equality, or even independence, is a direct result of our meddling. And now, without them, we would have lost the Lupine War ... and they know it. Their demands for greater autonomy can no longer be denied.”
“Of course they can,” the councillor insisted.
“My staff believes the Humanity League will win a majority in the Sol Assembly, displacing the Empire Loyalists,” Yasuke stated. “The Empire Loyalists themselves are demanding some form of reward for their loyalty. If we fail to come through, their assemblymen may defect to the Humanity League. That might well trigger an early election or a series of by-elections that will put power in the wrong hands. And if that happens, honoured councillor, we will have the flat choice between agreeing to concede a measure of independence and risking a war that will rip the Empire apart.”
A ripple of disbelief ran around the chamber. Yasuke understood, better than he cared to admit. The councillors might never have laid eyes on a human, even one of the uncounted millions who lived and worked on Capital itself. They’d certainly never studied the human race. Why should they? There was no one on Capital who cared about human history, beyond a handful of dusty academics. But Yasuke couldn’t allow himself the luxury of ignorance. Human history was astonishingly violent. The longer they managed to keep the lid on, the greater the explosion when they finally - inevitably - lost control.
