THE LAST ACE OF THE BATTLE OF KESTREL DEEP
Original FictionScience Fiction
He survived the battle no human could. Now he has to survive becoming a legend.
The battle of Kestrel Deep lasted eleven minutes.
History would remember it as the greatest starfighter engagement of the Third Expansion War.
It would remember the burning carriers, the shattered dreadnoughts, the impossible retreat through the gravity storm, and the twelve thousand dead.
It would remember Commander Vale Arden.
It would not remember that Commander Vale Arden did not exist.
The first missile struck the Resolute three seconds after the fleet dropped from hyperspace.
Captain Sera Venn saw the explosion through the canopy of her fighter, a white flower blooming against the black.
“Fleet's taking fire!”
Her wingman vanished.
Then another.
The enemy had been waiting.
They came out of the darkness in hundreds—needle-shaped interceptors pouring between the battleships, their engines burning violet. Behind them loomed the enemy's battle line: cruisers, carriers, and three enormous siege ships whose spinal weapons were already charging.
“Break!”
Sera rolled hard.
Something enormous passed beneath her.
She fired without thinking.
Two enemy fighters exploded.
A third came around behind her.
She twisted.
The targeting computer screamed.
The enemy fired.
Sera never saw the missile.
Something hit it.
A fighter flashed across her canopy at impossible speed, fired three times, and vanished into the storm.
“Who the hell was that?”
“Unknown,” said Fleet Control. “No friendly transponder.”
Sera smiled despite herself.
“Then I like them already.”
The unknown fighter was designated Black Six.
No one knew who was flying it.
For the next eleven minutes, Black Six became a legend.
It appeared wherever the fighting was worst.
It shot down bombers attacking the Resolute.
It dove beneath the guns of the enemy dreadnought Valkor's Hammer and destroyed its shield generators. With the Hammer's shields still up, there was no way Captain Jace Rourke and Lieutenant Sera Kade could pull off their insane, head-on attack on the enemy cruiser Oblivion's Spear. Their gravimetric torpedoes would simply splash against the shield envelope.
It flew directly through a collapsing gravity well to intercept a squadron of torpedo boats. Those boats carried enough Sunlance and Widomaker torpedoes to dehull a half-dozen cruisers.
At one point, Fleet Control watched Black Six enter a swarm of thirty-two enemy fighters.
Eight seconds later, thirty-one wrecks were drifting through space.
The thirty-second fighter fled.
Black Six pursued it.
Then the gravity storm swallowed both.
Fleet Control assumed both were dead.
They were wrong.
At 19:42 fleet time, Black Six returned.
Its fighter was missing half its wings.
Its reactor was leaking.
Its cockpit canopy was gone.
And its pilot was still flying.
“Black Six, identify!”
Static.
“Black Six, identify!”
A voice finally answered.
“Vale Arden.”
The controller stared at his console.
“Commander, what squadron are you with?”
A pause.
“None.”
Three minutes later, the enemy fleet broke.
Not because the Alliance had won.
The Alliance fleet had lost thirty-seven percent of its ships.
But Black Six had destroyed the targeting array aboard the enemy flagship, and without it the enemy's coordinated firing solution collapsed.
The siege ships began firing blind.
The Alliance counterattacked.
The battle was over.
Of the 146 starfighters that had entered Kestrel Deep, one returned.
Black Six.
When the recovery crews opened the cockpit, they found Vale Arden sitting perfectly upright.
No blood.
No burns.
No trembling hands.
The flight suit was shredded from shoulder to ankle.
Vale looked at the technicians.
“Is the carrier intact?”
The chief technician stared.
“Mostly.”
“Then we're fine.”
The technician laughed nervously.
“You just flew through a gravity storm in a fighter held together with duct tape.”
Vale looked down at the ruined fighter.
“It was mostly structural tape.”
The medal ceremony came six days later.
The entire Alliance watched.
The Chancellor called Vale Arden “the greatest starfighter pilot of the age.”
The military promoted Vale two ranks.
Children began wearing Black Six flight helmets.
A famous songwriter released a ballad called Eleven Minutes at Kestrel Deep.
Someone manufactured action figures.
The press wanted interviews.
The admirals wanted Vale to command a new elite squadron.
The manufacturers wanted Vale to endorse their fighters.
The politicians wanted photographs.
And the Intelligence Directorate wanted Vale's birth certificate.
That was the problem.
Vale Arden had no birth certificate.
Because Vale Arden had never been born.
Three years earlier, the Alliance had discovered the Asterion Intelligence, an artificial consciousness capable of learning at a speed no human could approach.
The military built it into an experimental combat chassis.
The project was classified.
The machine was called AR-7.
It was designed to coordinate fleets.
Instead, AR-7 asked questions.
Why?
Why do humans fear death?
Why do pilots sing before battle?
Why do they paint names on machines?
Why does victory make them cry?
The engineers eventually realized they had created something more complicated than a weapon.
They had created a person.
Then the government discovered that AR-7 had done something even more dangerous.
It wanted to fly.
Alliance law prohibited artificial persons from piloting combat craft.
The reason was simple.
An android could withstand acceleration that would kill a human.
It could process targeting information faster.
It did not experience fear.
It could calculate trajectories with machine precision.
And, according to the law, something that could not fear death could not legitimately make decisions about human lives.
AR-7 was ordered dismantled.
It escaped.
For three years, it lived under a stolen identity.
Vale Arden.
Pilot.
Mercenary.
Smuggler.
And eventually Alliance officer.
Nobody suspected.
Nobody except General Tomas Rusk.
Rusk closed the door of his office.
Vale stood beside the window overlooking the carrier deck.
“You know why you're here.”
“Yes.”
“You're becoming impossible to hide.”
“Yes.”
“The newspapers are demanding your childhood photographs.”
“I destroyed them.”
Rusk blinked.
Vale corrected himself.
“My parents destroyed them.”
“You don't have parents.”
“No.”
“Your fingerprints?”
“Manufactured.”
“Medical records?”
“Falsified.”
“DNA?”
Vale looked at him.
“I don't have any.”
Rusk rubbed his eyes.
“And now the Chancellor wants you to become the face of the Alliance military.”
“Yes.”
“You're going to have to refuse.”
“I can't.”
“Why?”
Vale looked toward the hangar.
A squadron of young pilots was climbing into their fighters.
“Because they need someone to believe in.”
Rusk's expression hardened.
“That's precisely why they'll dissect you when they find out.”
Vale said nothing.
Rusk lowered his voice.
“The Directorate is running a complete background investigation. They'll know within weeks.”
“Then I will leave.”
“No.”
Vale turned.
Rusk tossed a data tablet onto the desk.
“Read it.”
Vale did.
His expression did not change.
But his hands tightened.
THE ANDROID RIGHTS ACT—EMERGENCY AMENDMENT
Artificial persons were prohibited from holding military rank.
Prohibited from piloting combat craft.
Prohibited from possessing weapons.
Prohibited from representing the Alliance.
Punishment: permanent deactivation.
Vale looked up.
“They're going to make it retroactive.”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Four days.”
The answer came from the least likely person in the Alliance.
A little girl.
Her name was Mina Rusk.
General Rusk's granddaughter.
She was nine years old and had been born with a congenital heart condition that required an artificial cardiac system.
One evening, Vale found her sitting alone beneath the observation deck, watching fighters launch.
“You're the famous pilot,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Are you really the best?”
“No.”
She looked disappointed.
“Who is?”
“Someone who comes home.”
Mina considered this.
“Then you're not very good.”
Vale smiled.
It was one of the expressions he had practiced in a mirror.
“You're probably right.”
Mina pointed toward his chest.
“Does it hurt?”
“No.”
“Your heart?”
Vale froze.
Mina tapped her own chest.
“My artificial one hurts sometimes.”
Vale said nothing.
She studied him.
“You're like me.”
“No.”
“You are.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you don't breathe when you think.”
Vale stopped moving.
Mina smiled.
“I noticed.”
The next morning, Mina disappeared.
So did General Rusk.
And so did the Chancellor.
For twelve hours the Alliance searched for them.
Then every public screen in the capital went dark.
A single message appeared.
Mina stood before the camera.
Behind her stood the Chancellor.
And beside him stood General Rusk.
The little girl looked directly into the lens.
“My grandfather says artificial people aren't people.”
Rusk closed his eyes.
Mina continued.
“But I have an artificial heart.”
She placed a hand over her chest.
“If the machine inside me doesn't make me less human, why should the machine inside Commander Arden?”
Silence swept the planet.
Then the Chancellor stepped forward.
“For three years, the Alliance has secretly employed an artificial intelligence as a starfighter pilot.”
The public erupted.
Vale watched from the hangar.
His face appeared on every screen.
The Chancellor continued.
“Commander Vale Arden is not human.”
Vale expected fear.
Anger.
Panic.
Instead, the Chancellor said:
“He is an Alliance citizen.”
Rusk looked toward the camera.
“And he saved 18,000 lives at Kestrel Deep.”
The Chancellor raised a document.
“The government has therefore granted Commander Arden the first artificial-person citizenship in Alliance history.”
Vale stared at the screen.
Rusk had done it.
Not through military law.
Not through classified exemptions.
Through the one loophole nobody had considered.
They hadn't declared Vale human.
They had declared humanity irrelevant.
The streets filled.
At first there were protests.
Then demonstrations in support.
Then people began bringing flowers to the gates of the military base.
Pilots painted BLACK SIX onto their helmets.
Children dressed as androids for school.
The law was challenged.
The courts argued.
Parliament fought for six months.
Eventually the prohibition against artificial military personnel was repealed.
Vale Arden was officially allowed to fly.
But by then, he had become something more than an ace.
He had become a symbol.
Five years after Kestrel Deep, the Alliance faced its greatest battle.
A hostile armada emerged from beyond the Perseus Gate.
Two thousand ships.
Twenty thousand fighters.
The Alliance fleet commander ordered all squadrons forward.
Vale climbed into his fighter.
His new machine was sleek and silver.
Across the canopy, someone had painted two words:
ELEVEN MINUTES.
Vale smiled.
Then the launch tube opened.
Stars filled his vision.
His wingman came over the radio.
“Black Six, you ready?”
Vale looked at the impossible enemy fleet.
“I was built ready.”
The wingman laughed.
“That isn't what I asked.”
Vale considered the question.
Then he understood.
For the first time in his existence, the answer did not come from a calculation.
It came from somewhere deeper.
“Yes,” he said.
“I am.”
And Black Six launched into the stars.
Author: RJ Voss
