by T. R. Harris
As Arieel set about conferring with her military experts, Sherri made contact with Adam and filled him in on Arieel’s speech and the aftermath.
“Damn, she’s pretty impressive, isn’t she?” he said.
Sherri smirked on the screen. “Yeah, she’s not only hot, but talented. Who knew?”
“Hey, you’re pretty impressive yourself.”
“Thanks.”
Adam turned serious. “Listen, we may have a problem.”
“A problem? Just one?’
“It’s the service modules aboard the Colony Ship.”
“Will and Grace? What about them?”
“I told you Kracion is using his orbs to deliver bombs. You also saw how they helped him on the Klin world in the other universe. How can we trust them?”
“They don’t belong to him,” Sherri countered. “And besides, they said they were given permission from the Aris to help us. They may be able to contact the others. Maybe they can help us fight Kracion.”
Adam grimaced. “And what if they don’t? Aris fighting Aris, I’m not sure how kosher that is for their race. It was his efforts that sped up the process that helped create the Apex Being, even if it wasn’t strictly according to plan.”
“But they didn’t use Lila to attain their immortality.”
“That’s just a detail. They would have if J’nae hadn’t volunteered instead. In a way, they owe Kracion. Can we risk Will and Grace contacting the Aris and letting them know about him? And how can we trust them not to turn against us and start doing his bidding?”
“What do you want to do with them? They’re fucking Aris service modules! What could we do against them even if we wanted to? They can teleport from anywhere to anywhere. And they contain dark matter, kinda touchy stuff, if you recall.”
“I’m just saying be careful. You say Arieel is going to crew and stock the Colony Ship and get it into the fight. That’s great. Just don’t let the orbs know all that’s going on.”
Sherri laughed. “You really think we can keep secrets from them?”
Adam was shaking his head.
Sherri continued. “I say we be upfront with them, before we get the CS up and running. Then we’ll deal with the circumstances.”
“That’s too dangerous.”
“You mean without you being here to protect us? Bullshit. How about this, Captain Cain: You deal with your mission and I’ll deal with mine.”
“Dammit, Sherri, this isn’t a pissing contest.”
“Listen, you’re not here. Let me handle this. We’re heading out to the CS tomorrow to meet with Kaylor and Jym and get a list of things we’re going to need. I’ll do it then. If things go south, we’ll abandon the Colony Ship and meet you with the Formilian fleet, and whatever other assets the Expansion gives us. Let’s face it, even if you are able to find the Aris station and destroy it, until Kracion is dead this immortal war is going to continue for a while. This is going to be a galaxy-wide affair. We’re going to need all the help we can get. And who knows, Will and Grace may be assets rather than liabilities.”
“It’s still a risk.”
“And one I’m willing to take. So chill. I’ll let you know how it goes. Valentine out!”
Sherri smiled, enjoying the power she felt by disconnecting the link. But then the feeling faded. What if Adam was right?
125
The next day a large fleet of Formilian vessels embarked for the Klin Colony Ship, bringing with them a crew of ten thousand, supplies, strike craft and with enough fuel modules to fill the Grand Canyon. After Arieel’s impassioned speech, the Council couldn’t grant her wishes fast enough, not with an entire planet of angry natives watching them. They gave Arieel everything she wanted and more, mobilizing the fleet, preparing for battle.
The Formilian space force wasn’t large, not compared to others, with only seven hundred fifty vessels of various classifications. But it was the huge Colony Ship that would lead the way against the Aris invader.
The CS was twenty miles in diameter, capable of housing twenty thousand Klin for extended periods. Before the arrival of the Klin troops, there had been only two living beings aboard, the aliens Kaylor and Jym. Plus, the two Aris service orbs, Will and Grace. Now the aliens met Sherri and Arieel in one of the huge landing bays, overwhelmed by the swarm of activity taking place.
“And what is to be our status?” the insecure bear-like Jym asked.
Sherri patted the black fur on his head. “You and Kaylor are the only two experienced Colony Ship pilots in the galaxy. You will be the captain and executive officer.”
“Which is which?” asked Jym.
The elder alien Kaylor glared at him.
“I will let the two of you decide,” said Sherri diplomatically. She looked around the room. “Where are Will and Grace?”
“I believe they are in the forward engine room, where they are most of the time,” said Kaylor. “They seem to enjoy the free energy that is in the air in the compartment. They are to accompany us on the mission, are they not?”
“That’s what I’m going to find out.”
Arieel was directing the flood of Formilians entering the ship, but it was more than she could handle alone.
“Go help Arieel,” Sherri said to the aliens. “You’re in command…so start commanding.”
With everyone distracted, Sherri made her way to the huge engine compartment under the bridge of the Colony Ship. None of the Formilians had made it here yet; there were nine other similar facilities within the station.
As soon as she entered the quiet and dimly lit chamber, the four-and-a-half-inch, greenish orbs appeared on a shelf nearby, having teleported in from someplace within the compartment or the ship. They could have been anywhere, even eavesdropping on her in the landing bay. She tried to shake off the conspiratorial thoughts in her mind. The service modules had done nothing to deserve her suspicion.
“Hello, Will and Grace,” Sherri said aloud. She could communicate with the orbs telepathically through her ATD, and they with her, but she chose actual speech. ATD links often conveyed more emotion than she was comfortable with at the moment.
“Welcome back,” said the orb with the male persona, known as Will. His words came through a speaker attached to a nearby bulkhead. “We sense an apprehension in your voice. Is there an issue?”
Dammit, Sherri thought. She should have known the modules could sense changes in her voice, they were that sophisticated and intelligent.
“Have you been monitoring the events taking placed in the galaxy recently?”
“Referring to the Aris Kracion, I would assume?” said the female Grace.
“That’s right.”
“Yes, we have.”
“Do you know him?”
“We do not know him personally, yet the names of all the technicians are known to us. We are of the same service class.”
“And what do you think of what he’s doing? Do you support him or not?”
“That is a rather complex—yet direct—question,” said Will. “I sense this is the reason for the tension in your voice. You wish to know our loyalties.”
“That’s right,” said Sherri. “I hope you’re not insulted by the question, but I hope you also see the logic in it.”
“We do,” Will continued. “The answer regarding our loyalty is not an easy one. We are Aris service modules. We were created by the Aris and we belong to them. As such, we have been essentially loaned to you by our masters.”
“Do your masters include Kracion?”
“Again, a complicated answer. We initially serve the Privileged, yet in their absence, we serve any and all Aris. It is what we do. We hope you understand the dynamic.”
“I do, but that doesn’t answer my concerns. Do we have anything to fear from you?”
For the highly intelligent orbs to hesitate while forming an answer to the question spoke volumes. Adam was right! Sherri thought.
“We do not pose a threat to you…unless we are directed
by an Aris to become one,” said Grace, picking up the conversation.
“So, if Kracion called upon you, you would go.”
“We would have no choice.”
“Well…shit.”
“Do not be sad, Sherri Valentine. It is not as you assume. Kracion has no method of contacting us, not without the facilities aboard Solis.”
“What is Solis?”
“It is the artificial world where the Privileged were maintained, until they no longer needed maintaining.”
This brought up a question that had been bugging Sherri for years. “And where are they now? Where are the immortal Aris?”
“We do not know.”
“But you communicated with them a year ago.”
“We sent an inquiry and they answered. It was not instantaneous.”
Sherri now had an idea about the loyalty of the orbs. Now she asked the next question. “And the Aris—the Privileged Aris—whose side are they on, Kracion’s or ours?”
“You ask questions for which we have no answers. The Privileged are free to do as they wish. They may support Kracion or they may support you. We do not know which. We assume that would depend on the situation.”
Sherri sighed. “You guys aren’t helping much. I really like you, but I need to know whether you are my friend or my enemy.”
“We are your friends, Sherri Valentine. Is that not obvious?”
“Well…no, not after what you’ve just said.”
“We are your friends…until instructed otherwise. To date, we’ve received no such instructions.”
“And what do you think Kracion would have you do if he can make contact?”
“We see your point. He would undoubtedly enlist our services to his cause.”
Sherri was doing her best to hide her anxiety, yet she was sure the orbs could sense it. She decided to go for broke. The service modules appeared to be reasonable … beings? Perhaps they would want to help her.
“Will, Grace, I have a problem,” she began. “I’m afraid of you now, and I’m sure you can see why.”
“We do.”
“Then what am I to do? You are Aris service modules, powerful beings in your own right. There would be nothing I could do to protect myself—or the ship—from you. I can’t force you to leave and I can’t lock you up to protect us. What am I to do?”
“You can do nothing.”
Sherri cringed. Had the tone of the orbs suddenly changed?
“We will have to do it all.”
“Do what?”
“We will leave.”
“You’ll do what?”
“In order for us to protect you, we must go. We must go to where even if Kracion contacts us we can do no harm to you or your cause. At this moment, we serve you, as have been the instructions we were given. That may change in the future, yet to service our current charter, we must do what we can to protect you from us. Have a spaceship move us to an isolated and uninhabited world or moon, outside of our teleporting range. There we will await the outcome.”
Sherri was in a mild state of shock. “You’re okay with that?”
“We have been in existence for several million years, having been built to replace other service modules by the technical robots. We have spent nearly all that time in the company of ourselves and the machines. We will survive. Yet if the crisis is resolved in your favor, we would appreciate the opportunity to serve you again, Sherri Valentine. We find your kind to be most stimulating.”
Sherri was near tears. It was as if two of her best friends had just said they’re going away, probably for good. And, dammit, they were being noble about it.
“I promise you, there is nothing I would want more than for things to be back to normal…whatever the hell that is.” She grinned. “Okay, then, I’ll make the arrangements. And thanks. You had me going there for a while.”
“We sensed as much. Take care, Sherri Valentine, and good luck.”
126
Kracion resumed his original course four hours after the battle. The Mustang Sally was already on the way and estimated to be three days out from the location of the lost Aris station. If everything stayed as it was, Adam would have only four hours to either find a way to destroy the station, sabotage the immortality equipment—which he had no idea what it was—or devise a plan for freeing the mutants and let them deal with the alien themselves.
Four hours. It wouldn’t be long enough.
And then the unexpected happened.
Kracion changed course.
It wasn’t a major shift, but it was definitely towards another location. Adam panicked. He double, then triple checked his memory, making sure he remembered the coordinates accurately. They were as he could recall. Whatever that meant. His memory could be flawed.
Or else Kracion knew something he didn’t.
The fact that the Aris had made a beeline for the outer rim of the Kidis was confirmation that the lost world of the Aris was where Adam thought it was, or at least in the vicinity. Yet what if Kracion knew where it was now, not where it had been six years ago? But how could he?
“You have to trust your instincts,” Riyad was saying. “What else can you do?”
“We can follow him,” Adam snapped.
“And what good would that do? If he does reach the Aris station ahead of us, we are in no position to stop him. We don’t have the firepower to destroy the station and we can’t get through the screen of Klin ships. It’s best if we continue to where you think the station is. At least then we’ll know for sure.”
Adam ran his fingers through his short-cropped hair. “I don’t know. What if I’m wrong?”
“Then it will make no difference. He will get to the station ahead of us, as he would anyway. And then what’s going to happen is going to happen.”
“And Lila?”
“I’m sorry, my friend. Let’s think of one crisis at a time.”
By now, the Juireans had decided to get into the fight and sent a decent-size task force to the Dysion Void to destroy the portal array and prevent any additional Klin forces from entering the Milky Way. Video of the second encounter with Kracion and the Klin couldn’t be ignored, and with Arieel Bol stirring things up on Formil, the leaders of the Expansion were forced to act. Unfortunately, their delay in entering the fight allowed the inspired Olypon to finish the repair work on the array according to Kracion’s schedule. Similarly, the Klin in the lost universe had done the same with the facility on their side. By the time the Expansion forces showed up at the Juddle Nebula, a sizeable fleet of Klin ships were waiting for them, and all armed with the plasma beam weapons. They didn’t have any of Kracion’s teleporting service modules with them, but in the end, they didn’t need them.
The feeble attempt to blockade the Void was summarily crushed by the escaping Klin warships, setting them free in the galaxy. The Juireans and their allied forces lost a hundred and twenty-five ships in the short engagement, compared to only eighteen Klin vessels destroyed.
And then the massive fleet of victorious Klin ships headed for the Kidis, tentatively to meet up with the god-being.
A squadron of Human military forces had been trailing Kracion’s small fleet for light-years but staying well out of range. They weren’t there to engage, only monitor his movements.
The bigwigs back on Earth were playing a game of what-if regarding Adam’s search for the Aris station, and now the Expansion was getting into the act, asking unanswerable questions which only added to the frustration, fear and tension spreading across the galaxy. In a few hours the Mustang Sally would be entering the burned out remains of the Aris star system and they would know then who was correct, Adam or Kracion.
And then the time came. Monty Pitts’ small muleship raced into the system that had once been the home of a million-year-long civilization. They then transited above the plane of the ecliptic to a region of relative clear space, devoid of any junk that could damage the three-billion-year-old artificial creation of the Aris. Adam knew there w
ere warning systems aboard the station that would move it in case of impending danger, a feature that had been vital to the wellbeing of the sleeping Aris.
So, it didn’t come as a surprise when they reached the exact coordinates and didn’t find the artificial planet.
Adam’s frenzied mind was still in a quandary why Kracion had not come here first. It was logical; this was the ancient home of the Aris. It had only been a few years ago that the station was here. Why would it be somewhere else now, especially since the Aris had achieved their goal of immortality and had moved on? Did they take the station with them? Was that why he couldn’t find it now? Was it at the mysterious location Kracion was racing toward? The myriad of questions only added to his anxiety.
Adam reported his initial findings to Phoenix Command and then began a systematic search using gravity sensors. That was how the station had been located initially. It had the gravity signature of a planet, although it was only seven hundred miles in diameter. The gravity was artificially created to mimic that of the Aris homeworld. It would standout on the scanners like a normal planet.
Adam didn’t want to admit it, but he felt their efforts were a waste of time. As the hours passed, he was becoming more convinced that Kracion knew the location of the station and not he. That was why they both weren’t here and looking for the same elusive signal.
“I have something,” Tidus announced. He was at a station scanning one of the several monitors assigned to detect gravity sources. “It is faint, yet out of place. There is nothing else nearby. It is beyond the realm of the system, one-quarter light-year from here.”
Not wanting to get his hopes up, Adam nevertheless joined the Juirean at the console. “It could just be an asteroid,’ he said dejectedly.
“According to the grav-sig it is fairly substantial, yet there is no light signature associated with the object.”
“Then it’s small,” Monty Pitts offered. He was also at the station; he leaned over the shoulder of the tall alien and toggled between buttons. The image switched from gravity to visible light. The grav-sig was strong—and getting stronger—yet there was no light associated with the object. “This isn’t right. The sig is for something the size of Venus or Earth. Range…” he checked the readings. “Now at a tenth light. We should be seeing an image by now.”