MotherShip

by Tony Chandler

  Trying to fend off the vocal assault, Rawlon shouted back, barely heard even by the Chieftain next to him. “They will be under my command! The Kraaqi will lead this great fleet!”

  The wall of sound increased, assaulting their senses in wave after wave of sonic aggression. Becky raised her hands protectively to her ears, as did Jaric and Kyle, for they seemed to be the focus of this living nightmare of sound.

  Jaric fought against his growing panic, and suddenly turned to Kyle and shouted so his voice was audible in Kyle’s ear, only inches away.

  “I don’t think they like our idea.” Jaric paused, fighting his rising panic. “Or maybe they had some bad burritos for lunch.”

  “Don’t be stupid with your jokes,” Kyle shouted back. But he knew it was Jaric’s way, his way of dealing with pressure. Kyle, too, fought the urge to scream back, to run-to do something. As he stared at the shouting Kraaqi warriors, Jaric’s idiotic stab at humor echoed again.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Kyle whispered to them all.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “We can’t evacuate entire planets!”

  Saris looked at Minstrel’s flowing body with outrage. Taking a deep breath, she continued. “Over half of our fleet is either being refitted with the hybrid weapon, or they are in orbit around our shipyards to have it installed. The smaller Trade ships simply don’t have the capacity for such mass evacuations. Nor the time before the impending attack!”

  Minstrel brought its form together into a more compact design, but still floated near the edge of the ceiling above the newly promoted Mewiis admiral.

  “Then we must accept the losses. We have not heard word from either Mother or the children. The assigned time has passed.” Minstrel’s form pulsated with emotion. “It must be assumed that the Kraaqi are not cooperating. Perhaps even the Hrono are balking?”

  Saris’ eyes flinched with pain. “In less than a week, the first Mewiis planet will be taken. Each week after that another Mewiis world will die, along with the children and parents who live there. We don’t have time for this age-old bickering!” Saris shouted.

  “One would think when faced with the same harsh reality, that the Hrono and Kraaqi would come to the same conclusion,” Minstrel sighed.

  “Old hatreds are hard to die. Silly things that make us hate each other - differences in culture, ethnic differences...” Saris turned in frustration, the rest of her thought unfinished.

  “We Minstrels have always been troubled that life forms can hate another life form simply due to differences in body features. Even something as simple as different shades of skin.”

  Minstrel took its body and poured it onto the floor in a twinkling stream. As it touched the floor, Minstrel formed its plasma body into the shape of a Kraaqi warrior. The warrior laughed out loud, his feather-hair shaking with his great mirth. In that instant his body flashed, and there appeared in his place a Hrono Technologist, laughing still, his hands now on his hips.

  “It is most troubling. These differences in beings, that this variety between life forms should cause such hatred.” The Hrono/Minstrel said.

  With a wave of motion, Minstrel transformed exactly half of its body.

  Saris stared wide-eyed at the visage before her.

  The left half of the body was Hrono, the right was Kraaqi - exactly half.

  Saris bent her head as she studied this surprising form before her. “It seems... familiar.” She stammered.

  Again the twinkling stream poured, but upwards this time, back to the ceiling.

  Saris shook her head. “Sometimes I don’t understand it either. The differences in culture, maybe I can. The Hrono totally destroy their worlds in a way. Covering every inch with their planet-cities, completely destroying the natural environment with their technological powers.”

  The Mewiis female walked to the large window where bright rays of sunshine were streaming through. “The Kraaqi are the opposite extreme, spending all of their lives either in their great warships in space or in their underground cities, leaving each world’s surface and its living cycles complete. No matter how dangerous they are.”

  “There should be a happy balance somewhere,” Minstrel mused.

  “But enough of philosophy.” Saris’ head-tail flicked from side to side decisively. “Our Recon ships have discovered the first T’kaan battle group bearing down on Zailia, the outermost world of the Mewiis kingdom. What can I do? I am the appointed admiral of the entire Mewiis fleet now. I command great warships.” Her head-tail grew limp. “What can I do?”

  “We must hope that Mother and the children can do the impossible,” Minstrel said.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “Even with imminent danger, the Hrono are preoccupied with technology,” Mother said with electronic calm.

  “Technology obsession,” Guardian added as Mother spoke through his speakers.

  “Yes!” Jysar said enthusiastically. “And now I am consumed to understand living technology. What a dynamic concept.” The Hrono began pacing energetically around the bridge. “We Hrono have a saying, ‘Technology is the key to happiness-the key to life.’”

  Guardian’s red eyes glowed.

  Jysar stared with a wide-eyed excitement at Mother’s bridge. “Taking-state-of-the-art hardware and software and integrating them into a powerful warship and then making it alive. What kind of a race created you?”

  “The human race,” Mother said. “But that is enough, order your people to stop. I must speak with Jasus, the Hrono leader.”

  “That is not for you to say. You are only a robot.” Jysar laughed. “Besides, if we can determine what in your programming has made you sentient, we can possibly integrate that same technology into our own warships, even as we are integrating your hybrid super-weapon.”

  “Which I gave you. And which I gave to the Mewiss.” Mother’s visuals focused on the Hrono’s face. “I will now give the same weapon to the Kraaqi. My schematics are complete to allow integration with their warships as well, according to the information the Mewiis provided. All I need to do now is to transmit the schematics to the Kraaqi for them to confirm its functionality with their shipboard systems.”

  Jysar smiled, slowly shaking his head. “We cannot allow our enemies this technology. Besides, you are our prisoner.”

  Mother reached out with her sensors, but found them effectively jammed by the Hrono, except for the immediate area around where she had landed. She tried sending a communication to Jasus, but realized this, too, was blocked. With the tractor beams holding her tight, she was a prisoner.

  Or so the Hrono thought.

  Analyzing the jamming signals, Mother reconfigured her sensors, but this time on a narrow beam, searching for the source of the beams that held her fast. She found something even better-the power grid that fed each tractor beam.

  Mother now focused her processing on escaping, analyzing the configuration and strength of the beams. Her calculations showed she would need a fifteen second interruption to speed far enough away to escape from the range of the tractor beams. Almost three full seconds had elapsed since she initiated this line of processing.

  “Tell your people to stop.” Mother repeated.

  Jysar placed his hands on his hips. “You must...”

  Before he could finish speaking, Mother had transmitted her plan to Guardian.

  Stepping forward, Guardian lifted the Hrono and held him firmly in his steel grasp. The Hrono looked around with a panicked glance at his companions.

  “Put me down!” Jysar shouted.

  Small doors opened from several points in the bridge and Mother raised and aimed the small defensive blasters from their hidden enclaves. In a brief flurry of blaster fire, the other Hrono figures fell limp.

  “My weapons are set to stun. Unlike yourself, I have respect for other forms of life,” Mother chided.

  “What are you doing? You can’t...” Jysar began.

  From her dark, purplish hull Mother opened the hatches for her twe
lve main guns. As Mother lifted them, she aimed; six toward a point to her starboard, six toward a spot at port. Mother’s sensors registered the gathering Hrono response. She also detected no life-signs on the areas she targeted, but she could only hope there would be no casualties among the Hrono.

  Huge geysers of concrete and steel erupted as the crackling of raw power from her guns electrified the air all around her hull. Twelve accurately timed bursts fired at the two targets located several levels below her position, effectively knocking out the Hrono power grid in one fell swoop.

  In that same millisecond, her engines roared to life.

  She slipped over the top of the planet-city and then banked straight up. Her shields shuddered under two direct hits, but with her engines screaming wide open she leapt out of range of the powerful tractor beams that began reaching for her once again as the secondary Hrono grid came on-line. Sixteen seconds had elapsed since she had fired her guns.

  The Hrono fighters were already turning to block her way as Mother began her careful calculations. She had only studied the configurations of the largest warships of the Hrono fleets; this was her first study of their fighters.

  Now rising above the atmosphere and into low orbit, Mother’s sensors once again reached freely. She sensed the orbiting grid of defensive satellites that surrounded Hronosium, and felt their sensors come seeking for her as well. She analyzed them and their intercommunications as they came alive.

  It was an impressive network.

  Mother primed her super-weapon as she targeted the fighters with her twelve guns. Her sensors also informed her that any communications she tried now would still be futile; she had to get farther away from Hronosium to make her final bid work.

  The Hrono fighters fired.

  Mother danced around the blasts easily-the fighters had fired from too far away. Her sensors reached out and touched the shields of the prism-shaped Hrono fighters. Immediately she calculated optimum firepower, enough to disable, but not to destroy them. She did not want to destroy lives if she could help it.

  As her analysis completed, her near-term memory filled with technical data on the Hrono fighters, comparing them to the T’kaan. And though the Hrono fleet was smaller than both the Kraaqi and T’kaan, the Hrono fighters and warships would be an excellent match for the T’kaan one-on-one.

  If she could get the Hrono to fight them and not her.

  Ten Hrono fighters closed from above and began their firing sequences.

  Mother fired ten of her main guns.

  The Hrono fighters shuddered as their shields overloaded. In the next second, each flew out of control in different directions from the impact of Mother’s blows that had disabled their maneuvering systems.

  Mother banked and leapt past all of them. Her sensors felt the defensive satellites begin to power their weapons. Mother flew on, seeking to be free of the planet’s gravity-well and the intense jamming frequencies that kept her silent.

  Her sensors drew her targeting system to an especially large satellite. It was a battle station, yet around its immediate vicinity in the defensive network the smaller satellites were fewer. But the power signature she sensed showed it was the single most powerful satellite in the entire network. The Hrono depended upon its deadly arsenal to protect this quadrant of their defensive net, and to control a sizeable portion of the other satellites. To her internal delight, it was completely automated with no signs of life emanating from inside. She could destroy it completely with no twinge of conscience.

  Mother turned directly for it.

  “You have signed our death warrants,” Jysar shouted as he watched the viewscreen. “That is the Destroyer Station.”

  “You’re a lover of technology. Well then, watch mine in action,” Mother said.

  The black battle station grew bigger with each passing second. It was a perfect hexagon, a full kilometer in height, depth and length. And it bristled with hundreds of weapons.

  Mother’s sensors revealed that only robots worked inside. There were no life signs. She also noted the station’s shields as they rose, anticipating her attack.

  But it would not be enough.

  Mother’s hull suddenly glowed red with the flash of her super-weapon as it leapt out like a beam of death. The huge red beam continued inexorably, aimed directly at the heart of the Hrono battle station. The weapon reached the station and cut through its shields without pause and continued on into the blackness beyond it for several more kilometers. The next millisecond, the battle station’s pierced shields fell as its internal systems began to fail from the single huge hole that had been driven through its electronic heart. All across its surface explosions erupted and grew together quickly with flashes of pyrotechnical precision. Within seconds, the huge battle station was completely consumed by thousands of explosions erupting across its surface.

  Mother banked and roared around the station even as it was enveloped by ever larger explosions. As Mother leapt past the speed of light, the huge battle station finally exploded with a single, all consuming flash.

  Jysar stared open-mouthed as the stars formed into star-lines on the viewscreen, revealing their jump to hyperspace. “You are amazing!”

  “I only disabled the fighters. There is substantial damage to a small section of your planet-city, primarily to the power grid that fed the tractor beams. Now your satellite defense network has an enormous gap.”

  “Amazing.” Jysar repeated.

  “Now, I must play my last hand,” Mother said.

  “What is that?” Jysar asked.

  “I am now transmitting on all the main Hrono communication wavelengths. Simultaneously, I am also transmitting on all of the Kraaqi communication wavelengths.”

  “Why? We’re sworn enemies.”

  “Because there is now an enemy who threatens both of your peoples. And you must fight together in order to defeat them.”

  Jysar’s face showed puzzlement as he stroked his chin in thought.

  Mother remained silent as she tapped her vast knowledgebase. In addition, she sent the final schematics that would integrate her hybrid super-weapon into the cruisers and battleships of the Kraaqi fleets.

  “Just what are you sending to the Hrono and Kraaqi masses?” Jysar asked. “You will cause a stir by interrupting our regularly scheduled programs. This type of thing just is not done.”

  “What they shall see will shock them to their very souls. I am transmitting the uncut images of a hundred worlds being destroyed.” Mother paused to allow the import of her words to sink in. “The images of billions of human beings as they are killed under the guns of T’kaan ships. The images of an entire race as it is eradicated planet by planet, city by city, by this same enemy who now come for you.”

  Jysar’s mouth dropped open as Mother began to display these same grisly images across her own viewscreen. The screams of the dying erupted through every speaker, and, as he watched in horror, the bloated worm-like forms of the T’kaan came out of their ships. Each T’kaan crawled and wriggled to a corpse and their three-jointed mouths opened revealing their hideous fangs. Jysar felt his stomach knot and convulse as the T’kaan feasted upon the dead.

  Mercifully, the scene changed as more strange, black ships appeared to the Hrono’s horrified eyes-thousands upon thousands of T’kaan Hunter fighters. They swarmed through the skies of another planet, spreading death and destruction wherever they went. It became painfully obvious that the end had come for these pitiable people as well. The end... another unnatural victory feast began for the horrid T’kaan.

  The shattered cities were shown from Mother’s archived images in the knowledgebase. As the current image focused on a single city, its great buildings broken and burning furiously, Jysar noticed that the streets were moving. His mind rebelled at what his eyes revealed; he refused to comprehend because the truth was too terrible. He felt the hot, searing stomach bile suddenly explode from his throat as he cried and screamed and vomited at the same time, realizing beyond doubt w
hat this red, moving river was.

  The wide thoroughfare was bright crimson and it was not the street moving as his mind first thought.

  It was a river of blood.

  Within seconds, this horrible, gut-wrenching river grew deeper. Up from its depth things began to float as they were carried along by the growing current. Corpses-half-eaten and almost unrecognizable as they bobbed and floated down the river of blood.

  Mercifully, Mother changed the scene.

  The blue skies of another planet appeared, littered by countless horned fighters as they streaked by with their all-consuming destruction. The screams of the dying filled Jysar’s ears, as well as the entire populations of the Kraaqi and Hrono who watched with frozen fascination on their public networks. Another world was quickly annihilated with heartless precision.

  Still another world appeared. Another massacre began before their eyes. The screams and the fires and images of total destruction filled their senses with overwhelming dread. The horned fighters landed and the repulsive T’kaan emerged, tentacles waving in nightmarish jerks as their bloated bodies undulated and their short legs pushed them toward their feasts on the dead and dying.

  Apocalyptic images that both the Hrono and Kraaqi recognized from their own ancient legends.

  Jysar knew, as billions of other Hrono and Kraaqi were beginning to realize, that these same T’kaan were coming for them-to do to them as they had done to the human race in these recorded images.

  In blood-filled minutes, entire worlds were consumed by the T’kaan horde, burning and completely ruined by the T’kaan pollution of war. Unbelievably, still another world was shown under attack.

  “Of course, I am only displaying a short synopsis,” Mother said. “There is not time for the entire T’kaan campaign. I hope these detailed recordings will give both races something to think about.”

  Jysar wretched again, his mind and body seared by this visual nightmare.