Odyssey (The Spiral Slayers Book 3)

by Rusty Williamson

  Through the pain and panic, he aimed it at Adamarus and pulled the trigger. He missed and Adamarus dove off the ramp. Whitehall dragged himself further into the ship. As he did, he took stock. Although it hurt, he could move his leg. He discovered it was just burned.

  He realized that they were shooting flares at him.

  He had a laser.

  He smiled.

  ---

  Adamarus was figuring out what he could do next. He figured he had some time. He’d hit Whitehall in the leg.

  More distant explosions could be heard and the giant ship rocked again.

  Without warning, Whitehall ran out and pointed the laser at Adamarus.

  “Freeze,” he said. “Hands up.”

  Adamarus froze and raised his hands.

  Whitehall yelled, “You out there, unless you want to see Adamarus shot or, maybe you want to shoot more flares at me… then I’ll shoot him and come and kill you… come out now with your hands up. Now!”

  After the slightest pause, Evelyn came out with her hands up.

  With the laser, he gathered them together and told them to kneel.

  They did.

  Then Whitehall pointed the laser at Adamarus’ head and fired.

  The floor shot up and blocked the beam.

  As Adamarus and Evelyn watched, the floor came up under Whitehall and engulfed him. It stretched around him. The bumps and jerks showed Whitehall was struggling inside. Whitehall fired the laser and a hole blasted through the metal cocoon. Immediately the hole sealed and the metal cocoon shrunk to the size of a basketball. There was no more movement. The metal cocoon melted back into the floor.

  Again, the entire ship rocked slightly with sounds of distant explosions.

  He grabbed Evelyn and boarded The Spore. Adamarus closed the hatch then they both ran to the bridge.

  “Sit in the co-pilot’s seat,” Adamarus said.

  They both strapped in as Nemesis heaved again.

  “Hurry,” Evelyn said.

  Adamarus didn’t want to tell her there was little use in hurrying. They could fly The Spore out of Nemesis, but they couldn’t escape the central singularity’s event horizon and as soon as the Blackship refueled they would die.

  “Voice control on,” Adamarus ordered the AI as the Nemesis heaved again. “Auto pre-flight list check, and emergency egress.” He turned to Evelyn, “Hold on.”

  As soon as he said it, she was thrown back in her seat. The Spore erupted from Nemesis and rocketed away from the dying ship.

  Adamarus looked back. Nemesis’ central sphere was breaking up. I’ve lost her, he thought. Radin… his bridge crew… half a million people. His chest seemed to empty out. There was a ringing in his ears. Too much, he thought, too much. The ringing in his ears turned into a roar. He let go of the controls and slumped sideways in his seat.

  “Adamarus!” Evelyn yelled.

  He snapped back. Shit! He thought. Don’t think. Don’t think.

  ---

  Aboard the Blackship The-One watched the Whiteship break apart. The Harvesters had obviously failed it take out the Helpers but the Helper’s ship was now destroyed and new Helpers in the neighboring galaxy were being evaluated and hopefully groomed to replace them.

  The Slayers had tracked the human designated alpha-prime since the beginning. The-One had developed an affinity for this alpha-prime. Now as he watched the unfolding drama, his tracking indicated that alpha-prime had departed the ship.

  The-One squawked mightily summing The-One-That-Waits. Once it arrived The-One pulled an old rarely used lever. The stone seat moved aside and dropped The-One down a long chute. It fell into its staple ship and launched.

  The-One-That-Waits hung its head. It knew why it had been called.

  ---

  Adamarus took some pleasure in flying The Spore. It was as responsive as the latest fighter. Too bad it was going to be destroyed. Too bad they were both going to die. He could see no way out.

  They both knew it and were silent.

  He’d considered setting the angle to 45 degrees and flooring it. Maybe the rift didn’t mean death. Nothing can come back so… no one knew. He’d have to do it before the Blackship fed and the singer exploded.

  “Incoming,” the AI announced.

  Adamarus checked the sensors, it was a single staple ship coming fast.

  He hit the after burners.

  “What’s wrong?” Evelyn asked.

  “We’re under attack. Make sure your harness is tight.”

  Almost immediately the staple ship changed course trying to get behind Adamarus. Adamarus turned hard but he knew the staple ship could out maneuver him… but maybe not in every way. This ship could do some weird things.

  The staple ship pulled in behind Adamarus and he started taking evasive action. The staple ship started firing its energy sheets and he was cutting it close. He wasn’t going to last long doing this.

  He turned hard then turned hard the other way. An energy sheet came at him. He dodged it by inches.

  A plan came, but he’d have to do it fast.

  He programmed in commands into the weapons system then programed overrides into the ship controller that would allow him to spin the ship. The weapons would have to lock on and fire without him as this was going to knock them both out. He waited until the staple ship swung directly behind him, said a prayer and hit a panel.

  The Spore flipped around facing the staple ship and fired all its weapons. Then it shot away backwards as fast as it could. The staple ship was blown apart and within seconds a nuclear explosion went off.

  The blast hit The Spore and it spun away out of control.

  ---

  The-One-Who-Waits knew instantly when The-One expired. It dragged itself to the stone chair—it didn’t look forward to what was coming. It sat upon it. The huge Blackship seemed to groan. Then multiple lightning bolts came down from the ceiling of the chamber and struck The-One-Who-Waits on the top of the head. Over and over the lightning beat it down into the stone chair. Finally, it was thrown off the stone chair and lay in a smoking wreak on the dais.

  Two of the hoard came up to it chirping.

  From the burnt pile a hand shot up. “Squawk!”

  The two fell back.

  The smoking wreck raised itself from the floor then climbed up on and sat upon the stone seat. It had been changed. It’s head, though burned horribly on top, was larger and more defined. It pointed at one of the two creatures that had come to check on him and a single lightning bolt shot from its tentacle and struck the worker.

  “Squawk!”

  “You are now The-One-Who-Waits.”

  ---

  Adamarus woke first and immediately threw up. Then he managed to stabilize the ship just as Evelyn woke up and threw up. The air smelled foul. He wiped off the monitor with his hand and checked the ship’s status.

  They’d been out for thirty-three minutes. He checked the space around the ship and sucked in a breath. They had fallen halfway to the singer. The Blackship was still poised above the singer. However, while they were out, The Spore had been surrounded by dozens of staple ships.

  He knew the odd-looking formation the ships were in too, it was arranged so that any ship could fire at him without hitting another staple ship. Great. So, this was it. What were they waiting for? Nothing now that he’d stopped the ship from spinning.

  He made up his mind. Better the unknown then certain death. He quickly entered the necessary instructions and executed. The Spore angled itself at a 45-degree angle to the singer’s poles.

  At this point, the staple ships all fired.

  The Spore’s speed jumping kicked in and she rippled and vanished as the energy sheets from dozens of staple ships met at an empty point in space.

  The Spore vanished. She had slipped into spacetime cracks caused by the gravity gradient.

  ---

  The new The-One groaned. They should have fired sooner. It looked to one of the monitors that surrounded it. Alpha-prim
e’s ship had survived and the Blackship was still tracking him. The-One couldn’t follow the same way but this Helper, had done what no other Helper had ever done. Gotten away.

  This alpha-prime would have to be tracked down.

  Chapter Seventeen – The Spore

  “Time is a yardstick we invented. Time, as a container or continuum that can be traveled through, does not exist. There is only now and physics moving at relative speeds. Because we have memories, we imagine a past. Because we recognize repeating patterns, we’ve found we can predict their reoccurrence and so we can imagine a future. The only thing real is now and the relative rate that the big bang fizzles out (i.e., the speed that physics moves).”

  The Stow named d-eli

  Source: The Archive

  Their surroundings had vanished and been replaced with lines and shaking. The lines went in every direction. The ship was shaking apart. But the lines grew further apart and the shaking smoothed out.

  Now outside The Spore things were crazy. Spacetime patches passed and whirled by. Patches, most containing stars or distant galaxies but some containing white light and a few containing dark clouds. All were pulling at the ship as Adamarus passed them and he was having to use all of the ships power to stay away.

  Adamarus realized their only way out just might be to let the ship fall into one of the patches. Between the patches had been the lines but now was emptiness, no color, nothing. It was hard to look at.

  The Spore also seemed to be in some kind of protective bubble. He could glimpse it every once in a while.

  He saw a patch with a lot of stars coming up. It looked good. He steered towards it and realized his mistake at once. A patch before the one he wanted was dark and cloudy and was pulling harder at The Spore. He was falling into it instead. He tried to correct, but it didn’t work.

  The Spore fell into the dark cloudy patch and there was a huge explosion all around them. The ship had carried the protective bubble with it and it was interacting badly to their new environment.

  However, Adamarus and Evelyn were in no condition to really notice. The gravity had increased so much the ship could not counter it. Their seats had adjusted automatically and Adamarus and Evelyn were flat on their backs and in pain.

  It was the ship’s AI that realized its perilous position and pointed itself and fired its engines to escape the gravity well.

  This added more gee forces. Adamarus felt his chest and forehead split open. The seat tried to cushion him but it was too much and he passed out for a second time.

  It seemed like ages later that he came too. He was in horrible shape he could not move. The ship had escaped the gravity well and had flipped to slowdown. Adamarus tried to lift his head. He could not. He tried to move his hand towards the seat controls and managed to raise the headrest.

  He could now see out the main viewer. It faced the gas giant they had just escaped from. It was a huge planet but it looked like it could be popped with a pinprick. Pastel orange and cream-colored bands of clouds circled the planet. Directly below was a large churning red spot.

  He noticed his boots. Beyond his boots, he could see a red storm. It looked like he was standing on the gas giant on the red spot.

  A crazy thought came to him… if he were standing on the gas giant, then Evelyn was standing next to him on the gas giant as well.

  He wondered how Evelyn was. He tried to turn to look at her, but he couldn’t turn his head it hurt too much.

  Movement caught his eye. Two black spheres came toward him. Two sphere-bots carrying an Emer-freeze. He tried to look over at Evelyn again, but he could not do it. The small metal spheres plunged the Emer-freeze into Adamarus’ arm and the blackness took him.

  ---

  The Spore’s main AI had gone down. The 200 sphere-bots were on their own. They had two humans in critical condition both in emergency freeze, an AI function that wouldn’t boot and they were drifting in space and no one was answering calls for help.

  Luckily these sphere-bots were the new, Loud improved, ones with a touch of AI and improved networking capabilities. It brought their intelligence up from that of a well-trained dog to that of a well-trained dolphin.

  The group mind listed facts; they didn’t have enough intelligence or information to help the humans or repair the main AI function. What could be done? They needed more computing power. How could they get that? They could build more sphere-bots from raw materials. That would increase the computing power as well as storage.

  Where to get raw materials?

  The sphere-bots checked within the ship and found little. They scanned around the ship and found what they needed eight miles away.

  How to get to it?

  The sphere-bot space skit in the forward airlock would do.

  ---

  d-aba came awake slowly. Her memory came back to her in pieces. She was in stasis… and, hopefully, in The Spore.

  She broke free from the stasis pod and uncompressed herself. Then she cleared her eyes and opened them to find the most puzzling sight. Hundreds of sphere-bots were floating around the room looking at her. She knew what a sphere-bot was, she’d just never seen so many of them together.

  She let her senses come back. Deeply concerned by the circumstances she was seeing, she remembered the transmitter and checked it. The message was from d-eli.

  “d-aba, Nemesis is doomed. She is coming apart. Thousands of humans have already died. We’ve watched their awareness energy depart. If you survive and are able, please tell the humans that they do have self-aware energy upon death.”

  Sadness filled her and she mourned all the loss of all the hives, the loss of the humans and her home the Atrium.

  She looked around through blurry eyes and confirmed she was in The Spore then tried to walk. Her legs were still not working quite right. She went unsteadily forward to the bridge.

  Looking out the viewer, she immediately saw that The Spore was no longer in the Nemesis.

  When she discovered Adamarus and Evelyn in emergency freeze, she immediately ran back and revived d-mon, d-dor and d-mis—their leader and the medical sisters.

  ---

  The Stow were more than shocked when they saw the thousands of sphere-bots outside the ship and the asteroid orbiting around the ship on which sphere-bots worked around the clock making more sphere-bots.

  Where were they? There were no transmissions of any kind. They orbited a large gas giant with a large red spot on it. A storm.

  Until Adamarus or Evelyn came to or, the main computer was fixed there were no additional answers.

  ---

  A month later Adamarus and Evelyn came out of their medical comas. Adamarus was shocked but grateful for the presence of the Stow.

  He explained to the Stow what had happened to Nemesis.

  d-aba conveyed what d-eli had told her about tracking the human awareness energy.

  “Then, it’s all self-aware beings that are doing this?” Adamarus asked.

  “So far that’s what it looks like.”

  They decided to find out where they were and survey the star system, they were in.

  They were 50 million light years beyond where they thought they were.

  The star system contained eight planets of consequence; four rock worlds and four gas or ice giants. The ship orbited the largest gas giant. Of particular interest was the third planet out. It was in the middle of the bio-zone and was filled with breathable air, water, and at least plant life.

  They decided to go there, but they didn’t want to take the thousand sphere-bots that now existed.

  Fortunately, all but 200 decided to go their own way with the asteroid they’d captured. They headed towards the center of the galaxy that they were now in, but that was not their goal. The Great Attractor was. Why? It was one of the few big mysteries left. What lived within that dense galaxy of galaxies? What was it that was pulling on all the galaxies in the area?

  ---

  The Spore went into orbit around the blue and wh
ite world and began scans.

  Adamarus noted, “Definitely animals and, a lot of mammals at that.”

  Then they detected agriculture, then villages and finally cities.

  “They look human… same as us,” Adamarus said to Evelyn.

  Two large dust plums heading towards each other attracted Adamarus’ attention. That they could be seen from space was enough of a clue. “Please zoom in on that.”

  It was obviously two armies. Large ones too. However, it was easy to see that one was twice the size of the other.

  They watched as the larger army made camp in a wide field.

  The next days showed the larger army’s preparations for battle while the smaller army marched towards them. Finally, the smaller army camped on a hill overlooking, the larger army.

  “Looks like someone is going to get their butt kicked,” Evelyn said. “I wonder what they’re fighting over.

  “Yeah, run buddy. You are way outnumbered,” Adamarus retorted feeling like a spectator in a distant but deadly game.

  “What weapons do they have?” Evelyn asked.

  “Looks like spears, swords, and chariots.”

  The next morning the smaller army attacked. They attacked the left side of the larger army at an angle. On the right side, the smaller army’s cavalry rode off to the right in front of their enemies, not attacking, just riding in front of them.

  “Confusing,” Adamarus said.

  Then everything quickly changed. The smaller army used a brilliant tactic that caused the larger army’s middle ranks to split open. This exposed presumably the larger army’s leader because when the smaller army’s cavalry used the split to attack, the larger army fell apart. Whoever the smaller army was they had just beaten an army twice their size.

  Later that night Adamarus sat in front of the viewer watching the blue and white planet below. Earlier he’d zoomed in on the battlefield, the carnage and death had been horrible. He assumed that the humans below had self-awareness like himself and the Stow and therefore upon death, their awareness energy would leave their bodies and, according to the Stow, seek out the nearest black hole.