by E. R. Torre
“It was time to explore the abandoned alien ships,” General Spradlin said.
Astronauts in the Earth ships passed through the Displacer and journeyed to the three abandoned alien space crafts. Dozens of such ships made the journey between Earth and the asteroid field.
The Earth ships docked alongside the alien crafts. Dozens of impatient scientists and technicians in space suits awaited their opportunity.
“The hardest part of exploring these ships was finding a way inside,” General Spradlin said.
A pair of astronauts floated beside a massive door on one of the alien spacecraft. After considerable effort, they managed to pry open a panel beside that door. Within, they found alien circuitry. Inside the Earth spaceships, scientists pored over the schematics of this exposed circuitry and tried their best to understand its meaning and function. After a while, one of the scientists excitedly jumped from his seat. The alien ship’s locking mechanism was deciphered!
The scientists within the Earth ships watched in awe as a large door in the alien craft noiselessly slid open.
Cautiously, the Earth ships made their way inside.
“When we were in, we began a thorough analysis of all the alien equipment,” General Spradlin said. “Naturally, much of it was strange to us. But thanks to my exposure to the Locust Plague’s information on this race, not all of it proved a mystery. The creatures that created the Displacer and made these ships proved to be humanoids not all that different from us. They anticipated a very long flight from the Locus Plague and filled each of these three space crafts with stasis chambers. With slight modifications, we were able to make them, and the ships themselves, compatible with human beings.”
Astronauts and engineers moved along the corridors within the alien space crafts, modifying gear and adapting technology. Nox and General Spradlin stood within one of the ship’s massive engine rooms.
“The ships, which we named Ark 1, 2, and 3, were soon on-line and ready for use. All we had to do was fill them up.”
The engine room faded away and was replaced by the white research center. Nox and General Spradlin found the younger General Spradlin there, reading over his notes. Behind him was an even more massive Displacer unit, one capable of fitting a supertanker.
“There still remained our one big problem,” the elder General Spradlin said. “How would I get people into the Arks? At that point in time, the only way to do so was by putting them into our spacecraft and flying them through our Displacer and to the alien ships. But how could I take large amounts of people from Earth to those ships without revealing what I was up to? If I announced to the world that we were threatened with an alien invasion and was planning an evacuation, I risked ridicule at best and a worldwide panic at worst. And there remained one other danger: What would the Locust Plague do when they discovered my plans?”
Nox thought about that.
“They would…they would stop you,” she said. “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s why the ships were never used.”
General Spradlin nodded.
“I believe the alien race that created these ships hid them well from the Locust Plague,” General Spradlin said. “But agents of the Plague discovered what the race was up to and acted. They mercilessly slaughtered that alien race before they could use their hidden ships. Once the race was decimated, the Locust Plague simply moved on to their next meal. They either forgot about or didn’t bother spending any more energy searching for the hidden Ark ships. That will prove to be their biggest mistake.”
The elder General Spradlin walked to his younger self’s side.
“One day not so very long ago, while going over how to get our people to the Arks for what seemed like the millionth time, I had a brainstorm,” he said. The younger version of himself stared intently at his notes. A crazy smile appeared on his face. “I don’t know where the inspiration came from, but it hit me like a bolt of liquid lightning. I realized that by combining my knowledge of Displacers and nano-probes, knowledge derived from two separate and vanquished civilizations, there was another way we could use the Displacers. By using simplified nano-probes as energy mirrors, we could create a pulse echo within people themselves that a Displacer could lock onto. As long as the person with these simplified nano-probes stood near an entry Displacer, we could then transport him or her without having them physically step through a Displacer and risk incurring massive radiation poisoning. This person could then be sent to a location of our choosing, again as long as this location was relatively near the target Displacer.”
The younger General Spradlin faded away. He reappeared, this time dressed in astronaut gear. Scientists stood around him. They watched as he prepared for another test.
“As with all else, I volunteered to be the first subject of these simplified nano-probes,” the elderly General Spradlin said. “I was inoculated with them and stood four floors directly above our Displacer unit. A countdown was initiated. Our Displacer was activated.”
A halo of light enveloped the younger General Spradlin and grew in intensity. The younger man looked at his instruments and read the radioactivity gauges. They were all green. When he looked up again, he was shocked to find he was no longer on Earth. He stood in the cargo bay of one of the three Ark ships. A large window above him displayed the floating rectangular Displacer in space.
“We succeeded,” the elderly General Spradlin said. “We found a way to send people directly into the ships.”
Nox understood.
“The vaccines.”
“They contain the simplified nano-probes.”
“What happens to the nano-probes afterwards? Will they remain in people’s bodies forever?”
“No. The Displacer jump consumes the nano-probes. Upon their arrival, every one of the people sent is free of any and all alien technology.”
“There’s no way you could inject everyone on Earth.”
“We didn’t need to. When the test trials proved successful, we created mountains of the Displacer nano-probe solution and pumped it into the world’s ground water. Over several years all people, animals, and vegetation absorbed it. With the aid of computer scanners, we could track everyone on Earth who had those probes within them. All we had to do to get them to the Arks was dial in their position into our matrix.”
“If everyone on Earth was exposed to the nano-probes, why do we need to vaccinate the children Landon stole from the hospital? Why couldn’t you figure out where Jason Landon and the other child soldiers were?”
“Several hours passed before we realized the children and the other one-time child soldiers were gone,” General Spradlin said. “We immediately initiated the Displacer matrix and tried to locate them. We couldn’t. Lemner’s passkey had somehow discovered the simplified nano-probes within all their bodies and flushed them out. That’s why we needed to inoculate the kidnapped children once again.”
“But not before getting rid of Lemner’s passkey.”
“Though the Displacer matrix is off the GCN grid, it would be foolish to continue using it at full power while Lemner’s passkey remained alive and capable of infecting computer systems. Lemner’s passkey might find a way in to our Displacers and, if it did, those who remain on Earth were at risk of being stranded here. Or worse.”
General Spradlin stared at the alien Displacer.
“I had to get the infants and I had to destroy the passkey so that the evacuation could be resumed…and completed.”
“Did you?”
“Yes. The passkey is gone.”
“Where are the Ark ships going? Have you found another world for us to inhabit?”
“These are things I can’t tell you, Nox,” General Spradlin said.
“Why?”
Even as she asked the question, Nox knew the answer.
“I won’t be going, will I?”
General Spradlin faced Nox.
“You can’t,” he said.
“Why?”
“Even as I made those first trips throu
gh the Displacer, I knew doing so put humanity at risk. The nano-probes in my body and yours are Locust Plague technology. We may be in control of them at this time, but they never belonged to us. If even one of the billions of nano-probes in our system should somehow be turned or establishes contact with the Locust Plague, they could revert to their original programming. Not only could we lose control of our bodies, but the invaders would surely discover everything we know.”
Visions of the German soldier from that ancient war swirled through Nox’s head.
“We are…we are him,” she said.
General Spradlin shared Nox’s vision. He nodded.
“Unintentional or not, we could be traitors to our race’s survival.”
“And we can’t remove the nano-probes within us,” Nox said.
She recalled the conversation she had with General Spradlin not so very long ago.
“The nano-probes are a part of us now, just like our heart and lungs. You destroy the probes, you kill the host.”
“We’re stuck with them.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“When the Arks were functional and there was no need for me to supervise the population transfers, I set up a security protocol in the Displacer matrix,” General Spradlin said. “I made sure the Displacers could not send anyone infected with even a single one of my –of the Locust Plague’s– nano-probes to the Arks. Humanity, with their simplified nano-probes escapes the invasion. We…we cannot join them.”
Nox closed her eyes. A single tear ran down her cheek.
“How…how many people did we actually kill back in Arabia?”
“Very few,” General Spradlin said. “By the time the Child Brigades arrived in Arabia, the people throughout the region had already been exposed to the simplified nano-probes. Our computers were tracking virtually everyone there. We transported many hundreds of village’s worth of people to the Arks under cover of the Child Brigade massacres.”
“What about the nukes?”
“Sleight of hand,” General Spradlin said. “Once the smaller villages were cleared, we focused on getting the people in the big cities to safety. While it was plausible to tell the world the Brigade soldiers wiped out the smaller villages, but there was no way to fake the deaths of the millions of people in the big cities of Arabia. So we sent the Brigade soldiers into those cities armed with nuclear devices. Seconds before the nukes were detonated, we transported every one of those citizens to the Arks. The only casualties of the nuclear explosions were the Brigade soldiers themselves.”
General Spradlin’s head hung low.
“We saved millions at the cost of several thousand,” General Spradlin said. “The child soldiers could never join us in the Arks and I justified their deaths as a…kindness. Rather than leave them behind to face the Locust Plague, I thought it was more humane to…to…”
“Kill us,” Nox said.
“It’s…it’s what Generals do.”
“You kept this from everyone.”
“Yes. The Locust Plague’s sentinels were aggressively infiltrating and sabotaging my organization whenever they could. It took them less than two years to discover Oscuro. I decided to keep the project alive even though I knew it would not succeed. The only reason I did so was to fool the Locust Plague’s agents into thinking it remained my sole project to counter their invasion.”
“But when you set off the nukes in Arabia, the Locust Plague must have realized you were up to something else.”
“I’m sure they did,” General Spradlin said. “By then it was too late for them to do anything about it. The security protocol on the Displacers was in effect and we had only twenty to twenty five short years left to fully evacuate the planet. There was no chance they could stop me. Not anymore.”
“You kept this secret from your allies, as well.”
“That proved to be a mistake,” General Spradlin admitted. “David Lemner continued working on his passkey. He was convinced I lost my nerve and was allowing the world to die. I tried to convince him I wouldn’t do that without revealing what I was up to. I stripped him of his credentials and locked him in his own home but somehow, he still managed to keep working. All those long hours took their toll and David Lemner’s health was destroyed. Before he could fully implement his new program, he died.”
“Not before making at least one hard copy.”
“Yes,” General Spradlin said. “It was his legacy, an automated monster whose goal it was to fulfill the promise of Oscuro.”
“I wish I hadn’t found those disks,” Nox said.
“It doesn’t matter now.”
Nox thought about these revelations as more memories bled into her mind. After a while, she spoke.
“If the Locust Plague is as driven as you say, what’s to stop them from hunting the Arks down?”
“We set charges in the Displacer units both here and at our destination. As soon as everyone is out, the Displacers will be destroyed.”
“The Locust Plague can still follow.”
“Humanity will be far enough away that it would take the Locust Plague thousands and thousands of years to reach the location of the Arks. By then, we’ll be long gone.”
“But the Plague remains. Even if it takes them all those years, they still might track humanity down and destroy it. How can you leave a threat like that out there?”
“I’m not going to,” General Spradlin said. “Earth is the Locust Plague’s last destination.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I poisoned their meal.”
Nox exhaled and shook her head.
“By the Gods,” she said. “The Arabian nukes…the desert sands…the Displacer’s fallout…”
“Yes,” General Spradlin said. “We fouled the air, water, and land. We’ve exhausted the Earth’s resources. We’ve done everything short of blowing this world up. As vicious and unstoppable as the Locust Plague is, they operate under one major flaw: They have to feed to continue. What little food they find here will be useless to them. They came here to starve.”
Despite it all, Nox couldn’t help but smile.
“I’ll be damned,” she said. “Congratulations, General Spradlin. You figured out a way to kill creatures civilizations hundreds of thousands of years more advanced than ours couldn’t. The only cost was our planet.”
Nox was silent for a few more seconds.
“What happens now?”
“My people will reactivate the Displacers in full and send what remains of the Earth’s population to the Arks. By the end of today, everybody will be gone.”
“Everyone but me.”
“You’re a survivor, Nox.”
Nox let out a bitter laugh.
“I’ll be one against millions. Billions.”
“You’ll find a way,” General Spradlin said. “Survivors like you always do.”
As the words left his mouth, he faded away.
51
Nox opened her eyes.
She was surrounded by several amorphous shapes.
At first, she could not tell one from the other. She rubbed her eyes and shook her head. She was sitting on the ground before an ancient computer terminal.
Nox no longer felt Lemner’s passkey tugging at her mind. For the first time in what seemed a lifetime nothing gnawed at her mind. She was fully at peace.
“At peace,” she said out loud.
Her next move was entirely hers to make.
She examined the terminal before her. It was dark and appeared dead. No lights flashed and no fans cooled heated circuitry. She recognized the computer as one of the premiere models built during the Arabian War.
Only the best for Oscuro.
Nox sensed Lemner’s passkey had resided within this computer. Cameras stationed above the machine looked outward, to give the passkey eyes to view its surroundings. The cameras were just as dead as the machine itself.
No, not completely dead.
A single memory chip on the lower left side
of the machine extruded from a plug. Nox reached for it but stopped.
A single dull red light flickered on the chip.
Nox could feel it. Lemner’s passkey was there, contained and imprisoned within that chip. It was all that was left of the most fearsome computer program ever devised.
Nox cautiously reached for the memory chip. She touched it.
Nothing.
Lemner’s passkey was trapped with no hope of escape.
Nox pulled the chip from its plug. It was impossible to tell how much of the program remained within. She considered dropping it to the floor and crushing it under her foot but didn’t. Though her desire for revenge against the program was great, she would have plenty of time to deal with it later. Nox put the chip into her pocket and examined the rest of the room.
As she did, she noted the bitter stench of death that permeated the area. She realized her clothing and hands were stained a deep red. She was covered in dry blood.
The Mechanic looked at the other side of the room and feared what she would find.
Her fears proved justified.
General Spradlin’s body was there, still strung up against the wall like a grisly trophy.
Lying in front of him were the five remaining one-time child soldiers. Like Nox, their bodies were also covered in the General’s dry blood.
Nox gingerly got to her feet. For a moment she felt she would fall and had to lean against the wall of computers. She then remembered the kidnapped children. Nox reached into her pant pocket and was relieved the black leather pouch with the syringe and vaccines was still there. The one-time child soldiers hadn’t bothered searching her, so focused were they on getting revenge against General Spradlin.
“You planned it that way,” Nox whispered.
She approached the one-time child soldiers and checked for any signs of life. She found none. Their faces were the faces of ordinary people in their mid-thirties. She couldn’t remember any of them from her time in Arabia. None but Joshua Landon.
Landon’s body lay closest to General Spradlin’s. His corpse was curled up under the General’s bloody feet and his face was relaxed. There was no longer any evidence of the animalistic rage she saw in him when they were captured. He found peace in death.