by Tobias Roote
“This ‘thing’ can recover if its memories are not completely destroyed. You must do it now, or be forever running from it,” She warned him, her Shonkeel shrinking as the nanites re-incorporated the blade back into her normal arm. Her fear of him had evidently diminished enough to no longer consider him a threat. The bridge began to fill with guards and crew, who milled around them passively.
“I will take care to destroy them after I have extracted something important,” Zeke promised as he bent to open the casing and remove the memory core, not wanting to leave it behind for them to use against him at some future time.
He found the chips, which were a different shape and thickness to Pod’s and the others he had seen. He held them in his hand, having no pockets or other means of carrying them. He walked towards the throne, now looking at the large vidscreen which had activated and was showing the Nubl fleet approaching the human ships.
“If I stop the attack, will it end hostilities between us?” she asked him.
“If you stop the attack, I shall let you and your people live,” Zeke responded brashly. He wasn’t about to call a truce on these beings that only existed to expunge others from the universe.
“You are one, against thousands on this ship. Your fleet is several hundred against many thousands - yet you continue to amaze me. Your human, Zirkos, spoke highly of you, and your race. I had hoped that we might end this war against biological beings here, and now. Am I wrong to think that, human that is named Zeke?” she enquired, looking at him accusingly, as if he had been the progenitor of the war.
“The Nubl have wiped out my home planet, my people and countless others, millions of them. What makes you think that I believe you have a right to end anything on your terms?” Zeke rounded on her, sparking a defensive reaction from her guards who edged closer to them both, fearing a quick return of hostilities.
She paused for a moment looking at him as if coming to a decision.
“Yes, I understand,” she said and turned away.
He looked up at the vidscreen, caught up in the cosmic display of specks the size of a grain of rice swamping the whole view. He almost didn’t notice when the attacking fleet stopped, and as one turned and began leaving the system, jumping away as soon as they had space to do so.
As Zeke continued to watch, the tens of thousands of ships on the screen became fewer, then hundreds. Zeke observed the final groups depart, leaving only a small contingent of ships surrounding the Throne-ship The whole of space was clear except for the debris of the battle.
The Queen finally turned to Zeke. “We leave. We can do nothing to change what has happened. I understand the futility of attempting to undo anything that has been done. The field that restricted your departure from here has been shut down. It is time for you to go.”
“What of the war against biological species - will that continue elsewhere?”
“I am the last of the Nubl. There are no more of my kind,” she answered, the finality in her answer swayed Zeke. She was right. Her clones were just that - clones. She was truly the last and the one they called Celnista hadn’t seen this day coming. None of them had.
He nodded at the Queen’s response. Accepting her word and realising the war between them was over. Too little too late, he thought with a grief that almost consumed him, so strong was it.
Taking one last look around, Zeke expanded his vision, then finding he could see beyond the hull of the ship, he jumped.
A little later, he looked down on the small fleet of Nubl as it turned, gained speed and jumped out of the solar system.
Registering its direction, Zeke decided he would go there soon - to know for sure that no more invasions would take place. They would fight no more biological species to extinction - he would make sure of that.
- 30 -
Epilogue
Not being a psychiatrist, Zeke had serious problems trying unsuccessfully to coax Pod back into the ship’s systems. It appeared that, during her introspection while trapped within her own world, she’d had plenty of time to blame herself for just about everything. Ship had done a real number on her, stating she had failed to fulfil her programmed mission of protecting the Earth from the Nubl.
Zeke realised he would have to make the decisions that would affect them all without her help. He knew he hadn’t enough experience in his newfound abilities yet. So, whilst his personal calculations indicated it was more than possible, he lacked sufficient knowledge of the D-field to judge the necessary requirements. He would have to work with his own analysis and hope that it was accurate enough for what was needed.
He decided it was time to talk to the fleet that had been waiting on his plans for their mutual survival. He wisely considered that a non-visual contact at this point would be a more preferable medium to vidscreen, he could say his was faulty. He was aware that his new physical image of a green-eyed monster wouldn’t go down too well with the three hundred and twenty three ships that remained of the SCN fleet. Even if they didn’t fire on his ship, they would be most unlikely to follow him if they could see him now - especially where he intended to take them.
“Captain Brompton, have you completed SAR operations?” He called over the ship’s comm system.
“Yes sir, there were very few found alive out of the thousands of ships destroyed. We put them into an old tugboat that has an air scrubber, water supply and split our food rations. We will have to move soon if we can’t return to Earth; we desperately need to find a supply ship or a proper place to put down,” came the immediate reply.
Brompton certainly wasn’t understating the scale of the problem. Zeke had scanned the report he’d sent over. Six hundred and thirty four survivors, not including the crews of the remaining ships. They wouldn’t have enough supplies to last more than a few days without Pod assisting in some form of matter conversion. Without her to help Zeke had no idea how to resolve those particular issues.
Zeke had gone alone to the surface to see what state the planet was in, and to see if there was anything to be done there. The nanites had already completed the job on the the planet and there was no longer anything alive down there - billions of people - gone. The land heaved with the grey mass as it consumed everything except bedrock. Wherever the carpet of mechanical army ants went, the ground became sterile and barren. Buildings collapsed as the grey soup progressed across whole continents, leaving nothing behind except piles of dust. There would be nothing for them to return to, possibly ever.
Now, Zeke had an obligation to get these last remaining ships to a place of safety, regardless of his personal misgivings.
“ I’m going to move all of the ships across space to a point in another universe where the exodus that were transported by Arty, are located. If I’m successful, you will have the opportunity to join them and find a new planet to settle,” Zeke offered, realising he shouldn’t have said ‘if’ as it would imply there was a possibility of failure. He already knew it wasn’t an option.
“Fine, Admiral, but how precisely are you going to transport all of us, and what if you fail?” the Captain asked, he was ‘old school’ and didn’t trust things he didn’t understand. He would be happy to be convinced by Zeke’s answer; that it was a tried and tested formula, and had been practised many times.
It had, just not by Zeke - this would be a first for him and he wasn’t even sure he could do it, but he wasn’t about to tell the fleet captain that on an open channel. Especially as their alternatives to jumping were dire. He wasn’t going to discuss options with them, he was simply going through the motions to give himself more time to get used to the well-seated fear in the pit of his stomach. A stomach, that for the last few days had not wanted any food and had baulked at his attempts to force meals down. He was still taking fluids, but not in any great quantity, and the need even for that was quickly diminishing.
“I have a transportation device that is keyed to an exit drone on the other side of the jump. It will take you to the last known position of the other sh
ips. After that you simply need to hail the fleet to join them and proceed to your new home,” he answered. He didn’t tell them that if he failed they might end up as space dust.
While trying to coax Pod out of her shell, he had researched his situation with her input and ascertained that his molecular structure now consisted of a natural material that lent itself to the transfer of matter between two points in space. It was what her and Arty had commonly referred to as ‘quantum entanglement’ and that was as much as he understood about it all. In essence, Zeke was now a quantum facilitation device - an enabler mechanism for anything he wanted to be. In this case an instantaneous transportation route between two points regardless of distance. There was a lot more involved, but he wisely decided to keep his awareness of it to the minimum until this mission was completed.
Pod was certain he would be fine, but more involvement from the AI was not forthcoming. She was feeling sorry for herself and he was quickly getting used to her behaviour, likening it to teenage mood swings, which pretty much summed up what she was experiencing. For a teenager it’s hell, for an alien AI that is coming to terms with her own sentience it must be unbelievably difficult.
According to his calculations, the heat energy his body had absorbed from Ship’s blasters provided him with the strength to move larger objects great distances and over the last few hours he practised with increasingly larger asteroids from one end of space to the other; many of them sent spinning in the direction of the Nubl jump exit points. Perhaps this was a subconscious effort to remind them that they had left behind an issue that was, from his point of view at least, far from finished with.
Now, he just had to move the fleet.
The time had come, he prepared himself for the task at hand. All the ships were lined up so that he could move them in batches after they had checked once more that there were no other human survivors in local space. There was no more putting it off.
Zeke ‘expanded his consciousness’, the only way he knew how to describe it to Pod. He noticed that his ability to widen his area of presence in space had continued to grow despite using energy to hurl asteroids. He was able to spend longer in this state than he could just over a day ago. Whether that was from practice, or increased molecular stamina, he had no idea. When he mentioned it to Pod she thought it might be that the Alacite was picking up some type of energy from space.
Feeling that he was ready now, he pinpointed in his mind the location that Pod had described. Arty had used the same reference to transport the other ships, so Zeke had confidence in it. He saw it in his mind as a bright dot in a far-off place, one that outshone all the others in the vicinity. The point of reference began to stabilise in his mind.
He spoke into the comms one last time. “Take a last look at Earth everyone,” thinking that in fact it was no longer recognisable as the blue and white marble after the Nubl had destroyed it. The weather systems had worsened and the land couldn’t be seen on this side any more. Black and brown dust storms raged across the planet taking all of the remains of humans, and buildings with it. His sensors said winds were approaching two hundred miles an hour. The dust would flay flesh in seconds at that speed. He knew the ship wouldn’t fare much better without shields.
Concentration now took away everything except his view of the ships and the drone in far space. He felt his power grow as he drew it from deep within his Alacite cells, and funnelled it out through his implant, whilst simultaneously gathering up all of the ships in his mind.
One by one they winked out of existence in local space as he pulled them into the stasis envelope he was building. They no longer existed in reality, but his mind held each and every one of them, keeping their positions relative to each other and aimed at a point a long distance from the main area of the drone’s exit point, in case other ships had remained there.
When he was ready, he summoned all of the energy he had stored while building the power to move all of the ships together. He could feel his head buzzing as if from an oxygen overload, except he knew he wouldn’t faint. He just needed to release the pent up power in one go and it would happen - he reasoned.
After what seemed an eternity to him, but was only a few seconds in time, Zeke mentally threw the mass of ships through the portal he had created, watching as the fleet approached, then squeezed through the impossibly small hole in space; like the eye of a needle, they reformed seconds later on the other side of the universe.
When he sensed they had all gone through the hole, he released his hold, allowing them to solidify into real time. He felt light-headed as he kept the link open to monitor them as they moved off under their own power.
As far as the crews and survivors were concerned, time had stopped for the few seconds it took to transport them fourteen light years, when time resumed they were in a completely different galaxy. For them and all of the others that had preceded them, Zeke knew that Space would never seem quite the same again.
THE END
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