Rumors of Wars: The Askirti Chronicles - Book 2

by Danny A. Brown

  The small group Helen was with parted for the four heavily armed soldiers.

  “Alesium, want to come?” she said in Standard, holding the stare of one of the soldiers, who simply nodded.

  They then parted, bringing her and her engineer to Jackie’s pinnace. Getting settled in, she found the ship quite comfortable.

  “Well, at least it isn’t a prison cell,” she quipped.

  The woman across from her just stared. She was a bit surprised to find that all four of the marines in the pinnace were indeed women. And they were not small.

  “You are not a prisoner of the High Queen,” the marine said.

  Helen looked at her with an incredulous look.

  So that is what she calls herself. Figures. A clone of me, and using my title as well.

  She could tell the marine was embarrassed at the slip of the tongue and said no more to her.

  A few minutes later, more marines boarded along with the clone herself, this “Jackie” character who calls herself “High Queen”. It was amusing, really.

  “So, this one tells me I am not a prisoner!” Helen said with exaggeration in her eyes, looking directly at Jackie while the pinnace rose from the landing platform.

  “I never said you were,” the clone answered.

  “And yet, you keep us locked away! Look at this place! There’s so much to see and do here, but my people are not allowed! Can we not get out and meet people?”

  “Pilot,” the clone said, speaking into her comm, “vector by shipyard seven. Take it slow.”

  Helen looked at her very curiously.

  “Look out your window,” said the clone.

  There, near the shipyard, was Helen’s flagship. She hadn’t seen the images of the outside at the conclusion of the last battle. It was heartbreaking. The pitted armor, the gashes, the outright holes that could hold warships. So many memories that were so recent flooded her mind, most of them terrible.

  Then their vectored changed, going flying past a parked fleet of ships, much smaller ships, that looked heavily damaged.

  “What have we here?” Helen asked.

  “We are in the middle of a war, finding you was quite the accident. We are trying to keep your people safe, that is why you are segregated.”

  “Then why the information black-out?” Helen said, her voice having more heat in it.

  “Because the truth is worse than you think,” she answered in a thick voice.

  “Oh, so you are concerned about us losing our minds?” Helen said with a voice of ice.

  “You are human, and yes, I am afraid of that.”

  The shuttle flew into the hangar of the largest ship out of the damaged fleet, battle scars clearly visible. Landing in the hangar, she took a deep breath at the sight of the drone fighters. They looked eerily similar to those she had fought.

  The hangar was a wreck, there were wrecks of fighters, and stacks of fresh materials, presumably for ship repairs. Exiting the shuttle in the wheelchair was a humbling experience, but she realized at least some traditions were universal when she saw the color guard and the officers at the end of the ramp.

  “High Queen, welcome back onboard Mars,” the ranking officer said.

  Mars? Isn’t that a planet?

  “And Homem Queen, welcome. We are at your service,” she politely said.

  “Well, a nice taxi you have here,” Helen quipped.

  That comment drew a hard look. Helen knew it was inappropriate, but she was done with the hoax and wanted hard facts.

  “Follow me,” the officer said.

  ##

  Going to FTL was unexpected, especially using the engines they had on this thing. It was also unexpected they allowed both her and her chief engineer on the flag bridge.

  “They must be working really hard to convince me!” Helen said to Alesium.

  Approaching the Space Gate was not one of the things Helen expected. These were generally a backup measure for transport if the transition drive failed. And yet this large ship and her five escorts were opening the Gate.

  Helen motioned at Alesium to remain silent. One look at his face showed he was just as shocked.

  As they entered into the next system, Helen saw something on sensors.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  “Those,” the clone said, “are the Gate Keepers, defensive systems, or what is left of them.”

  “What happened to them,” Alesium asked, speaking for the first time.

  “They were destroyed some years back when the system was invaded.”

  They jumped into FTL again, this time for twenty minutes. No one said much of anything in this time.

  Coming out of FTL, Helen was presented with a sight she was familiar with, yet was not.

  “Welcome to my home, welcome to Earth,” the clone said with a sad look in her eye.

  What was before her on the wall screens was simply not possible. Yes, the continents looked right, but brown. The whole planet was brown. The water, the land. Helen was there not two years ago in a port of call during the war, and it looked nothing like this.

  Her voice somewhat shaken, she asked, “What am I looking at?”

  Alesium was equally shocked, looking for perhaps imperfections in the images to see if they were real.

  “Better to see with your own two eyes,” the clone said. “Let’s go back to the pinnace.”

  ##

  Flying over city after dead city, nobody said a word. Everyone just stared out the windows, looking with their unaided eyes.

  Pieces of huge buildings still standing, craters, ancient wrecks of starships littering the open spaces. Everywhere Helen could see was just a wasteland.

  What was stranger was she could feel the power plants that were under the crust, formerly used to power her civilization. The power seemed faint, barely there. The enemy definitely did not have access to this technology, nor the ability to use it. If this was a hoax, it was beyond anything she could conceive.

  “I recognize none of this. None of the cities, nor the ship designs we flew over,” she said to Alesium, who remained silent. “Where are we going?” she asked the clone.

  “Orlando, coming up on it now.”

  The shuttle slowed and turned, taking a slow look at the dead city before descending to land in an open area. Only it wasn’t open, no place was. The ground was completely littered with human bones. The shuttled landed on top of no small number of them.

  This city is a graveyard, Helen thought to herself.

  The ramp lowered, and the party exited the shuttle.

  “What am I looking at?” Helen asked, repeating her earlier question.

  “I already told you, this is my home,” the clone answered quietly as she walked off, making her lack of concern for Helen very apparent.

  She did not walk far, only to a large pit hundreds of meters long where there had to be tens of thousands of human remains. Then she just sat at the edge, and had her security team back away, as if to be alone.

  After a few minutes, Helen asked her minders to take her to the clone as there was simply no way her wheelchair was going to get over there. They complied, two of them lifting her chair and walking over there next to Jackie. One of the marines looked down at the clone with great sadness. Sadness not for the surroundings, but for this woman. The clone herself was just sitting there staring at one point in the pit, with tears coming down her face.

  “How can this awful place be your home?” Helen asked, dropping her previous attitude.

  The clone never looked up at her, “before the invasion, I was raised right here in this city. Earth was always a ghetto compared to other worlds, but it was home, there was life in this city. My father led our sect, we called ourselves the Askirti. The first ‘High Queen’ I remember was when my grandmother was granted the honorific title. One day, her position, her heritage, was to be mine. Then the invaders came, they killed so many. I am all that’s left.”

  It was clear to Helen this was indeed Earth, a v
ery polluted Earth. It was not the pristine, garden planet she remembered that could support forty-three billion people. This felt very surreal.

  “Over there,” the clone pointed.

  “What am I looking at over there?” Helen answered softly, now feeling afraid of what she was learning.

  “My husband and my three children, or at least the pile of bones that probably contains them.”

  After a few moments pause, she continued, “I know you think I’m a clone. Trust me when I say I’m not offended, but now seems as good a time as any to tell you the truth. You’ve been asleep a long time, Helen. I’m not a clone. I’m your descendant. I was born, had a beautiful childhood, married and had children of my own. Of sorts, you’re my grandmother.

  “I do not know why we look just alike. I’ve had our DNA’s tested…we are duplicates, exact duplicates. I have no idea how that is possible, it shouldn’t be. If I’m a clone, nobody told my mother nor my father. All I can tell you is I was born and grew up here, never ventured into space until all this happened,” she said motioning to the sights around her. “I learned of the Homem Empire two years ago. A few ancient sites had been uncovered, one in the Dennaway star system was still active, gave me supposed royal nanites. Gave me an AI.” She turned to look directly at Helen and said, “I don’t know the how or the why for any of this. What I do know is you’ve been asleep for fifty thousand years, and it’s time you dealt with it.”

  Helen felt like someone punched her in the gut.

  “I’m trying to help people,” the Askirti woman continued, “people who would otherwise be killed or oppressed. I don’t know what I’m doing, I only know my passion is to defend the innocent. My passion is to prevent more cities from looking like this place.

  “It would be great if you and your people could help us, any help, really. I know we seem backward and primitive, but this is the reality we live in. Very few of us know about the Homem Empire, and nobody knows any real details. Your history, your traditions, it’s all gone, every bit of it. If you want to take your people to a random planet and forget about us, I’ll make it happen. I understand you’ve seen your share of war, I wouldn’t thrust more of it on you willingly. But we do need help.”

  At this point, Helen wanted to scream. Reality was far different than she thought. She was relegated not even to the history books, nor myth. The truth that she learned was worse than her worst fear. She needed a plan, she needed her people, she needed her space.

  “What would you be willing to part with?” Helen asked.

  The not-clone woman closed her eyes and sighed.

  “I can’t afford to give you our latest stuff, but we have plenty of resources from some of our conquests against the Zikar Empire. It’s all inferior even to our tech, but there’s an abundance of it. I’ll give you a small Zikar fleet so you can defend yourself, I’ll even toss in a few supply ships. You’ll have to crew them, though you’ll probably need some of our robots to help. I’m sure whatever you guys are given you will have it upgraded past our stuff in short order. We have a list of planets that are unoccupied, though you may be best setting up a moon base like we did at San Agustin, at least until hostilities subside. If you want to be part of a civilized society, we can relocate you guys to the planet Avalon. You would be welcomed there.”

  “When will hostilities subside?” Helen asked.

  “Not until Apollyon is destroyed, and those who command it.”

  Helen was taken back. She has seen and battled the destroyer of worlds, indeed, and was witness to the slaughter of trillions of lives so uselessly snuffed out by it, the imagines of populated planets breaking apart were so recent in her memories. How could this woman ever hope to combat such a thing? And if fifty thousand years had passed, how would she even be aware of this abomination?

  “What do you know about this ‘Apollyon’?” Helen asked guardedly.

  “My family raised me to believe in prophecy, but I never put much stock into it, sounded like fairy tales, at least until the fairy tale sucked me in. In it, the prophet believes I will be involved in fighting this Apollyon. Because of this prophecy, others have brought me from an XO on a destroyer to this ‘High Queen’ roll and supposed savior of mankind.” She paused, looking out at a distance again, “The kicker is I couldn’t even save my family, but they expect me to save them from the coming Darkness.”

  “What is this ‘Darkness’?” Helen asked as more dread building inside of her.

  Surely it couldn’t be the same Darkness I know of!

  “We don’t know. All I know is today we have a terrorist organization that has infiltrated the major nations, turning them on one another. This I can fight, though I hope not to fight forever.”

  “Why do you choose to use so many robots? So many machines?” Helen asked.

  “I understand that is how your enemy outmatched you,” Jackie said with a grimace. “We needed to grow too fast for a real military to support. We needed machines. My AI suggested using the ‘winning strategy’ from the Homem conflict.”

  “Just one more question, you said you got an AI? By any chance did this AI have a name?” Helen asked.

  “Yeah, its name is ‘Pari.’”

  Chapter 16

  San Agustin

  “I can’t believe you let them go, and took a spare Gate to boot,” Rick said.

  “What would you have me do? They saw their entire civilization destroyed. There’s so few of them left. Look, I think if we give them some space, they’ll eventually come around.”

  “I can’t believe they chose a rogue planet,” Rick added.

  Rogue planets were planets that did not orbit a sun, but existed in between systems, in the middle of nowhere. The galaxy was full of them, these fully formed worlds that were cast offs from their host stars at some point or another.

  “Actually, it’s a brilliant idea. Who will find them? It’s a better idea than San Agustin. I’ve already authorized two beta sites to mirror what the Homem’s are doing. We’ll keep this facility, but eventually shift our assets to the beta sites. A planet, a real planet, gives us virtually unlimited space to grow. There’s already tens of thousands of charted rogue planets just waiting for a secret base!” she said with a snicker. “This place is becoming crowded. Just the amount of surplus we have is absurd, with more coming.”

  Jackie did not want to think about the projected growth of San Agustin. These beta sites would take most of the pressure off this system, and provide better security.

  “Yeah, provided we have access to asteroids with easy to get to deposits.”

  “I know, Rick. But it’s a very secure solution.”

  “Did you have to give them a shipyard?” Rick asked.

  “It was just a little one,” she said with a guilty look. “It has two slips, it’s from the Zikars, and we kept their old beat-up Homem dreadnought. It’s ours to study forever and always. They even gave us a translation matrix so we can understand their language. That will shave decades off the time it would take learning the tech on that ship. I would prefer they gave us designs for everything they have, but if you were them, would you do it? Look, they said we could call them anytime.”

  “Okay,” Rick said in a resigned fashion, “but what do the powers that be think of all of this?”

  “Well, the Commonwealth and the Reslorians both agree we cannot force the Homems to work with us. They also think the rogue planet is the best idea yet. It will take the Homems almost six months to reach their destination, as is with our beta sites. And that is with some ultra-top-secret FTL improvements they utilized, tech they did give us.

  “San Agustin has already proven its worth, as several of the Commonwealth’s research facilities were hit. Those particular facilities already relocated their most sensitive projects here!”

  “Wow, so the Zikars got what?”

  “A headache. But really, it was an eye-opener for us. They crept passed the FTL detectors with small ships and inserted a few small teams desi
gned to capture technology, and perhaps even key personnel. With San Agustin, word will get around. They can indeed just fly here.”

  “So, six months, that’s going to suck for the tug crews pulling the Gates for us.”

  “No, not really. It’s all unmanned tugs and unmanned escorts.”

  Rick sighed. He was not a fan of automation. At this point, the Askirti Federation, being awash in small Zikar ships, converted dozens of corvette and destroyer sized ships to be exclusively unmanned vessels.

  “Just how long would this six-month trip take without their improvements?”

  “Eighteen months.”

  “Wow! That’ll deter anyone if they even knew where to go!”

  “Yes, and in six months, we’ll start moving equipment and personnel en mass.”

  “What about our gamma sites?” he asked, with a knowing look.

  Jackie had not planned to share that information.

  “The first of them will be three years,” she said with an innocent grin on her face. “Look, it cost us nothing, and in the long term we gain more security than ever before!”

  The look on Rick’s face was priceless.

  What she did not want to share at the moment was that the ship refits currently underway would use even less of a crew compliment than they had right then, but they were specializing ACUs to be able to take over any position a human might fill, including captain. Also, plans were already on the table for fully robotic crews for every ship class, including the mighty dreadnoughts.

  Warship design, by default, was never fully automated. Each critical system was always air-gapped, that is it takes a physical being to execute key maneuvers or to fire the weapons. The ACUs were designed in such a way that prevented hacking in that they used their senses as humans do. Sight, sound, smell, and touch. There were no wireless connections to the them that somebody in body armor did not have. They even had removable comm devices.

  What this gave the Askirti High Queen was the ability to remove a human crew altogether. This was ideal for deep space missions or even sentinel duty, as a ship could remain completely cold, yet have an active eye on what is going on in their vicinity.