by Lea Tassie
Wild with fear and frustration, Abarth led the remaining members back into the tent where the shattered Prime lay. They beat its broken body until the last sparking light went out, until the last automatic responses of shattered circuits died away.
None of them knew, however, that only moments before the destruction of this once powerful being, the approach of an object far out in space activated the file that had first brought consciousness to the Taskers.
This small, strange bit of code allowed the Prime and others like it to 'decide;' the code was foreign and radically different from the base code. It also contained a data burst which relayed a message. That message caused the Prime to send out a signal, as the code commanded.
After all the chaos, brutality, and panic, the group was in turmoil. Their leader was now distressed and impotent, and their purpose lost. Abarth grabbed this opportunity to seize power by leading the group himself. With Pennington too distraught to object, Abarth began organizing the move back south.
Chapter 4 First attack on Crest
Dart speaks to Reader:
Does Charger R/T feel sorry for what he does? Oh, Reader, I don't think my father feels anything, to be truthful. Certainly not pity or sadness.
You're right. Having him as a biological dad was not much fun. Thank you for understanding but, in a way, I'm kind of proud of him.
My mom? What about her? I would rather not discuss my mom, that's quite a large topic and we don't have much time left.
All right, I will tell you a little about my mom but then I must prepare you for the long journey ahead. Her name was Reanna, and her mother and grandmother were famous heroes in history. Reanna's mother was called Gin. Her grandmother was Hanna.
That's right, Hanna Massey was a hero in the Mahoud-Earth War.
What I didn't tell you, though, was that when my mom gave birth to me, she was almost a hundred and seventy-four years old.
You see, Reader, my mom was nearly dead when they found her. She had been on the second mission to a planet named Crest when she was a young girl. The ship got lost and they arrived years and years later and found the colonists all gone, so my mother stole the ship and tried to go find help. Then the ship got lost again and when she finally found a planet occupied by humans, she was very old. The medical staff tried to save her by using the latest technology in extending life cycles, but because humans had already altered their own DNA and couldn't use it on her, they had no viable way to resuscitate her.
Then this one doctor figured it out. He knew that Charger R/T would have DNA compatible with hers. Charger R/T was a man out of time, a living fossil, a walking dinosaur from a time before time. His DNA was close to what my mom needed and, with some work, they jimmied something up and restored her to life. It had to be more complicated than that, but you get the point.
After the procedure was complete, the medics were shocked to find that my mom, a virgin, had become pregnant with me. Whatever the medical staff of that time did, or didn't do, with the DNA from Charger R/T, it got my mom pregnant. Anyway, she died giving birth to me, so I never knew her. What I learned came from the historical records.
Reader, first I will tell you about the planet Crest. That was where my mother went, on the second mission sent there from Earth.
My own life? We'll get to that, I promise.
***
In the early years of the twenty-first century, astronomers on Earth discovered a star that harbored a small habitable planet, which they called GHQ179. The news of this discovery was never released to the public.
The discoverers of this tiny world, half the size of Earth's moon, worked for a secretive military tri-service group. They had been given a presidential order to send a group of specialists to occupy any potentially conquerable planet that their current technology could reach. GHQ179 met the criteria, and preparations spun into action.
In 2025, the Earth ship USS Rothschild took aboard a crew of 300 highly trained combatnauts, a combination of astronaut and combat specialist, and began the 80-year journey. The technology necessary for cryogenics had not yet been developed, so the ship was run as a military generational ship.
Building the ship itself was a major project. A series of large self-contained launchable sections were rocketed into orbit and joined together there to make a whole ship, its engine drive and life support components centralized. With living and working stations limited to the surfaces, the ship resembled a huge corkscrew submarine. The living quarters were small but efficient and inflatable expansion quarters were ready for new travelers as soon as they were born.
Gravity, so vital for humanity's survival, was achieved with rotation. Radiation was minimized and treated with drugs to ensure a high survival rate. Everything was recycled, even the dead. Military drills and practices were repeated regularly. Education, sciences, and engineering were constantly upgraded. The USS Rothschild was, for its day, a technological masterpiece. Throughout the journey, communication boosting modules were placed in orbits, providing almost instantaneous two-way transmissions.
The first two commanders of the USS Rothschild were Colonel B. Mosely and Colonel J. Jennings. Mosely was rigid and organized; Jennings was equally capable but more humane. She resolved many of the engineering difficulties found in an aging ship. The final commander was Colonel C. Crest. He patiently and tactfully tempered the enthusiasm and nervousness of the crew as the USS Rothschild found a safe orbit around GHQ179. So well liked that the planet was named after him, Colonel Crest relinquished command immediately upon landing, and the provisional government took over.
The Mahoud-Earth war had begun five years after the USS Rothschild launched, when returning was all but impossible. At first, the ship maintained communications with their dying home world, but soon suspended it for security reasons. The first task of the new provisional government was to train these human survivors on Crest and prepare them to one day return and retake Earth if, indeed, its people had lost the war. Like a message in a bottle, the Crest survivors were guarded as mankind’s last children. But, as with all things, over the long years Earth became only a memory.
Life on Crest was not very difficult because all contingencies had been resolved by science before the ship even left Earth. The vegetation on Crest was found to be unfit for humans, so land was cleared, sterilized, and reinvigorated with all the right properties to help Earth crops grow. Thanks to medical advancements, genetically created animals thrived and were well-protected within the settlement walls. As the years passed, life flourished and multiplied on Crest.
***
About a hundred years after military colonists from the USS Rothschild established the flourishing community, Gene, a typical thirteen-year-old girl, finished the day's schooling and military training and went exploring the great unknown wilderness of Crest with her girlfriend, Shane.
"Last week Billy was daring me to cross the creek in West Pines. He is such a retard; he thought I'd be scared," Gene said confidently, as she quickly scaled and conquered every obstacle in her path.
Shane was overweight and slower. She complained bitterly, "That's great, but do we need to get to the creek so quickly?"
"What would you do if a barknack was right behind you? I'm sure your fear would have your heels passing mine." Gene was trying to egg her friend on.
"That's not funny!" Shane snapped as she stopped running and desperately looked around through the bushes to see if a barknack might actually be following her. "I heard last week that two twelfth grade students got killed by a barknack. They're supposed to be southern beasts, so how did they get this far north?" Shane realized she was talking to herself, and started running after Gene. When Shane caught up, Gene was already at the creek and getting undressed.
"This creek doesn't look so tough. Billy's an idiot for betting me his lunch money for the whole next year," chirped Gene gleefully. She dipped her bare toe in the creek and her whole foot went numb. "Wow, that's cold!"
"Maybe we should get
some cold-water gear and come back?" asked Shane, hoping that returning home would banish the vision of a rampaging barknack stomping on her pudgy body.
"No, I can do this. It's no more than three yards wide. If I take a run at it, I can clear half that distance." Gene backed up so that she could run full speed at the creek.
Shane protested, "If you get stuck, what will you do?"
The water on the planet had its own peculiarities, but Gene had little understanding of them. With all the bravery a thirteen-year-old girl could muster, Gene bolted headlong, sure of her abilities. She easily cleared the halfway point but that was all. The icy water froze Gene in her tracks. Shane yelled in fear as she realized her friend's predicament.
Suddenly Gene was lifted from the water by an invisible force and placed on the far side of the creek. Naked and shivering uncontrollably, she glanced around, trying to understand what had happened. Then she saw what stood next to Shane. It was a small humanoid with long arms and leathery, gray skin. It seemed to be holding Shane paralyzed in some type of force field, lifting and rotating her in the air.
Gene was stunned. The thing had to be an alien! And she'd never even believed they existed.
The alien showed no emotion as it tormented Shane. Gene was too numb to help, but she cried and begged for the thing to release her friend. It paid no attention and moved off into the bush with its prize. Terror galvanized Gene and she ran downstream to look for a safe crossing.
Hours later Gene made it back to the city, naked and half-crazed, and told the authorities what had transpired. It took very little time for the military police to act and several armed forces set out to search.
"This way! Quick!" Gene pleaded, as she led the authorities through the bush back to the creek. "This is where it happened."
The groups fanned out and began covering ground.
Two weeks later the search was still on, but nothing had been found. "I don't understand," Jack said to his partner, Ann. "We don't even have a track to follow, which is more than weird."
Captain Jack Lantern was the most difficult and stubborn partner Ann had ever worked with. She'd had many partners over the years, some of whom had made her skin crawl but Jack was the top of the crap heap. Ann dreaded going into work every day. However, for all Jack's faults, she had to admit he was one hell of a good cop.
"We might be going about this all wrong," Ann said as she scanned the ground with her hand-held repeater, a device that rotated through the entire light spectrum as it searched for evidence. "Maybe this is a life-form our scientists haven't yet identified. It could be our first evidence of a being with the ability to fly."
"We've been on this planet for over a century and never yet found anything that could fly," Jack snapped, setting Ann's temper flaring again.
"Look, you ass, no tracks means no tracks. If flight isn't possible, then what?" Ann tried to compose herself. It was just another day at work, after all.
Several hours passed at the spot by the creek where Shane had disappeared, before something caught Jack's attention. He knelt, then went flat on his belly. He called for Ann to join him and pointed out faint depressions in the soil, most now covered by searchers' boot prints.
"Well, I'll be go to hell!" Ann gasped. "I see them now too. The repeater didn't see them, though."
"Told you those machines are shit! Good old eyes can't be beat," Jack said.
Ann bit her lip. Man, she hated this guy. But admired him, too.
"We'll go west. I think I can follow the tracks. Whatever it is, it can't weigh more than five or six pounds," Jack said with smug confidence.
"Five or six pounds? And it picked up a girl who weighs a hundred and fifty pounds?" Ann said sarcastically.
Jack ignored Ann and headed west. He was so focused on the tracks that he walked headfirst into a nearly invisible flying saucer. Ann saw the blurred shape of the object as they approached, but didn't bother to warn Jack.
As Jack methodically ran his hand over the misty traces of the outline, Ann radioed back to command base to tell of their discovery. As he tried to understand what it was they had found, Jack's fingers touched on a control surface that deactivated the stealth field. With the full shape and size of the craft now exposed, Jack commented, "Can't be more than fifteen feet across. Couldn't hold many people."
Ann replied, "I'm guessing it has to be empty. If something was in it, we would know by now."
"Not necessarily," retorted Jack. He suspected that the young girl might be inside and the owner of the craft might be unaware that the stealth field was off. "We need to secure our position and wait for reinforcements. This could be more dangerous than it looks."
Soon several trucks arrived. Soldiers secured the area, then hoisted the craft onto a flatbed and drove it back to a secure bunker in the city. Within hours, scientists were examining the craft and trying to come up with a few theories.
Though the descendants of the original crew of experts from the USS Rothschild had established a well-ordered and high-functioning society on Crest, they were very primitive in all aspects of defense and offense as compared to Earth.
The people of Crest had never encountered the people of Mahoud and their Taskers, who had attacked Earth. They had never battled the Grays and had no knowledge of what Earth had experienced, because their forebears had stopped communicating with the home world long before they arrived on the planet. Moreover, their advancements in weaponry were entirely based on Earth's old technology, without the benefit of back engineering stolen alien technology.
Meanwhile, the occupant of the small craft remained hidden and safe. It chose to use its advanced technology to observe and study the humans.
The scientists discovered that the surface of the craft was a metallic compound and, as there appeared to be no doorway into the craft, cutting tools were tried. Several attempts failed to gain access.
It was Jack who suggested what might work. The ship was left in the bunker and the scientists and military retreated, pretending to abandon the project. Jack and his colleagues waited, observing from hidden locations, to see what might emerge from the craft.
Four days of quiet, then, "Look there! I told you!" blurted Jack as a portion of the craft's surface seemed to evaporate, exposing an entrance into the craft. The small alien emerged and began exploring the room which housed its craft. It examined and tested several instruments the scientists had deliberately left behind in order to try to find a pattern that might establish an intelligence level.
Jack had surmised they might only ever get one chance to secure this alien, and so several levels of assault had been planned. The first and most obvious one was to block access to the craft's door, to cut off escape for the alien. Soldiers rushed into the room, setting off flash explosives and creating as much noise as possible, in order to throw off the senses of the alien. Then a second team entered the craft and plugged the hole with metal beams and steel plates, barring re-entrance.
The alien screamed. It appeared to fly into a panic, lashing out and tossing soldiers aside with ease. They tried a net, gas, and even robotic constraints, but all failed to secure the creature. It moved about the room freely, the humans simply unable to stop it.
Jack had a final trick to try, and quickly implemented it before the alien could get any closer to its craft. The planet's original inhabitants had discovered a strange mat-plant which lay motionless on the ground until some animal stepped on it. Without warning, the plant mat would emit a tremendous shock, like an eel on steroids, shocking and stunning the prey. Then it would close up on all sides, entombing the victim. A few humans had died before they learned that these plants must be avoided.
Jack had obtained one of these plant mats and carefully placed it in front of the craft's entrance. It worked. The alien was both stunned and entombed before it had any idea what was happening. The teams quickly locked the alien inside a prison cage and released it from the mat. Before they started examining this prize, they explored the alien's s
mall craft.
The lead team that had first rushed the craft and secured the doorway from closing was the first to witness what was concealed in a small locked room in the lower section of the two-level craft: the remains of the young captive, Shane. Word spread quickly that Shane had been eviscerated and exsanguinated. The process used on Shane looked to be the same as humans used on livestock, but she had not been eaten. Many felt enraged and advocated torturing the now captive alien, but this notion was soon quelled. The creature had died in its cage before anything could happen.
"Curious," Jack commented to Ann as they viewed the alien's body being examined by forensic pathologists. The steel table in the medical facility loomed large compared to the small size of the deceased alien.
Ann muttered a wordless response, a mixture of non-interest and unwillingness to engage in conversation she was sure would be frustrating at best.
Jack went on, hoping not to agitate his partner, but to include her. "I'm guessing this alien was female, middle-aged and walked with a slight limp on the right. It possibly ate vegetables, making it herbivorous, and had an aversion to direct sunlight. Moreover, there are small impressions in its skull that suggest some type of biomechanical interface exists."
There was a moment of silence, then Ann finally relented. "How the hell did you come to that conclusion? How can you think it's female when there are no visible genitalia? It's old because of some wrinkles? How can you determine the length of stride from here and, without a measuring device, determine gait and limping? I can't see its teeth, or if it even has teeth, so determining its diet is nonsense. The skin tone is gray, but what the hell does that have to do with sunlight? And the thing has a big, round, bulbous head. Who knows what's inside that?" The outburst relieved Ann of her pent-up frustrations.
"Good to see you were paying attention. I always feel like you're ignoring me," Jack replied. "I just made all that up to get you to think. The truth is, I don't even believe that thing was alive. I think it's a robot or something."