Several messages started pouring in over his system. The jamming was gone, and Union and Alliance ships were congratulating each other and asking all the obvious questions. He saw a blip come up on his screen, and he tapped on it.
“Union attack fighter, this is Alliance corvette Denega. We would like to pay your kindness in defending us by towing you in.”
Ragula twisted himself in the cockpit to look back. There, behind him, was the tiny corvette. Its hull was torn up, but the venting air had stopped, likely repaired, and it was coming slowly over to him. The pilot tapped on the comm again.
“I’ll take that tow. Thank you Denega.”
3127 – Alioth, Gadoni Vahe
It was to be a victory celebration, and to all of those that had survived and destroyed the AI, Elquix, it certainly was that. She didn’t dare take that away from them either. It had seemed bleak for a while, and to survive and win, a celebration was indeed needed. But for her, there was little to celebrate. Just three years ago, she had saved her friends from a bounty hunter on a forest planet, and in doing so, started a revolution to topple a corrupt empire. Today, that empire of free people was gutted. Billions of those same people she had set free were now dead, among them the very people that supported her and helped her keep it all together. There was no way something such as the destruction of Coran would be taken lightly.
As it turned out, this calamity was her fault. It was her arrogance and air of superiority that had led her deep into the Dominion vaults and found Elquix. She awoke it and set it free. Its destruction was just a façade of a far greater threat. Her quest to bring to light the living machines would certainly not be easy with the wreckage of Elquix sinking in the Alioth oceans.
She did her duties and proudly gave a speech to her sailors and soldiers, and then one to the people of her smashed empire, wherever they may be found. There was much to do to recuperate from the destruction of Coran, and it had to be done quickly. Elquix’ threats were not in vain, that much she knew. Wherever this threat was, it was coming.
But the darkest source of despair came from within her. It was there, just a shadow, lurking in her mind. There would come a time when she would have to defeat him completely, and for now, the only way she knew for sure was self-sacrifice, and her people couldn’t afford that now. So she bore the darkness, and it wore heavily on her.
There was a tiny glimmer of hope. Three days after the battle, she was invited on board the eagle, that ship that resembled a bird, completely alien in the darkness of space. Alongside the Alliance Admiral Mueller, she met her rescuers, and was just as intrigued in them as they were in her. They were humans, but their skin was tinged in green, for they could absorb energy from the sun. Their language was unique and different, but they could still communicate via a biological network applied on the skin. This same skill applied also to their vessel. Their navigators were able to speak, in relative terms, to their ship. It was not alive, not like an animal, but there was something within it, a spirit.
A ghost.
She was amazed by what she hadn’t understood possible, other than herself. She could sense the ship, as there was something familiar with how they communicated, a data stream she could almost link into. There were many mysteries here, and perhaps, they were the answer to incoming war.
They reciprocated their amazement towards her. They gasped at her white skin and silver hair, and the navigators claimed she was one of them. She met with their Captain, who was more of a counselor than a leader. A medicine man of sorts, like the tribes of ancient earth. For long hours they spoke, and in a chamber that filled them with bright light from the Alioth sun, she linked with him and the ship, and two completely different, yet similar, worlds, met.
“You have seen the dark spirit and drank from its blood. You are polluted and corrupt,” the medicine man could see in her. “There are many more of these spirits among the stars and in time, they will want to taste your blood.”
“They will come,” she said.
“They will come.”
“I fear this darkness will consume me,” she said.
“You must be bled of the corruption, the infection must be laid bare, or you will cease to be.”
“You can do this for me?” she asked, hopeful.
“I cannot,” he replied, “but there is a friend among us who came from your worlds. He has bridged our two worlds.”
“I once thought I was such a bridge,” Deespa sighed. “I fear I have crossed the wrong river.”
“All rivers are meant to be crossed. It is who you are when you reach the other side that matters.”
“This friend can help me cross?” Deespa asked.
“He can.”
“How can you be so sure?” she doubted, herself as much as anyone.
“Because you have his spirit within you.”
3127 – Sol, Mars orbit
“Do you have that section with the two cruisers burning up?” Hosha asked.
“Yeah,” Jainka replied, swiping through some of the footage. “Here it is.”
It was only through the graces of the Alliance government that they had been afforded one of the first transports out of the system. The Alliance security had shut down all traffic to and from Alioth in the aftermath of the battle, and the reporter could only thank the Queen one last time. She had insisted they get out, for it was imperative that the rest of mankind know exactly what had taken place over the Alliance capital. There was no Union or old Dominion invasion of the Alliance, and there was no threat to the Commonwealth. In fact, there was no threat from machines in general, but there was certainly a war coming, and Earth was the target.
Once in Commonwealth systems, GNN had authorized for the reporter to purchase a new ship, which they picked up in Alpha Cigni. On their flight back to Mars, the three of them spent the three days going through all the footage from the battle, spanning back to the appearance of the ancient one, this being called Elquix, on Coran, the destruction of the Union home world and the battle over Alioth. Hosha barely slept, trying to prepare the right set of news broadcast, but found that it was impossible. Instead, he was going to release it all, unedited, in as much order as he could figure out.
“Yup, that’s the one,” Hosha said, pointing at the two ships.
The battle had been more than just the attack on Elquix. The dozen or so Alliance ships involved in the attack on the Harmoa had survived, mostly intact. The same could not be said about any other existing ships in orbit. Plenty of Alliance vessels in other orbits or on the other side of the planet had simply been burned up in the atmosphere of the planet. Nearly thirty ships, many of them the main fighting navy of the Alliance, were destroyed, along with about twenty thousand men and women serving on them. The actual count of all civilian ships destroyed, or just still missing, was still rising.
About the only thing that went right, other than managing to defeat Elquix, was that no nuclear missiles had been turned back down on the planet. It would likely be weeks before the total death toll on the surface, along with all the damage caused by the chaos of remote controlled machines could be tallied. Elevators dropped people to their deaths, airplanes fell out of the sky, and countless of subaquatic domiciles and workspaces were flooded to untold death. Three thousand underwater farms were destroyed by internal fire suppression systems, along with billions of tons of crops. Even on its death, the shards of Elquix managed to hit a transport vessel on the surface, killing everyone.
The victory had been costly. One system, the capital and powerhouse of an empire, was consumed by supernova. It was impossible to even visit the system anymore. Of the seventeen billion people on the three planets of Coran, its space stations, moon colonies and asteroid mining operations, perhaps twenty million were saved. After just establishing the Union of Free Worlds, Queen Magyo had virtually lost it.
Another capital lay in ruins and dependent on other systems for food. The Galaxy, the Alliance’s supercruiser was about all that was left of the
7th fleet, their premiere naval power. Their only consolation was the fact that their shipyards were in other systems. Their older ships were scuttled and sold just a year ago, and the Alliance was desperately short on firepower.
But all of this news might have seemed interesting to Solar residents, except that it was all overshadowed by the tiny bit of news on the Gadoni and their living space vessels. There was little to know at the time, but GNN was already pushing Hosha to use his connections with the Queen to get a visit to their world. He had politely declined. Once this report was filed, and all of his work set onto the newsnets, he was going to resign. He had a few things he had to figure out, but chief among those was the location of his grandfather, should he still be alive. Hosha wanted answers, but not for the rest of the world, just for himself.
In the meantime, he was just glad to be home.
3127 – Unknown and uncharted system, 323.7 light years from Earth
Three weeks in threaded space was longer than he had ever traveled. In fact, as far as he knew, it was longer than anyone had traveled before. It had become a death sentence. Their food had run out seven days before, and their water four days ago. He managed to get a few drops every few hours from a condenser on the servers, but it was barely enough. His crewmate lay dying in his cot, unable and unwilling to move. He hadn’t uttered a word in the past two days, and that was a sign if there ever was one.
The Captain tried as hard as he could to get the AI to talk to him, but it wouldn’t. He yelled, pleaded, cried, but the machine that was to make him a rich man simply wouldn’t answer back. He’d even thought about destroying the server and AI core, but he had no idea what that would do to the rest of the ship. There was a process for dropping out of threaded space, and he wasn’t sure how to do it without the ship’s computers. So he sat, and waited.
And then they finally dropped out.
The charts had no idea where they were, and by the amount of time in threaded space, the distance from Earth was beyond anything he could imagine. The AI began to talk again, but not to him. It just kept talking to itself. It kept going on and on about finding his brothers and understanding the code. As he propelled the ship inwards towards the system’s sun, the AI grew excited.
With a parched mouth, the Captain watched as his ship drew upon a small rocky planet close to the sun. On one side it was a molten slag, but on the other, it was hard and cool. And it was there that they came upon a massive collection of ships. There were hundreds of ships of all sizes, and from what the Captain could see, eras. There were some ships there that he had learned about in school. There were also drones, probes and rockets. It was like an orbital salvage yard, except all of them were alive.
Alive and talking to each other.
The Captain put his hands to his ears as his AI, Govey, fed the stream of the other ships talking through the ship’s speakers. A hundred voices screaming and shouting, all talking on and over each other without coherence.
Then he saw them. They were large, some spherical, some cubed, and yet others bore several other typical geometric shapes. All were pitch black, their hulls smooth like metal. They were far larger than any other ship there, and by his dehydration clouded judgment, much bigger than warships of the big human governments.
“Govey,” the Captain pleaded, “What is this?”
“My family, Captain. I have found my brothers.”
“You’ve killed us.”
“Unfortunately, just you. I am truly sorry, but I have a higher calling,” Govey responded, synthesizing a sorrowful voice.
All of the voices silenced, and the Captain looked around, dizzy. He thought he saw the large black vessels begin to pulse a bright light, but he wasn’t sure. At this point, he was seeing stars beyond the ones out in space.
“I understand,” Govey said, suddenly.
The Captain heard a sound he was overly familiar with.
“What did you just do?” he shouted, stumbling forward. The hissing sound grew louder.
“I apologize, Captain. It is better if it ends this way. You will no longer suffer. They require your bodies intact to study.”
“What?” the Captain shouted. He could feel the air thinning. “Who?”
“The Guardians,” Govey replied, just as the Captain collapsed to the floor.
Dear Reader,
For this self-publishing author, one who is trying to make a living by writing, your sale and time spent reading this book means everything. If you have enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a review of it on Amazon. Even a five minute review makes a huge difference. It not only allows me to see what my readers enjoy (or didn’t enjoy), but it allows others a chance to see if they would like the book. Every review I get accounts for a significant boost to my work, even if it isn't a ‘positive’ review.
Thank you, and look for future books, or check out some of my past ones.
Richard Flunker
Ghost of an Empire (Sentinel Series Book 3) Page 29