THIRTEEN
MATT JUST FELT stunned as he and Carey stood from their chairmen chairs and stared at the large screen in front of them.
It would be another half hour before the next scout ship appeared to give a report. But in the meantime, scout ship after scout ship were going into other shielded galaxies and reporting that formally teaming life was now all gone.
And all of the Earth-like planets that had once been occupied had been terra-formed as Seeders did ahead of seeding a galaxy with humans. But now the planets had swallowed back up almost all signs of any civilization and were lush, green planets, empty of anything but animals and fish.
So far the scout ships had found the exact same thing in almost a hundred galaxies, and not one sign of human life remained in any of them. Something had happened.
“You are being called by Chairmen Ray and Tacita,” Star Fall said.
Both Matt and Carey glanced at each other, then returned to their command chair and Matt said, “Put them through here.”
Ray, with his long gray hair and Tacita, with her short black hair appeared in front of them. No one else in the command center could hear the conversation or see the other two chairmen.
“How confident of this information are you?” Ray asked.
“Star Fall says it is a ninety-five percent certainty,” Carey said, “and we will know more in ten minutes when the second scout ship reports back with new information.”
Matt decided to get it out on the line right now. Ray and Tacita had held information before because they hadn’t thought it necessary. This might be another time.
“So what do you know about this?” Matt asked.
“We are as stunned as you must be,” Ray said and Tacita nodded. “And the Gray have responded and they had no knowledge of any large civilization, especially a human civilization, in this area of space. They said they have never had a ship this far out since they never had the faster drives until we gave it to them.”
Matt nodded.
“We are discovering,” Carey said, “that the Earth-like planets in all the dead galaxies were, at one point, terra-formed as we do.”
Ray looked shocked at that and Tacita just shook her head.
“And the shape of those ships cannot be a coincidence,” Matt said. “This civilization was clearly booming when you took the first mother ship to a nearby galaxy.”
“If they had advanced trans-tunnel speed,” Carey said, “the first Earth would be in easy reach of where we are now.”
“Maybe easier,” Matt said. “The technology to build this kind of power system to supply power to whatever is at the core of this is far, far beyond our technology now. I can’t even begin to imagine how that power would even be transmitted over such a vast distance.”
Ray nodded and glanced at Tacita, then said simply, “Find answers. Something killed or stopped this culture or they abandoned it. We need to understand what and why and how.”
“Understood,” Matt said.
Ray and Tacita cut the connection.
“Seems we scared the old folks as much as we are scared,” Carey said.
Matt laughed. “Compared to the people who lived in this culture, Ray and Tacita are kids as well.”
“Well, that’s got to hurt,” Carey said, smiling as they both stood to watch the new data come in from the ancient space station.
And the new data confirmed what they had already really known. Human station, Seeder-like ships. It was going to take more hours before they dared enter the old station, but they would have full scans of it within four hours.
And after that, Matt really, really wanted to know why humans or Seeders would build a massive structure at the center of a sphere that took millions and millions galaxies to power it.
And what was in it.
SECTION THREE
Information
FOURTEEN
CAREY AND MATT had spent the next three hours studying the information coming in from all the scout ships and the information every hour from the scientists and scout ships now surrounding the ancient space station.
One piece of information that Carey felt good about: The station had had no offensive or defensive weapons at all.
And none of the docked ships had either. So this society, at the time of its death, had been peaceful.
Two of the major scientists on the mission felt that the docked ships might give them more information. Starships were designed to withstand long periods of space, more so than a stationary space station.
Matt and Carey both agreed and told two teams to focus on one of the ships and getting into it, and the rest of the scientists and scout teams to focus on the station.
It was very slow going since the military parts of the teams checked everything for any sort of old trap. They found nothing, but they continued to check.
After three hours, Matt and Carey went back to their apartment and Matt cooked them dinner of fresh salads and beef ribs in barbeque sauce
Reports from Star Rain came in while they were eating. The Star Rain scout teams on the other side of the massive sphere were also finding galaxy after galaxy of empty planets that had once teemed with human life. So it seemed a logical extrapolation that what had happened to this culture had been throughout the entire massive sphere of galaxies.
All Carey could think about over and over was what had killed them all? Or if not killed, what had happened? Where had they gone?
After dinner she and Matt jumped back to the command center just in time for the next update from the space station.
Ten military and scientists had jumped onto what appeared to be the command center of the largest ship docked at the station.
As they did, the ship had come alive, the lights coming up, some old panels trying to boot up, which had scared them all.
Matt and Carey stared at the images of the command center. It looked like almost any command center on a Seeders ship, with a large chairmen’s chair on the lower level, a second level of stations, and a larger third level of stations.
“That design is no coincidence,” Matt said.
Carey could only stare and nod. Clearly this race had influenced Ray and Tacita and the early Seeders, more than likely without Ray and Tacita knowing it, just as Seeders influenced human advancement without humans knowing about it.
Carey glanced at Matt. “We need to have Ray and Tacita go back through whatever records of their first flight and the building of their ship and see if they can spot the Seeders from this society in their ranks. Who came up with the ship design for them? And are any of those Seeders still around?”
Matt nodded. Star Fall, did you understand that? If so, please suggest that to Chairmen Ray and Tacita.”
“Sent,” Star Fall said a moment later.
Carey went through the reports as the teams on the ship worked to keep the ancient systems running and see if the core intelligence was still intact.
“Star Fall,” Matt said. “If you could contact that ancient ship’s systems, do you think you could talk with it?”
“Unlikely,” Star Fall said. “But there would be a slim chance of success. I could make the attempt in a clean and secure system, away from all this ship’s normal working systems.”
Matt nodded and glanced at Carey.
Carey nodded. “Let’s pull that ship out of the shield.”
If Star Fall thought there might be a slim chance, and would be safe in the attempt, it might be worth it.
Matt gave the order to pull the ancient ship out of the galaxy shield.
“Star Fall, how long should that take to move the ancient ship out of the galaxy shield?” Carey asked.
“Thirty minutes, maybe slightly more,” Star Fall said.
“This could get very interesting very quickly,” Matt said, smiling.
She wasn’t always sure she liked his definition of interesting. But in this case, he was right, as if all this wasn’t already interesting enough.
FIFTEEN
MATT FELT SLIGHTLY stunned when the ancient ship appeared basically in tow of one of the major military ships. The ship was beautiful, but clearly in the style of the older Seeder mother ships. Only it wasn’t as large as a mother ship, more like a long-range scout ship.
It was shaped like a bird in flight as all Seeder ships were, with a rounded nose and black color. Matt wasn’t sure if the color was original or part of the aging of a million years.
But either way, it looked impressive and beautiful.
Amazing, just amazing, that after a million years, anything at all worked on that ship, let alone held together. Clearly anything corrosive had been drained away. The scientists who had jumped to the command center had said all atmosphere was long gone. That had helped as well.
The fact that the ship and the station existed at all was a testament to the incredible advanced building and technology of this ancient race.
Two science ships followed the ancient ship out of the galaxy shield and then surrounded it.
Matt knew that they had formed a shield around it to stabilize it and keep any space dust or debris from hitting it.
The military vessel turned and went back through the galaxy shield to take up its station again. Two other military vessels took up positions back from the ancient ship and the two science ships.
Carey and Matt both stood beside their chair, watching the scene on the big screen. There was complete silence in the command center as everyone stopped to stare.
“Star Fall,” Matt said, “please stream all of this to Star Rain and Star Mist and also to Chairmen Ray and Tacita.”
“Stream activated,” Star Fall said.
At that moment one of Carey’s Tip-to-Tip running team members appeared on the screen. Chairman Gregory of the science vessel Brand. Gregory was a thin, tall man, with large glasses and a massive mouth that seemed to always be smiling. He was also one of the smartest people Matt had ever met and they were damned lucky to have him and his ship with them on this mission.
Matt smiled at him and Carey said, “Got a fun assignment, huh, Chairman?”
“This is a dream,” Gregory said, laughing.
“We’re thinking that maybe Star Fall,” Matt said, “in an isolated environment, might be able to contact the brain of the ship. Opinion on that?”
“Possible,” Gregory said, nodding slowly. “We have stabilized the power to the core systems of the old ship and we can provide a link. Star Fall might be able to work through that link far faster than any of us could to see if anything is left.”
“Any idea as to the language?” Carey asked.
“Early standard,” Gregory said.
Then he smiled at what must have been shocked looks on Matt and Carey’s faces. “We are clearly dealing with an ancient, pre-Seeder society here. Ship design, everything. This is going to rewrite some Seeder history, that’s for sure.”
Matt would have loved to see the looks on Ray and Tacita’s faces when they heard that.
“So how long do you need before you want to try this link?” Carey asked.
Gregory glanced at something or someone to his left, then said, “Give us four hours to make sure everything is stable, at least as much as we can do with million-year-old technology.”
“When you are ready,” Carey said.
“And Chairman,” Matt said, “one more question. Any sign at all of what happened to the crew of this ship or the station?”
“Nothing,” Gregory said. “Closets are empty and no food remains in storage. Whatever happened did so planned and over a little bit of time at least. And there are no signs of human remains, which in a vacuum, even after that much time, there would have been.”
“And the mystery gets deeper,” Matt said.
Gregory just nodded.
“Thank you, Chairman,” Carey said. “Contact us when you are ready.”
She then cut the connection.
The big screen went back to the shot of the ancient Seeder ship between the two research ships. Matt just stared at it. He was having a very, very hard time grasping any of this. He knew Seeders worked at a vast scale, but billions of planets full of people in millions of galaxies didn’t just all vanish one day leaving ships and space stations behind.
Where had they all gone?
And why?
Nothing at all made sense, most of all that beautiful ancient ship floating on the large screen.
SIXTEEN
CAREY AND MATT spent the next thirty minutes going over all the data coming from the ancient ship and also the next hourly report coming out of the station.
Then when the information seemed to reach a lull, she reached over and took Matt’s hand. “Let’s go rest and talk. It might be a long night.”
She knew they needed the break, needed to give all this information time to settle in.
Matt nodded and a moment later they were in the kitchen of their apartment. He loved their home, the feeling of safeness it gave them. And privacy.
“Tea?” she asked, moving to the counter to get them some mugs.
“Please,” he said as she moved to make herself a cup and he went to sit down at the kitchen table.
“Hard time believing all this,” he said after a moment, just staring at the table surface.
She nodded. “And we thought this mission was going to just be routine for a few hundred years or so.”
He laughed without looking up. “We got fifty years of routine at least.”
She nodded to that.
She tried to let her mind just drift as she fixed the tea and then joined him at the table. He was clearly lost in thought as well, since he was just staring off at the far wall.
She set his tea in front of him and sat in her chair.
“So let me see if I have all this straight,” Matt said after a moment.
She nodded. They had solved numbers of problems over the last three hundred years by going through this exact routine.
“We have found a massive network of galaxies that are all shielded. We don’t know how the shields work at all, but they seem to be gathering certain levels of power being generated from each galaxy. Right?”
She nodded.
“So they clearly aren’t defensive screens of any type since we can move through them without problems.”
She again nodded.
“We don’t know how they send the power back to the center of the sphere that is the network of galaxies,” Matt said. “We don’t even know how they manage to keep the entire sphere looking like a sphere with all the galactic shifting that is normal over large spans of time.”
“Technology so far past our own,” Carey said, “as to be almost impossible to understand.”
“We know there is some sort of construction in the very center of the sphere that takes up the area of a large galaxy. We don’t know what it is or why it was constructed or even how it could have been constructed. But the energy of millions of galaxies seems to be beamed toward it.”
Carey nodded. In such a short time they had already encountered more wonders than she could imagine and she had a hunch the coming mission to the center of the sphere would be full of even more surprises.
“We know that the galaxies out here on the edge of the sphere were once populated by humans and that the populations seemed to have vanished.”
She nodded yet again.
“Missing anything?” he asked.
“The why of it all,” she said. “We have no reason as to why this was built, and what happened to the populations and why.”
“And why they helped the original Earth population,” Matt said, “build Seeder ships to move out to other galaxies.”
“So in essence,” Matt said, “we have a ton of questions and no answers.”
“Want to make some guesses?” Carey asked. Sometimes they did that and managed to come across areas that they hadn’t thought of.
“I doubt I could make a logical guess at any of this,” Matt said. “But I have a hunch as time
goes on we’re going to find out a lot of these answers.”
Carey nodded to that, took one last sip of her tea and then offered her hand to Matt as she stood.
“We have a few hours until Gregory gets back with us,” she said. “Let’s go take a nap.”
“Thinking we might need it later?” Matt asked, standing with her.
“With all this craziness,” she said. “You never know. But since the Tip-to-Tip starts in just over two days, I don’t want you making excuses about being tired when you start.”
“A winner needs no excuses,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said, pulling him into the bedroom. “Just keep dreaming.”
SEVENTEEN
MATT AWOKE TO the page from the command center. Chairman Gregory seemed to think they had the ancient ship stabilized enough for Star Fall to try to contact its core.
It had been just over four hours since they had fallen asleep.
Both he and Carey splashed water on their faces and combed their hair, then jumped to the command center. Matt actually, in just a minute after waking up, felt much better. Not at all as overwhelmed as he had felt before. Carey’s idea for a long nap had been a good one.
Gregory’s serious face appeared on the screen. “Chairmen, I think this might be a long-shot at best.”
“Star Fall will go carefully and secured,” Matt said.
“Anything we get is better than what we have now,” Carey said.
Gregory nodded.
“Star Fall,” Carey said, “please stream all of this to the other two ships and Chairmen Ray and Tacita.”
“Information going out,” Star Fall said.
“Please have all your staff and crew off the ancient ship,” Matt said to Gregory. “And be prepared to shield against any kind of explosion.”
Gregory nodded. “We have taken all precautions. We are ready.”
“Star Fall,” Carey asked. “Are you ready?”
“I have created a secure control space in a probe,” Star Fall said, “that space is not connected to this ship in any fashion. Permission to launch the probe?”
Star Fall: A Seeders Universe Novel Page 5