When they finished, Cannard said, “Third shield up.”
“If you know us so well and know that we are Seeders,” Benny asked, “why the shields?”
Cannard laughed. “It has nothing at all to do with you. This center is triple shielded at all times. Always has been. We only made the exterior shield visible to you before your scout ships hit it is all. And it is the shield that also blocks transmissions.”
“Why?” Angie asked.
“Because without this command,” Cannard said, “Those rings out there would stop turning and quickly disintegrate. And the power from all the galaxies would lose focus and the shields around the galaxies would fail. If that would have happened with the rings occupied, the loss of life would have been untold. This small moon, which we call Command, is never not shielded in all forms. And never not occupied by about three million Seeders.”
“Even now after all the others have left?” Gina asked.
Matt just glanced at Carey and then back at Cannard.
“Even now,” Cannard said. “We have staffed Command for all that time hoping that some day you would find this wonderful home.”
“And the only reason you left is because you simply outgrew it?” Matt asked.
Cannard nodded. “The only reason.”
“I can’t even imagine the size of your new place,” Benny said, shaking his head.
Matt couldn’t either.
“It makes this place look tiny,” Cannard said, laughing.
With that he ordered that food be delivered and it appeared on the table in front of them, including place settings and numbers of different choices of courses and drinks.
The fantastic smell of fresh bread, fried chicken, and prime rib just overwhelmed Matt and he realized how hungry he was.
“Wow,” Benny said, “You can serve a meal.”
“I want to know how the food just appears,” Angie said.
“Yeah, interested in that was well and not just for food,” Carey said.
Matt had been wondering the same thing.
“One of those inventions we can help you get to over time,” Cannard said. “We had to invent it to build this place.”
So Cannard dug into the food and that got the rest of them moving as well, passing around plates like it was a big party.
Finally, as everyone was eating, Angie asked a simple question, or at least Matt thought it was a simple question.
“How do the three of you know each other?” Angie asked.
Ray smiled at Cannard. “He was our second-in-command for almost nine hundred years.”
Cannard smiled. “Those were wonderful times.”
“Even with the slow speeds and the secrets you were keeping?” Benny asked.
“I didn’t mind the slow speeds because I was with wonderful people,” Cannard said.
Matt looked at Ray and Tacita and they both looked sad. Cannard looked down at his plate and focused on the food.
“Too much to ask what happened?” Gina asked. “If too personal, please just say personal and we will move on.”
“I lost Este, my wife,” Cannard said.
“A freak accident,” Ray said.
Matt thought Tacita might actually cry, even after what had been millions of years. Clearly the Seeder memory made bad memories as clear as good ones.
“I had to take a break so I came back here and started to work with Command,” Cannard said. “But I kept a close eye on your progress and eventually became in charge of the Seeders helping your group.”
“But you stayed out of sight?” Ray said. “We missed you.”
“I know,” Cannard said, staring at what food was left on his plate for a moment.
“Can I ask if you moved on?” Tacita asked.
Cannard nodded. “About two million years ago I met a wonderful partner named Marie.”
Ray frowned. “Why isn’t she with us now?”
“Yes, please,” Tacita said.
Cannard beamed. “I would love to have you all meet her.” He looked up just slightly. “Marie we would love to have you join us.”
At that moment a beautiful woman appeared beside Cannard and he stood.
Marie had long silver hair and large brown eyes. She stood not much over five foot and wore a dress blouse with light blue jacket over it and jeans.
“My wife and partner,” Cannard said, “Marie Koddest.”
Cannard introduced the six chairmen of the Starburst ships first, then said, “And this is Ray and Tacita.”
Both Ray and Tacita stood and moved to greet her.
Tacita hugged her, which surprised Matt for the second time in just a few hours.
Marie was beaming. “I have heard so many wonderful things about you both.”
“And we are looking forward to getting to know you,” Ray said, smiling.
With that a chair appeared beside Cannard and another plate and settings appeared on the table and everyone sat back down and went back to eating.
Matt just stared at the two couples as they laughed and talked. Then he glanced at Carey and then at their four closest friends. They had only been all together for just over three hundred years.
He was just starting to understand how special having hundreds of years to form friendships really was.
SECTION EIGHT
Decisions
THIRTY-SIX
CAREY WALKED HAND-IN-HAND with Matt as they took the tour of the large moon that served as command for the Center. It was far larger than their own Starburst ships and along the way they got to meet many of the crew.
They saw vast hangars full of clearly Seeder ships in the older styles, both research and scout, and vast green areas and also small cities that seemed to exist in forms of domes inside the moon, giving the people who lived there a sense of community and surface living.
On Starburst ships they made no attempt at any of that and Carey found the thinking interesting at best and fascinating at the same time. There was no doubt that if they got a chance, it was an area of thinking of the ancients that she planned on looking into.
And she also found it interesting that there were no Gray or Cirrata control areas for the Center. From what Cannard said, they had seeded the working control of the Center rings to humans.
The tour ended with them in the actual command center.
It was massive, the same layout as the command center in their ship. A dual chairman’s chair was the only thing on the lower level, but from there were five levels behind the chairman’s level with over a hundred stations, all occupied.
“At one point,” Cannard said, “this center held the responsibility for the lives of vast populations of humans, Gray, and Cirrata.”
“A frightening responsibility,” Ray said.
Cannard nodded. “It was.”
Carey only had a faint idea as that scope. She and Matt were responsible for three million humans. That kept her awake many nights as it was. She couldn’t imagine working in this room with the rings fully occupied. It would take a certain type of person, of that there was no doubt.
And the fact of so few taking care of so many really bothered her at the same time.
What she found even more amazing is that even with the vast scale of the Center, a structure larger than even the Milky Way Galaxy, it all boiled down to one large room and about a hundred people to run it.
Seeders may do things on vast scales, but it always came back to the humans involved.
After the tour, Cannard promised more information would be coming in the following days. The six chairmen went back to their ships and Ray and Tacita stayed in the Center Command with Cannard to have dinner and catch up on millions of years missed.
Carey just couldn’t imagine that conversation.
Along the way Ray and Tacita had seen other old friends and it seemed that they knew half of the command crew. Clearly the ancients had stayed with Ray and Tacita and really helped in the early expansion of the Seeders.
So now the q
uestion was would the ancients stay with them now and help them learn all this advanced technology?
Carey sure hoped so.
She and Matt made sure all the reports were looking fine, then told their command crew a short excerpt of the meeting and said they would explain more as soon as they knew more.
“Basically,” Matt said, “There are millions of Seeders on that artificial moon and they are there to keep this thing going.”
With that, she and Matt went back to their apartment. Matt thought that the only logical thing to do was to watch a movie and just let their minds process what they had heard and discovered.
Carey loved that idea and about halfway through the movie she dozed off.
Matt woke her to come to bed and the next thing she remembered it was time to get up. She really had been that tired.
THIRTY-SEVEN
MATT WAS GLAD that he and Carey had basically tried to focus on something else for the evening. His mind had been overloaded and he knew decisions would not be good ones in that state.
But now, as he cooked them both breakfast, they talked about everything from yesterday and he felt like he was thinking again.
“Two areas that are bothering me,” Matt said as he put scrambled eggs and toast and orange juice in front of Carey.
Carey laughed. “Only two?”
“Well, two things past the assumption that we are going to eventually learn all this unknown and magical stuff here and the ancients will stay around and help us.”
She nodded to that and dug into the eggs as he went back to dish up his breakfast. He could make the best and lightest scrambled eggs she had ever tasted and loved it when he made them.
“The first thing that bothers me is that they believed that all humans with the Seeder gene should be basically taken out of the human populations and brought here. That’s what eventually caused the overpopulation. Right?”
“I think that is right,” Carey said.
“So do you think we should be doing that with the millions of galaxies full of worlds we have already seeded?”
She looked up at him and shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. Maybe some way to give every person with the Seeder gene a choice might be appropriate. Tough question because who is to say our way is better than not being a Seeder.”
“Exactly,” Matt said, taking his plate and going to the table.
“So what is the other thing that bothers you?” she asked.
“The other six hundred groups of Seeders and human worlds,” Matt said. “Do we search them out or do we just let them go on without ever knowing about this place and their own history?”
“You know,” Carey said, looking up at him and smiling, “in a situation with almost impossible questions and challenges, how is it that you can come up with two even more impossible questions?”
Matt just shrugged and laughed. “Thought you liked that about me.”
She smiled. “Didn’t say I didn’t like it. Just wondering how you do it.”
“Honestly,” he said, “I don’t really know.”
Thirty minutes later they were back in command and going over all the reports from the last hours. No word at all from Ray or Tacita or Cannard.
After they looked at all the reports on the center ring, Matt glanced at Carey. “I think we should just pull in all our ships. At this point they aren’t getting much or understanding anything about that center ring. I think we’re going to learn a lot more working with the Seeders on the Command moon.”
Carey nodded. “I agree.
A couple minutes later Benny and Gina and Angie and Gage all agreed and the order to pull back all ships was given.
Four hours later Matt felt much better that all their ships were safely back on board. And still no word from Ray and Tacita.
So he and Carey went to get some lunch and then were back in the command center an hour later when Ray and Tacita and Cannard finally asked for a meeting with the six of them.
This time the meeting was to be in the meeting room of Star Rain.
He and Carey jumped to the meeting room on Star Rain just as the others arrived as well.
Ray and Tacita actually looked happy and Marie was with Cannard and they both looked happy.
As all ten chairmen took their seats, Ray said, “For Tacita and me this has been a wonderful reunion with old friends. But I imagine for you six, the questions about what next are swirling.”
“That and a few thousand more,” Benny said.
Matt laughed. He felt exactly the same way.
“So we have decided to leave those decisions up to the six of you,” Ray said. “From this point going forward.”
Matt sat back and Carey reached over and touched his hand.
“The six of you basically saved all of humanity from a disaster with your work in the alien plague,” Ray said. “Compared to us, you are all very young and still have the sense of youth and the future about you.”
“Very much so,” Cannard said. “We have been impressed as to how you six brought your ships forward exploring the sphere, yet did it without any major risks to your people.”
“So,” Ray said, “as Tacita and I did in the war, we will step back and just do as you ask.”
“And the entire crew of the Command of the Sphere will be at your disposal,” Cannard said. “We will teach you and train you and your people in everything we can, but realize such training may take centuries in many areas.”
“And what happens if we don’t do something the way you think it should be done?” Benny asked.
Matt nodded, as did Carey.
“We will explain our position,” Cannard said. “But the final decisions will be up to you.”
“But there is only one area we cannot help you with at the moment,” Marie said. “We cannot give you the location of our new home just yet. In time, yes, but not now or for maybe millions of years into the future.”
“And the reason for that is what?” Angie asked a second before Matt could.
“We hope that your generation of Seeders and humanity and Gray and Cirrata,” Cannard said, “will remain independent from our generation, the Ancients as you call us. Besides the interaction here with the Command crew and scientists.”
“We are no longer Seeders,” Marie said. “We hope you never reach that point in your society where you become so complacent that you no longer want to explore and expand and help start new cultures.”
“And you don’t want to contaminate us is what you are saying,” Matt said.
Cannard and Marie both nodded. “But we will teach you anything we know that you would like to learn.”
“Got to admit that food thing is pretty cool,” Gina said.
With that, they all laughed, even though the weight of seemingly the universe had just been dropped on their shoulders.
THIRTY-EIGHT
CAREY SAT AT Angie and Gage’s kitchen table in their apartment on Star Mist. Angie was cooking the six of them all dinner, from the smells of it a wonderful chicken dish with what looked to be a white sauce. All of them could cook, but Angie was the best.
Angie and Gage’s apartment was laid out as Carey and Matt’s apartment, but with very different tastes in furniture. They had a darker leather furniture and dark cherry wood for the table and end tables. And had rustic log beams on the ceiling and log posts at different places around the apartment, giving the feeling of a mountain lodge, which sort of fit the place they met as Carey understood.
Angie and Gage were not as neat as Carey and Matt were. They had books and reading pads and blankets scattered around the living room, showing that they spent a lot of time in front of their massive stone fireplace.
Matt sat beside Carey. Benny and Gina were across from Gage and where Angie would sit when she finished cooking.
“So now what the hell are we going to do?” Benny asked after they all got their drinks.
Carey, after Matt’s questions earlier, had a few ideas, so since no one else was sayi
ng anything after Benny’s question, she said simply, “I might have a few starting points.”
“Oh, thank heavens,” Gina said and they all laughed.
At that moment Angie brought a large basket of butter-covered breadsticks to the table. The smell was to die for, making Carey realize how hungry she actually was.
“Dig into those,” Angie said. “I have more with dinner which is still about fifteen minutes.”
Angie took one and turned to go back to the counter while the rest of them took a warm breadstick.
The thing melted in Carey’s mouth it was so good.
Benny actually sighed after taking a bite of his.
“So first off,” Carey said, “I’m thinking all our ships have to be upgraded for speed.”
“And for the new shields needed to handle that speed,” Matt said.
They all nodded.
“So just as we did with the alien fight,” Carey said, “how about we take over a few planets here in the sphere and set up factories to upgrade all of our ships.”
“I like that,” Benny said. “And Gina, I flat love these bread things.”
“Thanks,” Angie said from the kitchen area. “And I love Carey’s idea as well. That will give us a focus and after we are finished a far greater freedom of movement.”
“I would say that after we learn the new speed upgrades, we also pull back all the other Starburst ships to the Milky Way,” Gage said, “and convert the major shipbuilding facilities there to deal with the new speed and shields as well. Upgrade every Seeder’s ship over the next one hundred years.”
“That’s a lot of ships,” Benny said. “But if we think like the Ancients and think big, I bet we can do it.”
“So do I,” Matt said, nodding.
Carey liked that a lot. Clearly they were all in agreement. But she had one more thing she had to say and she wasn’t sure what her friends were going to think about this.
“I have another thought,” Carey said. “I have never stood on the surface or inside one of those rings, so I don’t know how I would honestly feel. But it scares hell out of me that only a hundred or so people can hold that many lives in their hands.”
Star Fall: A Seeders Universe Novel Page 11