“You are a dense beast,” the adept said. “The artifact knows, of that you should have no doubt.”
I sat stunned. Despite my efforts to use cunning, I found it too hard to concentrate. “You’re not taking our warships,” I said. “We’ll fight to the death to hold them.”
“Perhaps that is so, Commander Creed,” Saris said. “If that is true then you will die, and all humanity will die with you. Is that worth a noble but futile gesture?”
I studied the admiral as wheels turned in my mind. Finally, I concluded she was telling the truth. We’d have to give up our cruisers. That would leave us practically defenseless. Just when we’d begun as Star Vikings, Admiral Saris came and took all our dragonships. Was this going to be the fatal handicap that ensured our extinction?
If Baba Gobo returned too soon or some other predator alien then the answer would be yes. Instead of climbing out of the hole, Admiral Saris was putting us as deep down as humanity could go.
-12-
Several days later—after the Lokhar armada had left—Diana informed me that panic threatened the people packed in the Jelk freighters. As the vessels orbited Earth, there were riots, fights and assassinations.
I came to a hard conclusion and loaned her half the assault troopers. It was difficult to think of ourselves as Star Vikings now. In any case, in a Demar hauler, troopers from Mars Base landed on freighters in Earth orbit, breaking heads as they helped restore order.
The Purple Tamika armada had left us defenseless, taking every warship they could lay their paws on. Fortunately, they didn’t taken any haulers, freighters or hidden loot on the asteroids. Nor did they hunt too diligently for the sunken cruiser and Demar hauler sitting down on Earth.
What was one more cruiser to their mass anyway? To us, the single warship might mean everything.
I admit it. Depression hit me hard. A single alien pirate ship might annihilate humanity. We had to act fast. But what was the right decision?
In our Demar hauler, I descended through the atmosphere toward Lake Erie. The Great Lakes looked normal from high orbit. No artificial lights shined up from the planet, though. Everything was dark the way only North Korea used to be.
Little had changed on Earth since the nukes and bio-terminator had hit. Winds howled, shoving multicolored clouds. They reminded me of oil slicks in puddles I’d played around in as a kid.
N7 piloted us. I had a skeleton crew along. Most of the troopers were in the freighters, fighting under Rollo and Dmitri. During times of panic, a hard fist with shows of mercy to the defeated often helped quell rebellions the quickest.
The hauler shook as greater winds struck our hull. There were no more trees on Earth, no more grass or lichen, moss or mushrooms. It was a dead world with quickly decomposing skeletons, rusted metal and crumbling brick and concrete structures. The Lokhar decontamination ships had begun their work. After they left, though, the process of de-atomization continued.
Our automated factories worked slowly but relentlessly. It would take them more than a century to clean up the biohazard mess. Humanity needed something quicker.
In any case, Lake Erie had the multicolored glare. It made me sick seeing it. I hated walking on Earth now. The bio-terminator was still strong in places. Four years ago, we’d lost twenty thousand freighter people when someone with the terminator bug returned to the living quarters up there.
After that, Diana’s people quit mining the Earth for old junk. It wasn’t any wonder the Lokhars hadn’t looked too hard here for the missing cruiser.
The Demar hauler shook as it touched down. N7 and I traded glances.
“I’ll see you around,” I said.
“This is wrong, Commander,” N7 told me. “Send someone else.”
“No. This is my job.”
“You are too important to lose,” the android said.
I laughed sourly. “Right. I’ve brought humanity back to square one. Do me a favor, N7. Tell Rollo the artifact’s name if I don’t make it back. Promise me you’ll do that.”
“I give you my solemn oath, Commander. I will do so because you dared to risk taking androids from the Demar Starcity.”
We shook hands. Then I headed for the hatch that would take me outside.
***
In my pressurized suit, I walked on Earth. Despite the ruins around me, I felt as if I’d come home again. That was crazy, don’t you think?
I saw badly rusting cars, buildings looking as if hungry termites had been eating for a hundred years. The freeways were still intact. They were like the granddaddy of dinosaur bones laid in the Earth. Nothing living grew up through them. I wondered if a thousand years from now the freeways would be all that was left of mankind’s rule on Earth.
I have to change this. I have to make the Earth green again. I want children to frolic under our sun.
This sense of purpose steeled my heart for what was to come. I didn’t have any right to be depressed. Someone had to drive ahead and make these aliens pay for what they had done to us.
I reached Lake Erie’s shoreline. The waves lapped on the lonely Earth. I was the only living soul walking the planet. It made me shudder, and it almost brought tears to my eyes.
I refused to give the aliens the pleasure. This was my planet and they had destroyed it.
“Think, Creed. What are you missing?”
I could feel a hole in my head. No, not a literal hole. But there was something knocking around inside my noggin that I wasn’t getting. It plagued me, demanding attention. Was it my subconscious?
With a shrug, I began to wade out into the cold water. I wore a pressurized suit. Forcing my legs, I waded so the water reached my knees, my waist and finally my chest. The harsh sound of my breathing was the only noise in my ears.
“Let’s get this over with,” I told myself.
Water swirled before my eyes. Despite the queer colors in the water, it was clear down here. I could see easily, rainbows in the water as far as I could look.
For the next hour, I tramped along the muddy bottom. All plant life down here had died. Mud swirled and slowly it became darker. I would look up and see faintly colored light. At last, that stopped and I moved within a world of eternal gloom. How deep had I come?
I didn’t have any instruments to measure that. Instead, I had a locating device. It beeped every minute. After two hours, a dot appeared on my HUD. That would the Lokhar cruiser hidden down here.
Okay. Here’s what happened. I walked forever and reached the outer hull. I couldn’t see a damned thing until I turned on my headlamp. It felt eerie as all get out as the spotlight washed over a Lokhar letter. If something had swum by me then I’d have freaked out and raved. I didn’t even have a spear gun, just a knife.
Twenty minutes later, after marching around the craft, I found the hatch. Slowly, I rotated a wheel and tugged. Nothing happened. Had the deep pressure sealed this thing shut for the rest of my life or was that rust doing its trick?
Inside my helmet, which dripped with condensation, I snarled. I recalled Rollo and his one thousand pound bench press. It was time for Creed to play muscleman. I pulled harder, all to no avail.
Maybe I should have sent someone else down here, Rollo for instance.
“Nope, I’m doing this.”
The words sounded hollow to my ears. I put my feet up against the hull. I gripped the wheel and I began to pull. The hatch moved so very slowly. I wondered then how I’d prop it open. The frustration made me roar, and I pulled it wider. Quickly, I squirmed between the hatch and the hull. I forced myself through as the pressure of Lake Erie shoved the hatch against me. I bellowed in pain. If the hatch should breach my suit—
I couldn’t worry about it now. Water came gushing in with me. Then I slithered through. The hatch clanged shut and water came up to my chin. It was slow work, but I finally opened the inner hatch. The water gushed through with me into the warship’s hall, but I was inside the cruiser with contaminated Lake Erie water.
Sealing t
his area, I found my way to a decontamination area. After a long scrubbing, I shed my suit. Finally, I walked the lonely corridors of the starship. Outside were millions of tons of water pressing down against the hull.
I turned on the engines, flicked on the gravity generators and lifted the Lokhar cruiser. An hour later, I parked the cruiser in orbit.
We had our sole remaining warship.
***
Later, I spoke with Rollo as we inspected the cruiser. The man might have looked like a muscle-bound idiot, but he was anything but.
“You know,” I said, as he ducked into engineering. “We have a cruiser, as in one to humanity’s name. What do we do with it?”
“It seems to me that sitting on our butts only means it’s a matter of time before Baba Gobo or someone like him comes around to kill or enslave humanity,” Rollo said.
“So…?” I asked.
“So we must go on more Star Viking raids and rebuild,” Rollo said. “Nothing else makes sense to me.”
“If we take the cruiser that leaves nothing behind to protect the freighters,” I said.
“Well, the freighters do have their mobility,” Rollo said. “They can run away.”
“That’s one possibility, I suppose.”
“We also have a few missile launchers and ground-based laser cannons we took from Demar,” Rollo said. “We can fortify an asteroid or two so they can defend against pirates. We could set up the weapons systems like German 88s as Rommel did in the North African deserts during WWII. The freighters race for safety to the laser cannons and bam, the rays take out any following pirates.”
“I like it,” I said. “Yeah, I think you’re right. We have to keep raiding. We have to build up to the best of our ability. It’s a long shot. But ever since the aliens showed up on our doorstep this has been a crapshoot. It’s surprising we’ve managed to keep the remnant alive for as long as we have.”
“I’d agree to that,” Rollo said.
“Right,” I said. “It’s time to get to work.”
***
Nine days later, we were almost ready to leave the solar system in our cruiser.
The freighter riots had ended. Most of the ringleaders found themselves in the brigs. Murad Bey spaced a few of them. I wished he hadn’t had done that. I would have taken the so-called troublemakers with me, if nothing else.
We’d worked overtime getting ready. Ceres bristled with the Demas system weaponry we’d taken. It was a veritable space fortress now.
After long days of work, Rollo, Dmitri and I relaxed in a rec room aboard Glorious Hope. We’d rechristened the vessel with its new name.
The three of us played pool on a regulation-sized table. The trick was to beat Dmitri, a real shark. The Cossack didn’t spend long seconds eying the billiard balls either. He would chalk the cue stick, step up to the table and put his left hand on the green cloth. Then, as quick as you please, he readied the stick, slid it twice through his fingers and whacked the cue ball. The targeted billiard sank like lead into a pocket.
Once again, I didn’t get a shot for an entire game. Instead, I watched Dmitri sink all of his balls and then the eight ball.
He straightened with a grin. “Another game?” he asked.
Frustrated, I handed my stick to Rollo.
“This time you’re going down,” the muscleman told our Cossack.
Dmitri only grinned. With a crack, he split the balls, which expanded across the table. This time, none of them fell into a pocket.
“My turn,” Rollo said. He proved the opposite of Dmitri, carefully lining up each shot. After a long study, he tipped the cue ball, which rolled and nudged a striped fellow, which ever so slowly rolled to a side pocket and…fell in.
“Yes!” Rollo said, shaking his stick.
“Look at him,” Dmitri said with an indulgent smile.
Taking just as long for his second shot, Rollo sank another billiard ball.
“Now you’re showing real improvement,” Dmitri said.
Rollo threw the Cossack an evil grin, and he squinted studying his next shot. He sank the third ball.
Dmitri said nothing this time.
In fact, Rollo sank five balls before missing his sixth shot.
“Fatal are thy mistakes,” Dmitri said.
Rollo quietly stepped back, no doubt seething inside but calm outwardly.
Dmitri sank everything, including the eight ball. “Creed?” he asked.
I almost shook my head. Instead, I said, “Yeah, one more time.”
Dmitri chalked his tip as I racked the balls. “You know what I think sometimes?” our Cossack asked me.
“What’s that?” I asked, stepping away from the table.
“Why you don’t use the Forerunner artifact as a ship?”
I hung the billiard rack onto its peg and turned around to stare at Dmitri.
“Do you remember how the artifact disappeared from the Altair star system?” Dmitri asked. He walked to the end of the table, leaning down to take his shot.
I said nothing.
With the cue stick sliding between his fingers, Dmitri said, “And how the artifact vanished from the portal planet with all of us hitching a ride on it?”
I still didn’t say a word.
Crack! Dmitri’s break did better this time, sinking a striped and a solid. He lined up another solid, sinking it. As he moved around the table, examining the balls, the Cossack said, “I’ve wondered why you don’t go back into the artifact and talk to it. I mean, if it can teleport wherever it wants”—crack, another solid went down into a pocket. “Why not convince the artifact to pop around the galaxy for us. Can you imagine what kind of Viking ship the object would make?”
Dmitri straightened, glancing my way. He frowned. “Creed, you okay?”
Rollo had been looking at something on a computer pad. He looked up too. By the frown on his face, it appeared as if Rollo played back in his mind the Cossack’s words. Suddenly, the muscleman glanced at me.
“That’s brilliant,” I whispered.
Dmitri raised his eyebrows. “You think so?”
“I should have thought of it,” I said. “Yeah, the artifact just zipped away from the Altair system. It brought us home from hyperspace.” I laughed, and even to my own ears, it sounded a little crazy.
“I thought the artifact has gone to sleep for twenty-five years,” Rollo said. “It’s going to think things through.”
“That’s what it told us,” I said.
“So how can you get it to talk to you?” Rollo asked.
“That would be the first trick,” I said. “The second would be to convince it to move around for us.”
“Are you serious?” Dmitri asked. “You really think that would be a good idea?”
I grinned from ear to ear. “We’re going to postpone our next venture.” With a snap of my fingers, I said, “I need to talk to N7.” I put away my stick, heading for the hatch.
“Hey,” Dmitri said. “What about the game?”
I was too wound up to answer, beginning to run as I moved through the hatch.
-13-
N7 and I used thruster-packs, flying from a Demar hauler to the giant artifact before us.
As I’ve said before, the object looked like a gleaming silver donut the size of a medium asteroid with an artificial black hole in the center. Whatever anchored the black hole wasn’t visible to the naked eye or to our scientific instruments.
In my opinion, the technology of the First Ones was in play. In most cases, their machinery baffled us.
Who were the First Ones anyway? That’s what I wanted to know. As the name implied, they were the supposed to have been the first on the scene. The tiger religion said the Creator sculpted the universe, first making the substance, of course. Then He poured the First Ones down as a baker might dribble sugar into a cake mix. The Forerunners—the First Ones—made the artifacts, and in the course of time, the living beings vanished. No one I’d spoken to had given me an explanation as to why
the First Ones went extinct. It was a fait accompli. The artifact-makers were gone, but they had left behind their impressive machines and the jump lanes between the stars.
The Jelk, the tigers and the baboons all wanted the artifacts for themselves. Heck, even Abaddon had wanted them. Everybody did.
N7 had been inside the artifact on the portal planet with me. Why shouldn’t he join me a second time, if it proved possible? Send a thief to catch a thief. Use an android to convince a living machine to help.
The Forerunner artifact had told me its name before, Holgotha. Over seven years ago, N7 and I had been inside one of the squat buildings on the inner portion of the donut nearest the black hole. There, the artifact and I had engaged in an interesting conversation.
As I jetted through space toward the approaching object, I recalled the words we’d spoken together while on the portal planet:
“Did the First Ones see the Creator?” I asked.
“Not to my knowledge,” Holgotha replied.
“Is there a Creator?” N7 asked.
Holgotha paused, finally saying, “My designers and builders believed so. I have awaited the cycles and millennia for conclusive proof.”
“Is that why you came here?” I asked. I meant to the portal planet in hyperspace.
“I do not understand your reasoning,” Holgotha said. “Can you be more specific?”
“Do you wish to unleash an apocalypse on our universe in order to see what will happen?” I asked. “Do you believe that will bring the Creator into sight?” If Abaddon and the Kargs had reached our space-time continuum with all their moth-ships, it would have meant death for everyone else.
“For the first time, I find your reasoning interesting.” There was a pause, before Holgotha added, “I wonder if some of my oldest subroutines subscribe to such a notion. I will investigate.”
“How long will that take?” I asked.
“Do you mean in your time?” asked Holgotha.
“Sure,” I said.
“Twenty to twenty-five years,” the artifact said.
“So your internal investigation is going to take quite a bit of your, ah…” I hesitated. Just how touchy was the artifact? “I don’t want to be imprecise and I don’t mean to demean you by implying you’re a computer. But will your twenty-year analysis absorb the majority of your computational abilities?”
Extinction Wars 3: Star Viking Page 12