by Damon Alan
“I will do as is required. But I dream of you.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere. When I return, we will mate.”
Joy covered him. “If we pledge our bond twice before the clan, it’s tradition that your mother will not call me away. We will be a pair bond twice over, a sign of true compatibility.”
She flashed her approval of his idea, but then her colors turned to irritation. “Mother does not often follow the rules of our society. Regardless, you are right, we will try to secure what we have.”
“You should go,” he said after noticing her irritability. “Your mother expects you, and the sooner you go the sooner you return for our time together.”
Agreement was all she had for that. “Watch the children. I don’t want to lose anymore. We will be the most successful breeding pair the Obedi have. I will earn my Matriarch spot when the time comes.”
“You will,” he agreed. “I will see you when you return.”
“And I you,” she said as she phased out.
She immediately arrived where the machine had killed her children. The imprint of this place would never fade from her mind.
“I am here, Mother,” she said.
A giant figure appeared next to her, dwarfing her own. Her mother was truly gargantuan with her years, her success, and her uncounted feedings.
“You look well,” she flashed to her parent.
“As do you,” Mother replied. “You are growing nicely, you should know I am proud of you. It was not a mistake to let you continue.”
Sylange flashed her embarrassment. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said.”
“Don’t get used to it,” her mother responded, pushing Sylange’s embarrassment away. “Now, share with me the memories of this loss.”
Sylange allowed her mother to enter her mind, she opened the doors the older Obedi needed to see the event. She felt the push of inquisition as her mother searched for the memories.
“Interesting. They did literally die the moment the creature disappeared.”
“As I told you,” Sylange said.
“It is hard not to conclude the system of locomotion is the cause of death. But see how the bubble of space around the machine goes opaque? That hides the image of the actual death. It is remotely possible the machine killed them by another method just as the opacity appeared.”
“It is, Mother. I cannot disagree without reaching into illogic. But I feel they were killed by what created that opacity. By the method the machines use to move. Particularly how this machine moves. The others we encountered didn’t damage any of my family.”
“You’ve seen that all over the systems you’ve fed on?” her mother asked. “None of your children were affected by the drive systems of the machines?”
“Yes, haven’t you?” Sylange asked.
“I have. I’ve ripped ships apart as they’ve tried to flee with this same system of locomotion.”
“Am I the only one who has children so weak they succumbed to this thing the machines have made?” Sylange said, anger rising inside.
“Don’t whine, dear,” her mother implored. “You’re in succession, it’s unseemly.”
Sylange didn’t answer, she simply flashed her annoyance.
“The debris around us,” her mother asked, is that from their death? Did they attack the machine and leave a cloud of destruction before they died?”
“No, this is from my anger. The being that destroyed my children recovered a ship that I had earlier left on a nearby moon when it proved hard to reach. The killing machine seems to have consumed the occupant of the other ship before my children and I got to this point. All that was left was a shell, which I destroyed and then hurled away from here,” Sylange confessed. “Would you like me to retrieve it?”
“No, from what you say there is nothing but metal left.”
Her mother thought for a while, her carapace going dark as she concentrated on the issue. Several chimindiks later she replied. “I think, from your memory, I will search along the stars that align with the departure of the killer. You do not concern yourself with this, daughter, go back to Khala and take care of your other children with him. Feed, I have caused you to expend energy you need for growth.”
“You will tell me if you find something?” Sylange asked. “I want to be there if there is a reckoning for what has been done.”
“I will let you know what I find,” Mother replied. “If I believe it is suitable for you to be there, I will summon you.”
Sylange understood that to mean Mother would probably resolve the issue herself. But she would hold out some hope to bring justice to the thing that destroyed her strongest two children. Maybe it was providence that these offspring were ended. But Sylange wasn’t about to let it go unpunished if she could help it. “Destroy what took my hatchlings if you will not have me there.”
“I will, Sylange,” her mother promised. “I will.”
The Matriarch phased away, off to find the killer.
“Good hunting,” flashed across Sylange’s carapace even though no thinking being but her was in the system to see it.
Chapter 45 - Gaia
24 Seppet 15332
The ten thousand were on board. One, trained by Emille to assist with the transfer, was in a viewing dome that nested in between two fuel tanks on the top of the ship. The others, eager to learn their fates after volunteering to go create another world of adepts, were in cabins, meeting rooms, rec rooms, and similar spaces in the center of the ship’s mass.
“I will provide you with information regarding our destination,” Gaia told the transferring adept, Piceaus. “You are trained solely for this purpose, once we arrive at our destination there will be no need for travel again in your lifetime if the plan unfolds as it should.”
“I am ready,” Piceaus replied.
Gaia showed her the first jump point via a navigation display in the observation dome. Never used before, it had waited ten thousand years for just this purpose.
She wondered if ten thousand adepts and ten thousand years had some connection in the minds of the adepts who’d originally conceived of her mission so many eons in the future.
The ship transferred. Somewhere Emille’s mind faintly recognized the event, if Gaia understood how it worked. Emille was the conduit for the group efforts of the adepts, which depended on the presence of Piceaus in the dome.
It was beyond the understanding of the AI. But she knew it worked, even if she couldn’t see the mechanism.
Jumps continued. Several dozen times they shifted position, and each time the Tapestry faded behind them. Eventually a new tapestry, M101, or the Pinwheel Galaxy, appeared in the distance ahead. It could almost be a twin to the galaxy they’d just left.
With each jump the occupants of the ship became the most far traveled human beings to exist up until that time. Slowly, with several breaks for Piceaus to rest, they crossed millions of light-years. Twenty-one million, give or take a million. There was no way to measure the distance of the jumps, that’s not how the adepts worked. They didn’t have an odometer. Just a vision and a movement.
They stopped ten thousand light-years from the target galaxy, near a small system with an orange dwarf almost identical to the star Oasis.
Seven planets, one asteroid belt between the inner terrestrials and the outer gas giants, this system was much more like the Sol System where humanity originated. There was no Earth, however. No, this system, much like Oasis, would see the adepts living on a moon. The planet that moon orbited was very much unlike Ember. It was a super-terrestrial, six times the mass of Earth. The moon was about nine tenths the mass of the Earth. In reality it was more of a dual planet than a planet/moon system.
The moon, a hundred and fifty thousand kilometers from the primary, was tidally locked to the planet. It orbited the planet in two and a half days, giving a day/night cycle nearly identical to the one on Nye Hyem, or Refuge.
This system was picked for a variety of reasons,
most of which revolved around the adepts having a similar experience to their homeworld so as to not disorient them too much.
There were differences from Refuge, for which this word was also chosen.
This star system was closer to M101 than Oasis was to the Milky Way, so gravity waves were more of a factor. Gaia listened as the colonists complained of headaches, of vertigo, of disorientation. Maybe some would be overcome. But with these adepts twice as close to the Pinwheel Galaxy as they were used to, something important would happen. Evolution would find a way to help the adepts naturally defeat the gravity wave issue.
That was a vital step for the adepts to eventually spread across the universe, including the galactic bodies.
As the ship settled into orbit, she observed the world that would birth the future of the human race.
It was bathed in the green of forests. White ice caps dotted the poles. Five continents stretched across the world, occupying thirty-five percent of the surface. The atmosphere was thick, but less so than Refuge’s, with a near perfect Terran standard mix of gases. Life dotted every corner of the world, placed long ago by sources unknown to Gaia. She watched as whales danced in the surf near an island, and as birds flew in flocks so large and numbers so great not even her sensors counted them easily.
It was a living, breathing world with one city. That city signaled to her.
“Gaia, we are ready for the colonists.”
Shuttles were lifting from the atmosphere, showing up on Gaia’s sensors. The shuttles, flown by AIs, would transport the colonists to the ground, into the hands of other AIs who’d see to the needs of the discomforted passengers. It was these artificial intelligences who’d terraformed this world, and who’d built a city, a comfortable place to call home.
Six days later the passenger transfer was complete. Gaia received another signal much as she had at Eislen’s world, giving her new instructions.
She altered her course, pushing the ship toward a ten thousand year polar orbit around this star she didn’t even know the name of. She should ask about that. She didn’t want to spend ten millenia wondering.
“What is the name of this system, and the planet my brothers and sisters will call home?” she transmitted to the AIs.
“The star is called Icarus, and the planet… it is named Gaia.”
“And what of my other charges, Eislen’s colony?” she asked.
“All will be taken care of. For now, rest. Your struggles are over.”
She believed them. If there was one things she could say about the adepts who spoke to this time from the future, they seemed to take care of their own.
Days later, as she settled once more into a familiar orbit, once more destined to be alone for a length of time humans couldn’t comprehend, she would have smiled if she could.
They’d named the world after her.
She thought it brilliant that the future adepts looked back in time and created two different conditions of evolution for adept lineage.
Would the future be built by the primitive harsh world that Eislen would inhabit, and the tough followers he’d taken there, or would it be built by the adepts of this world? By all appearances the colonists of this planet had a luxurious future in store, other than the gravity waves. Once they adapted to the increase in gravity waves, they’d live comfortable lives under the watchful care of the AI’s that would see to every menial task.
Maybe both worlds would contribute something. Gaia looked forward to seeing the result. But for now it was once more into the cold, shutting down to minimal systems, letting her hallways and rooms grow lifeless as her internal heat bled into space.
Someday, in a distant future when it was time to push evolution once more, she’d come back for the descendants of the adepts she’d just carried so far. Hopefully they’d remember who she was.
Chapter 46 - A Theory of Death
Bn74x00 patrolled the white dwarf system while it’s child, and 00 had somehow come to think of Yz as offspring, worked on studying the alien hulls.
“No known force or material penetrates these ships. I am unable to segment them. I am unable to image their interior. I am unable to analyze the elemental components. Even spectrographic examination fails, as the reflected light does not match the absorption bands of any known elements.”
“What theory is most likely for the origin of the hull material?” 00 asked.
“This material cannot be artificially created within the laws of known physics. Physical laws are absolute within the boundaries of reality. This material comes from beyond our reality,” Yz answered.
00 considered that answer. Billions of calculation cycles later it concluded that Yz was right. The highest probability origin for the material was from outside the known universe. From a multiverse or other dimension. Captured human research indicated both possibilities to exist, but 00 thought it to be nothing more than speculative math.
“The sensor net at this base is indicating a massive ship has entered the system,” Yz transmitted.
“Continue your research. The hulls stopped functioning when this colony activated its FTL drive and jumped away from the aliens. Consider the nature of highspace and calculate any opportunities that might be found researching the hulls in FTL flight. If that will help us, I will bring you on board and we will continue the research in a state of transit.”
“What of the ship?”
“I will intercept it to determine the origin. If it is alien, I will return for you and we will abandon this position.”
“I understand.”
Yz seems to have inherited 00’s growing self awareness and expanded on it. It showed concern for self survival in the face of a threat, but also understood that expanding self awareness meant successfully out-competing the other forms of Collective colonies. That is why both 00 and Yz felt this research to be critical.
As 00 began to spin up its FTL drive, a ship that registered too large to be real appeared a million kilometers from the research station. 00 assumed the mass detector was malfunctioning, and the ship would be much smaller once spotted.
00 was wrong.
While as large as a space station, the enemy ship had the density present in the small hulls 00 possessed. It was the mass of a small moon.
It was jumping toward 00 in small surges, seeming to disappear from space and reappear instantly a bit closer. Several kilometers long in the main hull, it also had several kilometer long appendages slipping from the main structure. Strange lights illuminated the surface of the gargantuan ship in patterns.
“I am Bn74x00. I do not wish hostilities with you,” it transmitted.
No response.
With the FTL singularity successfully spun up, it jumped to the small planet remnant to save Yz from destruction.
The ship followed.
The enemy vessel appeared near the planetesimal, then locked onto the rocky body with long appendages. It began ripping the iron remnant apart like it was tearing at air.
“Save me,” Yz transmitted. “I am—
Then 00’s first creation that mattered was gone. Removed from existence by the ship that still ripped at the research station. 00 watched as it extracted two hulls from wreckage of the station, and then gently tucked them into it’s own main hull. Almost as if it were an organic being caring for the bodies of dead offspring.
00 decided that it would test the theory it had regarding the lethality of its drive system on the enemy vessel. The potentially fatal opportunity to do so might not rise again, so it was a risk it needed to take. It jumped to the larger ship, keeping the singularity spun up and ready to jump again despite the cost in fuel.
When it appeared next to the enemy momentum carried it closer.
An arm lashed out, striking 00’s dreadnought frame amidships.
Internal alarms went off as if 00 was in the center of a nuclear bomb. The center spar bent as the dreadnought lurched violently to the side. The sensors detecting the state of the singularity
went offline. Weapons systems across the ship showed red damage status, and vital fluids drained into the vacuum. Two fuel tanks were ruptured.
00 wasn’t sure if the singularity drive would still function, but it made the attempt anyway. It jumped again, and the arm extending from the enemy ship went along for the ride. A large section of the enemy’s main hull was ripped away and trapped in the bubble as well. An unknown fluid spilled out into the vacuum around him, and slipped away through the outer edge of the inclusion sphere.
The solid part of the enemy ship slowly passed through the wall of the bubble, almost as if it were so dense it was having trouble crossing the barrier. The end result was the same as any other object that passed through an active FTL bubble, however, the enemy’s debris was scattered over a stretch of billions of miles.
Once again 00 had barely escaped with its life. And now it had a reason to live.
It damaged the ship that killed Yz.
00, once in condition to do so, would return and destroy the enemy if this encounter proved to be survivable.
Chapter 47 - New Heights
27 Seppet 15332
“Marines, take our prisoner to his quarters. Be gentle, he might make it out of the mess he’s in yet if the admiral is merciful,” Harmeen ordered. “For now, I want him off my bridge.”
Sarah looked at Navin and smiled. He was asserting his authority. Good. “Captain Harmeen, get me reconnaissance data on Mindari. I don’t care how, don’t put anyone at unnecessary risk, just call me when it’s done.”
“It shouldn’t take long, Admiral. I’ll notify you.”
Sarah unstrapped from her gravcouch and floated to her quarters. Inside she moved to her bed, took off her boots, and lay floating over the mattress. She pulled a stick-strap over herself to stay in place.
Just as she was about to drop off, her chime rang.
“Oh, galaxies, who is it now?”
Salphan.
“Let him in, Lucy.”
The hatch opened and Salphan’s scarred but grinning face popped in. “Am I interrupting?”