Chapter 11.0:
Reunions
“Wake up, Last Human.”
“Ship! What on earth happened?”
“We are not on earth, Human. We are on our way to Amazon.”
“Oh.”
Everything that had happened flashed back into Speed’s head. The loss of his home. The moon colliding with the earth. Space battles. Amy and Fiero. Quickly, Speed collected himself.
“Nevermind that, Ship, what happened? How did we defeat the Vagus?”
“The GoodBots eliminated the threat to the last human.”
“But why were the GoodBots fighting us?”
“I was not part of the Interlink which was fighting against you. The Interlink was under the impression that the creature you called the Vagus was the last human. I transmitted data about your existence to them, and their program was … corrected.”
“Well, if the Vagus was my coach, and my coach was human, why did they side with me?”
“When I joined with the Interlink, it realized that you’re bio data was … more human.”
Ship was demonstrating the odd behavior--deep buzzes and beeps--that showed more was going on under the hood.
“Last Human, the GoodBots are under your command now.”
Speed looked from his hospital bed within Ship out the viewscreen. He realized then that the hundreds of battle moons which had been manufactured by the machines were flying in formation around his tiny craft. Within the formation, he saw Amastra’s ship and Prince Fiero in dragon form flying swiftly to keep up.
“What are your orders for the battle moons? Shall we continue to Amazon?” Ship boomed.
“No. We’re going to earth.”
The hundred or so huge battle moons, each bigger than an Amazon battlecruiser, crowded around the tiny vessel, ready to help the Last Human, wherever he went.
Epilogue:
The Ones Who Lived
Far away, where once there had been a peaceful planet with her crater-pocked moon, there was now an enormous cloud of debris. The collission had rocked the entire solar system, and climate changes were felt from Mercury to Neptune.
Earth itself had been torn in two by the impact of the moon. If the moon had simply fallen to earth, it would have put a hole in the surface, and scraped much of it away, creating several new moons. Instead, the moon was driven to earth by enormous engines on a magnitude only a robot mind could devise. Carefully calculated destruction had cut the big planet in two.
The two pieces of the earth drifted together, roughly in the same orbit that the earth had once occupied. They rotated around each other in gravitational union.
Both half-planets carried something their previous occupants only imagined in their nightmares: creatures which only vaguely resembled their forefathers. Normally such a malformed race could never have survived on its own, but the GoodBot technology, now abandoned by the GoodBots themselves, remained on the remnants of earth. Some of it was functional.
Of this technology, the neural 3-D printers created by the GoodBots to fulfill human needs had allowed the creatures to survive… and thrive. They wouldn’t have been able to program anything themselves, but the 3-D printers used their emotion and visions to create terrible, terrible devices of both survival and destruction.
Amplified throughout the galaxy, everyone would soon hear their gurgling cry of terror:
“Rolang!”
“Rolang!”
“Rolang!”
Afterword:
From The Author
Dearest Reader,
Speed couldn’t have made that journey without you.
I wanted to thank you personally for reading Battle Moon 2075: Ramming Speed. You are the peanut butter to my grape jelly.
No story is ever complete, and it is never told the same way twice. I may not be able to respond to every email, but I will personally read emails sent to [email protected] with the subject “Ramming Speed.” If you found spelling or grammar errors, plot holes, or inconsistencies in this book, we invite you to participate in the ongoing editing process to make Ramming Speed the best book possible.
Also, look for me and Paralarc on Facebook. You can never have enough friends.
For those of you who want to see where Speed winds up in the next book, I invite you to keep Googling “Battle Moon 2075.” There’s going to be a sequel soon, but you never know what else might crawl out of the Interlink.
Thanks,
Harvey
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