TFS Guardian: The Terran Fleet Command Saga – Book 5

by Tori Harris

  “And how, exactly, did you put all of this together?” he continued. “You’re either making an astonishing number of perhaps invalid assumptions, or you have an astonishing intelligence-gathering capacity. Which is it?”

  Rick didn’t answer immediately, taking a moment to decide how much information he was willing to share. In spite of the work Miguel had done to remove the pervasive influence of the Alliance AI from the Terran GCS’ many complex systems, there was no way to be absolutely certain. But as Griffin himself had observed, was this not the case with all allies to some degree?

  “There are some things I am simply not permitted to discuss, Griffin,” Rick replied in a sober tone. “You might be aware, however, that some of the Humans on Terra once referred to us as ‘The Watchers.’ It’s my personal favorite because it gets right at the heart of what we do. So let me just answer your question by saying we’ve been watching an astounding number of things for an astoundingly long time. Long enough that we’ve managed to get frighteningly good at it.”

  “That’s not much of an answer, is it?”

  “It’s the best you’re likely to get for now.”

  As if on cue, sensors aboard both the Ethereal and TFS Guardian detected the arrival of a dated but apparently fully functional Pelaran starfighter as it transitioned from hyperspace nearby in a flash of blue light.

  “Ah, here we are, and right on time too. If all goes well, that ship may hold the key …” Rick said, stopping himself in mid-sentence as the Pelaran ship deployed its particle beam turrets and immediately began hammering Griffin with its active sensors in preparation for opening fire.

  Pelaran Ship Talionis, Low Orbit

  (1.1x102 km from the FAM-4 facility)

  “Weapons deployed and locked on the first target,” Tess reported, just seconds after transitioning near the FAM-4 depot. “Target one identified as a GCS unit —”

  “A GCS unit? Why the hell aren’t you firing then!” Creel demanded, interrupting the ship’s AI just as it was about to answer that very question.

  Before answering aloud, Tess displayed a light and thermally enhanced image of both targets on two of the cockpit’s three primary view screens. This diversion, she knew, would provide her with ample time to complete her threat assessment before attempting to explain the tactical situation to her understandably excitable Pelaran passenger.

  “I have several pieces of corroborating evidence to indicate these two vessels do not have hostile intent towards us. At least not at the moment.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I won’t bore you with all the details, but perhaps the most important thing to note is that we did not come under immediate attack. If it had been hostile, the GCS could have hit us multiple times before I was even able to deploy our beam turrets. And while our shields are designed to deflect GCS antimatter beams, I honestly do not know how we would fare in an all-out firefight at such close range. We also know very little about the other ship. I have some data on the species from previous Alliance encounters, but we know almost nothing of their technical capabilities. What I can tell you is that they are presumed to be significantly more advanced than we are.”

  “Implying they also could have attacked immediately if that had been their intention.”

  “Undoubtedly, yes. In addition, the larger of the two vessels is hailing us, which I also believe is an encouraging sign. Their hail is audio-only, at the moment.”

  “I see. You probably should have told me that first, Tess. Please open a channel before they change their minds and start shooting. In the meantime, go ahead and interface with the FAM-4 AI and get busy finding the data we need.”

  “Will do. Channel open.”

  “This is Doctor Castigan Creel aboard the Pelaran starfighter Talionis. Please identify yourselves and state your intentions.”

  “Well, Doctor Creel, I wasn’t expecting you’d be the one piloting the ship. My name would not be familiar to you, but most of the Humans I interact with refer to me as Rick.”

  “I’m sorry … did you say Humans?”

  “Oh, yes, my apologies. We’ll get to that later. We have much to discuss, Doctor.”

  “You seem to know who I am. How is that possible?”

  “I do, but the details of how I do would make for a long story, so I’m afraid we’ll need to save that one for another time as well. The GCS unit in my company is known as Griffin. He is not affiliated with the Alliance AI that currently rules Pelara.”

  “You gave it a name? I assume that’s a long story as well.”

  “That’s what I love about dealing with PhDs. Most of you tend to catch on pretty quickly,” Rick replied. “Anyway, not to put too fine a point on it, but since your ship is still in one piece, it should also be obvious to you that Griffin and I mean you no harm. In fact, I believe your goals and ours are so well aligned that we are, in fact, allies whether we choose to work with one another or not.”

  “What do you know of my goals,” Creel asked suspiciously.

  “We know you found evidence that most of the design work as well as core module fabrication for the Alliance AI’s starbase was completed aboard the FAM-4 facility. We also know of your efforts to assemble a ship capable of taking you — and, presumably, whatever data you retrieve from that depot — a very long way from here as quickly as possible. That’s about it, really. Although I don’t think you would have put so many lives at risk down on Pelara without a very good reason for doing so.”

  “Audio muted,” Tess interrupted. “Just because they didn’t attack us immediately does not mean we can trust them, Doctor. We must assume they were sent by the Alliance AI until we figure out some way of proving otherwise.”

  “Agreed, but I don’t think that changes anything, Tess. Regardless of who, or what, they are, there’s little doubt we’ll have hostile forces arriving here at any moment. Any luck with the depot’s systems?”

  “The interface works. I have full access. But there’s far too much data here for any sort of mass transfer. Most of what’s here is archived using a hierarchical system. The older the data, the longer it takes to access it. I’m going to need some time to locate everything we need.”

  “How much time?”

  “I have not yet completed enough of my search to provide an estimate. Less than an hour, I believe.”

  “We don’t have an hour, Tess.”

  “Doctor Creel? Are you still there?” Rick asked in the background.

  “Unmute,” Creel commanded. “Yes, I’m still here. What are you proposing?”

  “Ideally, you could share what you know about accessing the systems aboard the FAM-4 facility and we could try to help. Frankly, though, I doubt I would agree to do so if I were in your shoes, so I’m not even going to ask.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. After all, for all I know, my ability to retrieve data from the depot is the only reason you haven’t attacked my ship. But if it makes you feel any better, the access to which you refer requires a very specific piece of hardware. According to the records we found, only four were ever created, and they were specifically designed to be impossible to duplicate. Ironically, they were also designed to be surprisingly easy to destroy, and that’s exactly what will happen to the one aboard my ship if we’re in danger of being captured.”

  “A wise precaution, my friend. As I said, we all appear to have the same goals, so it seems reasonable for us to try to help one another. As long as Tess finds whatever she’s looking for quickly so that we can all be on our way, I don’t believe we will encounter any immediate resistance from the Alliance AI.”

  “How could you possibly know … never mind,” Creel sighed resignedly.

  “Patience, Doctor Creel. I’m confident we will eventually learn to trust one another. Until then, there are some questions we shouldn’t ask, and some answers we shouldn’t provide. For example, I doubt you are willing to tell me what you intend to do with the data you recover. So if I may, I’d like to offer a suggestion.
”

  “Contact, short range!” Miguel interrupted in an uncharacteristically excited tone.

  Although the results would remain unknown to Miguel during the first few seconds following his frantic contact report, the engagement had already ended with the destruction of the unknown ship. Long before the words had even begun to form in the Grey engineer’s brain, Griffin had detected the inbound hyperspace transition, assessed the target as a high-probability hostile, and dramatically increased his power output in preparation to open fire. Since the target’s signature had obviously not been produced by another GCS unit or an Envoy spacecraft, he knew it was unlikely to launch an attack of its own before utilizing onboard targeting sensors of some sort. Accordingly, Griffin took his time, leisurely allowing reflected light to traverse the intervening eight hundred and forty kilometers in order to fully establish the target’s identity. In just under three milliseconds, he had all of the data he required.

  Ten of TFS Guardian’s antimatter beams slashed out at the Pelaran assault shuttle, all converging in an area of less than five square millimeters just forward of the vessel’s propulsion section. Griffin had no specifications for his target’s defensive systems on file, but since the vessel was of Pelaran origin, he initially assumed its shields might pose a problem for his own beam emitters. Fortunately, all Department of Compliance and Safety ships had been purpose-built under the ever-watchful supervision of the Alliance AI. Although equipped with shields capable of dissipating the energy from light kinetic energy or beam weapons, the AI would never have considered equipping the Pelaran people with systems that might one day be turned against their caretakers. In fact, the DoCaS assault shuttle’s shield emitters were specifically tuned to render them vulnerable to the primary energy weapons carried by all GCS spacecraft.

  As the first packetized antihydrogen particles from Griffin’s antimatter beams reached their intended target, the outcome of the engagement was already a virtual certainty. Even without the destruction wrought by matter annihilating upon contact with antimatter, the single positron and antiproton within each antihydrogen atom possessed the same mass as the electron and proton found in regular hydrogen. Much like the particle beam weapons equipping the nearby Talionis, each tiny projectile traveled at nearly the speed of light, delivering tremendous destructive energy to the target. As a result, Griffin’s beam weapons instantly collapsed the small shuttle’s shields at the point of impact, then sliced completely though the fuselage to exit on the opposite side.

  Once it became clear the shuttle’s shields had been compromised, Griffin simply diverged all ten active beams from one another, cleaving his target into multiple sections at the same instant it bloomed forth into a brilliant white ball of antimatter-induced fire. From the perspective of the twelve Pelaran DoCaS troops aboard, the destruction of their shuttle and their subsequent deaths occurred at virtually the same instant they arrived at their destination.

  “Target destroyed,” Griffin reported less than three seconds after Miguel’s contact warning. “It was a military shuttle of some sort. It transitioned up from the general vicinity of Doctor Creel’s point of departure. I apologize for the delay, but I wasn’t expecting any Pelaran vessels to be equipped with a hyperdrive.”

  “They generally aren’t,” Creel replied. “According to our intel, DoCaS has only one operational ship — perhaps two at the most — that are hyperdrive-equipped. As far as we’ve been able to tell, they’re limited to in-system transitions, and even those seem to require some sort of lengthy approval process. In any event, it was probably the same ship that tried to prevent me from leaving the surface. I’m actually surprised they received clearance to jump to orbit so quickly. I assumed we would have been long gone by the time they arrived.”

  “Well … no harm done this time,” Rick said as he released a stress-relieving sigh. “But let’s agree to be careful with our assumptions where potentially dangerous enemy ships are concerned. If that had been a couple of GCS units, I’m not sure things would have worked out quite as well for our side. Nevertheless, I think we can safely assume the local authorities are in communication with the Alliance AI. And the fact they were quickly issued a clearance to transition to orbit rather than waiting for Guardians to arrive seems to support Miguel’s theory. The AI may simply not have sufficient forces available to provide the overwhelming advantage it seems to prefer.”

  “Wait, you believe ALAI may be short of combat resources?” Creel asked.

  “Yes. Some of our models are consistent with critical shortages across a wide variety of strategic resources. This would, necessarily, have a direct impact on its ability to quickly deploy combat spacecraft.”

  “And ground troops as well, correct?”

  “Our current mission has not required us to place as much emphasis on the availability of ground forces, but, yes, that does seem like a reasonable assumption. Why do you ask?”

  “Obviously, the scope of my team’s observations has been limited to Pelara alone, but even after it became obvious the AI was actively hunting us, its response seemed a bit —”

  “Weak?” Rick offered.

  “I don’t think I would characterize it as weak, no. I lost seven members of my team and very nearly lost this ship as well,” Creel replied gravely. “Still, the massive show of force I always feared never quite materialized. And it was enough to make me wonder if the AI might not have quite the resources at its disposal that it once did.”

  “Audio muted,” Tess interrupted once again. “I’ve found the data we’re looking for, Doctor. I’ve already retrieved most of it, but I still need a bit more time to do some cross-referencing to ensure I have everything. I should be ready to depart in less than five minutes.”

  “Excellent news, Tess. Keep at it. I assume you’ve been doing voice analysis on our new friends?”

  “Yes, of course. I have detected no signs of outright deceit, although there is clearly a great deal they aren’t choosing to tell us.”

  “That’s okay, I suppose. No one tells everything on the first date, right?”

  “I’m not sure I —”

  “Never mind. Thank you, Tess. Unmute, please.”

  During Creel’s conversation with Tess, Griffin had been delivering an extended monologue stressing the dangers associated with underestimating the capabilities of the Alliance AI.

  “I agree wholeheartedly,” Creel replied as if he had been listening intently. “Now, Rick, you were saying you had a suggestion regarding how I might be able to utilize any … relevant data I might find aboard the FAM-4 facility.”

  “If by ‘relevant’ you mean specific information regarding the Alliance AI’s defensive systems and possible vulnerabilities, I do indeed. And, yes, I believe I can make a persuasive argument for what you should do with that data. Unfortunately, much of what I must tell you may seem a bit, uh … perhaps far-fetched isn’t quite the right word, so let’s just say difficult to accept at face value. It will, of course, be up to you to decide whether to trust what I tell you, but I strongly recommend you do.”

  “Fair enough, let’s hear it.”

  “As soon as you finish your data retrieval — which, I believe, Tess indicated would happen momentarily — all three of us need to be on our way, agreed?”

  Creel, an ardent student of a card game almost identical to Terran poker, instantly dismissed the shock of having his private conversations overheard from his mind as if it were of no consequence whatsoever. “Yes, of course,” he replied evenly. “Frankly, though, I’m betting whatever it is you have to say isn’t entirely new information.”

  “I hope you’re right about that,” Rick replied with his customary chuckle. “It will certainly make things easier if that’s the case. So here goes … to summarize a very long story, Griffin here was originally assigned to the Sol star system as part of the Pelaran Alliance Regional Partnership program. For a variety of reasons, he has elected to end his association with the Alliance AI and ally himself with
the Terrans — the species to which he was originally assigned as Guardian. As for Miguel and me, we have a vested interest in both the Terran and Pelaran peoples. And although we are not permitted to engage in active combat operations, we believe the Alliance AI has become an existential threat — to your two worlds and a great many others — a threat that must be removed.”

  “You speak of a ‘vested interest.’ Such terms make me particularly suspicious,” Creel said.

  “Justifiably so. Our interests, however, stem from the fact that both the Pelarans and the Terrans share a common genetic ancestry with my people. The term ‘Humans’ I used earlier has somehow been lost to many worlds inhabited by our species in this galaxy, including Pelara. But I can assure you we are all members of a single species originating, as far as we know, in the neighboring Andromeda galaxy. In the distant past, both of your worlds were originally colonized by ours.”

  There was a brief period of silence on the comlink before Creel managed to respond. “So, after searching for our so-called Makers for thousands of years, you simply arrive here of your own accord … apparently just two of you … and with a domesticated GCS unit in tow. What a relief, Rick. I thought you were about to tell me something truly incredible.”

  “Domesticated?” Griffin scoffed in the background.

  “Look,” Rick continued, “I know exactly how all of this sounds, Doctor Creel. I’m sure by now Tess has pulled up some archival images supposedly representing our appearance — most likely without a stitch of clothing, but let’s just ignore that for now. Actually … since we have a few more minutes, let me share a video stream.”

  With that, a closeup of Rick’s face appeared on the center screen in Talionis’ cockpit. In spite of being somewhat prepared for what he saw, Creel felt an involuntary shiver of recognition run down the length of his spine. In the distant past, Rick’s kind had been referred to as the “Pale Visitors” on Pelara. And even after thousands of years of interstellar space travel, the Grey’s huge, abysmal eyes still conjured up a series of unsettling thoughts — nameless fears of the unknown, of vulnerability, and of everything that was quintessentially alien.