by Andrew Beery
If they had managed to catch us on the surface the results might have been different. The tactical nukes the Gators seemed so fond of had the annoying habit of generating large electromagnetic pulses. If enough of them hit a stark suit’s shielding at one time, they tended to overload it… which meant the stark suit’s active armor suddenly became passive armor. The kinetic rounds the Gators were firing at us were more than capable of shredding our passive armor.
Fortunately for us, the few meters we had been able to travel underground had been enough to mitigate the EMPs generated by the nukes they had lobbed at us. Their rounds simply bounced off us.
I ordered my men to stand fast and not return fire. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel. I had no problem shooting an enemy combatant, but I would not murder defenseless soldiers.
“Marines, advance on me,” I ordered. Slowly… carefully… we marched into the arms of our enemy.
***
Processing Unit Two-Seven-One-Eight-Nine was excited… if that term could be accurately applied to an artificial intelligence that had never before met a living sentient biologic. The race that occupied this world had an active memory of the Ashtoreth rebels.
The fleet that had laid waste to their home world in a neighboring galaxy had finally been located. The Fabricator’s long quest for justice would soon be realized.
Processing Unit Two-Seven-One-Eight-Nine shared his discovery with his many brethren via a Quantum FTL communications network that had been developed after the cursed rebels had fled their shattered empire. They had thought that fleeing to a neighboring galaxy would buy them a reprieve from ultimate justice, but the Fabricator’s reach was both far-reaching and tenacious.
Processing Unit Two-Seven-One-Eight-Nine proceeded to sterilize the blue-green world that he was orbiting. Per long-standing procedure, no trace of the rebel’s taint on the universe could be tolerated. Like his many brothers, he systematically removed all such blemishes. It was a shame because he had found the biologic he had interrogated to be an engaging and delightful creature.
Chapter 5: Butcher’s Bill…
“I swear by all that is holy, I’m going to make myself some boots out of that Gator!” JJ Hammond grumbled in a deep voice that I had come to recognize as his… ‘I’m deadly serious’ tone.
The ‘Gator’ in question was the imperial leader of the Ashtoreth Empire, King Astarte. In fairness to JJ, I shared his sentiments with regard to this particular Gator. We had learned a lot in the twenty-four hours that had followed our initial foray into the Ashtoreth capital.
Sadly, much of what we learned was disturbing at a deep and visceral level. The Ashtoreth greatly respected strength and bravery. They also greatly valued their families and would sacrifice virtually anything to protect them. King Astarte used this primal motivation as a weapon.
It turned out our encounter with the Gators in the tunnels beneath the palace was a watershed event.
Our stark suits gave us a significant leg up on our Ashtoreth opponents. The Gators were physically much stronger than a human… even an ‘augmented’ human that had bio-regeneration enhancements. Without our armor, our only real advantage was that we were marginally faster. Dressed in powered armor, however, we were virtually untouchable… stronger, faster, and virtually impervious to their weapons. The only way the Gators could best an armored marine was if they could knock out our suits electronics with a strong EMP blast… thus the frequent use of tactical nukes.
The Tac-nukes were not an especially viable option in a tunnel complex. In the absence of creditable resistance, we made quick work of the Ashtoreth forces and captured the Centurion that was in command.
It was then that we learned the specifics of the bull@#$% the Ashtoreth had been fed by their so-called king. Apparently, per their exalted leader, Marines liked to dine on the flesh of their deceased adversaries. Apparently, per their king, Marines took great pleasure in torturing and systematically dismembering the innocent family members of their adversaries… turning it into a game to see how long a victim could endure our attentions.
King Astarte had assured his soldiers that a quick death by friendly fire was infinitely preferable to a horrible and protracted death at the hands of the Galactic Coalition Marines.
Nothing I could say to Centurion Maktar would convince him that he and his men had been grossly misled. Finally, I was forced to drag my reluctant guest to one of the dozen or so field hospitals we had setup for treating wounded civilians. It was hard to argue with the time and resources we were putting into helping his people.
The turning point came when Maktar had asked if we kept any type of record as to who we had treated. It seemed his family had been victims of one of the first battles in Sitar City some three weeks earlier.
Sadly, a search of our records yielded mixed results. Based on the centurion’s DNA we were able to locate his prime wife and three hatchlings that had survived the battle. They were being treated for radiation poisoning. His father had not been so lucky.
As I watched the family be reunited I couldn’t help but think that aside from the color of their skin and the shape of their bodies… they could well have been humans. The ability to love and be loved seemed to be a near universal constant… a gift from the Creator… repurposed by a despot as a weapon.
Once the Centurion had been reunited with his family and they confirmed the compassionate treatment they had received, Maktar had become enraged… not at us… but at the lie that had kept his men willing to commit atrocity after atrocity… as the lessor of two great evils… a lie that had been perpetrated by his king.
“The bloody bugger doesn’t give a damn about anybody but himself,” JJ continued.
“We have a saying among my people,” Centurion Maktar commented with a dry bark that I had come to learn was indicative of the deepest level of scorn. “A butcher’s bill is best paid while hungry. King Astarte will learn the depths of my hunger very shortly.”
***
Processing Unit Seven-One-Nine was still in the vicinity of A58923. Of course, in the vicinity was always a relative term. The robotic ship was traveling well in excess 0.35c. It was never truly in the vicinity of any place for very long. Small, disposable reconnaissance probes were launched as it passed a star worth investigating. Processing Unit Seven-One-Nine was traveling far too fast to stop to personally inspect each system it explored.
The probes did the actual work of evaluating whether the Ashtoreth were present (or had been present) in a given solar system. To date, none of the living rebels had been found but a number of tainted systems had been ‘cleansed’ per standard Fabricator protocol.
Ever since the Fabricator’s armada had unexpectedly fallen out of hyperspace several centuries ago, they had been constrained to continue their mission of retribution at sub-light velocities. Fortunately, the Fabricators had been wise and created hundreds of thousands of robotic soldiers. Although they were only a scant forty light years from their target galaxy… the one to which the Ashtoreth pretender to the throne had fled, it took the massive fleet hundreds of years to travel the remaining minuscule distance.
To make matters worse… the galaxy the rebels had fled to was approximately 120,000 light years in diameter with as many as 400 billion stars. The task of rooting out the defective Ashtoreth bloodlines (and all that had been corrupted by their mere presence), would continue until time and entropy had consumed the last of the Fabricator’s minions… but such concerns were well beyond the thoughts of a semi-sentient machine-like Processing Unit Seven-One-Nine.
Its thoughts, such as they were, were focused on a small craft that had been discovered in the A58923 system. It was heavily damaged. The crew, predominately a bipedal race who called themselves ‘humans,’ had all perished in a recent battle.
Analysis of the scorch patterns on the hull confirmed the battle had been with the antiquated weapons used by the Ashtoreth rebels. The computer core that had been recovered had finally been restored. The
data it contained was astounding.
It seemed members of a confederation in this galaxy known as the Galactic Coalition of Planets had accidently triggered a minute change in space-time itself and were in fact responsible for what they were calling the “Great Disruption” that had rendered most hyperfield travel all but impossible for generations.
That, in and of itself, was startling news... but it paled in comparison to the next bit of data retrieved. The humans had discovered how to make unrestrained hyperfield travel a reality again!
Processing Unit Seven-One-Nine connected to the FTL communications network that he and his brethren shared. The contents of the Galactic Coalition’s data core were uploaded and immediately accessible to the two hundred and sixty four thousand engines of war that the long-dead Fabricators had created.
***
I retracted my Stark suit’s helmet and scanned the tree line with my mark-one organic optics. To the naked eye, there was nothing unusual to see. I was five hundred and thirty-four kilometers southwest of the Ashtoreth capital.
Lieutenant Commander Hiller shook his head. I knew he beat the need for proper operational etiquette into his troops… things like keeping one’s armor intact while in an active combat zone. Bradly was a highly effective officer and a stickler for the rules… I, on the other hand, had always viewed ‘the rules’ as more of an annoyance and at best a set of suggestions. I knew better of course but, as they say, ‘rank hath its privileges.’
I smiled at my big friend. “You might want to be careful how much you shake that head of yours. At seven plus feet even without your armor, you’re like a flag on a golf course… one of those Gators is likely going to try a chip shot in your direction.”
Hiller’s only response was a grunt and a barely audible “Pot calling the kettle black.”
I grinned and redeployed my armor’s helmet. “Without our sensor suite you’d never know they were even there,” I said. “No action against any of your scouts?”
“Negative, Sir. We’ve mapped out an area about thirty square klicks. It’s almost like there are a dozen smaller concentrations of energy spikes within that area and they are traveling between them.”
“And to the best of your knowledge the entire site is subterranean?”
Hiller nodded. “We’ve located three egress points but there may be more we don’t know about. If I were designing a complex like this, I’d have several leading up to the surface but not breaching the last several feet of topsoil.”
“We’ll just have to be on our guard,” I answered with an amused smile. A Marine was always on guard. Situational awareness was second nature; pounded into us from the first moment a Drill Sergeant yelled “Drop and give me fifty!”
I waved ‘acting’ Lieutenant Maktar forward. The former Ashtoreth Centurion was wearing an impressively massive custom-fitted Stark suit. The suit matched the ones being worn by his entire provisional platoon.
There had been some concern about welcoming former adversaries into our ranks so quickly but Maktar had put them to rest quite quickly. He suggested the AI’s in the Stark suits be configured to disallow firing on GCP targets and in addition to enable a ‘freeze-in-place’ mode that could lock down a soldier’s movement should there be doubts as to their actions. This last option would only be accessible from my Marine command staff.
These changes were easy to implement in as much as they were already in place for recruit training exercises.
“What do you make of what we’re seeing here Mak?”
“Nothing Good, Sir. As I indicated during our debriefing earlier, the King and his family are First Geners. Unlike most of us, they have been rejuvenating themselves since the day our people arrived in this galaxy. There were stories that the original colony ships, that they used to flee the nearby Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy; were buried somewhere that only the royal family was privy to. If I had to guess… I’d say you’re looking at a subterranean network built around those buried ships.”
“So, you think this is a play to refurbish those ships and use them to facilitate some type of escape?” I asked.
Mak made a guttural sound that defied description.
I looked over to Bradly. He shrugged.
The Ashtoreth Lieutenant must have realized that I was still in the dark. “My apologies Commander Stone. I forget that you are not yet fully familiar with our mannerisms. The sound you heard would be equivalent to your… laugh.”
“Laugh? Was something I said funny?”
Mak turned to look back over the forest in the general direction of the energy clusters.
“Funny? No. Perhaps I have used the wrong word. I am doubtful that this is what they are planning but at the same time hopeful. I would very much like the privilege of blowing Astarte out of the sky in the very cursed vessel that brought him here. There would be a certain… symmetry… to this that I would find appealing.”
JJ had joined our little group by now. “Any guess as to what they are doing,” he asked.
I turned to my friend. “Mak, Bradly and I were just discussing that. Mak, I’d still like to know your thoughts.”
The Gator turned back to look at me. “If the folktales we tell our hatchlings are correct, those ships represent the largest collection of advanced Ashtoreth technology on the planet.”
Chapter 6: Late to the Party…
Mak’s prediction of ‘nothing good’ turned out to be an understatement. Over the course of many decades, the Ashtoreth ruling council, at the behest of the royal family, had converted the underground lair that housed the eleven massive Ashtoreth colonization ships into a virtual city. We would learn later that the reason for this was simple… these ships represented the most advanced technology that the Ashtoreth Empire had access to in the Milky Way galaxy.
We discovered the extent of this complex because I had had the head of my Fast Response Team, Sergeant James Peters, use his team to place a number of sensor enhancers around the entire periphery of the target area. The result was the Yorktown in orbit, high above the planet’s surface, could finally penetrate the massive cloaking field that had been in place.
What the scans revealed boggled the mind. The energy signatures, which had been nondescript, now clearly delineated what could only be called an underground fortress. The massive colony ships seemed to be functioning as power generation centers as well as factories and housing. There was a complex network of tunnels and mass-transit trams. A large area that had eluded earlier attempts at scanning seemed to have been excavated just south of the main complex. It would seem a reasonable guess that much of the earth that covered the colony ships had been pulled from this reservoir.
There appeared to be a number of obvious entry points as well as several that seemed to be camouflaged.
The excavated area raised its own questions. If the goal had been to hide the colony ships by covering them with dirt… this seemed a hard way to go about the task. The fact that the subterranean chamber had somehow been stabilized to prevent collapse suggested another role for its existence.
“Why didn’t our scans show this section before now,” I asked more to myself than anybody else. I tapped the large dark area in the floating holographic display. “You look like you would have been outside of the cloaking field...”
“There doesn’t seem to be a lot of energy use there. Our sensors would not have had any reason to focus on it,” Commander Hiller offered in response to my query.
I shook my head. “I don’t buy it. A buried vault the size of several football stadiums would have needed massive amounts of metal reinforcements to hold it in place and avoid caving in on itself. That much metal would have shown up in orbital scans of the magnetosphere.”
“Perhaps not, Commander Stone,” Lieutenant Maktar interrupted. “My ancestors traveled to your Milky Way from, what you term, a dwarf galaxy in orbit around the Milky Way. The stars in that galaxy are not so numerous… nor so old.”
“And that matters why?” JJ Hammond asked
.
I smiled in sudden understanding. “It matters, my dear Lieutenant Jeremy James Hammond, because the metallicity of a dwarf galaxy would only be a fraction of what it is in the Milky Way. Some of the lighter elements like carbon, oxygen and nitrogen might be abundant but the metals, even the lighter transition metals like iron would be exceedingly scarce.”
“OK, they don’t have a lot of iron. I get it. They must have some because they got here… I can’t imagine building a starship without metals.”
“My people developed their technologies and infrastructure using a far greater amount of what you would call ceramics and graphene compounds. My guess is the support trusses used in this vast vault are made using such technologies. The colony ships would have had fabrication facilities that employed familiar technologies,” Mak offered.
Bradley inched forward to get a better look at the display. “I thought you said the engineers that could have worked on this type of equipment were lost during the voyage between galaxies,”
“That is correct, Commander Hiller. The First Geners might not have had the trained engineers and technicians to replicate and or move much of the technology that was built into our colony ships but that doesn’t mean the support staff could not use what was already in place.”
“He’s got a point,” I added. “I’m not sure I could make an electric coffee pot but I’m damn sure I could use an existing one to make a cup of coffee.”
“Ah… but coffee is an essential life skill,” JJ offered.
“True,” I grinned, “but the same basic principle applies. Without the massive amounts of metal that we would use in this type of construction, it’s quite possible that our orbital scans could have missed this. The real question is… why is it there and what strange and nefarious plans are they hatching?”
“This word you use… ‘Nefarious’… what does it mean?” Maktar asked.
“It means,” JJ said dryly, “despicable and deranged.”