The Dave Brewster Series

by Karl Morgan

  As the elevator car dropped, Vanda expected to be inside Eon’s brain, or perhaps his own. Instead, the chamber was completely empty. The car stopped in the exact center of the vast chamber. He looked around but saw nothing. He turned to look again and saw that Eon was now standing in the car next to him, and stepped back stunned. “You must end this charade right now, Eon!”

  The other laughed and shook his finger in Vanda’s face. “You can’t tell me what to do. You have no power over me. I can leave you here for the rest of your natural life if I want to.”

  “You and Odo Pak have no right to treat me this way. If you don’t return me to my rightful place, your worlds will pay the price! My fleet is already headed to the spiral. Nothing can stop them now.”

  “Odo Pak was here?” Eon gasped.

  “You know damned well he was here. You set this up.”

  “Honestly, I’m not completely certain I ever met the man,” Eon replied. “I know he is a friend of Dave and Lini, but if he was here, it was on his own volition, not mine.”

  “Then, this isn’t a dream,” Vanda sighed heavily. “Why did you do this to me? Why not just kill me in battle?”

  “Vanda, I’m surprised you never listen to what I have to say,” Eon said. “I don’t want you to die, Vanda. You are my friend. We all made the mistake to create The Accord. We are all culpable. Now is our chance to change that mistake and make it a tremendous triumph. Once you transcend, the three of us will be together again.”

  “I’ll admit that the physical sensations of this body are wonderful. I have been a brain in a machine so long I have forgotten. But these flesh vessels are frail and die after only a few years. In The Accord, I am immortal!”

  Eon laughed and replied, “Vanda, the Friends are not immortal at all. They are still fleshy brains enclosed in metal bodies. While the brains may live an extended life, eventually they will fail. Bodies die and so do brains, no matter how much we wish to remain alive.”

  “But I will live much longer than you, Eon. Look at your puny body. You already look to be very old. How much time do you have left?” Vanda asked. As Vanda watched, Eon began to change very slowly. He was getting younger by the moment. Vanda’s jaw slackened as he stood next to the twenty year old Eon. “How did you do that?”

  Eon smiled. “This body feels real to me. I can hear my heart beating and the air moving through my nose into my lungs. When I am near Lini, I can feel myself becoming aroused by her presence. If I work in the fields, my armpits sweat and I stink. But it is not the complete reality of me, or of any other person. Deep within each of us is a spirit that is truly immortal. Every sentient Being is born, goes through life and dies without understanding the meaning of spirit. Only when the body dies is the spirit set free. As far as I know, there are only three exceptions to that rule: Bandopaz Niderak, Mantarcus, and me. We are completely in tune with our spirits and transcend the veil between the physical and spiritual realms. We are immortal. And I want you to join us.”

  Chapter 28

  Fa-a-Di was pacing back and forth on the bridge of the Kong-Fa, anxious for the battle, but deeply fearful for the lives of his crews. De-o-Nu sat quietly in his com chair next to Captain Ka-a-Fa, monitoring the forward sensor arrays. Ka-a-Fa was keeping his com channels open for the other ships in the fleet. The Lud-Fa and Sing-Fa were on the flanks of the flagship. Hundreds of other starships formed a cloud just behind the Gallicean ships, attempting to blind the robot’s visibility of the Maklakar battle stations. The Kalidean and Earth fleets were stationed above and below the main fleet to stop any robots from trying to outflank the force. The battle stations were the only source of plasma bombs, and their protection was critical.

  “There!” De-o-Nu shouted. In the center of the viewscreen, a single blip appeared, and then there were two, then fifty, then one thousand. Soon the screen was filled with brilliant points of light. “We’re less than thirty minutes from contact, General.”

  Fa-a-Di sighed heavily, then removed each of his blasters from his belt and examined their power levels. Satisfied, he clipped them back to his belt. “De-o-Nu, I’m giving you command of the fleet. My Marines and I will board our fighters and see you in battle.”

  De-o-Nu jumped to his feet and hugged the general, saying, “Brother, please take care of yourself. Today, we either defeat The Accord or die trying.”

  “For Gallia!” the general replied, slapping his brother-in-law on the back. He smiled at the bridge crew and left for the lift that would take him to the shuttle bay.

  “What’s the fleet status, Ka-a-Fa?” the admiral demanded.

  “Sir, the Maklakar report all plasma bomb devices are armed and ready. We have reconfirmed the spread of the robot fleet and our firing profile remains optimal,” Ka-a-Fa responded.

  De-o-Nu sat next to the other, put his hand on his shoulder and replied, “I guess I should have let you stay retired, old friend.”

  “Never, De-o-Nu. All of our worlds will fall if we don’t stop the fleet now. I would rather die in battle than in one of their liquefiers. My only wish is to take as many of those bastard robots with me as I can when I go.”

  §

  Charlie Watson and his wife, Aria, walked out of the elder’s residence and into brilliant sunlight and stood next to the spidunk, which had remained cold and inert since it landed there. She stood next to him, with her arm around his back. “What I don’t understand is why this thing isn’t sinking into the ground?” he asked at last. “I mean, this thing has the mass of thousands, if not tens of thousands of star cruisers, and it’s sitting on the soft grass like it’s a feather.”

  “Maybe it’s not inert, honey. I’m not a great physicist,” she lied, “but I agree something this massive should be making a dent at least.” She dropped to her hands and knees and looked at the spot where the spidunk rested on the ground. She gasped and sat back up. After a moment, she smiled and crawled up next to the device and slipped her hand underneath it.

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Aria,” he said too late.

  “Charlie, get down here and look at this,” she said. After he knelt down, he could see her hand under the giant machine. Looking closely, he noticed the spidunk was not sitting on the ground at all. Its massive form was resting on top of the blades of grass. “Isn’t that amazing?”

  “You’re right, honey, the spidunk is not turned off. It’s hovering just above the surface.” He put his ear against the side of the machine to listen for machine noises, but it was totally silent. “I think there’s a lot more going on here than a giant sabot round with a magnetic engine. But it doesn’t make any sound or vibration. How is that possible?”

  “Come on, Charlie,” she laughed. “You should have figured that out already. With the density of this thing, there could be nuclear explosions going off one foot inside and we probably wouldn’t feel anything.” She put her hands on the device to help her stand up. “Something’s changing inside it, Charlie. It’s getting warmer.”

  She helped her husband to his feet and he touched it as well. What had felt like a sheet of steel in a freezer was now room temperature. He leaned over and listened again, but there was no sound. “What is going on here?” he wondered aloud.

  They began to feel a hot breeze emanating from the machine and started to back away. The spidunk began to rise off the ground very slowly. Several passersby came to join Charlie and Aria and marvel at this strange object coming to life. Elder Paranaxis Incatum Fodo was among the group and he came and stood next to Aria. “This thing isn’t going to explode, is it?” he asked.

  Something in Charlie’s head told them to back away more and he pushed the crowd back. Perhaps it was the hot wind coming from the device, or maybe his personal terror at the potential of the weapon. When the group was fifty feet away from the spidunk, it rotated until its point was aimed skyward. The heat increased and the crowd moved back again. The words “Thank You” crossed Charlie’s mind, and the spidunk shot upward, disappearing fr
om sight in less than a second. The suction caused by its updraft pulled the air from everyone’s lungs and they gasped for air for a moment until things became normal again. The same updraft sucked several smaller clouds together over them, and a gentle rain began to fall.

  Charlie pressed his com-link and said, “Get me Admiral De-o-Nu!”

  After a few seconds, De-o-Nu answered, sounding irritated, “Charlie, we are about to engage the enemy. I don’t have time now.”

  “Just a second, Admiral,” he replied. “I just want you to know that the spidunk has left Fistnan. We have no idea where it’s going.”

  “Roger that, Charlie,” De-o-Nu said. “I’m not sure what’s going on either. We will engage the front lines of the robot fleet in a few minutes. Good luck to you.”

  “God speed, De-o-Nu. Fistnan out,” Charlie said as he closed the connection. He turned to his wife and asked, “Did you hear the words “Thank You” just a minute ago?” She and Elder Paranaxis nodded.

  §

  “You must decide soon, brother,” Eon said to Vanda. “Your fleet is about to engage the defenses of the spiral.”

  “This whole experience is too much for me to rationalize. I still think this may be a dream and you are tricking me into surrendering The Accord to you.”

  “Please do me another favor, Vanda. Close your eyes for just a second.” He complied. “Okay, open them now.”

  They were no longer in the golden elevator in the center of Vanda’s planetoid. Eon and Vanda were sitting in the gazebo in the center of Tanat, along with Mantarcus, Dave Brewster, and Dar Lini. All around, hundreds of people were working to repair houses and stores and begin new lives, away from The Accord. A small group of sheep were busy munching the grassy park around them. “Why are we here?”

  “Countless millions of our brothers are living and dying inside the planetoids of The Accord,” Eon explained. “After the battle for the spiral, most will be moved here, or to Skee Lotho or other Nan planets in the Clouds. We have stolen their lives, and now it is our responsibility to help restore them. You, Mantarcus, and I need to help our people find new lives, free from the oppression of The Accord.”

  Vanda frowned, then stood and began to pace around. “What if The Accord is victorious? We will all be meat for their liquefiers. Where is the honor and duty in that?”

  Mantarcus stood and put his hands on Vanda’s shoulders. “Brother, you must now realize that The Accord cannot win that battle. I am just beginning to understand what’s really happening in the universe, but I already know The Accord is finished. Do you remember that special weapon that destroyed one of your transports as it attempted to land on my vessel?”

  “Yes, and that was a serious violation of Accord protocol. How could you create such a weapon without any other Friends finding out?”

  “That’s a great question, which until my transcendence I could not have answered. As Mantarcus of The Accord, I remembered always having the spidunk in my arsenal. I did not know its capabilities or that I had the only one, but there it was. I had too many other things to handle to worry about it. But now I know,” Mantarcus said.

  “Okay, what’s the answer then?”

  “The spidunk was placed in my custody by another, although I still do not know whom,” Mantarcus explained. “Also, the belief that the spidunk would save all of us was placed deep in my mind. For a long time, I thought it was destined to save The Accord, but now I know its real purpose is to save our people.”

  §

  “Firing range is two minutes!” shouted Ka-a-Fa at his weapons officer. “Confirm all ships are ready!”

  “Aye-aye, Captain!”

  “De-o-Nu!” shouted Commander Vard Kalak of the Maklakar fleet. “All of our weapons systems have gone offline!”

  “What!” the admiral shouted.

  “Ours too, sir,” said the weapons officer.

  “Oh my God,” De-o-Nu sighed. “We are lost.”

  It became deathly quiet on each ship in the fleet. All weapons were offline and com channels were silent. Captain Lauren London of the Nightsky could hear her own heart beating in the dead silence. Drops of sweat formed on Fa-a-Di’s face in the seat of his fighter.

  “Whump!” The deep guttural sound filled the air of each ship, sucking the air out of the lungs of every person on each ship. The spidunk shot through the center of the Free Society fleet and approached the mass of Accord screamers. As it reached the first robots, it began to spin rapidly, though it was imperceptible to anyone due to its speed. A vortex behind the spidunk sucked virtually all of the screamers away in a tight tornado. Within half a second, the spidunk flew through the upper atmosphere of the Lubna sun, incinerating all of the robotic ships. The spidunk was now bright white, looking like a shooting star as it raced away.

  “Captain, I have weapons online again,” Frake Andres of the Nightsky reported. “What the hell just happened?”

  “I have no idea,” she replied.

  §

  “Now do you understand, Vanda?” Eon asked.

  “Who is controlling that weapon?”

  “No one,” Lini said. The others turned to look at her with stunned expressions. “Odo Pak told me the spidunk is alive. It is the friend of Bandopaz Niderak.”

  “But it’s a simple arrow with a magnetic engine,” Mantarcus said. “It’s all metal, there is no brain inside.”

  Lini laughed. “We cannot force our perceptions onto reality. The spidunk was manufactured by a highly advanced civilization in the Cattreen Galaxy, some fifty million light-years from here. Just as my galaxy is facing a threat to our existence from The Accord, their civilization was at risk of extinction by a natural foe. They created the spidunk to protect their worlds. Given the speed of the machine and the great distances it needed to travel, they knew there was no way to control it from a distance, and so they figured out how to make the machine be alive.”

  Dave smiled, “In a way, I guess that makes the spidunk like The Accord. It is a thinking machine, just as are the Friends. The only difference is the piece of human brain the Friends currently require.”

  “I agree,” Eon noted. “Except the spidunk is a force for good, while The Accord only exists for its personal power. It’s the oldest story in the book: good versus evil.”

  Mantarcus said, “Vanda, the screamers are destroyed without firing a single shot on the spiral’s fleet. Now do you see The Accord cannot prevail?” Vanda sat heavily and put his hands over his face and groaned in pain. “Vanda, please listen to me. There were no Friends in the screamer fleet. I imagine Opala will unleash the strikers next. Each of those vessels has one Friend aboard. If we do not stop the battle now, lives will be lost.”

  As they waited for him to think, the spidunk floated silently out of the sky and landed on the freshly-mown grass next to the gazebo.

  “What do I have to do?” Vanda said at last.

  “Reach out to your Friends in The Accord. Tell them to stop their attack. Warn them that the spidunk will not allow them to harm the others,” Eon said.

  “How do I do that now? I’m just a man again. I certainly haven’t transcended anything. Will you send me back to my station?”

  “Vanda, you are the greatest human mind the universe has ever known,” Eon replied. “Just the act of your contrition and the attempt to stop the war may be enough to complete your transcendence. Give it a try. We all love you and will support your effort.”

  Vanda sat quietly with his head down and eyes closed. He took a few deep breaths and tried to relax. He thought about The Accord. It was all he could remember now. His brief life as a man ended so long ago. “Opala, we must speak,” he thought. Nothing. He thought about Opala and how he had joined The Accord from this very planet. Even though he was Opala’s mentor, would he give up his power for this? “Opala, speak to me,” he demanded. There was no response. Vanda’s body was feeling warmer and warmer, as though Mantarcus and Eon were inside his flesh with him, helping him to reach out into open spa
ce. “Opala!”

  Chapter 29

  Fa-a-Di was pacing around in his ready room while De-o-Nu and Ka-a-Fa sat silently. “We still don’t know what caused the fleet-wide systems failures? That is not acceptable!”

  “Ambassador Watson thinks it has something to do with the spidunk,” De-o-Nu replied. “It is not possible for all ships to lose weapon systems simultaneously. There had to be an outside factor.”

  “What if the outside factor is The Accord?” Fa-a-Di shouted. “If they have that capability, we have no chance of victory. Unless the spidunk does all the work, we will all die!”

  “There was no mention of power losses during the two battles with Zeet,” Ka-a-Fa argued. “Shouldn’t that have occurred then as well?”

  “That’s a good point,” Fa-a-Di admitted. “This time we’re facing a massive fleet and not just one newbie Accord member.”

  “Brother, the helm is reporting several thousand larger ships headed our way. We will contact in less than ten minutes,” De-o-Nu said. “But I think this whole conversation is a waste of time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If The Accord can drain our weapons, we will all die today. If it was the spidunk, and it returns to help us, The Accord is finished. If it doesn’t come back, we’ll have the fight of our lives. What caused the power drain is a moot point, with only those three outcomes.”

  Fa-a-Di picked up his weapon belt and fastened it around his waist. “I know you’re right, brother, but I just hate variables that remain unaccounted for.” He placed his battle helmet on his head. “I’m going back to my fighter now. Good luck, gentlemen.”

  §

  Six thousand strikers rocketed through open space between the two fleets. Back on the planetoids, hundreds of thousands of robots climbed aboard the star cruisers and transport vessels to attack the Maklakar battle stations. The plan was to launch the capital fleet just as the strikers reached the enemy ships. Deep inside Opala’s vessel, eight golden robots stood around the conference table shouting at one another. “I am in command now!” screamed Opala of The Accord. “You must respect my position.”