“Did I miss something?” he typed in back up to the Galaxy. After he hit send, he skimmed back over the previous messages he hadn’t seen yet. When he saw the specific message, about the bomb, his eyes opened wide.
Shouts rang out from on board the spider, and men were pointing towards the sky. They could see the glow through the clouds. Seconds later, they heard the sound, thunderous; a locomotive crashing down through the sky.
“I bet they’ve never seen anything like that,” Graham muttered under his breath.
As they followed the glow, Graham looked down, knowing the target. It was then that he saw the mountain rising behind the spheres. He had seen the orbital pictures, but as the mountain continued to rise, it actually blocked out one of the suns coming up the horizon. On board, the shouts of surprise changed to shouts of joy. Did they know what that mountain was?
The missile pierced the cloud and came screaming down towards the sphere. Everyone watched intensely, while some traced the missile with their pointed fingers.
Graham had seen only one gravity explosion of that magnitude. It was during a test run nearly twelve years ago. He had been just a fresh recruit at the time, on board a cruiser doing an atmosphere test drop of the bomb. They did it on a tiny planet with very little atmosphere. It hadn’t been much of an explosion and he had been disappointed. It was years later, as he moved up the ranks and studied, that he came to discover that the gravity bomb didn’t explode in the fiery fashion of nearly all other bombs.
Graham looked up and saw the Jaguars speeding in towards land. Down below him, the battle continued to wage on. He looked up one last time, just as the missile impacted directly into the largest and primary sphere.
“You might want to hold on,” Graham said, twisting some of the netting around his wrist.
There was no sound, and from the distance, it was hard to tell, but the moment the missile hit, it unleashed its gravity forces. The air, water and all matter within that blast radius of the impact were all sucked into an infinitesimal space. The instant compression of mass created an unholy fusion of all the elements present. The force first created immense pressure, then released it, exploding all that super-heated mass right into the sphere.
Graham, Marines, and Gadoni warriors shouted out in exclamation as a bright blast erupted from the sphere. Mass in the form of plasma splashed up into the sky at the same angle the missile had struck the sphere. The force blew the clouds away as the plasma blast erupted upwards. The sonic boom hit them moments later, blowing men and centaurs over easily. The spider Vahe held on true, but some Gadoni were thrown clear off. Graham held on.
After the hot blast, Graham stood up. He quickly dug out his optics and turned to look out towards the sea. He focused on trying to see the sphere through the fire rising up towards the sky. Graham couldn’t see anything, but the sphere was clearly still there. It hadn’t budged at all.
“Damn it,” he cursed. “Nothing I can see here, Galaxy,” he reported.
“What about the creature behind it?” the response came back down.
Graham looked again. He moved the optics around to try to focus through the smoke and fire. He thought he saw something moving. It was the mountain, the creature. It was moving in on top, over the sphere.
“Something is going on out there,” he reported.
***
Sentinel had just barely managed to avoid the blast. He had dived the ship as soon as they had seen the missile coming out of orbit and was able to hide behind the blast shadow of the Mother. Sentinel still didn’t have any sensors as he had on board the man-made ships, and at this point, wasn’t sure he ever would. Everything was done visually, although it was much easier for an advanced computer AI to extrapolate much more data from simple images than a human could. As the explosion ripped through the air along the other side of the sphere, Sentinel pulled the ship up so that his human passengers could see as well.
Sentinel leveled the ship about ten miles south of the sphere, parallel to the Mother. After being thrown about with the blast, Kale picked himself back up. Uli had remained strapped into her seat the entire time.
“What’s going on, Sentinel?” Kale asked, shaking himself off and walking up to the windshield and looking out.
The giant planetary security measure was halfway encircled around the spheres. The blast seemed to have done nothing to slow down its attack on the spheres. Its tentacles, if that’s what they were, had encircled the primary sphere. They had already seen it try to get into the sphere. After the blast, it had found something.
“The Mother is linked to the sphere,” Sentinel informed them.
“That means???” Kale asked.
“They are talking.”
“They… are talking?”
“There is an incredible surge in data between the two. It’s data transfer. Talking.”
“Why would they need to…” Kale began.
“The Mother isn’t talking anymore. It’s killing the sphere.”
Kale and Uli looked back out of the window. Sentinel turned the ship and began flying straight towards the duel between the titans.
“The explosion, Sentinel?” Kale asked, concerned.
“We are safe inside.”
As they flew closer, and the blast vaporized, they could see the tentacles had found some kind of a crack where the blast had impacted over the sphere. Hundreds of tentacles had slithered into the opening and were working their way through the sphere’s internal structure. Fractures began to form all over the sphere, spreading like broken glass.
The whole strike played out in slow motion between the two gigantic enemies. As the cracks grew along the sphere, the Mother began to sink back into the water and they could see the ocean rushing into the Mother, as if a canyon had just opened up under the ocean.
“Look,” Uli pointed out.
Water was starting to pour out of the sphere. The Mother was pumping the ocean into the sphere at an incredibly high pressure, destroying its internal structure. They watched as a geyser shot out of the top of the largest sphere and then the whole southern side collapsed and the pyramid of spheres came crashing down into the water.
“The Mother has eliminated the threat,” Sentinel informed.
“Yeah,” Kale said, pointing out the obvious. “All I can say is wow. At least I didn’t break a leg this time.”
“Captain, the security measures are finished. The Mother is going back into a rest state.”
The giant security Vahe had sunk back into the water. Kale couldn’t tell if it was moving or not.
“We need to get back to shore and see what the damage is.”
“Captain. I think I have bad news.”
“After all of this, you have bad news?” Kale said, sitting back exhausted into his chair.
“The talking, the data transfer. I have access to it. There is probably years of data to sift through, but the initial reports indicate that this force was just an initial force. I think I heard Gheno once use the term expeditionary force once.”
“Scouts?” Kale asked.
“I believe so.”
“The tip of the iceberg. Then we certainly need to get back.”
“Captain?”
“That bad news wasn’t enough?” Kale growled.
“The spheres. They have a name.”
Kale didn’t respond. He looked over at Uli, who had been completely immersed in the visual of the two titans. She hadn’t understood anything Sentinel had said up to that point.
“Ok?”
“Captain. They call themselves Sentinels,” the AI said. With its much more organic voice it had via the Vahe’s walls, Kale could almost sense a hint of fear or anxiety coming from the AI.
“Come again?”
3127 – Gadoni, In the ruins of the city
“I found him. I'm turning my homing on.”
Kale kneeled down next to a cot and smiled.
“You look like shit.”
Gheno didn’t even smile, b
ut Kale could tell he wanted to. His face was mostly unscathed, except for visibly singed hair along the left side of his head. The burn marks began down his neck and his left arm. He was mostly bandaged up in leathery bandages. The highly adaptable material was everywhere in the Gadoni society.
“You should see the rest of me,” Gheno said quietly.
“Do I really want to?” Kale asked, pointing to his hair. “Looks like you're going to have to cut the rest off since you managed to burn off half of it.”
“Yeah, it was time for a haircut, anyways,” Gheno grumbled.
Kale sat down on the ground next to him.
“I heard you're quite the hero.”
“Lots of heroes today, I think,” Gheno replied. Kale nodded in agreement.
“You going to be ok?” Kale asked.
“Their, I don’t know, their medicine men? They said I would be fine,” Gheno said. “How is Sentinel?”
Kale tried his best to explain to Gheno everything he knew about their AI friend. He continued by telling him all about being picked up on the mountain, the Mothers, the battle and Sentinel’s discovery. Gheno was quiet the whole time.
“Ayia went back to Sentinel early today. He is, I guess you could say, plugged back into that network of his. He seems to have found a way to talk to the Mothers, that security system this planet has and is slowly getting information from them about the black spheres. The news isn’t good. That force that attacked the planet is just a tiny portion of their whole civilization, or army, or whatever it is they are. And they aren’t even really after this planet. Sentinel made it very clear, they want Earth.”
Gheno remained silent, so Kale continued.
“I’ve passed this information through to the Alliance soldier types, of course, keeping the source a secret. As far as they know, one of the Threadweavers found it out. After this battle, they believe anything is possible with these people. It seems they want to bug out of here as soon as possible and get back to Alioth and warn humanity of the pending invasion. If after all these years of trying to find Gadoni, they are now able to do it, it’s probably just a matter of time before they find the wormholes back to our part of the galaxy, or universe. Wherever we are. We should take the opportunity to get out of here too, but, I'm not sure how long you’ll be out of it.”
“I'm not out of it.”
“You know what I mean, Gheno,” Kale reassured.
Gheno frowned a bit, then looked past Kale. The Captain spun around just as Ayia approached them. He stood up and waved down towards Gheno. Ayia ran up, dropped down on her knees and tried to give Gheno a hug, one that he painfully rejected. Ayia was laughing and crying at the same time. The whole park area had been transformed into a treatment center. Tents had been set up all over and the medicine men, their doctors, were running back and forth between the wounded.
It hadn’t taken Kale long to find out where Gheno was. Word of his actions, and of the small band of Gadoni warriors, had spread throughout the devastated city. Now here, he could still see the transport and the crate fort he had built to fend off the centaurs. He put a hand on Ayia’s shoulder, and when she turned and nodded, he walked off.
“Karai, are you unloading the package?” he asked into his wrist com.
She replied she was. As Kale approached the transport, he saw a line of Gadoni men and woman forming a moving assembly line. About thirty men and woman were handing the small components down the line towards one of the spider Vahe. They were removing the AI cores from the transport. Cove was safely within the cores and these would be transported to Sentinel. He planned to integrate them somehow. Once removed, the transport was going to fly back with the Galaxy fleet. Karai would be in the transport.
As would be Cruxe.
Kale seethed a bit when he saw the young man, standing under the cargo bay doors, directing traffic. His shoulder was bandaged, but he seemed ok. He had heard from Ayia of his actions on board of the Galaxy. Kale still didn’t trust him, but had afforded him the trust of taking the transport. In either case, Kale would not fly the transport again.
Cruxe caught Kale’s gaze and nodded. Kale ignored him and turned to find Karai. She walked out of the side hatch and came over to Kale. He handed her a small package.
“You know what to tell Oganno?” he asked.
“I do,” she replied, tucking the package away in her jacket pocket.
“Good. Be ready to go soon. Alliance ships are planning to leave tomorrow, just as soon as they get their Alliance meeting over.”
Ayia and Kale sat together on logs that had been hastily made into benches. Hundreds of these benches had been setup to form an amphitheater of sorts, directly in front of the towers and on down the ridge where some of the fiercest fighting had taken place. In the plaza ahead of them, the Gadoni had cleared away all the debris from the battle. The trees would take many years to grow again after the devastation the small section of ground had suffered, but for the moment, the clear and bright skies served as a reminder of the events. Thousands of Gadoni had taken time off from cleaning up to come see the Alliance ceremony between the Admiral of the Alliance ship, and the Tribal Elders of the city. Among them were representatives from all over the planet, many who had sent thousands of their warriors to die in defense of the city.
Kale couldn’t hear what the Admiral or the Elders were saying, but he knew what the basis of the ceremony was about. Marcus was offering the Gadoni entrance into their Alliance, as an equal member. It was mostly a ceremonious alliance, as they still didn’t know where Gadoni was in respect to the rest of Alliance space, but Alioth never took its treaties lightly. A Gadoni Elder was actually going to travel with the Galaxy to become part of the Council back on Alioth.
“We’re going to need their help to fight the spheres,” Ayia mentioned.
“We’re going to need a lot of help, when all is said and done.”
“Did Gheno say anything about the Sentinel name?”
“No, but I'm going to let him stew on it. He will figure it out. I don’t like the coincidence.” Kale sat back on the bench. He looked around, but didn’t see Uli anywhere. She had been gone since they had left Sentinel. She said she needed to speak to the rest of the Threadweavers.
“Just over three years ago, we woke up a Sentinel. That Sentinel made another one, and now, a whole lot of them want Earth. No chance that’s a coincidence. You think Deespa has anything to do with this?” Ayia asked.
“Maybe. I don’t know. When Gheno is ready, we head back, too, and start to figure it all out.”
“You sure you want to go back?” Ayia asked. She knew who he was looking for.
Kale turned and smiled at her. “I have my ship now.”
Ayia nodded and turned away. “You know they are calling Gheno the Ghost Walker?”
“Better that way. No one needs to find out about the AIs, either of them.”
Kale flinched when his earpiece squealed in a high pitch.
“We’re gonna have to work on that,” he said, rubbing his ear. Sentinel had no communications integrated into his Vahe circuitry. The AI was still working on that problem. So instead, they had left an open com device stuck on the Captain’s chair. All Sentinel had to do was speak out loud and Kale would hear him.
“You should leave now. The shuttles are leaving the planet and the Galaxy is moving back into orbit. They will be leaving soon.”
Kale stood up and looked back at Ayia. “You coming with me?”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
As they shuffled out through the crowd, Kale looked down at the Admiral and the Elders. They were presenting him with their communication stones, which they hoped, would allow them to talk over the expanse of space once the Galaxy was back in Alioth. The science of those stones would be studied in hopes of a communications breakthrough that would revolutionize mankind yet again. If they survived the black spheres.
Kale reached into his pocket and felt his stone. He was tempted to use it, but left
it in the pocket.
3127 – Gadoni System, eight AU from Gadoni.
“All systems linked. Alamo and Indigo linked to the Galaxy. Inform the Vahe the wormhole is ahead.”
Kale smiled. Ayia had officially transferred ownership of the lion transport to Karai, and the first thing she had done was rename it to the Alamo. It was a fitting name.
Three of the Gadoni large space Vahe had come along to provide an escort for the still badly damaged Galaxy. They would jump into the Binary system where the Galaxy had assured them they could locate the wormhole back to Alliance space. It was the Eel, the Squid, as Ayia had named them, and now what resembled a spiral fish from Alioth’s oceans. Sentinel had also compared it to the star fish of Earth’s ocean, the kind with many thin arms. The Gadoni explained that this particular vessel was their carrier. It carried nearly one hundred of the smaller one man spacecraft.
Sentinel was on board the Eel, docked in their hangar, the same hangar they had first met their new allies. Sentinel had insisted on coming along. He had mentioned that he could network with the Vahe now, and provide them with intel, without the Gadoni knowing about it. It would make them a better fighting machine. Kale just wanted to be where Uli was.
He had seen her board the Eel and watched from the now fully formed windshield as she exited from a smaller Vahe craft. She was dressed in long black robes and was wearing some kind of black crown. She was followed by a whole procession of men and women, similarly dressed. They all carried a large black oval. They had gathered in front of some of the Elders that were also on board of the ship. They spoke to her, but she looked up at the ship. Kale felt the urge to run out and talk to her, but he knew that she was in the middle of some great ritual.
“All linked. Vahe confirm the wormhole ahead. Begin moving.” The chatter was from the Indigo.
In space, the Galaxy flew across a seemingly empty portion of space and vanished. The corvette, with visible battle damage on it, and the tiny Alamo, vanished right next to it. The three Vahe followed next, and disappeared.
The Lost Tribe (Sentinel Series Book 2) Page 36