by Tobias Roote
With his objectives achieved, he sat quietly smiling while the meeting finished and drew to a close. His skin itched and his head ached behind his eyes. He would need another transfusion soon. Still, it was worth it, the team working on the Ferrazine had discovered some startling properties that he hadn’t passed upstairs yet. He intended them to be a surprise when the time came.
Osbourne looked at Ferris out the corner of his eye. He wasn’t stupid, only timid. He knew Ferris wasn’t acting above board, he had heard the rumours going around for months now. Ever since Jannson had disappeared, there was something afoot. He needed to get a message out somehow and he had an idea how.
- 23 -
The black smudge of the Shadowship drew swiftly past the thirteenth planet. The sensor display showed it to be mainly land, liquid methane, little atmosphere to speak of. The spore of a Nonnie had drawn them here. A garbled signal, given off by the remains of its antenna, could leak like that.
Arthere hawked aggressively at an underling. The command, which had been directed at the sensor operator, sent the poor creature into panicked reaction. Its Avientel-coloured skin glowed crimson-red in alarm, as it fought with the controls to try and focus on the trail of the Nonnie. It hawked back to the Commander, arching its shoulders in submission, pointing desperately at the display.
The Commander skewed his vision slightly to one side as his beaky features moved to allow it an uninterrupted view of the forward panel. A small circle oscillated in the blackness on the edge of the view screen.
“THERE !” He flung out a clawed hand which extended, seemingly by sinew alone, from the end of his bony arm, the jewelled finger pointing to its intended target.
“Proceed to close with the fugitive,” he commanded.
“Avien Arthere, as you command,” screeched the pilot who set about finely adjusting levers and dials on its control panel.
The vacillating circle moved until it became centred on the screen which began to grow as they gained on it. Flying through the darkness of open space, the Shadowship ate up the distance and was soon within range of the stricken vessel.
It wasn’t much of an affair, the Nonnie ship. Little more than the gathered wreckage from a dozen different ships cobbled together to give sanctuary and transit through space. The unfortunate Nonite, an outcast from a destroyed clan, was not fair game. It carried no weapons, there was little point. You could not defend against a Nubl Shadowship, especially with the hive link, you would be set upon by thousands of Nubl in a matter of minutes.
The Nonnie could be seen sitting in its open cockpit, its upper body and head pockmarked from small meteor strikes. It looked directly into the view-screen, defiant to the last, as it awaited its inevitable obliteration.
Arthere opened a link to his Queen. ‘Avien Oneness, I’m honoured if you will observe the demise of another outcast, so it can be seen that I, Arthere, have yet again cleared our domains of useless garbage from our inferior cousins,’ he thought through the link that was exclusive between his Queen and her clones.
‘Proceed, Arthere, your thoroughness is observed and recorded. Ensure no trace of the Nonite remains to be analysed,’ the Queen whispered to him alone. She, herself, would broadcast the execution to the others.
‘It will be so, my Queen.’
“Proceed with elimination of the Nonite,” Arthere commanded.
Immediately beams of illumination cut through the short distance of space, melting the evading ship piece by piece until all that remained were several molten blobs. Of the Nonite, there was nothing remaining.
The weapons operator changed the settings on one of the dials then pressed a flashing button. A wide red beam blasted through the nose of the Black Shadow. As it hit the remains of the other ship, the blobs of metals and alloys disappeared in an explosive percussion of dust. The beam went out, its job done.
All that remained were a few minute traces, which swirled and dispersed as the Shadowship swept past.
Arthere was pleased. That was the tenth Nonite they had eliminated this voyage. It was not greatness, but the opportunities for greatness were limited unless they discovered a biological sentience that needed eradicating. Then, when he summoned the hive to assist, he would become senior Avien, and ultimately, given her honoured blessing, Avien’Ta, the one closest to his Queen.
He ordered them to proceed to the next solar system and as they prepared for the jump he crooned his pleasure. His small crew flashed with glowing colours of deep blues and greens in response to his vocal approval.
***
The Avien Queen pondered her current predicament while absently tapping her bejewelled claw against her prominent beak. Her eyes, iridescent black and gold diamonds gleaming with inner fire stared off into the distance as her mind travelled. Ignoring the attentions of her inner combine, she allowed her thoughts to seek out the eight hundred thousand drones and, as one, she sensed their mood.
There had been fewer sporting opportunities for her hive of late. As a result, there was increased dissatisfaction among her clones. Athere alone, among them excelled, he would make a good ‘Ta for her, she decided.
She dwelt upon the recent lack of challenges and contemplated the unthinkable : a blood-letting, a war, “a Hasseel !” The word hissed off her tongue before she could halt it. Her clones nearby heard the challenge and their feathers preened in response, their attention now firmly rooted on the emotive mental aura of their Queen.
Her pulse raced at the thought of a Nubl challenge, inadvertently sending a ripple through her hive. She sensed the drones pace quicken in response. The Queen smiled inwardly knowing they would be more productive as a result of that little boost.
Declaring ‘Hasseel’ on another hive was risky. If she continued to do nothing, she would appear weak, and worse, her drones would begin to aggress against each other to relieve their boredom and there would be fatalities. The sickness would grow until her hive weakened, perhaps even destroyed itself. It had always been thus.
Should she do this, it would give added greatness to her hive. The resulting glory would raise her higher than Celnista, but she needed to be careful, there were many hidden alliances between the larger and smaller hives, so choosing the right opponent would be essential to her success.
She would scout out her competitors and see which was the most vulnerable.
The Queen sent out the instruction to her clones to gather news of the other hives, sensing immediately their excitement grow as they realised their Queen lusted after a new challenge. Their renewed enthusiasm infused her with increased well-being.
Hasseel’s were an honourable conflict for both sides. All hives would respect the challenge and watch from the sidelines, hoping to perceive a weakness in either, that could be later exploited by themselves.
***
The new Space Council proved easier to create than Zeke Callaghan expected. Much of the attention that had previously been negatively diverted to policing issues closer to home, with crime and oppression, had left many societies without a strong social focus. Consequently, they were wandering aimlessly looking for motivation.
When announced, the concept of participating in a major expansion into space provoked immediate Space Mania, with many groups all over the world forming to clamour for representation on the Council. It became a major task for Zeke to accomplish anything with his small group. Luckily, as he progressed, he found more and more people prepared to assist him in its development.
He began to call larger and larger meetings until, finally, as the organisation formed around him, he was able to nominate people for roles to manage the work he and Zirkos had begun over five years ago.
Soon he had to split them into two. One to handle the formation of the Council itself, the other to manage the development of a manufacturing industry completely independent of any nation, but bound to all. Bound, in the sense that every country provided workforce, expertise and much of the raw material needed to create the first shipyard.
After much negotiation, a large uninhabited island was rented on the Pacific rim and, as it was an easy matter to arrange the D-field to move everything they required, including levelling of the build areas, work progressed extremely quickly. The design teams were working on new ship layouts, to accommodate a larger crew and scientific research units, within a matter of weeks.
They had decided to build a roving vessel with the ability to defend itself as well as discover new worlds to eventually colonise. It quickly became a very ambitious plan and all of the big nations put themselves firmly behind it.
The individual governments didn’t appear to notice the growing unity between their countries, gradually forming out of a natural desire to work more closely together on the space project. It hadn’t escaped the notice of Zeke or Zirkos. They kept a quiet watch while the important elements began to come together as the planet approached a unified ethos that would make the Space Council an entity whose time had come.
Zeke was pleased when Zirkos allocated Pod permanently to his side. Zirkos had been increasingly looking outward into space with a yearning for his people. He was troubled by the absence of signals from space and Zeke could see that it was troubing him.
He decided to tackle him about it.
“You need to consider making that journey you promised yourself,” Zeke broached the matter head on.
Zirkos sighed. “I am worried. I sense trouble coming and I am torn between staying here and assisting in the development of your Space Council and the ships, and going out looking for the cause of my concerns.”
Zeke understood, but Zirkos wasn’t really with them, his mind was out there and he needed to face up to it.
“If I were to suggest that, having Pod here to support me in all of the work required, and universal coverage of the shields having been virtually accomplished, perhaps now is a good time for you to make that journey, what do you think ?”
Zeke put his hand on his friend’s shoulder and added an incentive. “We really need to know how long we have before we are discovered. You need to do this, my friend, for all of us.”
Zirkos nodded. He reluctantly agreed, the decision was made.
A week later, without any fanfare, only the Fortress people and those governments in the know advised, Zirkos left planet Earth behind and he and Ship began the massive search for his Brethren and by undesired expectation, the Nubl.
***
When Ferris heard the news that the alien and his interfering ship AI had gone walkabout, he fairly chuckled with glee ; it couldn’t have been timed better. The one big problem with his plans had always been the damned alien and that ‘too clever by half’ AI of his. Now, with both of them gone, he had only humans to deal with and no artificial intelligences to worry about.
He could now physically match and even overpower Zeke Callaghan in strength and with his own personal knowledge of the state of the shields and other technology that he had been controlling the development of, meant that his time was almost upon him. If Ferris had been aware of the existence of the pod AI, which was monitoring everything he said and did, he might not have been so pleased with himself.
Impulsively, but with increasing confidence, Ferris reorganised his schedule. He decided to bring his plans forward and thought it just might be possible to get all the pieces in place in time. Pulling out his encrypted cellphone, he called his contact in the Pentagon.
“Schaeff ?”
“Yep.”
“08:00hrs. One week from today.”
“Are we ready ?”
“We will be, Schaeff, we will be,” Ferris assured him.
He rang off. Schaeffer would feed the order into their private cell network, and all the planning they had done and the arrangements put in place over the last nineteen months, would begin to filter down. It would go into operation at zero hour and then Ferris would take charge.
It was a perfect opportunity as they were currently between Presidents, the new one having yet to be sworn in. A power vacuum to all intents. Garner’s two successful terms would soon fade to nothing and his teams in Russia and China would begin their takeover, as soon as he, Ferris, took control of the USA.
Twenty four hours later, orders got put into the grinder, got chewed out and acted upon. The military is a simple beast at heart. When orders are issued, the higher they originate, the less they are questioned. These orders originated near the very top. All concerned responded without question, and followed their orders to the letter. Some knew the real agenda, most didn’t.
So, when the small and highly specialised military units were informed that the operation was top secret, and no information was to leak out to family, friends or other units, they went dark and instituted set protocols, prepared months ago in anticipation of this exercise. As far as they were concerned it was just business as usual.
- 24 -
It was late, the office was quiet and most of the staff were off shift.
Zeke, as usual, worked on through the night. He needed virtually no sleep these days and, with an overloaded schedule, it was necessary to keep on top of things. The ever-present Pod hovered nearby, collating information as it was programmed to do, from all over the world. It used the hover globes, in cloaked mode, as well as the internet and other communication nets because there was so much to do.
Every so often, it would dip and bob as if its concentration was dropping out. It was. It had processor problems again and needed additional Alacite to cope with the extra workload. Now that Ship had gone and taken the residual Alacite out of its reach, Pod was unable to do the necessary upgrading.
The reason it was having concentration issues, however, was more to do with the deep thinking going on in its mind, where it needed considerable processing power that had to be drawn from various sources. Pod was having an issue with what would, in human terms, be classified as an ‘attack of conscience’.
The problem was beginning to consume more and more of its processing power as it tried to resolve the problem it had created for itself. It needed to clear its memory by dumping it before it burned out its processors.
It decided on a strategy to divest itself by passing the issue to the human. Pod considered Zeke to be its Maker so it was a natural thing to do. However, being ‘human’ Pod wasn’t sure how the handshake of the two data systems would work in such an instance. There was no ability to do a data upload. It would have to approach the problem from a different direction, verbally, with speech. This is where part of the problem lay.
It went through the options one last time, seeing no change from the other thousands of permutation tests it had carried out. It chose the optimum time to transfer the problem, the night period when humans were at their quietest.
“Zeke ?”
“Yes, Pod ?”
“Do you like working with me ?”
“Yes, Pod.”
“Good, I’m much better than Ship.”
“Yes, Pod.”
“Are you humouring me, Zeke ?”
“Yes, Pod, I mean, no, of course not.”
“I understand. I do, actually. Ship is far older than I am and it is almost an ‘eight’ according to the Maker, Zirkos.”
“I think you are much higher than a ‘three’, Pod. I find I can communicate with you as easily as I can Ship and your routines don’t seem to be any less efficient.”
“You think so ?”
“Yes, Pod. I do.”
“That’s good to know. Thank you Zeke.”
Zeke thought quietly about that conversation. It was unlike Pod to talk, quite the opposite really. It was an intelligent computer, with some limited ability for conversation, especially since coming into contact with humans and eavesdropping on them, twenty four hours a day for months on end.
Some transfer of mannerisms and speech patterns would inevitably be inherited from daily use. However, the conversation they had just shared was anything but simple. A strange feeling crept up on Zeke. Somethi
ng was spooking him.
“I need to make, what you humans call, a confession, Zeke.”
“Really, Pod ? Do AI’s make confessions ?” Zeke answered with the certainty of something being seriously amiss now.
“No, not really Zeke. I’m not sure why I feel the need, but it’s important.”
“Okay. So why don’t you tell me what’s bothering you, Pod ?”
“I am monitoring communications from the Fortress and other locations around the USA.”
“Yes, that’s in your approved routines, Pod, there’s no problem with that.”
“No, it isn’t. I set up the routine myself when I overheard things relating to you.”
“It must be, Pod, you are a ‘three,’ you would not be able to...” Zeke suddenly realised Pod was right, he hadn’t set up the routine. There was an outside chance Ship had transferred one before leaving. He doubted it.
Zeke pondered on how the routine could have been initiated. Pod must have done it on its own, some other set routine must have prompted it or allowed it to meet certain conditions and activate. Still, Zeke knew Pod was having data handling problems, probably logic based. He needed to find out what it was.
“What have you heard, Pod ?”
“Someone is planning to disable the shield systems on some of your cities.”
“WHAT ?” Zeke stood abruptly, walking right up to the hovering AI so he was talking directly at it.
“There is a ‘plot’ against your American government being hatched.”
“What plot ? Where ? When is this going to happen, Pod ?”
“I don’t know what, and I don’t know where, but it’s going to happen at 08:00hrs, in two of your days.”
“Geez, Pod ! That soon ! We don’t have much time to stop it. How much information do you have ? Can we intercept them or pull the plug on their plans ?”