The Emperor's Daughter (Sentinel Series Book 1)

by Richard Flunker

  Deespa glanced down at something. “Some damage, nothing serious at all. Kale,” she continued after a pause, “we weren’t counting on having to deal with those two ships.”

  Kale noticed how she had said ‘we’ when she referred to the Harmoa.

  “Yeah, I know. I am grateful for…” Kale began before being interrupted by Sentinel.

  “Captain, another ship coming out of a hook.”

  “Great, now what.”

  Kale turned the ship around just as a very small ship, well out of their sight, flashed through its own hook hole in space. Kale squinted, knowing the ship was too far for him to see clearly. Realization flooded his mind as his eyes opened wide and he looked down at his screen.

  “Sentinel?” He barked.

  “It is the Scythe. Far earlier than expected.”

  Deespa chimed in through the open video link. “Kale, we are out of position. I'm being told our tractor can’t reach them.”

  The tiny speck dodged the wreckage of the destroyed Crusader ship. It flew around it, going further away from the Harmoa. Kale set a locking course to follow the Scythe ship. His mind was reeling with ideas on just how to get to the ship and disable it without harming anyone when it vanished from his sight.

  “It just slung out of here Kale,” Gheno shouted from his chair.

  “Yeah, I saw that. Sentinel, get me a reading on where it’s going as fast as you can,” he ordered.

  “I can do that captain, but, there is really only one place in this system for it to go.”

  There was only one planet with any kind of human presence. It was Oxaoca, the planet owned by the lawyers.

  “Get the sling ready, point us there,” he ordered the AI, then he spoke to Deespa, “I have to go after her. I understand if you need to go.”

  Deespa was looking off screen when Kale talked. “Not a chance. We are already preparing sling to the planet. The six Corinthian ships will be there waiting for us, but that will give us nearly a full day to do repairs to the ship. Let us jump before you do so that we can be your spear.”

  “Are you sure about this?” Kale wanted her help desperately, but knew the odds were against them, “That’s six ships against your one.”

  “I have a few tricks of my own as well. Just ask Sentinel.”

  “Yeah, I'm sure it knows,” Kale took a deep breath, “alright kid, Deespa, thank you.”

  “You saved me, let me help save her.” She smiled into the screen and then it went blank.

  “Ok, when the Harmoa slings, wait ten minutes and then follow,” Kale said, slumping back into his chair, “and restore life support to the rest of the ship. We need some rest.”

  “What now?” Gheno asked.

  “We have a day to figure that out.”

  3124 – Oxaoca System, In a sling towards the planet Oxaoca

  Kale was jolted awake and instantly, and whatever he was dreaming of vanished from his memory. He sat up, a bit dizzy, and rubbed his eyes. Gheno looked up with some noodles hanging from his mouth. Steam was rising from the small bowl.

  “How long have I been out?” Kale asked. He tried to stand up, then sat back down again, “And why am I so dizzy?”

  “I'm guessing tired, or hungry,” Gheno replied, “I know I barely noticed, but we have been going full tilt for many days now, barely sleeping or eating. Then we ate like kings on the Harmoa, and then back to the insanity of this pursuit.”

  “Yeah, insanity. I'm really sorry about all of this.”

  “I’d like to blame you, but I don’t think much of it is your fault. Have you realized we all apologize a lot?”

  “Have you slept any?” Kale said, ignoring his comment.

  “No, but I'm going to in a bit.”

  “So how long was I out?”

  “A few hours. We’re still twenty or so hours out from the planet. Hey, come check what I dug up.”

  Gheno slid his tablet over to the other side of the table. Kale stood up slowly, and walked over to the table, nearly collapsing on the small stool. The large cylinder that had held Deespa in deep sleep for so many years still took up most of the space in the ‘Hall’. Kale sat down and took the tablet.

  “What am I looking at here?”

  “Ok, so I started some digging with Sentinel’s help. We’re trying to link Ayia’s kidnapping to all of this. I mean, the Crusaders showing up makes sense. They want their God and that other guy who you said was Ayia’s kind of ex-boyfriend. And the Dominion clearly has something in all of this with Deespa, but why would someone want Ayia?”

  Kale shook his head. He certainly didn’t know.

  “So you said the planet was, is, owned by the law group that is supposedly helping Ayia through her inheritance stuff. So I looked them up, and you're right. They have far more wealth in their name than we can possibly imagine. So if they don’t want her money, what else valuable would she have?”

  Kale continued to look at Gheno without an answer. “Just keep talking kid because I don’t know a damn thing here.”

  “Ok. We looked up her inheritance. Now she gets her father’s immediate wealth, and that’s no small amount of change. But she also gets her share of the corporation. Now, with the revolt on their planet, the corporation is mostly defunct. She could probably try to restart it, but that’s nothing until it does. Plus she would have to get the backing of all the original owners and who knows what they will do. What she does have though are access to all of the databanks the corporation had. I mean, I guess the vast majority of it, like ninety nine point nine nine nine percent of it is just numbers, finances, memos, pointless things like that. But, this is a corporation that invested in many other small companies.”

  Gheno stopped, waiting for Kale. Kale just waved his hand in a circle, urging him to continue.

  “Ok, we dug up anything that could somehow tie them to either the Crusaders or the Dominion and get this: a portion of their engineering actually subcontracted in building the Magyo, like, a hundred years ago. They were part of the job because of their expertise in deep space exploration. Apparently, the Dominar had always planned for those large ships to serve as deep space explorers. They just happened to make great war ships as well.

  Now, that’s not the key thing here. That same engineering department also ran its own line of deep space exploration technology and production. They worked on ships and hook technology, but their greatest area of work was hook piercing communications. And before you ask, it’s basically using the hook technology to send communications, you know, over vast distances.”

  “I'm still not seeing anything here,” Kale added.

  “Well, the Crusaders jumped all over that, demanded the purchase of the technology. This again, was quite some time ago. I can’t find anything to show that they did or didn’t. The Church started preaching that this tool would be used to communicate with God, you know, aliens.”

  Gheno waited.

  “So aliens?” Kale asked. He was feeling even dizzier and tired than before, “Ok kid, wrap this up. I don’t have a clue.”

  “What if that engineering group actually discovered proof of alien life? And now, the Corinthians somehow discovered this, but need Ayia, somehow.”

  “Really? Aliens?” Kale wasn’t sure Gheno was too tired himself.

  “That kind of information would be insanely valuable.”

  “It really would, especially since it isn’t possible. Listen, we, you and me, mankind, we have been out here among the stars now for almost a thousand years. We’re alone. For whatever reason, it’s just us out here. In a thousand years we would have found something, seen something, or heard something on a radio wave from somewhere. There are no aliens.

  Now, that theory aside, I do like your thinking. They found something and need her to access it. Maybe a DNA lock, or a memory lock. I’ve seen those before.”

  “I think it’s aliens,” Gheno added, defeated.

  “You would.” He began to get up out of the chair, handing the tablet back t
o Gheno.

  “There’s another thing. The weapon Sentinel had the Dominion guys install? Without them knowing what it was?” Gheno began.

  Kale stopped and turned to face the boy. “Yeah?”

  “It’s, well, some kind of, gravity gun.”

  Kale looked directly into Gheno’s eyes. “Yeah, you're not joking. You said a gravity gun?”

  “Yeah, but I'm not sure how it works?”

  “Sentinel? Care to explain,” Kale asked the AI.

  “I’d be delighted to captain. It may take a few hours though.”

  “I thought so. Aliens and gravity guns. I don’t think I woke up and this is the crazy, makes no sense, dream I think I forgot when I woke up. Now, I'm getting some food and going back to sleep. I'm going to need it because we’re speeding towards reality.”

  The next time Kale woke up, he woke up calmly and slowly. He sat down in his pilot’s seat and reclined it and slept there. It was something he had done hundreds of times over, and was completely comfortable with it. He checked the time and saw that he had slept for ten hours. He had told Sentinel to wake him up after eight hours, but the AI told him they had plenty of time, and that his own body would wake him up when ready. Kale was a bit more amazed by the AI’s sense of adaptability. Any other program, even a complex AI program, would have woken him up without hesitation. Maybe this creature was truly alive.

  With his stomach rumbling, he got up and went back into the ‘Hall’ to find Gheno sprawled out on the couch. One arm dangled down from it, and a blanket half covered him. He was about to look closely to see if he was drooling, but decided against it. It was then that he realized that his sleep took his stress away, and made him forget for that brief moment after waking up, the stress of flying half way across the galaxy to save a friend.

  “It’s funny how sleep works that way,” Kale thought.

  He quietly took a hunk of Alothian cheese. It was derived from the Alothian sea cow; not to be mistaken for Earths ocean mammals. The Alothian sea cow was a strange creature, as any were when compared to Earth. It was fish in appearance, but mammalian in function. It regulated its own body heat, raised its young, was an omnivore, and most importantly for the production of cheese, made milk for its young. The large creature was also rather docile, and was immediately domesticated. It did ok as a meat producer, but its wealth came from its milk. It produced vast amounts of it, and it held the same properties as the milk produced by Earth mammals. Kale could even remember seeing the giant underwater machines that milked them by the thousands.

  They were sweet creatures, he was told, but were no smarter than the Earth cow. Every time he ate a food based off of a non-earth creature or plant, he would remember just how amazed he was at the variety of life in all of the planets that was discovered. And yet, within the depths of his ship was the only other intelligent being found outside of mankind. And to be fair about it, that intelligence came from mankind’s hand.

  Kale took the cheese and a cup of water back to the pilot’s cabin and sat down. He recalled Gheno’s alien explanation. When mankind had finally figured out how to jump between the stars, and even more so with the discovery of actual living animals and plants and everything in between on other planets, there was such a joyous expectation in the exploration. Man was so certain they’d find someone else out there, maybe not like them, but still a people. Laws, religion, culture, language, music, and science, were all of the things that defined a civilization, and man was thirsty to discover them.

  Instead, nothing was found and it was generally agreed upon that man was alone. For most religious groups, this fared well. It still left the vast majority of humans feeling a sense of loneliness, even among the thousands upon billions of humans scattered around hundreds of planets. It didn’t take long for that urge to discover a new civilization to die down and man settled on becoming the main race in the galaxy. But with every new rumor, every new story, or virtuavid that somehow involved the discovery of something, either some old relic, ancient buildings, or mummified remains, there, underneath the human psyche, that excitement bubbled. In the event that ever happened, the individual, or group, that made that actual discovery, would have the wealth, fame, and possibly technology that would follow. It would be something beyond all scales of human imagination. Maybe Gheno’s theory had some weight behind it.

  “Sentinel, what’s going on with the other ships?” Kale asked.

  “The Harmoa remains steady in its sling nearly ten minutes ahead of us towards the planet. The Scythe ship is just a few minutes ahead and the six Corinthian cruisers are nearly back to the planet. I have not picked up any more readings for any other ships. There is a station around the planet, smaller. It appears to be just an ascending and descending station for tugs. When we get closer I can get confirmation.”

  “Can you do that laser trick with the cruisers?”

  “I have tried. They either learned from the Fox interceptors, or just routinely keep their ports closed. Taking over a large cruiser would be far more difficult,” it replied.

  “What are we, six hours out from the planet?”

  “Six hours and twenty three minutes.”

  “Then we have time. Tell me about this gravity gun. And remember, I'm not Gheno.”

  “Very well.”

  Two main screens lit up, taking up the entire windshield. Diagrams began to pour out onto them and Sentinel began to describe his creation to Kale, who mostly just nodded and tried to follow along. He barely picked up any of the scientific explanations, and to his credit, Sentinel kept that portion of it as brief as possible.

  “How many times can we use it?” Kale asked.

  “As many as needed, but it does need to build up energy before each discharge. I could speed that up by using fuel.”

  A green light came on as a communication came in from the Harmoa. They had completed all the repairs they could do without a space dock. There was an additional note in there that they had extended the range of the tractor as well. Kale read it over twice.

  “Sentinel, are you and Deespa one and the same?”

  “Not in the fashion that I believe you are thinking.”

  “But you, came from her?”

  “In some ways she is my mother.”

  “But she is just her female body. You, the original you, are the AI from the deep space probe? And that probe is inside of her?”

  “It is her.”

  “And she knows this?”

  “She does now. She did not at first.”

  “So she knows she is, for lack of a better term, a super computer.”

  “She is no more a computer than you are. But she is aware of her spirit.”

  “Spirit. Interesting term. Are you a spirit?”

  “Are we having this debate again as to whether I'm alive?”

  “Oh, that’s not the debate. I'm not a smart man. Not like Gheno is at least. But I can tell you're a living creature. We can debate what living means at some other point. No, what I'm concerned is if I can trust her.”

  “Do you not trust me?”

  “Hey, no offense, but we just met, and you already own my ship.”

  “So you do not trust me.”

  “I’d like to be honest here. I'm not sure if I do.”

  “Is that because I am not a person you can see? Would you trust me more or less if after years of companionship, I had proven myself?”

  Kale was hard pressed to answer.

  “That’s a hard one. You're right. You're a machine. Living, sure, but a machine. I don’t know if I could.”

  “I think I'm disappointed to hear that, but I understand. Is it easier to trust her because she is a living breathing human being?”

  “A machine inside a human body, though.”

  “No more than you are. Just, wired differently.”

  “I guess…” Kale began.

  “What you're really wondering is if she is evil.”

  “Well, yes. To put it bluntly. Can you tell me th
at since you are her?”

  “I can’t. I come from her, but I am my own being. But if I said that I think Deespa is a generous and kind person, you wouldn’t believe me, because you still see me, a machine, as part of her.”

  “Yeah, you're smarter than me too.”

  “I'm not smarter, just wired differently.”

  “Can we save Ayia?” Kale asked abruptly.

  “By saving Deespa, she saved me. I owe my existence to her. And to you as well. Of course, she is far more likeable than you.”

  “Yeah, I agree with that completely.”

  Kale closed down the screens with the gravity weapon designs on them.

  “Now, we wait.” Kale looked back down to a timer he had going. There were fifty minutes left before they slowed down from the sling. He had to go wake Gheno up. The kid probably would be of no use in the battle, but he wasn’t about to let him sleep through it. It might be their last.

  3124 – Oxaoca System, Orbit over Oxaoca

  “Captain, I have the scope up. The Harmoa just slowed down from the sling,” Sentinel informed them.

  Kale and Gheno sat strapped into their seats. They now had ten minutes before they came into orbit. The scopes were catching the scene from that distance quite clearly. The six Corinthian ships held a staggered top down formation between the Harmoa and the tug station. The Harmoa easily dwarfed the six ships, but the formation nearly equaled her size.

  “She didn’t come in guns blazing?” Gheno asked, watching the vid.

  “I can’t pick anything up here, but my guess is that they are attempting to communicate,” Sentinel informed them.

  Kale squinted at the screen. “Can you see where the Scythe is?”

  “Can’t see it visually yet, but sensors have it headed towards the station.”

  They watched as the Harmoa moved ever slowly towards the formation of ships. They could only imagine what the exchange was between the two forces.

  “Sentinel, can we have the gun charged as soon as we drop into orbit?”

  “Charging now. It should be ready.”