Attack of the Rockoids

by Gene Steinberg

  Despite all of her doubts, Zanther sent a telepathic message ordering her minister to convene a meeting to discuss the final battle plan before the next three hundred timeframes, equivalent to about one Earth month, had passed.

  Her mind returned to thoughts of her dreams, frightening images of the night that conveyed the palpable presence of an outworlder, a human with whom she felt she was in contact, a mysterious sort of contact that existed deep within her subconscious.

  The visions first revealed themselves right after the tragedy at Dorton. Those dreams could hardly be considered nightmares; they were so well detailed, she almost believed they were reflections of reality.

  She tried so hard to suppress those sensations, those vivid dreams, yet as her fleet came ever closer to Earth, they suddenly intensified. At times she’d look around her, feeling that strange human stood right behind her, yet she knew nobody was there.

  Try as she could, she couldn’t banish those dreams from her mind.

  Every single night Zanther would see that human male, the same person over and over again, involved in some strange, savage battle in an alien desert. She was quite sure the dreams were a sign that whoever this human was, he was trying to communicate with her.

  She had a strange passing thought as the dreams intensified. Perhaps this human awaited her on Earth. She tried to look into his soul, but she didn’t know if such a being, even if he existed, was capable of telepathic insights. Her intelligence operatives told her the humans didn’t possess such abilities.

  The remnants of these horribly vivid dreams continued to impinge themselves on her consciousness. Zanther couldn’t keep silent any longer; she decided to speak with her counselor, the High Priest Yexin, about her concerns. She sent Yexin a telepathic summons to come to her throne room; he quickly strolled in a few minutes later.

  The aged minister’s wiry frame belied his great physical and mental strength. He wore the long, dark robes of his rank, but his jaunty gait and ever-present smile seemed to contradict the seriousness of his position and authority.

  The top of his head was completely shaved in the fashion typical of the Rockoid male, and a fringe of thick, ruler-straight gray hair stretched from ear to ear, across the back of his head.

  To him, the young Empress was like a daughter, for he had no family of his own. Yexin was also her late father’s closest friend and confidant. He had dedicated his life to the teachings of the lore passed down by multiple deities that lay at the heart of the Rockoid religion. That, along with the burden of several previous failed marriages, reduced his enthusiasm for mating.

  His already exaggerated grin broadened as he entered her chambers.

  “Good evening, Empress Zanther. How are you feeling?”

  Zanther smiled faintly back. “I can sum it up in one word, my friend: stress.”

  Yexin appeared puzzled as Zanther explained the dreams she had been having in the six Earth years that had passed since the battle of Dorton.

  Yexin remained thoughtful for a moment. “Why have you not told me of this before?”

  “Would you have believed me? I consulted the medical texts, and all they said was the symptoms were accounted for by stress and grief. I accepted both explanations. Yet the dreams persist, and now they grow stronger.”

  “My Empress, that is very strange. How and why these dreams could be appearing in your mind is a puzzle to me. But that is not the problem right now. You face one of the most important decisions of your young life.”

  “Yexin, I must know what is causing these dreams. I cannot let them haunt me or else they could endanger our campaign….”

  “That is the point, Empress. You must not have doubts about this. You must keep uppermost in your mind the fact the Alliance attacked us first. We must seek vengeance, Empress.”

  Zanther tried to remind him, “Yexin, we did not always make war.”

  “They made war on us….”

  “Is there not another way to resolve a conflict—the negotiating table, perhaps?”

  “It is no longer our way.”

  “This human, I sense some of his thoughts; I feel he has a good heart.”

  “To think that way is forbidden; it could be interpreted as treason.”

  “Yexin,” Zanther managed her glorious smile for a second. “I feel it.”

  “It is forbidden…”

  “Perhaps Zeuther would have better served our people as emperor.”

  “Your younger brother is intelligent, crafty, a brilliant soldier. One day he will be ready to lead should Nerval-danai require it, but you are the chosen one, by right, and because there is nobody else in the Rockoid Empire who is better suited for the task.”

  “Oh, come now, Yexin, you do not need to flatter me thus. I love you as I loved my father; you have been with me since I first emerged from my mother’s zanaka….” For a second Zanther couldn’t continue, as tears filled her eyes.

  “I came here by right of succession and nothing more,” she finally managed with difficulty.

  “Zanther, you combine Empress Zounar’s beauty and compassion with Emperor Zikath’s strength and wisdom, and, when you let it show, his sense of humor…” The old High Priest smiled his winning smile once again.

  “Our people are counting on you to execute the war against the Alliance in the most efficient manner possible; they expect you to be merciless, to savor our inevitable victory. I trust that is what you will do. Am I correct?”

  She sighed. “Correct, my dear friend.”

  Yexin smiled. “I will see you soon, Zanther. If you need me…you know I will be here.”

  The Empress smiled back.

  Zanther touched Yexin’s right and left shoulders gently with her open hands, the Rockoid custom for showing affection to a close friend.

  The High Priest bowed slowly, respectfully, and left of the room.

  Zanther felt increasingly tired. The sleepless nights, the concerns over the fateful decisions she must make; they all conspired to keep her in a near-exhausted state, despite the hours of intense meditation. She desperately needed some well-earned rest; she slowly removed her clothes and went into an adjoining room, where she took a quick shower in the huge, cylindrical bathroom. Finally, she put on her colorful but simple evening wear and was soon fast asleep.

  Once Zanther’s mind entered a state of slumber, the mysterious dreams returned, this time more intense than ever, still depicting the strange desert battle. However, the image that remained paramount was, once again, the handsome face of that human. She didn’t want to believe it, but she feared this outworlder was becoming an obsession.

  She was now more certain than ever he was trying to contact her, trying to tell her something.

  Most important of all, she knew in her heart if she didn’t find out what he was trying to say, a terrible tragedy might result…and her intuition was usually never wrong…

  Chapter 7

  Ray didn’t learn about it until later, but while he was unconscious, his body was placed inside a hovercar and the entire party zoomed off to an Alliance military base just outside of Brussels in the country formerly known as Belgium.

  Less than an hour later, the vehicle landed in front of an imposing-looking building, replete with multiple slim, metallic towers with row upon row of huge windows. Ray was carried to a side entrance and whisked away into an elevator, where he was transported to a huge room that very much resembled an operating room.

  Ray was gently placed upon a long white table. A team of men and women in white lab coats attached his limbs to metallic straps and conferred among themselves as to the next course of action.

  “Why the hell did we bring Perkins here?” Gotlieb asked. “Wasn’t the cerebral scanner enough to show he was telling the truth?”

  “As I explained to y’all before, those scanners only give us part of the story, ” explained Dr. Johnson. “We are field-testing a new generation of holographic mind probes in this laboratory.”

  Gotlieb sta
red in amazement, but said nothing.

  “These holographic probes can actually replay what the mind experiences,” Johnson went on. “That way we can observe precisely what Ray has seen and felt. Otherwise, we’ll never know what’s true and what isn’t about this fellow’s background.”

  Gotlieb took a long, skeptical look at the huge lenses poised at the ceiling of the laboratory.

  “You sure these lasers won’t mess with his brain?” he asked.

  “Of course not. As long as the lasers aren’t kept on for too long, we can scan Ray for several hours with no damage at all,” replied Dr. Johnson. He smiled in his usual twisted, craggy fashion.

  Gotlieb glared at him, never feeling comfortable in Johnson’s presence. Too many things had happened in the past, when he was still serving under Johnson in the Alliance’s military forces, things he was loath to forget.

  Johnson pressed a few buttons on a touchscreen, turned a few handles, and pulled down a few switches, after which a hole opened up on the right side of the table. From this opening emerged a thin, oval-shaped device that was so tiny it could not even be seen with the human eye unless one was looking right at it. The device slid into Ray’s right ear and disappeared.

  “This probe will scan his brain and retrieve the information from his memories, which will be translated on the viewscreen in a form we can understand—images and sounds. Even though the probe will pass through his ears and brain, there shouldn’t be any danger to his health unless he wakes up. Of course if he wakes, the probe would threaten his life. If he survived, he’d probably suffer serious brain damage,” explained Johnson.

  “Dr. Johnson, are you sure there isn’t some other way to do this? I mean, I know you’ve done this before, but I don’t want this guy to get killed here!” protested Gotlieb in an increasingly worried fashion.

  As much as he detested Johnson personally, Gotlieb never hesitated to look in wonder at the man’s accomplishments. For years, Johnson had been a top commander in the Alliance military forces. On the side, almost as a hobby, he’d also managed to become a well-known scientist who devoted his attention to all sorts of cutting-edge technology. Although he continued to hold a military rank, he preferred to be referred to as head of the Alliance’s military research division.

  Johnson quickly assuaged Gotlieb’s worries. “Don’t you worry David; there is a ninety-nine percent chance he won’t wake up during the scan.”

  “What about the other one percent?” sneered Gotlieb.

  “Don’t be sarcastic! If he starts to wake up, we’ll know it. There will be plenty of time to render him unconscious again. Now let me continue with this operation. I don’t want this fellow harmed any more than you do, David. Y’all just gonna have to trust me!” Johnson shouted.

  “All right, all right! Please continue.”

  Trust, sure. Why should I trust you, you old bastard?

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Dr. Johnson announced to the machine, “Engage, function B2, security scan Delta.”

  There were a few blinking lights on the instrument panel, as the computer verified Dr. Johnson’s voice scan. A soft female voice intoned, “Request acknowledged.”

  Ray remained unconscious and passive as the experiment began.

  “The probe should reach the center of his brain in one to two minutes!” exclaimed Johnson excitedly. One would have been surprised to learn that the scientist had run this process on hundreds of patients over the years, yet never ceased to be amazed at the sort of information the scan extracted from a human’s brain.

  The scanning machine, in its original form, was not a product of Earth technology. It had been developed centuries ago by a humanoid race in the far reaches of the galaxy, and the technology had spread through a number of different cultures.

  Exactly a minute after the probe entered Ray’s ear, a three-dimensional image of his memories began appearing on the large viewscreen at the rear of the room. Dr. Johnson studied the data carefully, rapt attention on every detail. He pressed a few buttons to navigate through the thought display, in a fashion hardly different than one might navigate from one page to another in a document on a computer.

  “Oh my God! I’ve never seen anything like this! You should see this, David! It’s just amazing!” exclaimed Johnson, for once sounding almost friendly towards Gotlieb.

  Gotlieb looked over at the screen. His eyes opened wide in astonishment when he saw the audio and visual representation of Ray’s thoughts.

  It seemed as if they had journeyed to Earth’s past. Johnson scanned through the images being retrieved, and he saw ancient ground vehicles, primitive air carriers, and homes and large buildings made from wood, brick and mortar. The scenes that unfolded before them, with pictures and sounds, were so real, they could almost feel they were party to the events. The multi-dimensional images seemed to dance in front of the screen. The sounds displayed an incredible level of detail, way beyond what contemporary audio systems could produce in a movie theater.

  Johnson’s attention remained rapt, unwavering, as he examined what Ray saw in his dreams about the battle between the Alliance and the Rockoids.

  The huge Rockoid cruisers and the relatively small Alliance warships fired multicolored beams in every single direction, sometimes even hitting “friendlies.” They were even more astonished to hear the loud thunder of huge engines speeding through space. The effect was particularly troubling because everyone knew sounds couldn’t be heard in space. Was it a construct of Ray’s subconscious mind? Most likely, but it was indeed a strange effect, adding to the enigma unfolding before Johnson and Gotlieb.

  The conflict continued, lasers flying in every direction, fighters desperately scrambling to avoid destruction by a barrage of firepower coming from either the huge Rockoid ships or the Alliance cruisers.

  The battle continued for several minutes. Suddenly one of the Rockoid cruisers, which had been under fire for quite some time, exploded, blowing debris in several different directions. The force of the explosion created sufficient momentum to knock the other two Rockoid warships off course.

  While three of the Alliance cruisers chased after the retreating Rockoid warships, the rest stayed behind and began bombarding the surface. As city after city was vaporized, Johnson swore he could hear the screams of millions of dying Rockoids, sending a chill right up his spine. Worse, the troubling implications of how this battle started were simply impossible to believe. Johnson struggled to dismiss what he saw as a fabrication of the mind of Ray Perkins, but nevertheless he had his doubts.

  “Speak of this to nobody, Captain Gotlieb.” he ordered without allowing time for a response. “It contradicts everything we know about the incident at Dorton. It can’t be true. His unconscious mind is obviously creating this impossible spin on the conflict…Just remember what you learned at the academy. Bury an unacceptable theory until you have further evidence, unless it is critical to the survival of the Alliance.”

  Gotlieb nodded, his own doubts far more difficult to assuage. He stared, motionless, stunned, disbelief filling his tear-stained eyes. He wanted to cover his eyes and ears, stop the flow of such treasonous images, yet they were too compelling, too real to dismiss out of hand.

  Soon those awful death cries become unbearable and Johnson found it almost impossible to continue the brain scan, when the gorgeous face and body of that Rockoid woman appeared on the screen, hovering almost motionless in space. She was even more beautiful than Ray had described. The very sight of her violet eyes and exquisite form kept Gotlieb and Johnson glued to the screen for a long, silent moment.

  The Rockoid female’s face bore an almost content expression before an expression of deep anguish took control. Her mouth started to open wide, tears flowing down her cheeks, and…everything went black.

  Johnson felt deeply troubled by what he saw, even though he forced himself to ignore the implications of some of those battle scenes. For three decades, since the end of the last horrible conflict with the shark-lik
e Jintorian race, the people of the Alliance had lived in peace. That tragic conflict surely soured the desire of humanity and its allies to fight new wars.

  The five long, painful years of the Jintorian War left dozens of worlds in complete devastation, and others in economic and social disarray. A number of planets had still not recovered; the war’s effects lingered for decades.

  When the bitter end of the war came at last, the Alliance’s painful journey to peace and prosperity seemed to have reached its fitful climax.

  As a decorated veteran of the war, which claimed the lives of his father and many of his friends, Johnson experienced first-hand the conflict’s awful aftermath. It cemented his cold-hearted attitude toward his military obligations.

  It was that attitude that also made him dislike some of the young recruits from what he considered “privileged backgrounds” who later came under his command. He especially resented a young hotshot ensign, a recent graduate from the Alliance academy, by the name of David Gotlieb.

  His thoughts returned to the present, and Johnson announced to the computer, “Experiment ended.”

  The computer’s voice responded, “Request acknowledged.” The beams slowly diminished in intensity, and soon vanished. Ray continued to sleep, a restless, fitful sleep.

  Gotlieb looked skeptically at Johnson. “All right, sir. You can’t hide anything from me any longer. You told me this battle was an ‘isolated’ incident resulting in relatively few causalities for both sides. What we’ve just seen from Perkins’ dream totally contradicts what you said.”

  Johnson smiled a lame smile. “Okay, David, I suppose you might as well know the truth.”

  Gotlieb frowned at the old scientist, but waited patiently for his explanation.

  The scientist sighed. “I know you’re probably going to be upset when I tell ya this, David, but this wasn’t just some isolated incident. Based on the reports from the Alliance ships present at the battle and the intensity of the firepower they were delivering, it seems entirely possible we inflicted as many as ten million causalities on the Rockoids in a matter of hours…the actual figure may be even more than that, but we never confirmed an exact total….”