“Well, Mizuki-chan, I'm a bold kinda guy.” He looked at Beth and Billy Ray. Both nodded.
Bobby turned and stepped forward—and passed through the solid metal wall.
“I've lost signal from his suit,” Mizuki said.
An armor encased arm extruded itself from the metal wall and beckoned them to follow.
“In for a penny, in for a pound,” Beth said. She too walked through the wall.
Mizuki and Billy Ray looked at each other, shrugged and followed their partners.
Chapter 38
Tanzania, Africa, circa 3.8 Million BC
A warm yellow sun shined brightly in a cloudless blue sky. Large pink birds trailing long orange legs flapped unhurriedly overhead while a dozen species of herbivore dotted the grassy plain. On the valley floor, between the wooded hills and the lake, herds of grazing animals often wandered by. Their ranks included huge shovel tusked elephants, wildebeest, rhinos, and a herd of antelope that was making its way to the lake side to drink.
Nearby in the grass, several male hominins secreted themselves in a shallow gully, waiting patiently while others from their tribal band moved into position upwind of the antelope. Most of the grazing beasts were too large for the tribe to handle, but antelope were just right. One of the herd could be brought down if lured into an ambush. That was why the males were hidden in the grass downwind.
Copses of trees littered the plain. Normally the tribe sheltered beneath the shade of those trees during the heat of the day, but today they ventured forth driven by the need for food. Though the tribe's females were skilled at gathering fruits and grain, and also digging for tubers, on occasion they all had a craving for meat. This day, the tribe was fulfilling the first part of their lifestyle as hunter/gatherers.
The primary male of the tribe was taller than most, but still quite short compared to a modern human. Not that he looked much like a modern human—jutting jaw, heavy brow, flat nose, with a head housing a brain only a third the sized of a Homo sapiens. His arms were long in proportion but he was not a knuckle walker like chimps and gorillas; his gate was fully bipedal, with legs inline beneath his hips and no opposable big toe. Covered with coarse brown hair, about the size of a half grown human child, anthropologists would label him Australopithecus afarensis.
The leader found himself crouching down in the tall grass, clutching a long stick in his hand. The tip of the stick had been shaved to a point and hardened in a wildfire. With any luck, he would be able to claim a prize with it, assuming the others did their part.
Good. We ready, catch food.
Looking to his right he spotted a smaller, stockier male. Though lacking a word for it, he thought of the smaller male as a friend. The other often backed his leadership of the tribe, happy to be number two—as long as he left the small female the other favored alone. That was a price worth paying, after all he had the dominant female to himself.
Upwind of the herd, the younger males and several of the females descended on the tribe's chosen quarry. The fleet footed antelope were far too fast for them to catch on foot so a more inventive strategy was called for. The appearance of the hominins upwind—both their physical presence and their scent—caused the herd to bolt. Fleeing in well orchestrated panic, the ungulates headed toward the nearest copse of trees, the one directly behind the hidden hunters.
The herd headed straight at the gully the hunters crouched in, their hooves making the ground tremble. The leader could feel them approaching, could smell their panic. He tightened his grip on his spear. He glanced at his friend, who grinned back.
The antelope ran through the hunters' position, bounding over the gully without slowing their headlong flight. With a guttural cry, the leader stood up and rammed his sharpened stick into the stomach of an antelope in mid-jump. It stumbled and fell to the ground, tearing the primitive spear out of the leader's hands.
The leader's friend pounced on the downed animal before it could regain its feet and runoff. The antelope was mortally wounded but that would not prevent it escaping to die later. The friend thrust his weapon into the herbivore's soft underbelly. The other males rushed up to pummel the creature with heavy sticks and rocks.
Running across the field, the rest of the hunting party rushed up to the kill site. Excited hoots and joyous arm waving spread through the hominins as the antelope expired. The tallest of the females stepped forward, pushing the celebrating males back from the carcase. A smaller female, the one favored by the leader's friend, moved forward and crouched next to the kill. In her hand she held a stone that had been knapped to expose a sharp edge.
With the sharp stone the female cut into the dead antelope and started the process of skinning and butchering the quadruped. As the females dressed the kill the males stood around, on the lookout for danger. Both the leader and his number two had recovered their primitive spears. Together they leaned on their weapons and admired the hairy backsides of the females as they bent over the kill.
CIC, Peggy Sue
“Pinnace, Peggy Sue. We have lost all communication and telemetry from the Captain's party. What is your status?” Doc White queried the sailors in the small shuttle. When the four officers entered the cave to search for the T'aafhal artifact, she had come forward to monitor their progress and vital signs from the displays in the CIC.
“Peggy Sue, we lost contact as soon as they passed through that metal wall,” replied PO Jacobs from the surface. “We tried following them with the recon drone but the barrier won't let it in. Not only that, those butterfly things are going crazy, dashing themselves against the wall. It won't pass them either.”
“Roger, Pinnace.” Betty looked at Arin, Gunny Acuna, and the Chief, who were also monitoring the surface mission from the CIC. “What the hell do we do now?”
A familiar voice interrupted the conversation—the ship's computer.
“Chief Engineer Baldursson, an outside entity has penetrated my memory system and effected a data breach.”
“What! What do you mean Peggy Sue? How can an 'outside entity' access your systems?” the Chief Engineer asked the ship's computer.
“Screw how! Can it take over the ship?” the Chief demanded.
“No, Chief Zackly, the systems compromised are isolated from the ship's operation and control circuitry. Only my long-term data storage structures have been accessed.”
“When did this happen?”
“The incursion began concurrently with the loss of communication from the Captain's party.”
“Peggy Sue, is the entity that hacked into your system located on the planet below?” Asked the Gunny.
“That is affirmative, Gunnery Sergeant Acuna. The channel used to access my memory systems appears to be an old T'aafhal protocol. It was able to provide the requisite cyphers and passwords yielding a probability that the intruder is the suspected T'aafhal artifact greater than 99.8 percent.”
“So what information did it get?” asked Arin.
“Evidently, this mechanism functions like a flight recorder on an airliner, only more extensive. It downloaded all of the historical data stored in my memory. That would include data going back to the T'aafhal ship that crashed on Earth. Portions of those data even I have been unable to access.”
“So what happens now?” the Chief asked.
“I do not know, Chief Zackly.”
Tanzania
In the midst of the tribe's hurried butchering a new scent drifted across the plain—cat! The leader spun around, holding his spear in a defensive position. Next to him the smaller male had done the same.
The grassland was home to many species of predator: jackals, wild dogs, hyenas, and big cats. The cats were bad and among the cats lions were the worst—they were dangerous and lazy and hunted in packs. They would much rather relieve some other hunter of its prize than hunt themselves. They were also territorial, different family groups marking off home ranges that outsiders trespassed on at their peril. For this reason the hominins staged their ambush on the
boundary between two different prides.
Unfortunately, there were other big cats that prowled the plain and surrounding forest as solitary hunters. There, moving through the waste high grass was the deep golden, spotted coat of a leopard. Most of the hominins began shrieking and backing away.
Normally, the tribe would have hacked off as much meat as they could carry and fled into the nearby trees, knowing that other meat-eaters would soon show up to claim their kill. This time their luck was bad indeed, with the nearly lion sized spotted cat happening upon them before the butcher work was done.
The leader was incensed. No! Antelope mine!
He growled at the approaching cat.
Looking to the side he saw his friend, also gripping his spear, snarling at the leopard. He snorted at the shorter male, who looked back at him and grinned, displaying his canine teeth. While they lacked the large canines of more primitive hominids, the meaning of the bared dentition was unmistakable.
The leopard snarled, declaring its intention to claim the dead antelope and telling the chattering apes to move along. It slinked forward, confident of its position in the hierarchy of savanna life.
The two friends separated, one moving to either side of the approaching feline. Crouching, their sharpened sticks were held at the cat's eye level. The leopard stopped, perplexed, its tail twitching from side to side—the ape creatures should have fled.
The leopard made a lunge at the taller of the two males confronting it. The leader jumped back and jabbed at the cat with his spear. From the other side, the shorter male lunged and poked the leopard in the flank.
The big cat roared and spun on its attacker, barely missing him with a paw swipe. Before it could press its attack the tall hominin jabbed the frustrated feline in its other flank. Again it spun about to face its tormentor.
That was when the tribe's alpha female ran up behind her mate and tossed a sizable root, striking the leopard on the side of its head. It swatted ineffectually at the root and growled again. Then the smaller female, the one favored by the leader's friend, stepped up beside her mate and threw the rock she had been using to cut up the antelope carcass.
Flung with considerable force, the stone rotated in flight and struck the leopard, sharp side forward, above its right eye. The cat howled.
One by one, the rest of the tribe joined the fray, tossing sticks and stones at the big carnivore, whatever came to hand. Other males joined the leader and his friend, poking at the cat with their spears. Finally the leopard had enough.
The big cat turned and fled through the grass, back the direction it had come from. The tribe broke into a whooping, shrieking, arm waving celebration—they had driven off a dangerous predator and saved their hard won kill.
The leader and his friend stood side by side, their females beside them, and looked out across the grassland. This was something new, something unprecedented. Attacking and driving off the leopard shocked even them.
The world spun. The bright colors of the African plain mixed in a swirling pinwheel that collapsed to a single dot and winked out, leaving only blackness.
Chapter 39
The Artifact
The blackness blossomed with pinpoints of light—sprinkles of color scattered like jewels on black velvet. The components of Alpha Phoenicis appeared, with curved lines arcing through space describing the trajectories of suns and planets. The four explorers found themselves standing on a transparent balcony overlooking a gigantic planetarium. Annotations swam into focus, written in a strange yet familiar script.
“I just had the weirdest hallucination,” said Billy Ray, the first to speak.
“Did it involve being all covered with hair?” asked Bobby, standing to Billy Ray's left.
“And fighting a large cat with sticks and rocks?” asked Mizuki, standing to the far side of Bobby.
“Yep, that's the one.”
“Pardon me, everyone, but I don't remember being starkers when we came in here.”
Billy Ray looked down, then he looked at his wife, standing to his right. His gaze lingered appreciatively on her lithe dark body. “Well, it beats being all hairy and romping around a nature park with a pointy stick.”
“Oh good!” Mizuki exclaimed, looking down at her naked body. “I really didn't like having hairy breasts.”
“Or hairy bottoms,” added Beth.
“Not sure what the purpose of that little drama was but we have obviously found the artifact. If I'm not mistaken, that scribbling is T'aafhal.”
“Indeed it is, dear.”
“They seem to be astronomical coordinates, movement vectors and other information regarding objects in this star system.”
“You're right, Mizuki-chan. Look, there is the remnant of the Fakkaa fleet on its way back home; and there is the Peggy Sue, in orbit around this planet.”
A voice sounded in their heads.
Welcome.
“Y'all hear that?”
“I don't think 'hear' is the proper term, but yes.”
“And just who, or what, are you?” Billy Ray asked.
I am the caretaker of this system.
“I'm Billy Ray Vincent, captain of the Earth starship Peggy Sue.”
I know who you are, Captain Vincent. I downloaded your ship's memory.
“That's a might forward of you.”
It is standard procedure for T'aafhal ships and installations.
“Well, as you might have noticed, we are not T'aafhal.”
Obviously.
“Not the most forthcoming fellow, is he?” Beth said.
Ignoring his wife's rhetorical question, Billy Ray continued. “You have us at a disadvantage. You know who we are, but we don't know who you are.”
I am a non-biological intelligence, created by the T'aafhal and charged with preserving life in this system.
“So what should we call you?”
I have no name.
“Really? We've met a genuine T'aafhal battle cruiser and it had a name.”
Warship intelligences take the name of their vessel. I am not a warship.
“Yer on a planet, why don't you take the name of the planet?”
There was a pause.
Yes, that would probably make your attempts at communication less cumbersome. Call me Formicidae.
“That's what we named the place. Doesn't it have a T'aafhal name?”
No. It has a number.
“Fine. So, Formicidae, you mind telling us what that little field trip to the Serengeti was all about?”
I scanned the records from your ship, which included the records from the M'tak Ka'fek, the ship you found, and from the D'lat Me'tan.
“The what?” Bobby blurted.
The ship that crashed on your planet. The intelligence that created your species, and your companion species, Ursus maritimus. The name translates as 'Glorious Victory'.
“Holly shit,” Billy Ray murmured.
That statement has no informational content.
“It is an expression of surprise,” provided Mizuki. “This ship, the D'lat Me'tan, its records detail the genetic modifications made to force our evolution?”
That is correct Dr. Ogawa. I also scanned your individual genomes.
“I think we are gonna need to have a discussion about the concept of privacy,” Billy Ray commented. Mizuki ignored the Captain's sarcasm.
“And what did you conclude from your examination?”
I conclude that you are the most dangerous species I have ever encountered.
The four humans looked at each other, not knowing exactly how to take that statement. Billy Ray furrowed his brow in thought.
“Let's put that point aside for now and go back to why we found ourselves hunting big game with pointy sticks. It was entertaining as all get out but I still don't understand why you did that to us.”
Even your use of language is dangerous—filled with ambiguity and multiple layers of meaning. You are truly... strange, even for biological entities. But I will endeavo
r to explain what you experienced.
I ran a number of simulations based on the described program of genetic manipulation employed by D'lat Me'tan. That, in combination with your genomes, allowed me to reconstruct a representative history of your emergence as a fully sentient species. To test the final model's veracity I inserted your individual consciousnesses into the simulation.
“OK, and what did that tell you?”
The incident you participated in was a key moment, a tipping point. It was when your ancestors consciously became the apex predator on your world. You used intelligence and cooperation to defeat a more dangerous natural predator. From that instant on, your kind was destined to dominate the planet you lived on.
“Those hairy ape things were our ancestors?” asked Beth.
They were one of the earliest species that your anthropologists would consider a hominin, a close relative if not a direct ancestor of your modern selves. Though they would probably not grant those creatures membership in the genus Homo, they were a stepping stone.
From then onward you spread across your planet like an infection. Eventually you would inhabit almost every ecosystem, from high mountains to the deepest valleys, from frozen wastes to burning deserts, from wind swept plains to sweltering jungles. Being omnivores, there were few edible plants you would not consume and practically no animals you would not hunt.
“Yer makin' us sound like a plague of locusts.”
Worse. All creatures great and small helped feed your growing ranks—not just grazing herbivores but snails, small birds, rodents, and even locust. You hunted the mammoth and mastodon to extinction. Not satisfied dominating the land, your ancestors climbed into primitive wooden ships and went to sea—an environment you are most definitely not adapted to—in order to hunt and slay whales, the largest animals on your planet.
More over, when wild beasts no longer presented a challenge you turned on each other with unprecedented savagery. It is amazing that you did not destroy yourselves. Perhaps you might have if the Dark Lords had not intervened in a failed attempt to do just that.
The Queen's Daemon (T'aafhal Legacy Book 2) Page 30