by Paul Phipps
* * *
Admiral Webster was sitting at the table in the Wardroom of the Lucky waiting for the temporary Crews of Farragut and Rover to return from their brief trip to the moon and talking with the remaining Navy personnel.
“Captain Edgewood, I didn’t get a chance to talk with you earlier. How did you like your experience in the Gym?”
“Admiral, I had a great workout. I never dreamed of the possibilities of Gravity control while exercising. I found that working out under 2.5 G’s to give me a total workout and I didn’t even have to do any weight training. Just amazing…” The Captain said with a hint of wonder to his voice.
“I understand you got a brief familiarization with some of the Standard Marine Armor and personal weaponry. Find anything you liked?”
“The Railgun Pistol and Rifle were amazing. I especially liked the Holographic sights on the rifle. The powered armor did take a little bit to get used to. And the trainer also said that an EVA propulsion package was available.
That made me do some thinking. Do you intend on your marines to work outside of the ships as in boarding actions?”
“While a boarding action is possible, I don’t see it occurring. But with that being said, Why not provide the capability and training to go along with it? Mostly though I see the Marines being able to do Orbit to Ground Drops, either by Dropship or by Individual re-entry pods.”
“And why would you want to do that, sir? Asked Chief Calabrese.
“Because if we ever do get into a situation where the U’Tarn or even a human political unit is causing MAJOR problems to the rest of the Human populace. They will need to be stopped. One of our primary directives is to nurture and protect the Human race. Sometimes that means protecting it from itself.
I spent close to thirty years traveling and learning about the various cultures on Earth. It is my opinion and that of the AI’s of the fleet that there are some very sick societies and cultures on the planet. There are also some very mature cultures that believe in co-existence with those sick cultures. They will catch the sickness in time and be eliminated.
Our goal is to stop that elimination if possible.”
“And how do you intend on doing that, Admiral? Destroy them, kill off the members of those societies, What? Asked Captain Edgewood.
“The best way of doing it is to sequester them and let the infection die out. Those societies for the most part only exist by parasitism off of healthier Societies. Or by internal parasitism. But like all parasites, once they kill off the host they die too. Our goal at that point is to ensure that the spores of the parasite also get eliminated.”
“That’s all fine and good, how do you intend on doing it?”
Admiral Webster just smiled and then said, “By giving them exactly what they asked for. A whole world just for their own culture so that they can’t be contaminated by the others.”
“A whole world? I did attend your initial briefing for Admiral Crane and I do recall that you said there were other Earth’s in Parallel dimensions that had no Humans on them. Are these the ones you are talking about or do you know of other inhabitable worlds in this dimension?” Capt. Eagleton asked.
“That’s a very fair question. Yes to both, we could transport them to either an Alternate Earth or to a different planet in this Universe. We intend to use one of the Unoccupied Earth’s first though. The Gho L’Gamesh will be back in around 500 years to inform us of its findings as far as planets under the control of the U’Tarn in this dimension go.“
“That’s right! I had forgotten about that detail with all of the other things that have been sprung on us by you.”
“And that brings up a question for me, sir. Who or what is the U’Tarn?” asked Chief Calabrese.
“That is the $64,000 question isn’t it.’ The Admiral sighed then. “Ok, here’s the rub, The Gho L’Gamesh was horribly damaged by the U’tarn several hundred thousand years ago. So badly damaged that to ‘save’ what was left of its crew they did Engram recordings before each one of them died due to their life support having been rendered unrepairable in time to save their ‘lives’. These ‘recordings’ then became the initial A.I. crew of the Gho L’Gamesh.
Using a very rudimentary Damage Control system they eventually rebuilt the Gho L’Gamesh. This process took about 20,000 years due to lack of materials and energy resources available to the Hulk. Then they had to travel back to their ‘Earth’ from the location where they had ended up at.
When they did arrive back in the Solar System, well… there was no system left only a sun. All of the Planets, Asteroids, Kuiper Belt, and Oort cloud, everything was gone. There wasn’t anything left to even theorize what had happened.
So there they were in a Solar System that was barren with only them occupying it. What do you think they did?” He finished directing his question at all of the Navy personnel.
“I can imagine only what I would do, I don’t even have an idea of what technology was available to the Gho’Lamesh.” Said Captain Edgewood.
“So what would ‘you’ do?” Asked Admiral Webster with curiosity in his voice.
“Did they have the rapid transit capability you mentioned yesterday?”
“Yes, they did.”
“I would have used it to travel to a star far enough out but not in a position to have any occlusions between it and the Solar System and construct a large enough Telescope system to enable them to watch the Solar System in enough detail to see what happened during the time of their absence to the time of the disappearance of the planets.” Captain Edgewood explained with some enthusiasm.
“I like the idea, but that’s not what they did. You see, due to the battle damage and the need to have memory space to record all of the crew’s Engrams they purged most of their computer storage that also had the history of their people and the information that they had about the U’Tarn. So they were literally clueless about what had happened in the past. So the ‘crew’ started to examine their own personal memories. Those that made it through the recording process in any case.
What they found was an obscure reference to an early planetary probe that had left the Solar System.”
“You mean like the Voyager probe?” Asked Chief Calabrese
“Yes! Exactly like the Voyager Probe. It took several thousand more years to find it. But it was found. And it contained a treasure trove of data about their lost history and their people. But still nothing about the U’Tarn since they had occurred after the launch of the probe.”
“Ok, so when did they start exploring the alternate universes?” asked Capt. Eagleton.
“Now that was a fortuitous accident…” The Admiral paused, “It appears that Rover and Farragut have returned. Let us wait until Captain Johansson and Lieutenant Harrison and their crews join us.”
A few minutes later Capt. Johansson and his crew came through the Trans-Portal and then Lt. Harrison and his crew came through almost immediately thereafter. Admiral Webster put down his cup of tea and stood up to greet them.
“Good to have you back Gentlemen. I trust you had an enlightening time?” he said with a broad smile.
“Oh yes.” said Lt. Harrison in a reverent tone of voice. “I just got to walk on the Moon, I mean I always daydreamed about it as a kid. But I never expected it to come true.”
“I am glad to hear that we were able to make that dream come true for you. And you, Capt. Johansson?”
“I’m in love… Flying in Farragut… Words just don’t come to me right now.” He sat down and looked up at the ceiling. “I love to fly, flying an F-35N is exciting and demanding. But it doesn’t compare.” He paused again. “We flew so fast that we made it to the moon in less than fifteen minutes, fifteen minutes, it took the Apollo Capsules at least three days to get there. And Farragut said we could get to Mars in less than two hours including a turn around to slow down.”
Admiral Webster also sat down and finished drinking his tea as the men talked back and forth amongst themselves about their
experiences. He found himself reliving his own feelings of wonder about when he and Seeker and had met and the amazement of all the things she could do and how the universe opened up before his eyes. And then, there came purpose, ’I suppose that all blessings carry responsibilities too’, he thought.
“Now that you have been brought up to date about your various experiences today let me continue with my tale of the history preceding the creation of the Terran Space Navy”
He then gave a brief recap so that everyone was on the same page. “The discovery on how to travel to and explore the alternate universes came as an accident. The Gho L’Gamesh was going to make a ‘jump’ through a temporary wormhole they created for the purpose. Their destination was the star we call Delta Pavonis.
One of the Gravity Drive Generators developed a very high frequency fluctuation just before the jump. This caused a perturbation in the wormhole that caused the terminus to be in the same spatial location they started from but in a different dimension, an alternate universe that is. One that fortuitously enough, still had all of the material that had gone missing in their ‘home universe’.
The Gho L’Gamesh was in what we call a ‘state of shock’ over what had happened and it spent a very, very long time analyzing the event. In the meantime it had detailed to its sub-AI’s the task of exploring the solar system it found itself into. The method used was a very primitive forerunner of the modern IGD. Once it was discovered that the Earth of that Analogue was also rendered lifeless but in most respects still whole, the investigation into what occurred went into high gear. In the ruins of that Earth were records of an enemy called the U’tarn.
Now you have to remember that in the effort to try and save some semblance of the Gho L’Gamesh’s original crew all of the memory storage was purged of non-essential data. So the Gho L’Gamesh lost all of its records concerning the enemy it had been fighting when it was nearly destroyed. And much of the knowledge in the Engrams of the crew was unusable because of the trauma loops in the recordings that had to be edited out to form a sane A.I. from each of the Engrams.
In any case, that Analogues Earth’s enemy, the U’Tarn became the generic name of the Destroying Enemy. This version of the U’Tarn appear to have been a race of space traveling insects. On a side note you should have seen Seeker’s shock when she read Starship Troopers. I had to explain to her that it was just Science Fiction. She on the other hand thinks that the Author, Robert Heinlein, somehow tapped into a memory of the actual events that occurred in that Analogue.
She showed me some of the recordings of the wreckage that they found on the Moon and on Mars. I have to say that she might just have a point.” He stopped and scratched his scalp for a minute then looked pensively at the wall, and then said somberly. “Lucky, please show an excerpt of the moon wreckage and that of the Earth in Analogue E00002.”
Lucky was silent as he projected a portion of the Holographic records that Admiral Webster had requested.
Commander McAndrews/Seeker/Comspeech Mode: Admiral Webster, I think this is of significance to Admiral Crane and Captain Welles and his crew. With your concurrence I will provide them access through their ship’s video system of your briefing to our visitor’s.
Admiral Webster/Comspeech Mode: An excellent suggestion and I won’t have to do this over again for them either. A true time saver. LOL
Commander McAndrews/Seeker/Comspeech Mode: I’ll make the offer immediately.
After fifteen minutes of showing ships and spacesuited bodies lying in disarray on the two Planetary bodies. There were also images of the Aliens everywhere, they looked just like Giant Insects that would have been at home in the Jungles of Earth only these were much larger and were obviously of a high technological bent from the equipment found with them.
The Earth itself was barren with only a small portion of water located at what might have been the deep ocean rifts. The exposed portion looked like it had literally been eaten and all of the valuable minerals were gone.
Finally Captain Johansson said, “I think I have seen enough for now. And they found this scene when they went from Analogue to Analogue?”
“Well… Yes and No, These particular aliens have shown up a number of time. There has also been a race I call the Harvesters. The Gho L’Gamesh used the generic term U’Tarn for them too. The Harvesters would just bombard a planet with a Nano-machine swarm that literally would disassemble everything and pile the resulting elements into discreet piles for harvesting. 905
Seeker and I have come to a hypothesis that the Harvesters aren’t intelligent as you or I would determine. We think that they are literally a Harvesting mechanism for another race somewhere out there amongst the stars that have used up all of their own system’s resources. We also think that the Harvesters consumed Gho L’Gamesh’s home system.”
“Are these the enemies the Terran Space Navy was created to defend against? Asked Chief Hartman.
“Yes Chief, them and others. But the primary enemy of the Human race is really itself.” Admiral Webster said sadly. “The most common cause of the Human race’s extinction in the various Analogue Universes has been itself. Rarely through Bio-Warfare, more often though it has been Nuclear Annihilation, several times however it was through a religious order like an Islamic Fatwa.”
“So what do you intend to do about the tendency for self-destruction?” Asked Chief Calabrese.
“As I said in the beginning of this conversation. We will offer the means of immigrating to other Analogues of the Earth that are in a pristine condition. This sequestering of the sick societies will aid and possibly stop the tendency for self-destruction. Also by opening up new yet strangely familiar worlds we will give an outlet to those that are the most restless or have the pioneering spirit.
And on this Analogue we will do our best to stop Global Nuclear war from occurring. We don’t think we should get involved in these minor conventional wars other than to monitor them to insure that Bio-warfare isn’t utilized.”
“Aren’t you taking a lot on your shoulders and what if the people of the Earth don’t want you to do that sort of policing on them?” asked Lieutenant Harrison.
“A very, VERY good question isn’t that. Yes, we are taking a lot of responsibility on our shoulders. The big question that we have is this: How far should we go in letting the people of the Earth know that we exist and are protecting them from Hostile Aliens and possibly from themselves? We’re not sure about that one. So we are going to ask you to help give us an answer.”
“Which you do you mean? The You that is the U.S. Navy or the You that is the people of the World? Or the You that is our Political Class?” Petty Officer Absher said in a serious tone of voice.
“Let me be upfront right here and now. The political class will have nothing to do with directing or controlling of the Terran Space Navy. Unlike yourselves, we don’t rely upon taxpayers to fund the construction of our vessels. We don’t rely upon the Tax-Payers to pay our wages. We are completely self-sufficient.
What we don’t have though is Man-Power. We need people for their ingenuity and imagination. We need people for the sense of community that comes with groups of humans living and working together. We need people because we need to constantly re-affirm why we are doing what must be done to protect and nurture Humanity.
The Terran Space Navy has absolutely no interest in being a government for the people of Earth. We actually encourage the various forms of government that you currently have. If we could ask just one thing though, it would be the ability for every Man and Woman to be able to go from one Political Unit to another if they find the one they are living under to be a poor fit with them. In the long run I believe that a consensus of what is a workable political system will someday emerge and along with that, an economic model that also is workable for the greatest number of people.
And in the spirit of that, we would be able to offer a ‘pressure relief valve’ in the two forms of immigration to another Earth Analogue or Enlistment in
the Terran Space Navy.”
“I can see where Immigration would be a good pressure relief on the various political systems. What about criminals and those who are of a criminal bent? And what are the terms of an enlistment in the Terran Space Navy?” Petty Officer Absher said.
“Criminals? That is an interesting question. Australia and the United States were both used as dumping grounds for non-violent criminals as well as those who were violent but not murderers. Many of them would be the types that would opt for immigration especially if it meant a chance to start over with a fresh identity and an initial clean slate.
And look how it turned out in the end, both of those Nations are leading in innovations and the ability to empathize with others.
As for your question on enlistment in the Terran Space Navy. There are only a few conditions. One, all members enlist, there is no Academy for creating an Officer Class. Everyone starts out the same way and they advance as far as they can by objective analysis of their capabilities and abilities. Two, an initial Enlistment is for 500 Earth Years.”