The Sixteen Galaxies

by William Drayman

  “Well,” Baxter said, “I’m as good as dead if I go back to Washington, and that’s for sure.” He stood and went to the viewport. He stared at the planet far below. It was hard to believe he was here; enjoying a view previously reserved for a select group of highly trained astronauts. Baxter thought about Harold Parkhurst’s car, upside down in the Potomac. The whole planet was being sold down the river, when it was on the brink of integration with a society that offered a life he couldn’t even imagine.

  He turned back to Nuthros. “Count me in.”

  *****

  The Chengdu J-20 prototype fighter aircraft flashed past a small stand, which was packed to the brim with government officials. The President of the People’s Republic of China nodded his approval. Around him, several members of the politburo applauded with enthusiasm. The aircraft banked through a tight turn and headed in for a last pass.

  The fighter approached the runway in a steady descent before levelling out at a very low altitude. The enthusiastic applause dissipated as the aircraft started to slow down. It lost more and more speed as it approached, and came to a complete stop in mid-air, right in front of the now very alarmed politburo. As its velocity dropped, the high-pitched scream of the first pair of completed WS-15 turbofan engines, which were the reason for the demonstration, faded into silence. There was a sharp sound, and a man in a three-piece black suit appeared directly below the motionless aircraft.

  The Central Security Bureau detail didn’t hesitate, but leapt to secure the politburo members and opened fire on the man, who stood and absorbed their gunfire with total nonchalance, surrounded by incandescence and a growing puddle of molten lead. The troops ceased fire when it became apparent they were having no effect. The man in the suit vanished and reappeared right next to the Chinese leader.

  The president looked around at his comrades in confusion. They were frozen solid, with just their clothes flapping in the breeze as evidence that time still passed. He looked at the man in the suit, who stood beside him.

  The man gave a formal bow. “Hello, Mr President,” he said, in fluent Mandarin. “My name is Kestil. I apologize for the dramatic entrance, but I didn’t wish there to be any confusion as to my total control of this situation.” He gestured to the aircraft. It lowered its undercarriage and descended gently onto the concrete runway.

  The Chinese leader returned the bow, but kept his silence as he regarded Kestil with a wary eye.

  Kestil held up his hands. “I wish you no harm, Mr President. If I did, you would already be dead. Please, relax.”

  He sat down, and patted the seat beside him. The President sat, but remained silent.

  “Now,” Kestil said, “I’ll come straight to the point. Over the last week, no less than twenty of your agents in the United States disappeared without a trace.”

  The President opened his mouth to object.

  Kestil held up a hand. “Please don’t deny it, Mr President. These agents were there to get information on the Vincent Generator. I don’t blame you, really I don’t. Your country stands to fall way behind the times without that technology. As a side note, your agents are all safe. In fact, after I leave, you will receive notification that they have all been discovered locked in solitary confinement cells in Qincheng prison. I am not without a sense of irony.”

  The President nodded slowly. “What do you want of us?”

  “Ah!” Kestil replied, “I’m glad you asked, my friend. What I would like you to do is contact this number.” He offered the president a business card, blank except for a cell-phone number. “That is the private number of one Donald Vincent. He has been advised you will call. You’ll find that he is still happy to grant the People’s Republic of China the designs and licenses for the Vincent Generator that you previously refused. The fees are appropriate, and well within your budget. Especially when you take into account the money you are currently spending on outdated infrastructure, let alone the time and expenditure wasted on trying to steal the Vincent technology in the first place.”

  The President took the card from Kestil, and gazed at it with a blank look. He pocketed the card and raised his eyes to Kestil’s. “Why are you doing this?”

  Kestil smiled at the bemused politician. “Because it’s time for humanity to grow up, Mr President. Time for you to stop bickering like children in a sandpit, stop all this theft from one another, and put an end to the pretence that your planet is a place to be divided up. I mean, honestly; is anything of more value than the long-term health of your planet? You must be a force of unity; you and all of Earth’s leaders. I intend to pay a visit to every major country on Earth that has so far refused to buy from Vincent Technologies, to offer them the same deal. There is more technology where the Vincent Generator came from, Mr President; much more. And I will give it to you, eventually. But, only when I see progress towards true global unity.”

  The president peered at Kestil. “And if we refuse?”

  Kestil held out a hand toward the aircraft on the runway. The canopy flew off, and the pilot was transferred to the grass near the stand. Kestil squeezed his hand into a fist, and the Chengdu J-20 was flattened onto the runway. Fuel spilled out of the mangled wreckage and spread all over the concrete. The air above it shimmered as the liquid evaporated in the hot summer sun, until the fuel was ignited by a random spark. There was a solid whoosh and a huge fireball shot skywards, leaving in its wake a compact mushroom cloud.

  Kestil patted the statesmen’s shoulder. “Now, Mr President, why on Earth would you do that?”

  Kestil vanished, and the people around the Chinese leader came to life. He waved off the security detail’s anxiety, and sat impassively amidst the confusion. He watched the fire tenders approach through the thick black smoke, the howl of their sirens a suitable accompaniment to the pandemonium that surrounded him.

  *****

  Hiram took his seat in the council hall. His mind whirled from all the information he now had to absorb. Asdrin stood to indicate the commencement of the meeting. “My friends,” he began, “The Entity is open to questions at this time. I would like to ask the first one if I may.” There was no dissent. “Very well. My question is this; from where did the population of the Independent Worlds originate?”

  “From the Earth,” Truly replied.

  There was a stunned silence. Everyone present had their implants closed for the session, to help members focus their thoughts and meditate privately. Asdrin frowned. “The Originals, or modern Earth?”

  Good point, Hiram thought.

  “They came from modern Earth.” Truly replied.

  Asdrin waited, but nobody spoke. Can’t really blame them, Hiram thought.

  “Is any clarification possible?” Asdrin asked.

  “The DNA for the population’s progenitors was taken from the Earth’s dead,” Truly replied.

  Council Member Dethos leapt to his feet. “That is proscribed science!” There was silence as everyone looked at him. After a short time, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Please forgive my loss of control. Clearly, I have not reached emotional equilibrium as regards these issues.” He resumed his seat with a gesture to Asdrin to continue. There was a pause while all of them struggled to deal with the enormity of this new twist. Dethos may have been the only one to articulate his concern, but they all felt it.

  “I will briefly explain, for Hiram’s sake.” Asdrin turned to Hiram. “It would seem Kestil has developed a banned technology, Hiram. The removal of DNA from the dead, from which new individuals are made.”

  “Clones,” Hiram said.

  Asdrin nodded. “Yes, Hiram, that is your name for it. At one time, a researcher by the name of Prestern delved into a procedure whereby he could take the DNA of someone deceased and remake them. Death is a very rare thing in the Sixteen Galaxies, but it does happen. By using the donor DNA, Prestern found it was possible to overwrite the DNA of a zygote with the DNA sequence of the donor and create a perfect copy.”

  “Why was it
banned?” Hiram asked.

  “Ethical questions arose, Hiram,” Asdrin replied. “The individual has a unique pattern that should remain unique, or it causes all sorts of issues. The biggest problem is, while it is possible to make a physical copy, the mind of the clone is a clean slate. All efforts to reproduce, or even capture, thought patterns and memories failed. Thus, all their memories and much of their personality is lost. The original idea Prestern had was to restore dead loved ones back to their family and friends. Without the memories and inherent personality, the reproduction would be an empty shell and cause more pain than the effort was worth.”

  “What Kestil is up to, if we are correct,” Brantok said, “is to create a new copy of a deceased person from Earth, and thus provide an individual for one of his planets. It’s quite a simple process, really. When a person dies on Earth, Kestil takes a DNA sample and stores it. When he has enough, he ships them to a planet and they are developed as babies to be raised. Once he has a small population on a planet, time takes care of the rest. He’s had four and a half millennia to fill his planets, and that’s plenty of time.”

  Hiram struggled with the concept. “So the ancestors of everyone in the Independent Worlds are people who died on Earth?”

  “Yes,” Truly replied. “The DNA provides the data to make the body, Hiram. I have deduced that Kestil has done this to try to harness your unique creativity and inventiveness.”

  There was a pause, and then Baelet, the woman from Prentersea, rose. “I would ask this question. Is Kestil trying to secure the allegiance of Earth because he failed to reproduce the creativity of mankind, or has he succeeded and simply wants to deny us the chance to gain the same?”

  “His technology still lags behind ours by thousands of years,” Asdrin said. “My guess would be the former.”

  “I’m afraid,” Truly said, “That is not a certainty at this time.”

  Council Member Trell got to his feet. “We know that Researcher Prestern disappeared after his work was banned. Is it possible that Kestil found him?”

  “Unknown at this time. But, it is very likely; an 87.3% chance of being correct with the available data.”

  Hiram stood up. “I remember Nuthros told me that Kestil’s ship had a crew on it just before it was destroyed four and a half millennia ago. Where did they come from?”

  There was a prolonged silence. Hiram realized that Truly must be searching for the relevant data from the time of the incident.

  “It would seem,” Truly said, “That the crew were not from the Ten Galaxies, as it was at the time. We must assume that they were clones made from an unknown source. Most likely to be from planet populations that failed to develop. This would indicate that Kestil had, indeed, found Prestern before that point. Kestil could not have developed the clone technology in such a short time without Prestern’s expertise.”

  Asdrin smiled at Hiram. “Well done, my friend. One less puzzle to solve.”

  Dethos stood. “While four and a half millennia is long enough to populate a planet, it is not long enough to achieve integration.”

  He sat amidst a long silence. Asdrin sighed. “He’s taken them into space way too early, then.”

  “His people are therefore undeveloped socially,” Truly said, “Which means they may well be aggressive and violent, and not developed to the point of tolerant acceptance of those unlike themselves.”

  Sounds familiar, Hiram thought.

  “In other words,” Asdrin said, “They are soft clay to be moulded as Kestil wishes. No wonder he has been able to establish himself as a demi-god. This is very unfortunate.”

  Pthent, the young council member from Turoth VII, got to his feet. “We have covered a lot of ground here. I feel we must now turn our attention to what lies ahead. We need to plan for the care of all those refugees returning from exploration detail, and consider the future course of our actions on Earth.”

  “I agree,” Asdrin said. “Let’s start with the exploration details.”

  *****

  Ron Baxter flew. He zoomed between two buildings and down a wharf, shot out to the middle of the river and back to a point where he overlooked a third building; a large warehouse. He felt like a cross between a bird and a fighter jet.

  Focus, Baxter, and stop goofing off, he scolded himself, you have a job to do. He relocated the black limousine and returned to a position directly above it. Five minutes later, the car turned into a driveway and approached the door to a large building. He waited for the door to open fully and swooped in over the top of the limousine. This area was walled off, with a couple of doors. One door led into a lunchroom, while another one led into the warehouse itself. He waited until Donald Vincent was ushered through the door and followed him into the main area of the building. He saw that the building was, in fact, a large laboratory facility. Suddenly, his vision went black.

  He sat up on the inversion plate. “What the hell just happened?”

  “I must apologise, Ron, I did not anticipate that.” Truly said. “The building has a shield around the inner area that prevents the establishment of point connections. I have not encountered anything like it for over four and a half millennia.”

  “What about the micro-drone?” Baxter asked.

  “It is already destroyed; it has a self-destruct mechanism built into it, in case of disconnection. Before the drone was lost, I managed to secure some coding from the shield matrix. However, it may take a few hours to code a penetration construct. That shield is much more sophisticated than anything I have encountered before.”

  “Well,” Baxter said, “If that’s the case, is it okay if I grab a bite to eat?”

  “Of course, Ron.” Baxter left the control room. He wandered down the corridor to the viewport deck. He sat down at the table, where a hot meal and a fresh cup of the best coffee he’d ever tasted waited for him.

  A meal appeared on the opposite side of the table. Half a minute later, Jack Short walked in. “Morning, afternoon, evening or whatever time it is,” he greeted Baxter.

  Baxter laughed. “I’m glad I’m not the only one who struggles with that.”

  Jack sat down with a sigh. “I left Mandy with it; that woman’s a machine. Ten hours straight and she’s still going strong.”

  “What are you guys up to?”

  Jack pulled a face. “Searching for evidence to tie Kestil to the new president and this Vincent guy. You?”

  “Just tried to take a look-see into the Vincent facility. At least we’ve confirmed a location, now. Kestil has the place protected from point connections, and we lost a drone. He’s not stupid, I’ll give him that much. Where’s Nuthros?”

  “In conference with Truly. Kestil’s poked some world leaders who are reluctant to get on board with Vincent Technologies. Made quite an impression in China, apparently.”

  Baxter put his coffee down with a sigh. “I can’t help but feel we’re on the back foot with this whole situation.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Jack replied. “Mandy’s done two shows now, but last time she looked more like some kind of conspiracy nut job than a sincere correspondent. Kestil’s not stupid; he knows that if he stays out of sight, people will lose interest. Besides, the solution Kestil offers is so much more palatable, isn’t it?” He shrugged and swallowed some coffee. “We’ve stopped the shows, now. Truly has asked us to just collate evidence, but she hasn’t said why.”

  Baxter leaned forward. “You keen to go back? To Earth, I mean.”

  Jack laughed. “Not a chance, bud. Aside from the fact that Kestil would probably make me have a fatal accident of some kind, I couldn’t go back to my old life. Knowing what we know now, how could any of us? Mandy certainly wouldn’t. Besides,” he added, “How could I leave this coffee behind?”

  15

  There was no media coverage of Kestil’s demonstration of power in China, naturally. But, Truly had put micro-drone coverage on many of the world’s top leaders in anticipation of just such a move. Nuthros watched as Tr
uly ran the footage once again.

  “It is clear Kestil has progressed his technology quite rapidly,” Truly said.

  Nuthros watched the fighter jet lose all its speed in mid-air. “Gravitational manipulation to keep the aircraft aloft, no doubt,” he speculated. “And to overcome the inertia.”

  “Kinetic energy conversion to negate the power of the projectile weapons used against him by the security people,” Truly observed.

  Nuthros watched the jet being lowered to the ground; the undercarriage deployed by itself. “Simple protocol overrides of the aircraft’s controls to shut the engines off and lower the landing gear,” he said. He leaned forward to watch everyone but the Chinese president and Kestil freeze in place. “He seems to have progressed well with bonding, which is worrisome.”

  “His method of bonding is much cruder than ours,” Truly replied. “There are signs of biological stress on those bound. He does not have the stability of internal functions quite right. It would seem he uses a combination of muscular control and gravitational manipulation; it is a poor imitation of our system. The captives are fully aware while they are bound, and they stress accordingly. Kestil does not limit their cognitive powers at all.”

  Nuthros watched Kestil extend his hand toward the aircraft. He bunched his fist, and Truly froze the shot right at the point where the jet was halfway through being flattened. “Can you see the shockwave used to crush the aircraft?” Truly asked.

  “Yes,” Nuthros replied. “I first imagined it would be another gravitational manipulation, but this is much more aggressive. Kinetic energy field projector, perhaps?”

  “It would appear to be. If that is the case, I believe we are looking at a display of one of his ship’s primary weapon systems. His previous warship had turrets that fired projectile munitions on a very basic railgun system. Crude, but still effective against ships such as this, whose shields are designed for collision mitigation only. He has now progressed to this field projector, however. With such an advance, it is a high order probability that variations of this weapon are now his main offensive capability. There is little doubt he has specialized people working on this.”