The nun glanced over at the piles of wounded. “They will heal up on their own given enough time thanks to Corin’s recent bioedits. Days, weeks maybe. Time perhaps for me to get around to them. She glanced at the new arrivals being brought in on gurneys. “Or maybe not.”
***
THE COMMAND BRIDGE OF THE NAUTILUS
“Solo, is what the Creams are alleging even possible?” Mother asked. Mother had been monitoring the exchange between the Nun and Ariel, the Alpha Unit cadet, as one of the Skyhawks underwent surgery.
“No.”
“Are their minds failing?”
The colored bands in Solo’s eyes started turning over one another. Cream became more visible in his eyes as the necessary colors for procuring it blurred together. “No. This is something else.”
“What?”
“A moment, please,” Solo barked, the exasperation riding his voice better than a jockey a racehorse. His colored bands continued turning. “The Creams are engineered to keep abreast of the timelines that have the greatest likelihood of coming to pass. Typically this is why they marry oligarchs, for the oligarchs control which inventions come to market when. But occasionally, people like Skyhawk, swim through the nets the oligarchs throw over everyone. Like Natty, their ability to bring solutions into being which shouldn’t exist for some time, hinges on superior access to the Akashic records. Because of the oligarchs’ spy networks, the Creams can typically factor these individuals into the equation as well, knowing the wild cards to look out for.”
“So, why isn’t this happening now?”
“It is very possible someone is baiting us to bring more of these individuals into being precisely for the chaotic effects they create, which no oligarch can manage. Ostensibly, it would be a wise move on our part, if we’re looking to build a multiverse more free of tyranny. But I suspect what the Cream does, that someone is trying to compromise their value to the oligarchs. Someone whose intentions are not nearly so benign. We will continue to limit the number of Skyhawks available to us as the Creams request, for now. Meanwhile, we will both quietly continue to look into the matter.”
“That will mean greater losses for Leon,” Mother said plainly.
“So long as we have the Creams, and the future impacts to the wins or losses are more foreseeable, we can continue to score either outcome to any short-term battle as a long-term gain, once that intel is processed through Leon’s mind, and now, that of his progeny.”
Mother was buying the line of reasoning for now.
But she was right to be troubled. Solo certainly was.
ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-ONE
ABOARD THE STARHAWK NELSON MANDELA
IN ORBIT AROUND FARASA
A GYPSY GALAXY WORLD
The Nelson Mandela remained cloaked. Patent and the Blue regarded the invading fleet surrounding the planet Farasa from the bridge. The encroaching enemy ships appeared as small moons or rogue asteroids, at least from a distance, with second rate scanning technology. Up close, you could see that not only were they too small to be your typical moons, their “craters” were artificial. They were in fact satellite antennae made for gathering and broadcasting any information of interest to whoever placed them helter-skelter throughout the heavens.
“Who are these people?” Patent asked, noting Alpha Unit had snuck on deck, past the Bridge elevators, with the undying curiosity of youth.
“The Menasi,” the Blue replied. “They were a Stage 1 civilization when I last encountered them. Judging from these ships, now more like Stage 2.”
“And the planet below?”
“Stage zero.”
“So, the Farasians don’t stand a chance.” Patent’s neck and shoulder muscles flared as he snorted.
“The Menasi are bullies. This is their idea of a corporate merger. They steal technologies from less developed worlds before they’re in any position to make the most of them, develop the tech themselves. The worlds they steal from are either absorbed, if the people are amenable to Menasi rhetoric, or destroyed.”
“Can you jam communications so this is a contained, local situation?”
She hissed. He was getting better at interpreting her different hisses, and that sound communicated an affirmative.
“Well, then, in the wise words of one of my Alpha Unit cadets, if there’s no one left to tell the tale… I want those ships in orbit taken care of without anyone on the planet—including any Menasi operatives on the surface—finding out.”
“Those vessels in orbit are communicators summoning other vultures in the Menasi galactic empire that will be here shortly to fight over the spoils,” the Blue said, “if we arrived too late on scene.”
“So, possibly this is not a contained situation.” Patent weighed the implications. “So be it. We’ll take out whoever else arrives. Leon can roast me on a spit later. I just don’t like bullies.” These bastards hadn’t even waited for the battles to be won before enjoying the spoils of war, if they came to fight at all. They may be using the all-out assault on the Gypsy Galaxy as the perfect camouflage to make off with as much stolen tech as possible.
The Blue held out her arm, about to exert a force at a distance, when she winced in pain and turned away from the port screen briefly.
“What?” Patent said, the alarm and concern for her in his voice overshadowing his concern for whatever the Menasi was up to with this Stage 0 civilization.
“It seems I left enough of an impression last time for them to evolve technology in hopes of keeping me out of their systems.” With the “now you’ve really pissed me off” tone riding her voice, she added, “It will not work.”
“Well, then.” Patent folded his arms defensively, more determined than ever. “Let’s not leave them in suspense. Too much of it is bad for the heart.”
The Blue extended her arm and made a fist. The moon ships buckled under the crushing force. The satellite antennas themselves popped out of their housings, exploding and rupturing, their fireworks joining the ongoing implosions within the artificial moons.
“How…?” Patent asked.
“Simple telekinesis,” the Blue replied flatly.
Alpha Unit, which had approached the big screen until they were standing by Soturi’s and Patent’s sides, was eying one another and gasping.
“Never seen anyone throw shade in exactly that way before,” Ariel said.
“No more Dexing for me.” Reia looked like she was high as a kite and might just fall over. “You wouldn’t believe what I just imagined.”
The rest of Alpha Unit turned to her and shook their heads.
“Let’s get down there and reassure the locals we’ve got their backs,” Patent said to the Blue. He turned to Alpha Unit. “You kids stay here. We’ve got this.”
Patent and Soturi both sauntered to the elevator.
Alpha Unit waited until the doors were closed on them before they responded. Reia and Skyhawk were checking out the Blue’s ass, and her captivating way of walking, the whole way.
“She’s too young for him,” Reia said.
“The Blues can’t be aged, moron,” Skyhawk snapped. “She could be tens of thousands of years old, or more—way more. Lucky for her, I like older women.”
“We aren’t actually listening to them, right?” Satellite said. “I mean, it’s not like we ever do.”
“As rhetorical questions go, that’s the lamest yet,” Skyhawk replied. “Nelson, beam us to the launch bay, ahead of the dynamic duo.”
“Soturi and Patent have already beamed down to the planet on her recommendation, so they could avoid alerting Menasi forces to their presence with the arrival of any ships,” Nelson said.
“We, on the other hand, enjoy arriving to great fanfare,” Ariel chuckled.
“Are we even going to bother with what ships the Menasi have hanging over the cities before selecting our own craft?” Satellite asked, checking his handheld scanner, which for now, was tapping Nelson’s scanners for their intel, since his device was well o
ut of range of the planet’s surface.
“Where’s the fun in that?” Skyhawk said. “Keep it up and we may have to start calling you Detective Duh, always with the stupid questions.”
Nelson beamed them to the landing bay with its impressive collection of smaller ships.
“It’s a stage zero civilization, Nelson. You have anything sufficiently low profile in here?” Ariel asked.
“Beaming you to that end of the landing bay now,” he replied.
“Techa, it’s like an Asimov book cover from the 1950s,” Reia bitched, sobering on a dime, just on the thought of flying in that death trap. Skyhawk had meant to ask her earlier why in the hell she was Dexing with a body full of nanites that would just shut down the high, per the protocol for activated Special Forces on duty. But she’d evidently found a loophole by going such a primitive route for getting high, so question asked and answered.
As to “the death trap,” it was an upward-standing rocket, resting on its four legs that flailed outward from the fuselage which would help it steer through an atmosphere. They looked like four sails for a sailboat, just attached to the bottom of a rocket, and made of metal. The sails themselves had smaller rockets at the outermost tips of each.
“I’m sure it’s just camouflage, Reia. Techa, please tell me it’s camouflage,” Skyhawk said, noticing the whine in his voice.
“Of course,” Nelson replied.
“Well then, surprises for us, surprises for them. What more could you want?” Skyhawk asked.
Nelson’s robot minions, the ones that looked like Swiss Army knives set in motion, were rolling up a staircase to the door of the Asimov, high up on the fuselage.
“Don’t you dare,” Ariel squawked.
They heard Nelson sigh. “Just thought you’d like to get into character from now.”
He beamed them into the cockpit.
It was like sitting in a string of very small stalls at a videogame arcade, each equipped with a cockpit console. They were still getting a feel for what the knobs and dials did when Nelson dropped them into the atmosphere below.
“Whoaaaaa!” Satellite shouted. “They’re going to think we’re hard shell bullets fired from a rail gun, using the gravity assist to magnify the impact of the explosion.”
“I doubt they’ve latched on to that concept yet,” Ariel said. “But you won’t be too far wrong, Satellite, if we can’t figure out how to engage the thrusters on this thing.”
They continued to accelerate hot through the atmosphere.
“Are those floating cities?” Reia asked, zooming by them.
The others took in what were clearly the Menasi corporate envoy ships. And those weren’t tractor beams beneath the circular disks that looked like mushroom heads without the stalks, unless you counted the “tractor beams” as the stalks. The Menasi were vacuuming up the information they’d come for from the stage zero corporations below.
“She’s still Dexing,” Ariel said, “confusing the Menasi ships with floating cities.”
“You think?” Skyhawk couldn’t keep the exasperation out of his voice. “She better not screw up this unsanctioned mission for us. Failure is not an option when bucking orders.”
They were still heading straight for the ground.
***
“We apologize for the unprovoked attack on the part of the Menasi,” Patent said, addressing the audience in the auditorium, realizing Soturi would have to be broadcasting his words directly into the heads of the locals in their language for him, as these people had likely not heard of a universal translator.
He continued walking up the aisle with the Blue by his side. He was drawing more attention because he looked more alien relative to them, suggesting none of these people had ever met a Blue before.
The amphitheater was covered by a giant metal-glass dome giving a clear view of the Menasi mushroom ships hovering over the city. Many heads were still directed overhead rather than at the two latest arrivals. Patent had to admit if he had to prioritize his sources of shock and awe right now, he’d have kept his eyes on the mushroom ships too. “They are vacuuming up the intel from your corporations specializing in next generation tech,” he explained. “That’s what those beams of light emitted from the center of the ships mean.”
“I assure you, they’re doing no such thing,” the Menasi spokesman, disguised as a Farasan, who was standing center stage addressing the auditorium lied. “I was just explaining that they are scanning us to see if we are any threat to them, and as soon as they see we’re not, they’ll leave.”
“However he’s projecting that skin suit to make him look like a local, put it out of commission now,” Patent barked at Soturi in his head.
The Menasi’s cloaking device failed him, showing his true colors. The Menasi looked like ancient ancestors of the Kang, where they no doubt spearheaded these civilization-stealing techniques. They weren’t quite as terrifying looking, but from the perspective of these people, terrifying enough. Perhaps one or another faction of Kang had left the brood, before becoming imprisoned within The Collectors’ Menagerie, venturing into another galaxy where they evolved further and faster than these ancestors could.
The gasps went out through the hall at the sight of the uncloaked Menasi, and some people were jumping out of their seats, running for the aisles and the exits.
“I don’t know what subterfuge this is,” the Menasi representative said, pretending to be as shocked by his new form as the audience was, “but I assure you…”
Patent was up on the stage beside him by then.
He glanced up at Alpha Unit descending toward the city, and took a deep breath, praying they weren’t about to make his negotiations any tougher.
“You can’t fool us, you prick. No more warnings. We’ll continue to dismantle your ships, while showing them the truth of who you are, and transferring your technology to Farasa corporate heads, eliminating any edge you have. Who knows, maybe they’ll come after you the way you came after them. I know I’d be looking for payback.”
His words were broadcasted into the Menasi spokesman’s head with Soturi’s help, in his language. She proceeded to back up Patent’s otherwise idle threats for him. Idle, anyway, in absence of any other support from the Nautilus.
Soturi shut down the Menasi ship scanners, even as she broadcasted an image to the crowd of just what those scanners were doing prior to being shut down.
Pissed off, the ones inside the Menasi ships sent out fighter jets.
“Let’s bring down those mother ships and when you crush them as you did before, let’s have them land in such a way as to provide some desperately needed artwork for the local parks,” Patent beamed into Soturi’s head.
The Blue, without hesitation, crumpled the mushroom ships. She didn’t even raise her arm, keeping her involvement in things on the down low. The crushed ships, now reduced to the size of really big boulders, landed on the streets below, rolling to their new locations in front of skyscrapers and into the surrounding park areas—decorating them with one-of-a-kind sculptures—the unique blemishes caused to each by the crushing force of Soturi’s telekinesis.
More impressive still, Soturi was doing this with all the Menasi ships around the entire planet, not just what vessels Patent could see in the skies overhead and outside the transparent dome, which was perched on a high pedestal, above the city below.
“As for this prick, how about we make a sculpture out of him, too, and put him at the foot of the column leading up here, so the Farasans know the stakes of being low down on the food chain without a little help from their friends.”
Soturi complied, beaming the now hardened-to-stone Menasi representative to the foot of the tower. She showed the crowd, and Patent, the result of the Menasi social rehabilitation project—the Menasi ambassador now frozen as he was when he lashed out at Soturi, feeling no other option left to him. Just like the Kang, this likely primitive precursor of the Ming was only too happy to take one for the queen.
�
�I should have been an artist,” he said in her head, “and what a paintbrush you are to work with, my dear.”
The gasps rising from the audience this time were not accompanied by delegates fleeing from their seats. However bent out of shape they were by these proceedings, the big picture was starting to come through loud and clear.
Patent took the podium, facing the crowd. “Once again, I would like to humbly extend the apologies of the Gypsy Galaxy federation of worlds, and of the Gypsy Galaxy Transgalactic Civilization as a whole.” Patent realized he might be getting a bit ahead of himself on both counts, by alluding to a federation of worlds within the Gypsy Galaxy that really hadn’t been brought together yet, and with mention of the Gypsy Galaxy TGC status. “We were hoping to bring you into the fold under more auspicious circumstances, and to introduce ourselves in a more low-key manner, but as you can see, the Gypsy Galaxy came under attack, forcing our hand. I wish I could tell you that this was the only foray into the galaxy. But we continue to put out fires from ongoing incursions from numerous galactic civilizations. I promise you the full story will come out in time, but for today, I’m sure you feel you have enough to absorb.
“Please allow me to leave you with a small parting gift,” Patent added with a gesture to Soturi. “My partner will download the particulars of the ships that invaded your airspace to your computers. Instead of them stealing your technology, we will leave you with theirs. It may be some time before you can reengineer much of it but…” Especially with the primitive state of your current computers, your materials science…
He checked the skies again to see Alpha Unit demonstrating just what the Asimovs could do. The Stage 1 craft, camouflaged to look like late-Stage Zero rocket ships, which this civilization had yet to create, were a sight to behold, Patent was sure, from the perspective of a relatively early-stage zero civilization. Wait until they discover what those things can really do. “The air show being put on for you now…” he had to say something to cover his ass from the teens incessant playing around… “is to demonstrate some of the capabilities of our legacy fighters. These you will be able to hop on board right away and give a test spin yourselves.”
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