Four Tomorrows: A Space Opera Box Set

by James Palmer

  “You’d better be right,” said the first man. “In the meantime, you’d better start running some misinformation. Word about the Swarm has gotten out, and people are getting scared.”

  “As long as they continue to believe that it is a new Draconi weapon, that will only work to our advantage,” said Straker.

  “Keep us apprised,” said the woman.

  “I will.”

  One by one the phantasms winked out of existence, and the spots came back up. Straker puffed on his cigar as he left the room, humming as he went.

  Leda sat there for a long moment. She wanted to make sure he didn’t see her leaving the conference room. Besides, her left leg was asleep. She climbed out from under the table and shook her leg awake, thinking about what had just transpired. Noah was right. There was a conspiracy to start another war with the dragons. And the Swarm, whatever it was, was a part of it. And Noah, Captain Kuttner, and the Onslaught was right in the middle of it.

  She had to get in touch with Hamilton somehow, let him know what she found out. But first she had to see what was in Silo Six.

  18 The Hatchery

  After two Q-gate jumps and three weeks of travel at almost one quarter the speed of light, the Onslaught arrived in the Devlin system. The Draconi hatchery was exactly where Drizda said it would be, in the L4 of a large rocky world, light from a yellow G class star bathing its large solar panels with enough energy to keep the eggs warm and safe inside the orbital facility. It was a dull gray structure, its two solar arrays stretching out from it like enormous wings.

  “Looks like we’re the first ones here,” said Kuttner, stifling a yawn. “Is this thing manned?”

  “No,” Captain,” said Drizda. “All systems are completely automated. A ship comes around to check on it every few of our weeks, and on hatching day to pick up the hatchlings.”

  Kuttner nodded.

  “Looks pretty quiet,” said Hamilton. “I hope we didn’t get this wrong, and the Swarm is attacking somewhere else.”

  “Sir,” said Hudson. “We’ve got incoming, bearing two zero zero mark four.”

  “The Swarm?”

  “Negative. It’s a ship. Draconi. Raptor class.”

  “That’s not an egg ship,” said Drizda. “It’s an attack cruiser.”

  “On screen,” Kuttner ordered.

  The hatchery disappeared, replaced by a tiny dark spec illuminated by the sun. It was getting larger by the moment.

  “They must have been patrolling the area and detected us,” said Hamilton. “And we’re not exactly where we’re supposed to be. We’ll have a hard time explaining this one.”

  “But explain it we will,” said Kuttner. “Brackett, open a channel to that ship.”

  “Aye, sir,” said Lt. Brackett. After a moment she said, “Connection established.”

  Kuttner turned to Drizda. “You talk to them. They’re your people, after all.”

  “But Captain,” she said, “I am clanless. They will not listen.”

  “You’ve got to make them listen,” said Kuttner. “Come on. Do it. Think of the hatchlings.”

  “Draconi vessel,” she said. “This is Drizda of the Science Academy. This vessel means the hatchery no harm. We—”

  “I know that name,” snarled the voice on the other end. “You bring shame upon the Science Academy and our people, Clanless. What are you doing aboard a mammal ship?”

  “They rescued me,” she said. “I have been tracking a grave threat to both our peoples.”

  “The hatchery is no threat,” the voice barked. “It is sacrilege to bring the mammals here! You offend the Egg Mother with this trespass.”

  “The hatchery is a target,” said Drizda. “We are glad you are here. We could use your help.”

  “The Talon will offer no help to a clanless dzzt and a bunch of mammals. Leave this place or die.”

  “What did he call you?” asked Hamilton.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “They’ve primed their weapons,” said Lt. Cade.

  Kuttner sighed. “Makes you wish those blasted machines would actually show up, doesn’t it? Battle stations.”

  “We’ve got more incoming,” said Hudson. “Thirty degrees off the plane of the ecliptic. It’s them, sir. It’s the Swarm.”

  “They’re coming in hot,” said Gunner Cade, warming up his targeting matrix. “There’s thousands of them.”

  “Captain of the Talon,” said Kuttner. “This is Captain Henry Kuttner of the LS Onslaught. We are both about to be attacked by a swarm of alien probes that can eat your entire ship. Please take evasive—”

  The Onslaught shook as an ion beam struck it, activating warning klaxons all over the vessel.

  “Damage report,” said Hamilton.

  “Hull breach on decks seven through nine,” said Brackett. “Defense field down to twenty percent capacity.”

  “Another couple of hits like that and they’ve got us,” said Hamilton.

  Kuttner nodded. “Hudson, put us between the Swarm and the hatchery as best you can. Drizda, I need you to transmit everything we’ve collected so far on the Swarm to the Talon. If that doesn’t make them listen to reason, nothing will.”

  Drizda moved to Lt. Brackett’s workstation, slate in hand. Hamilton sat down beside Kuttner.

  “Information sent,” said Drizda.

  “Good. Now get to work on that Swarm secret weapon.”

  “You think this will work?” asked Hamilton.

  “Seeing as it’s the only thing we’ve got,” said Kuttner, “It had better.”

  “The Draconi vessel is holding off,” said Cade.

  “They are reviewing that info packet we sent,” said Kuttner. “Keep eyes on the Swarm.”

  “Swarm cluster is coming in fast,” said Hudson. “Individual bodies starting to break off into smaller groups. They’re coming after all of us.”

  “Get our capacitors up and running on full power,” said Kuttner. “Gunner Cade, any luck with the main gun?”

  “She’s back on line, sir,” said Cade proudly.

  “Good,” said Kuttner. He didn’t know what good the Onslaught’s central rail gun would do, and he didn’t even know if they’d need it. But he felt better knowing it was operable.

  Cade took aim with the ship’s array of ion cannons, taking pot shots at the Swarm machines as they moved in closer to the Draconi hatchery. He got a few, but more latched onto the structure, beginning to consume it, breaking down the metal atom by atom.

  The Razor suddenly came about, moving toward the hatchery, its own weapons trained on the Swarm machines.

  “Tightbeam channel from the Talon,” said Lt. Brackett.

  “On screen.”

  The leering visage of the Talon’s captain appeared. She was virtually identical to Drizda, save for a faint yellow stripe that run up her snout and the various sigils of rank and clan tattooed on her scaly skin. “I am Grand Leader Koro,” she said. “We have reviewed your data and find it…troubling. You do us a great honor by defending our young. What would you have me do?”

  Kuttner leaned back in his chair, surprised the Dragons were finally listening to reason.

  Hamilton leaned forward. “This is Commander Hamilton. What we need to do now is survive this Swarm attack. We will help you offload your eggs and get to a safe system. Then you must tell your people that this entire quadrant is in danger. And there are factions within our own government who want to use this to ignite another war with you.”

  The Draconi captain snarled, tongue darting from her mouth. “We have heard rumors of such talk within our own government as well, human.”

  Hamilton and Kuttner looked at each other. “This is bigger than we thought,” said Hamilton.

  “Understood, Grand Leader,” said Kuttner. “We’ll try to keep those things off of you while you remove your eggs. I’m afraid there’s not much we can do once the Swarm start eating.”

  The Draconi nodded, and the screen winked out.


  Kuttner stood and looked toward the communications console. “What have you got for us, Drizda? Please tell me the Progenitors had a weapon against the Swarm.”

  “Not exactly,” she said.

  19 The Thing in Silo Six

  Silo Six was an underground structure deep beneath the surface of Marta, the League’s administration world. It was accessed from a nondescript beige building, one of several dozen spread out over the Fleet yards. Leda walked toward it as she had hundreds of times, though this time it was with a heavy heart. The sun shone brightly in Marta’s pink sky, and people moved all about in their various errands, oblivious to the danger that was possibly headed their way. In the distance was Marta’s spaceport, where dozens of ships arrived and departed every day, most of them military, but some commercial.

  But Leda had no time to watch ships streaking off into space. Today what she wanted lay below her feet.

  She stepped up to the building’s one entrance, showing her ID badge to the black plastic security scanner mounted next to the door. She then gave it her thumbprint and stared into the retina scanner. The door opened with a heavy click, and she stepped inside.

  The room was empty, save for an elevator. She stepped into it and pressed the only button, down.

  Leda hadn’t been down here in years. Not because Special Projects was something she wasn’t cleared for, but because their work never crossed her docket. The elevator door opened and she found herself standing in a vast circular room with walls of dull gray metal. The space was filled with plastic crates of various sizes, all with top secret coded number designations stenciled on their sides. The contents of most of them were above her pay grade, but Leda hoped she could nevertheless find whatever Straker had referred to in his secret meeting less than an hour ago.

  She walked through the maze of crates, grateful that no one else was down here. Silo Six was mainly used for storage, which made her wonder why Straker would have placed an active project here. Her eyes glanced at the crates, noting warily the radioactive and biohazard glyphs displayed on some of them, until she neared the center of the room, which was dominated by a low hum. As she stepped around a large crate Leda noticed a faint blue glow.

  There it was, in the dead center of the room. Leda stepped up to it. It was suspended inside a powerful electromagnetic field. Bio stasis and contagion protocols were also in effect, but Leda suspected she knew the real reason for the field. A strange machine or probe of obvious alien design floated inside the field, which was being emitted from a white round dais that rose up from the floor. The thing was damaged, and looked as if it had been in space for a very long time, its surface heavily pitted from micrometeorite impacts. It was about eight feet long, with a cylindrical body. Rows of long, metal appendages circled the bottom, though some of them were damaged or missing. The top was capped with a mushroom-shaped disk, probably some sort of sensor array.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Leda spun around, startled. Walking slowly toward her, weapon raised, was Colonel Straker, a grim smile playing on his lips.

  “We found that out in Sector 3346. A couple of comet miners discovered it in the Oort cloud there. Special Projects paid a pretty penny for it, of course. You’d be surprised what a little silence can cost you.”

  Leda looked at him. “Those things destroying our colonies. You’ve known about them all this time?”

  “It wasn’t dead, either,” said Straker, ignoring her question. “Not entirely. It taught us so much about our place in the universe. It showed us that we weren’t the first, and we won’t be the last.”

  He stepped closer, his gun aimed at her head. “I’m sorry, Leda. I really didn’t want you to find out this way. I was going to bring you in when the time was right, but you stumbled into it before I could prepare you. It’s not very nice to spy on your boss when he’s in an important meeting.”

  Leda’s blood went cold.

  “Oh yes. I knew you were there. But I couldn’t very well let the group know, now could I? So I decided to give you enough rope to hang yourself. I followed you here, to Silo Six. I’m sorry for the subterfuge, but I had to see if we were on the same side. Are we on the same side, Leda?”

  “I should ask you the same question,” she said evenly. “What the hell is going on here, Colonel? If you knew about them, why didn’t you warn the rest of the Fleet?”

  “Come on, Leda. You’re a smart girl. Think. This is first contact with a new alien species.”

  “But they’re machines.”

  Straker shrugged. “So are we. At a basic level, we are nothing more than chemical machines made of carbon and water. We just wanted to meet our new neighbors.”

  “But they’re killing us. They’re just blind machines carrying out some ancient programming.”

  “Yes. To consume and reproduce. As are we.”

  “You sound as if you admire them.”

  “I suppose I do,” said Straker. “Well, I admire what they can do. Just think of what such a technology could do for us. We could finally end the war.”

  “We did end the war,” said Leda. “We’re at peace, remember?”

  “But for how long? I’m not talking about enduring an uneasy truce implemented by some one-sided treaty. I’m talking about actually ending the war the right way. With our victory.”

  “You want to reverse engineer the Swarm’s tech and use it against the dragons,” Leda said.

  “Oh, our plan is far more grandiose than that,” said Straker proudly. “We want to reprogram the Swarm and turn it against the Dragons. These marvelous machines would leave us alone entirely. Imagine, mechanical hunters sent out to hunt and destroy the lizards, like one of our nano viruses seeks and destroys cancer cells in a human body. It’ll be glorious.”

  “You’re insane,” says Leda. “You’ll violate the peace treaty, and spark another long and expensive war.”

  “And you’re short-sighted and naive,” said Straker. “Our little friends out there will make war obsolete. We’ll be the dominant species in the galaxy. Hell, the entire universe. And we’ll be more than ready for what’s coming.”

  “You won’t get away with this. There are people above your head. They’ll stop you.”

  Straker laughed. “My dear Leda. Everyone who could stop me is already on board. The Admiralty, most of it, anyway, want this to happen. We’re soldiers, Lieutenant. And now we have to sit on our hands because of some inane treaty? Look what those lizards did to our homes, our families. They are a disease. And the mechanical Swarm heading this way is the cure.”

  “Those machines think the same thing about us,” said Leda as she carefully reached behind her back for her sidearm. Being armed at all times was no longer the protocol now that the war was over, but old habits die hard.

  Reading her body language, Straker raised his weapon higher. “Not so fast. This doesn’t have to end this way, Lieutenant.”

  “You wouldn’t kill me,” she said. “That will raise too many red flags. Even for you.”

  Straker grinned. “Would it? Imagine my surprise when I found out that my personal assistant, one of the finest officers I’ve ever known, was stealing top secret materials right out from under me. I pleaded with her to stop, but she pulled her gun on me. It was self-defense.”

  Leda lowered her hands. “You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?”

  “Indeed. The wheels have been in motion for years, Lieutenant. We’ve known about the Chaos Wave for a very long time. When it gets here, we’ll be ready for it.”

  20 The Star Swarm

  “It’s quite simple, really,” Drizda explained as she tapped her slate, her long talons clicking against its surface. “The Progenitor Epics speak of a song that will calm the Swarm.”

  “Calm them?” said Kuttner, raising an eyebrow.

  “That’s their word for it. Calmness is the feeling the word conveys, anyway. Perhaps it means they will go to sleep or shut down.”

  Kuttner waved his hand dism
issively. “Whatever. I don’t care what it means, as long as it stops those things from eating our ship right out from under us. Communications is yours.”

  Drizda turned to Lt. Brackett. “We need to recreate these precise tones,” she said, showing Brackett the slate.

  Brackett nodded. “I think I can do that,” she said. “It should be no different than transmitting tones to the Q-gates.”

  “Main body of the Swarm approaching,” said Hudson. “They’re headed right for us.”

  “Drizda?” said Hamilton. “Are you ready yet?”

  “Not quite, Commander.” It will take several minutes to find and generate the tones.”

  “We don’t have several minutes,” said Kuttner. “Cade. Warm up the main gun. Let’s see how they like snacking on depleted uranium.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Cade’s hands flew deftly over the weapon controls, and Hamilton thought he could hear the soft thrum of the electromagnets charging up through more than a kilometer of titanium and nanocarbon plate. The Onslaught’s central rail gun was what the ship had been built around, one of the most powerful weapons space-faring man had ever devised.

  “Fire at will, Gunner Cade,” Kuttner ordered.

  “Firing,” said Cade.

  A metal cylinder the size of a barrel and filled with depleted uranium was hurled along the rail gun’s length by two powerful electromagnets, accelerating it to thousands of kilometers per second. It exited the main gun with deadly velocity, streaking toward the mass of Swarm machines at a high rate of speed. It struck dead center of the mass, the individual von Neumann probes rippling outward from the impact like a school of fish changing course. There a tiny blossom of orange fire appeared and then vanished. The hole created by the explosion was quickly filled again by the remaining Swarm machines, and they kept coming.