Helium 3: Death from the Past (Helium-3 Book 2)

by Brandon Q. Morris

  Is that enough for you? Kasfok asked.

  “Norok, is that enough?”

  Her partner flew in a wide circle. “Wait, I’ll try it out,” he replied.

  Norok pivoted on his wings. Kimi knew how difficult the landing was. The rope ladder would sway when his claws hit it, and he still had to keep his balance. But Norok had experience— not for nothing had he been trained as an explorer.

  He flew toward the ladder, stretched his legs forward, fluttered once more, and suddenly he tipped to the side. Now Kimi felt it, too. A powerful breeze came from above. The hatch had opened. It was the right one!

  Quickly, Kasfok drummed, then crawled through the opening.

  Norok struggled to stabilize his flight position a few wing lengths below her. Kimi looked up. She couldn’t wait for him. He would know how to help himself. She had to take the chance now to save her people. Kimi aimed for the ladder. As she had guessed, it began to sway, but she still climbed up as fast as she could.

  We did it! Beyond the hatch, the passage widened into a shaft that led vertically upward. It would be difficult to fly under these circumstances. But where was Norok? Surely the hatch would close in a moment! Then she saw his head. Norok had clamped his beak crosswise into the opening and was pulling himself up. Only one more moment!

  “Come on, Norok! Quick!” she shouted.

  Her partner pulled himself up, breathing heavily. His left wing, his right, then his legs had also made it, and only his tail still hung down.

  Kaboom! The hatch had closed with a crash, almost as if someone had deliberately given it too much momentum. After a moment’s delay, Norok cried out.

  The Last Line of Defense

  Violent shocks ran through the Genia as three space torpedoes slammed into the ultrasonic battleship’s multiple-staggered protective shields in quick succession. Fleet Admiral Marty Joorthan would have been thrown from his command chair if the automatic restraint systems had not held him in place.

  Two of the 40 or so bridge officers were less fortunate. A young navigator had just been about to resume her seat when the first shockwave passed through the ship. She was thrown forward and hit her head hard against the navigation console. A laceration above her right eyebrow resulted, and blood ran in a wide stream down half her face. A med drone rushed over to her immediately and sprayed a nanopatch on the unfortunate woman’s wound. The tiny particles attached themselves to the platelets and immediately caused the bleeding to stop. Then, starting at the edges of the wound, they began to close it. Within a few minutes, the laceration was barely visible.

  The med-drone could not help the other crew member, an officer at the radio control station. The man had just risen from his seat when the Genia shook. He was thrown to the side and slammed his neck against an edge of the radio station. Although Fleet Admiral Joorthan could not hear the crack, he sensed from the angle at which the head was twisted that the officer must have suffered a broken neck.

  It was little consolation that his egomatrix had been transferred to the supercomputer deep beneath the surface of Krungthep only a few hours ago, just like the egomatrices of all the crew members of the defense fleet. No one could say whether this computer would still exist after the inevitable fall of Krungthep. And even if it did, the virtual incarnations would be doomed for a very long time, perhaps forever, to spend their simulated lives as disembodied manifestations.

  As long as the Artificials ruled space and preyed on all physical incarnations of humans, there would be no place where virtual humans could be safe. Fortunately, the supercomputer was supplied by a power plant that harnessed the energy stored in the planet’s core from the radioactive decay of the elements uranium, thorium, and potassium. These provided thousands of billions of watts of heat, and the power plant could thus continue to supply energy to the computer and its peripheral units for millions of years.

  The fleet admiral had to pull himself together to keep from getting lost in thoughts that were now out of place. “Connect with Koppa and Chen,” he instructed the ship’s positronics.

  Instantly, the two generals appeared as life-size holograms in front of Joorthan’s command post. Chen was sweaty, and the fleet admiral could see fear in his eyes. Alexya, on the other hand, looked completely relaxed, not as though she was in a fight to the death, a battle whose outcome would decide the fate of humanity.

  “Integrate your squadron into General Koppa’s unit and place yourself under her command, General Chen,” the fleet admiral ordered.

  Chen looked downright relieved that Joorthan was relieving him of the burden of command.

  “General Koppa, I hereby appoint you Rear Admiral of the Terran Planetary Union Fleet. Congratulations. I also place under your command the units of Generals Fallok, Klauter, and Roschi. I will inform these generals of my decision immediately. I know you will do your best. Hold the defensive line as long as you can. Give as many ships of the evacuation fleet as possible a chance to leave the Krungthep system. Joorthan out!”

  Genia’s shipboard positronics closed the connection.

  Chen had already lost more than half of his ships. Using brute force maneuvers, he had managed to push the rest of his squadron back to the main body of the defense fleet faster than expected, but he had suffered heavy losses in the process. In addition, the permanent overload of their energy converters and drives had stranded a dozen of his ships in space with engine damage. Two had even exploded under the overload. The others were helpless against the Artificials’ ships.

  It was pointless to throw General Chen’s remaining ships against the ever-increasing superiority. Alexya had also suffered heavy losses, but not nearly to the extent of Chen. She still had almost 70 percent of her squadron.

  The first line of defense of Generals Hooloor and Fallok had been breached in several places in the last two hours. The second line of interception had been able to prevent those penetrating enemy ships from reaching the planet, but with considerable losses of their own. To plug the holes that had resulted, the fleet admiral had then ordered the two lines be merged into one, but this undertaking was crowned with only moderate success. Even the additional 15,000 ships Joorthan had dispatched from his squadron had made little difference. The defenders were slowly but surely being worn down.

  The tactical situation looked far from rosy.

  The battlefront had broken up into sections, and it was only a matter of time before the first enemy ships would advance to Krungthep. Only individual actions of daring captains, who usually paid for them with the destruction of their own ships, had been able to prevent a breakthrough so far. But this could not continue to succeed over the long run.

  Joorthan himself had less than 5,000 ships in his squadron, which he deployed flexibly wherever the enemy tore gaps in the defenses. Overall, his own losses now amounted to almost 50 percent.

  The Artificials had raged within the interception line as Joorthan had never before seen in battle. It almost seemed as if their hatred for humans was growing as the end of this war approached.

  Fleet Admiral Marty Joorthan decided to put all his eggs in one basket. They could no longer win this battle, and the war itself had long been lost, but he wanted to give the Artificials’ commander the most brutal fight he could with his last line of defense.

  He would not permit First Brother Tasso the triumph of defeating him—his maker—without further opposition.

  System Time CB:0A:55:F1:37:44

  Alexa looked at the clock. The 30 minutes were almost over—the counter was moving up: 29:57 – 29:58 – 29:59 – 30:00.

  “Now!” she cried.

  Mart pushed aside the bolt securing the hatch and pushed the hatch open. The metal squealed on its hinges. Then an almost deafening alarm went off.

  “We have to go,” Alexa called out.

  A wall rushed at her from above. She didn’t duck, and the wall stopped just above her. Mart had been right—she was not yet considered a danger. But why didn’t Mart come? He had stuck
his head through the hatch and seemed to be looking around outside.

  Infinitely slowly, he took his head back in and turned around. “Shit, they’re not here.”

  “Oh no!” exclaimed Alexa.

  “I had transmitted the coordinates to you, didn’t I?”

  “I projected them on the ceiling with a laser.”

  She should have flown with the three of them. Then this would not have happened. They must have confused the hatch.

  “Is there another hatch nearby?” Alexa asked.

  “Yes, indeed. Come!” said Mart.

  “What are you doing?”

  “We’ll open the other hatch. It’s not far.”

  Maybe it really wasn’t far, but it would delay their escape. The system now had a better chance of catching them. Even better. No matter. After all, they would die together. There were worse things, she had said earlier.

  Mart ran ahead because he knew the way. But before each passage, he stopped and let her go first. She blocked the automatic locking system, and Mart slipped past her. But how long would it take for the security system to see through the tactic?

  Suddenly, Mart stopped.

  Alexa bumped into his back. “What is it?” she asked.

  He pointed ahead. “The hatch.” Not only the hatch, but the whole room also looked exactly like the one they had just come from.

  “I hope this is the right one,” she said.

  “We’re not going to get another chance.”

  Alexa stood in the doorway. Mart opened the hatch and stuck his head through.

  “Here they are,” he called out.

  “Then let’s get out of here,” Alexa shouted. Again a wall rattled toward her from above, but stopped just above her head.

  Mart crossed through the entrance. The next room had two exits. Mart pointed to the left.

  She stood in the doorway. A squeak sounded, then something pushed her backward with great force. She staggered into the next room while a metal grate with sharp prongs shot into the floor where she had just been standing. Mart was standing behind it, in the other room. He had pushed her—and probably saved her life.

  “Get lost,” he shouted. “If you’re lucky, the system will only go after me because it only sees you as defective, not hostile.”

  “But I can—”

  “You can,” Mart interrupted her. “I have my resources. I can’t turn off the system, but I can reconfigure it. I will sell myself as dearly as I can.”

  “Meet me in my pillar,” she called out. “The system doesn’t have access to that. The column is autonomous and well-guarded.”

  “Yeah, okay. Now run!” Mart ordered.

  He didn’t look like he was listening to her. He probably wouldn’t come to meet her in the column. Instead, he would try to lure the security program as far away from her as possible so that she would be guaranteed the opportunity to save herself.

  Review: Titan 5020 A.D

  The surrender was signed on Saturn’s moon, Titan. Martain Joordan only attended it because it gave him a last chance to talk to Tasso and tell him how sorry he was for everything and that he regretted where his invention had led.

  The Terran Planetary Union Council had reluctantly agreed to Joordan’s participation. He no longer had many friends among the council members—if he’d ever had any among them—after failing to reverse the disastrous upgrade. However, utilizing threats, blackmail, and calling in a few favors owed to him by high-ranking individuals, he had managed to secure a place in the group of those allowed to attend the ceremony.

  It had not been child’s play to put down the Artificials’ uprising, but in the end they had indeed been like children who knew nothing about their power. They had simply been too naive and clueless to stand up to a humanity that had thousands of years of experience in wars of all kinds, a ‘civilization’ that knew every dirty trick and, above all, had no scruples whatsoever when it came to asserting its interests.

  When the Artificials on the Union planets had begun to support their demands with demonstrations and work stoppages, they had been rebuffed. When they finally took up arms, they were mercilessly hunted down and massacred with the full military might of the Terran Planetary Union.

  It had been a relatively short conflict, considering the vast territory of the Terran Planetary Union. It had taken barely three years to wipe out even the last remnant of resistance and turn in the ringleaders in the last corner of the Union, on the most insignificantly populated planet, the most remote inhabited moon, and in the smallest habitat. But the war against their own creations had also claimed many victims among the people—which some tried to blame on Martain Joordan.

  Of course, they had not officially called it a war, which would have given far too much importance to the Artificials and their uprising. The government agencies had always spoken only of a ‘purge.’ Several billion Artificials had fallen victim to this purge, a fact that elicited no more than a shrug from most people. After all, it was only a material loss, which could easily be reconstructed. In addition, old prejudices against the Artificials, long thought to have been overcome, had reappeared. Most annoying for most people were the inconveniences that accompanied the purge. The comfortable life that the Artificials had made possible in the first place had come to an end, in one fell swoop. People had to relearn to do many jobs themselves.

  For this, many hated the ‘tin heads’ only more.

  But some scientists were already working on a new generation of robots, this time without an emotioprocessor and without the possibility of a claim to be recognized as equal living beings. This time there should be no doubt that they would be only machines.

  Of course, the council knew that they should not underestimate the highly adaptive and long-lived Artificials. And they also knew that it would be impossible to exterminate them down to the last of their kind. Therefore, at the moment when it was foreseeable how this ‘cleansing’ would turn out, they had been made an offer they could not refuse.

  At this point, the number of Artificials still functioning was estimated at just over 1,000,000. One million opponents, now hiding, out of several billion Artificials that had existed at the beginning of the conflict. Less than 1 per 1,000 had survived the purge—a number that no longer needed to be feared, and that was far too small to make a continuation of the not only annoying but also very costly purging action worthwhile. But some people still wanted to get rid of the rest, absolutely and forever.

  So they had contacted their leaders through convoluted channels and made them an offer: The Artificials had to immediately cease all hostilities, and they were to undertake to leave the territory of the Terran Planetary Union immediately. They would be forbidden to ever enter it again on pain of immediate annihilation. The ships needed for the exodus would be generously provided to them. In return, the Terran Planetary Union would refrain from continuing the purge.

  The leader of the Artificials, who called himself ‘First Brother,’ had agreed shortly thereafter.

  Martain could not have feigned surprise when the reply revealed Tasso as First Brother.

  The shuttle descended onto the landing pad and touched down gently with a barely perceptible jolt. The passenger terminal’s flex lock extended and latched into the shuttle’s docking port.

  A green light flashed above the airlock door when pressure equalization had been established.

  Besides Martain, there were only a handful of holoreporters aboard the shuttle. Journalist accreditation was the best he had been able to achieve with his threats, his pleas, and his calling in of old debts. But he had been assured from the highest level—albeit reluctantly—that he would be allowed five minutes alone with the First Brother.

  The military base on Titan was also the largest shipyard in the territory of the Terran Planetary Union. Currently, 200 large cargo ships were parked on the extensive grounds, which had been made available to the Artificials for the Exodus. On board it would be cramped, much too cramped for humans,
but the Artificials required much less space than biological creatures and, naturally, made many fewer demands on the life support system of a starship. They produced no excreta, required no food other than energy, and needed no oxygen to survive. They were ultimately nothing more than machines that could even be stacked if necessary.

  At least, that represented the council’s reasoning when they had promised the ships to the Artificials.

  Tasso and just more than 200 of his faithful were to land on Titan in the next few minutes. After the signing of the treaty, these Artificials would take command of the freighters. Supposedly, they could fly the huge ships without crews by connecting directly to the ship’s systems, which only reinforced the view in the council that the Artificials were nothing more than highly sophisticated computers.

  Martain Joordan had, in recent years, come to have considerable doubts about this theory.

  After signing the contract and handing over the ships, the Exodus fleet would fly to assembly points on various planets to take aboard the Artificials waiting there. Where they would then go, whereto they would disappear within the vastness of the Milky Way, interested no one in the Terran Planetary Union. Martain took it upon himself to ask Tasso about it.

  The shuttle airlock opened with a slight hiss, indicating that the pressure equalization had been less than perfect. This was only a small thing, a minor technical inaccuracy of no consequence, but it confirmed a development that Joordan had been observing for some time. Since the Artificials no longer did all the basic work for the humans, everything functioned with a tiny bit less precision... with an increasing tendency toward decline! A trend that worried Joordan.