by James Rosone
As he approached her, T’Tock must have seen that she had no discernable weapon, because a sardonic smile spread across his lips. “This is only the beginning, Admiral. My people are going to devour your pathetic species.”
T’Tock laughed in satisfaction as he approached her, towering over her shaking body. Looking down at her as she lay there helpless, he said, “I am going to enjoy eating your heart and sucking your brains out through your eye sockets, Admiral.”
In that very instant, Halsey realized she was dead—dead because she’d failed to adequately protect her crew and the mission from this beast. Then T’Tock was hit by a barrage of blaster shots from several soldiers who’d arrived just in time to save her and Khalid.
*******
Thirty minutes later, as she sat on an examination table in sickbay, Admiral Halsey looked down at her hand and saw a slight tremble. She balled her hand into a fist so no one else would see it. Although that horrid beast was dead, she was still frightened. What she’d just lived through was by far the most terrifying thing she’d ever experienced. Never had she been as scared as when she had seen T’Tock unfurling himself in front of her, looking at her with those eyes that saw her as nothing more than food.
A nurse walked up to her with a small pneumatic injector. “This will help calm your nerves, Admiral. It’s normal to feel the way you do.”
Halsey nodded, not saying anything. She was trying to stay strong and stoic, but she knew she needed some help if she was to carry on.
“Thank you for this. I…I need to stay strong in front of the crew.”
The female nurse smiled briefly as she nodded. “It’s OK, Admiral, and you have this.”
The nurse then turned to head over to treat one of the other injured people from the attack.
A few seconds later, Halsey felt a lot better. Her nerves were calmed down, and she didn’t feel like it was the end of the world. She made her way to a couple of the injured crew members and talked with them for a few minutes.
Captain Hopper walked into sickbay. He spotted Halsey and made his way over to her. He was kitted out in his exoskeleton combat suit and weapon, ready to wage war on the decks of her ship if he needed to.
“Admiral, I’ve got a squad of my Deltas on watch over the remaining Zodark prisoners. I’ve taken the liberty of establishing a full twenty-four-hour guard rotation to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again,” he announced in a commanding, authoritative voice.
She only nodded at the warrior standing before her. The Deltas stood a full three inches taller when wearing their exosuits, which encased large swaths of their body in protective armor. The suits seemed to fit smoothly over their chiseled bodies and allowed them a great deal of mobility.
“Thank you, Captain, for seeing to this. I think it’s important that we reassure everyone that these dangerous beasts are firmly locked up and secured. We still have a couple of weeks until we arrive in Sol, and I don’t want the crew any more distracted than they already are,” Halsey said evenly.
The two of them talked for a few minutes more before they left. Hopper was about to lead her back to the brig—the place T’Tock had broken out of—to walk her through his security plan when she stopped.
Halsey turned suddenly. “I trust you to handle it,” she said, and then she left to head back to the bridge. She couldn’t bring herself to see the carnage T’Tock had left in his wake just yet. It was all still too fresh in her mind.
No, I’m going to need some time to recover from this one, she realized.
A few hours later, in addition to the Deltas on guard rotation in the brig, she had the Republic Army soldiers posting sentries on every deck and maintaining a lockdown of the crew. For the remainder of the trip, she wanted to keep everyone safe until they were able to hand over the nine remaining Zodarks to Space Command.
Chapter Nineteen
Colonization Highway
John Glenn Orbital Station
Earth, Sol
Admiral Bailey looked at the colossal transport as it docked at the station. It had just completed its five-day shakedown cruise with resounding success. BlueOrigin and Musk Industries had paused nearly all other construction projects to create the first several Ark-class transports. They had finished building three of them in record time. The other three were still a ways from completion.
The three Ark transports that were ready would start the process of ferrying tens of thousands of Republic citizens off Earth to Alpha Centauri and getting the new colony going while the military went into overdrive, preparing to defend Sol against a potential alien invasion.
As Admiral Bailey watched one of the new ships and saw all the people there to look on at the impressive structure, Bailey remembered that the Voyager and the Rook were due in Sol sometime in the next couple of days. The Gables had already arrived and caused quite the stir. Right now, there was a lot of anticipation for the remainder of the fleet. They were bringing back with them proof of alien life—ten of these Zodark creatures. It was thrilling, but also terrifying.
Then there were the Sumerians. Humans from another system and planet but who might have some connection to Earth, based on their language. The thought that there were other planets in the galaxy with humans wreaked havoc on the religions of the world, causing many to ask whether a deity had created life on Earth or if humans had also been created on other planets. Then, of course, there was the theory of intelligent design. Some postulated that an alien race was genetically engineering humans like cattle or crops and then planting them on various planets to grow and thrive, only to be culled at a later date and time.
The whole idea of humans being domesticated for food sent a shiver down Bailey’s back. He looked at the gigantic transport outside the station and realized the lucky passengers boarding it would be spared whatever was potentially heading toward Sol. Then again, he wasn’t sure if they really were the lucky ones. They’d be leaving behind all they had known for a new and strange planet that no one knew for sure would be better than Earth. It was a gamble either way.
“She’s a beauty, isn’t she?” Andrew Berry said as he walked up to Bailey. The two of them looked out the window at the mammoth creation.
“It’s a big ship. I still can’t believe we were able to construct something so massive,” Bailey said, waving his hand at the thing.
“Let’s put it this way—it wasn’t easy. We had to place multiple FLT drive systems along the sides of the hull just to make sure we could create a warp bubble large enough to encompass the entire ship. Frankly, it’s an incredible engineering accomplishment.”
Bailey nodded. “I’ll bet. How do you even slow something that large down once it gets moving?”
“That, Admiral, was a hundred-billion-dollar problem,” Andrew replied with a wink. “On a normal warship, we’d route a second set of MPD thrusters to the forward section of the ship to slow it down. With a ship the size of the Ark, that’s not possible. We’d lose too much power from the plasma drive system. We had to build a second engineering room at the front of the ship to handle the load.”
Admiral Bailey grunted. “Admiral Halsey’s fleet will arrive in Sol in a few days. Are your construction crews ready to begin work on the new warships once they arrive in the system and have some additional data to work with?” he asked. His own masters in the Senate were anxious to get the new fleet under construction. They were practically in a panic at the idea that Earth could become a food colony for some horrible alien race. It was every science fiction nightmare come true.
“We have an army of engineers standing by to receive whatever data the Voyager can provide on the Zodark ships, weapon systems, power generation, and propulsion systems. We’ve also stocked up enough supplies to build at least four of those original battleships we had planned to build. We’re about as ready to start production as we can be at this point,” Andrew assured him. “Musk Industries has even placed an emergency order for four thousand additional synthetic humanoid wor
kers to help with the workload.”
Turning to face Bailey, but keeping his voice low so no one else could hear, Andrew asked, “Are the rumors true about building a Synth army?”
The admiral glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one else was nearby. “That’s highly classified information you’re asking about,” he responded in a hushed tone.
Lifting an eyebrow at the cryptic response, Andrew whispered, “So it’s true, then? I thought they were illegal—against the Laws of Armed Conflict.”
The LOAC governed what types of military equipment each nation was allowed to build. It had been put in place to prevent the kind of bloodshed that had taken place during the last Great War.
Bailey shrugged. “Rules change when you’re facing a threat that can extinguish your race, Andy.”
Andrew shook his head in dismay. “I think you’re playing with fire, Admiral. We saw what could happen when humanoid AI drones go rogue. It was a bloodbath that nearly wiped out humanity last time.”
“I know what happened,” Bailey snapped hotly. “I’ve been assured safeguards have been put in place, and something like that can never happen again,” he continued. “Besides, I’m not even sure we’ll end up needing them. We’re just making sure that if they are needed, we can crank them out and have them ready if the time comes.” He held Andrew’s eyes for a moment, forcing the man to look away.
People hadn’t forgotten about the last year of the Great War of the 2040s. The war had changed until it was no longer a war both sides fought against each other but one fought by the machines both sides had unleashed on each other. When it had appeared the United States was going to lose the war to China, they had let loose new AI-equipped surrogate fighting drones on the Chinese. The drones had something close to consciousness and had the ability to learn, adapt, and overcome the enemy they were fighting. For several months, the marauding machines were all but miraculous as they turned the tide of the war in the Republic’s favor.
The drones themselves operated somewhat autonomously in that they could restock themselves with ammo from resupply drones. They could power down to recharge their battery using a combat solar panel or attach themselves to a fossil fuel generator. They needed very little in the way of maintenance or support once they had been deployed. That was what made them so effective. Then a Chinese hacker got inside the code and tried to disable them.
Instead of disabling the drones, the hacker accidentally disabled the safeguards, and the drones went rogue. They went on a killing spree of Biblical proportions, attacking and killing all human life. The only thing that stopped them was a concerted effort by the remaining Chinese and American forces to defeat them. It was in that gravest hour of possible species extinction that the warring parties saw what they had done and put an end to the fighting. They had coalesced together to defeat this unintended threat and save humanity.
The one saving grace the humans had during the war was that the rogue drones had not captured any drone production facilities or been able to get themselves organized into a coherent fighting force. They were small bands of sheer terror bots, running roughshod on anything they encountered until they were overwhelmed and destroyed.
From then on, the only humanoids allowed to operate were civilian synthetics, with extreme safety protocols in place. The world’s militaries had agreed to a moratorium on such tools of war. That moratorium, however, appeared to be coming to an end with the discovery of an even more deadly threat: the Zodarks.
Chapter Twenty
Homecoming
RNS Voyager
Sol
“We’re coming out of warp now, Admiral,” called out the helmsman.
Seconds later, the warp bubble around the ship collapsed, and the blackness of space returned. The light of the ever-present stars winked into existence seconds later, and then the visuals of the planets known in Sol. It was a welcome sight after all they had gone through. It was home.
Admiral Halsey looked at her helmsman. “Secure FTL. Prepare the ship for MPD thrusters and bring us up to three-quarter speed. Set a course for the John Glenn Station. Coms, send a message to Space Command that we’ve arrived safely in the system and are making our way to the John Glenn.”
“Yes, ma’am,” several of her crew members replied as they went to work executing her orders.
Looking at the radar display, Halsey saw the Rook had arrived safely and was following her lead to the orbital station. While they were returning home early, they had still been gone for nearly fourteen months. A lot had happened during their absence.
Lieutenant Adam George, her coms officer, announced, “Admiral, we’re receiving a message from Space Command. They’re welcoming us home from a successful mission. They’ve also asked that we relay all information we’ve been able to collect from our mission to the Mars DARPA facility for analysis and dissemination.”
Halsey nodded. “Very well. Send everything via enhanced encryption. Let them know it’s going to be a lot of data,” Halsey replied. She was happy to finally have someone to share the information with.
During the six-month trip back to Sol, her people had had a lot of time to debrief the Sumerians and the nine remaining Zodarks. They had collected tens of thousands of audio interviews of the two factions, learning every aspect and facet of their cultures, planets, people, economy, technology, and anything else they thought might be of value. Everything was fed into the quantum computer, and the sophisticated AI crunched the data and identified additional questions the interviewers should ask or areas they should explore. The AI had built an incredibly detailed summary of what they knew of the Sumerians and Zodarks up to this point.
Admiral Halsey had even had several Sumerians review and listen to what their AI had created so they could help edit it and fill in any gaps. The Sumerians, for their part, were astonished and amazed at how quickly the Earthers were able to develop these profiles of their people and the Zodarks.
Some of the critical pieces of information they had been able to glean revolved around the technology used by both the Sumerians and the Zodarks—particularly around propulsion, energy generation, and space travel. What still baffled Admiral Halsey was how the Zodarks had been able to transit such a vast, sprawling empire. Only a handful of the Sumerians they had liberated had ever been off their home planet besides their tenure as prisoners on Clovis, so their knowledge of how the Zodarks traveled hundreds of light-years was limited. They were only able to share rumors—and until those rumors could be validated, she wasn’t sure how much stock she’d put in them.
Hosni, one of the Sumerians whose master was apparently some sort of admiral, had said the Zodarks leveraged some transwarp-like technology. It acted like a portal or miniature wormhole that could be created, connecting one system to another. Then they’d use their FTL systems to travel between these so-called gates. She wasn’t sure what to make of that concept or how such a thing was even possible. Hadad had said when their people developed a technology that could essentially open a wormhole and travel between points without the use of these stargates, that was when the Zodarks had come down hard on them and locked them out of future space travel.
Hosni also gave them a piece of information that completely contradicted what the other Sumerian prisoners had said. While the Sumerians insisted the Zodarks were culling their world as part of their food source, Hosni had said that was a myth perpetrated by the Zodarks. He’d told them there were other colonies populated by Sumerians who had been culled. These worlds were being used to condition and train Sumerians into fighting in the Zodark Empire and expanding their reach as they fought other species.
Halsey didn’t know what to make of that claim. No one could confirm it, and no one else really believed it, but Hosni was insistent that this was all part of how the Zodarks used and manipulated other species. In the final report about this piece of information, she annotated that it needed further analysis and shouldn’t be outright dismissed. Something just didn’t add up, but
she wasn’t sure what it was.
Another piece of technology the Zodarks had mastered that Halsey was sure they’d move to integrate rapidly was their version of artificial gravity. While the Earther ships had to rely on an enormous energy-consuming artificial gravity well to create a one-g atmosphere on a large vessel or orbital station, the Zodarks had found a much more efficient way to accomplish this. Next to the information about the Trimarian reactor, the artificial gravity system, or AGS as they were now calling it, was probably the most significant technological discovery.
Of course, the discovery of human life on other planets and the Zodarks trumped the technological innovations, and they had also opened Pandora’s box for the Earthers. Naively, Admiral Halsey had to admit, humans had thought they were the only intelligent life in space. Perhaps that was because they hadn’t found evidence to support or disprove that theory, but they had now. What they’d discovered was so profound from an anthropological standpoint, it was going to upend centuries of doctrines and religious beliefs.
“Admiral, there’s a private message coming in for you from Space Command. Would you like me to route it to your office?” asked her coms officer.
Halsey smiled as she stood. “Yes, please do. XO, you have the bridge,” she announced before walking over to her office.
A minute later, she was seated at her desk and logged in to her computer terminal. She opened the communication application and waited. Seconds later, an image of Fleet Admiral Chester Bailey popped up. She lifted an eyebrow as a smile spread across her face. “Admiral Bailey, I wasn’t aware Admiral Sanchez had retired. Congratulations on your promotion,” she said.
Admiral Bailey had pushed for her to be the commander of this mission; she owed him for that. Admiral Sanchez had an old friend he had wanted to lead the first Republic expedition outside of Sol, but Bailey had pushed back, insisting that such a mission should go to a younger admiral, one who would be around to share that experience for generations to come, not retire shortly after returning to bask in the glory and accolades that would surely follow.