Nanomachine War series Box Set

by Don Viecelli

  Doug and Jan returned to their home, which in reality was a small three room habitat made of strong, tan colored fiber materials and inflated on Mars as residential housing. It was strong, secure and provided shielding from severe radiation from the sun. It would do for the time being. In the future, more buildings would be built using traditional materials found on Mars and everything protected under translucent geodesic dome structures.

  “I’m really tired. It’s been a long day,” Jan said as they entered the home and Doug closed the door behind them.

  “I’m really hungry,” Doug said. “I’ll make dinner.”

  “That would be nice. I’m going to take a shower before I eat. I’m all sweaty from wearing that spacesuit all day. I probably smell terrible.”

  Doug smiled at Jan. “I didn’t notice anything. You smell okay to me.”

  “You need a shower too. Trust me,” Jan smiled back.

  “Fine. You first. I need to eat something soon,” Jack ignored Jan’s final comment as she pealed her clothes off and threw them on the bed. One of the best things he liked about his wife, Doug realized, is she is not shy. Her skin was white from lack of sunlight on Mars. He watched her grab a towel in the bathroom and hang it near the shower. Janice turned to see him standing there in the kitchen with a smile on his face. She looked him in the eyes and slowly closed the door without saying a word.

  Doug shook his head and felt so thankful he found her when he did. She made his life complete and knew he would never love another person the way he loved Jan. He had to force himself to refocus on the task at hand—dinner.

  Fortunately, food was not a problem for the people who currently lived on Mars. They grew their own vegetables and fruit and raised many different types of small animals and fishes on farms in their communities. Certain meats like steak or pork were hard to find, but most people understood the reasons why and made due with other things to eat. Doug decided to cook frozen fish for dinner with green beans and rice. There was even local beer and wine made right on Mars for people to buy and drink. Doug decided to serve wine with dinner since they were celebrating a very interesting day. They had actually been the first humans to contact real, live aliens; at least first contact that could be proven to others. It would go down in history.

  Dinner was ready and on the table by the time Jan put on clean clothes and sat down to eat with Doug. He lifted his glass of wine and said. “Here’s to our first meeting with aliens. I hope this brings good things for all of us.”

  Jan raised her glass to his and said, “I hope they repair their starship and leave as soon as possible.”

  Doug took a sip of his wine before commenting, “That doesn’t sound too hopeful for a toast.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I’m just concerned about what we saw and learned about them and the Yoyka aliens. Our world is not ready for something like that to happen to us. The Qumru coming here seems like bad timing.”

  “Well, we’ll know more as soon as Utor meets with our people and tells us who the Intruder is on their spaceship. They should be able to handle it themselves. Once they repair their spaceship, they will be on their way.”

  “I’ll drink to that. Thanks for making dinner. It looks good.”

  After dinner they cleaned the dishes together and sat down to watch the news on TV. It was not good. The media was clamoring for the UN press secretary to give them more news about the aliens. A brief announcement from Haruto Nakamura said the first meeting with the aliens on board their spaceship went well and a second meeting was planned soon. There was no information about what really happened on that ship or who actually went up there.

  An hour later details about the ten dead aliens found aboard the spaceship leaked out to the news media. It was shocking to everyone who heard it and some people on Mars were getting a bit panicked according to several news announcers.

  Doug said to Janice, “One of the persons who went with us must have leaked these details. Colonel Jackson is going to be furious.”

  “Haruto better put out another press release or people will be even more upset by tomorrow,” Jan said.

  Doug turned off the TV and they both went to bed. It had been a trying day and both of them were bone tired. They fell asleep in each other’s arms within a few minutes. The last thing Doug was thinking before falling asleep was why an Intruder aboard the starship would try to cripple it before reaching its destination? He fell asleep before he could form an answer in his mind.

  Chapter 13

  Hunt For Intruder

  The Qumru starship was large enough for someone to hide in a dozen different compartments without ever being discovered. The Intruder was still invisible on any camera or other detection devices the aliens were using to try and find him. He was certain they knew who he was and why he damaged the starship, but did not destroy it entirely. It would be unconscionable to kill a billion souls on board even if one was only dealing with digitally stored minds and not whole persons. No sane alien would do such a thing. The Intruder knew this, but he had a dilemma that needed to be resolved. The starship could not be permitted to leave this solar system with the current crewmembers operating the starship. He just needed more proof before he killed them all.

  The Intruder was currently on Level 15 where the crew’s cryostasis sleeping champers were located. They were all empty now. First Leader Utor had woken the remaining crewmembers in order to find the Intruder and destroy him before he did more damage to the starship. The Intruder pulled out a small scanning device and turned it on. A red light indicated what he feared most. He checked all thirty chambers and the device confirmed his worse fears. They have all been infected by the Yoyka. He needed to capture or kill all the crewmembers before they spread their robotic nanomachines to other living hosts. He needed more help to contain the situation.

  The Intruder left the sleep chambers and worked his way back to the hangar bay. There were several spacecraft in the hangar used by the crew to land on planetary surfaces for various purposes. They also contained long range quantum space transmitters that could send messages through space almost instantaneously. He had already sent one message to his contacts telling them what had happened aboard the Solruku. He was waiting for a response. He climbed inside one spacecraft, turned on the device and looked for a reply to his earlier message. He found what he was looking for when a specially encoded message appeared on the screen in his language, “Message received. Space coordinates verified. Arrival in thirty sims.”

  The Intruder sent a new update on the current situation and deleted both messages from the device. He knew this meant his friends would arrive in 30 daily revolutions of this planet called Mars. Unfortunately, he also knew the AI aboard this starship would have detected the transmitter being used on this spacecraft and crewmembers would be on their way now to check it out. He had to leave and find another place to hide. He might be able to save the starship and all the minds in storage if he could survive long enough for help to arrive.

  Utor was standing on the Bridge in the Command Center. Other Qumru crewmembers were at their stations performing routine tasks in preparation for repairing the starship. Ten crewmembers were searching for the Intruder. Their orders were to kill the Intruder on sight. Utor had a good idea who the Intruder was and his crewmembers were prepared. Utor turned to Shonya, “What is the status on the search for the Intruder?”

  “A brief burst of energy from one of our quantum message transmitters on a Qumruku shuttle in the hangar bay was just detected. Two officers are checking it out now.”

  “Do you know what the message contained?” Utor asked impatiently.

  “It was an encrypted message sent to an unknown location, First Leader Utor. Quantum transmissions cannot be deciphered without the key.”

  Utor understood perfectly well what that meant. The Intruder was expecting help to arrive; but when? More importantly—who?

  Utor’s mind was becoming forgetful. He struggled to remember what his original mission w
as, but his thoughts were incoherent. When he first woke up in the cryostasis chamber, Utor knew what had to be done. Now the old memories were gone; somehow replaced by new thoughts. It was as if his mind was reorganizing his thoughts to accomplish a new mission. At first he thought his mission was to take the starship with its passenger minds to their second home world. Then his thoughts were to return the starship to their home planet Qum for reasons unexplained. Now his mind told him he must repair the starship and wait for more instructions regarding the aliens found on the planet called Mars. These new aliens would become more useful to them once they received the nanomachines from Yoyka. Everything was beginning to make perfect sense to Utor. The nanomachines were meant to clarify the meaning of life for all living beings, not just the Qumru. All must serve the Yoyka.

  Everything was slowly becoming much clearer. Utor must do Yoyka’s bidding and make Humans the new goal of this mission. But first, he must find and destroy the Intruder aboard his starship. The Humans must not discover who the Intruder really is.

  Chapter 14

  Yoyka Leader

  Rahta, Imperial Leader of the Yoykan Empire, was a giant of a being at 2.5 meters tall with broad shoulders, large round head, square face, deep set eyes, large nose, small ears and thick lipped mouth. He had a wide waist, two muscular looking arms with six thick fingers on each hand and long stocky legs with two large feet. Rahta’s skin was dark brown in color, his eyes black and his race no longer grew hair anywhere on their bodies for the last two thousand revolutions around their large, dim yellow sun. He was humanoid in appearance, but built with a large bone structure and muscular body to withstand the heavy gravitational force found on his home planet, Yoykan.

  Rahta wore a black military uniform with a high collar, gold waistband and several medals pined on his left chest. He was a warrior as well as the sole autocratic leader of the Yoyka people. For personal protection, he carried a sidearm beam weapon and a long thin blade knife at all times. In battle conditions he wore a protective armored suit that surrounds him with a nearly impenetrable energy field against ballistic, energy beam or other weapons. Feared by those he subjugated, there had been two assignation attempts on his life. He lived and the assassins died.

  Rahta ruled over a vast Empire stretching over 1,000 light years in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy with the original home world located 14,000 light years from the center of the galaxy. He controlled numerous alien race home worlds in several solar systems. These aliens numbered in the trillions. He did not need vast armies to accomplish this. He simply infected these races with microscopic robotic nanomachines, which only his race could control using quantum mechanics transmission methods that utilizes tachyon particles for almost instantaneous communications. It was ingenious really. Who needed vast armies of warriors to rule over conquered people when nanomachines could do the job so much easier and cheaper?

  Rahta was on his Imperial Dreadnought named Yoykan Malee; meaning World Conqueror. It was a massive space battleship 1.6 kilometers long, 1 kilometer wide and .3 kilometers deep. It carried over 500 crewmembers and 2000 Imperial troops. It was armed with the latest military weapons the Yoyka could devise. Nothing in this part of the galaxy could oppose it and survive; though many tried.

  The Yoykan Malee was in high orbit around Qum located 1,000 light years further out from Yoykan. It was Rahta’s latest conquest and he wanted an update on the situation concerning its subjugated peoples. Rahta was seated at the head of a large conference room table located near the Command Center. There were twelve chairs around the table and all were filled with senior officers. High Commander Anahta of the Dreadnought was standing at the other end of the table. He was wearing a similar uniform as Rahta, but was a bit shorter and not as muscular. His voice was clear and he did not seem intimidated by his Imperial Leader. “I am ready to begin, Imperial Leader,” Anahta said in a strong voice.

  “Why has the situation on Qum worsened, High Commander?”

  “It seems the Qumru were more advanced than we originally thought. Many found a way to escape the control of the nanomachines before we could stop them.”

  “What exactly did they do? Please explain to me.” Rahta was clearly unhappy with the news.

  Anahta was prepared for the question. “They uploaded their minds to one of their starships they had hidden from us in their asteroid field and fled the solar system. They left their bodies behind.”

  Rahta was astonished. “They can do this?”

  “We just became aware of this technology, Imperial Leader.” In fact, Anahta was not sure how this was accomplished. It was a new discovery.

  “How many Qumru escaped our control?” Rahta frowned.

  “Approximately one billion bodies were left behind, Imperial Leader.”

  “One billion! Are you certain?”

  “The number has been verified by the nanomachine tracking logs. As you know, Imperial Leader, once the nanomachines gain access to the mind and take control, the nanomachines send data to our quantum servers for administration purposes. However, if the body or mind should fail, the nanobots send a final message and stop functioning. The nanobots were not designed to supplant consciousness in controlled hosts. They require working brains to function properly.”

  Rahta was quiet for a moment. No one in the room spoke a sound while Rahta was thinking. He asked, “How did this happen?”

  Anahta was expecting this question as well and answered as best as he could. “We are not certain, Imperial Leader. The Qumru had outside help, but we do not know yet who it was. We are still investigating.”

  “Where did the starship go? Can we get the minds back?” Rahta was starting to get angry.

  “We were fortunate, Imperial Leader. Some of the Qumru crewmembers aboard the starship were infected with nanomachines and sent us a quantum message from hyperspace. Unfortunately, the message was cut off before we could get a destination. We are trying to track the starship’s path through hyperspace now, but it seems the starship dropped out of hyperspace without explanation. We are working to find it.”

  Rahta switched subjects. “What do we do with the bodies left behind?”

  “They must be recycled as soon as possible. There is no way to preserve so many bodies at one time on the planet. They are lost.”

  “And the effect on production?” Rahta asked.

  “It has been seriously affected, Imperial Leader, but we will find other ways to make up for it.”

  Rahta thought for a moment before asking, “What purpose does this serve? What will this race do with a billion minds and no bodies?’

  “The investigators on the planet found some answers to these questions. The Qumru seem to have the ability to regenerate their bodies as needed. The process is used when their people get sick or travel long distances in space. They upload their consciousness or minds into some sort of quantum archive that also preserves a copy of their DNA to create new bodies whenever needed. They call this Onutu.”

  “Can we duplicate this ‘Onutu’ process?” Rahta understood the implications. It could mean immortality for him or his people.

  “We could not find any information how this is done, Imperial Leader. We believe the knowledge was taken with them on the missing starship.

  “There is one more thing Imperial Leader that is of importance. The Qumru may have found a way to prevent our nanomachines from infecting them. There are indications that some of the Qumru people may be immune to the nanomachines and went into hiding.”

  This was alarming news to everyone in the room. “How many Qumru people are we talking about, High Commander?”

  “We are not sure, Imperial Leader, but not many. We are trying to find them and study how it works. For certain, the Qumru are not able to reverse our nanomachine control.”

  Rahta was seriously concerned now that the Qumru may have found a way to prevent his nanomachines from infecting people. If his scientists could not resolve this issue soon, he would order the destruction of
the planet to prevent the news of this spreading throughout his Empire. First things first, he thought to himself. He looked at Anahta. “We must find this missing starship and determine what these Qumru minds know. Then they must be destroyed before other races learn how to defeat our nanomachines!”

  Chapter 15

  Mars Colony

  The next day on Mars started out very early in the morning for Doug and Jan Martin. They were awakened by a phone call from Deputy Secretary Haruto Nakamura. Doug answered the call groggily on his comphone while still lying in bed. “Good morning, Mister Secretary.”

  “Sorry to call so early, Doug, but I need you in the office right away.”

  “What’s this about?”

  “I received some reports from the news media that there will be a demonstration outside our building at nine am this morning to protest about the aliens. They want more answers. I need you to handle security precautions.”

  “I’ll get right on it, Mister Secretary. Have you notified Colonel Jackson and his peace keepers?”

  “Yes, I have. He’ll be here soon. You can discuss the matter with him when you get here.” Haruto hung up.

  “Who was that?” Jan asked now fully awake.

  “Haruto. I need to get to my office. There’s going to be a demonstration outside the UN office building this morning at nine am. He wants me to provide security.”

  “Demonstration? About what?”

  “Seems people are worried about the aliens. They want answers. I need to get dressed.”

  Doug leaned over and kissed Jan on the cheek. I’ll see you later this afternoon at work.”