“What trickery is this? Your computer systems should be under our control. We will now have to obliterate you from orbit. Prepare to die.”
Russell yawned. “This is getting rather Star Warsy dramatic isn’t it? Can you tell which ship the envoy is on Maddy?”
“Yes sir, she is on the larger cruiser class vessel, or at least that’s where the signal is originating from.”
“Tactical. Once they come into range, target the envoy’s ship first. I want to give the other ships a chance to leave.”
“Russ?” said Molly as she walked back onto the bridge with Evan. “It’s very lovely of you to spare the other ships, but what if they just move away and phone a friend?”
“Yeah, I thought of that. But seriously, I don’t think they seem like the ‘live to fight another day’ types. Do You? I mean, it’s obvious that these guys are not the ones who terraformed this planet, they are just the opportunists. So, what if the real aliens are sitting out there somewhere watching us, deciding if we are worthy of living or not. Let’s give them the chance, and then blow them out of space once they refuse the offer and attack.”
“Wise words brother in law. I like the way you’re thinking.”
Chapter 53
“It Was A Non-Event”
“The Princess says she is naked because it shows that she has nothing to hide.” David said, quite exasperated.
“But the important thing is,” he continued, “she told me that the re-set process has already started, when I activated the device. We have all the choices we like, but the process to remove humans has begun. We must go forward or it’s all over anyway.”
“So far, I know that there are five missions that we have to complete, and we have to pass through the blue rings to start them.”
“I want you all to come with me to the Princess. Don’t be afraid to ask any question, no matter how ridiculous it might seem. Also, we have to decide who goes through the rings with me.”
Wayne spoke up, “That’s not even a question David, we all go, end of story.” He motioned for them to move on.
They walked as a group to the fire pit and the Princess. There were eight plates of food on the floor, keeping warm near the fire pit. Suddenly, seven stomachs growled in hunger.”
“Please, eat.” The Princess beckoned with a wave. “I will speak and inform you of what I can, before you ask any questions.”
They sat and ate ravenously, Wayne and Timothy were eating fast, hoping to claim Lurch’s meal for themselves.
“There is no need to compete for food here,” laughed the Princess. “More food will come if you want it, please place your bowl in front of you if you want more, behind you if you are finished.”
Wayne and Timothy looked at each other, totally amazed.
“I will begin,” said the Princess. “Please don’t ask any questions until I am finished.”
“I presume the fact that you have sat back down with me, means you have decided to continue on?”
David looked around at his family. They nodded their assent, acknowledging that they wished to go on. “Yes,” said David firmly.
“Ok then. There are five missions that must be completed. No-one, not even me, knows what these missions are. Although we have presumed for many years that they will be about how humans have interacted with the environment and each other, we may be wrong.”
“To start the mission, you will travel through one of the blue gates. Something, or someone, will reveal themselves to you, which will help you to determine what the nature of the mission is. We do not know if you are to complete the mission on the other side, or if it is merely to give you information to complete the mission here. No-one has ever passed through the portals before. They have never activated before today.”
“There is no middle ground. If you fail any of the missions, the environment will re-set. There are no second chances.”
“We do not know how long you have, so I suggest you don’t delay.”
“The Princess reached out and took hold of Skye’s hand and looked deeply into her eyes, trying to send a message.”
“Do you have any questions?” the Princess asked of the group.
David spoke first. “How will we know when a mission is complete, successfully or not?”
“I do not know the answer to that. I presume, like finding me, it will be obvious when it happens.”
David continued, “There are five portals, presumably one for each mission. Which one is the first?”
“There is no particular order. And no hint as to what lies behind each one. You must simply choose one and trust your intuition.”
Skye was next. “If we fail, how will humans be removed?”
“Ahh, Yes. Good question. They already have.”
Grandpa Jack nearly choked on his Dahl Bhaat, but the Princess held up her hand to indicate that they should continue listening.
“No-one has or will be killed. The human race was sterilised the moment you activated the device, and will be allowed to slowly die out. It will only take around eighty years or so. A blink of the eye in the time line of this planet. If you are successful, fertility will be reinstated. Of course, the time line for recovery is much shorter than that.”
“Strangely, that doesn’t make me feel any better about it,” said Skye, imagining what it would be like, to be the last human alive. She shivered.
The Princess sat serenely. “Are there any more questions?”
Grandpa Jack thought for a moment. “I think it’s time to get going. We will gain nothing more by sitting here chatting.”
They all stood and gathered their bedrolls and made towards the cavern exit and the bridge to the portals.
The Princess stood, her shawl falling to the cavern floor. She approached David, coming uncomfortably close. David felt her slip something into his pocket as she kissed him on the cheek and wished him good luck.
David looked down at his staff, “Nothing To Hide Hey?”
David had no idea what to say, so he simply smiled, turned and headed toward the gates.
They were instantly freezing again as they walked out of the cavern, into the high altitude atmosphere. David noticed his GPS in his HUD and it said that they were at six thousand five hundred and fifty eight metres. The air was extremely thin as they arrived at the gates, gasping.
Lurch was the last to arrive as he had been at the back of the cavern charging his batteries.
“David?” asked Skye, finally interpreting the Princess’s subliminal message. “Do you remember that we were supposed to hang our prayer flags on a high pass?”
“I had forgotten about that. This looks like the highest pass we are going to see.” He looked around at the magnificence of the view.
“If only people got out into nature, they could see all the magnificence that is worth protecting, feel that connection that I now feel. Maybe we can encourage that more.”
Lurch uploaded an update file to Druk who was circling down in the valley. It was weird to be looking down at her flying below them.
They unrolled their sleeping mats and removed the rolled-up prayer flags from within them.
David looked at his. “Outer Space Nature” he said.
“Outer Space Nature Boy,” they all said together, laughing nervously.
They tied off the prayer flags from a column near the portals, to the fence posts on the sides of the stone bridge. They all had different colours. David’s were a shimmering blue, as if they were copies of Druk’s scales. They fluttered warmly in the light breeze.
David looked into Grandpa Jack’s eyes, “An adventurous spirit hey?”
“There’s no other way,” he smiled. “Let’s do this. The sooner we go through, the sooner we find out what’s on the other side.”
“The big question,” said Flynn, “Is which one.”
The staff compelled them all to look at it, “Another Leap Of Faith?”
David shook his head and laughed, “Oh no, not again.” He could a
lmost hear the staff giggling to itself.
David and Skye led the way and stepped through the shimmering blue portal that was second from the right, why could it possibly matter at this stage, which one was correct, they would eventually have to pass through all of them.
It was a weird feeling. It was like being stretched and compressed all at the same time. But the transition was instant. There was none of this ‘stargate’ style, blurring star fields and screeching sounds. It was just step through and straight onto the ground on the other side. It was a non-event really.
Grandpa Jack followed, holding Fifteen’s hand. Wayne and Timothy followed very awkwardly holding hands, and finally Flynn and Lurch popped out to join the others.
The shimmering blue in the gate stopped shimmering. A few seconds later, the gate itself simply vanished as if it had never been there.
Chapter 54
“A Lot More Dangerous”
“Tactical. Let the Yrammus fleet come well within the field of fire, I want to end this with one shot,” Russell ordered.
“Lunar stations one and three are tracking the lead cruiser sir. Due to the difference in distance between the two moons, they will fire separately to allow the two shots to arrive at exactly the same time. I’m not detecting any shield systems sir, my analysis shows that the craft should be totally destroyed. Two minutes to optimal firing time.”
“Weapons free,” Russell said reluctantly. “Maddy? Once the lead cruiser is destroyed, invite the remaining ships to leave the system if they want to.”
“Yes sir,” Maddy replied, she loaded the message package to send on demand. “Sir, I just recorded another FTL flash in the outer system. It will be a few minutes before I can identify what it was.”
Russell and Evan just looked at each other. “This day just keeps getting better,” Evan said. “Stick to your plan I think Russ. We’ll deal with the new arrivals when we have to.”
The neutron plasma cannons mounted on the moons were massive beasts of things. The Barrels alone rose nearly fifty metres above the lunar surface. This was only possible due to the very low gravity on the moons. They were sitting in a giant gimble mount that sat above the surface. This gave the cannons an incredible field of fire, a full one hundred and ninety degrees side to side, and three hundred and sixty degrees around. This meant that they could hit almost any target before it even entered the lunar orbits, around four hundred and ninety thousand kilometres from the surface of Soom.
At the calculated target position, Lunar three’s shot range was only 223000 kilometres. Neutron plasma cannon shots travel at 0.92c. That is .92 the speed of light. The speed of light in a vacuum, is 299792 kilometres per second. Therefore, the plasma charge would arrive in a little under one second. Lunar One was a much longer shot, around 623000 kilometres. Meaning this shot would take a little over two seconds to arrive. Computers tracked the cruiser’s telemetry, coordinating the two canons to fire to a point that the cruiser would arrive, at the same time as the plasma charges.
“Canons are firing sir.”
“Sir? We have an expanding debris cloud at the target zone. Confirming target destroyed.”
“Maddy?”
“Package sent Sir. Waiting for a response.”
“Tactical Sir, I am tracking the other destroyer class vessels leaving on a trajectory heading away from the most recent FTL signature location.”
Russell raised his eyebrows. “Looks like the bigger dog just arrived to the fight.”
“Incoming data package sir. From the new arrivals. It looks clean, but I will route it to the offline data pad anyway.” Maddy said excitedly.
“Make sure the entire fleet is getting all of this information please Maddy. No secrets. Go ahead and play the new file.”
“Commander Owen Matson. I am envoy Reshnina of the Yrammus. We come in peace.”
Now, everyone in the fleet raised their eyebrows.
“I believe the scum that you just blew out of space was posing as myself. I thank you for disposing of her, the rest of her fleet will be rounded up and prosecuted.”
“Now, as to the matter of you having settled our nice little planet down there. We will need to meet to discuss the terms in which you will be allowed to stay. We do welcome you, however. My people terraformed the planet many years ago in the hope of attracting new sentient species to the region. But there are responsibilities that you must accept under confederation law if you wish to stay.”
“I will contact you again, once we make high orbit. Outside the range of your big guns.”
The envoy was obviously of the same species as the rogue envoy, but was clearly more refined, and perhaps, a lot more dangerous.
Chapter 55
“The Cove”
David was quite disoriented as soon as he stepped onto a nice green lawn on a knoll overlooking the ocean. His ears hurt beyond comprehension. After a while, he realised that in one step, they had gone from six thousand five hundred metres down to a little above sea level. He could see all of his companions experiencing similar pain, in fact Skye had a little blood coming from one of her ears, her eardrum had ruptured again. And there was an incessant banging noise, like several people banging steel water pipe with a hammer in a random pattern.
His ears started to adjust to the new altitude and the pain slowly began to ease. He started to strip layers off as the temperature was much warmer, but the banging in his ears would not stop.
David looked around him. They were in a nice park overlooking a quite beautiful stretch of coastline. It looked a little tropical, he could see what looked like a nice Buddhist style temple on the hill behind him.
Standing on the other side of the park were a group of people. They wore black shirts and hats with some sort of skull and crossbone design on them, like pirates. But they were pirates with cameras, and they were totally oblivious to the presence of the new arrivals.
Still, the banging noise went on. David came to realise that the noise was not his ears adjusting, but it was coming from the water below, where the pirates were focusing their cameras.
Off to the right, there were three policemen in black uniforms. They looked to be of Asian origins and if David had to guess, he would say that they were probably Japanese. The policemen still hadn’t noticed them, they were keeping a very close eye on the pirate guys.
David was drawn toward the pirates. But as soon as he started to move, he felt a firm hand on his shoulder, Grandpa Jack, he just knew.
He turned to see tears running down Grandpa Jack’s face. “I’m so sorry David. I should have sent all of you with your parents. I know where we are, and I am so sorry that you are going to see what you are about to witness. I should have known.”
David slowly took Grandpa Jack’s hand from his shoulder and gently released it. He knew that he had to go and see what was going on. They were here for a reason, best to get on with it.
David walked toward the Pirates. He noticed that the police spotted him when he was about twenty metres away. They made no move to stop him. In fact, they just laughed. He wasn’t sure if it was at him. Maybe they were just telling some private joke.
As he arrived at the little fence, alongside the pirates, he could see down into a beautiful cove with bright blue water. The ‘jungle like’ vegetation grew right down to the water’s edge.
He could now see the source of the awful banging noise. There were six small boats in a line at the entrance to the outer cove. One man on each boat, had a length of pipe hanging into the water and was banging on it with another short length of steel pipe. David’s mind had been exactly right before as to what it sounded like.
Skye grabbed David’s arm and pointed to a spot just ahead of the line of boats. “Is that a pod of dolphins? Oh my god, now I know where we are too.”
David looked to his right at the pirate lady who was standing next to him. She had removed the camera with a massive lens from her eye, and David could see the tears, cascading down her face. He looked back
to the water and his head spun as it finally dawned on him, what was about to happen.
He turned to look behind him, and saw that his family was in close around him. But now, behind them, standing shoulder to shoulder in a semi-circle, as if to protect them from the police, was another line of black shirted pirates.
David could now read the logo and realised that it was not a skull and crossbones as he first thought. These people were not pirates, but Cove Guardians.
The lady alongside David reached out to touch David’s arm, as if to reassure him. “My name is Mary,” the lady said kindly. “You are too young to see this. You should leave now.”
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