by E. R. Torre
Earth.
She’d see it in full soon enough, but in the meantime there was so much work to be done within her Moon base.
28
After a while, the ship appeared.
Though in the process of slowing, it was nonetheless traveling incredibly fast and would pass over the Lunar Base and be gone in seconds.
It was possible the ship’s pilot would see Vulcan’s base but, given the craft’s speed and her inability to stop and turn, there was no way her two passenger crew could investigate.
Vulcan watched through the window, her enhanced vision offering a magnified view of the terrain and sky above. She focused on the ship.
The Xendos.
She was surprised to find it didn’t travel alone. Below it and held by a gravity hook was an escape craft.
Vulcan leaned forward, her attention rapt. This was unexpected.
She focused on the escape craft and tried to see through its too small windows. She spotted a form, a person, looking through one of the windows and at the terrain below. The person had long, blonde hair.
Inquisitor Cer.
If Inquisitor Cer was in the escape craft, the Independent B’taav was piloting the Xendos.
Vulcan pressed buttons on the computers before her and linked up to the approaching ship. She kept the link secret as there was no need to alarm them.
She downloaded information from the Xendos, including everything gathered by the nano-probes that coated her outer body and lay hidden within the craft.
She then switched to a live video feed.
B’taav was indeed at the controls of the Xendos. Unlike the very ill person he was on Pomos a few days before, B’taav was mostly recovered from the nano-probe infection.
A second video feed, originating from the escape craft, displayed Inquisitor Cer. She had an ugly cut on her forehead and her blood marred the escape craft’s controls. She took up most of the vessel’s interior and stared out its window. She was the first to spot the lunar base.
In the Xendos, B’taav also noticed the base, mainly because of a single light shining through one of its windows. The light which came from the room Vulcan was in.
The Xendos and the escape craft flew over the lunar base and were quickly gone, their destination Earth.
All was going as planned.
Saint Vulcan shut most of the computers off for they were no longer needed and sat back in her chair.
She closed her eyes and concentrated.
Long minutes passed. An hour. Two.
Vulcan opened her eyes.
In that time, the Earth rose past the Moon’s horizon.
Floating above Earth was a massive, grotesque starship. It was a third the size of the planet and just as dead. A second structure, a metal lattice, surrounded Earth like a garrote.
The ship and lattice belonged to Vulcan’s old masters, the alien race known as the Locust Plague.
Though spread out and ready for use, the metal lattice was still. There was nothing on Earth worth taking. Vulcan noticed few clouds –dust actually– on the Earth’s surface. They moved in a slow swirl. More would appear and gain strength. Quickly.
Vulcan checked the Moon base’s long range instruments. The super-juggernaut Thanatos was approaching. By the time the massive starship arrived, Earth would be covered in that sandy whirlwind.
By then, it would be time to leave this place for good.
Saint Vulcan was satisfied all was in order. She again closed her eyes and allowed her mind to relax.
In that moment, she felt it.
The message.
It came from deep below the Earth’s surface.
From Three of Three.
She told her ancient companion all was ready.
29
It didn’t take long for that small storm to grow and cover almost the entire Earth.
Captain David Desjardins watched it from his artificial beach on board the super-juggernaut Thanatos. The vessel, like its brothers the Argus and the Tears of the Stars, was a solar system killer, a doomsday bomb disguised as a starship.
The Thanatos slipped past the Moon and her missiles fired upon the Locust Plague mothership.
The nano-probes within that ship had taken over and the metallic tentacles surrounding Earth spun and gained speed. They attempted to do the job they were supposed to over five thousand years before.
“Fire all starboard missiles,” David Desjardins said.
A hologram figure appeared at his side. It bore the likeness of Saint Vulcan.
“Missiles away,” the Saint Vulcan hologram said. “Loading next charge.”
“Where are they?”
The Saint Vulcan hologram took a moment to assess. One of the images before David Desjardins changed. It displayed a vessel rising from the planet’s surface. It was dead center in the eyewall of the enormous planet-sized storm.
“The Xendos is approaching orbit,” the Saint Vulcan hologram said. “Estimated time before she reaches it is fifteen seconds.”
“The storm?”
“There is a fifty nine percent chance she will make it through the storm’s outer wall.”
“Cutting it close, are we?”
“We have the time available to us and nothing more,” the Saint Vulcan hologram said.
“We do at that,” David Desjardins said.
The images changed. Titanic metallic structures appeared within the massive storm. They rose from the ground and the acid seas. From the mountains and valleys. They rose at a frantic pace and reached Earth’s upper atmosphere.
The images were disrupted as the artificial beach shook.
“Locust Plague ship is firing upon us,” the Saint Vulcan hologram said.
“Respond in kind,” David Desjardins said. “Show them we don’t take kindly to being fucked with.”
A deep rumbling was felt and lights dimmed as energy weapons discharged. The water before Desjardins continued rippling and waves lapped hard against the artificial shore.
“Where’s the Xendos now—”
Electric crackles and a familiar voice was heard over the communication system.
“Than— do you— me?”
The voice was that of Inquisitor Cer.
“Boost the signal,” David Desjardins said.
Images from within the Xendos appeared before Desjardins.
“Xendos, this is the Thanatos,” David Desjardins said. “Do you read me?”
“Thank the Gods!” Inquisitor Cer yelled. “We read you David!”
David Desjardins sat back in his chair and watched as the Xendos exited Earth’s atmosphere. The massive storm that covered the planet no longer allowed him a view of the metallic structures below so Desjardins’ attention turned to the readings from the Locust Plague mothership. On his face appeared a satisfied smile.
“You did your job well,” he said. “The Locust Plague’s Mothership was almost at full power until a few seconds ago. The computer virus is working.”
“What’s the status of the Thanatos?”
“I’ve swatted away a bunch of drones. Otherwise we’re ready for detonation.”
The Xendos flew through a thick cloud of debris and energy weapon discharges.
The Locust Plague Mothership, though increasingly crippled by David Lemner’s computer virus, nonetheless continued pounding the Thanatos with all she had. The Thanatos returned fire while Locust Plague drones moved around her, firing their weapons and trying to disrupt and destroy her offensive capabilities. The battle was near even, but it was never the intention of the Thanatos to win this particular skirmish.
Not that way.
The Xendos continued climbing, first passing the moving tentacles before passing the Locust Plague Mothership itself.
The Xendos approached the Thanatos’ side and used the massive ship as a shield against the Locust Plague’s weapons. Incredibly, that side of the super-juggernaut was intact.
Soon, the crew of the Xendos, Inquisitor Cer, B’taav
, Becky Waters, and Nox spotted a light as bright as a small star shining off the Thanatos’ port side. The Thanatos carried a small Displacer and it was active and waiting for the Xendos to fly through it and escape the doomed Solar System.
In his artificial beach paradise, David Desjardins watched the Xendos move closer to the Displacer.
The water before him was now far too violent to swim in.
“Not that this is the time to take a dip,” he muttered and laughed.
“Desjardins, how do we get you out?” B’taav asked over the communicator.
“You don’t,” David Desjardins said.
“There’s still time to save you!”
“No there isn’t. I’ve lived two full lives, B’taav. One more than everyone else. Make yours count.”
David Desjardins looked up and at the tinsel glass ceiling covering the artificial beach.
The Xendos would pass by very soon. Perhaps they’d even see him.
David Desjardins lifted his hand. He waved.
Just as he did, a small black dot zoomed across the length of the tinsel glass ceiling.
“Goodbye,” he said.
“You’ve done well,” the Saint Vulcan hologram said.
David Desjardins asked the hologram for one last favor.
Moments later, when the hologram informed him the Xendos was only seconds from entering the Displacer’s interdimensional corridor, he pressed the button which detonated the super-juggernaut and unleashed her fury upon the Solar System.
30
There is darkness and a deep silence at the Termination Shock, the place considered the outer limits of the Solar System and the beginning of deep space.
In this void, time appears frozen. The stars’ movements pass in increments measured by thousands upon thousands of years. Yet now and again, depending on where you are in this vast still sea, there are reminders that time does indeed pass.
A stray asteroid. A meteoroid.
A comet.
The comet had no name for her path did not bring her close enough for anyone on Earth to see, and therefore label, her.
She wandered through space for millions, perhaps billions of years, and would continue her long, lonely journey for nothing –at least so far– lay in her path and could stop or deviate her flight.
The comet was spherical in shape and roughly five miles across. This made her nothing more than a grain of sand in the middle of the near infinite nothingness.
She was therefore the perfect hiding place for a small ship anchored on the comet’s surface and inside a mountain’s perpetually dark shadow.
The ship lay hidden there for fifty years.
She was a nano-probe robot, a Chameleon, who called herself Laverna DeCastillo.
That was not her real name.
It was the name of a woman who lived her entire life within the Phaecian Empire many thousands of light years away. The real Laverna DeCastillo died quietly in her sleep at the age of eighty five a very long time ago.
Well before she died and when the real Laverna DeCastillo was much younger, she was a member of the Phaecian Army. During a mission on the planet Gehinnom, she and her fellow soldiers encountered a top secret task force comprised of sixteen robot soldiers.
The robot soldiers on Gehinnom followed their orders and efficiently destroyed the rebel presence near the planet’s Capitol while the human soldiers, including the real Laverna DeCastillo, followed in their footsteps.
Phaecian Command did not realize that once the robot soldiers’ primary mission was complete, they faced a command vacuum and had but one question:
What do we do next?
The robot soldiers surveyed Gehinnom’s landscape and, recognizing there were heavily armed human soldiers following them, decided they were hostiles and needed to be taken out.
What followed was a massacre.
In the years since, Phaecian records were altered to hide the tragic losses of life.
Unit 6, one of the sixteen nano-probe robots, sustained an injury during the massacre which rendered her unable to communicate with her fellow soldiers. During that time it encountered the human named Laverna DeCastillo. The female soldier was injured yet protected another, even more severely injured elderly woman.
Unit 6 could not understand why this human would protect someone while her own life was in mortal danger.
In search of an answer to this question, Unit 6’s nano-probes penetrated Laverna DeCastillo’s body. Though them the robot shared Laverna DeCastillo’s memories and personality to the point where the Chameleon thought itself Laverna DeCastillo.
Years later and on another world, the creature once again encountered its violent robot crew. Fighting against them was Elias Vulcan. Not only was he intent on eliminating the Chameleon units, he was determined to find and eliminate the Prototype, the mysterious being Vulcan claimed created these creatures.
It was only after the threat of the robot crew was dealt with that Unit 6’s memories were restored and Vulcan revealed the truth of the Prototype: It too was a nano-probe robot, one Vulcan created to be his companion. It was stolen from him shortly after its creation by Phaecian forces. The Prototype’s A.I. systems learned to hate humans and meant to take over both Empires.
The only thing standing in its way was Vulcan.
Vulcan sent the Chameleon who now identified herself as Laverna DeCastillo on a mission that took her to the stars. Unit 6/Laverna DeCastillo piloted the Thanatos from its berth until it was fifty years away from Earth. At that point she left the super-juggernaut in the hands of another Captain, a human clone by the name of David Desjardins. He spent the next fifty years piloting the ship from the Termination Shock to Earth. The Thanatos was sent to destroy the Solar System.
Laverna DeCastillo wondered why.
She also wondered why she was ordered to pilot the vessel to this point only to then wait outside the Solar System and the ship’s blast radius. She wondered what she could possibly see or do afterwards.
For fifty years the Chameleon waited in silence within her hidden ship.
And then she heard the message and for the first time in all those years opened her eyes.
Before her was her ship’s front window. It was covered in a thick layer of dark dust.
Laverna leaned forward. Her clothing cracked and, in some places, tore. Unlike Laverna and her ship, It was not made to last so many years.
She pressed a few buttons and a blast of air blew the dust from the ship’s outer windows.
Before her was another vessel. It too was a small ship, one capable of transporting no more than four.
Laverna’s concentrated and listened for another message. It came.
Are you still there, Laverna?
She recognized the voice.
It was One of Three, the being she knew as Vulcan.
31
Epsillon Military Command – Planet Lysander
First Lieutenant Francois Marcus rushed from his office in the Epsillon Security Division and made his way to the heavily secured officers’ conference room on the fiftieth level of the Intelligence Agency Division. The moment he emerged from the elevator he was met with staff from the IAD. Biometric scans were taken and, afterwards, he was issued a Red Level Summons permit.
Marcus passed three more security stations and was scanned three more times. With each stop, his frustration grew. The message he received from Doctor Aimee Sullivan urged him to get to the conference room as soon as possible and that the situation she was to brief him –and he assumed several other top officers– on was of utmost urgency yet here he was, wading from one checkpoint through another.
The delays gave him time to wonder why he was brought over.
Was there a revolt in some distant system? Was there an outbreak of pirate activity threatening civilian travel lines? Could a new biological hazard have presented itself? The worst case scenario also played in his mind: Could there be renewed hostilities between the Epsillon and Phaecian Empires?
After passing the final checkpoint, he was escorted by military staff directly to the conference room.
First Lieutenant Marcus found several of the highest ranking Generals, Lieutenants, and Captains already seated around a large table. Everyone possessed the highest levels of clearance in the Corporate System.
We’re dealing with dire news indeed, he thought.
Before each of them was a computer monitor displaying their names. Two chairs were empty and the computer monitor before one of them was identified as Marcus’.
Marcus sat in his chair.
The chair next to his, the last remaining empty one, was reserved for First Lieutenant Charlene Andrews, a middle-aged, no-nonsense officer whose rise in the military was every bit the product of her fierce devotion to the Epsillon Empire as it was personal ambition.
She arrived only seconds after Marcus and took her seat.
“Lieutenant,” she said. “What brings us here this fine day?”
A door on the far end of the room opened and Doctor Aimee Sullivan stepped into the conference room. She walked to the head of the table and said:
“Thank you for coming on such short notice. I have a great allergy toward wasting time, so let’s get down to business.”
On the large monitor behind her appeared a video feed of what looked like a dense asteroid field.
“Not quite thirty six hours ago the Apokalupto, a private… let’s call her self-employed cargo vessel operating in the Skryty System emerged from the system and contacted local authorities. Her crew had a fantastic story to tell along with footage provided as proof. What you’re seeing on your monitors is what we could salvage of this footage. It starts shortly after the ship was severely incapacitated. As you can see, the asteroid field before them is disturbed. The Captain of this vessel swears up until five days before they reached this area it was not so.”
Doctor Sullivan pressed a button on her computer.
“A disturbed asteroid field in a nothing system like Skryty is, normally, of little concern to us,” she continued. “What is a concern is the cause of this disturbance.”
