“Why didn’t Vandorian scientists discover these strange things eons ago?” MacKenzie asked.
“They did,” I replied. “And they studied the star patterns and found this one.” I grinned.
Chapter Six
---
Starship Shadow of Eternity
Capricorn sector, deep space
The decision was made that moment. Mallory ordered the fleet to stand down, repower engines and change course. The star system was slightly over six days away, so she ordered a full system sweep, and found a handful of destroyers and one cruiser that needed to be refueled. She ordered a refueling operation, and then ordered them on course for the planet.
The council was transferred to a cruiser that would be tasked as rear guard, to avoid placing them in greater danger, and the Night stalkers were spread out over the four carriers. We had made the decision to jump the bulk of the fleet into the gravity well, so we had enough force should we encounter the Gilbaglians.
I was in the hangar bay on the day we arrived in the system and were ready to head down into the short corridor leading down into the nebula. We seeded the entire area with a stealthy mine that moved under its own power and identified unfriendly signals as enemy targets. We seeded the corridor and then the bulk of the Vandorian fleet, just under four-hundred ships, used our powerful sublight engines and dove into the area that was the unusual bubble zone inside of the nebula.
“Full sensor sweep.” Mallory ordered, her eyes scanning the displays in front of her for any threats.
I stood behind her on the bridge, in my full combat gear, carbine hanging from a sling around my neck, sniper rifle across my back, my trusty pistol in the holster on my thigh. As usual, I only wore partial armor due to my large frame, and I stood as a guard to the staff on the bridge. MacKenzie and most of the night stalkers were in dropships ready to be deployed to the surface for any kind of action.
“Negative returns on sensors.” A tense sounding officer called. “No ships, no technology on the surface.”
I narrowed my eyes at the screens and pondered the emptiness.
“Scan for electronic emissions.” Mallory said, pacing with her hands clasped behind her back.
“One return. It looks like a messenger buoy, Admiral.” The sensor officer reported promptly. “It is not broadcasting, it appears to be weak on power.”
“Origin?” Mallory asked, turning to glance at me.
There was a long pause and then we both turned to the sensor officer. “I can’t determine, Admiral. I ran a deep scan on the unit and I can confirm that it does not contain any explosive element.”
“Bring it aboard.” Mallory ordered.
I spoke into the communicator mounted to my shoulder. “MacKenzie, there is a message buoy out there, go and get it.” I said.
“Aye, sir.” He replied smartly. I made sure the coordinates were uploaded into his dropship and then watched as a few long moments went by, then we saw the Scalper dropship blast into the void, line up with the buoy and latch onto it, then streak back towards the Eternity a moment later.
“I’m going to head down there,” I said to my wife with a wink. “Let’s see what it is in the gift box.”
She smirked at me then turned back to running her ship. I headed for the elevator and rode down to the hangar deck, then hurried to meet MacKenzie and his dropship. I waited as the red-painted ship that resembled the B2 bomber from ancient Earth landed and the hatches opened.
A heavy lift machine carried the buoy down the boarding ramp, surrounded by night stalkers. I walked up to it and the lifter lowered it to the ground for me to inspect. It was frozen solid, with a single blinking light that indicated its power cell was failing. I brushed off some of the ice from the casing, reading the markings on the unit. “Cetoplin.” I announced, looking up. I had studied in detail Venlent’s report, and had taken the time to identify the markings of the Cetoplin race.
“Can we get the message out?” MacKenzie asked, holding his helmet under one arm.
I pressed a control and a humanoid sprang to life from the buoy. Or rather, a very advanced looking hologram did. I raised an eyebrow as it looked around.
“Oh, hello.” It said, locking eyes with me.
“What the fuck?” I breathed, eyes wide.
“Oh, have I startled you?” It shuffled. “I am sorry, human. It has been some time since my canister was activated, and I have limited power remaining to complete my purpose.”
“What is your purpose?” I asked.
It held up a hand. Now that I had a chance to look at it more closely, I realized that the holographic being was close to human but was shorter and had what appeared to be gills on its neck, along with a ridge that ran across the bridge of its nose. “To guide humans to our sheltered worlds and explain them, of course.” It said brightly.
I looked at MacKenzie who was already holding a recording device. He nodded at me.
“Please explain.” I said.
“Thank you,” It said with a smile. It did not have normal human teeth, but a sort of straight looking grinding palate. “I was left here by my creators to guide our offspring to these worlds. There are two of them, located an equal distance apart. A star chart appeared overhead and highlighted our current location and then the location of Vandor. “These worlds are seeded with advance plants and animals that are edible to humans, and they will sustain life for many millions of years. When the Gilbaglians come for you, and they will come for you, these worlds can be closed off from the galaxy, if humans have not attained sufficient power to repel the avians.” It paused and smiled again. “When we visited Earth last, there was a civil war brewing. We left our knowledge under the city of Rome, for humans to find and use to strike out into the galaxy. Has that knowledge been used?”
Two Phelbs passed out. I felt like fainting also.
“No.” I said calmly. “Humans divided six millennia ago and we found one of these shelters around that time. We have rejoined our forces, and we are currently at war with Gilbaglians.”
“Oh my.” It said, touched its forehead. “Oh, my. Oh dear. Oh no. Our poor humans.”
“You said you’re low on power,” I said quickly. “Can we power your canister?”
It flickered. “Yes, but my records show I have been drifting for almost twenty thousand years. And I do not have long to survive.”
“Get power cables up here.” I ordered. “Quickly!”
Soldiers went sprinting off to get a variety of power connections to hook to the buoy.
“What are you?” I asked.
“I am a semi-sentient holographic computer program.” It said brightly. “I was left here with the expectation that I would have more than ten thousand years to help guide humanity to a safe society free of Gilbaglian interference.”
Mallory appeared beside me and the hologram brightened at us. “Humans still find love in the hatred of this galaxy. I admire that so much.” It smiled once more.
“Tell us what they want.” I said quickly. “Why were the Cetoplin and Gilbaglians fighting?”
“Ahhh, now that is a terribly sad story, human.” Its eyes dropped towards the deck. “Do you have some hours to sit and listen to this tale?”
We did. We moved the pod to the central operations center, hooked up a variety of power connections and fired the ship’s reactors to feed raw energy into the canister. The hologram told us that it had enough power and life left for sixteen days, advised us to pull our fleet into the area and keep our shields up.
We set up a broadcast to every ship, every screen, and even set up some movie-theatre style seating areas for viewing this alien construct and what it had to say to us.
“Greetings humans, I am DV-988-B1, holographic computer interface. Don’t let my appearance fool you, I am a computer program inside of this message buoy, and I am harmless to human life. I was left here by the Cetoplin, who were worshipped as gods for some generations on your home world. On behalf of the Cetoplin, I apologiz
e for that, a primitive society like yours would have seen any beings as gods at that point.” It looked sheepish and I grinned.
“We are, as I understand, extinct now, or at least the vast majority of Cetoplin are. We evolved outside of this galaxy,” Once more, a massive star chart appeared. It zoomed outwards until I was able to put in perspective the scale and realized I was not just looking at a chart of the galaxy, but of the three galaxies in the…local sector, if you could call galaxies local.
“Fucks sake,” I whispered.
“We were working on figuring out how to stop our galaxy from spinning into yours in approximately sixty billion years. So, we organized a corridor and sent ships here. We found a young galaxy teeming with beautiful species and life and we just fell in love. Our people on the other side of the corridor became more determined than ever to stop our galaxy, which I understand you call ‘Andromeda’, from colliding with and absorbing this galaxy. We set up a colony on a rogue planetoid and made sure that we would not disturb life in this galaxy.” It paused, sighed.
“Alas, we found hostile life fairly quickly whilst we set up our gravity generators to push the Milky Way out of the way. They resisted us at every turn, and chased us when we agreed to leave in peace.” It held up its hands. “And I realize that I may sound like a being that has one side of the story. I have recordings of all events that took place and all humans are welcome to view them. We overcame violence in our home galaxy billions of years ago. There, five species live in peace with each other, without strife or hardships, without anger.” The star chart showed known species clusters in the Andromeda galaxy.
“Here, we have a utopia. But, as I said, we were in danger of destruction with your galaxy, so we were trying to make sure that it didn’t happen. The Gilbaglians shot down several of our vehicles. We were not prepared for the level of violence they were to inflict on us, and they damaged our vessels and killed our people, and stole our technology. We fought them on every front, but they only grew stronger and stronger. We were forced to move a battle fleet through the corridor and go to war with them, but it was too late. We lost a hundred ships in the first day, and within a month, we had lost a thousand.” It looked sad.
“We finally developed a final solution, a biological weapon that has the power to destroy the entire race, in our darkest hour. At the last moment, before it was deployed, our leaders had a change of heart and instead seeded a world that was young and new. We seeded this world with a trace of DNA and an algae compound that settled into the oceans, and we fled. Only a hundred of our people survived the war, and we closed the corridor behind us as we fled. Twice since we ventured back only to discover that the planet of Earth had evolved and sprouted an offspring species of ours. Resilient and strong, we left much of our knowledge with you in the hopes that you would use it well.”
“Mostly we fought over it and killed each other over it.” Mallory said.
“Oh dear.” The hologram looked stricken. “That is awful news.” It looked flustered and continued.
“We returned twice, sneaking around the Gilbaglian patrols and making our way to Earth to leave more knowledge. On our last visit, we discovered that your people had naturally evolved a pathogen that would exterminate the Gilbaglian race. We sought to hide this news from all, and we were discovered by the Gilbaglians. Our people were stranded here in this galaxy, and we made use of our last days to create these safe havens. The Gilbaglians cannot approach this type of radiation, because it is highly dangerous to their nervous systems. We hoped that humans would have time to hide here, and we did our best to hide Earth from them, in the hope that our offspring race would evolve and survive.” It looked so sad that I almost wanted to reassure it.
“We must now discuss the biological weapon and why the Gilbaglians are currently attacking you.” A genome outline appeared. “This is, what humans call, the H5N1 virus. Better known to humans as “bird flu”. This is a disease that evolved naturally on Earth as part of a normal mutation of an illness known as the flu; it caused several avian species on Earth to become ill, and even to a degree had some effect on humans.”
“Yes, we cured it about ten years after we landed on a Vandor, I think.” I said.
“Very good, you do have a cure for it!” The hologram clapped its hands happily. “But the Gilbaglians do not. They also lack genetic modifications. They come from a very over populated sector, and they have seven colony worlds beyond their outer boundary.” The hologram switched and a dozen recorders went up to record the star map of where our enemy was. “They number in the quintillion, and they are aggressive breeders, and they suffer from famine as well as disease on their worlds. We tried to help them, but when they learned that humans had taken residence in our shield, they moved there to attempt to enter it and destroy their perceived enemies. Rather than letting them know you were there, we drew them away as best we could.”
“You mean there were Cetoplins in the galaxy recently?” I asked. “How recently?”
The device blinked its holographic eyes at me rapidly. “Five thousand years ago.”
Damnit. I thought I was going to get lucky. “The Gilbaglians used some kind of gravity weapon to destroy the other sanctuary world.” I said, frustration in my voice. “Is that Cetoplin technology?”
“Why, yes, it was.” The hologram cocked his head. “They used it to create a singularity near the world we used when we stayed in your galaxy.”
“We found that world,” Mallory said. “Some of our people went, but there was a black hole that created a time-dilation effect and nearly spent three months in the wilderness of space.”
The hologram froze and for a long moment, the buoy beginning to grow warm. Mallory and I looked at each other, and I was about to order the power feeds cut when it began to speak again.
“This is a radically troubling incident and I must find a way to contact the coalition in my own galaxy at once. The power to create black holes is extremely dangerous in the hands of any species not advanced enough to harness their power properly.”
“How?” I asked automatically. “How do you access your galaxy?
“We must utilize the corridor.” It said. “The Cetoplin created a corridor through subspace that is the only way to access our galaxy.”
My head snapped around to my wife. She stared back at me with grim resolve, knowing what I was going to say next. “I want to go with you.” I said.
It looked shocked at me. “Human, we may not be allowed to return.”
“I’ll take that risk.” I said.
“No, sir.” MacKenzie stepped towards me, eyes firm and back straight. “As your executive officer, I cannot allow you to assume that risk, sir.”
I rounded on him. “You are not in a position to question my orders, Major.” I said with real heat in my voice.
“Sir. Respectfully,” Kelis stepped forward to stand next to MacKenzie. “I must agree with Major MacKenzie. You must remain here to defend Earth and Falsun from the Gilbaglians.”
“They’re right.” Mallory said firmly, crossing her arms. “You have to stay here to be in Command, Destota.”
“I must agree with your human friends, Colonel.” The hologram pronounced it “Co-Well-Nel”. “You should remain behind to hold the Gilbaglian race at bay. Although.” It tapped a lip. “I have analyzed your psychological profile and I do not believe you are likely to do the rational thing.”
“That…that is…unfair.” I said lamely.
“He’s right.” MacKenzie, Kelis and Mallory said in unison, and I let my shoulders sag.
“That is unfair.” I said again with some pout in my voice. “And I will determine…”
“Destota.” Mallory said firmly. I glanced at her and she had that hard look in her eyes. She was still in operational command of the fleet and of all personnel onboard, including me. I sighed and relented.
“Very well.” I said at last.
“I will go.” Wingell spoke up suddenly.
“And s
o, will I.” This from Peter Stevins.
MacKenzie nodded. “With your permission, Admiral, I would respectfully request permission to detach one ship from the fleet for this operation.”
“That will be us.” Most of the commanders and Captains from other ships in the fleet had joined us aboard Eternity for the briefing offered by the holographic being, and this was Captain Cerasi Jones of the dreadnought Shockwave, a fearless and snarky Navy captain who had been one of the biggest influences on the battle of Earth. “With your permission, Admiral.”
“Granted.” Mallory said immediately. There was no better choice than to send the most vicious battleship we had available to us to another galaxy.
“Wonderful. We must depart at once,” The hologram said, clapping its hands. “I have just enough power to reach Andromeda.”
“Thank you,” Mallory said, bowing her head respectfully. “Your words and insights to us have been invaluable.”
It beamed at her. “Admiral Valentine, I have left a large data dump in your computer system. I do apologize if the information is not…well organized, and I can only hope that you will find it of use.” It bowed to the collected humans. “Thank you, for your hospitality and your power, humans. Thank you, for making the Cetoplin proud of you.”
I bowed my head. “Thank you, DV, for your assistance and your knowledge. We will strive to do our creators proud.”
It offered one more smile and then winked out of existence, and the command center became a frantic hub of activity.
“Get the canister loaded onto the Shockwave.” I told MacKenzie. “Take Alpha and Bravo company.” Alpha and Bravo were ‘originals’, trained on Vandor by the same instructors that I had trained with, completely savage. Unfortunately, through action against Gilbaglia and Phelb targets, both companies had taken heavy casualties and now numbered only a total of four hundred.
Requiem of a Nightmare Page 8
