The thing looked around itself before withdrawing its tentacles and taking off at a loping run. Wait, dammit, I had more instructions. Lexi grabbed up her Mark-Two Zapper and took off after the monster. As she ran, she opened the ship-wide channel on her comm-gear. “Attention, this is Marshal Stevens. All hands, avoid confrontation with the Kreesh. Keep out of their way. They should be standing down as soon as they get the word.” She knew that would take a while, the Kreesh required proximity to exchange cells. It was the only way they communicated. She hoped that was what the one she communicated with ran off to do. Then she wondered how it knew where to find the others on board.
As she ran past the Marines, several of them spared a glance at her bare, golden breasts. Maybe my timing could have been better on this one. This was supposed to just be a surprise for Ron’s birthday. She knew what was happening with her Kreesh. They couldn’t stop them until the firmware update propagated. She began jogging back to her cabin to get clothing. As she ran, she called out, “Duty officer. Have all ships pull back. Disengage the enemy. Defensive postures only. Any facing boarders, keep fighting until further notice. I’ll be on the bridge in a few minutes.” Switching to her private comm-link, she said, “Guys, meet me on the bridge. Ron, take time to put some clothes on.”
***
Urania was waiting on the bridge by the time Lexi got there. Being an avatar had some distinct advantages when it came to getting places quickly. Lexi glanced around at the tense, determined bridge crew, nodding approvingly. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to get the same sense of satisfaction looking at the command-deck displays. While she and Ron slept for only three hours, she lost forty-nine additional ships, all of them to boarders. The fleet’s shields were proof against the particle beams a Kreesh cluster could generate to breakdown the stubborn hull-material that refused to decompose. Some of the crew on those ships survived. Hopefully all were already picked up by the Vankovian hospital ship.
Damage to Glaurang was severe in some areas. Repair parties, now that the Kreesh were ceasing demolition, were dealing with it. The firmware update she inserted into the one unit was propagating quickly. Of course, there were only thirty of them on her ship. Most of those were now quiescent.
Ron, Jis, and Geena, all but Geena slinging a Mark-Two Zapper, arrived within seconds of each other. Jis giggled when she saw golden Lexi, now dressed in her skinsuit, but only said, “Happy birthday, Ron.”
“What have you done, Lexi?” Ron asked. Her orders over the ship-wide comm were odd. She didn’t answer, her attention drawn to the forward display as Yriwket, one of the badly damaged Borgolian-built battleships, with a predominantly Borgolian crew, expelled crew in escape pods. Three officers remained on board, sealed behind the control room hatch. They transmitted their intentions, but ignored all attempts at communication. The Kreesh on board could breach the hatch, but it would keep them out long enough.
From Lexi’s bridge, they watched Yriwket accelerate at maximum speed directly toward the hive-ball. The continually writhing surface of the ball stabilized into a rigid shell of thousands of Kreesh. The warship managed to impact that unusual surface, causing it to flex. Then the ship detonated, vaporizing an estimated twenty-seven thousand of the Kreesh along with Captain Eblan, Lieutenant M’dlan, and Ensign E’Kret. It had no overall affect on the hive-ball.
Answering Ron’s question, Lexi said, “Believe it or not, I altered their programming. The command Jis implanted when she was in the hive-ship was for them to recognize me. They think I made them.” She looked at Jis. “Clever last-ditch effort, girlfriend.”
“I still don’t remember, Lexi,” Jis said, “but, yes, I guess that sounds like something I might have done.”
Lexi shifted her attention to Urania-avatar. “We’ve got thirty modified Kreesh on board. I have twenty-four ships being eaten. Urania, I need one of the quiescent Kreesh transported from this ship to each of those ships. Move the other six to our flight deck.”
Commander Gormataldatic, Captain Davies’s executive officer, currently had the bridge. “Commander, inform those ships to open the transport band on their shields. We’re transporting reprogrammed Kreesh over to quiesce the ones already on board.”
She waited a couple of minutes, until Urania nodded and said, “Done.”
“Commander, stay in contact with the ships. Once hostile activity has ceased, have all of the Kreesh on them transported to our flight deck. Get Urania’s help if you can’t lock onto them. Either send the ships out of range or to Pweital for repairs depending on how badly damaged they are. Leave it up to the captains to determine if their ships have taken enough damage to justify withdrawing. I don’t want any more dead heroes.”
Chapter 68
Independence Day
“We’re lost too many people, too many ships. The fleet has slowed their advance, for now, maybe giving Earth a few extra weeks, but we haven’t stopped them. We can keep further damage to the fleet at minimal levels, but that’s all we can do.” Lexi’s voice reflected the stress she felt. She was alone with Ron in the ready room. She was breaking down, she knew it, and she couldn’t stop it. A sob escaped. “I don’t think we can do it, Ron. We’ve lost too many ships. We didn’t have enough to start with. I think we’re going to have to abandon Earth.”
She was crying now. Ron stepped closer to hold her. She spoke softly, saying, “Eight billion people, Ron. Converted to compost.”
He squeezed her and began, “Lexi.”
Before he said anything else, she added, “We can evacuate a few. They seem to ignore starships that aren’t attacking.”
“Lexi,” Ron again said, his voice gentle, “that’s losing, honey. Since when is losing an option for us? For that matter, when have we ever won through brute force?”
Lexi pushed back so she could see his face. “You’re saying I need to man up and get the job done.”
He smiled. “Let’s go back out to the others. Maybe we’ll come up with something we can do.”
***
All of them were grim. The Accord was losing the war. The new warships proved very effective against the Kreesh, destroying hundreds of thousands of them. Primary beams, built with Zapper technology, vaporized them. But inevitably a few would get close enough to breach a hull. The cruisers mounted anti-personnel Zappers but only around the airlocks. On the battleships, the flight deck was protected as well. The Rathca shields, unlike the older wall-shields, strengthened the hull. Just not enough to stop determined Kreesh. They weren’t designed to stop objects before they reached the ship. The e-shield component only blocked energy.
Thousands of the Kreesh got pass the fleet and were already on Earth, destroying as they went. Earth-based forces had weapons powerful enough for dealing with them, but it wasn’t easy. The Kreesh could take a lot of damage before being beyond the point where they could no longer self-repair. North Korea was threatening a nuclear strike on the largest cluster hotspot in India. They settled down a bit when every other country on the planet explained to them that nukes were not an option and that the consequences of using one would range from severe to total annihilation. At that point, Charlie Stevens stepped in with the statement that there was no range concerning the consequences. It would be total annihilation. He would give the order.
“You altered their programming once, Lexi,” Geena said. “Can you do it again?”
“Probably. But even assuming I can, how quickly would program updates take to propagate to all of them? I’ve only got two hundred forty-two on the flight deck.”
Urania, her avatar wearing as grim an expression as any of them, said, “This ship is equipped with a hyper-lance. How long would it take you to make it operational, Lexi?”
Lexi frowned. Glaurang’s hyper-lance was an untested Wraixain technology. The two massive generators in the forward section were designed to channel twin converging beams of hyper-energy through the crystalline eyes at the front of the ship, ripping out the core of a planet. It was a weapon o
f mass destruction if ever there was one. Lexi knew that it didn’t work. She also knew that she could redesign it so that it would. There was nothing wrong with the theory. Before she could speak, Ron said, “I don’t think that would help much. Sure, the hive-ball is the size of a planet, it’s larger than Mercury, but it isn’t solid. It’s all Kreesh, Kreesh who can survive in hyperspace and will just drop back into normal space after being hit by the lance.”
“That’s true,” Urania allowed. “But we still don’t know what’s at the core. We do know, thanks to Jis, that it’s not solid Kreesh. There are control nodes. There could be almost anything at the center. Replacement Kreesh have to come from somewhere.”
“I know this is abhorrent, but we all knew it could come down to this,” Geena interjected. “If we can’t stop them relatively quickly, like within the next week, our only option is to give them Earth. They’re winnowing down our ships. They’re still pressing their advance. We’re almost at the point where we’re forced to retreat with whatever remains of the Fleet and try to protect their next target.”
“That is not acceptable,” Lexi growled. Her voice was stern. Her stance adamant. “I know we’ve discussed sacrificing Earth as a strategy. It’s been part of the plan all along. Despite everything, we’re still Aeolus Investigations, Geena. We protect civilization from the storm winds. That’s our purpose. We didn’t realize it at the time but that’s what we chose for our lives. Losing is not something we do. Losing is not an option. Ron had to remind me of that ten minutes ago. And he was right. Think people. What haven’t we thought of?”
“Too bad we can’t just upload a virus to the mothership with a MacBook like they did in Independence Day,” Ron mused. It wasn’t the first time he made a remark that triggered a thought process in Lexi’s brain. He watched it happening now, so he added, “Oh, come on, kiddo!”
Lexi smiled. “That might work. How tall is Jeff Goldblum?”
“How the hell would I know that?”
“He’s six-four, Lexi,” Urania said. “I just looked him up. He was born in Pittsburgh. What does that have to do with anything?”
Her smile got bigger. “I’m six-three. I might be tall enough. Sorry, I might also be a little delirious because that comment is one of those that sounded more clever in my head before I vocalized it. Ron just gave us a chance. Listen, guys, we know we can’t defeat the Kreesh in battle. Not a surprise. The Wraix, with far more ships than we have, couldn’t do it. Our ships are significantly more advanced, true, but the Kreesh are tough. And there are an awful lot of them. I also think we may be seeing a degree of natural selection going on. Those that survived the Wraix passed on their cells to the collective.”
Chapter 69
That Could Work
Lexi paused. “Kreesh are robots with limited adaptive AI. They are more or less a hive-mind. We know that. But they don’t truly think. Jis reported they continually return for software updates even though there haven’t been any for thousands or even tens of thousands of years. She programmed the cells in her Kreesh-suit to recognize me. When that carcass was resorbed, her instruction passed into the Kreesh that are still sitting on our flight deck. Maybe, just maybe, we can infect them with a software virus.”
“When you’re like this I can’t follow your thoughts, Lexi,” Jis said. “What do you have in mind?”
“A heavy-duty Zapper melts them. What’s hotter than a Zapper?” Lexi asked, while processing details of what she planned to do.
“Please, let’s not play a guessing game, Lexi,” Geena said. “Just tell us.”
“Fair enough. Let’s terraform the sun.”
Ron got it almost immediately. As did Urania. It took the others a few seconds to comprehend what Lexi planned.
Geena summed up what everyone was thinking, “That could work.”
Lexi said, “It has to. Jis, I’m going to want your help. You’re our Kreesh programming expert.”
***
Urania’s medical scanners had determined that the changes to that small section in Lexi’s brain seemed to be permanent. It did seem to be caused by the marathon mind-meld held while Jis was in the Kreesh-suit especially as Jis’s brain exhibited the same abnormality. The only difference either noticed was that this time, their mind-meld was instant. They were able to add Ron seamlessly. Still, both had regular visits to the medical scanners scheduled.
Lexi, Jis, and Ron, joined in the mind-meld, spent long hours attempting to reprogram their captive Kreesh. Finally, Jis said, “I think we did it.”
Ron said, “It feels right, but we can’t be sure.”
Lexi said, “We’re all hulk-med enhanced pre-cogs in a mind-meld and I have the Rose of Light. I’m sure. This is going to work. Urania, your turn.”
Urania transported the reprogrammed units into the hive-ball as close to one of the processing nodes as she could reach, ripping unmodified Kreesh out of the way. They were still in hyperspace. Glaurang, still not upgraded with the Rathca shields, had to drop his old-tech shields in order to be able to transport through them. The hive-ship had no shields.
All of her battleships were now orbiting Earth in n-space. Starfighter squadrons launched to assist Earth ground forces. Her light cruisers were participating in the ground-side battle as well. The transporter-equipped battleships collected hundreds of additional Kreesh onto their empty flight-decks, containing them in force fields. Once loaded, the battleships raced out to the hyper-limit to rendezvous with Glaurang, still in hyperspace. They handed off their Kreesh for reprogramming, returning to Earth for another load. The reprogramming of individual Kreesh, at least, seemed to be working. She, Ron, and Jis had the process down to rote now. With close to twelve thousand Kreesh on the surface, they wouldn’t have time to process all of them before the hive-ship reached the solar system’s hyper-limit.
***
From Glaurang, they watched as the hive-ship and its auxiliaries dropped into n-space. Although her smaller ships were still battling Kreesh on Earth’s surface, the battleships withdrew, hiding behind the moon. With no apparent enemies in space, the auxiliaries merged back into the hive ship. Ron remarked, “They clearly have some method of communications other than just exchanging cells. We’re not picking up anything though.”
Lexi only nodded but had nothing to offer. If this plan didn’t work, Earth was dead. She really had nothing else. At most, they could rescue a few thousand people with the fleet before leaving the system to regroup. Realistically, they would be able to send in repeat evacuation missions. The Kreesh didn’t seem to care about other ships in the vicinity. Still, the death toll would be unimaginable.
Once the hive-ship reached orbit, they knew any Kreesh still on the surface would rise to meet it for firmware updates. What they didn’t know was whether or not the billions of units clustered on the hive-ship would descend on the planet en mass before the new instructions took effect. It depended on how fast the hive-ship propagated updates.
If the update took too long, or just plain failed, Lexi had a backup plan. The destruction on Earth would still be horrible, but she estimated forty percent of the population would survive. Not exactly a win in her book, but not a total loss either.
After two days in the mind-meld she dropped out. Alone, she reluctantly rebuilt the hyper-lance leaving Jis and Ron to continue the reprogramming efforts. Once she set Plan B in motion by kicking off an automated program that was more complicated to write than rebuilding the twin hyper-lances, her battleships would transport everyone on Glaurang to their flight decks. Then they would get out of range at maximum thrust. She and her team would shelter on Urania.
Glaurang, following the program, would surge toward the hive-ball with the lance continually pulsing, carving a channel through Kreesh and anything else in the way. Plunging into the opening, once at the center of the ball, his every missile and every power plant was programmed to detonate. She doubted anything would survive. If it did, she still had about half of her fleet left for mop up.
Of course, if she miscalculated, it would spell the end of eight billion people, including both her father and Geena, on Earth.
Now in n-space, they watched from Glaurang’s bridge as Kreesh auxiliary cluster after cluster merged back into the hive. The hive-ship had a relatively small mass for a planetary-sized object. Still, as it neared Earth, gravity effects caused flooding, volcanic eruptions, and minor earthquakes. The team regretted that more people were almost certainly losing their lives, but the disasters weren’t unexpected. Coastal areas and earthquake regions were under martial law. Except for the intractable die-hards, they were largely evacuated.
Lexi had Urania continually updating calculations on the impact to the orbit of the Moon. The last thing she needed was to try to figure out how to keep it from spiraling down into Earth if it’s orbit destabilized. It seemed likely it wasn’t going to be unaffected because but it’s mass exceeded that of the Kreesh hive-ship. Hopefully, the hive-ship wouldn’t be close to it for long.
“A steady stream of Kreesh clumps are rising from the surface,” Lieutenant Kregan reported from tactical on Glaraung’s bridge. “Still no sign of any descenders.” Twenty-four minutes later, she further reported. “The hive ship is moving away from the planet, Marshal.”
Aeolus Investigations Set 2: Too Cool To Lose: The Continuing Evolution of Lexi Stevens Page 51
