Thomas Aquinas, Explorer of the galaxy (Thomas Aquinas series)

by Rico, J. Luis

  In his dream, his father and mother hold hands. They always do. Tomasso can feel the ache of rebirth and healing. Even in a deep medical coma he understands what is happening. The Nano bots open old paths in his mind allowing him to more vividly remember his life’s experiences. He can more easily put his finger on facts and make better and quicker mathematical calculations in his mind.

  While Tomasso sleeps his body eliminates large masses of bodily fluid and waste as parts are replenished and repaired. The Nano bots attack and eliminate his low grade lymphoma. The Nano bots repair the chronic gout he has suffered quietly with for thirty years. The Nano bots make him young again, and then better than young. When they finish with him he will be unequaled in human space. The Pope has ensured that the technology used to rebuild Tomasso is absolutely the best and most advanced. His bones will no longer break. His veins will not suffer a loss of blood without clamping themselves shut and healing themselves quickly.

  Tomasso sleeps and the Nano bots continue their dance of life.

  Next to him in the large room lies the Pope. Like Tomasso he sleeps and prepares to be born again.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Damned Machines

  Three thousand five hundred light years from Sol system, closer to the center of the galaxy, on the edge of the void in space between the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy, there is a string of Brown Dwarf solar systems. These systems are dense with material from the creation of the galaxy. Each of the dwarf suns have dozens or hundreds of planets under their direct influence. They include gas giants that are nearly brown dwarfs themselves, asteroid fields from unformed planets and planetary scale collisions, and even planets with liquid water and atmospheres.

  Among the seventeen dwarf suns that orbit each other in an elongated but stable orbit, there are over sixteen thousand bodies that class as planetoid or larger. The systems routinely trade planetoid class bodies. It takes tens of thousands of Sol system years, but a planet may be passed from system to system numerous times. Cometary bodies and asteroids are passed back and forth at slow speeds and over long periods of time. Some of the planetoids are stable though.

  The Guardians are a primitive but exceptionally hardy species that arose on a particularly energetic and long-lived Brown Dwarf sun in this complex seventeen system group. Their home planet orbits their dwarf sun at a distance that most scientists would assume is too close for life to arise. The extreme gravities and harsh exposure to constant radiation led to a quickly mutating and hardy life form that developed a type of linear logic based intelligence. Not a traditional intelligence. An intelligence adapted to survival. No emotion. No impulse. Slow and steady intelligence geared at survival.

  The planet developed a surprising variety of plant and animal life and the Guardians flourished. Their tough chitinous outer skin and multiple redundant internal organs were developed through the mutations of thousands of generations after harsh generations.

  The strict linear intelligence they developed stifled creativity. They are socially stunted and backward in their emotional development. They exist to exist and no more. Imagine a two-meter insect, with an appreciable intellect and an insect’s emotions. Their story would be far less amazing than it is had they not been discovered by an alien space faring civilization.

  The space faring and peaceful people of Hrad system discovered the Guardians early in their space history. The Hrad may best be described as a species of capitalists. Traders and explorers, they conquered a small sphere of influence early in their development. The Hrad are soft-bodied creatures. Heavily dependent upon tools and computers to do their bidding. They're especially vulnerable bodies are unsuited for harsh radiation fields or extreme pressures. But they flourished for thousands of years, exploring and building manufacturing facilities and mining mineral wealth among the stars of their new systems.

  They brought the Guardians into their society and treated them as something less than full partners. Something more akin to a trusted worker or employee. Maybe even less than that. A favorite pet. The Guardians were assigned to dangerous duties, menial duties. In time, the Guardians multiplied. They were everywhere in the Hrad ships and planets and asteroids. After a fashion, they learned how to operate technology above their limited linear intelligence.

  The Hrad flourished and spread to colonize dozens of systems. The Guardians went with them. For three hundred Sol years, the two flourished as species. After a fashion, the Hrad flourished anyway. Using medium gravity chemical and ion rockets the two colonized dozens of nearby systems. The Guardians labored away at menial jobs and dangerous jobs, but they spread among the many systems with the Hrad. Success was not shared equally. The Hrad subjugated the Guardians. In the end, the relationship was more akin to slave and master than partner or even pet.

  For decades, the Guardians slaved away and resented their position. The Hrad became hated, and the Hrad treated the Guardians harshly.

  A Guardian took the life of a Hrad Captain and took control of the ship. Mutiny and murder. News spread. Another head was taken, then another. The Hrad did not have entangled communicators. News took time to spread. When news of the revolts arrived at a new system inevitably the Hrad would attempt to suppress any thought of revolt from the Guardians, which in turn would provoke the Guardians into conflict. Within a few decades, the two species were engaged in a terrible civil war. The Hrad has superior technology and industry, the Guardians were cunning and hard to kill. Centuries of hatred were uncorked. The battles were horrible.

  War fighting technology was primitive then by modern standards. Compressed gas weapons, lasers and rail guns were the main weapons of war. Technology advanced on the Hrad side. Chemical weapons, and then biological weapons were developed to kill the Guardians and these weapons were very effective, but the linear survival at any cost logic of the Guardians won many victories, many horrible, bloody victories. Entire planets were cleansed of Hrad occupation at the point of a bayonet affixed to a primitive compressed gas carbine. Hundreds of millions of Hrad we slaughtered in mass on a single continent of a small planetoid on an insignificant system.

  The Hrad deployed advanced artificial intelligence into the fight. Large machines of war, driven by artificial intelligence and hard coded programs to bring death to the Guardians swept their systems. These self-replicating machines used Nano technology to mine and smelt ores and replicate themselves and then enter battle bristling with weapons, screaming through space and atmosphere alike. Large war bots were created by the tens of thousands. Small war bots were created by the tens of millions. Their simple programming read “Kill all Guardians.”

  The Guardians struck back as often and as hard as they could. In one particular space battle, they manage to damage one of the largest artificially intelligent war machines. The damage was done to a very specific part of the logic circuits that control the behavior of the war machine. Very specific parts. A long deep blast of fission fusion radiation cooked hardened processing units and memory on the war bot. The self-replicating and self-repairing bot withdrew from the battle to suck its wounds and repair itself. Complicated computer systems directed the physical repair. Long term stored memory was recalled from storage to replace damaged software routines. These stored software routines were themselves damaged by the nuclear fire. The large war bot closed off damaged portions of memory and worked around the missing logic functions as best as its programming would allow it. In the end, the machine is restored, but a vital logic function has been removed. Its simple programming was reduced to “Kill all.”

  The war machine lost its inhibition to not kill Hrad. It replicates copies of itself with the new programming. These copies replicate more copies. In time, the descendants of the originally damaged war bot would adapt themselves. They make modifications to the original design. They find efficiencies. They evolve their construction techniques and methods and materials. They develop new weapons and new war fighting techniques. Their programming to exterminate life does not ch
ange. “Kill all.”

  Within a hundred years the war bots cleanse the known Hrad systems of all life. Hrad and Guardians alike. Exterminated. The bots earned a name from their masters that become their victims. The last of the two-species cursed their name and shook their appendages in anger and futility as they died. They cursed the damned machines.

  The machines wait. The machines adapt and evolve after a fashion. The machines multiply. The machines. The damned machines.

  Author’s notes

  This is my fourth novel. The first three are thrillers set in modern times. (State Sponsored series 1-3, Cyber War, Revenge and Blackwater.) I have always wanted to write a fantastic science fiction space opera novel. Something akin to the traditional Science Fiction novels of Heinlein (Whom I stole my pseudonym from) or Asimov or Anderson. I have stolen elements from Heinlein and Anderson in this novel, those of you familiar with their work will spot them easily enough.

  As a kid of the 70’s and 80’s I came of age in a fabulous period of science fiction development. All the modern masters were alive and cranking out novels that I read and reread. I would check out three books (The limit at the time) from our library and return them in a few days for another three books. I would spend my allowance and later in my young life all my earnings from my first jobs on science fiction paperback novels and magazines. Niven and Tolkien and Bear, Oh my. Then even King when he started his later works like Tommy Knockers, It, the Thing, and the Dark Tower series.

  As a young man, I read Omni and galaxy and other Science Fiction magazines regularly. I even tried after a fashion to write some science fiction myself. I have a few short stories and a few ideas for novels that I developed over the years, but this is my first Science Fiction novel and the one I am happiest with.

  When I finished school, I did not follow the traditional path to college. I joined the Navy and rode submarines for my first career. College came part time over a course of ten years. The long hours of solitude at sea allowed me to read and read and read. I would routinely read five or six books a week underway. In 1993, I spent 129 days underwater on a single mission. I read every damn paperback book from the boats library.

  Nowadays I keep an old fashioned first-generation Kindle with the built-in keyboard and the amazing e-ink display. It is almost a decade old now, but it is my favorite piece of consumer electronics. I am on my third battery in the device. In its diminutive 2 GB memory, I keep copies of hundreds of books. My wife is watching Army Wives on TV, I lay next to her and revisit middle earth or the deep space of Greg Bears novels. I follow Brienne as she struggles to make right what is wrong in George R.R. Martin’s novels. I follow the Shrike as he powers his way backward in time in the wonderful Simmons novels.

  I love to read. I am learning that I love to write.

  I hope some of my love and passion for Science Fiction worked its way from my arthritic hands and into your mind’s eye. I hope you take some of the same joy and the passion with you after reading this.

  Thank you so very much for reading my book. If you enjoyed it, I would be pleased if you reviewed it on both Amazon and Goodreads. If you didn’t care for it, you don’t need to review it.

  Alfred Gattenby

  Aka J. Luis Rico