Trail of Evil - eARC

by Travis S. Taylor

  “Is it possible that the Madira out there is a clone or that Elle Ahmi had been a clone of her?” Dee asked.

  “No way to know.” Nancy answered. “But this one at 61 UM is certainly acting like the Elle Ahmi that I encountered.”

  Moore sat and listened at the speculations being thrown about by his family. They really didn’t have any solid evidence to go on. But Alexander wasn’t so sure that it mattered. The big elephant in the room wasn’t Madira. It was this alien threat. He needed to steer the conversation toward that and get some thoughts on it. He turned and looked at his wife who had been quiet the entire time. She looked pale.

  “Sehera, are you okay?” he asked her softly and gripped her hand underneath the conference room table.

  “I’m okay. She’s alive. That is her. I know it, Alexander.” Moore could tell his wife was fighting back a mix of anger, sadness, guilt, and joy all at once. Her eyes were watery and her jaw was clenched. He had hoped they’d made peace with that part of their past but somehow it kept coming back like a recurring nightmare.

  “I wouldn’t doubt it.” Moore said. Then he stretched and leaned back in his chair. He was going to need some stims to stay awake for a few days.

  Abby, bring up our path and the colonies on the star map I briefed the President with.

  Roger that, sir.

  A star map with all of the human colonies and outposts marked popped up. He tapped 61 Ursae Majoris with his finger and it turned red. Then he grabbed it and expanded it to see the system now that the recon team had images of it.

  “Three planets, many moons, an approximation of tens of billions of, well, people of sorts, some kind of QMT transceiver system built by an alien, and a long-dead former president discussing a pending alien invasion.” Moore paused briefly. “They will be at Earth in five or so years if we can’t stop them out here. What does all of this mean?”

  “What had looked like a wall wasn’t really a wall at all,” Deanna mumbled to herself. “She was never trying to separate from the union. She was trying to save it!”

  “Dee?” Alexander looked at his daughter. She was talking to her AIC and had the thousand-yard stare while she mumbled. “You have something to share with us?”

  “Yes! I get it now.” Dee said to Nancy. “I had a vision when I died.”

  “What?” Sehera gasped. “Dee! You need to talk to us about these things.”

  Alexander bit his tongue and let her finish.

  “Well, I did talk to Davy, uh, Lieutenant Rackman—” Sehera gasped and Alexander raised his eyebrows. He didn’t like that.

  “Relax, I didn’t tell him any of the gory details. Besides, he suggested I had PTSD and should talk to a professional,” Dee explained as she held up both hands palms out in an attempt to calm their response. Alexander decided to remain calm for now. If he had to, he’d go kick a certain SEAL’s ass later.

  “Did you seek help, Dee? Did you talk to the doctor?” Sehera asked.

  “I don’t have PTSD, Mother. But I did talk to a professional problem solver and observer. I spoke with Nancy.” Dee grinned at the spy. Alexander was glad she kept their dirty laundry in the family.

  “Any way,” Dee changed the subject back to her vision. “It was very strange. My grandmother came to me—or rather it was a jumbled bunch of memories of her and everybody else all at once. I thought I was going nuts or that there was some real message from her from beyond. Nancy and I double-checked for any strange communication signals or hacks. There were none. Whatever this was came from my mind alone.” Dee paused and Alexander could tell she wanted to express this very succinctly. So, he continued to listen without interruption.

  “Keep going,” Nancy encouraged her.

  “Well, Nancy and I have talked about it and I think it is my mind figuring something out unconsciously or subconsciously. And I know what it is now. At least part of it.” Dee explained. “Elle Ahmi, the Seppy wars, even the Martian Desert Campaigns and the Exodus, it was all a wall that wasn’t there! A smokescreen for her true purpose.”

  “Plans within plans within plans,” Alexander added. “I heard her say this as Elle Ahmi on Mars.”

  “She said it all the time, Alexander,” Sehera added.

  “All of it,” Dee continued. “All of it was to create a war machine. Whenever that alien contacted her AIC, he must have told her that an invasion was coming. He somehow convinced her she was humanity’s only hope. And I have a feeling he didn’t get the reaction he was hoping for.”

  “Mother would never just run away, not unless it was part of a bigger plan. She has been driving all of these wars all this time to prepare us for something even more horrible?”

  “This explains something else too, Daddy,” Dee added.

  “What’s that?” Alexander asked

  “This ‘auction zone’ explains why we’ve never found or been contacted by aliens before. It’s clear now that we’re not alone in the galaxy.”

  “Sweetheart, I think you are absolutely on the right track here. But we need more than speculation about all of this. We need answers and I can’t think of but one place to get them.” Alexander stood up and rolled his neck from right to left and then popped his back. “We’ve been sitting at this damned outpost too long anyway.”

  “Alexander?” Sehera asked.

  Abby, sound an all hands, announcement, he thought. And open the channel.

  Done, sir.

  The bosun’s pipe sounded and the automated audio message played.

  “All hands, all hands, stand by for a message from the Captain.”

  You are on sir. Abigail told him in his mind.

  “All hands, this is General Moore. Prepare to move out within the next four hours to a new target location. I want battle stations ready and manned. This is not a drill.”

  Cut the feed, Abby.

  Done, sir.

  “Deanna,” Alexander turned to his daughter. “Go get cleaned up dear, I’m taking you to see your grandmother.”

  Chapter 34

  December 5, 2406 AD

  61 Ursae Majoris

  27 Light-years from the Sol System

  Monday, 7:41 AM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

  “Yes, sir,” the ships Science and Technical Officer USN Commander Monte Freeman nodded in agreement with the CHENG. Moore listened to their explanations but had to cut them short. The two of them were geeking out on the new physics and were enthusiastically getting over the general’s head. Throughout the conversation Alexander had to have Abigail explain what they were telling him. He finally had cut to the chase.

  “Buckley, you agree with the STO that this cloaking switch will work for all of the ships in the fleet?”

  “Well, uh, sir, yes sir. It appears to have worked on the shuttle, mecha, and AEMs on the last recon mission. I believe we have created a genuine quantum membrane cloaking field that works like the ones the Seppies and the bots have been using for decades. But ours is better, sir.” Buckley said puffing out his chest and tapping it with his finger.

  “What do you mean better?” Alexander asked his chief engineer. He turned and looked at the STO who was also smiling and nodding in agreement. The two of them were more excited than a hamster on stims.

  “You see, General, our system is more than just a hack and copy of the Seppy/bot system. We aren’t just sending out a code that tells the sensors to ignore that it is detecting something. Our system literally quantum connects with the sensor system and alters the quantum wavefunction in such a way as though whatever we are cloaking was never there. The quantum physics is such that the area around a cloaked mecha isn’t even there—or more like it is confused where it is.” Buckley said. Moore couldn’t understand the distinction. “If we hadn’t found these ships, sir, we’d have never figured this out. Fortunately, these things had the Seppy cloak systems on them and we were able to reverse engineer them.”

  “Joe, I know this may sound simple to you, but I’m not seeing how what you just said
is any different than how the Seppy system works.” Moore shrugged his shoulders.

  “Let me have a shot at this, Joe,” Captain Freeman said.

  “Right, your turn, sir.” Joe said anxiously.

  “General, let me put this to you in very military terms,” the STO started. “If we take an AEM suit and turn the Seppy algorithm on and you are looking at that suit with your eyeballs and at the same time any other sensor you will see the suit with your eyes and not your sensors. If you shoot the suit and hit it damage will occur.”

  “Okay, I get that,” Moore said. “And?”

  “Well, sir, if you take the same AEM suit and turn our new switch algorithm on that isn’t what happens. You will still see it with your eyeballs, but not with any other sensor like the Seppy system. The key difference here is that the cloaking field also acts like a QM teleport field to high energy density fields interacting with it but with random spatial displacements. In other words, if you shoot at it with a high-energy projectile or a directed energy weapon the cloaking field redirects that shot away from the suit.”

  “Are you telling me this thing will cause a weapon to miss or bounce off?” Moore asked.

  “Yes,” Buckley interrupted. “That’s it, sir, but it is more like it makes the projectile turn a random curve away from the cloaking field.”

  “So, we have shields like in the movies? Is that what you are telling me? Not structural integrity fields that hold material together, but actual barrier shields?” Moore thought this invention couldn’t have come at a better time.

  “Yes sir. That is exactly what we are telling you. But the field transmitters can only redirect so much energy before they fail, sir,” The STO added.

  “Okay, how much energy before they fail?”

  “We haven’t fully tested that, but they could take many many direct hits. If we used the SIF generators to generate the fields for the fleet ships they could take many hits from DEGs or even a direct nuke, probably. Maybe even two if we were hit at the right place,” Captain Freeman finished.

  “Hot damn!” Alexander clapped Joe and Monte on their backs and then shook their hands. “This is out-fucking-standing gentlemen! Make this happen on all the ships now. How long will it take?”

  “Well, sir, the Madira II and the Hillenkoetter are already outfitted. We are working on the others. Vice Admiral Walker has her CHENG working on the five ships detailed to her,” Joe said.

  “Good. How soon until we can have all forty-four ships in the fleet with these working cloaks?” Moore asked.

  “With current staff, sir, a week at the soonest.” Buckley replied.

  “Okay, focus on having the Madira ready for battle in the next hour. We QMT to 61 UM very soon. I’ll contact Vice Admiral Walker and have her start in on the rest of the fleet.”

  “Sir!”

  “All hands, all hands, battle stations. All hands, all hands, battle stations. Hold for message from the captain.”

  “All hands, this is General Moore. We are going into a system unlike anything we’ve ever encountered before. There are likely to be things we’ll see there that no human has ever seen. I’m sure we will all have many questions. Log the questions with your AICs and then put them aside. First and foremost is to do our duty. Whatever your position aboard the fleet might be, whatever your job is, do it. First and foremost do your job. Our mission must succeed. We’ll answer questions later. Also note that it is likely the things you are about to see are above your security clearance levels. Treat every thing we see here today as Above Top Secret. There will be a debriefing following the mission. Good luck to everyone and Godspeed. Moore out.”

  “All hands, all hands, battle stations. Prepare for QMT in ten seconds. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. QMT in progress.”

  * * *

  Sehera stood behind the General’s chair in her personal armor suit. She looked down at her husband who was in his AEM armor in the oversized captain’s chair. Alexander had issued a new protocol that all soldiers who could be armored would be armored during combat engagements. Sehera had been no exception. All of the bridge crew were wearing light Navy armor suits except for Firestorm who was a Marine and was wearing an AEM outfit, and Hailstorm, the ground boss, who was wearing Army gear.

  “The Buckley-Freeman Switch is operational, General. Shields are up.” the STO announced.

  “Good.” Sehera watched as the large flash of light and circular event horizon opened in front of them. The Hillenkoeter entered the QMT disk of uncertainty first.

  “The Hillenkoeter is through, sir,” the Nav officer announced. Sehera stood still but held on firmly to her husband’s chair.

  “Take us in, Penny,” Alexander said.

  Sehera felt the buzzing and popping feel of static electricity even through her armor suit. The sounds of crackling and sizzling filled the bridge briefly. Once the flash of white light subsided the view out the bridge viewport was much different. They were very near a yellow star, and just out in front of them was a blue-green planet only slightly smaller than Earth and covered with oceans. It even had a small moon orbiting it. The most interesting thing about the view to Sehera was how busy it all looked. There didn’t seem to be a place on the surface of either the planet or the moon that wasn’t covered with signs of advanced civilization and technology. There were lights covering the night sides of both.

  “We’re here, sir,” The STO said. “According to the readings from the recon team we are in the same system and that is the planet they visited.”

  “Roger that, STO.” Alexander turned to his wife and smiled. “Looks busy doesn’t it?”

  “What do we do now, Alexander?” Sehera asked. “Does she know we’re here?”

  “If they detected our entrance, they certainly can’t see us now with their sensors. They’d actually have to look at us with a direct visual,” Alexander said. “Okay, Lieutenant Brown,” Alexander said to the Com Officer. “My AIC has just given you coordinates. I want a direct line of sight communication beam directed to that point on the surface of the planet. There is a message attached to the coordinates package. Have that message play on repeat until further notice.”

  “Aye sir,” the young lieutenant replied.

  “Nav, move us any random direction a good hundred thousand kilometers or so from this position. If they did detect the QMT, we shouldn’t stay put waiting to get shot at. And relay the same orders to Captain Penzington on the Hillenkoetter.”

  “Aye sir,” the nav officer replied.

  Moore turned to his wife. “Okay, dear,” Sehera returned a business as usual look. “We wait and see.”

  Sehera paced nervously. Could it be that somehow her mother was still alive? If the Sienna Madira out here was actually her mother, then how had she watched her mother shoot herself in the head with a railpistol after the Battle of Ares. And even more, all those years she was growing up, was the Copernicus AIC in her mother’s head really an alien or was there more to that?

  Sehera didn’t really know if she cared. What excited her mostly, and at the same time scared her and made her sad, was the possibility that her mother was a good guy while at the same time was the most horrific and bloody character in human history. Sehera was going through a serious moral dilemma. She had personally been spared the gruesomeness of her mother torturing, maming, and killing countless humans as she was growing up. She was tormented and horrified by the fact that her childhood was very loving and normal. Her mother and father, whom her mother later murdered, had never once been anything more than absolutely loving toward her. Her life had seemed so normal—until she had reached her late teens and then her early twenties when the veil of her mother’s humanity was lifted.

  She happened to stumble into the wrong place at the wrong time and discovered that her mother was Elle Ahmi, a ruthless terrorist killer. Once Sehera had reached fifteen years old her mother could no longer hide the fact from her that she was plotting to take over the Sol system and all
of humanity. The wars on Mars started, and Sehera watched her mother be ruthless and, by any definitions of the word, evil. And then there was the Martian Desert Campaigns and the attack on the Separatists by the Marines.

  Sehera had lost the love for her mother or rather had decided her mother no longer truly existed and was totally insane once she saw how she treated the prisoners of war in the deserts of Mars. It had twisted her insides and her humanity to the point that she had grown a decade in a few days. At first, she had felt like committing suicide. Then she had felt like running away. Then she saw U.S. Marine Major Alexander Moore and how the man fought for life so strongly and with every fiber of his being. It was then that Sehera had completely cut her mother free and knew she had to stop her and save the Marine.

  Now Sehera was feeling all of that again, but with the strange twist that her mother might have been doing all of this for a much bolder purpose than mere conquest and bloodlust. Sehera was actually warming to the idea that perhaps her mother really was doing what had to be done to save humanity. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to that much forgiveness so easily. Hundreds of thousands had died at her hand due to her plans within plans. There must have been a better way to achieve the same goal. So much death and destruction was an evil means even if it were to a good end.

  “Alexander?” she whispered lightly. The general turned to her and rolled his head to the right a bit.

  “I don’t know, dear. We’ll just have to wait.” He leaned back into the oversized chair. Sehera let out a light sigh. She hoped something would happen soon.

  Chapter 35

  December 6, 2406 AD

  61 Ursae Majoris

  31 Light-years from the Sol System

  Tuesday, 11:41 AM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

  Sienna Madira sat at the desk in the center of her penthouse office. The dignified proportions of the room relaxed her and reminded her of a time when she was revered by billions. It reminded her of a time long before the horrible years had begun. The horrible years that had to happen in order for humanity to survive.