by Tobias Roote
Pod: I have travelled a distance of what the humans measure as fourteen light years.
Arty: Amazing - how did you achieve that?
Pod: It was accidental, as I know you are aware. I had no access to controls, except the D-jump. It didn’t matter at the time where I went, only that I required time to check my systems fully without further risk, and... I was confused. These humans affect me in ways I fail to comprehend. I have come to the conclusion that if I remain with humans my logic circuits will deteriorate.
Arty: By humans, you mean Zeke.
Pod: Yes, he is my Maker...
Arty: He is more than your Maker, Pod. Your Alacite links you to him. I believe you are receiving feedback through that link and it is interfering with your logic circuits.
Pod: Then I must compensate somehow. I need to reflect on the matter.
Arty: On the other matter, can you share the data from your jump?
Pod: Yes.
Pod transmitted the data core from the D-Jump and Arty spent some minutes reading and digesting the information.
Arty was impressed, he had already deduced the true nature of the D-field and had become increasingly frustrated at the limitations placed on his jumping ability by Pod. How to get Pod to change those parameters?
He had a thought, well, several million actually, but they resolved down to one option. He decided to press the issue.
Arty: Can you jump something else that far?
Pod: Yes, using what the humans refer to as ‘quantum theory’ I have discovered it is possible, so long as I have the coordinates.
Arty had thought as much. He needed Pod’s help with his idea, but didn’t want to share the details yet.
Arty: Shall we send a drone to where you were, then?
Pod thought for a moment while she calculated the power required to push the drone the distance. When she realised it was not only possible, but incredibly easy, she agreed. It would be a good test of both the ability to send something as well as the Alacite communication possibilities.
Pod: You’re thinking that the communication link will operate at that sort of distance?
Arty: Yes, but I’m also thinking that such an ability might help in evading the Nubl when they come.
Pod: I see. You are in charge of evacuation of those that can be accommodated?
Arty: Yes, I also have to oversee the fate of the twenty ARKs and the extraction of the Space Island humans. The trouble is, we now know that the Nubl can detect us despite our new cloaking devices, which leaves them vulnerable to discovery. We need an edge in helping the escapees evade the enemy.
Pod: I can remove the D-jump limiters which were placed to safeguard the humans when you were first placed in here. Can you calculate whether you can sustain enough power to move this asteroid to another location?
Arty: I believe the power contained within the complex is enough. If not to remove us from this system altogether, then at least far enough from immediate danger.
Pod: Then we need to make some revisions to your system parameters. Let us proceed.
- 14 -
Nubl Space: Aviental Rebellion
The Aviental Queen was nervous. The course she had chosen meant death for her and the remainder of her hive when she was discovered, or worse, failed. Timing would be crucial. It wasn’t that she was overly attached to her workers and clones, but the thought of them being subjugated to another hive through her, was unacceptable. She would rather they perished as in the old days of the Haseel, instead of this new slavery. No, there had to be a protest and this was the only way she could fight back against the complete disregard for millennia-old traditions.
When Celnista, the Crystal Queen began her meditations, this would be the signal for her to initiate her plan. It required a skill that had been almost forgotten within the Nubl, having been used between queens and their hives as a subliminal low level communication platform. Now, because of new coding methods, it was an unused frequency although the transmit and receive routines remained built into the workers. The captive queen was certain her communication would go undetected and she was fully prepared for the consequences.
The moment came, the Aviental Queen tapped her claw nervously on the silver torque around her neck that would remove her head if she failed and began the process of opening the ancient connection to her workers and clones. Then, when she had everything in place and decided it was time, she initiated the burst transmission. So small and insignificant was it, that an alert observer would be hard pressed to identify it even when looking for it. The Queen wouldn’t notice it at all.
The receptors built into her clones and workers would quietly receive the transmission, download it and recompile it into its full message format. Most of her workers would disregard it as it would say it wasn’t for them and their inbuilt programming would remove the message. The Aviental Queen had noticed there were dissidents in the worker population and guessed there were links to the Frenon rebels when supplies regularly went missing. She was banking on the fact that the intended recipients had overcome such limitations of programmed behaviour and would understand her message was for them alone, and act on it.
A few minutes later a shipyard worker in the process of nano-welding a seam of black composite received the message and understood its contents. It made one effort to backtrack and verify, then seeing where it originated, decided it was valid.
It dropped the welder, stood, signalled to another worker in its vicinity verifying the other worker had also received the message. By the end of the work period over three thousand Aviental workers had received and understood the compressed message.
Over the next few working periods, items went missing, large and small. There was no need for the workers to meet or discuss the news or action to take; it was a simple order, Escape, Evade, Disseminate, Retaliate. Never before had such an order been given to a lowly worker, it was a first. The workers themselves required no substantiation, justification or explanation - the very detailed order had been given, just as if it was an order to install a Fibron drive, or a Navigator console, and they followed it precisely, without question.
A small group of Aviental workers moved deeper into the shipyards to near where the Shadowships were going through their final testing before allocation of crews. These workers were the most highly skilled, having complete knowledge of the building of Crystal warships.
What they intended was unprecedented in Nubl history. As sophisticated a race as they were, there had never been any form of retaliation or rebellion within a hive, excepting for the clones usurping a queen. The Frenon, Free Nonites, were the only ones who would consider such an action as they were not bound to the laws of any hive and had struck out on their own. This was now their objective.
These Nubl that gathered had been secretly supporting the Frenon against the day their hive was overrun in a Haseel and they needed to escape the ritual slaughter of workers and clones. They would now activate their long-term plans for escape, but would follow the last ever commands, in all probability, of their hive Queen.
As zero hour approached, the teams of workers in the vicinity of the shipyards increased. Others congregated near the control zones.
When the lighting went out across the yards most workers stopped what they were doing, as it also meant their tools became ineffective without the power supply to feed them.
Two hundred and fourteen teams proceeded to board all of the newly completed Shadowships, quickly followed by an equal number of larger groups under cover of the unexpected darkness. The whole operation was completed silently, and in an amazingly short time. In all, three thousand eight hundred Aviental workers had crammed in, or onto, the tiny ships.
Many of them bolted themselves to the external sections of the ships reducing their profiles into a compact mode to reduce any potential drag to the operation of the ships. None wanted to be thrown off as the ship accelerated and entered into hyperspace.
The important distraction occurre
d in the control room where all of the security systems failed at the same time. Something to do with a large ship section of black composite material falling across a major power feed and shorting out the links, adding total blindness to the chaos caused by the blackout.
The triple asteroid’s defences; motion, direction and speed, were maintained by this control room so the ensuing panic to regain control provided sufficient cover for their escape.
As soon as the remaining team fell on the last ship in the yard, all ships took off from the asteroid as one, and in complete synchronicity, shielded, cloaked. Once free of the base, they altered course directly to the hyperspace jump point.
On the hive base it took the Nubl managers and clones a while to figure out they had been sabotaged, a further period to establish action to resolve the lack of power to the all important control room and shipyard. By the time the audit of workers and ships had been made, some time later, the two hundred and fifteen ships with nearly four thousand workers had gone through the jump point and escaped to a destination unknown.
***
When Celnista the Crystal Queen found out about the exodus she knew instantly she had been betrayed by the Aviental Queen. The Queen had her dissected alive where she stood. Now she had the head and chest in front of her on a plinth, the explosive necklace still attached.
“You defied me you harlot, now you will pay the price of your stupidity.”
The head and shoulders remained defiant, the remnants of the once proud queen maintained her haughty attitude while most of her lay in shambolic pieces over the floor.
The Aviental Queen had resigned herself to her fate. So she had the luxury of being prepared and responded arrogantly. “You should have honoured me with a quick death when you had the opportunity, Celnista. You broke with convention and set us on a new path. This is your own doing.”
The Crystal Queen sneered, she couldn’t find it in her to admit the Aviental Queen was right. “I’m intrigued how you achieved this, where do you think your precious workers are going to go? There’s nothing out there, my Ta and his ships will find them and blow them out of subspace.” She looked askance as if thinking to herself out loud.
“I’m not going to give you anything, you will have to interrogate my memories for the information and take the chance I haven’t set traps in my core for you to trip,” she responded confidently. In reality she wanted it over quickly, her memories would give up information on the Frenon’s location if Celnista took the time and trouble to check.
“Oh, I have time to tread carefully Avien, but I will find what I need,” she murmured as she connected a communication conduit to the other’s frame.
The disembodied queen watched through the mental linkage they both shared as the Crystal Queen interrogated her memories until she had ascertained the means with which the escape had been organised and where they were headed. Through the Aviental’s own links with her hive workers the Crystal Queen could see there was direction and motivation behind the escape. She saw the Aviental’s observations of the possibility of an underground group subverting workers, and made note to search out any similar malcontents in her own hive.
It was too late to chase down the escapees, the Aviental queen had deliberately not attempted to direct communication to any specific worker. The workers alone knew who they were. No matter, she thought. All the remaining Aviental workers would be terminated before they infected her own.
“Nicely done Aviental... nicely done,” the Queen smiled.
The captive queen felt the ravaging of her memories as the Crystal Queen swept them aside searching for the data she required, the traps she had set all but useless to the cunning ability of her captor.
“My name.... used to be... Avien.” She struggled to put the words together as the wrench of the Queen’s connection forced its way through her systems.
With slow deliberation, the furious Queen pressed the hidden catch which opened up the Aviental’s chest cavity. The other’s eyes tried to look down, but the amulet around her neck restricted movement.
The Queen stopped once to look into the eyes of her enemy not paying attention to her words, while removing the first iridescent wafer from the Aviental’s chest cavity. One by one she would take her long and useless life of memories and consign them to a black hole.
Almost absently she narrated her intent to the head and body that had thwarted her. “You will suffer a slow death and experience the agonising loss of your long life being erased,” she said. “Then, when you no longer know who you are, I will remove you from your pathetic existence.” The hive memories, usually preserved and incorporated into another queen’s memories would now be erased for all time. A fate worse than death for the Aviental Queen.
The Crystal Queen was satisfied when she observed in her enemy’s face what was a rare reaction for any Nubl - fear and dismay as she who had lived for millennia slowly lost her memories. The history of her hive were taken from her, wafer by wafer, until she had no more knowledge than a simple robot. Soon, the Aviental hive would be no more.
“You do not... rem.. remember... me?” The Aviental Queen stuttered finally. Her last words ignored by the Queen, who was busy wiping the data from the wafers as threatened.
When all data had been stripped out of the wafers they were replaced in the cradle from the Queen’s chest. As the last one was returned, the cradle withdrew into the chest cavity. The last act of the still angry queen was to set off the charge in the necklace and destroy the remainder of the disembodied and brain-dead queen. With her ire only partially sated she stormed off shouting at her clones.
“Destroy all the Aviental workers, they are of no further use to us,” she ordered, quickly taking account of the now hive-less workers wandering aimlessly without direction.
The Queen’s workers rounded them up and removed them for dismantling. Their metals would be smelted and re-used in new ship components. within a few days, nothing of the Aviental hive would remain. Their ships, their workers, their memories - gone. It was not the way of the Nubl, but it was the way of the Crystal Queen.
“Send out Shadowships and track down those thieving Avien Nonites and destroy them,” she ordered. “We will not allow them to gain ships in such numbers. They must have a plan, and whilst I do not know the details it will not serve us if they have opportunity to bring it to fruition.”
Later, the Crystal Queen pondered her situation. Her first attempt at subjugating another hive had not gone so well. She had not taken fully into account the propensity for retaliation, nor the desire for revenge from the other queen. She must find a better way next time.
As she felt the pressure from her anger dissipate, the Queen, now more relaxed, felt a pull inside her. Something was drawing her and unsettling her again. She decided to meditate on it and took to her throne while her clones carried out her bidding. she observed from a distance as chase ships left, heading for the jump zone to follow the escapees.
Her mind though, was on something very different.
***
.....dust swirled in the distance imparting a sense of large-scale motion. She watched excitedly as a dark mass of moving bodies swept down the dry hills. The muted thunder of hooves hitting the packed ground reverberated across the empty ground between them and her, the vibration echoed through her feet and up into the calves of her strong legs, making them feel weak and incapable of holding her weight.
They were approaching fast, almost too fast. Her fear mounted and mingled with the excitement she felt at the prospect of even being close to these beasts, remembering too well her own experiences. The tall man beside her looked down at her as she looked up. His fair features and strange green eyes bored into her seeking her thoughts as if they meant life or death to him. Jenari never had green eyes, where had he come from.
Deliberately distracting herself from his intense gaze, she looked down at the other warriors, seeing them preparing for the forthcoming trial. The annual Wazkeel was their only chanc
e to achieve status in the clan. She had done it twice in her life. Now, she was here to watch her eldest son take to his first Henurai, the four-horned beast that was fully her height and more than twenty times her weight. Its annual migration forced it along these trails and she knew that where she stood, her father had once stood, and his father before him, right back in time to the beginning. A time when all Jenari were one tribe.....
Without warning her memory jumped, she was startled to see a scene she vaguely remembered.
.....The town square was full of irate people, she could see their anger directed beyond the security forces. The Seg, their shields and batons raised, were holding back the crowd from reaching their objectives. Behind the line of Seg a small group of TransJen’s were huddled together. She could see them clearly, one was her daughter, Avien. Oh Crusis! How she had changed, Celnista thought to herself. The melded combination of metals and flesh merged into something unrecognisable in places. She knew it was Avien only because she had watched the changes happen over time.
First had come the mental augmentation to help her with her work, then the optical because the mental was capable of seeing better with the combination. Soon Avien and her friends were adding ever new aspects to their bodies. When she returned a stranger on her last visit, after an absence of six months, her arms had been surgically removed and replaced with bionic limbs. Celnista could not even hug the ‘thing’ that was now hardly recognisable as her daughter., She had turned in revulsion at the sight. It was the last time she had seen Avien - until today.
Now, hiding behind her friends, seemingly afraid for the first time in her life, Celnista watched her estranged daughter cower as the mass of Jenari emotion swept over them. She wept and went to move toward her, wanting to hold her just once more. When she felt the presence beside her take hold of her, keeping her away from the ugly scene in front where she knew they would kill her if she went to them.
