by Lea Tassie
Reader, it seems to me that a long time ago I promised to tell you more about Charger R/T bouncing through time. You already know that his landing on Earth, just as the Mahoud invasion started, saved Danny's life, which was important because Danny went on to become world president. And now you've heard about how he dealt with Abarth.
But there was a third incident. Way back, almost at the beginning of the story, when the Mahouds started developing the black, hollow world of Neo Terra into a paradise, they heard an explosion which was eventually dismissed as a quake. But that was Charger R/T, landing near the laboratory where the Mahouds were developing more advanced Taskers. It was Charger R/T who added the hidden code to the Taskers, the code which would eventually allow them to 'decide,' to become semi-human Taskoids.
And why did he do that? Because, at the time the Prime resurrected Charger in order to clone him into super-soldiers to defeat the Grays, he inserted the command when he programmed Charger RT's mind.
Yes, it's a circle, a loop. A universe inside a universe. Think about it. If we have time, we can talk about it later.
Chapter 6 Second attack on Crest
Dart speaks to Reader:
Now we've come to the part in the story where my mother, Reanna, enters the history of Crest.
The second ship sent to Crest, the Loki, left Earth in 2065, with Gin and little Reanna aboard. Two hundred and fifty Earth years passed before they reached Crest, which would have made it 2315 in Earth time when they arrived.
How could Reanna still be alive then? Because time passes more slowly in space than it does on Earth. And don't forget the cryo pods.
***
Reanna would have been ten years of age according to Earth time, if the ship Loki had reached Crest as planned. But this didn't happen. Now, at thirty-four and with both parents dead, Reanna had few memories of childhood and the good times it meant for most children. Instead, she lived in a small world of constant fear. The Earth ship Loki had followed its course flawlessly toward Crest, picking up the trail of small satellite communication relays held in safe orbits leading toward their destination. However, there had been no communication from the Crest colony after the Mahoud-Earth War started and everyone assumed communication had been turned off for Crest's protection. The truth was much more disturbing.
Like following a trail of bread crumbs, the Loki hunted down every satellite, right into the path of an undetected space distortion. This distortion sent the Loki and its crew helplessly across a vast distance in space. Loki was a large ship, holding five highly trained families made up of ten adults and fifteen youths under the age of sixteen. As the ship had entered service after the Mahoud-Earth War, part of its design was based on the invaders' technology. Taskers had not been included, but their cryogenic pods were. The ten-year mission was well stocked and prepared, but a space distortion had never been considered as a possible scenario.
After a year of ship time in a layer of space that seemed like an out-of-control river at full flood, the Loki emerged back into the steady blackness of deep space, now with five people fewer then when it had started. It took months of painstaking research to decipher where in space the ship had been flung. The answer left all members of the party severely disillusioned.
The ship kept the remainder of its human passengers safe and asleep as it plied the vastness of space for two hundred and fifty years, until it reached Crest. The families had expected time in the cryo pods to seem brief. The ship's controls were automated and, until they reached their destination, they would age at one-tenth the normal rate, safe in the ship. Reanna had entered stasis at age nine, and expected to emerge at Crest ten years later, aged ten. So, to emerge at age thirty-four was devastating.
And there was no welcome. The Loki arrived on a dead world.
All the buildings and functions were perfectly intact, but devoid of human life. The survivors from the Loki might have prospered, but the loss of so much time and the shock of arriving at a world bereft of human life was hard to bear. Within a month of arrival, three more members had been lost to the group, all by suicide.
The city on Crest looked as if all the humans had simply evaporated one day. Decayed food still sat on dusty dinner plates. Machinery functioned, but no humans were there. For some time, the survivors tried to adapt to their surroundings, but the enormity of the situation and the lack of any concrete knowledge about the circumstances led to depression and despair. The first pioneers had left Earth on an eighty-year voyage before the Mahoud attacked, with only the advancements Earth knew at that time. The Loki had technological advancements far beyond what the original pioneers enjoyed and they found being on this planet similar to landing far back in time. Like twenty-first century people arriving in an 1870s cowboy town of the old west, these survivors found little they could use or understand.
To operate the computers that ran the city on planet Crest, the survivors had to rediscover programming that was as foreign to them as ancient Latin or Greek. However, eventually they learned the original inhabitants' fate.
The inhabitants had captured a Gray alien and discovered that it was a very sophisticated biomechanical robot. The revival of this robot resulted in it contacting the nearby Gray fleet. The people of Crest mounted the best defense they could, which quickly proved futile. After the Grays won the brief battle, they apparently removed every human. The original planetary life forms and those introduced by humans were spared, but what had happened to the humans remained a mystery.
The Loki reached Crest in 2315, about the same time as the Grays destroyed all life on planet Earth during the Night of the Black Rain. Though the survivors of the Loki trip tried to re-establish communication with Earth, there was no one left to answer.
"The ship is capable of returning us to Earth," Reanna said to Deme. Deme was seen as the leader and most fit to command the survivors.
"That’s true. We still have an intact drive system, but our power source has been severely depleted, and so only a few could return," Deme replied as he stroked his long graying beard. "I’m not sure how we could decide who is least important to our current situation. And to lose even a few members might be the death of those that remain."
"I agree with Deme," replied a younger man named Jade. Jade had been the engineer aboard Loki, and was chiefly responsible for reviving the city on Crest. "With our numbers so few, I think the logical response is to settle in and repopulate." Jade was very matter-of-fact and unemotional on this point.
"The longer we stay here, the less power we'll have to return," retorted Reanna. She had inherited her grandmother Hanna's intolerance and was short with most people.
During the long flight to Crest, as the families were held in stasis, Loki's computers continued with educating the minds of the crew. However, instruction was provided for only a ten-year flight and, as a result, the survivors suffered a limited education, and some were driven more by emotion than logic.
"I'm not sure I could endure the flight back," Dawn replied nervously. She had been the same age as Reanna when the flight left Earth, and seemed to have suffered greatly in stasis. Dawn told stories of horrific dreams, but few believed her. The computers weren't designed to supply dreams. "I think Deme and Jade are right. We should repopulate and later possibly send our children, or their children."
Dawn's comment on the situation was dismissed by Reanna as simple fear, and she pressed on with the argument. "Every year we stay here is a year we lose in travel," Reanna said. "We can plot a course past the distortion now that we know where it is, and so it only makes sense that we return and get more help to solve what happened to the people who were here."
Reanna achieved nothing with her arguments and decided her only option was to launch herself in Loki and travel back to Earth at the first opportunity. It took almost six months of time on Crest to secretly prepare the Loki and launch at night when everyone was asleep. Reanna intended to spend some during the return trip attempting to re-establish communication wit
h Earth. She left a video recording her reasons for taking the ship, sure the survivors would understand that their best interests were all she cared about. The survivors viewed this deceit with varying degrees of anger.
With the ship's controls set to wake her every six months, so that she could try again to contact Earth, Reanna settled into the cryogenic pod. The Loki was designed to travel in the depths of space at incredible speeds, but this came with equally incredible risks. If something like a large asteroid crossed the flight path, there was little time to react.
Loki's computers constantly adapted to the chosen flight path, but there was no way that this system, or the people on Crest, could have anticipated that the space distortion had the ability to move and constantly found new areas of space to ravage. Loki rushed headlong back into the swiftly moving river of space and was carried off-course yet again, for a very long time.
***
Dart speaks to Reader:
Yes, the event was catastrophic for Reanna. The emergency procedures responded and she was trapped in stasis for fourteen hundred years of Earth time.
How old was she really? Well, she'd begun this trip at age nine. With her life stunted by cryogenics, she now found herself being awakened at nearly one hundred and seventy-four years of age, and nowhere near Earth, which is where she had planned to go. The closest human settlement was New Eden. Loki's computers correctly assessed the circumstances and made this its destination.
You can probably do the math yourself, Reader. The Loki arrived at New Eden about 3716, some 75 years after Abarth released Charger R/T, the First Ones, and the god from the time-lock.
Oh, you want to know what happened to the people on Crest before I tell you what else happened to Reanna? All right then, cast your mind back to 2316.
***
The noise began with a low rumbling, like someone banging a fist on a bunch of piano strings. The eerie sound started small but, after about an hour, resonated so much that several Crest survivors gathered in the street to question one another. Deme was the first to suggest that it might be the Earth ship Loki, returning and trying to land somewhere nearby. However, no ship was visible in the dawn sky, and the resonating sound increased minute by minute. Fear began to replace mere concern.
"I know the sound of the Loki, and that's not it." Jade said to Deme. "It could be mechanical, but it's not the pulse blasts of Loki's landing motors."
Deme listened to Jade but, all the while, he was looking around, trying to pin down where the sound was coming from. As quickly as the sound started, it stopped, leaving frayed nerves quivering. "That's really odd. In the year we've lived here, that's a first. Maybe we still do not fully understand this small planet," Deme said to the rest of the group.
"Well, whatever that was, I'm glad it's over," Dawn replied as she held her newborn daughter tightly in her arms. Jade took Dawn by the arm and the two retreated inside their small home, leaving Deme intently scanning the sky.
Later that same day the sound started again, first as a low hum, then gradually increasing until the ground began to shake slightly. This time everyone was out in the street with instruments, recording the sound and tracking its direction.
"Well, I'm out of ideas," Jade said to Deme as the two men stood close together. "It seems the sound is coming from the sky, as we suspected, but from everywhere at once and not from any one point."
"You do have the orbital tracking system running, right?" Deme asked.
"Oh shit!" exclaimed Jade and bolted back into the office to start the tracker. After a few minutes, Jade returned and stood listening to the weird, resonating sound.
"You're getting old," Deme teased. Jade just grinned and agreed.
Dawn had never been a strong woman. She quickly became unnerved by the sound and tried desperately to find someplace to get away from it with her daughter. After about an hour, the sound stopped again and Jade found his wife hiding when he returned to their home. He tried to comfort her, but Dawn could not be consoled.
The doctor was called and he gave Dawn sedatives. Jade then checked his instruments and what they had recorded. Nothing. The sounds had no origin, and no identifiable pattern. Jade worked into the night until exhaustion set in and he fell asleep in his chair. He awakened next morning to a bloodcurdling scream.
Dawn was screaming for the noise to stop. Jade was confused at first, then noticed the resonating hum had returned. Frustrated and angry, he stormed outside and found Deme preparing a flyer.
"Want to join me in a scouting trip?" Deme asked.
Jade grabbed a helmet and joined his friend. The flyers were small two-person scout ships left over from the military group which set up the original colony on planet Crest.
With gusts of jet blast from the four engines, this stick-framed contraption rose into the sky and jumped about in an uncontrolled fashion. "Who taught you how to fly these things?" Jade yelled over the sound of the engines.
"No one, really," responded Deme, as he fought the controls.
"Well, that's obvious. Here, let me do it." Jade took the controls, and the small flyer leveled off and began to fly straight.
"Fine, be that way. I thought my method was much more interesting," Deme joked.
"Your way was going to get us killed," retorted Jade with a smile.
The two men rose high into the morning sky and, with instruments recording and scanning, they hoped to find an answer. A second and third flyer also rose, quickly following Deme and Jade. Deme shouted orders over the transmitter to the other two flyers, telling them to move to different quadrants of the sky.
Suddenly the resonating stopped. Dismayed, the three flyers returned to the city. A meeting was quickly called in the town hall. Everyone was disturbed, fearful, and full of questions. "Do we know anything about what's happening?" someone shouted.
Calmly, Deme rose. "We do know a few things now. The reason I had a flyer at my house was because I suspected we might hear this strange noise again. I've confirmed that today's sound was the same as we heard yesterday, but just a few moments later. This suggests a time dilation to the sound."
Someone tried to interrupt and was quickly hushed. "This time dilation might be natural or artificial, and I suspect that later today we will again be subjected to that same sound," Deme said. "I've also deduced one other fact." Everyone was quiet now. "The second session of sound was a few seconds shorter than the previous one."
"So you're saying that over time, the events will stop because the time is decreasing?" Jade asked.
"Yes, but I'm not sure that's a good thing, because the vibrations are increasing as the time is decreasing," Deme replied.
"Are we being attacked?"
"Is this natural for the planet?"
"Can we stop this from happening?"
All the questions came at once, and there simply weren't any answers. That afternoon, and the next day, and the day after that, and for the following five days, the noise returned and intensified.
Each time, the duration shortened and the vibrations increased. On the eighth day, the sound did not return. The people held their breath and waited in fear, but nothing happened. Two weeks passed and the fear subsided. The sounds were still being studied and analyzed when a new event hit.
The boom was so fierce and deafening that several people blacked out. Shock waves smashed several buildings to the ground. Terrified, people began to discuss whether they should try to restart the original Earth ship, the USS Rothschild, which had brought the first military colonists. But the ship had remained dormant for far too long and had no power supply. This realization only fueled the fear. The shocking boom returned every day at the same time and increased in intensity, with the additional plague of thinning the air and making it difficult for people to breathe.
Panic was now the norm. It was decided that the only safe recourse was to hide in the surrounding hills, deep inside caves. Ear-shattering and chest-shocking blasts hit the planet daily for a month, then stopped. When th
e survivors emerged from their caves, the planet was in ruins. No structure anywhere was still standing.
"Well, smart guy, what do we do now?" Jade asked his friend Deme.
"I know we’re being attacked!"
"Ah, shit, I was hoping it wasn't that," Jade said sadly. "Any ideas?"
"Just one. We find a place on this rock that has a body of water large enough for us all to hide under," Deme replied, packing up his belongings, like all the other survivors now leaving their caves.
"Well, that’s going to be a bit tough. This rock has mostly rivers, and there aren't that many bodies of water to start with!" Jade said.
Jade was correct. Crest was a small world and there were only two significant bodies of water on the planet, just large, shallow lakes possibly seven meters at their deepest points. At the residents' meeting, Deme spoke of everything he had surmised, and a plan was hatched to save the still rattled and shaking survivors. They would dam some rivers, dredge up the bottom of a nearby lake, and use a large section of the original space craft as a safe harbor under water.
What Deme feared might come next was nothing less than total destruction of the surface of the planet. The first attack had been on the senses, an attack to demoralize and unnerve the populace, with the intention of creating panic. The second attack was designed to destroy infrastructure and destabilize the community. The third attack would be to occupy an already defeated planet and kill the inhabitants with the least possible casualties to the attacking force.
That was how Deme described the situation to the meeting. The original military equipment and technology, though primitive, was working and in good condition. Thus, within a few days, the lake was dredged enough to submerge a large section of the USS Rothschild. Damming the rivers was an easy task. The use of high explosives placed in mountain passes forced water to be diverted to the lake. When all was finished, the section submerged was covered over with enough debris to look natural, and a tunnel to the surface doubled as a ventilation port for fresh air. Military equipment was hidden in a cave and the entrance disguised with rocks, earth, and shrubs.
