Earth on Target (Survival Amidst the Stars)

by Angel Bright

  Hasterazis was now alone.

  For a long time, the loneliness and grief of the lost adherents caused him to waver between despair and fury and the dreams of revenge. He created plans which were increasingly risky and reckless. Yet time reduced the severity of the loss, and he began restoring the lost “New World” as much as possible from the ashes. With the help of Vigor, he was repeatedly transferred to his destroyed lab, collecting seeds and cells from the destroyed world-dream. He awoke new life and sowed it on planets that were extremely far from one another but had suitable living conditions. He sowed ten planets. One of them was Earth. He visited the planets and gave the impetus to evolution. Some received more, whereas some received less, because the spark of life was capricious and easily extinguished. The ten green-blue planets gradually gathered strength. Hasterazis erased most light attributes of the flora and fauna but ignored some small creatures on land and in the ocean because their easy discovery made them easy prey. He left the flora and fauna to themselves. Strong and wild worlds grew in which Hasterazis settled the living creatures—future carriers of intelligence. Here, his intervention to protect them became a necessity for each of the ten planets where the fruits of his work became visible.

  He trained numerous assistants, but none of them could have been set to Vigor. There was an elusive difference; some protective mechanism did not allow intelligent living creatures to pass the setting. Hasterazis understood he would not be able to find out where the key to the path to power and longevity lay. But he did a lot of experiments on the ten planets, even with genes from his cells, to create a line of Guardians of Intelligence similar to him. His best achievements were the armored creature-tanks that transformed the energies but were far from being intelligent. They could be useful as defenders of the planets but were incomparable with the powers of the Gods.

  The prototypes from Earth also only partially passed some of Vigor’s programs. They received some of the divine abilities but at the cost of many physical disabilities and mutilations. They remained incapable of going through the complicated procedures of the transformation.

  Rhem was also considered an ineffective copy. It was easy for him to suggest to his instructors he did not differ from his predecessors. His survival on Olnea and his attack on Vigor caused turmoil in the Observers, and Hasterazis was urgently informed that something different had happened.

  Hasterazis immediately transferred to the palace and tried to take control of the situation, where he encountered strong resistance and tactical preparedness on Rhem’s part.

  9 Desperation and Plans to Fight the Hunters

  I remained alone on Earth. My father caught a signal, hurriedly wished me success in protecting the Earth, and disappeared through a whitish screen that appeared behind him.

  I was promised training in how to conceal the energies charged in me by way of a mechanism of creating screens-portals. I learned the secret of determining the coordinates of the place of arrival through the portals and learned the ways to resist the forces of the Gods, whom my father had successfully opposed for millennia. I had many questions, but the time was not enough for us. I was left with only the clear understanding of the vast gap separating me from the knowledge and abilities of the Gods.

  I remained anchored on Earth. It was a huge training range but negligible in comparison to galactic spaces. I found myself with limited means of escape and denoted by a revealing luminous halo. I knew neither how to hide it nor what exactly marked me. My energy charge did not depend on my wishes. My recharging was automatic. I could create a neutralizing sphere very close to me and tens of meters around me as well, but how could I check my camouflage? I wondered if I had the ability to suppress the whole spectrum of energies gathered in me. Would my inexperience doom me to miss all the frequencies visible to the Gods? I would probably look like an ostrich with a shiny bottom, believing I was invisible.

  What screens could I create?

  How long did I have to deal with the problem I had not even known?

  I created fantastic neutralizing spheres for maximum and minimum distance and rejected them almost immediately. The panic was catching me. I was aware of this, but the impotence was paralyzing me.

  What game was Hasterazis, my self-proclaimed my father, playing? Was my purpose to be a lure diverting the hunters from him and his planets?

  My very existence drew the attention to a populated planet on the edge of the star branch of our Galactic’s spiral, which had every chance of remaining unnoticed. There was no point in activating forces that had remained inactive for quite some time. Maybe the purpose was to attract a certain punitive squad to a certain vulnerable place to capture or destroy. It was possible, but it seemed as if my father were not inclined to an uncompromising war and relied on the enemy’s underestimation of the periphery. The enemy could easily organize a destructive raid for all the planets my father had settled, when he decided the time for that had come.

  This probability was more real.

  Still, something had forced my father to leave so fast. He could have given further directions to acquire the most necessary defense skills he had hinted, but he had not done so.

  Why?

  Clearly, I had to stay on Earth. I had to be here for a reason requiring my presence with certain skills at a certain time.

  What could I do?

  I could make noise, pursuits, and battles fun for the hunters. Hmm, I was still the prey. This explained a predetermined lack of vital skills. I was prey who was a little better than the disappointing, clumsy tank defenders, which my father never helped and were always destroyed.

  Still, he did not promise me any help but hinted we could resist together.

  How?

  When?

  Would it be in a moment determined by him or due to the circumstances? I wasn’t so strong. I didn’t have the skills I could think of, and I certainly couldn’t imagine many other abilities the Gods had encountered, acquired, and used during their millennia of life.

  And I could not do it.

  Definitely not. No.

  Still, I had worked with scientists from Earth. I’d probably created my scientific approach through trial and error, but I was alone.

  Illuminated.

  Numbered.

  Well, because I could not hide, was it not better to know where the hunters were? I could hang something on them that would let me know at any time how many they were and where they were. I could locate them without them suspecting that.

  Even if they detected the sensor, they would be doubtful and afraid they didn’t find other sensors operating based on another principle.

  I could sow insecurity among them. Their fear would be even greater because they would be risking their immortality, whereas I was not sure if I was immortal like them or perhaps only until I was useful with the help of Vigor. Well, it was still something.

  That same day, I traveled by plane to San Diego. The money I had at my disposal, either left or forgotten by my father, was not much, and I generally knew how to make as much money as I needed.

  I was accompanied by the enigmatic magician Nolen.

  I started by visiting the lab at my former school, but I was out of luck. The lab was closed, and the scientific equipment had been moved. I had no time to lose. Through an advertisement, I found a private detective and ordered him to find the addresses and residences of the research team who had been working at the school lab ten years ago when I was studying there. I went to the industrial area of the city, where, by the next evening, I had already purchased a warehouse with several additional rooms for administration. In several of the local newspapers, I posted messages about hiring staff for a newly established scientific research company.

  The next few months, after dozens of interviews, I appointed an experienced, old-hand bureaucrat as a director and put him in charge of the company’s organization, bank accounts, corporate law firm, and the rest of the details. I focused on my meetings with scientists.

&
nbsp; I patiently listened to details of their previous studies in the field of electromagnetic science, particularly acoustics, electrostatics, earth waves, and even in areas such as telepathy, auras of living creatures, and the spectra of earth elements emissions, whether chemically pure or in different combinations. I also listened to the methods of their observation.

  I paid special attention to their developed and trained scientific approach and its application in their experimental quests.

  In the evenings, I worked on finding funding for my plans, but this turned out to be not much of a problem because of my abilities to infiltrate various communication and information systems, thanks to Vigor.

  The appointed laboratory managers began the selection of teams and scientific equipment according to their assigned tasks. I appointed my friend Nolen as CEO and junior partner of the newly fledged Corporation BWU. To my great surprise, he accepted this position with joy and enthusiasm. He adopted my ideas with great ease and started implementing them while I focused on my own training plans and on improving the ability to detect and block frequency emissions throughout the whole frequency range of living cells and organisms.

  For entire nights, my plan was becoming more complicated because of new ideas, but it also increased my optimism for resisting and surviving as well.

  My first orders were carried out with the speed of money transfers. These were low-power, miniature crystal generators that could emit on different frequencies, chosen by me. And they were disposable. My associates dropped them from helicopters in desert and urban areas, and I found and destroyed them. That department failed to do much with auric generators, but I still learned how to find a person by his or her aura and to specialize in reading it.

  I chose aggressive individuals and set them against me, and then I found them and chased them amid the crowds. I found them thanks to their aggressive red nuances appearing when they met me in the crowd, and I improved the speed of my reaction.

  I complicated my work with frequency generators by setting short-term frequencies that changed to others from other ranges with long-time switch-on and shut-down pauses. I wore an automatic radio direction finder for a long time, but I created my own ways of internally defining the points I wanted and achieved remarkable accuracy so that this radio direction finder was no longer necessary.

  To detect my own frequencies, I created extremely sensitive devices detecting the environment’s secondary vibrations, caused by the energy emission of living creatures. This seemed to be the mirror I wanted so I could observe my own energy emissions. I was not able to completely conceal my telltale illumination. Everything in me changed not only according to the degree of my charge but also according to something else that changed as soon as I reached a balance between the external field and the inner field on the boundary between my neutralizing sphere and the environment.

  The situation remained desperate.

  I considered other options.

  When you cannot hide anything, saturate the surrounding space with “dolls.” These are similar false signals appearing and hiding at random intervals, sometimes in the same place and sometimes slowly moving. I also considered a series of traps and mines I would leave behind me when pursued.

  My panic was turning into paranoia. I turned into a super-automaton for observation and action. I instantly determined the frequencies of all possible energy fields and directed rays and destroyed them reflectively. I achieved a lot but did not know what I had missed. I was a bundle of nerves ready to blow up.

  I began practicing tactics on different ranges. Deserts were relatively poor in living creatures, but it was hard to hide or to prepare any surprises there. The polar regions were similar. The most complicated situation was in urban areas. But a battle in the cities would bring grandiose destruction and millions of casualties. Cities must be avoided.

  One day, I realized that panic had made me more vulnerable, less focused, and less observant.

  Thus, I was a potential victim.

  I had to get a hold of myself, get ready, and become the decisive fighter I used to be. I had acquired new knowledge. I had trained with new skills. Now, I set about arranging the skills into series: series for defense, series for attack, and mixed series.

  I arranged battle complexes for single combat, for multi-opponent combat, and for long fights against an unknown number of opponents.

  That was what I could do, and it pleased me.

  Day after day, night after night, I trained the series to the point of them becoming automatic. Even if my opponents surprised me, if I were not killed in the first second, there would be a number of troubles for them. It was enough to start a definite complex.

  I was not going to give in so easily. Hunters would have to be very careful with me. If I could keep them in constant tension, I had a rich arsenal of actions.

  For a while, I was considering incorporating the military-industrial potential of Earth into my defense complex. It seemed quite tempting at the beginning, but then I realized I would cause the deaths of billions of human beings without any benefit or salvation for them. That burden would destroy me, and I had been created to be the defender of the planet, which seemed to me now a naive notion of the capabilities of a single human being. I also considered creating sensible observation posts evenly distributed across the planet, but that task would be more easily carried out by the numerous surveillance satellites circling Earth, without me having to conduct difficult negotiations with anyone.

  It took me about a month to install portable scanners on the satellites, but I did not rely too much on them. The floating frequencies of their generators could cause back resonance only when coinciding with the presumed frequencies of the hunters, and I was given the opportunity to sense them if they were in the vicinity of Earth. And these induced resonances would also reveal my location rather precisely. However, we made it possible for the scanning devices mounted on the satellites in the near space to be turned on and off only on my command, and this was a pretty good condition for suddenness, especially when the requested details were specified and the frequency range of sought frequencies was narrowed.

  I did not have time to visit my crystals research lab, but I read the summary of the scientists’ searches and their successes, and I was impressed by their assertion that they could build crystals based on provided specifications. This information remained in my mind until an interesting case arose that gave me a great chance of using it.

  In one of my training sessions, I ended up in a small church in the town of Cooperville, Illinois. The church walls and ceiling were painted with images of saints and kings with halos. The saints wore crowns and cloaks decorated with precious stones. I stared at the layout of the decoration, and it was as if an electrical current passed through my body. And the precious stones were crystals. I began to track the locations of the rubies and emeralds on the crowns. The crystals were concentrated on the front of the heads and almost always with a big ruby or emerald at the higher front part of the crowns. The crystals became smaller on the cloaks but were more numerous around the bodies and over the knees.

  Why did they need such energy protection?

  I compared the three painted patterns. Each was different in its own way, but the conviction I was observing three protective suits and helmets strengthened in me.

  In the town, I found a professional photographer and ordered several series of color photographs, intending to send someone to receive them on the next day. I did not want to leave an address where the pictures would be sent. I contacted the leading crystals lab manager and ordered him to send one of the workers to get the photos and also to find the best heraldry specialist to systemize and summarize the decorations of all the famous royal and clerical crowns and cloaks. I wanted to know what crystals were used on them and the way they were placed.

  I knew my own frequency and range of variations, and if the idea was right, I could incorporate specially selected crystals into the fabric of a suitably sha
ped work suit to act as silencers of the oscillations within certain volumes. I became obsessed with that idea, and I moved entirely to the crystals lab as a junior assistant to the leading crystals specialist. The studies proved to be increasingly complicated because I had a requirement not to interfere with the reception and transmission of the energies necessary for me under my control in both directions, and the requirements for invisibility and emitting were contradictory. We achieved some balance with the condition of turning off my body’s protection during active actions. The turning-off itself turned out to be a complicated procedure, and even achieving the process’s acceptable speed and level of automation was complicated.

  During one of the trials, I sent a rather powerful charge to the suits that were being checked, and one of them reflected almost all the charge’s power back at me. My reflexes—and, most of all, the suit I had been wearing since the previous experiment—saved me. This pleased me and puzzled me at the same time because new search areas were opening up, and this technology might have been well known to those I was about to face.

  First of all, we made a combination of the qualities of the two protective suits and produced several sets of sophisticated ones that I placed at several strategic points to be available in case of an attack. I constantly wore the lighter extinguishing version because it was comfortable and extremely strong. We learned that the shape of the suits played an important role for reaching the maximum possibilities we had studied so far, but the compromised versions with the strongest counteraction proved to be not particularly mobile.