“Adamarus,” the president leaned forward, “I want you to talk to him, tell me what you think. To be honest, when he agreed to help us, I got the feeling he might agree to anything I asked him. Find out how he really feels. He’ll have to divide his time between the R&D work and college while somehow finding the time to do the things that seven-year-olds do. Maybe he’s not ready for it…I don’t know. Just talk to him while you visit the zoo and see what you think.”
“How much does he know?”
“About the alien? Nothing yet, and I haven’t decided yet what he should know.”
“I see,” Adamarus looked to Grace.
She looked thoughtful for a minute then said, “If he’s as smart as you think, he may have a lot of it already figured out.”
---
It was the perfect day. The day was perhaps a bit cool if you weren’t trudging up and down the steep hills that made up the landscape of the zoo, but since the three of them were doing just that, the cool air made it perfect.
Howie stood four foot ten inches with thick red hair and blue eyes. He was very excited meeting Adamarus, and at first, he asked many questions. He also took to Grace right away.
After some small talk, Adamarus just came out and asked Howie, “How do you feel about helping out with the research and development for the defensive buildup?”
The seven-year-old thought about it for a few seconds then said, “I guess I’m a little nervous, but mostly I’m thrilled and can’t wait to start.”
Adamarus could hear the excitement in his voice. “You’ll have to keep up with your school assignments and studies. Are you sure that’s not going to become too much?”
Again, Howie gave Adamarus’ question thought then said, “The way I see it, instead of trying to come up with things to do in my spare time, I’ll be given new things all the time. It will be so much easier.”
Adamarus raised his eyebrows and looked at Grace.
“So,” Grace said, “you spend a lot of time just looking for things to do?”
“Oh, yeah, all the time.”
They had seen the lions and tigers and elephants, camels and bears. Now they came to a branch in the path. One way led to the Aviary, the other to Rare and Unusual Animals. Howie immediately chose the latter and after a meandering path, they came to a one-story building and entered.
“The classes you’re taking don’t give you enough to do?” Grace asked.
“Sometimes,” the boy replied, as he stared at the first exhibit. It was a six-foot long lizard. “But usually they spend too much time on the same things.”
The prehistoric looking beast didn’t move though it had its eyes open. It was thought to be extinct but had been discovered on a small unsettled island 200 years ago. An endangered species, they were now only found in captivity. The sign also said that only 350 existed.
They moved down the hall to the next exhibit containing a huge bird with long legs and a long beak and seemingly just an enormous ball of feathers in between. It was another animal on the endangered species list.
Adamarus asked, “Why do you want to help with the defensive buildup?”
“Because it’s the biggest challenge of our time and we have to find a way to survive.”
The next exhibit was something none of them had seen before. The sign said it was a Honey Sucker. It was attached to a tree.
Adamarus looked at the smooth blackish ball. Thin tentacles emerged from it, slowly waving to and fro. Tiny black specks—perhaps nates—flew around it. A warm wind brushed his face and briefly he caught the scent of popcorn and cotton candy. Then the air was still, the smells gone. A bead of sweat emerged from his hairline and ran down his forehead.
Grace and Howie continued talking.
Grace asked, “How did you feel when you first learned that… well, the alien was on its way here?”
“Scared. Really scared. Like your chest compresses, your gut becomes hollow and the skin on your head feels like it’s being pulled back,” Howie said.
Part of the Honey Sucker exhibit was a screen with a button below it. Howie pushed the button and a video started. It showed the odd animal making its way up a tree toward a beehive. Bees were flying around and as it neared the hive, their numbers increased and they became more frantic. As the Honey Sucker nudged next to the beehive, it started waving its thin tentacles, swatting at the bees. The bees had now gone wild and were stinging the animal, literally covering its form. However, the bees couldn’t harm the Honey Sucker right now and poison within the Honey Sucker’s shell and tentacles caused the bees to die upon contact. The bees fell away by the dozens.
Adamarus stared at the video in wonder—the blackish sphere, its thin tentacles waving back and forth while hundreds of bees flew around it.
“Wow,” Howie said.
The video said that the Honey Sucker had to kill every bee before it could open its hard shell and ingest the beehive and its honey. This was because bee stings were extremely poisonous to it and once the Honey Sucker opened its hard outer shell so it could eat, it became vulnerable. If even a single bee stung the inside flesh that was exposed while it ate, it would die.
Finally, the hard blackish ball opened up, exposing soft pinkish flesh and started devouring the hive. The camera zoomed in then and showed that a lone bee had appeared. It stung the creature and immediately the pinkish flesh turned red and blistered. Within seconds, the Honey Sucker fell away dead.
“My goodness,” Grace exclaimed. “I’ve never heard of anything like this.”
Howie pointed out the blurb below the Honey Sucker’s name, “They're only found in the lower Southern Continent and are quite rare. They’re also on the endangered species list.”
Adamarus shook his head. This had been the most exciting exhibit of the day. He smiled at Howie. It really seemed like the boy was enjoying himself.
Later Howie took a toilet break leaving Adamarus and Grace alone for a moment. Adamarus asked, “What do you think?”
“It seems like it should be alright. I think that he’s so bright that his school work, even though college level, is somewhat boring to him and not keeping him busy enough. And, you heard him, he spends a good deal of time looking for things to do.”
Adamarus nodded, “I agree and I think he could really help.”
The next day Adamarus conveyed all this to the president.
---
After consulting with others, the president decided that Howie would get Gray Raven Security information. Adamarus would start the briefing, but since Howie also wanted to meet and talk to a Loud, it was decided that Bugs should do a part of the briefing.
The leak had let everyone know that the alien was coming in a ship powered by a huge black hole, as well as how fast it was coming and when it would arrive. What remained was the problem with the black hole passing through the ice cloud and its close encounters with Aster and Serena. Since solutions for these problems had been worked out, conveying this information was painless.
Then Adamarus told Howie about the ship being from outside of their galaxy and that there was more than one ship, and that the black hole ships had been detected and followed through other galaxies.
After this, Bugs took over and moved on to what the ships did to galaxies. How they somehow caused the central black hole to explode and how the explosion radiated outward for thousands of years, eventually killing all life within that galaxy. He also told Howie what they did to civilizations that they encountered on the way to the galaxy’s center with the added information they had gained watching the Tachyon scans from the attack on the Loud star system.
Howie was shocked but he took it in stride. That was going to be all of the information that they were going to let Howie in on, however, it didn’t work out that way.
After the briefing, Howie managed to get a half-day on the Timberline Observatory’s large scope just outside Axis. There he discovered the Spiral Slayer’s footprint and easily traced their presence back to the edge o
f the observable universe. After this, he stumbled on to something new: Instead of one Blackship per galactic group, some galactic groups seemed to have a pair of Blackships working within them.
After reporting his findings, the embarrassed adults decided to give him access to all the data.
Adamarus had already left on his next assignment so they asked Bugs to finish the briefing. However, Adamarus wanted to be present so he teleconferenced from the shuttle he was piloting, which was already 1,500 miles away from Amular. Leewood and Harrington both teleconferenced in as well as observers.
Bugs told Howie that the Loud suspected that the Spiral Slayers had reached the Omega level of advancement and what that meant—that they knew and understood everything.
Bugs also showed him the progress of the Slayer ships across the observable universe. Howie had been able to detect their footprint and trace their presence back to the edge of the observable universe, but had not established any dates for these findings. The dates showed the timetable for the advancement of the Slayers from their entry into the observable universe to their present day locations. It all added up; The time spent within each galactic group, the time taken for their infiltration into galaxies, time spent within the central black hole, the progress of the black hole’s explosion, their ejection from the galaxy within the plasma jet and finally their travel to the next galactic group at just below the speed of light.
It was then that Howie stated, “What they do does not make sense.”
Bugs asked, “In what way?”
“What doesn’t make sense is why this alien bothers to destroy civilizations that it encounters on its way to the galactic center when it is just going to cause the central black hole to explode and kill every civilization anyway.” Everyone fell silent and stared at the boy with wide eyes, shocked by the simple logic of what he’d just said.
However, Howie wasn’t finished. “And,” he continued, “perhaps even more important to us, is why do they go to all the trouble to attack and destroy a planet if they are just going to make the sun explode and vaporize all of the planets? It makes no sense.”
Everyone’s mouth dropped open.
“He’s right,” Adamarus said. “I don’t know why we didn’t see it before.”
They all looked at each other. No one had an answer.
The seemingly unimportant fact that sometimes the Spiral Slayers seemed to travel in pairs was completely overshadowed by his other observations. That what the Spiral Slayers were doing made no sense, stunned everyone to the core. It was something so obvious…so right in front of everyone that everyone had completely overlooked it.
With the exception of the seven-year-old boy, each person at that briefing left in a subtle state of shock…and, Howard Dawn hadn’t even officially started yet.
---
Thousands of miles away, Adamarus steered his shuttle around to the far side of the Larger Moon. The endless gray craters passed beneath him then finally he saw the lights of Far Side, the top-secret research base. He circled around the base while he checked in with the docking controller who guided him to the enclosed landing dock. The top of an enclosed crater opened, his ship entered and settled on the landing pad.
The large dock hatch slid closed and he waited for the dock to pressurize. The atmospheric pressure light turned green and he opened the hatch and made his way down the retractable steps. A door in front of him opened and a female strode toward him.
“Admiral Maximus, I presume,” she said with a smile.
“Who else,” he said.
“I’m Emily Frazer,” she said, holding out her hand.
Adamarus shook it, “A pleasure.”
“The pleasure’s all mine. Without you, our little kinetic weapon wouldn’t exist.”
“Well, I’m glad all those asteroids we collected could be put to some use.”
“And we have…put them to use, that is. If you’ll step this way,” Emily said. She was a short blonde-haired person with a pretty face. Adamarus liked her immediately.
He followed her out of the landing dock and down a long hallway. Finally, she opened a door and they entered a conference room with half a dozen other people. Introductions were made.
Emily seemed to be the one in charge and he soon found out she was the director of the facility. “We have two thousand one-hundred and seventy-eight asteroids performing slingshots around our sun and three gas giants constantly building up speed. Currently, they are traveling at about point one light speed and by the time they’ll be needed, they should be up around point three. But at their current speed, we can perform the first live test of the targeting generators and we are ecstatic that you agreed to be here to perform it.”
Adamarus smiled, “Well, I thank you for thinking of me and asking. There’s nothing I like better than a new gun to try out.” Everyone laughed.
“Over here is the simulator, if you’ll take a seat here,” Adamarus sat behind a small control station bristling with switches, levers and small screens. “Basically you have to first load the asteroids you want to fire. This tells the grav-generators to separate out a group of asteroids from their spin up orbit and place them into an orbit where the targeting grav-drives can control them.” They showed Adamarus how to do this as well as how to target and fire the weapon. “We’ll be targeting the asteroid called Twiddle Dee. You’re going to take an older T-Fighter that we’ve outfitted with this same control panel. She’s called the Star Walker. She’ll take you out about two thousand miles and you’ll target the asteroid from there.”
Adamarus asked questions and then went through several mockups of the process. After half an hour, he felt he had it down.
They escorted him to the T-Fighter and helped him aboard.
Emily smiled up at him, “Good hunting, Admiral.”
He lifted off and went to military power. Following a pre-programmed flight path, he left the Larger Moon behind. Finally, he was in position. The view of the asteroid and the targeting was all done via the Loud’s Tachyon Com System so there was no delay time and he was seeing and performing everything in real time.
There really wasn’t much to it. He put the target asteroid in the cross hairs, loaded six of the smaller asteroids to be fired, then pressed a red button. It took one-and-a-half minutes for the asteroids to travel to the target. The target asteroid blew apart. He never saw the six asteroids that hit it. They were just traveling too fast. He shook his head thinking, that was too easy.
Chapter Eight – Voices of the Dead
“The ‘Many Worlds’ theory does not mean that when you walk up a flight of stairs that other universes are created where you walk up the stairs taking different paths or where you don’t walk up the stairs at all. Beings are not elementary particles that take different paths. The molecules, atoms and particles that you are made of are bound together by the electromagnetic force. If other universes exist where your species never came into being or where you exist but we don’t...these were created in the beginning when matter first formed and clumped together to create the stars and galaxies.”
The Loud Named Bugs
Opening Speech, 23rd Amular Symposium on Quantum Physics
Source: The Archive
T-Minus 090 Years
The time had finally come. The light from the nova—the Loud’s exploding star—had been traveling toward the Iceis system for 112 years, and at last, it was about to reach Amular.
The photons would hopefully provide additional information you just couldn’t get from the Loud’s amazing Tachyon scope. However, the main thing was that the messages sent at light speed by the Loud home world would finally arrive providing detailed information about the alien.
All four of the Loud Umbrella ships were out beyond the orbit of the gas giant, Farnom, which was about half a billion miles from the sun. It was the optimal position to receive the messages coming in from their long dead species. They had been out there listening and recording for eight weeks. So far, they had been
strangely silent, reporting nothing to Amular.
Millennia ago, the Loud had stopped creating messages that would leave their star system and propagate in all directions into space advertising their presence. The reason: they knew it was an unpredictable universe and they did not want to advertise their presence—something the humans of Amular had never considered. Now, however, the Loud had presumably broadcast what had happened—what the alien had done—sending out this information at the speed of light. If they couldn’t save themselves, perhaps they could help save someone else.
It was believed that the Loud had started sending information as soon as the Spiral Slayer’s Blackship had entered their inner system and that they had continued sending messages as the alien destroyed their world, and finally, did something to damage their sun. Then, the Slayers had departed, heading straight for Amular. Logically, the reporting from the Loud home world would continue for three more weeks until their sun exploded, vaporizing their world as well as six other planets. Hopefully, the voices of their long dead brethren would soon tell the tale.
---
President Wicker, Woodworth, along with Jan had traveled up to the Anderson Shipyards to watch the event with Aon Lyson-Doil, the master of the vast facility. Also present was the astrophysicist, Bradford Donnelly.
None had been up to the yards since the Radford attack 75 years ago. It had taken 10 years to repair the damage and reposition the shipyard in its stationary position above the North Pole.
All of them were seated in Aon’s cabin, which happened to have one of the best views of where the event would take place. Donnelly had just pointed out the dim star G214h—the Loud star.
Aon looked at his watch, “We’ve got about two minutes.”
Donnelly checked his watch, “Correct.”
“Tell me,” Woodworth said, “what can we expect to see?”
“Basically, a new but smaller sun,” Donnelly said. “It will shine for about eighteen days then fade over a two-day period. After that, we’ll see the resulting nebula form. Really, that will be the interesting part.”
Countdown Amageddon (The Spiral Slayers Book 2) Page 22
