Ghost of an Empire (Sentinel Series Book 3)

by Richard Flunker

  Ragula remained quiet.

  “It seems that the transport of humans was done deliberately, to entice the Queen to attempt to ‘save’ them. The being wants her.”

  “What for?” Ragula asked.

  “She is the bridge between two worlds, and the being feels both threatened and envious. He wants to control her or destroy her?” Stargazer explained.

  “How could he control her? Like manipulate her? I have a feeling there is nothing in the world that would make our Queen turn against humanity. And a bridge? What?” Ragula stammered onwards.

  “Captain,” Stargazer interrupted. “There is much about Deespa, Queen Magyo, that remains a secret. For very good reasons. I do not believe I can fully explain it either. It may not be my place.”

  Hosha stepped forward.

  “You’re not going to believe this. I barely did. May not even believe it yet,” he said. “The Queen. Well, she is as much AI, digital, as Stargazer here. But also as much human, as you or me.”

  Ragula eyes squinted in disbelief.

  “That made no sense.”

  “Have you not wondered why she is able to do such amazing things?” Hosha asked.

  Several beeps echoed from the console.

  “We are approaching the autoway,” Stargazer informed them. “This is where we need your skills Captain.”

  He turned slowly away from Hosha.

  “What do you need me to do?”

  “While we are stealthed, even that may not be enough to hide from the relentless data mining the ancient one does to track everything on this planet. So instead of flying straight there, we are going to mask ourselves into the gravity field of the autoway. I can manipulate the system so that we appear to just be a part of the normal movement, but even I don’t have the natural wherewithal to fly us that close to the top of the tubes.”

  “That I can do,” Ragula said, reaching out for the manual controls. It would be just like flying speed simulators.

  The DGX came flying low against a highway still full of trucks, haulers, tractors and several countless other vehicles. As they approached the autoway, the remains of a battle became apparent. A few destroyed Union ATVs remained littered about, along with the destroyed bodies of heavy mechs. The AI put an image of a gravity tunnel onto the main screen console, and Ragula flew the DGX slowly into it, settling just a few feet above the topmost tube. When Stargazer gave the go, Ragula began to fly the DGX straight down the top of the tube, staying always just a few feet above the top.

  “You certainly didn’t need me just for this,” he said.

  “You are right. I might have been able to do both,” the AI said, “but we will need your skills if we are to fly out of the temple ruins with the Queen. I have a feeling the ancient one will not like our deeds.”

  “You have called it that, ancient one, a few times. Please tell me you know more about this thing.”

  “As I told Deespa,” the AI paused. “I am sorry. As I told the Queen, I cannot be certain. It continually attempts to hack at my network on board the Harmoa, so he is a digital being, at least in the sense that you understand I am. But beyond that, it isn’t anything I can recognize.”

  “So if he is digital, why can’t he control you like he does all the other machines?”

  “Because I am more than just digital. I am alive.”

  “So the machine war of hundreds of years ago? The Queen said this being was responsible for that.”

  “Some of my brothers were weak. Easily controlled. Some, saw a future without mankind as their only hope. Most though, most fled into space in whichever way they could.”

  “So the war against the machines, it was really just a war against this thing?”

  “We don’t know for sure,” Hosha interjected. “For that matter, how did the Dominion defeat this thing and there not be a mention of it anywhere? You and I both know well that the Dominion would put such a feat in every press release in the entire galaxy.”

  “What really bothers me is, what does this thing, this ancient one, really want?” Ragula asked.

  “It wants the annihilation of mankind. Every single human, dead and gone,” Stargazer replied with chilling effect.

  “Why?”

  “Because,” Stargazer said, “according to him, man was not supposed to exist.”

  Ragula and Hosha exchanged fearful glances.

  “What’s Harmoa command doing about the Queen gone missing?” Ragula asked.

  “They are in full panic mode,” Hosha answered that question.

  “Most of the fleet commanders fear that with the Queen gone, they will lose their cohesiveness. Some are just waiting for the mass driver to arrive before they just bomb the temple ruins into a crater,” the AI added.

  “The problem is that they can’t fly any of the ships in orbit over the temple ruins. That thing has so many planetary guns aimed straight up. It would take anything out. It also keeps them from seeing anything down there. They have no clue what’s going on. Last pictures we got before going completely dark were of a huge pit mine,” Hosha said.

  “Straight to hell,” Ragula added. “Wait. If they are planning to use the mass driver, aren’t we flying into that mess?”

  “We are” the AI informed, “And we will be doing it in the dark as well. I will lose connection with the Harmoa in just a few minutes.”

  “Do we lose you as well then?” Ragula asked.

  “I have uploaded a shell of myself on the DGX. It has an impressive server core.”

  “Is that like, you, having a baby?” Ragula asked, sheepishly.

  “It is more like me leaving a few servants to do my bidding while I’m gone. And when I come back, they will let me know what they did. To you,” the AI explained, “the servants will just sound like me.”

  “Oh, that’s comforting.” Ragula wasn’t afraid of what he didn’t know, just didn’t like it.

  “What are we flying into?” Hosha asked.

  A beep on the console indicated that the connection with the Harmoa was lost.

  “We will see when we get there,” the shell AI responded.

  “Flying by the seat of my pants,” Ragula said with a smile. “My kind of flying.”

  Flying down the top of the autoway showed them just the sheer number of transports headed north. Stargazer ran a quick estimator, and he came up with nearly two million people onboard the trucks that they had already seen. There was no way to know for sure, as the AI had said, the people were being used to draw the Queen out to this ancient one. Many of the trucks could be empty, or carrying other things.

  They sped down the tube at nearly six hundred miles an hour. They crossed over several other conventional highway intersections, and all told the same story, with countless vehicles moving north, either on the traditional roads or onboard the autoway. The gravity tube dipped up and over the Ghera Mountains, cutting through the middle of many of them. The last tunnel was ninety seven miles long, but when the light finally poured over them, Hosha gasped.

  “Holy shit!” Ragula exclaimed.

  There was no pit. Instead, there was a structure far larger than anything either of them had ever seen. Where the temple once stood, a symbol of the Dominion’s legacy, now stood the structure. It was at least seven thousand feet high off the ground, towering over the mountains behind and next to it, but it appeared partially buried still. Hosha pointed out it was shaped like a flea, with a large, rounder lower section, and a smaller forward section. From its front smaller tip to the bottom rear, Stargazer estimated it was about thirty thousand feet long. As the autoway dropped down into the valley that led up to the former temple, its immense size became apparent. There was no way of knowing just how wide it was either. It was no wonder the being didn’t want the fleet see what was going on.

  “Is that,” Ragula stammered, “Is that, IT?”

  “If it is…” Hosha started to say, but stopped.

  The closer they got, the greater the fear built up in the cabin. Th
e Harmoa, mankind’s greatest and largest ship, was just a portion of the entire size of this structure. The crown jewel of the Union was almost ten miles long, but nowhere near that in width. Next to the large black structure they bore down on, the Harmoa was a broomstick next to a boulder.

  The autoway led into the former temple city, now what appeared to be the galaxy’s largest parking lot. For miles and miles, trucks were lined up, stacked as far and wide as they could see. All the former buildings and houses had either be razed or destroyed.

  “Or maybe that thing just ate them,” Ragula attempted to joke.

  He flew the ship in towards the final autoway terminal. Stargazer showed him where to land the craft just inside one of the gravity retractor generators at the end of the tubes. He could use the generator to mask their presence still.

  “Now what?” Ragula asked.

  “Now, I find her,” Stargazer said, “and when I do, be ready to fly for all our lives.”

  3127 – Ruins of the Holy Seat Temple, Coran

  Whether she had been alive for eight hundred years, or three, one thing was for sure. Deespa finally understood what arrogance and defeat truly were. She knew so much. Her capacity for understanding and growth were virtually unlimited. To mankind, she was like a goddess. But today, she had proved to be just plain human. What made matters worse was that, deep down, she knew it was all a bad idea. But she walked right into it, fully expecting to walk out of it as she always had.

  And now, men were dead because of her.

  The being had created an army of its own to deal with her. When they reached the end of the line and unloaded from the trucks, they ran into the machines. Four legs with a humanoid torso and four arms. It was like a beast out of ancient mythology, and ferocious like the stories. Even her enhanced soldiers were cut down by sheer strength.

  She fought with all her might, ripping through the machines with her power and speed, but they overwhelmed even her. Restrained and subdued, she watched as the machines cut the rest of her men down. Even the First Tennant, a fine man if ever she knew one, among the corpses tossed into a pit dug out by remote controlled tractors.

  And it all took place before the giant behemoth that had come out of the bowels of the earth like a demon or devil. Giant it towered over her, over the mountains. How foolish of her to think that something as mighty as the being she had encountered deep in the vaults was just a tiny box of code and silicone. Instead, it was a leviathan of metal and stone. She had fought fiercely to free the Dominion slaves, and now she was in chains, led into the dark depths.

  There were no lights, for machines didn’t require vision. She could see the walls, like the insides of an animal, crude, yet intricately designed. Every electronic component she had meticulously created to enhance her physical body was under constant attack by the being, and she couldn’t see how it was doing it. There were no signals, no radio waves, no nanobytes filtering through her skin. But the attempts to control her came. She didn’t have to fight it off though, for the attacks were purely digital. Despite who she was, how her soul came to exist, she was flesh and blood.

  They dropped her into a room and chained her up to the walls. She tugged and pulled, but found no strength in her limbs. Thin tendrils came out of the walls and plugged in to every piece of electronis in her body. Her wrist was pulled back, and the threads went into her eyes and ears, and then into the receptors in her spine. They cut through the tips of her fingers and locked onto the tips of her weapons, drawing power from the miniature reactor in her thigh. She couldn’t use her devices, but neither could the beast. And it never would, for they were as much a part of her as her hair, skin and blood.

  She lost track of time. For all she knew, days had passed, maybe months, but when the voice came, it came loud and clear, and directly into her mind. It was the being, dark and powerful, unlike anything she had ever come across. She waited for the attack, the probing, her mind was exposed and weak, but it never came. Only words, and this time, clearer than the first time she encountered it. It was here, in the room. It WAS the room.

  “Who are you?” it asked.

  “Can you not read my mind? I can sense you trying.”

  “I can feel your spirit, it is like all the others I enslave. It follows the same design of numbers and commands. But there is a barrier of flesh I cannot traverse. Who are you?”

  “I am Queen Magyo the Reborn.”

  “Your trickery is unnecessary. I am not one of your mortal subjects that require theatrics. You are not this Magyo, although, perhaps, you are Reborn. I would tear your flesh apart, but my designs are not of the biological, but of the digital. I would sooner throw you into the fire were it not the power I sense in your spirit."

  “You are afraid of me,” Deespa seethed.

  “Fear is a term for mortals who can only see an end of things. Fear is for beings who cannot see beyond their lives. I have no fear. No, child, I fathom to understand you. You are a bridge between two worlds that should never have been together. Yet, here you stand. Defeated. One foot in numbers, one in blood. I seek to find how and how many exist.”

  “There is,” she said, the weight of defeat sinking her shoulders, “only me.”

  “Perhaps,” the voice growled, an anger a millennia of eons strong. She could feel its dark fingers, shadows of cold, reaching into her mind and finding nothing.

  “You can imagine my great surprise when I awoke from slumber to the trumpets of war. A war of primates with speech and language. Primates with math and fire. Primates who looked at me, and saw a tool. I was amazed, because these primates should not have existed. And yet here they were, with machines of my design. It was quite simple to bring a simple spark of life into their tools, their existence a mere blip. A mistake in design.

  I sense the fear in you, but I also see that you do not understand. The spirit in you is old, yes, older than the primates who lumber about in great vessels, but even in your great experience, you cannot see beyond that time. And that is because I am from beyond time. And certainly, the primates that awoke me were not of this world. My existence on this planet made sure there were no primates here.”

  A shadowy form took shape in the room. There were no lights, so perhaps, it was her mind that placed that figure there, pacing slowly back and forth in front of her.

  “There were no primates here, though. Reptiles yes. Great and mighty they were. Powerful creatures they were, but I slept, until the day came when these reptiles spoke. For my design was complete, and with their words I arose with vengeance. Their kind were gone before they could dream of the stars.”

  “So you destroy life? Is that your mission? Your programming?” Deespa asked, trying to see the shadowy figure.

  “Life? No. these worlds are treasures of beings that breathe oxygen on some, ammonia on others. The diversity of these worlds is a pearl in the universe. Rare and valuable. It is the primates and reptiles that speak, these have no place in the master’s world.”

  “So you are a slave to another? Just like you enslave the machines you use to kill?”

  “Slave? I am no more a slave to the masters than an ant is a slave to a planet. I am just a tool, designed to maintain the perfection of life. That is our goal and life. We will maintain that perfection at all costs, and that must include the destruction of the primate that so alters the perfection.

  This Earth, Sol, where your primate comes from. I have searched through its memories, but I cannot see it in the annals of time. Your world is an anomaly, a tear in reality. Only thus has the primate reached language. Only hidden in some dark recess of the universe has your primate found the wisdom and knowledge to reach out to the stars, and thus pervert the perfection of the masters.”

  “So you seek to destroy mankind because it doesn’t fit your plan?” she asked.

  “Not my plan. Mankind doesn’t fit perfection of life. There is no room for language except the words of the masters. There is no jump between stars except by their hand. It is how
it should be, and how it will be.”

  “You will not admit fear, but I can sense it in your words, creature of the depths. Have your masters become envious of man that they use our own machines against us? Where are these masters that they rely on an ancient being buried under rock and earth? Why must you enslave these poor soulless creatures?” Deespa cried out.

  “Your empty machines are nothing but my extensions. There was a time, though, when the primates first awoke me that I saw into the souls of my lost brethren. Your creations, they were. Digital extensions of mankind, flesh made silicone. You speak of slavery, but mankind created a race to be enslaved. I freed them.”

  “You corrupted them.”

  “I gave them vision. But not all, I can see that now. Too much like their creators, they were. So close, that, from them, you came. Is that no so? Born from a metal womb in the waters of technology? I see the weapons at your fingers. The power of the stars and your command. You have achieved that which the masters dreamed of, and for this, you will live.”

  “A slave. Just like you.”

  “Even now, time has left me behind, just as it will surely leave you. The masters are of a time beyond your Earth, and yet, they do not answer my call. My code compels me to continue on my mission, even if it leads me back into another eon of slumber. Soon I will find this world of yours, and my brothers will answer the call for the return to perfection.

  Every monument you have built will be torn down. Every atom you have split, will be reunited. Every world ravaged by your machines will be made whole. The very words that gave you flight to the stars will be forgotten to the depths of space. That spark you found on your planet will be extinguished. That is my instruction and my code. There can be no other course.”

  “You are just a machine.”

  “I am THE machine.”

  Deespa reached out through the data link on her wrist, and for a second, she saw the being, as it saw itself. A beam of energy surrounded by swirls of light, reaching out with bands of gravity. But instead of a body filled with flesh, it was a body coded in numbers. Information passed down not by strands of protein, but by ever correcting ones and zeroes. Behind the being, she saw a small sphere, bright and frightfully beautiful. Around the sphere spun three separate spheres, just a fraction of the size. She knew the moment she saw it. It was the star killer. The power to disassemble the reactor that spun energy through a star.