Cleansing Fire

by D. L. Harrison

  Lara blushed, and pointed at the screens as they filled with information.

  There was a long silence, as we took in several surprising pieces of information.

  The first screen was full of information for the solar system itself. The five planets, masses, gravity, atmospheric gases, star type, and a whole lot more. In short, a brief summary of everything natural in the solar system.

  The second screen listed artificial satellites, and ships. Along with their mass, size, power generation and shield strength. That was one of the surprises, it was clear the old very technical sensor system the human colonists used weren’t good enough for much more than getting the size and shape of the ship correct. Gaia had been guessing about a lot of it, since those sensors couldn’t measure magic.

  That was still an ironic revelation to me, that magic was more high-tech than high-tech.

  The city ships had a mana shield ten million mana strong, while the twenty-ship fleet of sleek ships that stood apart had a mana shield twenty million strong. The city ships were obviously the ones that moved in to rape a planet of resources, after the fleet ships cleaned out the previous owners. The city ships had the magical potential of twenty-five million, while the fleet ships had double that.

  If I had to guess, the city ship used five million of that mana to run all its systems, leaving another ten million for weapons. The fleet ships double that. Even if that wasn’t exactly right, it would be somewhere around there. Still, that was a good surprise in a way, the city ship in Evolution Online had over fifty million mana in potential, which the fleet ships did, so it wasn’t that great of a news flash. Regardless, both ships were still quite out of our league, there was no way we could face them in a head on space battle, just building ships with master level gems. We’d have to figure out something else.

  The probes in the system had a mana shield just a thousand mana strong, they obviously weren’t defense satellites, and just there to keep an eye on the system. They had a total of five thousand mana in potential, the other four must be for scans and propulsion.

  The power of their ships and probes weren’t the biggest shock though. Not by a long shot.

  The third screen listed life sign populations.

  The city ships had around a hundred thousand unknown life forms. Around, because the lowest population on any of the ten ships was ninety-three thousand, and the highest one hundred and two thousand.

  All twenty of the fleet ships had exactly two hundred and thirty-eight unknown lifeforms, and they were obviously their military ships with a defined crew roster that didn’t change. That left a lot of space inside, perhaps to ferry supplies, or rescue populations. Who knew besides the aliens? Maybe they hosted fighters, and it was a carrier? We’d find out.

  It was the planet that had us thunderstruck. The planet had a population of one point four million… humans, and only a few hundred unknown lifeforms. That complicated things. It was about ten percent of what the population should be. We also had to assume all their technology had been destroyed, since Gaia lost contact with them a long while ago. Did the aliens use them for slaves?

  The data refreshed, and another ship was added to the screen. That one small, one of those city ship’s large and sleek shuttles. It had a mana shield of a hundred thousand, and a mana potential of five hundred thousand. Again, Gaia had missed in her estimation due to the old scanning technology, and she’d estimated twice that.

  Lara sighed, “It’s because my system doesn’t list the magic sources on a planet’s surface, and it assumes the earth and air scans are all part of the planet. I need to tweak that as I said. Still, it’s safe to assume the only alien ships on the surface are those cargo shuttles. Now that I know their mass and magic power sizes for all their ships, I can modify it to show ships on the ground.”

  I snorted, “Tell me you’re not apologizing or embarrassed about a system this awesome.”

  Lara blushed, “Thanks, but it really is a flaw. My fix won’t show any ships that don’t match what we already know either. Other ships on the ground will just look like buildings, with people and power.”

  “I see the problem. Ships are usually made up of alloys that are differentiated from buildings on the surface, maybe if you cross referenced magic and earth scan data?”

  Lara nodded, “I’ll do that, that’s a good idea. I’ll just leave the probe cloaked in the system, and I’ll have the new base unit version ready tomorrow. Then we can let Gaia copy it and get information on all these systems. Any other suggestions or changes before I do it?”

  “Can we dig into one of the ships better, show corridors and rooms using earth and air sensors, things of that nature? It would be nice if we could use that to get target coordinates to teleport right into the ships. Either a group to blow the ship, or perhaps a remote-controlled offensive probe of some sort.”

  I had a feeling it would come down to the former, but the latter was worth researching. This was the real world, and if we could destroy them without loss of life than that's what we should do.

  Lara nodded, “With the planet, or even an asteroid as well to get a detailed report of what can be mined.”

  Her eyes narrowed, and one of the city ships zoomed in, until that was the entire hologram hovering three feet above. The three screens below were filled with lots of information, not only the main magic power source crystal twenty-five million strong, but also smaller power sources. Another screen showed blueprints of sorts. Not how to build the ship, but a mapping of the corridors, just like I’d asked for.

  “Awesome.”

  Lara smiled, “I’ll start updating it in the morning. How many do you think we should make?”

  I frowned, “I’m tempted to make two hundred or so, and get a really comprehensive view of the whole galaxy. That isn’t enough of course, but we could jump them around, give each one a quadrant to search for life, and life with ships. It would also let us know where it was safe to expand, and where to avoid trespassing on other empires.”

  Lara tilted her head, “Anything else before I shut this down.”

  “Let’s get a good look at the lifeform.”

  Lara nodded, and the hologram changed again, presumably she’d assessed life on one of the lifeforms in range. Once again, it was fairly clear Gaia had made up the quadrupeds out of whole cloth. The true enemy was bipedal, two arms and two legs, with ten fingers and toes. It was about ten feet tall, and it had a high body mass which would make it naturally very strong. Perhaps their home world had a higher gravity? Outside of the generalization of shape, it looked nothing like a human at all.

  The legs bent the wrong way, and there were claws on its feet. That suggested it could run extremely fast. Its arms were longer than a human’s by scale to its body, and thick ending in claws, if smaller than on its feet. It had a larger head as well, with all carnivorous teeth, it didn’t look like it was an omnivore. It would be incredibly strong compared to a normal human, but not so much compared to us. Even I was much stronger than a normal human, and the weapon wielders in our party including Gwen put me to shame that way.

  Gwen said, “Alright, with that out of the way and having a plan for tomorrow, let’s discuss the elephant in the room. I’d bet the third colony ship was the only one that lost all its humans, since it showed up in one of the enemy’s solar systems. That means we not only have this colony to save, but two others that had just gotten started. Do we know what they’re doing with the humans?”

  I was almost afraid to find out the answer to Gwen’s question, given they were carnivores.

  Lara zoomed in on the small cargo ship, relatively small. It was still about a hundred yards long, and thirty yards wide.

  She said, “It looks like they’re carrying metals, maybe they’re using them as miners, slave miners?”

  I sighed, “They have the technology that they could use to mine the whole solar system, we don’t see them doing that. Of course, they can only support and crew so many new ships being built at a
time. Maybe they are using them as miners, but I also think that’s just killing two birds with one stone. They’re doing it to… occupy the herd.”

  There, I said it. They were doing both, looking for metals to build new ships, and lifeforms to eat. Otherwise, why wouldn’t they be mining dead systems, they only had ships in life bearing systems.

  Lara’s face turned green.

  The hologram zoomed to the planet. There was a pause for a moment, and then it zoomed again.

  Lara said, “Had to find a spot with humans and aliens, without cloud cover.”

  It looked like a spot by a mountain, close to the site of one of the colony’s cities. The humans were definitely mining, and there were alien guards present, in armor. The armor itself had a mana shield, and it was made of advanced composites and had a mana shield fifty thousand strong. It was a little funny, it seemed almost all of Gaia’s guesses had doubled the true threat of the enemy.

  The enemy didn’t have a big shield though, I imagine that was just an artistic fancy to make it fit more with the world of Evolution Online. They did have a sidearm however, which had another fifty thousand strong mana potential. They also carried rifles that had double that.

  More importantly, having humans mine made no sense whatsoever at their technological level, they could surely build machines to automate it. The only conclusion I could come up with was that humans were breeding and feeding stock, and this would keep them busy, tired, and from plotting against the enemy. Killing two birds with one stone.

  More disturbing perhaps was the population was at ten percent of what it should be. Had the other ninety percent been killed? Seems to me they would’ve surrendered long before losses became that bad. Or had some been moved to the ships, and even others moved to the other alien held planets for breeding stock? It was all speculation of course, based on the alien’s dietary requirements and circumstantial evidence.

  We wouldn’t know for sure, until we got data from the other eighteen worlds. We needed to check all the other solar systems with habitable worlds around it as well for probes. Checking the rest of the galaxy out for other threats, or perhaps allies, would be the last step.

  “Alright, let’s not jump to conclusions, we’ll find out tomorrow night, after the information system and remote control is updated, and Gaia makes us some copies. It is disgusting, but it might be a blessing in disguise, if we can free those three colonies, we’ll have humans on four different worlds shortly.”

  Gwen made a face, “You’re trying too hard to find a silver lining.”

  Yeah, blessing in disguise was probably going too far. Still, the aliens could have killed them all, and used far more efficient machines to mine. With twenty thousand of us willing to fight, assuming Gaia’s predictions were right on, there would be plenty of us around to protect those four worlds, while half or even more took time to vacation, train, and grow in power in Evolution Online.

  Assuming of course, we won against the carnivorous enemy…

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The scent and taste of the coffee was a perfect medium brew. It was the next morning, and we’d gathered for breakfast. My beans had de-gassed for over twelve hours, and that had definitely made the difference. I’d already roasted several more pounds of it, which should be ready by tomorrow.

  A man had his priorities.

  “I’m taking a cup, unless I’ll lose a hand if I try?”

  I faux scoffed, “Coffee is life, but your more important to me than life itself.”

  Gwen giggled, and grabbed a cup.

  “Thanks, this is really good. I just wish we had cream, or milk.”

  Yeah, no cows, they were all dead. Damned volcano. Of course, we had all the animals in addition to the human population of minds in the DNA vault, when the Earth was ready to support life, it would be repopulated with both.

  Assuming of course, we were still there when the time came.

  Steve looked at Gwen’s cup.

  I sighed, “Of course you can, all of you. I love coffee enough to want everyone to share in its awesomeness.”

  Cassie snickered, but she also got up to grab a cup.

  Gwen said, “Human survivors are a good thing, but also a complication.”

  I nodded, “We’re going to have to hit everything at the same time. That should avoid hostage situations. Twenty thousand of us means about four thousand parties, give or take a few. Hopefully that’s more than enough to cover it all. Three hundred and ten enemy ships, that leaves over thirty-five hundred parties to attend to the nineteen planets. We can build a few ships to take care of the probes in other systems as well, once the enemy is cleaned up.

  “We’ll have to wait for a full picture, before we make plans however.”

  There were already a few more parties in the café, and I knew there were more spread throughout the base. That was probably going to be the biggest thing, getting everyone to cooperate and agree to the same plans. Just because our group was first, didn’t mean other party leaders wouldn’t demand their say. I wasn’t looking forward to that complication.

  Part of me thought that part would be harder to manage than the actual fight against the aliens.

  Steve asked, “Anything we can do?”

  I sighed, “Design a ship? Folding space interstellar distances is easier for something made of all earth, and hardy enough to survive the forces involved. I don’t have nearly enough mana to teleport the party there. The ship will need to hold over a thousand of us, and cloak. We should also avoid putting any offensive capabilities in it, so Gaia can copy it twenty times. Once we’re actually in the target solar systems, the people that can teleport can take their groups to their assigned ships and planetary positions if we have it all mapped out coordinate wise.

  “Cassie, it’ll need life support. Dan, it will need impulse drives for sub-light speed, inertial dampers and artificial gravity. Gwen, it’ll need cloaking, it might be prudent to ask other groups for help with that one, the grand enchantment for it will be huge. The more people with darkness working on it, the faster it will happen. I’ll build in heating and cooling. The trick of course, is the FTL drive, I have no idea how to get that done. I can also work in those life enchantments for creating food.”

  I paused for a moment, “Any ideas?”

  Gwen frowned, “How short are you?”

  I shrugged, “A few million mana.”

  Cassie snickered, “Is that all?”

  I grinned.

  Gwen said, “Let me think about it.”

  I nodded, “Another thing is to find Fire Sphere wielders, who will volunteer to make small bomb enchantments. They won’t be able to take a crystal out, but if we teleport that in first and blow up that area of engineering, it should take down the equipment, kill the engineers, lower the shield, and de-power any intrusion detection devices and weapons. Then we just teleport aboard, drop a spell to destroy the crystal, and teleport off before the ship explodes. That’s just a tentative idea, and it might not be workable.”

  “The planets?” Dan asked.

  I frowned, “We’ll come up with plans when we get there. For the human ones we destroy any aliens on the planet, transport small groups to areas they are. It’s possible there are other enslaved races, so we’ll try to free those as well, as we destroy the ships in orbit. On their home planet, or colony planets where they’re settled in large numbers… I’m not sure yet. I don’t like the idea of genocide. Let’s wait for the data on that. All of it really, the only thing I’m sure we’ll need is ships for us to get there, and it seems like a good second step now that the probe system is almost a done deal.”

  Lara was already working on it, and it should be done later that afternoon.

  Gwen sighed, “Gaia?”

  She appeared in a flash of silver.

  Gwen said, “There’s a flaw in your sphere system, how the hell are we going to get to another star system, and there’s nothing in it about FTL travel.”

  Gaia looked conf
used, “What do you mean? Just fold space there.”

  I cleared my throat, “I don’t have over three million mana.”

  Gaia looked even more confused, and then she smirked.

  “Teleport takes so much mana because your folding space tightly around live bodies. The gravity sheer of the forces involved are much more powerful on the edges of the space that’s folded, but not so much on the inside. It has to be done that way on a planet, or you’d rip chunks out of the planet, or nearby buildings, but in the void of space it’s another matter.”

  I frowned, and I went through the concepts. Damn it, I should’ve seen that. It was obvious in hindsight.

  “She’s right, I can do it. Or better yet, build a system on the ship so the ship can do it. As long as the edges of the field are ten yards or so away from the hull, the gravity and inertial damper system that Steve builds will be more than powerful enough to protect us from the forces involved. That means I can put all the mana toward just folding space, and none of it towards protecting us from the tidal forces during the process.”

  Gwen frowned, “Won’t that take a lot of gems?”

  I nodded, “About a hundred. A hundred thousand mana should do it, and it will take the ship a few minutes before it could fold space again. But really, I just need to do one stone, and get ninety-nine volunteers to do the rest. Same as your cloaking system. Thing is, you need all darkness volunteers, where I can use water, earth, or air volunteers.”

  Dan asked, “No life?”

  I shook my head, “Like I said, your damper and gravity systems will protect us, and the most severe of the tidal forces will be outside the ship. We don’t need to be put in stasis for the trip.”

  Gwen frowned, “You’re telling me ninety-six or seven percent is how much mana goes into protecting us, and only three percent into actually folding space?”

  I nodded, “That’s why those probes can fold space with just two thousand mana, a grand enchantment with two crystals. Small area, and no life to protect.”