“How many Kuth?”
Repressed fear and terror erupted within Adam’s gut, boiling out of him in a hot unexpected rage. “Those creatures are trained killers,” he snapped suddenly and unexpectedly at David, amazed by his lack of tact and by the abrupt intensity of this strange conversation with a man who – for all intents and purposes – continued to be a complete stranger to him. “Not only do they kill, but they enjoy doing it.”
David responded by pointing a stern finger at him. “Are you talking about the same type of joy that you felt while killing those Kuth in your cargo bay?” he snapped briskly. “Admit it. You took pleasure in using your superior technology to humiliate and then execute them. In that moment, you were little better than they.”
“That’s not true,” insisted Adam. “And who are you to pass judgment on me?”
“Believe it or not, I am your friend,” said David insistently, catching him completely by surprise. “The answer to my question is ten, if we include the military installation. You have met eleven Kuth in total, and TEN of them have died at your hand. The eleventh would have been a cripple all of his life, but has since been put to death by his own people for allowing himself to be so soundly beaten by one human. That is the destruction that you have wrought with your weapons, with your technology, and with your choices. That is why I am here.”
“You seem to already know who these Kuth are and what their purpose is within the Wasteland,” pointed out Adam, a rush of uncontrolled humiliation passing through him. He could feel his cheeks flush red at the truth of David’s revelation – a small part of him had indeed enjoyed inflicting terror and injury on the Kuth… there had been almost a feeling of revenge driving his actions, revenge in the name of a people that were admittedly not his. “You seem to know how manipulative those creatures are and how many lives they have destroyed. So I will ask you sir. What would you suggest I do differently?”
“I want you to take the time to think things through more thoroughly,” David told him, voice steady and strong. “Even if things are happening fast, I want you to remember that the use of force should always be a deterrent, and the use of lethal force an absolute last resort.”
Adam’s mind filled with dozens of possibilities. “Why?” he inquired curiously.
“You are about to make choices that will literally impact billions of lives,” interrupted David somberly. “The next time you have a chance, why don’t you ask your brother how long it took him to write that artificially sentient computer program. Ask him how much effort is required to make certain that it can transmit and receive messages from other ships, interpret them, contrast them with historical activity and insure that this ship’s transmissions behave in a manner that is non-threatening to other Yakiir ships. If you listen carefully to his answer, I believe you will discover that creating life is considerably more challenging than ending it.”
“The Kuth are cold-blooded killers,” echoed Adam, his words suddenly sounding more than a little hollow. “They will not leave these people alone unless someone makes them do so. Even the concept of alien sentient life is meaningless to them. They act without the guidance of morals or conscience and care only about the continuity of their own race. The concept of coexisting with the humans already living here seems to have always been completely beyond their comprehension.”
David folded his robed arms and studied Adam’s blazing eyes. “A moment ago you accused me of passing judgment on you,” he observed critically. “Exactly who is passing judgment now?”
“I don’t know what you want me to do,” Adam pleaded honestly. “I don’t know what your point is.”
“All I am asking, Adam Roh, is that you think smarter from this point forward. Make a conscious effort to discover alternatives other than simply using your superior technology to kill off the problem. You are better than that… humanity is better than that. Other options exist, I promise you that, even if you don’t always recognize them immediately. Use the mind you have been given and think of something else.” He paused abruptly before continuing. “The Kuth are a race from a dying universe, a race that simply developed later in its universe’s lifespan than you did in yours. They want to survive as much as you do and have made a tremendous effort to do so, even though their intelligence and temperament do not match yours. They made use of what was available to them to try and preserve their species, and I think that you should weigh every possibility before you continue killing them off with your superior firepower. In the long run your conscience will thank you for it, especially when you return to that wonderful family of yours.”
“Why do the Kuth deserve mercy when they have offered the humans living in the Wasteland none?”
“Offer them mercy because your intelligence and morals are supposedly honed to a sharper degree than theirs, because you live your life according to a higher standard. So what if their alien nature doesn’t allow them to relate to you in the same manner? Does that mean the Kuth race has nothing to offer this universe? How can you know that for certain?”
“You’re talking to someone who has seen their brutal nature at its worst,” Adam pointed out. “Please forgive me if I therefore feel a little bit apprehensive about the prospect of interacting with them diplomatically.”
“Of course you feel uncomfortable around them,” snorted David somewhat disapprovingly. “Suppose you follow through with what your primitive side is telling you to do… let’s say you destroy their hold over the people of the Wasteland and wipe them completely out of this galaxy. What if then, your brother, the true believer, turns around and tells you that your Doctors have discovered that the Kuth mimetic abilities – possibly something in their blood – can cure some of Earth’s worst diseases? What if their biology can help ease even the worst of the radiation damage that many of your Earth refugees continue to suffer from? Your shortsightedness will have trumped compassion, costing your own people in the long run.”
“After watching Bok devour his Captain right in front of me, I’m sorely tempted to take that risk.”
“Then you might as well be the Intelligent Designer you were asking about, because you’re in effect choosing to play the role of God on a truly massive scale, deciding who lives and who dies completely at your whim. Am I correct in that regard? If another ten years pass, will you still feel this way? The Kuth will be just as dead.”
Turning his head sharply to one side, Adam found his cheeks reddening again and chose to say nothing.
“Maybe your people never will be able to live alongside the Kuth in peace,” continued David, ignoring Adam’s awkward silence. “That doesn’t mean they don’t deserve a home and their own chance to thrive.” He waved his arms up and down in the general direction of the window portals. “Just think of how truly massive this universe is, and there are others just like it out there!” He smiled warmly at Adam and stepped forward to hug him briefly. “Use your compassion and your good judgment to make better decisions than you have so far,” he suggested. “That is what I have come here to tell you.”
And then David turned suddenly transparent, and his robed, rail thin body vanished into thin air.
Adam simply stood there for a few minutes, trying to digest the vast amount of information that his exhausted brain was trying to process. Emotions that were stronger than anything he had ever felt continued to rise and fall within him, driving his thought process in unpredictable ways. He didn’t like that part of him, that portion of his personality that was becoming unpredictable. But he was an imperfect, emotional creature in the midst of a chaotic, constantly changing environment unlike anything most humans would encounter in their lifetime. Thinking back to his first, youthful conversations with his parents, he consciously made the decision to forgive himself in advance for occasionally getting caught up in the raw emotion generated by these kinds of life-altering experiences. Sometimes you act before you think, his father had told him. You can try not to, but it will occasionally happen. That’s the price of be
ing able to feel emotions… they influence your behavior.
[“Are you there?”] his mind instinctively asked, accessing his implant and using it to send a message over to the Pathfinder. [“Denny, can you hear me?”]
[“Yes, yes I can hear you,”] replied the Council President cheerfully. [“What’s up?”]
[“For starters, I think I’m done drinking beer until this is all over,”] Adam decided, shaking his head with dismay. [“Along with my elevated anxiety, I’m beginning to hallucinate. Maybe it’s the residue of that pathogen from ten years ago acting up again, the one that we picked up on our initial journey outward from Earth…”]
That was when he looked down and noticed the antique, silver watch still tightly clutched in his right hand.
PROJECT WASTELAND
Pathfinder Series: Book Two
Chapter XV: The Foothold In The Wasteland
Aboard the long-range shuttle Ranger…
Thomas Roh snapped out of his light nap and glanced around, suddenly aware that he was chilly. The rear, cargo compartments aboard the Ranger were essentially large, empty chambers and not nearly as well ventilated as the rest of the ship. But on a longer than normal trip such as this one, they provided a relatively quiet place to rest. The young scientist idly made a mental note to remember to bring a blanket the next time around, rising out of the passenger chair he had belted himself into and moving back toward the shuttle’s forward cabin. Before returning to the cockpit, he poured the remaining contents of a coffee pot into a large, plastic lidded cup and sipped from it. The hot, harsh taste of the coffee stirred his mental faculties, and he smiled while glancing out a nearby window at the surrounding dust clouds.
These nebulae seem to go on forever and never end, he thought idly to himself. But everything is finite and definable, in the end. Ever since learning scientific notation, he had always believed it to be so. At least until we discovered the existence of other universes surrounding us, universes that might in fact be just as numerous and limitless as we once thought galaxies were.
He found his sister-in-law, Noriana Roh, working the helm in the pilot’s seat. Several other officers were also busily with other tasks, so Thomas simply picked out an empty chair near his portable laptop and sat down next to them. The program running on his computer was busily monitoring the shuttle’s detections systems, searching for local communications traffic and signs of other ships. “You must be doing pretty well searching through all of this dust,” he noted, still sipping coffee. “My search functions are picking up additional signs of inter-ship communications. We’re getting closer.”
“Are we now?” Nori glanced back at him, her lips curling into an odd smile. In front of her, clouds of pulsing, purplish dust roiled slowly back and forth in a steady procession past the forward cockpit windows. It was one hell of a view, but something in her expression piqued his interest.
“What?” asked Thomas, instantly suspicious. “What did I miss?”
“Perhaps you should take a closer look at your computer,” Nori told him simply in response.
Thomas did exactly that, cycling his way through the half a dozen screens that currently displayed endless lines of statistics. He found what he was looking for on the motion sensor emulator, where three bright red dots blinked at him, immediately attracting his attention. “When did we find other ships?” he exclaimed excitedly. “Four days of nothing and all of a sudden we just hit gold? When?”
“Maybe next time you should take a shorter nap,” suggested Adam’s wife, still wearing a triumphant smile. “I mean, I usually fly fighters, but even with a shuttle there are still a few tricks to be tried.”
His eyes narrowed as he watched her cheerful nature. “Did you vary our course from the computer’s suggested flight pattern?” he asked her suddenly. “You did, didn’t you?”
She returned her attention to the flight controls, but he could tell even by simply looking at the back of her head that she was still extremely pleased with herself. “Your flight plan was boring getting us nowhere Thomas. So I improvised a little bit while you were napping.”
Growing somewhat frustrated, Thomas shook his head negatively. “You shouldn’t have done that Nori. These programs are very carefully designed to search the local area for patterns left by fuel residue and inter-ship communications. Since most of the local traffic would occur around the star system – or systems – that we believe are hidden in this vicinity, eventually the computer would have pinpointed the precise location.” He studied the suddenly useless statistics with more than a little frustration. “Now I have to start completely over. Why did you do this?”
She spoke without hesitation or regard for his hurt feelings. “Your system was taking too long.”
“So you took it upon yourself to just try something else… without even letting me know?”
“I didn’t want to wake you Thomas. You looked like you were resting peacefully, and I sincerely doubted that you would approve of the WAG method.”
He tried to resist, holding out for as long as his mild anger would allow. “WAG method?”
“Wild Ass Guess.” She let out a mild snort while laughing playfully at him. “We know that whatever is hidden here will not be at the exact center, so I used the PTP system to hop around a bit. When that didn’t work, I picked a nice spot that was mostly free of nebula dust – extremely hard to find by the way. Then I simply shut down our engines and waited. It only took a couple of hours before another ship passed by, so I implemented a pursuit course and started following it. The shield you obtained from Noah is keeping us invisible to their motion sensors, so there’s no danger of their detecting us…”
“Noah’s shield is keeping the entire ship completely invisible,” Thomas corrected her. “They couldn’t see us even if they were running alongside of us, two meters distant.” He rolled his eyes. “How did you know this ship moving along through empty space was going anywhere significant?”
Nori chuckled and waved her arms. “I didn’t,” she told him firmly, “until two other ships showed up.” Reaching over toward one of the other officers, she handed him a printed sheet of paper. “Your laptop successfully decrypted their communications, so it was of some help.” He ignored the not so subtle jab and read the words on the page curiously. “They’ve been ordered to return to Alpha Prime,” she said triumphantly. “So wherever that is, hopefully it’s what we’ve been looking for.”
Working to satisfy his own curiosity, Thomas pulled up surveillance images of the three vessels that his sister-in-law was following, studying their configurations with interest. “Those aren’t warships,” he noted with renewed interest. “They look like cargo carriers of some sort.”
“That’s why I think we’re on to something,” agreed Nori. “They’re not part of the war, but they do appear to be hurriedly moving supplies back and forth for someone.”
Taking a few minutes to shut down his search and surveillance programs, Thomas closed the laptop’s lid and leaned back in his chair. “Oh, I hope you’re right,” he sighed with obvious reservations. “If we’re following these guys and they end up going nowhere, well… I’ll have to start over nearly from scratch now. You’ll have completely invalidated over four days of work!”
“That’s one way to look at it. The other way is to admit that we’ve been trying things your way for more than four days now. You’re not an expert at everything, you know. I have done a lot of deep space scouting in my day, before I married your brother and started a family.”
“You could’ve at least told me,” he growled at her, still mildly irritated.
“I didn’t want to wake you up,” she replied with a smile. “This mini-convoy has potential, but it could still turn out to be nothing.”
Thomas’ eyes drifted back to the printed orders listed on the paper. “Not if they’ve been ordered relocate to a primary target,” he countered thoughtfully. “This has a real possibility of working.” Still a bit miffed by his sister-in-law’
s penchant for impulsiveness, he cast a wary glance at the pair of officers, both of whom were doing their best to look busy. “So, Gil, Ted,” he asked mischievously. “What were you two doing all the while my sister was transiting back and forth across the center of the Wasteland?”
The tall, elderly officer with thinning gray hair looked up hesitantly. “Doing whatever she told us to.”
Nori grinned. “That’s why they don’t have any bruises, Thomas.”
*
Less than three hours later they found what they were looking for. Thomas was awake this time, sitting in his side chair admiring the view when the endless clouds of floating nebula dust began to gradually change color to a dull, reddish-orange. He flipped open his laptop eagerly and reactivated a series of programs, once again wirelessly linking them to Nori’s helm and navigation stations. She was already looking at him with a huge smile, grinning once again like the proverbial Chesire Cat. “There is a gravity well nearby,” she informed him, despite the fact that he was obviously well aware of the situation. “Looks like my search pattern ended up working out pretty well, doesn’t it?”
Somewhat defensive, Thomas cleared his throat awkwardly while studying the newest lines of data scrolling vertically across his laptop screen. “We haven’t found anything of significance yet,” he reminded her, although he suddenly felt imaginary butterflies doing wild, unabated aerobatics in his stomach. There was something directly ahead of them and it was reading exactly like a stable star. They had passed their fair share of red giants and dismal, long since dead suns during the past few days’ journey, but this was proving to be the most promising lead of them all. Even as he continued to watch the cockpit windows, the brightly illuminated nebula dust surrounding the shuttle continued gradually transitioning from red to orange. As they continued to pursue the convoy, even the auburn began to fade until the dust clouds radiated bright gold.
The Pathfinder Trilogy Page 70
