No, the challenge when it came, would be his alone. He would take his finest Warrior Shadow-ship into the alien system and strike the first blow against the sentient species that bred of its own kind. He would not call for a swarming unless it was desperate. He did not anticipate that need, such was the arrogance of youth and inexperience. He had already decided the outcome, the technology of the silver ship was old; good quality, but antiquated. One ship would master theirs, he had no doubt.
Cebrel crooned with self adulation when the transponder announced itself to his networked link. The vessel, he was informed, had been halted and boarded. Its location was known. It was in the fourteenth segment, an edge system that had been systematically cleansed in the previous millennia.
He shimmered visibly, his crystals creating a dazzling effect reflected in the light of the palace forum. He required that the Queen acknowledge him. She smiled, and connected with him.
‘How can I help you first son, my ‘Ta? Do you have news of your Guut’Ar?
‘Yes, my Queen, I have transponder coordinates of the home system of the silver biologicals. As you surmised it was along the trajectory you ordered it returned.’
‘Then proceed with your personal challenge and be valiant and cunning. I will broadcast your success across our hive and all shall share in your victory.’
‘It will be so, my Queen of the new Crystal Empire, it will be so.’ as he signed off and proceeded to ship.
The Queen turned to the clone nearest her, and spoke out loud and not across her channels. “He is young and arrogant, he will race in and take on more than he can handle. Prepare a Celnista g’Nal of two hundred ships and launch them four microns after my ‘Ta departs. It should be just long enough for him to get himself into trouble.” The Queen had considerable experience of ‘Ta’s. They were headstrong and brave, but lacked the ability to step back from a situation and analyse it correctly. She had read his thoughts and knew this would be so.
It was Cebrel’s first Guut’Ar, a quest of personal valour. It was reserved for the most special of the hive’s clones. He, being ‘Ta, the first in order, had only recently been appointed, the last having been ruptured into shards by the Queen’s rage at the unfortunate escape of the silver being.
Cebrel looked over his crew. Hand-picked by him they were the best the Crystal Queen had cloned. From the greatest warriors that had been re-compositioned, lesser by far than he, but good hive brothers nonetheless. He stood proud and confident at his helm position as the navigator input the set coordinates given by the transponder relay.
The view-screen illuminated with their route. Cebrel noted with a passing interest that it would take them to the point at which they previously despatched the silver ship. Their direction would be the same, except their journey would be shorter,but time itself was nothing to their race.
The navigator looked to him for final approval; the pilot was waiting to engage the hyper-drive
“Proceed!” Cebrel ordered looking at the Pilot, who efficiently brought the ship to its correct bearing and engaging the drives, thrusting them forward at an increasing speed until, to all visual appearance, the universe itself flashed past them in a blur. They sat, or stood in complete detachment requiring nothing of themselves, but with full attention on their tasks at hand. The time flew past until the warning bells sounded their proximity to the fourteenth segment, their destination was at hand.
Their preparations were made. Weapons primed, sensors optimised for detection of biological sentience. They would arrive at the coordinates in moments. Their travel through hyperspace had not been long, but to a Nubl, time was irrelevant, they endured stasis, tuning their activity to mere maintenance levels. They required no sustenance, no rest, or entertainment. They were the Nubl.
As the sleek black ship transitioned from hyperspace, it reflected no light. They called them Shadow ships for a reason, you never saw them coming. Their hull seeming to drink the small amount of light encountered in space like being sucked into a black hole. Its surface was a material only known to the Nubl and uniquely constructed by the Crystal hive.
The radio interference as it completed the transition to normal space was minimal, no eddies or turbulence to measure. Like a ghost, it moved toward the mapped location provided by the transponder. The skilled navigator, following the trail into the system, could see where the transponder had halted, been moved, dragged and then released and set back on its course, the silver line on its viewer showing the ship’s course continuing towards the system’s sun.
”Gemeel, what do you see?” asked Cebrel of his navigator.
“They were here, there is sign of interception ahead of this point not two thousand measures further. The measure being the length of their shadow ship.
Their ship halted, motors that powered its sub-drive now silent. The shadow drifted. On Cebrel’s order it cloaked, and the shadow disappeared behind a transparent shroud that hid it from view, yet allowed the ship to see all around it. Undetected.
They sat silent for some time. Cebrel had the navigator plotting every asteroid and planet’s rotation and direction. They then waited for a further period, looking for anomalies, things that weren’t natural. At first nothing moved.
Bradeen, the brother in charge of the communications and sensors reported no background interference. There were no pulses signalling spaceships in the system. All was silent. Cebrel was nonplussed. It had the right of it, the transponder did not err, yet there was no...
“Contact, Celnista'Ta,” the comms officer called.
"They are using old communication frequencies, this is not an advanced civilisation, they broadcast everywhere, everything. There is so much noise."
Gemeel, now aware of the need to verify the comms officers information, tuned his instruments down lower. Then, he too advised, “Contact, bearing twenty slips to fractal green. There is interference coming from the sixth, no, the fifth planet. It appears to be electronic debris, large amounts - it could be shipwrecks.”
Gemeel rechecked his readings and turned to Cebrel. “Correction, they are communication devices, simple and orbital.” He added tuning his sensors further.
Cebrel gave the order to proceed. “Quietly now, there may be little risk, but they have spaceships. We know this from the silver relic and it was intercepted by something. This confirms they have technology with which to detect, hold and repel ships. We are still missing something here. Proceed with caution.”
“Celnista'Ta,” Bradeen called Cebrel by his formal title out of deference. “I am detecting a communications relay of high sophistication. It differs totally from the simplistic machines in orbit around the fifth planet... Yet, wait. The signals are relaying to and from that point of origin.”
“We are detected,” Cebrel announced disappointedly. “They expected us.”
He had hoped to survey the planet, work out the best means of eradication before getting into a fight with the alien species. Now, he surmised they were warned so they should expect retaliation.
“Cebrel,” Bradeen warned, “We have multiple contacts, approaching from all directions.” He frantically tried to get distance, bearing, size and some detection of threat level. After a moment, his head twisted completely one hundred and eighty degrees. “Celnista'Ta, they are just surveillance drones?” He said, confused. “Yet they approach as if they are ships.”
“Maintain shields at maximum,” Cebrel ordered.
Cebrel turned to another of his crew, T’chakra and ordered him “Weapons master, shoot one of those drones and let us see the results on the viewer.”
The viewer homed in on a drone that was approaching their location, the closer of all of them, but not by much, a few measures was all.
A slim multi-faceted crystal rotated toward the drone and immediately fired a white beam at the puny threat. A millisecond before it exploded, they detected multiple flares which illuminated the sides and top of the surveillance drone as it responded with an unknown threat.
>
“Inbound missiles. I’m counting two hundred.” Bradeen shouted.
“They are Nubl missiles, old stock, very old.” Puzzled, he turned to his leader. “Celnista'Ta, these are antiquated Nubl missiles being fired upon us.”
The viewer panned to show pinpoints of red lights indicating the detected missiles. Then, one by one, a large number of lights began to wink out as if their motors had failed them.
“Wait, there appears to be a high failure rate.”
“We now have eighty inbound,” the Weapons Master chimed excitedly.
“Set for multiple burst on all front crystals,” Cebrel ordered. He was rewarded with a bright flash of illumination as the viewer relayed the contact.
“Forty two destroyed.”
“Keep firing until all destroyed,” Cebrel ordered unnecessarily. He knew they would take them out; lightning fast and deadly accurate, they would surgically remove the threat. Antiquated Nubl missiles being fired at them, how strange. Was there a hive remnant here? Were they trespassing another hive’s bounty?
“All threats destroyed,” announced the Weapons Master after a few seconds.
“Multiple threats incoming, time to impact variable from forty to ninety microns. The computer counts eight hundred and dropping. These missiles seem to have unreliable power drives, their failure rate is nearly fifty percent,” said Bradeen monitoring the sensors and updating the screen which now showed the Shadow in the centre with the threats coming from multiple directions.
The swarms of missiles were not large, but Cebrel wanted to incur zero damage. Yet they could not halt all of them. Some would connect with their shield. As the mass of inbound missiles slowly approached, their numbers were whittled down until the first of the remaining missiles hit their shields.
Expecting a high level of shield degradation, the Weapons Master stood surprised when he read the sensors which showed there was little, to no reduction in shield efficiency. As missile after missile hit the shield, the ship weathered them without any adverse effects until the final anti-matter explosion signalled the end of the barrage.
They turned to Cebrel; an explanation was required.
“These missiles could not be Nubl,” he assessed. “They were designed to behave and look like Nubl missiles, but ones that we have not used for millennia.”
“Bradeen, analyse explosions and calculate payload of missiles.”
While he was doing that, Cebrel continued his analysis, with his artificial brain set as superior to all of theirs he could analyse the information that was available to him and come to some very accurate conclusions.
“Celnista'Ta, these missiles were not designed to penetrate our shields. They have a payload of insignificant amounts. We use more powerful ones for celebrations,” Bradeen scoffed from his display where he was still analysing the results from the sensor logs.
“So,” Cebrel continued, “We have an enemy that is not very advanced, they have few basic ships, crude communication systems, but a surveillance system that indicates a different - higher - level of advancement, yet we are assailed by playthings that have no effect on our shields.”
Cebrel’s head nodded causing the crystals around his head to chime musically.
“More input is required. My initial feeling is, they are not familiar with shield technology. Had those missiles hit our naked hull at the rate they did, we would have suffered substantial accumulative damage. They obviously had not planned on that being the case which was why the attack was ineffective.”
He looked over them brazenly confident. “We have nothing to fear, if they are not familiar with shields they will have no means of overcoming them. Proceed at full speed to the fifth planet. I want to see this pestilence for myself.”
“It shall be so, Celnista'Ta,” said the navigator as he spun round, instantly feeding the information required into his console to proceed to their destination.
Outside the ship, the glass ampoules that made it through the ship’s shields had broken against the side of the hull splattered thick grey worms of killer-nanites which even now made headway over the black lacklustre metal of the thick skin. Some spread out to cover large areas, others burrowed deeply. All found much to consume. It would not take long to reach the interior and then things would become interesting.
Pod received warning from the sentinels that had responded to the incursion into the system and knew it was time. It activated Zeke’s implant.
‘They come.’
‘What can you tell me about them?’
‘Just a single ship, probably a Shadow ship.
The sentinels are tracking it, it is out of their missile range, but it is proceeding directly to Earth. They will be here in two hours.’
‘Are we ready?’
‘No, but your world is prepared.’
‘I will send out the alerts.’
Zeke was sitting in the war conference while privately communicating with Pod who hovered close by. It no longer bothered to cloak seeing as the nullifiers would unmask it and then cause a stir. It was soon forgotten in the heat of debate going on in the run up to the first hostile confrontation the world had ever had to consider from an alien entity.
“Gentlemen, we are out of time. The first ship has entered our space and has destroyed our sentinels. It will reach Earth in two hours. I suggest you pass the warning back to your cities to mirror their shields.”
“How do you know that, Mr Callaghan? You have been sat there along with us these past three hours,” said General Cunliffe, another ‘Brit’ that had followed Pennington over from the now defunct NATO. He was not as steadfast, but a good tactician and was going to head up part of the SCC. He was very much a new boy but catching up with Pennington and few others.
Zeke glanced at Cunliffe and pointed to the hovering tear-shaped pod.
“Oh, you two are telepathic?” he asked.
“I have a computer implant that allows me to converse with the AI, General,” Zeke admitted.
“I see, so this AI can tell what is happening in space from here?” the General queried, still a little incredulous.
Pod was still a new and unknown quantity to the staff here who were having a few problems coming to terms with its abilities. They often mistook it for an over-sized personal Orb, none of which were allowed in the room for security reasons.
“Yes, General, the range of the communications it has are not extensive, but relays have been set up deep in space, and these are giving the AI details of time-scale, approach trajectory and size of the invasion,” Zeke confirmed.
“General Pennington, are your Marauders ready?” Zeke asked. He had taken over as chairperson of the military version of the Security Council, being the most experienced and to give balance to the proceedings. Garner and other civilian members were present, but not actively involved, although frequently vocal, which was fine so long as they didn’t actually impede the military decision-making process.
It was standing procedure that, in times of peace, the Space Council would rule, but in times of war or other threat, the military would take over until equilibrium was restored. It was all part of the same ruling authority, but with radically different approaches.
This would be the first time that it had been enacted since the invasion by Fortress. It was now a much larger organisation, making it also more difficult to manage politically.
He nodded at Zeke, “Their capability isn’t brilliant yet, but so long as they stay close to the planet we should manage to rescue them if they get into trouble. We are expecting high casualties until they learn how to fight up there. However, all of them are experienced Air force pilots so have the best chance of any of us. We can only hope they can worry the invading ship enough to keep Earth safe.”
Pennington-Brown had moved up in the hierarchy as the Pan Asian ‘Naval’ Space base had developed. Space Island was now developing more as a commercial hub with less military in evidence. It was becoming much more of an industrial centre based around t
he space technology and this was sitting extremely well with the Council members many of whom were nervous with a military presence around, having recently progressed from being ruled by such.
The set of the meeting now was serious. They were all on their comms updating their respective countries with the latest news. Zeke imagined alarms going off in every city around the world. Panic, despite the organisation, would be the result and chaos would reign supreme within the hour. Nonetheless, Zeke understood better than any of them that this was just an opening salvo that hadn’t even happened yet.
They waited for further news.
‘Zeke, I need you to return to your ship,’ Pod advised him through the implant.
‘Why? Pod, I’m needed here.’
‘No, Zeke, you will sit here and watch, wait and do nothing. I can do something, but I need your assistance.’
Zeke looked around the room. Pennington was in charge, he knew what he was doing. Pod was right, he could do nothing. He got up and walked around the table to John and Frank and pulling them together into a quick private conference he told them there was something he could do and was taking his ship into space. The argument was swift, but they saw the determination on Zeke’s face and let it slide.
- 20 -
Five minutes later, Zeke was on a sled heading for the ship. He saw other sleds running in the same direction.
He blipped Pod on his interface.
‘What’s going on, Pod? Who are the others?’
‘Lang, Osbourne and Goeth, we need them too,' Pod responded.
‘What are you up to, Pod?’
‘Trying to save Earth, Zeke,’ was all Pod would say leaving Zeke with the feeling that the A.I. was becoming taciturn and independent and he, Zeke, had pushed the buttons to make him like that. He felt a moment of regret until he also realised that the A.I. had become its own person and this was it. He smiled inwardly at the thought of history judging him harshly for not pulling the plug, figuratively speaking, when he should have done.
POD (The Pattern Universe) Page 19
