by Saxon Andrew
Ken nodded and turned to Pixie, “You should be able to see what happens. Just don’t come anywhere near where it’s happening.”
“I don’t know if I want to see.”
Ken smiled, “I can understand that.” Ken hugged Pixie and boarded the small scout ship. He powered the controls and pressed the communications console. He looked around and closed his eyes. He felt the pattern of the ship and extended a mental field around it.
Pixie and Sprigly stood watching the ship and suddenly it disappeared. Sprigly looked at his control board and sent a scan. The scan didn’t see it. Pixie stared at the place the green ship had been and was not able to see it either. Ken said, “Sprigly, can you detect the ship?”
“I cannot. Nothing I’ve tried has allowed me to see you.”
Ken stopped the mental pattern and the green ship reappeared on the landing bay floor. It slowly lifted and moved toward the hangar door. It moved through the force field holding atmosphere in the giant room and began moving quickly away from the Algean Construction Facility. Pixie watched it and saw it disappear just before Ken activated the teleport key. She looked up at the ceiling and found the star system Ken was jumping to. She didn’t want to watch but couldn’t stop.
• • •
Ken teleported out into open space and looked at the star on his display. He wondered about how his mind had suddenly changed several weeks back and knew that the Creator had sent him a key to unlock it. Once his mind expanded, he understood why he had always avoided doing anything that would get him noticed. He was the last of a long line of millions of others just like him who were created to have his mind released if the need arose. All of his predecessors had avoided doing anything that would prevent them being used. His lack of ambition was a product of making sure one would always be available.
He took a long deep breath and calmed his nerves. He felt his body relax as he focused on what he had to do. He felt his pulse slow and his heart rate slow to seventy five beats a minute. He closed his eyes and looked at one of the home worlds of the Illineg. He saw one of the giant defense satellites above the planet drop its force field to allow a giant transport to dock. He took a deep breath and activated the first teleport circuit.
• • •
The giant transport began moving toward the huge defense satellite just as a tiny green ship appeared and fired a high powered energy beam into the huge facility hitting the main reactor room. The tiny ship disappeared just before the satellite exploded, taking the transport with it. Ten green ships read the teleport signature and disappeared.
Ken arrived in open space and extended his mental field and dropped into the layer between normal and null space just a moment before the ten ships arrived. The ten ships began scanning and spread out looking for the small green attacker but were unable to find it. Ken watched them move rapidly around the area and felt their frustration. Someone had successfully attacked a home world for the first time in a million years and they were going to pay for it. After two days the ships disappeared. Ken looked to the right and saw ten thousand ships arrive at the planet that had been attacked. He looked a little further to the right and saw thousands of ships start arriving at the other home worlds of the Illineg. The first part of the plan had been successful; now for the second.
Ken stared at another Illineg home world and waited. He stared at the planet searching for what he knew must be on it. Finally he saw the pattern and found the giant building next to a sprawling city. He entered the coordinates into the two teleport module, leaned back, and activated the first circuit. His ship appeared just above the planet and he fired his main beam into the giant building, exploding the huge reactors inside it. He immediately activated the second teleport circuit and disappeared as a giant nuclear explosion on the surface roared out from the building, burning the city and sending a massive radioactive cloud into the atmosphere.
An Illineg warship read the teleport signature and more than fifty thousand ships from thirty planets jumped to the coordinates. Ken entered the layer and watched the huge fleet begin searching for him.
Pixie watched the events and felt her heart in her throat. Ken had just barely made it into the layer before the first green ships arrived. They were responding faster and they had almost caught him.
Sprigly looked at Pixie’s thoughts and watched what was happening. He said, “The next one will be it.”
Pixie looked at him, “What?”
“The next one will be when he teleports to the real dangerous species.”
Pixie looked at the ceiling and prayed for her love’s survival.
• • •
Jixie sat in Castle Gardner and watched was happening through Pixie’s thoughts. She knew Ken just wasn’t fast enough and thought about going to assist him, but forced herself to remain where she was. This was more than he should attempt alone. She sat and thought about what she could do.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ken remained in the layer and ignored the ships that were searching for him. He looked out into Creation and finally found four hundred Illineg warships that had been sent to destroy civilized planets. He focused in on one of them that was sitting in orbit above a planet preparing to fire it. Suddenly, it disappeared and Ken followed its pattern to one of the Illineg home worlds. He breathed a sigh of relief. The ships being sent out to kill planets had been recalled to defend the home worlds. All of the Illineg forces were now back in their home universe.
He looked at the next Illineg planet he had targeted and saw a million green ships around it. He watched their pattern of movement and knew that there was not going to be time to fire on anything before he was attacked. He looked at the fifty thousand ships looking for him and waited in the layer for three days. The ships finally left and he entered the next two teleports into his console. He knew he had to act quickly and not allow the Illineg to start sending ships out to find where his ship had come from. He knew that they were searching all of creation and had come up empty. Failing by scanning, they would resort to sending out ships to take a closer look. There could be no delay in the final step of the initial plan.
He stared at the board and it took him thirty minutes to force himself to calm down and gather the courage to activate the initial teleport. He blew out a breath and thought, “This is for you, Pixie,” just before he activated the circuit.
• • •
Ken’s ship emerged into normal space and he immediately activated the second teleport location. Suddenly, everything around him underwent a profound change. He saw more than five hundred black beams moving toward his ship but they appeared to be moving very slowly. He saw the teleport field surround his ship slowly and his ship start to disappear. He looked out at the incoming black beams and they looked like thick columns of smoke moving his way. He knew they were traveling at the speed of light but they were not going to arrive in time. He watched everything disappear around him and he used Pixie’s jumping ability to jump out of the teleport field directly into the layer at the second location. He could have jumped away but decided that he must see the Apex Predators in order to plan his next attacks. He expanded his mental field that appeared to be unaffected by slow motion as he arrived in the layer and time began moving at normal speed. Right behind him, two million green ships appeared. He focused on them and searched for what he knew was coming. He didn’t have to wait long and what he saw stunned him.
• • •
The two million green ships arrived around the teleport location in the shape of a giant hollow globe. It was clear they thought the small ship had a field around it that prevented it from being seen. The huge globe began contracting in the hope of physically hitting the hiding ship. Moments after the contraction began, a massive shape appeared outside the giant globe.
The Illineg warships were two miles in length but were dwarfed by the new arrival. It was five hundred miles long and about a hundred and fifty miles wide. It had a purple glow around it and Ken saw that it wasn’t a ship.
It was a living entity. It had a triangular shaped head that had two globular eyes that were each about forty miles wide. It had eight legs tucked up under it and long black wings pulled in to its body. It appeared to have an iridescent shell enclosing it that changed from blue to yellow and red as it moved. The head moved constantly as it looked at the millions of green ships as they broke from the globular formation and fell on the giant creature firing their massive black beams and launching millions of missiles at it. Ken saw the beams hit the creature and just disappear. The shell surrounding it didn’t even change color as millions of black beams stuck. The millions of missiles hit the purple glow around the creature and just disappeared. Ken rewound his display and played it back in slow motion. The missiles hit and just disintegrated into nothingness. He went back to the live feed and saw the giant being turn its head toward the closest green ships around it and spit thousands of white balls at its attackers. It then began moving at an extreme rate of speed spitting white balls at every green ship around it. Ten more giant creatures arrived, flew through the first creatures purple field, and white balls filled the space around them.
Ken watched his display and brought one of the green ships in for a close up view and saw one of the white balls hit it. It blew through the ship’s force field and hit the ship’s hull just behind the bow. The entire ship disintegrated in less than a second. More than five hundred thousand of the Illineg ships jumped away but for more than one and a half million, it was too late. Nothing remained of them; no gas, no debris, no wreckage, nothing.
Ken watched as the original creature disappeared and the other ten disappeared moments later. Ken had seen the original creature’s pattern and he looked up into space. He closed his eyes and followed it as it moved through the Illineg universe, stopping less than a hundredth of a second at each Illineg home world. Ken waited and after three days the creature returned to its universe and arrived at a giant construction hanging in open space. There were at least a billion of the creatures surrounding the structure and when the original being arrived they began moving in an intricate pattern around it.
Ken watched the pattern not understanding what was taking place and them it came to him. The scout had returned with what it had found. The giant creatures flew through its purple field and disappeared. They had locked on the pattern of the Illineg and were leaving to attack. Ken looked back at the Illineg universe and saw the first of the giant beings arrived at one of the Illineg home worlds. Every Illineg creation was disintegrated; every ship, every satellite, every structure on the planet, and finally, every individual Illineg on the planet’s surface. The planet was not harmed and only the Illineg were destroyed. The animals and plants weren’t harmed. Where once there were massive cities, only bare earth remained behind. Even the pavement had been disintegrated. Ken watched as every Illineg in their universe was killed by the giant, swarming, creatures. He watched the last planet die from the Algean Construction Facility. The last Illineg to die was on a disabled ship that was waiting for assistance in a different universe. Once those giant creatures locked on the pattern of a creature, they could see it anywhere in creation. He walked off the ship into Pixie’s arms and knew what death looked like. He handed the recordings from his scanners to Sprigly, “See what you can learn from this.”
Sprigly nodded and left for his office. Pixie held on to Ken and he wrapped his arms around her. Pixie held her head on his chest and whispered, “We’re nothing in comparison.”
Ken reached up and stroked her hair, “We’re still here; that’s something.”
• • •
Ken and Pixie sat in Sprigly’s conference room and watched the display showing the thousands of Illineg home worlds being destroyed. Ken shook his head and had great difficulty understanding how the strange creatures were able to only destroy the Illineg and their creations. “Sprigly, do you understand how they do this?”
Sprigly leaned back, “No, I don’t. I can see what they’re doing but I don’t understand how it happens.” Ken looked at the young Algean and he continued, “These creatures remind me of a former enemy of the first Realm.”
Ken said, “The Captors.”
Sprigly shook, “You’re right. They appear to be very much like the Captors but without their limitations.”
Pixie said, “What limitations are you referencing?”
“They are not bound to a ship. They can see all of creation without the need of an energy nexus. They also do not exhibit any intelligence. All the behavior I’ve seen appears to be driven by instinctual behavior. They are both incredibly simple and complex simultaneously.”
“They’re not the same type of creation as the Captors, Sprigly.”
“I know that Commodore. The Captors were more like honey bees. These creatures are more like hornets.”
Ken frowned, “I thought hornets were much larger than bees.”
Sprigly leaned forward, “They are. Thirty hornets can kill forty thousand honey bees in a hive. Remember, the Captors became part of their ship. The bulk of their ships were not the Captor, but the construction it inhabited. These creatures are much larger than the Captors. They don’t inhabit ships for the simple reason that they would have to have intelligence to build them.”
Pixie said, “Why haven’t these creatures expanded outside their galaxy?”
“I believe that they are held there by the nest. They cannot go outside their own galaxy and leave the defense of their home.”
“They left to kill those Green Ships?”
Ken said, “Hornets will chase anything that threatens them or their nest and will not give up the chase. They are tenacious and unlike bees, can sting multiple times. If anything enters their domain, they lock on it, absorb the intruder’s pattern, and then go out and kill every being in creation with that pattern. Once that pattern is removed, they will be forced to return to their nest.”
Sprigly said, “That appears to be their attack procedure. The good news is that they only kill the beings that have the scanned pattern.”
Pixie shook her head, “I still don’t understand how a life form can be that powerful and why they haven’t expanded outside that galaxy.”
Sprigly brought the image of the construction that was built by the creatures on the display and said, “I think I have an idea as to why they’re restricted to their galaxy. I believe that they were created inside the star at the center of the system where their nest is located. That star is unlike any star in my system, and trust me; I have almost all of the stars in creation in it. That star has some kind of metal inside it that is unique to that star. I believe that the creatures require exposure to that star’s energy in order to survive. If they are away for a prolonged time, they will die. It is that dependence that causes their aggressive defense of it against any creature that enters their space.
Ken shrugged, “If their bodies can withstand the heat of a star, there’s not much in creation that could harm them.”
Sprigly stared at the display and said, “They are not evil.”
Pixie looked quickly at Sprigly, “How can you say that?”
“They are only doing what they have been made to do. They build a home and desire to be left alone. Unlike the evil species that go out and attack innocent civilizations, that species only attacks an invader. They are no different than a hornet’s nest that will attack anything that threatens it. Unlike a hornets nest that goes out and attacks honey bee hives for food, these creatures are fed by the energy from the star.”
Ken said, “They have been created to remove evil from creation and they only do what their instincts direct them to do. They are innocent as far as even understanding good and evil. They have no choice in attacking anyone that enters their home. It’s programmed into their instincts.”
Sprigly looked at Ken, “So what are you going to do now?”
Ken sighed, “The Illineg are the first to start their expansion but the other two aren’t far behind. I need to go and see the next species and
determine the best way for them to visit the Hornets.”
Sprigly said, “You came close to being caught; is the next species more advanced than the one just destroyed?”
“The next two are very dangerous.”
“Are they more advanced? You avoided the question.”
Ken looked at Pixie and then turned to Sprigly, “Eyes says that they are as far ahead of the Illineg as the Illineg are from us.”
“Then your last plan won’t work.”
Ken shook his head, “No, I suspect it won’t.”
“Do you need a different ship for this one?”
“Have you ever heard of the boxes within boxes scheme?”
Sprigly tilted to the left, “Humans used to give presents by putting increasingly smaller boxes inside each other until the last box was opened with a valuable present inside. I think, if I read my history correctly, it was often quite irritating to the receiver.”
“Well, I want to be an irritant to the next species and I need to see if you can build a box inside a box.”
“Tell me what you want.”
Ken told him and Pixie did a double take. She looked at Sprigly, “Can that be done?”
Sprigly actually did a shrug with his branches, “It would only work one time but I suppose you are only going to use this ship one time.”
Ken nodded, “That’s the plan.”
“Let me see what I can do. Since we have some time, I can make sure it functions properly. I’m going to assume you are going to provide the field for the inner box.” Ken nodded and Sprigly said, “It won’t take long to open this present.”
Ken shrugged, “That is my fervent hope.”
Pixie looked at Ken, “Can’t you just do this automatically without being present?”
Sprigly said, “No, it must be delivered to just the right spot at just the right moment. Someone has to be on board setting the coordinates.”
Pixie looked at Ken, “We will not wait here.”
“Where would you like to go?”
