by Greg Curtis
Five minutes later the Sparrow was already docking at the Targ, and Daryl was still sitting in the rear compartment of the bug, if it actually had one, praying. For maybe the first time in twenty odd years he knew they needed some divine help if the Community was going to get through this nightmare intact. If the Targ was even going to survive the next few hours.
He emerged slowly from the hatch and into the Sparrow’s holding bay, where the whole crew was waiting for him, Mark and Ryal chief among them. What they knew or guessed he didn't know, but they were staring at him, full of questions. Without a word to them - for he didn’t know what to tell them, and also knew that he couldn’t tell them anything for a while anyway - he led them out the Sparrow's hatch and down to the floor of the Targ’s docking bay, where another, larger reception party awaited. They in turn ordered him directly to the captain who was undoubtedly waiting on the bridge, fuming.
All around Daryl could see other shuttles docking in frantic haste, and the Ocelot itself just outside, and coming in fast. For almost an entire second he wondered if what he was doing was sane. If he was really sure he was right. All these people panicking, terrified out of their skins, and in danger of making serious mistakes. But the image of New Eden in those displays swam once more in his mind and he knew he was right. It was insane but he was doing the only thing he could.
He paused just long enough to grab the recorders off Mark and Ryal who he then ordered back on to the Sparrow and once more to say nothing, and then followed his escort at a run to the bridge.
Once there he saw that organised chaos was the best word to describe what was happening on the bridge. Blind hysteria was closer to the truth. People were babbling incomprehensibly into their consoles, while more were running frantically from them to other stations and back. Sirens were screaming everywhere and lights were flashing as shuttle after shuttle was guided in at a sprint. He had really started a panic. But he wasn’t given any chance to look around as he was forcibly marched into the captain’s ready room to the side, where he and two aids were waiting. The captain did not look happy.
“Have you got the two Kaiwhare?” Daryl didn't even let the Captain start asking what was happening. He just blurted out his question no matter how inappropriate it was. The captain nodded, something Daryl hadn’t realised that Myrans could do with all that leathery skin built up around their necks.
“Both are unconscious and in the discipline area being scanned.”
“Thank God! Thank bloody everything!” Daryl was weak with relief. The first part of the nightmare was at least contained.
“Strip them stark naked and make sure they have no access to any of the ship’s equipment or their own. Nothing, not even their translators. Then scan them as thoroughly as you know how, and lock them up separately. They may well have far more advanced technology on them than your scientists are able to detect. It may even be embedded in them. Look for anything out of the ordinary, even things as simple as moles or lumps under their skin, and remove them. If it even looks strange remove it. Keep them unconscious if you can. We can interrogate them later. But if they get a message out it’ll be too late for all of us. The Targ and the entire Community.”
“There’s no bomb Captain, so please turn off the alarms, but those two pose a greater threat to the Targ and the entire Interstellar Community than anything else in existence.” The captain nodded to one of his officers who marched out of the room at double time. A few seconds later the sirens stopped and maybe with them, the panic died down a little. But the situation was still grave.
“Fine! We’ll do as you ask if we have to. Now will you please tell me what’s going on?” He seemed remarkably calm Daryl thought, just like a volcano before it erupted. And his senior officers looked no happier. But he didn’t tell them, he showed them. Activating his portable recorder he splashed the holo up in the centre of the room.
“We found the control room. The one that was meant to give the best tactical data they had to any Calderonians who might one day follow them to the Ancients. But unlike the one on Calderon Six this one was fully operational. Uncorrupted. It began flashing up data and displays as soon as we entered, I assume so that we could act immediately if necessary. Thank God! If it hadn’t we’d have said something over the radio, and by now we’d all be dead. But then the Calderonians suspected that whoever came would probably be in a desperate hurry, that anyone who found it would likely be under attack, being chased, and they prepared for it. It was a war room.”
“The Calderonians weren’t sick as I’d assumed, or at least not of any natural disease, but they were dying. They were at war, and they were losing badly. Actually it wasn’t a war in truth. It was an interstellar holocaust.” He showed them the battle campaign schematics which displayed the Calderonians in green and their enemy in red, and the way the red was slowly dominating everything, a plague of red spreading out across the galaxy. And if he’d understood it for what it was in bare seconds as a mere scientist, he figured they would probably understand its significance that much more quickly.
“Their enemy was subtle and powerful, and with technology they just couldn’t match. They defended themselves as best they could. And every city on every planet had an arsenal of technological defences. Even more than we’ve encountered here. Far more.” He pressed a button and this time Ryal’s scanner showed the battle ships and orbiting attack platforms manned by thousands of Calderonians, and all under attack.
“It wasn’t paranoia. It was desperation. For despite their own technological advantages, they were being destroyed. Exterminated.”
“Theirs was a war of extinction. Not one of territory or power. Actual extinction. Their enemy didn’t want any Calderonians to survive. Or anybody else as it turns out. Their goal was - is - to be alone in the universe. And they used some horrific weapons to ensure it. Weapons of mass destruction, things that we’d have to call obscene, were just the beginning. They also had genocidal weapons. Diseases and plagues designed to wipe out not just whole races, but entire ecosystems.” Again the images were in the database. Images of green worlds, turned to balls of slime and dust, Calderon among them.
“These creatures have no scruples. There can be no compromise with them, no peace, no treaties. It was a war to extinction for the Calderonians, and they lost. As we will.”
“That was ten thousand years ago.” Which it was, and it staggered Daryl as he realised he still hadn’t truly considered that fact even as he agreed with the captain. It was an insanely long period of time, but it didn’t matter. Impossible as it was, for ten thousand years this enemy had been out there, plotting and scheming his way through the Community.
“I know. But this is the enemy.” He showed him the image of the Kaiwhare from the Calderonian database, and watched the captain stare in obvious shock. A Kaiwhare. A member of the most peace loving non-violent world in the Community, dressed for war in full battle gear, behind him a fleet of unknown ships, each one bristling with gun ports.
More images of cities in flames as those same ships bombed them from orbit with things that made plasma weapons look like fire crackers. Ships by the tens of thousands circling burned out planets, cinders which had once been Calderonian worlds.
“The conclusion is inescapable. For ten thousand years the Kaiwhare have been out there. Hiding in the shadows, and believing that they’d won the war. Which they did. They thought all the Calderonians had been killed, and perhaps they have been. They could just bide their time and let the universe go past as they were the pre-eminent force in it.”
“Then, when the younger races first came along, they probably figured you were no threat. You were too primitive to bother them, and if you ever became more advanced, they would destroy you as they had doubtless destroyed so many others before.”
“But you changed the rules on them as you all started advancing together rather quickly, as you found ancient Calderonian cities thought long since destroyed and pulled technology out of them, and also f
ormed an alliance, a true Interstellar Community. Suddenly they couldn’t take you out one by one any longer.”
“The Kaiwhare were surely caught off guard by that. After all it had been ten thousand years since they’d even smelled a threat, and for a while they probably didn’t know what to do. Wage all out war? They surely had the technology, but it wasn’t their way. Not until they had every single code you possess, and overwhelming power. They don’t want a fight. They want a massacre. Worse still you weren’t of one race, and the monstrous plagues that they favour as weapons couldn’t take you all out at once. What would destroy one might be useless against the rest. And while you were primitive, you were also numerous and possessed of unknown resources and knowledge.”
“By their very nature they much prefer the more sneaky approaches, and that was clearly what was called for. Besides, they may have lost some of their technological edge over the long millennia. They must have, or they would have destroyed us all before we’d ever made it into space. Possibly they split into factions, maybe had their own wars. I also suspect they don’t breed that well. Not after the horde of biological and chemical weapons they unleashed against the Calderonians. There were bound to be backlashes from unleashing such ruthless evil. And the Calderonians may have set them back a bit as well in the war. Besides, no species can rule forever.”
“Whatever the reason though, they simply weren’t ready for you. So they moved into an infiltration mode. First showing you a seemingly unprotected world which they’d colonized probably just for you, and showing you their impossibly peaceful ways. Kaiwha. And they let you slowly integrate them into the Community, as they in turn infiltrated their way up the ladder in preparation for your destruction. Your extinction. Our extinction. Everyone’s extinction. It was a seemingly perfect plan, and one that they’d probably used for millennia without problems.”
“But then came the problems.”
“First, though it wasn’t actually first, a primitive race which itself was close to being integrated into the Community had settled on one of their ancestral colony worlds. New Eden. It wasn’t the only one either. They had a lot of ancestral colonies, and many have been colonised by the younger races over the following millennia, and they’ve also been dealt with, permanently. But the Edenites are the first human threat I know of, and they posed an immediate danger. Sooner or later, the colonists would find the remains of their ancient civilization and the secret would be out. They had to find a way to stop that. Especially when the mineral resources were found. One or more of their ancient mining facilities was probably quite close to them.”
“I should have seen that earlier. Much earlier. But the clues were so vague. Just that the Edenites had found a few artefacts, and thought that a long time before another race had been there and left. And a reference to evil from the town’s resident psychic. But I was so stupid. It seemed so irrelevant, so trivial, and I missed it. But the Calderonians knew it. In their time, New Eden was a thriving enemy world, probably one that was used for its vast mineral wealth and food production. That’s why they had its image in their database as an enemy stronghold.” He showed them the images from the recorder.
“But New Eden wasn’t the only old Kaiwhare world settled by the Community which they had to destroy over the years.” He flashed up more images. Another dozen worlds, only two of which he actually knew. But everyone else knew one of them. Persephone Three, a world of never ending volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. Its purple atmosphere made it distinctive the universe over. But its fame wasn’t because of its colour or its activity. It was because of what had caused it to become a volcanic nightmare.
The world had been wiped out a little over two hundred years before by a giant meteorite, one which had come out of nowhere undetected, a virtual impossibility, and then extinguished all life. The impact crater was over five hundred miles wide, and the nuclear winter the world had endured after the shock wave had flattened everything, was still occurring. A once green world had become a volcanic ice planet.
The image in the Calderonian’s database though was from long before its nightmare had begun, and it showed a vibrant busy world, with cities and space stations. But not Calderonian stations. The technology was wrong, more primitive and somehow more threatening. Kaiwhare stations. The conclusion was obvious. It had once been a Kaiwhare planet. Before the war. After, apparently it had been abandoned and the world left vacant for nearly ten thousand years until the Regularans had set up a colony there. A colony that had been destroyed in one of the most unlikely and nearly impossible of all cosmic accidents.
“The Kaiwhare destroyed Persephone Three two hundred years ago because it too had a colony on it. A colony that might one day find their ancestral cities and then them. But for it they used a different, innocent looking device; a rogue meteor. A seemingly natural if unbelievable catastrophe, but one that was powerful enough to destroy an entire world. One that they both guided, and then somehow hid from all sensors until its very impact. It was no accident, it was murder. Mass murder. Genocide.”
“They couldn’t use that approach with New Eden a hundred and thirty years later, because the system firstly had no such natural meteors, and even if it had, it had been closely studied. Besides that the chances of even one hitting Persephone Three had been unbelievably remote and had raised a lot of questions just because of that. And that was before you consider that it had never been detected. It should have been. A second would have shown a pattern and revealed an enemy. No one would have ever accepted it as an accident and the Kaiwhare would have shown their hand. Sooner or later someone would have come hunting them.”
“Nor could they use the nightmare they unleashed on Navid Two, where you first picked me up.” He showed the captain the next picture from the database. A planet he knew too well even if it wasn’t nearly as famous.
“Two perhaps three thousand years ago the locals so we thought, had destroyed themselves in some sort of war. But given that it too was once a base of theirs, and that the locals were surely at the beginnings of space flight, the likelihood is that the Kaiwhare destroyed it, and merely made it seem as though the inhabitants had gone to war. They are the very soul of cunning and evil.”
“New Eden though, didn’t have such weapons. Nor did it have two factions. They were all one extremely peaceful people. So they couldn’t pretend a war had broken out. It didn’t even have an asteroid belt. Instead they shifted to another deception. It is their way. And I’m certain they have many. Pretending friendship, they infiltrated the colony, sending an ambassador to spy on the Edenites, then identified anything interesting they could lay their hands on, and formed a plan. They then fabricated some look-alike Earth Fleet vessels. No doubt they got the plans from the colony’s own databases. They were after all, freely available.”
“Then, when they were ready, the ambassador returned home for his holiday, and the attack was launched. That’s why the ambassador survived. Not dumb luck. Just planning. A perfect plan as the Earth would forever be cast out of the Community while trying in vain to protest its innocence, while the world would be unavailable for colonization for centuries. The Earth itself then implicated itself further by covering the massacre up in its desperation to maintain order, and the Kaiwhare knew they’d won again.”
“But they left evidence behind. They had to make certain alterations to the satellites, because their ships weren’t perfect replicas. They were close, as close as they could make them, but their ships had advanced technology. More than my people had at the time. Probably more than they have now. The ships could each hold half a dozen or more plasma weapons safely, something that would have been damn near impossible for my people as the magnetic fields interfered with each other. True Earth Fleet ships would have been floating time bombs if they were carrying just one such missile; with the sort of payload the ships had that attacked New Eden they wouldn’t have left the shipyards. And the total number of devices they had would have depleted the Earth’s entire
reserves if they actually had any left. All to destroy a colony that they were very proud of.”
“That’s why the Earth can’t find those ships or those people. They aren’t theirs. We didn’t do it. Dear God we were framed and I didn’t even consider the possibility. Nor I suspect did any others on my world. We just panicked and hunted desperately for the guilty party, and when we couldn’t find him, blindly panicked some more.”
“Never mind.” He stopped himself before his emotions ran away with him. Relief and fear were a heady combination, and they were threatening to take away his reasoning ability.
“The Kaiwhare might have stopped there, at least with the humans, and turned their attentions to other threats. And I suspect some of those other planets in the database have also been hit by unexpected disasters since. There’s a lot more of them down there than I managed to get here. But the next evidence I have of them is seventy years later, when a new human problem arose. Me. Twice.” A tiny, hysterical little voice in the back of his head was whispering insanely that he must have been especially honoured by the Kaiwhare to have them try and discredit or kill him twice. Surely that didn’t happen often. He stamped down on it firmly as he tried to concentrate.
“We were making progress in understanding the Calderonians, and they quickly identified me first as the man instrumental in finding ways into the cities safely, and then in understanding that the Calderonians were fleeing for their lives. Sooner or later they knew, I or one of the other scientists would realise they weren’t fleeing a changing sun, or unrelenting disease, but rather an ancient enemy. Perhaps when somebody finally figured out how to reconstruct the DNA records the Calderonians left of their enemy, and then analysed it. And sooner or later they guessed, we’d find some details of their enemy and it would all come back to them.”
