by Paul Phipps
“I didn’t, but one of my newer analysts, ‘Grey Mouser’ by code name, did. He postulated that there are a whole bunch of new Quarn-slaves that were parasitized just in the last few days while here for these international conferences.” Captain Fuller said.
“All right, that makes sense I suppose.”
“It looks like they are getting ready down there.” Ansel spoke up, “They are starting to get closer to each other and holding hands.”
* * *
The Master was standing in front of a mirror admiring the luxurious blue and purple robe that he was to wear to the ‘Ceremony of Joining’. There was just one thing that bothered him, there were no pockets for him to carry his failsafe. Finally he shrugged his shoulders and had one of his bodyguards tape it to the middle of his back. There was no way in hell he was going to get separated from it now.
He thought once again to his clandestine briefing last night with his most trusted aides.
“You and the Mother are currently at a 60/40 split in your favor. Your efforts to convert influential humans while you were the President-for-Life have paid off handsomely. By concentrating on the movers and shakers behind the scenes and ignoring the fleeting heads of state means we effectively control every national government in the world.” The former senior senator of Massachusetts told him.
The door to his suite opened and his chief Bodyguard asked permission for the person waiting outside the door to come in. Once it was given a tall Indonesian woman of middle age walked into the room.
“It is time for the Ceremony of Joining.” she said simply.
“Thank you, I’m ready.” He told her using his magnificent voice.
She smiled at his attempt to influence her using the sub-harmonics he had developed over the years that put his listeners into the mood to listen and believe anything he said… No matter how foolish or nonsensical it was.
“Come then, ‘Master’ and first child of us all, the Mother awaits you.” She gracefully turned and led the way out into the hallway. It was crowded with Quarn-Slaves, they however merely pushed their way back to walls and let the Master, his bodyguards and guide walk freely down the hallway. They filled the hallway back up once he was out of sight.
One said to another, “That blue and purple robe looks good on him.”
“Yes it does, but then it looks good on all of the humans who are ‘presented’ to the Mother.”
“Yes, you’re right. I wonder if I will have to be the one to clean up this time? I think it’s my turn.”
It took almost twenty minutes to walk the distance through interconnecting tunnels and chambers of the ‘Lair’. At the last door to the Mother’s chambers, he heard her voice in his mind. It filled him up and he found himself walking without thought and he communed with her.
::My son, it is time… Come to me and join with me. I have much to show you and then you and I will soon claim this world for the ‘Whole-of-us-All’!::
::Mother… It has been too long since I was with you last.::
::I agree, you’ve been gone for far too long. Now we will rectify that.::
The Master walked unseeingly to the edge of the pool, the others followed quietly behind him until the entire chamber was filled with the Senior Children of the Mother Quarn. Quietly, almost silently, the three human bodyguard/servants of the master collapsed slowly to the floor. Their faces had the look of ecstasy and then the bodies quickly dissolved into the dust from which they came originally.
But no matter how quietly they had died, the Master heard the clink of a gun on the floor. Decades of training and mistrust flooded him as he spun around to see what had happened. ::TREACHERY!:: his mind cried out in a great telepathic shout.
And with that one cry his supporters turned on their brothers and sisters on the side of the Mother. There was shooting, there was the flashing of knives and hundreds perhaps thousands died in that instant. The Mother’s supporters fought back and more and more died. It looked to be about even until a small pocket of the Masters Quarn-Slaves unthinkingly followed the ancient racial tactic of the mass-mind.
Holding hands or even clasping each other close they burst open like balloons filled with rapidly expanding red and gray oatmeal. Then the mental bolts of energy began to fly!
* * *
High in orbit the TSN’s sensors recorded all that was visible, Captain Fuller’s Intelligence teams stared in awe at the take from the bug swarm in the Mother’s Lair. Everywhere the Quarn-slaves were the human bodies were falling and the Bodies of the Mass-Minds were growing. The air was visibly distorting as the mental energies flew from one Mass-mind to another. In some cases there were only charred remains as the targeted mass-mind was destroyed.
Then the panicked reports come in, Humans all over Malaysia, Thailand and Myanmar were dying as the mind-bombs were siphoning off the human life-force to power the mental weaponry of the Quarn. Indonesia itself was worse, even the plants, jungle and even the Sea life was visibly dying as its life-force was being absorbed too.
Sensitive humans were filled with dread and foreboding up to fifteen hundred miles away. It was war on a scale that the TSN had feared all along.
In the pool of the Mother a TSN probe that looked like a Moray eel cautiously watched the Master and the Mother as they fought each other. He was standing alone at the edge of the pool, the remaining Quarn in the chamber were either dead or in the Mass-Mind stage. There was a visible trembling in the air between him and mother as they fought their mental battle. Time seemed to stop in one way, in other ways it stretched on for an eternity.
Then the Master faltered! He fell to one knee and stared at the mother in hate and fear. Slowly he fell to both knees and screamed a primal scream of hate and agony. With roll forward he fell into the pool and swiftly dissolved into the now familiar reddish dust. The Enlarged Q-Mot that had been the controlling mind of the Master’s human body lifted out of the pool and was brought to the Mother’s body and then was no more.
‘THAT could have gone better…’ She thought slowly to herself. With her sense of perception she soon discovered that there were none of her children left alive that controlled a human body. She started to make her plans on what to do next.
On the bottom of the pool the Master’s Fail-safe Dead-man switch did it regular check for the heartbeat of the Master. Finding none, it waited the prescribed interval and tried again. It tried the third time and then followed the protocols that had been written years earlier.
* * *
The TSN General Staff was in an emergency conference together with the members of the Civilian Advisory council.
“We continued to monitor the situation in real-time. There were two primary focuses for us, first how many of the Quarn were still functional? That included parasitized humans, their Mass-Mind state and of Course the Mother. The second focus was to determine the immediate extent of damage both to the environment and to human beings in specific.
While we were doing those things our instrumentation recorded the following.” Captain Fuller stated as he briefed the council.
On the primary briefing screen an image appeared of Weh Island and Banda Aceh. It was shown in slow motion so as to better understand what was occurring. A series of large cracks appeared on the Island’s surface, they were moving nearly evenly in a contracting circle. As the cracks all reached the center of the circle, which happened to be the underground pool that the ‘Mother’ called home, the ground leapt up and there was an intense bright light followed by an enormous subsidence of the ground leaving it between twenty and a hundred feet shallower than the ground surrounding it.
“It appears that the self-destruct was initiated on the Mother’s lair, perhaps by the former President-for-life’s death. We don’t know and probably will never know. In any case the first explosions were all of a conventional nature and the final one was a nuclear device that must have been planted under the pool when the lair was built.”
Admiral Webster took over the brie
fing at that point. “The Terran Space Navy has placed the former nation of Indonesia under a quarantine blockade similar to the one we placed the Nation of the Iranian Unified Republic. In addition there is a secondary screen of a type that has proven to be at least partially effective against the ‘Mother’ and her telepathic abilities.
The TSN also regretfully reports that there are no humans alive in the former nation of Indonesia. They appear to have been killed and consumed for their life force during the mental battles the Quarn had at the Lair.”
“And the surrounding nations Admiral, how many casualties did they receive?” The Premier of China asked.
“I’m not really sure Premier, what I can say is that there were death’s within a five hundred mile area surrounding Weh Island. And that there are many people within fifteen hundred miles that will be needing medical and psychological counseling from the telepathic damage they received.”
“Do you believe the danger from the Quarn invasion is over, Admiral Webster?” Asked the King of England.
“I think the immediate danger is over, your Majesty. Long term though? Well that’s difficult to say right now. All it would take is for one Q-Mot to have escaped destruction and this whole invasion could be restarted. And the next time will be more difficult as they now know about the TSN and some of our capabilities including the knowledge that we can detect them now.”
“I think I understand, so what do you plan on doing and what do you think we should be doing?” he asked with a slight smile.
“Sir, the TSN is going to keep monitoring for the Quarn indefinitely. We are also going to proceed with our plans for colonization of the pristine worlds the Gho’ L’Gamesh discovered in his journey. As for all of your nations, we’ve said it before: Your destiny is your own, it’s not for us to tell you what to do to accomplish it.
If you ask for our help, we will be glad to give it to you.”
Epilogue one:
Ansel, Peter, Tanya and Harum were waiting impatiently in the living room of their common quarters.
“Do you know what we are waiting for, sir?” Tanya finally decided to bluntly ask.
“No Tanya, I don’t. I received the same message you did asking me to be here at this time. And no I don’t know who sent it. Ariadne knows but she says she promised to keep it confidential out of respect for the person who asked us to be here.” He said patiently to her.
A few minutes later the pattern shifted on the Trans-portal and Sarah stepped through. The kids started at her in dumb-founded amazement, Ansel just stared and tears started to stream down his cheeks.
“Well! Someone better give me a welcome home hug!” She announced with her hands on her hips.
With that call to action the dam broke and the three teen-agers swarmed all over her hugging and kissing and everyone was crying tears of joy and relief. Finally it was Ansel’s turn to hold her close.
“I thought you were dead and gone Sarah.” He whispered in her ear.
“No, you wonderful man, I’ll always come back to you.” She whispered right back.
The five of them were sitting at the dining table. Ice cream was being shared and Sarah was telling them all what had happened.
“Ariadne, Seeker and I came up with a plan. The dreams I had were a true foretelling it seems and our precautions did pay off. They grew a clone of me and downloaded my memories and personality to it. Then I was put in suspended animation and shipped off to Space City One for storage.
My clone took over and was living my life and she went to Indonesia and she met, Merry as the Mothers avatar.” She paused and breathed deeply, “She is also the one who died. By that time she had lived long enough to have become a slightly different person than I. A person with her own soul I think.” She paused again in reflection.
“When I was brought out of Suspended animation it was decided to not give me any of her direct memories. Mind you I did see the recordings that were made but it’s like a movie I suppose. ‘I’ didn’t experience those memories I only viewed them”
“She was a brave, brave woman, just like you Sarah.” Ansel told her with feeling.
Later that night Ansel was surprised to have Sarah join him in his room. She only said, “Ariadne and I had a long woman to woman talk. We both love you Ansel Webster, she in her way as your Mindmate, and I as a woman. We agreed that there is more than enough of you for us both to share!”
Epilogue Two:
“Commander Seeley, Dimensional Transfer is complete.” Lieutenant Evanston announced from the Navigation station.
“Very Good Lieutenant, Chief Charles release the Alpha IGD’s. Let’s go find Earth E11003.
Down in the Explorer Corps section of the Marco Polo, there were cheers and muted prayers of thanks as the first generation of planetary explorers prepared themselves for their life work ahead.
Epilogue three:
(Whispering}, “Hello, are you there? I hope you are, I can’t hear you if you are. All I have left is this Wrist Com from the Christmas Party. I wish I was there now. I’m so scared.”
Long period of silence - almost 30 minutes.
“I can whisper again, I think they are leaving now. I was in Ms. Fitzsimons’s class here at the school when she passed out these treats she said were Yummy. We could only have one each though. Weird looking things like gummy jelly beans. Anyway my Wrist Com whispered in my ear like it does when I’m lonely and want someone to talk to. It said something about kwa-something and that I needed to get out of there. And then it stopped whispering right in the middle of what it was trying to say.
So I told Ms. Fitzsimons’s I had to go real bad and she knows when I say that if I don’t go I’ll have an accident again. So she told me to go and to go eat my treat on the way there. I didn’t, I flushed it down the toilet and hid in the old tornado shelter we get in when it’s bad weather.
I know a spot down here no one else knows about and I hid there, real-real quiet. It’s was so weird I heard strange moaning sounds and these really weird high squeals like the girls do but only higher. A couple of people came down here to see if I was here but they never said nothin’ and then they left. I heard lots of footsteps like everyone was marching and then it got quiet again.” He started to cry quietly. “Please, please talk to me I’m so scared. I want my Mom and Dad.”
“Is this Timmy?” he heard in his ear in the soothing voice that the Wrist-Com used at night when he had a nightmare.
“Yes, I’m Timmy, well I’m Timothy Hardin.” Timmy whispered back.
“Good, Good, Timmy I’m not going to tell you a lie. You are in a real bad place right now. But me and the boys are coming for you. Stay hidden and don’t come out until we get there. We’ll be real quiet like too. It’s going to be dangerous for all of us. Just hold on though, we’re on the way.” The voice told him confidently.
“Who are you?” Timmy whispered.
“I’m Captain Tom of the Terran Space Marines, Timmy”
