Moving Earth

by Dean C. Moore

  The rest of Alpha Unit arrived at the bank of desktop computers, joining Skyhawk in the fun, now that they were no longer needed for repairs. They were eager to play real-war games, especially this kind, much like their video games, with so “little” connection with reality. Who the hell could actually believe what was going on out there?

  “Thank Techa these cylinder worlds look so innocuous that the Kang queens haven’t figured out yet that they’re prizes worth coveting. Should buy us some time,” Ariel said, keying her panel, attempting to decipher the alien language of pictographic icons.

  “I think the Kang queens have other things on their minds,” Satellite said cackling, “now that they’re bumping into things even their hardened worlds can’t protect them from.”

  “Simple physics, my friend,” Skyhawk said. “If you fire a paper bullet at a rock hard enough, it’ll shatter the rock.” As if on cue, a Kang castle world exploded being hit by a comet of mere ice.

  There was barely time to appreciate the moment. “Whoa. A golden dragon ship.” Ariel gulped. “It’s bigger than all the others, way bigger.”

  “Bigger than this cylinder world,” Satellite corrected her. “And this is a world ship, I’d like to remind you.”

  All eyes turned to Skyhawk. “Don’t look at me,” he said defensively. “I get to enjoy my mindless moments of awe same as everyone else, shocked into a complete inability to think straight.”

  “It’s that meddlesome Patent again,” Satellite said, staring at his monitor. “Does he do awe struck?”

  “Not really,” Skyhawk mumbled, returning his eyes to his handheld to see if he could make out what Patent was up to.

  Patent flew the UFO straight through the head of the dragon ship and straight into the queen’s head. This queen was large enough for her brain to encompass the UFO. Not that that overlap lasted long. Patent exploded his UFO.

  The cascade of explosions rippling through the dragon ship took the entire ship out next, but gone too was Patent.

  Alpha Unit didn’t mean to honor his passing with stillness; abject and dumbstruck silence was just all they were capable of right now.

  “What the hell are you all standing around doing nothing for?” Patent said from behind them, climbing out of a bioprinter. “I thought I trained you better than that.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Remind me never to do that again.”

  Everyone was still too shocked to move.

  “Snap to! You can go into shock later when it’s a tad more convenient.” He pointed to the wrap around port.

  A swarm of dragon ships had amassed out of nowhere, suddenly all very interested in the innocuous cylinder world.

  “Just think, all the cloned teams of us on all the cylinder worlds… the war stories we’ll have to tell at the end of the day. It’s a glorious day to be alive, ladies and gentlemen.” Patent full of himself, large and in charge, per the normal, strutted toward another UFO clone ship being printed up by the Calamitous, clearly unable or at least unwilling to take a beat.

  FORTY

  THE UFO

  LEON AND CASSANDRA FROM CLONE TEAM ONE—ORIGINALLY TASKED WITH EXPLORING EARTH’S FORBIDDEN ZONES

  Leon gazed out the viewport of their pint-sized UFO as Cassandra buzzed the Kang dragonship. “What are you doing messing around with this thing? The Kang must have a thousand dragon ships or more for every Nautilus we have to throw at her, hell, for every Starhawk we have to throw at her. We can’t risk an asset like you on one of them. Let’s go after one of the Kang castle worlds. Better yet, find us a cluster of them.”

  She smiled at him. “Flattery will get you everywhere, especially when it takes me into even bigger kill zones.”

  “I trust Patent to have some tricks up his sleeve in how he designed this UFO, but how the hell to take out a castle world, far less several…?” Leon mused to himself out loud. “What would be even better is if we could get the reaction to spread to other Kang castle worlds, not just the ones in the initial conflagration. Get our one shot to act like a pebble in a pond, rippling out forever.”

  Cassandra smiled without any kindness or levity implied. Once she was fired up, the sociopathic serial killer took over, and what little humor she had was pretty much gone.

  “Am I to take that smile to mean you’re scanning the UFO with your mindchip to figure out how to deliver on this wet dream of mine?”

  Her smile twitched just a little, which he took to mean, “Yes.”

  Their little UFO, which came equipped with wormhole technology—a tweak worthy of Patent—especially for a ship this small with a far more humble-sized AI than anything Mother had at her disposal—brought them back into space-time in a district of the Kang Dynasty that fit the bill for Leon’s wet fantasy in progress.

  Leon beheld no less than a couple dozen Kang Castle worlds out his smart-screen viewport that was analyzing the peculiar planetary cluster for him. The Kang worlds were orbiting the biggest one in the center like moons. Was he seeing what happened when the queen’s nest grew too large? She sent out the younger queens to tend their own broods rather than compete with them? If so, she must have some way of slaving them to her, and maintaining her control over the growing hive.

  The only thing Cassandra and Leon had to buy them time for now was that they were the proverbial fly on a hog’s ass—over a couple dozen hogs’ asses to be precise. But the extent of the Kang scanning technology was not known.

  Okay, maybe it was.

  Dragon ships from at least twelve of the “moons” were deploying in their direction.

  “Who can afford to waste a couple dozen dragon ships on the likes of us?” The implications were terrifying. He estimated the crew size on a dragon ship to be at least three times that of a Starhawk.

  Leon’s mind raced to turn negatives into positives. “Maybe if they fight with such lack of economy, we can make that work for us. You don’t bring a battery of cannons to a bow and arrow party unless you’re looking to sacrifice enough assets to make it start to count, even when up against such an un-forbidding foe as us.”

  Cassandra, always pleased to have anyone talk in a way that added to her kill count, nodded and smiled.

  “We don’t have much by way of firepower and manpower compared to those dragon ships,” Leon said, “so why don’t we use theirs to achieve our ends for us?”

  “How?”

  “Hack the Dead Zone technology they stole, like you did before, when you sealed them back inside the Kang Galaxy. Maybe you can find other uses for the Ethereals’ castoff.”

  Startled, she craned her head his way briefly before returning her eyes to the screen.

  “I’ve seen those dragon ships fly through planets, even suns,” Leon said, “and I’ve seen them gather enough of them together to open a supersized black hole big enough to serve as a spiral galaxy’s center, the hub for the spokes of the spiral. If that Dead Zone technology gives them such play with the electromagnetic fields about their ships, maybe they can do a number on the Kang themselves, turn them against one another. Brain matter can be very susceptible to certain forms of EMF radiation. That’ll get us the ripple effect we’re going for. Then we just scatter the ships to the winds, let them plant seeds of destruction among their own kind wherever they go.”

  Cassandra was nodding again. “You sure know how to make a girl hot.”

  “You’re a seriously disturbed woman. I’m merely a bit suicidal. Lucky for you, I marry up.”

  She smiled, aiming their tiny UFO more aggressively into the mix of things. “Take over the helm,” she said, taking her hand off the wheel.

  Leon grabbed the wheel in front of him. “Now’s not the time for second thoughts, Cassandra, about who should be steering this thing,” Leon said, gaping at the flock of closing dragon ships. They were even moving like a flock now, capable of syncing their movements to one another. The slightest deviation at the helm of the UFO sent the flock reeling another direction. It was strangely beautiful to watch, if only the i
mplications weren’t so deadly.

  “One of Patent’s design considerations included turning the inside of this UFO into the Mormon Tabernacle. Its shape and acoustics facilitate a meditative state. The altered state of consciousness it’ll allow us to fight from will up our creative and death-dealing capacity above normal. But even so, for what you’re asking, I must ask for silence. I’ve never done anything on this scale before.”

  Leon just nodded. She was acting like a well-trained tiger. But Leon didn’t fool himself that he wasn’t trapped in the same cage with the tiger, and the tiger couldn’t always be counted on to respond to the whip and chair as expected. She might just rip his head off for getting in the way of her executing on one of his commands.

  Leon took the UFO into the flock of dragon ships, with fingers crossed that Patent’s Mormon Tabernacle design could procure for him the steelier nerves and heightened control with the wheel he needed. The flock parted, came back together, again and again, always with a fluid grace that was hypnotizing. Each time the swarm adjusted for him, their small vessel took the laser fire from the dragons’ eyes, coming at it from every possible direction. But Leon’s ship was so small, flying through the crisscross of beams was of little problem, providing he could steer off course of each of those locked, targeted laser beams. Being in an altered state reduced his reliance on the UFO’s AI. That, in turn, freed up the AI to help Cassandra with whatever madness she was planning. Every once in a while he needed to surrender to autopilot entirely, just visualizing what he wanted the ship to do, communicating with the UFO’s AI by way of his mindchip.

  Leon strained to remember things from the other timelines that his clone back on the Nautilus had beamed to him while still in an altered state of consciousness facilitated by the Samadhi tank; as altered states go, it was a different frequency than the one Cassandra was on right now, no doubt. And different from the one he was on, seated beside her. There were many meditative states. Choose the right one and you did well. Choose wrong…

  If Leon was going to keep them alive long enough for Cassandra to do her thing, he needed to recall something his clone from the Nautilus had downloaded to him the last time he slept. Otherwise, his reflexes, and the UFO’s AI’s ability to correct for his flying weren’t going to cut it. Cassandra might have been able to dodge this many ships firing their lasers at them at once, but he just wasn’t up to it. That realization didn’t help his relaxed state any, nor did it help him to access the altered state of consciousness needed to pipe through the critical information. He would settle for a blank mind right now, an empty vessel for memories from the Leon clones to pour in—any of the Leon clones.

  One of the dragon ships’ lasers had found them, despite the UFO’s tiny size and ability to buzz about the dragon ships far faster than they could move.

  The impact from the blast sent Leon careening into several other intersecting lasers that had missed him until he was polite enough to head straight into them.

  The UFO’s dashboard was smoking. Sparks were flying.

  A robot repair crew had come out of hiding—tiny, dime-size mechanical spider-bots—racing to repair damage. They in turn were releasing smaller progeny. Each generation down would emit smaller spiderbots until the nano scale or pico scale was reached—if necessary—to facilitate repairs.

  Leon just had to do better at buying them more time.

  He glanced over at Cassandra and she appeared unfazed, and not at all present. Acquiring a mind lock on the Dead Zone tech that the Kang had appropriated was receiving her full attention. She was oblivious to anything going on in the cabin. And why should she pay attention to him? They could blow this ship to hell and her body would survive outside just fine. She might even be immune to Kang bombardment. Leon’s model, on the other hand, came with a few less warranties.

  He returned his attention to that flock of synchronized Kang dragon ships, hoping to do more than cause ripples as he flew through it.

  Leon blanked his mind. Like he had any choice but to force calm upon himself.

  Nothing.

  No revelation streaming in from distant timelines.

  He let go of the yearning and screaming desire for that intel.

  No attachments. No aversions.

  It was Zen 1A.

  It seemed no matter how much he practiced this shit for moments like this he was forever at the foot of the mountain when it came to mastering it.

  And there it was.

  At last.

  “Get a lock on the galactic core-size black hole the Kang opened up,” Leon said to the UFO AI. “Or haven’t they thought to do that yet in this timeline?”

  “Oh, they’ve thought to do it. And you’re mad if you think I’m letting you send us straight into it.” The UFO’s AI sounded like Mother’s little sister that was still pissed she hadn’t gotten Mother’s job.

  “The Kang,” Leon said, “worked up to a fever’s pitch right now, will follow. Trust me. And trust Patent.”

  The UFO AI sighed. “Since staying here a moment longer entails assured destruction, I’ll give it a shot. But I will haunt you from the afterlife if you turn out to be merely incompetent.”

  Leon smiled. “I would deserve nothing less.”

  The UFO opened the wormhole. And in an instant, they were gone.

  The Kang dragon ships followed, not at all surprisingly. You’d think some might stay behind, but they must have been playing a points game at their end, and no self-respecting Kang warrior was about to let another Kang Warrior steal their glory.

  The countless Kang dragon ships flew straight into the all-devouring galactic-core-size black hole.

  Leon was close enough to see it firsthand, but not close enough to get sucked in. As he expected, Patent had built in a failsafe, for avoiding such pitfalls in space. Leon couldn’t have ordered the UFO into that thing if he’d tried. Even the AI had been overridden.

  “Nice,” the AI said. “I’m Erecta, by the way, not that we’re on a first name basis just yet.”

  “Get us back to that cluster of Kang castle worlds, Erecta,” Leon said, “in case you’ve interrupted Cassandra’s hacking by putting her out of range.”

  Erecta complied.

  The couple dozen or so closely clustered Kang castle worlds came back up on screen.

  Leon expected another discharge of dragon ships headed his way—filled with even more pissed off Kang. But no.

  What’s up?

  There. The Kang castle worlds were disgorging the latest flocks of dragon ships. Maybe Leon’s adrenaline was pumping enough to distort his sense of time. And a split-second seemed closer to a minute or more to him.

  But this time the dragon ships were not pursuing him.

  The Kang castle worlds had gone dark. All except for one patch of light.

  Like a fool eager to step into a trap, Leon steered the UFO toward it.

  Cassandra came out of her trance. “I did it,” she said.

  “Did what exactly?”

  “Those dragon ships are leaving to employ the same tricks against the Kang that they used against us, exploding their castle-worlds and suns, opening black holes that will devour Kang real estate.”

  “And these castle worlds?”

  “They’ll be teleporting soon into the abyss of that galactic-core-size black hole they themselves opened.”

  On Cassandra’s words, the castle worlds started disappearing, one after the other, leaving only one behind. The one with the light Leon was approaching now. It was the biggest of the worlds that made the others look like moons.

  “Prognosis?” Leon asked.

  “This is one solar system, Leon. Flying as fast as the turncoat dragon ships can fly, it will take them months, if not years to cover an entire galaxy. We measure our survival in hours. So, not good.”

  “And any chance of getting the Kang dragon ships themselves to spread the malware to the other dragon ships they encounter. We might still spread the malware at a geometric rate that way.”


  “No chance. He shut me down. Kang’s answer to Tesla.”

  Leon saw him coming into focus. He wanted to know his enemy, and even more importantly, he wanted his enemy to know him.

  The Kang’s scientific genius stood in an open port—one of many in a castle-size world.

  He was a terrific sight, about five times bigger even than the giant class of Kang they’d encountered earlier. Only sleeker, not as bulky.

  It was just possible, looking at this caste of Kang, that the Tesla types were the stage of metamorphosis before becoming a full blown queen. They were still male at this stage, but the sex change might have been a gift saved for last to minimize competition for the throne.

  The Tesla type wasn’t what sent chills up Leon’s spine.

  It was the sight of the Kang female.

  Even Cassandra took a deep breath. “That’s an egg-laying queen,” she said.

  “How much you want to bet,” Leon said, “she’s tweaking the eggs she’s dropping, creating a new class, a Tesla class? Why settle for one Tesla type at a time, when you can have countless Teslas?”

  “She wouldn’t threaten her own reign like that. From the size of her brain pan, she’d be even smarter than her one Tesla surrogate, and likely smarter as well than the queen it’ll eventually turn into. But smarter than a network of Tesla-class drones?”

  “She won’t have to be smarter than all of them combined. The new Tesla class can be more specialized than her, and more specialized than the original Tesla model, able to make the most of just one piece of tech from the Dead Zone, ensure it remains unhackable, is deployed to more ships, more worlds. Perhaps smart enough to reverse engineer the devices to the end of ensuring no one gets away with a stunt like you just pulled off ever again.”

  Cassandra sighed out the rest of her resistance. “It’s what I would do.”