Moving Earth

by Dean C. Moore

  The Kang weren’t the only ones evolved to come from behind.

  Leon and his growing retinue of Special Forces units were designed with the same job in mind.

  “And when did the Kang stumble on to it?”

  “According to Mother, less than twenty-four hours ago. If they didn’t see through Ajax’s Starhawk’s cloaked movement, then something about the colliding galaxies compelled them to come and investigate. Possibly, even shut down, the STAs are immune to colliding galaxies, but that immunity gives away their positions.”

  Leon craned away from the portal to give her another nasty look, as if this, too, was her fault.

  “Gamma Group is requesting orders,” Cassandra announced. “Shit, they’re nearly as twitchy as I am, sitting around without a mission to execute on.”

  Leon realized that if Gamma Group was going through her to get to him it was because they didn’t speak English, and possibly couldn’t, because of how they were bioengineered.

  That realization put another one in his mind. “Cassandra, they reached out to you because of your genetics. You were a spy once. And you’re evolved to shapeshift, to go undetected in enemy territory. You absorb cultural and communication subtleties almost instantly. You think you can lend that capacity to them?”

  “You want them to go in disguised as Kang drones?”

  “No, as Kang Tesla Types. You think they’re smart enough to pull it off?”

  “They’re soldier scientists. Engineered for deep space or not, the smallest breach of their bodies would require accelerated healing abilities, and a capacity to invent solutions on the fly to problems that their immune systems can’t handle. This implies an intelligence and adaptive ability that borders on supersentience. In space, a split-second is far more time than you need to die. So, yes.”

  Leon nodded. “Well, it’s settled then. You will board the Space-Time Alchemist ship as a Kang queen. The longer you’re morphed into one of them, the better the sense you’ll have for what it’s like to be inside their heads. Gamma Group will go in as Kang Tesla Types.”

  “And what about you, Leon?”

  “Someone has to negotiate a peace with the Kang queens. This is as good a time as any, especially if we can rip away this greatest of all prizes from them. If they’re disinclined to play along, the STAs would constitute great leverage.”

  Cassandra smiled. “Keeping you alive in there…”

  “…won’t be your concern or Gamma Group’s. Just open a COMMS line between my mind and the Queen’s when I ask you to. Your principal job will be to hack the queen’s psychic connection to her drones and her Tesla types and the various other castes in her hive mind. We’ll need the intel all of them have gathered about the Space-Time Alchemists come time to beam that info to Mother so she can take control of the STAs.”

  Cassandra had evidently already communicated his orders to Gamma Group and forwarded them to Mother so Mother could initiate beaming them aboard the Space-Time Alchemist ship currently being fired up. Leon could feel himself dematerializing, and a glance at Cassandra told him she was already morphing, Mother downloading to her whatever intel she had on the queen, and whatever the other Nautili had gathered on the Queen caste in general.

  ***

  ABOARD THE SPACE-TIME ALCHEMIST VESSEL, WHORL

  Leon materialized aboard the STA ship and immediately tapped his Nautilus insignia, initiating a singularity phone line that cut through space and time like only a singularity could, straight to Theseus. “Theseus, I want Theta Team to prepare for the arrival of the STAs.”

  “We’re dying to get our hands on those things, of course. Once we do, we can advise Mother on how to create Theta Team members evolved to make the most of them.”

  “We’re going to leave one for the Kang as a peace offering.”

  “Not advisable, sir, not without knowing what each of these ships specializes in. We don’t believe any two play with space-time in exactly the same way, much as their unique molecular configurations suggest.”

  Leon sighed. “I’m afraid we have no choice. If we find it’s a genie we don’t want to let out of the bottle, we’ll return at a later date and find a way to put it back.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Leon could tell from Theseus’s tone that he didn’t agree with the order one bit. He was pretty sure the rest of that sentence went, “Yes, sir, you fucking madman.”

  “Make sure Solo is on hand,” Leon added, “to help you with this latest addition to our own menagerie. After all, he’s our specialist in accessing other dimensions and playing Houdini with time and space.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Leon tapped the COMMS insignia to shut off the transmission, and continued to take in the STA vessel. Of course, being this close to Cassandra in her queen guise was nearly as impressive a sight, distracting from the ship itself. She now towered over him by more than a full body length.

  And she looked more lethal than ever, just when Leon thought that wasn’t possible.

  “Now, let’s hope Techa forgives me for counting my chickens before they’re hatched,” Leon mumbled to himself.

  FIFTY-TWO

  SPACE-TIME ALCHEMIST SHIP

  THE WHORL

  CLONE TEAM TWO

  They weren’t aboard the Space-Time Alchemist ship, The Whorl, long enough for Leon to even properly take in the surroundings.

  The ship was spectacular, but the actual Kang Queen had a way of pulling focus.

  She had detected their presence in an instant, perhaps even expected it. She jumped down from above to block their paths.

  She stood before them as if she were privy to their timetable and their plans.

  Cassandra, already morphed into a Kang Queen herself, picked Leon up in her tail and flicked him upwards. Being a keen judge of distance, he knew he’d already traveled three football fields with no sign of slowing.

  When he finally did land, the rest of Omega Force, Clone Team Two, was there to greet him. “What the…?” he blurted.

  “You didn’t think we were going to let you have all the fun, did you?” Crumley said.

  Leon panned to Patent, his face in a scowl. “And if they shouldn’t be here, you damn well shouldn’t. You’ve got your teens to look after.”

  “You know me and cantankerous females. Anything short of a Kang queen and I can’t get it up anymore.”

  Leon resisted a smile.

  “Rest assured there are clones of me fighting and dying everywhere,” Patent said. “My dreams, if ever I get a chance to sleep again, should be a real delight, the way the clones have a way of syncing to one another across time and space to share intel and lessons learned.”

  “The idea is to keep you from making the same dumb mistakes again and again!” Leon carped. He was panting, trying to get his breathing and his emotions under control.

  “What’s the mission, boss?” DeWitt asked.

  Leon was here to negotiate with the queen, but peering down from his balcony perch, he was good and intended to let Cassandra soften her up first before he tried to interject himself into that conversation.

  He turned to Patent, “Any chance we can get a sense of how this ship works?”

  Patent smiled and pivoted that massive body of his that had been blocking the view to Satellite, Skyhawk, and Ariel. He winked at them and then returned his attention to Leon. “My people live to show up Omega Force as the obsolete techno-dunces they are. I mean what soldier goes into battle these days who hasn’t racked up a few PhDs in any number of scientific fields?”

  Leon had to admit he was secretly grateful elements of Alpha Unit Clone Team Two were also here. “Excellent.”

  He knew Patent was partly chiding him, but Patent was mostly fluffing up his teens, who needed constant ego-stroking to work their magic. Leon didn’t envy Patent his job one bit. Leon’s temper and his patience had just grown shorter the more pressure he was under. That was not like him, and he’d have to work to find his way back to his baseline.<
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  “I’ve got a lock on where the Kang Tesla types are hanging out on the ship,” Satellite said, checking his handheld scanner.

  “I can do you one better,” Skyhawk replied, looking up from his scanner, “I know where the chief supersentience of this Dyson Sphere is located. There is one for each node, or Dyson sphere in the overall ship.”

  Satellite frowned at him. “Show off.”

  Ariel cut in on their repartee. “Now that Mother has gotten us in here, she can’t do much more for us. The Dyson sphere is now powered up enough, even if it’s just at one percent capacity, courtesy of the Kang Tesla types, to block her.”

  Everyone stared at her with ugly looks on their faces. Patent was the first to say what they were all thinking, “At just one percent? Of just one of the Dyson spheres?” It was one more confirmation of just how out of their league they were.

  Patent turned to Leon. “What you want to bet that there’s another queen protecting the chief supersentience of this Dyson sphere? And Cassandra is otherwise engaged.”

  Leon took a deep breath to help him process that concept.

  “The good news is we’ll never get there in our lifetime,” Ajax said. He usually knew enough to keep his whining from interrupting the deep thinking going on that might save his life, but he must have already been too worked up for common sense to take hold. He nodded in the direction of the Kang drones heading their way which must have picked up on them. It could have been a keen sense of smell on the part of the Kang for all Leon knew. Unless the Kang had more appropriated Dead Zone technology in their possession with which to track Leon’s people.

  “I can get us to the chief supersentience,” Ariel said, looking up from her monitor. “This ship is so big, movement about it via anything but teleportation would be hopeless. And the Kang Tesla types have all but broken the code for how to activate the STA’s teleportation technology. Thanks to my piggybacking on Satellite’s work, we’re one step ahead of them. For now. I suggest we don’t hesitate.”

  “What, to jump from the fire into the frying pan!” Ajax blurted. “No offense, but I’ll take my chances with hordes of bulletproof Kang over a queen any day. At least I can pretend this is the latest shoot-em-up multiplayer video game Mother has conjured for me.”

  “Take us there,” Leon said, looking Ariel in the eyes to help steady her nerves.

  “Does anyone listen to me? Ever?” Ajax bitched.

  “Just ask me to wring your neck,” Patent said. “See how well I listen to you then.”

  “Don’t tease with the mercy killing idea,” Ajax blurted. “I know you. You hard-as-nails bastard. You’d never let me off so easy.”

  They were already beaming out. Small mercies. It would mean that much less chatter from Ajax. He’d settle down once he had something to shoot at. They all would. It was in their blood.

  ***

  THE WHORL’S CENTRAL NERVE COMPLEX

  One look at the Kang queen protecting the Dyson Sphere’s chief supersentience from up close—the queen towered over them by a good eight feet—and Patent said to Leon, “Might I interest you in one of these?”

  Leon glanced at the syringes in his gold “cigar case.” It was technology they’d formulated for coming up against the Nouveau Vikings on The Star Gate mission. Leon didn’t have to be asked twice, and neither did the rest of Omega Force.

  After Patent and Omega Force injected themselves, Patent turned to Satellite, Skyhawk, and Ariel and said, “You three stay small and stay hidden—less of a target that way—and stay sharp.”

  The nanites pumping into the veins of the ones taking the injections specialized at gigantism and self-reproduction; these nanites quickly made them a match for the queen—in size, anyway. The rest was left to be seen.

  Patent’s and Omega Force’s weapons sized up as well, responding to the nanites migrating from their bodies. That meant more blasting power.

  Omega Force and Patent came out of hiding to face the queen in the open. She had detected them before they could finish teleporting. But she was hesitant to damage the ship to get to them. Now that they were making it easy for her…

  Her tail whipped across Patent, who, never one to let someone charge ahead of him in battle, was the first to be cut down. That tail was like the exposed vertebrae of a T-Rex made of solid metal and sharpened to chainsaw standards. Without the nanococktail, Patent’s body would have been sliced in half. This, despite the fact that he had no shortage of nanites in him even prior to the gigantism cocktail. But these nanites were designed to toughen their bodies, making their bones titanium-plus-strong.

  ***

  Patent, sent flying with a flick of the queen’s tail, was dropping from a height well beyond the height of any skyscraper on Earth. The odds would have had him colliding with no shortage of ducting that flowed through the ship before he fell too far. But the queen had done this deliberately, calculated the trajectory of his descent precisely by how she’d flicked her tail.

  There was no way even his unbreakable body was surviving a fall clear to the bottom. “Come on, Ariel. Something tells me I’ve died enough for today already, in enough quadrants of this galaxy.”

  Patent could feel the tractor beam grabbing him, and then the teleportation device hurtling him back into the thick of things. But not before his eyes took in the wonder of the Kang. The queen’s drones were everywhere, on every floor of the ship. And not just the warriors, their spider caste, which appeared to specialize in gathering information, biopsying, exploring with the tips of their eight legs that could extend to nano scale even as they branched out. The spider caste dropped progeny of their own. The smaller spiders were able to go places the bigger spiders could not. Patent was well aware that the Nautilus used similar ploys, only with bots, to rapidly gather information.

  The giant caste of Kang soldiers was providing muscle, opening chamber doors in the Dyson Sphere, and prying apart sealed chambers like only they could.

  The Kang’s black eyes flashed or phosphoresced periodically—all the castes did this—like watching fireflies take to flight. And considering the number of Kang aboard this ship, that could easily constitute a plague of fireflies.

  Only now did Patent understand the way the Kang Queen’s head sparkled like flawed obsidian mixed with flecks of gold dust catching the light just so. She was in constant communication with her hordes. The secret to anyone interested in staying in power lay in making sure you knew everything going on in your domain, and that required spies everywhere. Her genetically altered minions were all spies, all loyal to her. Omega Force and the few members of Alpha Unit in attendance couldn’t make a move without her knowing—not anywhere on this ship. And it was Patent’s guess that the queens knew Leon and his people were boarding this vessel even before they arrived because the Kang were everywhere in their galaxy. They littered space where they lived—outside the Kang Castle worlds. And, the latest realization to hammer Patent’s mind like a club to the back of the head… The way the Kang could ball themselves up and mask themselves as rocks, boulders—like they’d done on Earth at Los Alamos Labs—many of them were no doubt passing themselves off as so much space debris in the same way, possibly even as space dust. That’s how they knew about Leon’s and the rest of the team’s arrival ahead of time onto the Space-Time Alchemist ship, The Whorl. If it was easy enough for the warriors to ball themselves up, how much easier for the spiders? The instant Leon’s UFO got near one of the spider caste, it would have sent its progeny at the UFO; if the spider’s babies were nano-scale they would have been too small to be detected by the UFO’s scanners, especially if their hive mind wasn’t turned on at the time of contact.

  Maybe the Kang Castle worlds hadn’t been this dispersed throughout their galaxy to begin with. But apparently, the destruction of any of those castle worlds caught up in a game of When Galaxies Collide, triggered a failsafe. The smallest specks of dust surviving the impact carried seed intelligence.

  Patent signaled Leon and
Satellite via his nanite neural webs. Satellite would make sure Patent’s message got to Leon, in case Leon was too stressed to read what his nanite COMMS was conveying to him.

  And in the next moment Patent was back in the fight with the Kang queen protecting The Whorl’s chief supersentience for this Dyson sphere.

  He shook off what he just saw like a bad dream.

  What else could he do? It was not his job to yield to shock and awe campaigns, but to get the enemy to.

  FIFTY-THREE

  ABOARD THE SPACE-TIME ALCHEMIST’S SHIP,

  THE WHORL

  Cassandra had to say she enjoyed being in the Kang queen’s head. Her nanites had brought back to her what she needed to know to finalize her morphing. Her initial morph had been facilitated simply by the footage they had on the queen and intel gathered by Mother or one of her alternate timeline affiliates. The initial morph was required to learn enough about the enemy to procure nanites which could possibly pierce the actual Queen’s surface, and then migrate into the mind of the Kang queen, which Cassandra didn’t need to guess would be a lot busier than her own.

  The Kang Queen’s body was created by a much higher concentration of exotic metals than what was used to fortify the more stony bodies of her various other castes, making her that much more unassailable. And her elongated, enlarged cranium, was a crystalline matrix that allowed for a supercomputing and nearly fathomless memory storage versus the smallest slivers of crystal by comparison that served as brains for the Kang drones, and the chicken-egg-sized crystal brains of the Kang Tesla types.

  The queen was connected to everyone in her hive. And she had an ability to transmit distress signals to the other queens, who could then choose to come to her aid by sending some of their hive mates in the form of countless Kang drones.