“This is nothing special, there are many wayward planets in this galaxy,” Braac countered, clearly not impressed.
“It’s not the planet; it’s what on the planet that piqued our interest. Look closer.”
Another image appeared showing the remains of a ship that was buried nose first into the dead soil of the lost planet.
“The design is not familiar to me,” Braac stated, a little curiosity in his voice.
“Nor should it be,” Puar said definitively, changing the position in which he was sitting. “It’s a design we’ve never seen before because it’s over thirty thousand years old.”
That piqued his interest and he stopped at mid sip of his drink, raising his white eyebrows. “The Founders?”
“We think so,” Puar agreed. “Well, actually we know so at this point.”
“Explain,” Braac said cordially.
“Okay, this is the part where things get a little sticky.”
“If by ‘sticky’ you mean why you never shared this information with us, I’m sure we will get to that soon,” Braac remarked, achieving simultaneously, both cordial and menacing tones. “But, please…continue.”
Puar’s jaw twitched almost imperceptibly; it was already going south. “Right. Anyway, Sibrex and my brother were able to hack the computer and download a significant amount of data including a galactic map of the Unknown Regions, the location of a weapons cache, an energy source that, until recently—”
“A weapons cache?” Braac cut in again, his anger just below the surface.
“Yes,” Puar said with a sigh. “A sizable fleet of ships close to that design.”
“Am I to assume that all this information will be made available to me?”
“Well, yes. That’s why I’m sharing it.”
“Then, please, cut to the part where you thought it was a good idea to keep us in the dark,” Braac said angrily. “Especially now that you’ve mentioned something about a weapons cache!”
“How many reasons do you want?” Here it came. This was going to be ugly.
“I would say that I am inclined to hear all of them.”
“Okay,” Puar said with Ti’tan’lium in his voice. “As I’m sure you’re already aware, my administration isn’t exactly airtight. So I had to assume that you had same problem—”
“Which we don’t,” Braac snapped incredulously.
“Which I have seen no proof of,” Puar shot back. “Having your underground pockets of resistance find out about it would have started a bloody race all the way there. In all honesty, a lot of fingers were being pointed at Sibrex. He has since been cleared of this. And to be honest—”
“That would be a welcome change,” Braac growled.
“To be honest,” Puar didn’t skip a beat, “only a handful of people in my administration knew about it and didn’t even know if it existed until a few weeks ago when I had a disinterested third party go look. And, frankly, with the situation between us degrading as quickly as it was, and more than half of my navy out looking for a new home for your people, I was skeptical that we would be able to defend ourselves.”
“Hm,” Braac said, thumbing his chin. “It takes a lot to admit weakness.”
“It’s the truth. We are vulnerable right now. I have a lot of the navy coming back to defend Seryys right now. But—”
“And where are General Khail and Admiral Sibrex?”
For the first time, Puar’s face fell out of its politician perfection. “I don’t know. We lost contact with them when the Sixth Fleet was lost.”
“What do you mean by ‘lost’?”
“Obliterated,” Puar said sadly.
“By whom?”
“The same people who destroyed that star system on the slideshow. They call themselves the F’Rosians.”
“That is quite a feat to destroy an entire fleet. How many ships do they possess?”
“We’re not entirely sure,” Puar answered candidly. “It was chaos when they attacked, but we think less than ten. We know for a fact that we took down one ship, but any more than that…” he let the sentence trail off with a shrug.
“And how did you encounter these… F’Rosians?”
“When we went to procure the weapons cache,” Puar answered. “They simply jumped into the system shortly after arriving ourselves. I can show you the footage we have, that was sent by the Founders’ Pride up until the attack came. Anything after that is mostly chaos until Admiral Weller sent the distress signal and attached a recording of the events leading up to the attack.”
“So allow me sum this up: a highly-advanced race with seemingly unlimited power is coming to destroy your entire solar system because you went behind our backs to procure ancient, highly-advanced ships to possibly use against us. So why do you brings this to the table now?”
“Is it not obvious?” Puar asked, confused. “Once they’re done with us, do you really think they’ll stop there?”
“Perhaps,” Braac said coldly. “We are nomadic—thanks to your people, I might add. Our home colony can be moved by a ship with a hauling beam. We could evade them for years, possibly indefinitely.”
“Is that really a chance you want to take? I mean, so far they’ve been able to track each spysat transmission to the next. It’s only a matter of time before they get here and when they do, there will be little to stop them. They will destroy us and then find you.”
“I will have to confer with Chuumdar. He will not be pleased with any of this news and I suspect that he will have our ships withdraw to Vyysarri Space where we will gather in numbers and ready ourselves for a fight.”
“It’s your choice, of course. But I would like to share one more thing with you before you go.”
“And what is that?”
Puar clicked the device again. The image of a ship appeared. At first, Braac was unimpressed until he caught glimpse of the nose of the enormous ship. Cerys II was printed there.
“It can’t be…” he gasped.
“Oh, it can, and it is,” Puar said. “We have confirmed with a hundred percent certainty that the ships belonged to our ancestors, the Founders. We hypothesize that the Cerys I was lost sometime before the F’Rosians destroyed their solar system.”
“These people destroyed our forbearers!” Braac whispered, stunned. Then, he regained his composure. “This will not change Chuumdar’s decision, though, I imagine.”
“Maybe not, but he can’t deny the fact that these people are dangerous.”
“I will return with an answer shortly.” With that, he left the office.
Puar could only imagine what Chuumdar was going to say. He prepared for the worst. He keyed in Ryynaall’s com ident.
“Ryynaall,” he said in crisp military proper.
“It’s Puar,” he said. “Mobilize the First, Second and Third Fleets; bring them home. I have a feeling we’re gonna need them.”
“Is everything okay, sir?” there was actual concern in his voice.
“Hardly, Admiral. I have a bad feeling about this.”
Vor’l sat on the bridge of his ship. His ancestor’s memories flowing through his head like a great river, remembering the Alpha Centaurians and their last stand. They had fought valiantly, bravely, honorably… and that was their downfall. The F’Rosians held no code. Their only directive was to win by any means necessary… and won they did. They scattered an entire race of people into the solar winds. However, life finds a way and the Alpha Centaurians, though extinct, were able to spread their seed to distant star systems. There they rebuilt an empire, a tower dedicated to their greatness. But like any tower, it was nothing without a strong foundation. That foundation was the Seryys Star System. Destroy their foundation and the rest would crumble and fall.
They had tracked the last transmission to empty space. There, they found another communication satellite. They waited for it to transmit, traced the transmission and then destroyed it. He knew they were getting close, he could feel it.
If their po
wer was fully displayed by the fleet of ship they destroyed at Alpha Centauri, it would be a quick and decisive victory. Though the only thing that was tugging at his mind is what they were doing there. They claimed to be explorers, but explorers would not bring an entire fleet of ships, nor would they send ships into the asteroid field. Just in case, he left two ships behind to monitor the area. They dared not send a ship into the asteroid field; the constant drift made it extremely difficult to navigate and it would take days, if not weeks, to search the whole thing. If the ships went in, they would come out eventually or die in there.
Still, the signal coming from within the asteroid field, which was what drew them there in the first place, was perplexing him. Was it a distress signal? Was it a homing beacon? The more he thought about it the worse he felt about it.
“Communications?” he called out.
“Sir?”
“Send a transmission to the Devastator. Tell them to go into the asteroid field and find the source of the transmission. I feel that we are missing something in there.”
“Yes, Alpha!” A moment passed. “Receiving transmission. They report that all is quiet at the moment, but they will venture into the asteroid field to investigate.”
“Good. Tell them to send bi-hourly reports.”
“Acknowledged.”
“Helm!” Vor’l called out again.
“Alpha?”
“Do we have coordinates for the next jump?”
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“Good. Set a course and make the jump as soon as the drives are primed.”
“It will be done.”
A moment later, they were back in real space.
“My Alpha, I have detected a ship,” the tactical officer barked.
“Analysis.”
“It is heavily armed but of a different design than the Seryysan ships encountered at Alpha Centauri.”
Vor’l looked out through the main viewer with disdain. “Destroy it—no, wait!” Vor’l leaned forward on his seat, thumbing his chin. “Disable it. Then send a team of hunters. We’ll take the ship and rip any information we can.”
Finally! Khai thought. It had been a long week and half, but the day of reckoning was at hand! The ships were ready for launch. Though they couldn’t take the dry dock with them, they had the ships and through very basic maneuvers in the cramped space of the clearing within the asteroid field, the slave link seemed to be working. The Splitter’s and the Bucket’s computers were taxed to their limit, processing the millions of processes to run fifty plus capital ships.
“Joon, are we ready?”
There was a long delay then, “Yes, Khai. All ships are responding and ready for orders.”
“Now, Sibrex wanted me to warn you,” Puar explained. “Nothing too fancy, just basic maneuvers. You’ll fry both computers if you start ordering individual ships with advanced tactics. If the Cerys fires on a ship, they’ll all fire on the same ship. If she makes a jump out of system, the others will follow. Get it?”
“Got it,” Khai said, sitting in the main hold of the Bucket. So much for his preprogrammed tactics…
They had converted the main hold into a makeshift bridge of sorts. There were individual computers set up in a circle. Each computer controlled a different system, one for tactical, one for flight control, communications, etc… They picked Dah’s ship because it simply had a bigger main hold than the Splitter. The Star Splitter and the Bolt Bucket were physically linked by a high-capacity conduit to allow the whole crew to be in one place, and no signal degradation to allow the fastest processing speeds possible. The engineering teams were stationed on the Cerys bridge and in the engineering room, to deal with any major problems if a fight ensued—and Khai knew there would be because he would’ve left a few ships behind just in case. There was also a team on the Splitter that could bounce between the two ships should one of them have an issue.
“How do you propose we escape the asteroid field?” Sibrex said as he entered the main hold after making some final adjustments.
“With style,” Khai said. “Full intensity fire straight ahead. We’re blasting our way out. Once we’ve cleared a big enough path, reverse fire and destroy the station. We can’t have that kind of tech falling to the wrong hands, F’Rosian or any other.”
“Got it,” Dah called out from his computer.
“Helm, ahead one quarter sublight.”
“Ahead one forth,” Puar called out.
“It’s time to save Seryys again, boys!” Khai boomed.
Chapter Four
Brawl flew over Seryys City, it was deserted. Smoke still billowed from fires all over. There were remnants of survivors here and there. Big signs on the roofs of buildings that simply read “help” or “survivors” could be seen from above. He knew that Puar was sending small S&R (search and rescue) teams down into the quarantine zone to evac the last pockets of survivors. That had been going on for the last week or so, but he had no idea about the success rate, nor did he really care. He only cared about the paycheck coming his way!
Using the infrared scanners through his ship’s sensor package, he was able to easily spot the Reapers as they writhed about, eating whatever they could find… including each other. As he flew about, he set his sensors to ping any Reaper larger than seven feet tall. The chances of finding a mutated Reaper that size were high. He had not decided whether he was going to drop down in the city or fly out to the wooded areas along the outskirts, or even in the plains further out toward Tanbarder.
Regardless, his plan was simple. Swoop down and, using his Gatling gun filled with tranquilizer rounds, subdue a big fella. Then, using the net missile supplied by the good Prime Minister, wrap him up and haul him off.
Easy as boxing a blind, deaf guy.
His jaw dropped as he saw the number of pings popping up on his HUD. There were literally hundreds of them in his immediate area. He need only pick a direction and fire. Apparently, they were all mutating. He spotted a pinkish Reaper, fresh from mutating. He lined up the crosshairs, swooped low and opened fire. Dozens of hypo rounds pelted the monster’s skin and stuck, delivering their sedating contents. The Reaper faltered only once then kept running as if nothing had happened.
“Hm,” he murmured, swooping around for another pass. The same Reaper took another volley of hypo rounds—enough to bring down a heard of Dron’Jawks—hulking, four-legged beasts with horns and an ability to store large amounts of water that roamed the deserts of Seryys—and that second time around it didn’t even register an injury, just kept on going.
“Well, that’s interesting,” Brawl said with surprise. “I’ll have to do this the hard way, I reckon.”
He brought the Brawler to a hover hundreds of feet above the city. Only then did he realize that there was other movement in the city below. He didn’t notice at first because he was searching for high heat signatures and at the speed at which he was traveling, he wouldn’t have seen much else. Now, he could see other movement. There were thousands of cold spots on the infrared spectrum, colder than the air around them by several degrees, sluggishly meandering about.
“What the hell…” he whispered. “Brawler, scan the area directly below us. Identify the cold spots on infrared.”
“Unable to identify. No bio reading available.”
“I wonder if one of the automaton manufactures set loose their sentries to help clean up the streets.”
“That hypothesis is not likely,” Brawler interjected.
“Explain.”
“I am detecting no power source from any of them.”
“I reckon we’ll have to go down there and see what they are, then.”
Brawl lowered his ship to an elevation of thirty feet. From that vantage point, he could see people! The cold spots were people! It was only sick, morbid curiosity that made him bring the ship a little lower to get a good close look. Through the canopy, he saw these “people.” He couldn’t believe what his eyes were telling his brain! The first perso
n he saw was a woman, maybe in her early thirties, with what should have been a fatal slashing wound diagonally down across her chest. Her ribs, muscles, and organs were visible through these gouges in her flesh. He skin had the very unnatural gray color to it, and it was as if she was staring past him, not at him. The next person was an elderly man with the same gray coloration but with half of his face torn off revealing the edge of his eye socket, the whole left side of his jaw—with teeth, a cracked skull and all the ligaments and tendons that held everything together. The sight was so horrifying that it stunned this war-hardened veteran into paralysis.
The next thing he knew his ship was rocked hard and started spinning out of control. Dozens of little alarms starting buzzing in the cockpit as sparks and smoke filled the small space. As he spun, he caught a glimpse of a colossal Reaper roaring at him as he spun wildly away. Brawl jerked on the yoke to try bringing the ship back under control, but was having no luck. The Brawler spun toward a large high-rise and he cursorily thought about all those signs begging for help, and now he was going to be one of them. Suddenly, he really, really cared about those Spec Ops teams doing evacs for the civilians.
“Not exactly how I expected to spend my weekend,” he said just before his ship crashed sideways into the building.
Prime Minister Puar stood tall, sweat dripping down his back where it was stopped by the waistband of his slacks. Chuumdar was due to call any minute with his decision. He knew that if Chuumdar decided to attack, it was all over for them. If he chose to stay out of it, it was all over for them. The only good outcome would be if Chuumdar offered his assistance to fight this new threat. It was bleak, no doubt about it.
Braac strolled in, his hand clasped behind his back, his chin held high. Cocky bastard, isn’t he, Puar mused. “Braac,” he said with a cordial nod.
“Prime Minister,” Braac returned the gesture. “Shall we proceed?”
“Yeah, let’s get this over with.”
“Control room, this is Braac, open the channel to the Prefect’s office.”
The Seryys Chronicles: Steel Alliance Page 5
