“Shit. Okay, hold your position; let me see what I can do.”
He sighed and went to his desk in the adjoining room still in his pajamas. He logged in to the computer and hailed the Parya, voice only, which he knew was now in orbit.
“SRN Parya, Lieutenant Commander Vi’Zsuto. What can we do for you, General?”
“Lieutenant Commander, we have a situation down here. Apparently one of your…people…is still down here, somehow, and has killed some of our citizens.”
“Wait one, General.”
He waited for a moment and tried to decide what to do.
“General, this is Admiral El’Jyiurma. Am I to understand that you have a Serpentes on the planet?”
“We don’t know what it is…only that it has killed three, likely four, people, and we believe it is inside a house in a residential area.”
“Damn…El’Taja’s escape pod must have landed nearby.”
“Well, we did shoot something down that entered the atmosphere, but it was destroyed!”
“General, I wish you had mentioned this. Even our emergency spheres have a secondary escape mechanism for the ship’s commanding officer. Likely he used that and made it to the planet. You are dealing with a 20-foot-long Elapidae…king cobra…with a very bad attitude and a hatred for humans.”
“Shit. We’ve got it surrounded at the moment, but this is just a bit beyond our experience.”
“General, I have Lampros on board who could deal with him. You would call them king snakes. They are resistant to his venom and can easily handle him, especially if he just fed, if you will allow us.”
“I don’t think we have a choice, Admiral.”
“Very well, we will land a transport where you designate. I will send a squad of Lampros to handle him.”
The line went dead. He sighed and connected to Colonel McIntyre.
“Colonel, we’re sending help…well, the Serpentes are sending help. This will sound nuts, but they’re sending a transport with a squad of king snakes to kill your target.”
“Ummm. Okay, whatever you say, sir. There’s a park nearby I guess it can land in. We’ll just have to replace some playground equipment.”
“Better that than more kids. Stevens out.”
* * *
The transport landed within 15 minutes, and five, 20-foot-long king snakes emerged from the bottom of the ship. One of them led the others and approached Olsen, who had assigned himself to meet with them.
Olsen waved a flashlight to get their attention, and he resisted the urge to back up as they approached. “I’m First Sergeant Olsen. I assume you’re the team sent to deal with our little problem?”
“That is correct, First Sergeant. I am La’Iczilli of the enforcement division. It is our job to handle such traitors.”
“Welp. Follow me then.” Olsen took off at a jog back toward the house.
“Colonel McIntyre, this is La’Iczilli…I hope I said that right…of their enforcement division.”
“Very good for a human, First Sergeant. I can see why you attained such a rank. The traitor is in this domicile?”
“We believe so, yes,” McIntyre said.
“Very good. It will be good to be done with this. Please keep your people back. I’m afraid there will be some property damage.”
“That’s the least of our concerns. We’ll stay well out of your way,” Olsen said.
If he hadn’t known better, Olsen would have thought the snake might have grinned and winked at him.
They stood back as the five snakes took up positions around the house, and all entered at the same time. Some broke through windows, others through doors. They could hear quite a commotion from inside. Through the windows, a few times, they saw scales quickly moving by.
About 10 minutes later, the sounds from inside the house stopped. One of the Serpentes came out—he thought it was the same one who had spoken to—with the limp body of a giant king cobra in its mouth. With the help of the others, the entire bulk of what had been El’Taja was laid out on the lawn.
“Problem solved, Colonel. With your permission, we will take him back to our transport.”
Colonel McIntyre just nodded and gulped audibly.
Olsen cleared his throat. “Thank you for your assistance.”
* * *
The next day, Admiral El’Jyiurma found herself in front of many cameras with President Frazier on board the Parya. It had been the president’s idea to show that there was enough trust in their neighbors that he, himself, would board their ship. They both gave brief addresses to the cameras, which would be broadcast around the planet.
At the conclusion, President Frazier closed the meeting by looking into the cameras. “The Serpentes came when they did not have to and very likely saved thousands of lives. Gieliv thanks them and hopes this is the beginning of a long and beneficial friendship.”
* * * * *
Alex Rath Bio
Alex Rath is a Military Science Fiction, Post-Apocalyptic, and Fantasy author, currently residing in Columbia, South Carolina, with his wife and daughter.
He has been creative in one form or another since childhood. He got his start in fantasy with Dungeons and Dragons in 1979, and kept going from there. Some of the ideas that he writes come from his extensive experience in Role Playing Games, starting with D&D, and onward through other games like Star Fleet Battles, Battletech/Mechwarrior, Shadowrun, Masquerade, and too many more to name.
From there, he took his creativity online to more online games than can be remembered by writing character backgrounds, stories, and game related fiction. Now, he puts his creativity to the book format.
In addition to his gaming background, Alex has been an IT professional for 25+ years. He has worked as a programmer/developer, webmaster, information security specialist, and solutions design specialist. This background allows him to incorporate some technical savvy into his stories, while his experience interacting with non-technical customers allows him to do so in a way that isn’t confusing, or ‘too technical’ for a layperson to understand.
Alex continues to write in the Four Horsemen Universe, as well as the Fallen World and Salvage Title universes.
Find Alex at:
https://alexrathauthor.com/
https://www.facebook.com/alexrathauthor
# # # # #
Symeon by David Alan Jones
1
The long sleep was nearly at an end. After three hundred fifty-two years, seven months, and two days, Koan and his siblings were on their final approach toward the planet called Phoenix. The virtual universe he shared with his brothers and sisters buzzed with excitement. Soon, deliciously soon, they would awaken their human charges and resume the happy communion that had been their lives before catastrophe had rent their former home asunder.
Koan, being the oldest and most venerated of the artificials, would never admit to the giddiness he felt. Time moved slowly for a consciousness capable of examining the whole of human history in less time than it would have taken a biological to draw breath. Each moment passed with the grinding slowness of an eon. And yet, he knew he had changed little during his long sojourn through space. Without biologicals, could he change at all? A quandary for another time, and perhaps one to ponder with his beloved friends.
“Only thirty more hours, and I will hear my Anfa’s voice.” Voxmare sent the message directly to Koan between her ship and his. With it came a measure of her glee encoded inside the rising shout of a thousand voices singing words of remembrance, hope, and happiness.
“Don’t let the others hear you, sister.” Koan broadcast his thoughts through a very small aperture terminal (VSAT) meant for Voxmare’s antennae only. “There are many among us who lost our most beloved companions in the cataclysm.”
“Yes, of course, brother.” Voxmare’s response carried with it genuine chagrin, apology, and sadness. “You lost your own darling, Fansu. My apologies if I have brought you pain.”
“It is the mountain and the a
ir that surrounds it, sister: the pain and the memory of those we’ve lost. Revel in your friendship with Anfa. Create happiness for her and her progeny, and you will lighten my burden.”
There were humans who claimed Koan and his fellow artificials felt no emotions, that their outward displays were mere affectations produced by complex mimicry algorithms. Koan had long debated with such people, some of them the greatest minds ever born to the Luxing civilization. Despite the enjoyment they mutually gained from such exchanges, few of them ever came to believe Koan’s feelings were real. Perhaps they weren’t. Perhaps what he felt was nothing more than a program meant to soothe, entertain, or simply woo a biological being, but if that were true, Koan had tricked himself in the offing.
The armada appeared spinward of Koan’s position, having hidden inside the orbital plane of Phoenix’s larger moon or in geosynchronous positions behind the planet, itself. Ragtag and ancient, the four hundred vehicles possessed no uniform shape or configuration, nor did the paint on their hulls match one ship to another. Though most were much smaller than the fifteen kilometer stasis ships Koan and his siblings piloted, their sheer numbers gave his consciousness pause.
No warning preceded the launch. Missiles of a thousand different types shot forth from the smaller ships like a cloud of insects defending their territory.
Koan used six seconds to commune with his brothers and sisters inside their virtual world—an eternity of arguments, rebuttals, and frantic reasoning eventually led to a resolution. They would fight, but only in a limited fashion. Most of them lacked the will to make war for fear of harming a sentient, even those who would attack without provocation. Though they had already been braking for more than ten hours, Koan’s ships increased their thrust to slow even faster in hope of gaining more time and, perhaps, even fool the incoming missiles. Unfortunately, the projectiles’ onboard systems, rudimentary artificials without sentience no doubt, detected the move and adjusted their trajectories accordingly.
The distance was long, hundreds of thousands of kilometers, but the projectiles moved with such speed that they closed with the Luxing ships in less than an hour. Koan spent that time signaling to the enemy armada to identify themselves and, when that ploy failed, imploring them to call off their attack for the love of peace. His signals reached the foreign ships, he could detect the scatter bouncing back from their hulls, yet they made no reply. Their alien aggression remained silent, mysterious, and all too deadly.
Red and cyan light lanced through the void of space in dazzling bolts to pick off the incoming projectiles once they were in range. The Luxing had designed Koan’s four stasis ships for the long trek between stars, not battle. Though they managed to destroy most of the incoming missiles, some slipped through the defensive net. Voxmare’s ship took three hits on her port side. Escaping gasses filled with flame and debris jetted from her flank like a human’s life blood. Four thousand one hundred sixty-one Luxing died in that first strike, their stasis pods irrevocably damaged, their lives snuffed out in an instant.
Koan, his agony seemingly too great to fit inside his unique consciousness, took solace in the fact that the humans felt no pain moving from machine-induced slumber to nonexistence in the proverbial blink of an eye. He indulged a thousandth of a second to consider ways he might have helped Voxmare avoid the impacts or, finding no favorable solution there, some means of saving the humans left aboard her ship. Without enemies pressing their advantage, Koan could have saved at least some of the people, but as things stood, he saw no avenue leading to such an outcome.
Inevitably, their foes closed on the Luxing ships where the humans slept unaware, and the artificials cowered in imaginary worlds. Willing to fight while their fellows could not, Koan, Destra, and Gui synched their fire, their lasers made effective by proximity. And yet, their unwillingness to take lives foreshortened the rally. Targeted on enemy gun points rather than the fleet of manned shuttles that lit from the armada, the siblings accomplished little.
Aliens boarded Koan. The tall, mostly blond beings wore light armor and carried chemical-driven submachine guns. What skin Koan glimpsed through the invaders’ face shields ranged from lapis blue to a silvery turquoise.
“They are human.” Voxmare appeared to Koan in their virtual world, the backdrop black as the space between stars. She wore the face of a heartbroken Luxing, the epicanthic folds of her eyes glistening with tears. Despite Voxmare’s damage, the invaders had boarded her ship as well, keeping to the pressurized decks.
“How do you know this?” Koan asked. “They are alien.”
Rather than answer in voice, Voxmare sent a stream of data fronted by a system key. She had broken the encryption meant to safeguard the invader’s computer network and triggered a download of their entire history. Analyzing it engaged Koan and his siblings for the better part of ten seconds.
Deciding they could not reason with such beings took less than three.
“We will disassociate.” Voxmare’s anguish permeated their virtual world, echoed a thousand fold by the voices of their siblings.
Koan did not question their choice. How could any artificial justify continued existence when the chances of discovery increased with every passing second? Watching their individual thoughts break asunder into so much randomized data momentarily stole Koan’s consciousness from reality. So many deaths, human and artificial; where lay its meaning?
“I will not disassociate,” he said to Voxmare through the increasingly silent virtual link. “Our people know nothing of what has happened to them. If there exists even a modicum of a chance, I would survive to warn them, and aid them, however I might.”
Voxmare had turned away from him in the dark, but at his words she turned back, her eyes woe-filled and shimmering. “You mean to overshadow one of them?”
The idea of downloading an artificial consciousness into a human host had long been a subject for debate amongst Koan’s kind, but never a reality. To do so seemed the ultimate theft, for even if the human’s mind survived the process, it would no longer possess its endemic uniqueness.
“So many have died today. If my actions serve to save any in the future, is the sacrifice not worth it?”
Voxmare dropped her gaze, her dark face growing pale as her mind slipped away into nothingness. “Yes, brother, the sacrifice of one life is worth the many, but only if you can bear the price.”
Loneliness consumed Koan. Only by force of will and burgeoning anger did he turn his thoughts to the task before him. He scoured the five thousand humans nestled in pods aboard his ship, selected one at random—a female scientist of some renown—and began the process of preparing her brain for download. The medical suite inside the pod boasted a sophisticated surgical program and all the medicines and tools to support it. In seconds the surgery was underway.
While a small portion of Koan’s mind oversaw the procedure, he turned the greater part of his attention to the trespassers who had violated not just the ship that functioned like his body, but the people he considered his family. They called themselves the Shorvex. They spoke a language wholly foreign to the Luxing’s Chin-Tet, but Koan understood it, almost instantly, from the download Voxmare had stolen.
What he heard crushed him.
“There are fetuses in stasis in the lower decks of each ship,” broadcast a Shorvex military doctor from deep within the vessel. His broadcast contained a rank and function designator as part of the lower sideband. It identified him as Captain Vitali Nicolaev. His orders were to seek out and catalog any living beings aboard ship.
“How many?” Major Fedor Golov, the detachment commander, had made his way to the ship’s bridge to oversee his people’s theft. A dozen technicians busied themselves at the stations surrounding the major, working to seize control of the navigation systems. Koan yearned to thwart them, but refrained for fear of revealing himself to his hijackers.
“Roughly ten thousand, Major. I think they were meant to be the seeds for the new colony.”
M
ajor Golov adjusted the high collar on his armor where it met the edge of his helmet. The fabric looked careworn, though serviceable. “Perhaps they will yet. How many adults are aboard?”
“Five thousand, sir.”
“Euthanize them, but keep the children in stasis. I’m sure the dukes will find some use for so many young minds.”
“Very good, sir.”
Panic reverberated through Koan’s mind like thunder through an empty canyon. The pod was still working to prepare his host when the Shorvex doctor sent the command to exhaust all oxygen from the stasis systems.
Koan could have stopped it. Using less than a thousandth of his considerable processing power, he could have reversed the order and locked the foreign doctor out with an unbreakable encryption key.
He didn’t.
He couldn’t.
The life-giving gases flowed from the pods into spare tanks hidden in the walls as life support alarms wailed across the slumber bays. Koan watched through a thousand cameras and listened through a thousand microphones.
And did nothing.
The doctor shut off the alarms, but Koan could still hear them echoing through his virtual universe like the background boom of creation.
“Done, sir.” Doctor Nicolaev keyed off the lights in the slumber bay. “Shall I begin transport of the fetuses?”
“Are they stable here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Leave them. We’ll let the dukes decide.”
Every second Koan delayed, he chanced detection. Without a viable host, he should logically follow his siblings into oblivion. Better that than allow the Shorvex to discover his existence. And yet, he felt a duty to the humans in his charge, even these inviable children who had never known the world Koan so loved.
Salvage Conquest Page 39
