Quasar

by Philip R Benge

  His war against the Mechanoids was a simple one, for one such as he that is. The first thing that Quasar did was to send the Moranian high command a sample of his own reptilian blood, for he was immune to the disease ravaging their world. The Moranians were astounded to get this gift from heaven, it was just as they were reeling from all of the deaths; and to receive this help seemed to them to prove that god himself had entered the war on their side. Quasar`s reason were not humanitarian though, it just meant that the Moranians were able to stop the plague and so continue the fight against the Mechanoids.

  Then Quasar reconnected the link that he had previously severed, for this would allow him to re-access the super pathway that allowed the commands of the Mechanoids to be sent throughout their realm. However, when Quasar reconnected the severed connection he only allowed outgoing messages to pass through it, but he was able to monitor all the other calls flowing along the pathway.

  Quasar now launched his coup d'état against the Mechanoid leadership, he followed the super pathway, mentally that is, until he was within the inner workings of the central brain of the large super computer. The computer was attached to the supreme leader, and to control it was to control all of the individual Mechanoids. He attacked it much as a computer virus does, and used the limited time he had before the supreme leader attempted to marshal the computer`s defences to send out new orders to the Mechanoid space fleet.

  “The Mechanoid space craft nearest to you has mutinied and is about to assist our enemy, destroy it.” Quasar broke into hysterical laughter as his plans to become the emperor of the galaxy were launched.

  “Die you metal morons.” He screamed out to the empty space around him, for he was back in his Moranian spacecraft and on the way to commence the next part of his plan.

  The Moranian commanders could only look on and wonder just what was happening as the Mechanoid fleet suddenly broke off the attack on them and began to blast their own ships into so much space debris. Before the supreme leader of the Mechanoids could expel him from his systems, many of their spacecraft were destroyed. The Moranian fleet on seeing the Mechanoids stop blasting one another, this was after the Mechanoids had received fresh orders from their supreme leader, then resumed their own attack against what remained of the enemy fleet before them. After a long bloody battle, and when the outcome was always in the balance, they managed to finish off the remaining enemy vessels that had been sent against them, and then what remained of their battered fleet returned to their home world victorious.

  Quasar had also returned to his home planet, albeit covertly, and once there he turned his awesome mental powers upon the Mechanoids that were guarding their headquarters building, for it was here that the supreme leader was to be found. Quasar used his own super charged abilities to enter the brains of those Mechanoids guarding the complex and he quickly reprogrammed them to serve only himself. His first order to them was to follow him into the supreme leader’s council chamber, and he was soon standing before the Golden Mechanoid.

  “What are you waiting for, kill the traitor.” The supreme leader of the Mechanoids screamed in fear, for it seemed that the supreme leader knew the emotion fear. Unfortunately, for him, no not one of his former guards obeyed his orders.

  “Mechanoids stand in a line before your former master, for we are about to give him a grand send off.” Quasar`s voice boomed out around the large chamber. Moments later a line of twenty Mechanoids stood before their former master who could only look on in abject fear.

  “Mechanoids prepare to use your weapons on his Golden Mightiness, when I give the order you will all fire them at his Goldenness.” Quasar screamed out, now almost hysterical.

  “Fire” Quasar screamed.

  Twenty Phaser bolts screamed through the air to explode against the golden Mechanoid, and so the battle was won, for Quasar. Pieces of the fallen leader littered the now silent council hall, the light glinting off them making the room seem a little less austere. Quasar walked up to each piece that was bigger than a cricket ball and taking aim, fired his own weapon at these pieces of the fallen supreme leader until nothing much was left to tell of his ever having been there. Quasar then reprogrammed the super computer so that it obeyed only his orders, the first order that he sent out told of its new allegiance.

  “I, Quasar am now the supreme leader; all will cry hail to me and obey my commands.”

  Quasar smiled as he heard the cry ring out from around the complex. “Hail, Quasar. Hail our new Supreme Leader. Hail, hail, hail.”

  The Moranian race found, against all of their expectations, that they appeared to be winning the war against the Mechanoids, thanks to the unknown help that they had received from Quasar, however, he then proceeded to wage war on them alone. This time he used their telepathic abilities against them, much as he had used the Mechanoids super pathway against the Mechanoids.

  He took his Moranian spacecraft in amidst the Moranian fleet and from there he was able to enter the minds of the crews of the Moranian starships ranged against his own starships, he did this by once again using his starship`s specially adapted sensors to carry his mental message of destruction. Using his awesome powers of mind control he turned the crews against one another, they were powerless to prevent him from accessing their minds, powerless to prevent him from ordering them to attack their friends and comrades, soon their forces were in turmoil. The Admiral of the Moranian space fleet cried out in pain as he saw yet another of his ships destroyed at the hands of one of his own vessels.

  “Why in the name of god was I given a sight of victory, only to have it snatched away so cruelly?” Admiral Rajang asked in despair of ever seeing peace come to his world.

  “We must order our remaining ships to flee Admiral, or soon we will not have a fleet to command.” Captain Malang pleaded; however, Admiral Rajang took too long to come to a decision.

  The Mechanoid starships, ones that had not taken part in the previous battle and so had not been blasted into scrap metal, quickly destroyed all before them, for they were now virtually unopposed and they would soon be attacking the Moranian home world.

  Twenty-four hours later, and with the situation graver than they could ever have imagined, the Moranian high command broadcast a message to all the people of their empire.

  “Citizens of the Moranian Empire, to stop the hysteria that is breaking out across all of our worlds, we are taking an unprecedented step of telling you how we will soon be victorious. We are about to send out a new class of battle cruiser, it will leave on its maiden voyage from the moon above Morania tomorrow morning, the vessel is capable of destroying all of Quasar`s fleet without any assistance.”

  On hearing about this super starship through a Moranian newscast, Quasar, who was a little gullible having only been created a short while ago, decided to launch a surprise attack and capture this new super starship to add to his own fleet.

  Quasar encountered no opposition as he approached the planet Morania, the leading planet of the Moranian federation. The new starship was sitting on the nearside of this moon and Quasar found that he was able to capture the new starship without hardly any land forces there to oppose him.

  What Quasar was unaware of, were all the cameras that had locked on to him ever since he had left his own starship, they had followed his every move and those of the Mechanoids with him.

  “What is a Moranian doing with those tin cans?” Admiral Ménage asked of his officers standing with him in the small command centre one mile away from Quasar.

  “From the way the tin cans are deferring to him, he is not just any Moranian, my god he must be their new leader Quasar.” Captain Renege exclaimed angrily.

  Quasar’s flagship hung in space over the captured starship, its sensors scanning every millimetre of the craft to ensure that it did not contain any unpleasant surprises for him. When he received the all clear from the commander of the flagship, Quasar sent a squad of his Mechanoids aboard the starship to rout out any of its crew. As reports came to
him showing that there was only a small crew aboard the ship, a rather puzzled Quasar proudly stepped aboard the new starship to claim his prize, it was almost as if everything was going too well. However, as soon as the watchers saw him step aboard the vessel, which stood proudly awaiting to begin its inauguration flight, they sent a message which closed the door into the starship and started its engines, until then they had only been operating at a minimum level, the starship now took off. To his dismay, Quasar found that the starship had been prepared for a one-way journey, one that would take him out into inter-galactic space. However hard he tried, he could not stop its progress, for nothing aboard the ship worked apart from the engines, which had been disconnected from even the now defunct computer. Quasar now screamed out in anger.

  “I will not be beaten like this, hear me gods of the universe, nothing will stop me, why I will soon be leading an armada against even your realm.”

  **********

  When the plan to defeat Quasar had first been broached the Moranian high command were adamant on one thing, nothing was to be left in operation that could be used to stop the starship or change its pre-set course. They knew enough about Quasar’s capabilities not to take any chances whatsoever. As for the loyal Moranians killed by the Mechanoid attack, both around the starship as well as aboard it, they accepted the loss of these troopers as a small price to pay if it won them the war.

  The people of this war torn area in space celebrated when their leaders` plan to expel Quasar from their galaxy succeeded, but their celebrations were short lived for now they took the time given to them to mourn for all of their people who had died either in battle, or from the terrible plagues that had swept cross their planets.

  The rest of the Mechanoid fleet sat in space waiting for new orders to arrive, however, the spacecraft carrying Quasar out into inter-galactic space did not have any communication devices or working scanners, they had been disabled to prevent Quasar calling for help. A small machine down in engineering was working perfectly; it jammed all electromagnetic waves and prevented him or his squad of Mechanoids from contacting their forces by any other means possible to them.

  The Moranian civilisation had managed to expel Quasar, as he was relatively inexperienced in the ways of subterfuge; he vowed to correct this fault within him. It was during his tenth year in inter-galactic space that Quasar began to realise that he had an unknown life span, his creators had not intentionally built this into him, and it was just one of the mistakes they made when they created him. Unfortunately, for the universe, his life span proved to be one bordering on the infinite, barring fatal accidents.

  **********

  During the initial part of the trip Quasar turned off all but the essential systems on his starship, this was to manage his power resources, in this way he eked out the power and hoped that it would last until a planet came into sight. This in turn meant that the temperature inside much of his space craft was the same as outside in the vacuum of space, he had a free cryogenic unit, one in which he intended to survive in for most of the journey, oblivious to the boredom of inter-galactic space travel. However, his knew that his organic host might still die during the latter part of his voyage and so he adapted one of the Mechanoids for his personal use, one that would provide him with his daily needs. The only departments running on his spacecraft was engineering for power and the ships sensors which he managed to repair by using pieces taken from equipment no longer operating on the rest of the ship, and also from some of his Mechanoids. The sensors though were a simple affair, all they did was to scan the electromagnetic spectrum and when they found radio signals coming from an intelligent life form they were to awaken him from his cryogenic sleep.

  He drifted through the voids of space for eons, and during this long expanse of time, Quasar went completely insane, and as he was homicidal towards any intelligent life form already, this made him an extremely dangerous being.

  Finally, caught by the gravitational pull of the Milky Way galaxy, he arrived in a quadrant of space governed by the Regan Empire. Here he awoke to find he had arrived in an area of space ruled by another organic civilisation, one that was very similar to the one that had consigned him to the utter loneliness of inter-galactic space. Quasar was now very weak, but he managed to escape his prison ship in a maintenance pod, and then to attach it to a Regan shuttlecraft that was heading down to the planet of Purgatory.

  Purgatory, so called because here the forces of nature ruled with a terrifying strength, was a miserable planet where the wind blew almost constantly while the sun glared down on anyone foolish enough to venture outside of their shelter. The planet had a slightly greater mass than Earth; this made its Herculean inhabitants stronger than those of Earth size planets. Its people soon acquired a tan that the wind and the sun insured became permanent, and this marked them out to the people of the other planets of the Regan Empire. The winters were even worse than the short hot summers. During the long cold winters its people were afflicted by the cruel cold wind that blew remorselessly down from the icy northern regions of the planet where tall mountains stood majestically looking forever southwards. Here great glaciers rolled on down towards a world of icy waters and frozen tundra. A hardy people lived on Purgatory, they mined for the minerals that powered the Regan starships that ruled the galaxy and ensured that peace would reign here forever.

  Quasar’s spacecraft was seen as it approached Purgatory, however, the Regan Empire was at peace and so no one asked its business. It was pulled down into the atmosphere by the gravity of the planet where it burnt up along with the few remaining Mechanoids still functioning, a search for survivors was made later that day but nothing was found, although the crew of the shuttle did later wonder about the maintenance pod attached to their shuttle.

  After the shuttlecraft had landed at its tiny spaceport, Quasar crawled away in his Mechanoid body, itself low on power, to search out any small unintelligent animal that he could find. He needed one so that he could drain its life force and in doing so re-energise his mind. He was content to live off a succession of such animals while he was still weak, however, on getting his strength back he began to watch and observe a much higher level of life form.

  He soon found a man who was not only telepathic to a certain extent, as all Regans were, but one that also had strong psychic powers. Regans were only supposed to use their telepathic ability if permission was granted; good manners forbid them to use it otherwise. However, Quasar was not a well-mannered individual. The man awoke from a peaceful sleep and screamed, for Quasar had just sent one of his tentacles through into the man’s brain, and that was the last thing the man ever felt. Once here, Quasar took over his brain, much as Quasar was designed to do, and then he moved his own mind into the Regan`s brain. Quasar had positioned his body at the top of the man’s back, his powerful sucker easily holding it there. His own small body was hidden underneath the man’s clothing, while one of his tentacles went up through the man’s long hair and into his brain. It could not be seen, as on Purgatory everyone always wore some form of headgear to keep out the elements. His former Mechanoid body he took with him as a keepsake, it was to remind him not to trust organics ever again. Quasar stood up and stretched, it was good to be back inside an organic life form again, to feel emotions again, to plan his return to power.

  “Gods of the universe listen well, I am back, and soon I will be hammering on your gates so take heed and treat me well or suffer the consequences.” Quasar screamed out. All around him the wild life of Purgatory quietened, nothing could be heard except the cruel wind that blew forever through the darkness of the terrible world of Purgatory.

  Chapter Two

  The War against the Regan Empire

  Five years had passed since Quasar had arrived on the planet Purgatory, five intense years of planning at first, then infiltrating and finally declaring war upon the mightiest empire within the known galaxy. The empire had been weakened even before he had made his presence known to the people of the
Regan Empire. Viruses, made by Regan scientists who were under the mind control of Quasar, had been sent to ravage the planets and many had died before a vaccine was found that would protect the populace. However producing enough of the vaccine to send out to all of the planets of the empire took time, and it was while they were occupied with this that Quasar had commenced the second phase of his attack. After just six months of war, in which Quasar had won every battle, the empire was showing signs of collapse.

  One thing that Quasar soon found out, the Regan people were stronger willed than the Moranians, he could not simply use his sensors to access their minds, initially he needed to get up close to gain control of them. However, this had not prevented him from winning the many battles he had waged against them.

  Today, Quasar stalked around the bridge of the space cruiser Andromeda, he had captured this magnificent vessel from the Regan Empire during the first major space battle of the war. Once more, he was fighting against the Regan space fleet, this time it was to decide the fate of the people of Emanuel, a planet twenty-seven light years away from Rega, and once more, he was winning the battle. The bridge of the Andromeda was suddenly lit up when the Regan space cruiser Remus exploded in a brilliant flash of light, killing all of its crew; it really had not had a chance, for it had been attacked by four of Quasar’s space cruisers. Quasar smiled as he felt the telepathic screams of the many dying men in this small area of space, for he thought, their voices were always especially loud at this point in their short dreary lives.

  Captain Odessa was the captain of the Andromeda; before he was captured by Quasar, he had enjoyed his fifteen years in the Regan space corps, although now he hardly looked to be the captain of a starship. Odessa’s face showed the strain that he was under; he looked as if he had given up on life itself, rather than someone who was winning the battle for the conquest of the galaxy. His whole appearance looked decidedly worn and wasted, his clothing hung from his body testifying to the amount of weight that he had shed since his capture and conversion to the will of his new master, his face gaunt and pale, his eyes red an rather dull looking. He seemed oblivious to everything except the wishes of Quasar, but a part of his mind took in all that was happening, unfortunately, he could do nothing except what Quasar wanted. The terrible feeling of guilt that filled his mind would soon make him ill equipped to fulfil even this meagre desire, then he would be replaced by a Mechanoid. If only he could remember why he felt so guilty, what had he been a part of that made him feel this way? For the memories of Quasar’s unwilling slaves were so terribly short, all they felt was the unending pain of guilt. This alone was enough to convince them of the terrible things that they had done.