CYNTHIA
EMPRESS OF THE STARS
By James Patrick Warner
The McDowell Saga Book 2
Copyright © 2018 by JPW Publishing all rights reserved
Clearwater, Florida USA
Cover Art by Ariel Hales Copyright © 2018
Table of Contents
Chapter 1.
Chapter 2.
Chapter 3.
Chapter 4.
Chapter 5.
Chapter 6.
Chapter 7.
Chapter 8.
Chapter 9.
Chapter 10.
Chapter 11.
Chapter 12.
Chapter 13.
Chapter 14.
Chapter 15.
Chapter 16.
Chapter 17.
Chapter 18.
Chapter 19.
Chapter 20.
Chapter 21.
Chapter 22.
Chapter 23.
Chapter 24.
Chapter 25.
Chapter 26.
Chapter 27.
CYNTHIA
EMPRESS OF THE STARS
The McDowell Saga Book 2
Copyright ©2018 James Patrick Warner,
all rights reserved
Cover Design ©2018 by Ariel Hales
Chapter 1.
The Scoutship Silver Hornet
“Captain, keep your finger on that firing button! I’m not going to slow down. We are heading for the surface at near warp speed, my nose canons are white hot. Our cabin temperature is hot as an oven. A planet buster sphere is racing toward us, molten drips of metal blowing away from it in the atmospheric friction. Here it comes. It’s in range!” My giant capacitors roared in their mounts against my outer shell and the laser cables flashed a thousand times per second screaming beyond Caryn’s and Meph’s hearing.
“Caryn, fire my damn starboard guns NOW!” I didn’t wait for her command.
I let go the built-up charge and blew the humongous sphere into a billion melted drops of black metal eventually slamming into the planet. My gun emplacement track was warped and stuck. They would fire but not rotate. I managed to get the dual weapons to move with a lot of grinding, superheated titanium adding more hell raining onto sparse trees, our own cloud of molten metal raining death on the island.
“Move the ship to port with a s-s-short jump so I can target the Enemy weapons,” Meph said, his excitement causing him to slur his words a bit.”
“On my mark, Sassy jump us to port a few yards with the starboard thrusters.”
“Aye-aye, Captain.”
I looked to port and saw two enemy ships heading straight for us firing. Their blasts mostly missed, but one hit our nose melting the comm antenna. That hurt! I turned the port cannon on them and blew them out of space just as Caryn yelled “JUMP!” I jumped into the debris field and my skin was peppered with flaming globs of debris. “Ouch! Ouch! That hurts!!”
Meph used his waveslide reflector to scoop a mile deep gouge under the Pirate planetary weapons and that set off a huge volcano that erupted throwing their weapons and factories thousands of feet into the sky. A mile of rock, magma and dirt followed the Pirate ships and liquid metal scrap thrusting up toward us. “It might blow up.” I thought.
“Get us out of here!” Caryn yelled.
“Yes sir!” I yelled back into our comm system. I sent an electronic sensor beam throughout the ship noting the starboard gun emplacement frozen in position then jumped us thousands of miles from the destroyed planet to the back side of one of its moons.
“Starship SS455Y to base. Come in base. Mayday, Mayday. Have taken heavy fire engaging Pirate Base in system M-9171884. Planet is destroyed. Fuel at 50%. Weapons at 20%. Awaiting orders.”
“I don’t get any bounce back signal from Base, Captain. Sensor sweep of the ship indicates starboard gun emplacement frozen, pointing 20 degrees starboard. Comm system antennas are damaged or missing.”
“We can still fly and shoot,” she answered.
The Pirate fleet seemed to lose some of their enthusiasm after the ruination of their construction base. We sat still, everything shut down as we orbited near a small moon in the system. My weapons and shields were way over heat spec and we radiated almost in the visible light range. Nobody wanted to come out and play. I counted almost a thousand Pirate star ships and over 150 large planet busters now scrap in the enemy’s system. About two thousand Pirate ships escaped. They scattered and I did not find any particular destinations.
Chapter 2.
Sassy’s Last Battle
“Sassy, did you repair the hyperspace transceiver?
“Yes, sir.”
“Report in our location and the sit rep here.”
“Yes sir. The Enemy does not seem to be aware of the near-by Parent base.”
“Starship SS455Y reporting arrival at the Pirate Base on Planetary system P009992. They are not at present aware of our reconnaissance. One moon heavily fortified, the second moon has no enemy installations.”
At this moment I could not sense the location of the two thousand enemy ships that had abandoned the battle as we destroyed their repair base. But what I couldn’t sense because of damage was that those thousands of enemy ships had recovered their command and organized a plan to destroy us. Or specifically me. They were over the shock of our vicious attack and the immense destruction of our weapons on their equipment and the planet. They survived. It was like attacking a hornet’s nest without killing all the insects, and they were extremely, completely furious.
Their plan was quickly formed. They would attack us from two sides with amassed weapons to overwhelm our defenses. Much like our sudden and massive attack against them, they knew ultimately the sheer numbers of their fleet would eventually find a way to destroy us.
With their base destroyed none of them gave any thought to retreat, repair or stopping to regroup. It was total assault, unwavering and constant. It was a slaughter. The slaughter of me.
If the Pirates had wavered or paused to regroup we might have had a chance. They did not. Two thousand ships became one thousand. Then six hundred – still the Pirates came in spite of their massive losses. Then two hundred. Many, many Pirates died in that battle. But not all of them. The space in that star system was as hazardous from bits of destroyed star ships as it was from the forces of the battle. We held out for hours but eventually Meph’s waveslide reflector was destroyed and the few remaining Pirate ships began using me for target practice.
We were within the orbit of Repair Station 142 but the Pirates had destroyed the entrance and tunnel we had used to enter the station before. I had nowhere to go. My Captain and Meph had to leave and try for a landing somewhere on the planet below us. It was hopeless, but I was being riddled by energy beams. For some reason my bio-containment field still held, protecting my biological systems – but for how long? It was time to call for help – and pray.
Chapter 3.
Salvation.
“Mayday, Mayday, Brainship SS455Y to Hamarab… anyone who can hear my voice. We are under attack by a fleet of Pirate ships, outgunned and low on fu… need assistance. Comm channels jammed, am I getting through? Drive unit inop. Engines gone…”
“Mayday, Mayday, I can’t open the cargo bay. The Pirates have blown a hole in my drive unit. No engine sensors operating. Please help, no rear sensor input. Mayday, Mayday, Captain McDowell took the lander. Biological containment sealed. I expect to be killed in moments. Captain needs help. Mayday, Mayday.”
A powerful beam of energy hits my nose and wraps around part of my bridge. No idea what it is! There are colored fields of energy all around my front. They tickle. Something is detachi
ng my nose from the rest of my body. Who is it? What is it? I’m being dismembered! Around my environmental unit the energy beam is changing to a translucent gold color. “I’m completely helpless. Few sensors still active. The lander is shot full of holes, crashing toward the planet with the Captain inside!” “Mayday!!”
“Caryn! Caryn!!!!” None of my comm channels are working! I am mute.
I hear a soothing voice, “It’s okay, Sassy. It’s okay. You are being taken to safety. We will protect you. We are guarding Caryn and you will be safe in moments. You and Caryn have a great deal to discuss. We will help you. Go to sleep now, daughter, while we transfer you to a waiting area.”
‘Was this one of the Parents talking to me? How was this possible without my comm system?’ I thought. In a confused state of mind I fell asleep – something that had never happened in the twelve years since I had become a Scoutship.
Chapter 4.
The Pudding
Where was I? I couldn’t see, I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t talk, I wasn’t a starship any more. I couldn’t even cry about it!
“You are in storage. You will have your new body in moments.”
“Who are you?” I thought. Well this was something, anyway. One ghost to another.
“We are the Parents.”
And with that mysterious statement I began to wake up. It was really weird. I was not in a huge powerful metal body. I didn’t recognize what my sensors were relaying. I didn’t have any engines, any warp drive, any energy cannons. Was I a pudding? I searched around this pudding I was in and located something that resembled sensors. I tapped into a comm channel and Holy Smokes! I was flooded with sensations, images, even feelings. It was a total confusion. But I did realize I was not a pudding. There were sense channels that I might be able to harness and turn into some kind of sensor array. But it was all a varying sense of different hardnesses. Nothing solid like my titanium skin had been. I discovered I had two manipulation systems that I could control. In the midst of my discoveries I began receiving a humongous download. It was like when I got the technical specifications of my original Scoutship body. Just a never-ending stream of technical data about my new body. I would have to sort it, catalogue it, and analyze the various functions of this pudding.
“Wait!!!” I yelled. The data stream stopped. “What is all this? I don’t recognize any of it!”
“This is the operating system for your new body. It is auto-correcting. Just relax.” That voice again. I didn’t understand.
In a few moments the data stream began again but this time it was mostly moving images. And these images had other sensor data that I could understand. I did what the Voice said and relaxed. Slowly the pudding I was inhabiting gained meaning for me. There were sensory inputs of all the biological systems starting with my bones, then my organs, then my muscles and nerve channels. Slowly it became understandable. It was fantastic! So complex, but so wonderfully complete! I thought it was like a human.
I began to awaken from a heavy sedative. I could feel and wiggle my toes – “toes? I have toes? I don’t have toes, I’m a scout ship. The Captain has toes. She paints them red. Why is that? I want to paint… my… toes…” The Captain owns an entire star system. I own some toes. “Crap!” And I half dosed off. I felt constant changes, as if I really was some kind of pudding.
The system activation continued through my legs, my groin (oh wow! That was a surprise!), my stomach, my heart which began motion, pumping fluid (blood?) around and through everything.
I gasped as the lungs began working, then my brain was irrigated, and I was alive, not as a machine intelligence but as a person – like the Captain. Where is the Captain?
I began receiving memory input – a hell of a lot of input. First, the captain’s lives were downloaded into some sort of field, maybe a quantum field. Then my own memory input as a Scoutship flooded in. I raised my hands up to a head. I felt hair there. I gently rubbed the head to ease the sensation of being stuffed like a turkey. Turkey – I remembered sitting around a dining table with other people with a stuffed turkey, complete with the taste of the dressing and the gravy. Were these images from my childhood? There was the table with my loving parents before they died – before I died? Was that my older sister at the table with us? She looks just like the captain! I was just a child then. I cried quite a while as childhood memories flooded in, tears I had never been able to express as a Scoutship. I was not yet ready to confront the car accident that killed everyone but my sister and me as it turned out, or the many weeks of operations needed to implant what remained of “me” into a Scoutship.
As I became more fully awake, I heard the Parents tell Caryn to leave the tent we were in. I opened my eyes to watch her. I wiggled my toes again, thinking I might like to try walking. I lifted my right leg off the bed.
“No, daughter, your body is not yet ready.”
The appropriate word came to my mind immediately – something my Captain would say:“Bullshit!” I thought to myself, longingly watching my Captain walk away, but I waited another hour until I couldn’t stand it anymore.
I turned on my side and slid off the bed. I was pretty wobbly on the new legs. But, there were my toes down there, on my feet, planted firmly on the floor. I took a few steps, for the first time and how many years, grasping onto the bed and a chair for support. In moments I was steady enough to go in search of my Captain, my sister!
A comm system was implanted in what I surmised was my brain and I was instantly connected to it. I stopped worrying about how all this was happening. I could feel and wiggle my toes – “toes? I do have toes!”
I had 3D maps of this planet in my memory but where the hell was I? Nothing from my scans as a Scoutship gave me any info on where I was or where Caryn might have gone off to. But the warm breeze on my skin through the doorway teased me to set out, with or without a plan to find my Captain.
I was able to access a map of the area in better detail from the lander, still in the planet for repair. I decided to go to the highest local point so I could get a better view and perhaps see Caryn. There was no trail. Of course, stupid, it’s a virgin world! I thought. I walked along a rocky streambed, then began climbing rocks toward a peak with large flat rocks. I thought it would be a good vantage point to look for her.
About half way to the peak I fell and skinned my knee. My toes were covered with dirt. Ow! Damn! I said out loud. My first words. I laughed. But being naked, I was easy prey to any rocks, thorns or other painful things. No space armor, no exploration suit. What the hell was I thinking? Not even any shoes, pants, anything. I was a virgin explorer on this virgin world. I realized I was going to pay dearly for my lack of vision.
I stood at a spot surrounded by rocks from which I could see Caryn sitting with her back against a large flat rock face, surveying the sunset. I stopped and rested with my hand on a rock that hid me from her until ants began walking on my fingers. I brushed them off but their bites turned into red welts. I stepped out from cover and Caryn jumped up, ready to attack. But she recognized my body the next second from her first view of it and relaxed, eyeing me over, my lack of clothes creating many questions in her mind, I was sure.
“So you are the mystery woman from the Parents. What’s your name?” She walked up to me and shook my hand. I stumbled on the rock and she caught me. In that moment’s electric touch I was bound to her forever. Memories of her flooded me and I realized she actually was my sister. How to tell her? How could she even imagine the brain in her brainship was actually the sister she thought was long since dead?
Captain - Karen, it’s me, Sassy ‘err’ or Cynthia. I guess that’s my name, Cynthia. I don’t know what to say – figure that, Sassy with nothing to say.”
“Sassy, that’s you? Cynthia? I haven’t lost you? Oh my God!” She threw her arms around me.
“Yes. It’s really me. Caryn! I am so proud of you and to think, you are my big sister! I have a big sister! Just look at you. You have been a Scoutship captain
for years, bringing in all sorts of wonderful discoveries and having all sorts of adventures that children dream about. And, look around. All this, as far as you can see, belongs to you as your bonus for such good work. And you have a handsome boyfriend and pretty clothes and you can paint your toes! May I paint my toes, please?”
“Of course you can paint your toes darling. I’ll show you how.” She smiled at me.
“Here, sit on these. You are really my sister?”
Caryn set her shoes down on the rock for me and I sat on them.
I reached over to her and kissed her and I was overwhelmed by the volume of passion I felt. It was like all her love and romance memories opened up a huge doorway in my mind and my body longed to respond. I’m afraid I overdid it a little. We came up for air and I think she realized I was not a mechanical device at all, but a real, loving, living human sitting naked next to her. She took a big breath as she stared at me and I turned bashfully away. It was a bit too much for me so newly born. I did get as part of the avalanche her memories about her lovers, especially the one named Frederick. I realized I wanted a lover of my own. He had a 1st Mate, Mike, I picked up from her memories. “Well, it’s a start.” I said to myself.
Cynthia- Empress of the Stars Page 1
