B00BKLL1XI EBOK, page 26
Stretching out its fluid, flexible tentacles, it watched and listened for intruders as it had done over the eons. Sometimes it would sit in this highly receptive state for centuries, bristling with flowing tentacles in anticipation. As it felt the warmth of bodies, it knew that its wait was over. These particular aliens had been coming to the City on a very frequent basis. It was time to meet them personally.
The formless, fluid creature slithered down from its perch atop a giant temple and leaked down the jagged stones to the ground. Like a stream of inky, black water, the thing proceeded towards what it saw as three burning, red embers floating above the ground, surrounded by auras of white energy. It moved at a slow and measured pace, like a big cat stalking its prey. The cyborgs seemed oblivious to its expert approach.
As it entered striking range, the shapeless creature slowed down to form itself into a black puddle. Out of the puddle rose its tentacles, the delicate tendrils attached to them solidifying into sharp spikes. It prepared to shift its shape one last time and attack.
The cyborgs stood still.
The creature slithered just an inch closer.
The silence around the cyborgs grew tense.
Two of the cyborgs shifted on their toes, a motion the creature’s senses couldn’t detect. To the odd, shape shifting predator patrolling the ancient city they seemed to be frozen in place.
With a roar the creature pounced, collecting itself into something absolutely horrifying. It reared up on three legs bristling with claws, its back sprouted a forest of sharp spikes which aimed in virtually every direction, and its huge mouth on an extendable trunk was lined with countless gleaming fangs.
This unholy amalgamation of spines, claws and fangs shot itself towards the cyborgs, using two of its side legs as gasping hands and its rear leg as a spring. Its mouth shot forward in mid-jump, opening wide enough to swallow a cyborg whole. Its strike was a textbook example of a sneak attack.
Yet amazingly, it failed.
As the shape shifter struck the ground, it splattered itself all over the gravel and returned to its puddle form. Almost immediately, its quivering tendrils shot out in search of the cyborgs. Instead of warm bodies, it picked up a strange echo all around itself. The cyborgs had it in a force field, deflecting their energy away from the shape shifter and trapping it between them.
Irritated, the creature fused its tendrils into a single fluid tentacle which rose eight feet above its liquid body. The tentacle’s top rounded itself into a black sphere which peeled away to reveal a single, green, compound eye. This spherical eye stood still while the tentacle did an angry, writhing dance underneath it. Using its eye, it could see the world around itself in color instead of just heat and fine patterns of radiation.
From the darkness, three robed scholars emerged. Each carried a dark, semi-transparent sword with a flowing red aura dancing around the edges of the blade. They held the swords like expert killers. For a moment, things looked very bleak for the shape shifter.
Its fluid base erupted with dancing spikes, signaling that it didn’t mind a fight with the Shadow Demons surrounding it. But instead of attacking or getting closer, the cyborgs sheathed their swords with a soft click and pulled back their hoods to reveal their faces.
“That won’t be necessary,” said one of them.
The shape shifter calmed down, but didn’t retract its spikes.
“Do you want to stay in the city?”
The shape shifter’s spikes rippled in a highly organized wave.
“You don’t need to stay here anymore. We have another job for you, the job we discussed with the others a little while ago.”
The creature produced another complex ripple through its spikes, very different from the last one.
“Yes. We were sure they told you.”
A calm, relaxed ripple moved the shape shifter’s spikes. Visibly, it cooled down as it recalled a conversation its siblings had with these strange creatures in cloaks just thirty rotations ago. It was time to leave this old city. Its skills were needed elsewhere. Its skills and that of its ancient brethren who lived all over the City of Ghosts...
After an expansive tour of the Nation’s capital, Steve and Christine were escorted to the Temple of the Shades. Inside, the building was sealed, sterilized and pressurized to allow them to take off their spacesuits and change into white robes decorated with complex patterns of silver glyphs and runes. Nelson and Dot put on the same attire while Ace donned a black robe decorated by red tribal designs. The robes were loose and comfortable, tied together with a sash and worn with only a bare minimum of clothing underneath.
In the main chamber of the temple, a crescent shaped table was set for a meal of Earth’s finest exports preserved with elaborate containment chambers on their long trip and prepared just before the get-together. Sitting behind this table were nine members of the Command, also dressed in ceremonial robes.
Despite the traditional pomp, the atmosphere was like a cocktail party rather than an official meeting and greetings were warm and friendly. Everyone sat where they pleased and biting jokes easily flew back and forth. Stemless glasses in the form of inverted domes clinked as Ace, Alice, Sergio and Nelson toasted to new friends, old chums, and good fortune.
The High Command fully embraced the same principles of polite and casual informality by which the rest of the Nation lived and despite the unavoidable invocation of political euphemisms and several tight lipped verbal tiptoes around a few topics, the discussions between the humans and the cyborgs were open and cordial. As the official meet and greet with Steve and Christine started winding down, the conversation shifted back to the reason why they were all here. The Dark Gods and the results from the Nation’s counterstrike. While the intelligence from the field sounded encouraging, the cyborgs knew just how vast the Dark Gods’ infrastructure really was and that even a shower of IGF-laden missiles was more of an unpleasant inconvenience rather than a serious blow. The next step in the war had to be fully fleshed out.
“So how much is the war going to cost?” asked Nelson. “Are we talking hundreds of billions or even more than that?”
“Worst case estimate? Just shy of ten trillion astros up front and about six times that to repair the damage to the military and infrastructure over the next 33 years,” replied Sergio. “And of course, that’s not counting the costs of lives and the training for new commanders. I’m not going even going to entertain the best case, I’m not that much of an optimist.”
“And the odds of winning?”
“Slim. It would probably end up in a standoff.”
“With our current weapons capacity, right?” asked Ace.
“Right,” nodded Alice. “We’d need some sort of an edge, something a little extra to help us out...”
Ace’s lips slowly stretched into an ominous smirk.
“I’ve been wondering what can beat a Sentry,” he started. “I took a look at the history books we have and an interesting thing came to my attention. Every time a new Sentry won a war, it won when fighting with an almost evenly matched rival one on one and the wars could go on for as long as a hundred years. Most would take at least sixty on our timescales. But if we go back just a bit before the last ten million years, there was a really quick takeover by two species which teamed up against an opponent that would drain their resources in a traditional war if they fought separately. In a year, they kicked out the sitting Sentry.”
“Obviously that model didn’t work out in the end,” noted Alice. “If it worked, Sentry alliances would be common.”
“True,” acknowledged Ace. “In the end, the alliance turned into a war for dominance, but it illustrates an important point. If you can double your power by using the technology of another Sentry with your best guns, you can get the upper hand.”
“Are you going to tell us that you found another Nation and they want to team up with us?” asked Sergio. “Because I can tell you that there’s no way that...”
“No, I didn’t. But I did find that we can use something similar to that. The Guardians of the City of Ghosts.”
Ace’s eyes and runes ignited with an infernal flame. The lights in the main chamber faded and an ominous presence seeped into the room in the form of a black, moving puddle. Collecting itself next to Ace, the shape shifting creature from the City of Ghosts sprang into view, illuminated by the light emanating from the cyborgs. It’s huge compound eye glowed red, its stem undulated and its liquid base was a quaking forest of small spikes. As Ace began to move his hand, the alien creature swayed in the same direction. Powering up, Ace lit up his aura and in response, the spikes on the Guardian’s base grew and began to ripple violently. Its body churned with energy as the creature strained at its invisible leash.
“How... how did you do that?” asked Nelson, his jaw threatening to drop any second.
“We were very friendly with the Guardians when we came to this world,” replied Ace, “and since they’re here to guard the legacy of the Shape Shifters, we thought they’d be willing to help us in exchange for our help in preserving the city and its artifacts. Right now, I’m not controlling the Guardian’s mind, just suggesting where it should go and it’s more than willing to listen to me.”
“How would exactly they fight with us?”
“These creatures are the direct descendants of the machines that almost conquered the Dark Gods’ home world,” explained Ace. “You won’t see this mentioned too much, but the last minutes of that war ended in a strange dual invasion. Both the Shape Shifters and the Dark Gods landed each other’s home worlds trying to land the final blow first. In the end, the Shifters had to surrender just a few moments before a swarm of these machines was about the kill the Dark Gods’ rulers because they didn’t want to sacrifice their leaders to the worms. When they left this galaxy, the Shape Shifters got the Guardians to protect their secrets and quite a few of their leftover weapons. And I think these Guardians will give us a chance to hack our way to the Dark God home world if we integrate them in our fleet. You wanted an edge? Here it is.”
Sergio carefully studied the Guardian for a few moments.
“I’d like to see them in action,” he said. “Sounds very interesting but I want to know what they can do before we get this moving. How about we start with the worms’ outpost on Sigma 07Xd?”
[ chapter _ 032 ]
Losing an election was one of the most horrific things in the life of a politician. It wasn’t about the money since most politicians were wealthy and didn’t need a government salary. They made more from buying mutual funds and stocks anyway. No, what made losing elections so terrible was the politician’s removal from power. Even lobbyists refused to work with defeated politicians, especially losing incumbents since they needed powerful, active and respected politicos to arrange meetings with even more powerful politicos, not some washout who was kicked out of office.
After losing his bid to stay Councilor, Newman retreated to one of his mansions on the coast of the capital hyper-city and insisted on staying there, out of the public eye. Phone calls and e-mails from the press went unanswered, slapped with the generic label of “there will be no comment at this time.” The last thing he needed was the press yanking him into the middle of its constant debates about the loss of the neo-traditional influence on the Council.
His party’s media machine was in mourning mode, bemoaning the TVG’s predictable loss as if it was something completely unexpected, out of the blue, and altogether incomprehensible. The progressives beamed, freshly victorious from the campaign trail and hunted down anyone who dared to challenge their power to label them as woefully out of touch with the public. They breathlessly advertised grand plans for a downright utopian future empowered by the “enlightened public,” and of course, the Nation. They made bold declarations of what exactly the voters were saying with their backlash against the neo-traditionalists and for those who had any trouble knowing where their beliefs lay, a progressive pundit had no problem telling them what their worldview should be.
The reaction to Nelson’s words was obvious and so was the backlash against those he indicted of negligence for the sake of ideology, but the media felt no compunction to stick with the obvious or the facts and felt free to extrapolate whatever it wanted from simple, clear and concise statements offered by everyday people on the street as to why they voted for the Progressive Movement. Newman didn’t want to step into this fray while he was still licking his wounds.
He sat on a spacious sea-side deck of his beach home. There were no lights in the house except for the faint flickering of the holographic TV. He was alone with a small squadron of martinis, staring at the calm, crystal clear waves that gently licked the sand. His family was on the other side of the world for the last month, having exhausted all they could offer during the campaign. The family of a Councilor was a mere afterthought, a pawn in screaming matches about morality and little more. After all, this line of work was shaping the world for a very loud and reliable constituency of cash rich special interest groups. If the Councilors spent all their free time on family, it would reduce the amount of time they could spend reshaping the world for another donation.
Newman took a sip of his martini. The lemon drop was nice. His tastes often leaned to straight alcoholic beverages but he thought he would liven it up a bit. He didn’t drink to get drunk and he never did. He just drank until his mind focused on brighter and happier things, many of them set in the past. Some of them set on an ex-mistress. If your wife lived on the other side of the world and your kids thought that only your career mattered to you, refusing to get together for just about anything other than formal events, you’d probably be thinking of a mistress too. At least that was Newman’s logic.
In the darkness of the night, he spotted a shadowy figure walking across the white sand of the beach. It was a woman. A very shapely, attractive woman with pleasing curves. She was walking towards his deck at a leisurely pace. Newman’s brain, somewhat dulled by three drinks at this point, coughed and sputtered as it kicked into gear. If this highly appealing shape in the dark had a cute face as well, it was probably a good idea to try and seduce her. The flashy house, a rank in society that demanded respect and signaled inevitable fame would be a good start. After a story about his broken heart and the coldness of his marital life (as well as a few powerful alcoholic concoctions), she would bend to his will. At least that’s how he did it when he was younger.
As the woman came closer, he noticed that she was a cyborg. Oh well, there goes his chance to get lucky. Though he suddenly started to get curious whether a cyborg could give good head. He heard that their carbon skin felt soft and warm and their mouths were extremely similar to those of humans, wet with enzymes similar to saliva. But she was a Shadow Demon so she’d have to be very careful with her fangs.
The female cyborg stepped on his deck and knocked on the thick wooden poles that held the deck’s roof. She spoke seductively, like a purring cat.
“Mr. Newman I presume?” she asked.
“You presume right,” nodded Newman.
“You look awfully lonely. Would you mind some company?”
“Of course not, ma’am. I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name...”
“I’d be surprised if you did. I didn’t introduce myself yet.”
“Ah, good. That means I’m not old and deaf yet. Just old.”
He cracked a smile and the woman gave him a warm, yet sadly obvious pity chuckle in reply. She sat in a chair on the opposite side of the narrow table, crossing her legs with care so as not to let the long, hip to hem slit of her skirt show anything more.
“My name is Mai,” she introduced herself.
“Pleasure to make your acquaintance. Martini?”
“No thank you Mr. Newman. My body doesn’t absorb alcohol.”
“No resistance?”
“No liver.”
“Oh...”
Newman cleared his throat to fill in the awkward pause.
“So what brings you here tonight?” he asked.
“The view and the company,” was the reply.
“Really? By the way, is it Ms. Mai or Mrs. Mai?”
“It’s Ms. Mai now.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Oh I wouldn’t if I were you. You know my ex-husband.”
“When have I met him?”
“Slightly over a year ago.”
Newman gazed at his drink as if it turned into a poisonous snake.
“You don’t mean,” he started, “that you were married to Ace, do you? I thought he was...”
“Oh I was his wife for a few hundred years until we had a little scrap about the future fate of the Nation. That’s when he kicked me to the curb and took over as the head of the High Command.”
“And what happened to you?”
“I was left to my own devices after a separation. He didn’t marry again and neither did I. He was too busy running the Nation while I went into deep space to take my mind off things.”
“Did that work?”
“No, not really. I watched the Nation from far away and saw just how much chaos we caused in the galaxy. I shouldn’t be here. Ace or Dot or Nelson or the Nation shouldn’t be here. It was really a terrible mistake all this happened.”
“And it’s all Ace’s fault, huh?”
“Not really. I can’t say that it’s all his fault because I contributed to this problem just as much as he did. But he didn’t stop and that’s a major issue right now. Everybody’s wondering when the Nation will stop expanding and stop fighting. And everybody’s worried that the Earth will become just another extension of Ace’s empire. You were clever enough to understand this while the public at large wasn’t. So that’s why you were the Councilor while they were the counseled.”
“Well thank you for the compliment.”
“It’s not a compliment. It’s just stating the facts. You warned the people and they refused to listen because Ace’s henchmen showered them with flashy gifts.”
