B00BKLL1XI EBOK, page 8
“Does having a mostly robotic army change anything in terms of ranks?”
“Not really. We just have very few commanders. Each one of us controls 5,000 destroyers out of a fleet of 500,000 not including capitol ships like this one. This group of 5,000 is called an MRDG, or multi-role destroyer group and typically has 80 squadrons of SBDs (destroyers that fight only in space) and 20 squadrons of GUDs (destroyers that carry ground units and troops). Mostly we just watch the overall strategy for our MRDG and make sure everything is going according to the battle plan which is carried out by officers and the specialists and enlistees they command. Each ship’s AI chip does the rest. But the catch is, and it’s kind of an important catch, that…”
Leo continued the lecture in acronyms and proper Nation military terminology for hours and the humans asked question after question. Meanwhile, the High Councilors and their top advisors were gathering in the central dome below to discuss their future plans for the little blue planet below.
In the main room of the space city’s central dome was a round table with a brushed aluminum color scheme designed to seat twelve people in sleek, rounded chairs. The panoramic window around the circular room looked out on the Nation’s fleet and the Earth, setting the mood for the meeting.
Sitting at the round table were three of the Child Councilors, Ace and Dot. The two commanders were in their non-combat uniforms as they always were during official meetings. The Councilors wore dark cloaks with silver tribal designs around their edges and a silver seal of the Nation emblazoned on their chests. They politely chatted with Ace and Dot, waiting for the Senior Councilor to make his appearance.
“So sorry to keep everybody waiting,” said Thomas Nelson as he walked into the conference room with a sigh, the black chrome door softly sliding shut behind him. “Typical bureaucratic junk on Abydos. That’s it, next cycle, I’m cutting all this busy work out.”
He sat down next to Dot as was his custom. As a Child he looked much younger and as with all Children, the distinguishing features of his face were perfectly preserved in carbon gel.
“So where were we?” he asked.
“Just waiting for you,” replied Cynthia, a fellow Councilor and Nelson’s second in command.
“Thanks,” nodded Nelson. “Before the end of the week, we should be able to finalize trading rules with Earth. Right now, we were thinking about selling household technology and planetary construction services for starters. What do you think?”
“I’m sure someone will want weapons too,” noted Dot.
“They don’t need our weapons,” grumbled a High Councilor. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea to give them even more ways to kill themselves.”
“They’ll get weapons Alex,” said Ace. “And they’ll get them because they want them and because it’s going to be one of our most lucrative business lines. It’s been this way for thousands of years and they haven’t killed themselves yet.”
“Ok, then what about a lunatic general using our bombs and missiles around on us? How do we counter that?”
“That hypothetical lunatic general will have an interstellar drive in a few years,” noted Dot. “If we’re not going to sell humans weapons, they’re going to take their shiny new ships to someone who will. We bought weapons and weapon components from aliens a few times so they’ll certainly figure out how to do that.”
“Then it would be a snap for someone to take them out,” added Ace. “Who knows what they might bring back from a shopping spree in deep space? Some vulture might decide to save a lot of effort and sell them a weapon designed to backfire and destroy their whole world or cripple their military.”
“But what about an off world inspection point?” asked Nelson.
“Just as bad. These devices can have an AI chip which would lie in wait until the device is on the home world or a significant military base or it’s being used in combat. It goes off when it can do the most damage to its owners’ fleet. The guys who sold them this device just took out their potential competition with minimal effort and got paid for it. Or at least didn’t have to spend a lot of time or resources to do a lot of damage.”
“Sounds like you’ve done this before Ace,” guessed Cynthia.
“Eh... once or twice,” admitted Ace with a guilty shrug.
“So, any bright ideas?” asked Nelson. “Cynthia?”
“Sell them a lower powered version of our stuff?”
“Hmm... What about you Ace?”
Ace scratched his chin for a moment.
“You know Nelson, let’s sell them everything short of the heavy artillery. You know... no IGFs, GRBGs, DSDs, etcetera. They’ll still be one of the best armed races in the galaxy, but they won’t have the kind of weapons that could take out the whole system. When things really get underway, we’ll sell them whatever they want, just jack up the price to control how much they buy.”
“And since we’re right here...” continued Nelson, “there’s little incentive for them to wander off to another world and look for a new supplier... Not bad. Not bad at all.”
“Well, as long as they don’t blow themselves up,” sighed Alex.
“That’s where we come in,” winked Dot. “They’ll need our help to learn how to use the weapons safely.”
“Very well,” nodded Cynthia. “I’ll put all this into the agreement and we should have it in a few hours. We’ll just need the humans to agree to it, but with what we have to offer, I’m sure they will.”
“How do they pay us until we go to phase two?” asked Ace.
“Genetic data,” replied Cynthia, “tritium and deuterium.”
“Genetic data as in blood?”
“For now, yes.”
“Won’t somebody figure out what it’s for and have a shit fit on global TV, scaring everybody half to death?”
“They’ll have a shit fit faster if we give this stuff away. We need the blood for research in the first place to make sure we can add two more base pairs.”
Ace nervously tapped his fingers on the table. He could smell the imminent upheaval brewing on Earth.
“Politics isn’t my area of expertise so I defer to you,” he said.
“So what are we going to do about the Rexx?” asked Nelson.
“Kill them of course,” replied Ace nonchalantly, as if Nelson just asked him about how he liked his tea. “Frankly, we can’t afford to permanently move the bulk of the Sixth Fleet out here and that’s what we’ll end up doing if we don’t go on the offensive. Besides, we need to send the Dark Gods a message by severing whatever they’re using to control them.”
“They’re prolific bastards, aren’t they?” asked Nelson.
“Their queens produce a hundred Rexx every day.”
“And if we took a nicely sized fleet out of here to neutralize the Rexx and left just a small detachment and a few probes I think it would relax Earth’s armies,” finished Nelson.
“Coming with us Nelson?” asked Dot.
“You bet. Just after we finish up this trade deal. Oh and Ace... what’s the plan with Steve and Christine?”
“I’d like to take them with me. They’re fast learners and they did quite well yesterday. Besides, we might need allies when we’re back and have to sort out whatever humans will end up doing to their home world with our machines that’ll inflame the... shall we say... more politically aggressive occupants of the planet.”
“There’s no such thing as too many allies,” agreed Nelson and directed his attention to the rest of the Councilors. “Ok everybody, meeting adjourned. Let’s get the formalities out of the way so we can get to work.”
As the Councilors went back to their offices, Dot and Ace called Leo to start the slow withdrawal of the destroyer fleet. In a few days, just a few transports and a token squadron of warships would be left in orbit. Deeper in space, long range probes would watch over Earth, locking on to any enemy signal.
[ chapter _ 009 ]
When Ace’s destroyer entered an alien solar system thousands of light years away, it flew by a Hot Jupiter, a massive gas giant so close to its star that its orbital period was measured in days. The side of the gas giant turned to the sun was a magnificent vision of hell. It was as if the center of the planet’s sun burnt face was exploding from within; fountains of vaporized nickel sent constant shockwaves that churned enormous, beige clouds of superheated silica.
The small, blue sun perturbed by the gas giant’s gravity shot out spectacular plumes of plasma for millions of miles into space. Some of the giant plumes licked the planet with their fiery tongues, leaving unfathomably hot vapor trails along the parted clouds. On these long, hot vapor trails, blue and white auroras danced with breathtaking fluidity and intensity.
Wrapped around the solar system was a thick cloud of bluish dust left over from the giant nebula from which this star and its numerous siblings developed eons ago. From deep within the dust cloud, white, yellow and blue points of light gently shone.
“Oh wow...” gasped Christine as she looked at this stunning and alien view on the destroyer’s holographic wall. “I’d kill to see that with my own eyes and not go blind.”
“I know there are lots of systems like this,” reflected Steve, “but I never thought they looked quite like that.”
“Eh... You get used to it,” shrugged Ace.
“How would you ever get used to seeing that?”
“It’s like a sunset. You tend to stop and admire it at random. If you look at this every day for so long and with that much excitement, kind of wears off.”
Steve sighed, eyeing the beautiful and serene image for the last time as the destroyer spun around and headed to a rocky, barren moon of a bluish gas giant in a much farther orbit. Buzzing around this moon was a huge swarm of destroyers, orbital factories and GRBGs, the terrifying ships referred to as planet killers. They were monstrous craft capable of generating bursts of energy potent enough to decimate a small world. The power of these planet killers came from a tiny, artificial star encircled by six powerful, claw-like engines that could generate a massive gamma ray burst on command. As big as a mountain, jet black with a hellish red aura around it, shining with the light of a churning red star the size of a city which produced untold petawatts of energy per second, a planet killer was a terrifying sight. Any species that stared down the barrel of this hyper-weapon knew that the end was near and there was very little they could do to stop it. Sitting on the bridge of Ace’s destroyer, Christine and Steve couldn’t make up their minds as to whether they were very happy that the Nation had planet killers to help them kill the Rexx or whether it was a demonstration of what could be in an orbit around Earth if the humans ever decided to move against the cyborgs.
Ace carefully examined the output and diagnostic data from the planet killers. He smiled, leaned back and snapped his fingers with a strange, metallic click.
“Looks like everything is up to speed,” he said.
“So where are we going first?” asked Christine.
“We’re going to have some dinner of course,” replied Ace. “It’ll take a little while to resupply the fleet. Food, fuel, ammo, tune-ups, check-ups... Machine work basically.”
“Are they coming back from other skirmishes?” asked Christine.
“No,” replied Dot. “Patrol missions, exploration, things like that. You never know when you run across some homicidal alien race out there in deep space.”
“... and so Dot shoots them first and asks questions later,” added Ace with a wink. “If there’s anyone left to answer them. The itchiest trigger finger in the whole armada, I swear.”
Dot gave Ace a token glare and scowl. Ace looked at Steve and Christine, pointing to Dot with fake caution.
“Christine, I’m telling you, she’s dangerous,” he whispered.
Finally, for the first time since they stepped on board, Steve and Christine started smiling. Steve waved a finger in the air and stepped between Ace and Dot.
“If you need a referee...” he offered.
“Don’t worry Steve, I can handle him,” replied Dot. “He thinks he’s all that with his poisonous fangs and sharp claws and so on and so forth. But we all know that all I really need to do to make him howl is sleep in another ship.”
Christine laughed. Steve frowned. Ace sunk.
“A thousand years and they still have all the power,” sighed Ace. “You say one little thing wrong and you’re screwed.”
“Not screwed,” corrected Dot.
“Right,” winced Ace. “Bad choice of words.”
Steve was about to open his mouth when Christine cut him off.
“Steve, no male solidarity in a co-ed team,” she warned.
Steve closed his mouth and sat down in his chair, muttering and shaking his head. He sighed and said,
“I’m not going to win so I’m not even going to start.”
“Ok everybody good cliché fight, now who’s hungry?” asked Ace after a short pause.
“I am,” replied Dot.
“We are,” seconded Christine.
“Well let’s land on the moon and get some steak, shall we?” said Ace entering a command with the keyboard on his arm rest.
“Steak? You guys have steaks?” asked Steve.
“Yeah, that’s what I want to know too,” joined in Dot. “How is it that we’re suddenly getting fresh protein?”
“Oh just something extra that Nelson negotiated for us...”
The Nation’s destroyers were far too big and heavy to land on any planet or moon. Built entirely in space and equipped with engines only able to propel them well outside of a dense atmosphere, they were generally left circling in orbits on autopilots while its pilots would take small, sleek transport pods to the worlds below them. Leaving their massive craft circling the moon in the hangar of an orbiting space city, Ace, Dot, and their human guests descended to a spaceports below and gently touched down on a runway on the outskirts of a small, glowing city. Helpful robots steered it into a vast hangar lined with dozens and dozens of identical military transports.
As they ventured outside the hangar, Christine and Steve took a look at the sky. Looming in the heavens was a stormy, blue gas giant with thin, icy rings. The Nation’s fleet was virtually invisible. Only a few red lights created by the planet killers were noticeable. The dust cloud around the solar system projected a ghostly web of dark blue wisps between the stars.
A few minutes later, they were darting across the barren surface of the moon in another small, flying craft, this one designed solely to fly the cyborgs between different outposts on the same world. Dot skillfully avoided the jagged rocks protruding from the surface at random as she headed for the glowing city. Just like the space city that was in orbit around Earth, this base was composed of bizarre buildings that seemed to be growing out of the moon’s desolate rocks in wild shapes.
The buildings, as Ace explained, looked like they were growing out of the landscape because they were actually grown, put together from materials found in the rocks and fused molecule by molecule by an army of nanobots. A fully completed city could be grown in just a few weeks. It was the most efficient way to build anything in space because hauling around raw materials for construction wasted a lot of time and energy.
Arriving into the glowing, buzzing city, Dot turned the pod and headed towards a dome with windows that provided a panoramic view of the starry sky and the immense gas giant. She landed in a parking lot just outside of the dome. From this parking spot they could see that inside, the dome was buzzing with activity.
“Is that some kind of a restaurant?” asked Christine.
“Sure is,” replied Dot.
“Best place to eat in the Sagittarius Arm of the galaxy,” winked Ace. He thought for a second and added, “Actually, it’s the only place to eat in the Sagittarius Arm of the galaxy. But trust me, it’s good.”
Steve and Christine unsurely exited the pod. Unlike the bridge of the destroyer and the runway outside, the gravity in the city was just right for them. The reactors that powered the city channeled a stream of gravitons throughout the outpost’s power lines, creating a stable gravitational field. When they entered the dome with Ace and Dot, they unwittingly witnessed a very rare event.
Dozens of Children and a few Shadow Demons like Ace enjoyed something they weren’t able to enjoy for over a thousand years. They were eating fresh food grown on Earth and flown in within 72 hours by a special refrigerated transport.
In his dark chamber, the Reaper was looking at an ancient object covered by a thick greenish-brown patina. It was a small cube lined with hieroglyphs, switches, dials and oddly shaped gears. The cube quietly whirred faster and faster as it counted down to something. Finally, it clicked and the hieroglyphs across its surface flashed with a green aura. All of the switches, dials and gears aligned in the same direction and stopped. The entire cube pulsed with a faint radiance until the bizarre mechanisms restarted themselves and the device returned to its normal operation.
The Reaper sighed. His clock just counted exactly 1,117,656 years in human terms since the day the Dark Gods took over as the rulers of the galaxy. He still remembered the City of Ghosts, the citadel of their predecessors and how a shape shifting alien ran from spire to spire and weaved through grand temples to avoid the spiny, amorphous drones of the giant killer worms.
It had been protecting a primeval relic left behind for future species to discover when the time was right. Because of where this relic was placed within the City, the drones of the Dark Gods marching through the ancient citadel inevitably found it and its guardian. After the first few moments of the encounter everything happened so fast. Instincts kicked in. Blood, limbs and broken implants sprayed across the streets. Surprise. Fear. Panic. The tall, jagged spires and dark, abandoned chambers streaking by in the twilight.
The agile shape shifter strangled or impaled its pursuers. It was strong. Wrapping itself around its targets, it cracked armor and crushed vital organs. When it drove its spines deep into a writhing victim, it pierced flesh and synthetics with equal ease. The drones fired their pulse weapons and laser beams with wild abandon, but couldn’t impart more than a superficial scratch on the shape shifter. It skillfully leaped from spire to spire in a fluid curve. But eventually, the determined drones corralled the escaping alien.
