Annihilation - Finding Keepers (Annihilation Series (Book Seven}) (14 page)

Einstein raised himself, “If they see all the wrecked ships, wouldn’t they surmise that we were destroyed?”

Edison thought for a moment, “Yes, they might, but then they will come to the determination that the ones who destroyed us are a larger danger than we were. What would you do if you were in their place?”

The two large spiders looked at each other and Newton said, “I would come in force to see if there was a danger here. I suspect they will also see billions of our children on thousands of planets. They could also decide that we simply junked the ships as being ineffective against them and we were developing new ones to do the job.”

“Can we hide from them?”

“How? Our thoughts would be seen by these creatures. We have no choice but to communicate telepathically. That Gamma ship had the best invisibility screens we possess and they saw right through it.”

Einstein lowered himself, then asked, “How many uninhabited planets have we located in our searches that have a suitable atmosphere and climate?”

Edison punched a key on his terminal and said, “More than two hundred thousand.”

“Send the coordinates of those planets to every member of our race. Have them downloaded to the bracelets and assign a hundred different planets to each of those we occupy. They have to come from the jump limit and we will teleport away before their ships can arrive in orbit. We also need to tell all of our planets to make sure they have fed; it’ll be awhile before food will be available. They will have to chase us to attack us.”

Newton looked at the list of planets and commented, “These planets are scattered in more than fifty thousand galaxies. It will be a long chase.”

Edison turned his head upside down, “I’m sure that they will eventually start leaving ships in orbit around those planets to prevent us from coming back to them.”

Einstein raised himself, “True, but until they make that determination it will buy us time to try and find a way to defeat their technology.”

“I don’t think there is anything that will defeat their ships.”

The other two spiders said nothing, but started transmitting planet coordinates to the leaders of their worlds.

The ship came out of its universal drive and the sensor operator began scanning, “Director. There are huge numbers of the green ships.”

“Show me.” The Director looked at the huge blip on the screen and ordered, “Jump to that location.”

The brown ship disappeared in the silver-blue flash of its star drive and entered normal space six hundred miles from the mass of lifeless green ships. The ships were dead in space and had huge holes in their hulls. The Director saw that something had killed these ships. “Send a small craft over and examine the inside of one of those ships.”

A small craft left and flew through a giant hole in the closest green ship’s hull. “Director, everything has been burned inside this ship. There are millions of the Green Creatures floating around with multiple holes in them.”

“Bring your craft back, now.” The Director looked at the sensor operator, “Are there any of the Green Creatures still alive in this universe?”

The sensor operator ran his scan and said, “Billions of them on thousands of planets.”

The Director didn’t know what to think about this situation. He knew that the Collective would need to figure this out. “As soon as the craft returns, jump back to our home.”

The shuttle entered the brown ship’s bay, the Navigator set the universal drive, and the brown ship disappeared.

“Fleet Command.”

“Go ahead.”

“It happened exactly as we expected; a brown ship has just jumped in and examined the mass of dead Eight Leg ships. It sent a craft to go inside one of them to explore it internally. As soon as the small ship returned, the brown ship jumped using its universal drive.”

“Remain on station, Dream Catcher; looks like the Spiders were right. Did the ship appear on your sensors?”

“Negative; and it appears the skull coating prevented them from being able to see me.”

“Send your recording to us.”

“On its way.”

“Valerie, one of the brown ships has entered our universe and jumped away. They’ll be coming soon.”

“Thanks, Manny. Make sure your family has multiple teleport coordinates.”

“I’ve already set that up. Stay safe, Your Majesty.”

“I don’t know if any of us can do that, Manny.”

“I know.”

Jake walked out into the field with a jug of water and didn’t recognize anyone. Miley sent him to the southwestern field to help with their water detail. Every woman in the southern field had made physical contact with Jake, and quite a few from other fields had started leaving their work to come and touch him. The eldest of the Humans, Jackson Grant, had heard about the good luck man, and though he did not believe the rumors he knew that many did. The simplest solution was to move Jake from field to field to make sure that the work was done. He knew that anything that took the communitie’s attention away from the Keepers was a good thing, so he didn’t begrudge the attention being given to the “Good Luck Man.”

Jackson prided himself on his memory and he just couldn’t remember ever having seen Jake. Of course, with three hundred thousand under his care, there had to be some he missed. However, this Good Luck Man was the only one he had encountered so far that he did not remember. He knew his time was up and that he would probably be the next taken by the Keepers. Perhaps he should go touch the man himself. He sighed and watched as hundreds of women walked over and touched the Good Luck Man.

Jake smiled at the women as they touched his hand, his head, embraced him, kissed him on the cheeks, or took water from him and touched his hand as he handed it to them. Jake wondered how much longer it was going to take to find this initiator that Valerie had talked about. Three weeks had passed and so far nothing. He walked out into the middle of the field and held out his arms. He decided that he might as well be open about what was going on. Thousands moved toward him and Jake smiled thinking, “Now that’s what I’m talking about.” At the end of the day more than 9,000 had touched him; only 90,000 more to go in the two adjoining fields. “Where is she?”

The Keepers starship broke back into normal space and the Collective immediately had its information. Now this was interesting. The Green Creatures were found, but it appeared that they were no longer powerful. Their ships had been destroyed and billions of them killed. “All Quadrants, go over this information and prepare to discuss it in thirty intervals.” There had to be a stronger adversary in that universe. The Collective felt the Values Quadrant flinch. It almost decided to reorganize it, but held off as the feelings disappeared. “Don’t distract me again!” It began processing the scans of that universe and evaluating the risks of attacking. The amount of data being processed was enormous and continued for thirty hours.

“Edison?”

“Yes, Sprig?”

“Have you found any way to damage the ships of these creatures?”

“They are called Keepers by the Human colony being held as slaves. I don’t see any way to penetrate their hulls. The only reason we lost to the Realm was because of the hard organic trees that are grown on Cainth and Glod. Our analysis of their hulls tells us that it will reject any form of energy just like our green hulls, and is as hard as any modern alloy. The organic penetrators that killed our ships will have no effect on them. I’m at a loss as to how they developed that material.”

“I suspect that being a telepathic species that they are able to collect and process information in a central intelligence. They will be even more deadly if they see our teleporting abilities.”

“Perhaps, however, it will take time before they could develop it. I have looked at our records, and they did not have these hulls when we sent our follow up invasion three million years after the first. I do think, like you, that they will eventually develop teleportation once then know it exists, but it will not come quickly.”

“There’s one thing you’re not taking into account in your estimates, Edison.”

“What is that?”

“If as we suspect they have a central intelligence that processes their information, how much larger would that intelligence be now that they have conquered most of that universe and farm millions of worlds. I suspect their processing time is greatly reduced.”

Edison thought a moment, “You’re right; I didn’t think about that. However, even if they are a thousand times larger, it still took several million years to come up with the hulls on their ships. I think the window of discovery will be more than several years. Those principles you and Twig developed are not easily understood. I think we will have the advantage of teleportation for a period of time.”

“Now that they have seen the destruction of your green ships, do you think they might hesitate before invading?”

“Ordinarily I would think so, except for the chance killing of that Searcher.”

Sprig thought about that, “What do you mean?”

“I’m sure when they scanned our universe they saw millions of ships very similar to the ship they destroyed on that moon. They will think that the ones that destroyed our green ships are coming to their universe. They will also know that they destroyed that ship rather easily. No, they will come to remove a possible enemy. And don’t forget that Valerie says they are coming.” There was silence for a few moments then Edison thought to Sprig, “We have one development that at least offers a possibility.”

“What?”

“The skull coating that blocks telepathy from leaking out can also be used to keep telepathy out. That beam they use is an intense telepathic wave. We have begun coating some of our Gamma ships with that substance. I don’t know how it will hold up under the high intensity beam the Keepers use, but it may allow some time before the ship would be damaged. We won’t know for sure until they arrive.”

Sprig gave a mental shrug, “What good would it do if we have nothing that would penetrate their hulls?”

“We develop our defenses and offences as we find them. We can perhaps get close in the event we do find a weapon.”

“We’re doing all we can to develop one, but so far we’ve come up empty.”

“I know, Sprig. Just don’t give up yet.”

“I wish the Gardners were here.”

“As do we all.”

T
he Collective continued to correlate the collected data, “Military, are you ready to offer your conclusions?”

“There are many unknowns. Whoever destroyed the green ships obviously had a weapon that penetrated their hulls. Our hull material is much harder than the Green Hulls, but we don’t know if that would stop whatever weapon was used. That uncertainty causes great distress in deciding the next step.”

“Science?”

“I agree with Military; we don’t know enough to determine just how big a danger we face in that universe. I did see one thing in the scans that bears discussion. They showed large numbers of ships very similar to the one we destroyed at the farm.”

The Collective gave a mental agreement, “I also saw that. I also see that there is not one race that pilots those ships. The thoughts were diverse, and there were thousands of different creatures in those vessels. It would seem that no one race controls that universe.”

Sociology interjected, “I see that the Green Creatures are no longer living in ships but are on planets. Is it possible that after they were conquered they were made slaves?”

The Collective stopped its data analysis, “I did not see that. That is an interesting proposal.” There was a half second of silence while the Collective looked at all the data again, “I think we need to go see what is happening on those planets. We should eliminate them to prevent them from giving information about our capabilities.”

Military replied, “I would think they have already done that long ago.”

“Not if they are slaves. If they are not slaves, then they would represent our biggest threat in that they understand the technology of our ships’ hulls.”

There was silence. Production broke the silence by saying, “Then you are planning to send our forces into that universe?”

“We have killed one of their ships here. Do you not think they are a real threat to us?”

Again there was silence.

Military asked, “How do you envision this happening?”

The Collective hesitated, “We will send a hundred thousand ships to destroy the planets of the Green Creatures. We will evaluate our success or failure and then decide the next step. Military, when are all the ships due to come back?”

“They are arriving now.”

“Are the requisite number here now?”

“Yes; more than double that number.”

“Send the hundred thousand and have the others prepared to follow if needed.”

“Your orders are being issued.”