Star Rover-Chosen to Die (Lens of Time) (27 page)

“Sir, we’re going to need all the time we can get to build our forces to take them on. If they know a strong force exists that knows about them, they’ll go to every effort to find us. We can’t take that kind of risk.”

Katherine stared at Dat and looked at Gresha, who was nodded her head vigorously. She turned to Brad and he tilted his head to the left and nodded toward the feed coming in from the Pumgas’ galaxy. She took a deep breath and blew it out. She pressed a button on her panel and said…

• • •

Angel looked at her helmet visor and saw a message coming in from Fleet Headquarters. They were thirty seconds from jumping and she couldn’t believe the orders. She hit the main command frequency and said, “Attention all ships in the Striker Fleet. THE JUMP HAS BEEN CANCELED. HOLD YOUR POSITIONS UNTIL FURTHER NOTIFICATION!!”

She looked at the second page and shook her head. She sent a mental query to her data center and saw the frequency she was looking for. “Lt. Mitchell.”

Mitch heard the transmission and said, “Yes Sir.”

“You are ordered to jump in to the arrival point of the Rust Ships and take a shot at one of them as it enters normal space. Stay inside your field and immediately jump away after you take the shot.”

“Sir?”

“You will carry out your orders in one minute.”

“Yes Sir.”

Leon looked at Mitch, “What’s going on?”

“It appears the numbers have caused a major concern with our Senior Staff. Buckle in and get ready to make a fast exit.”

“They shouldn’t be able to see us.”

“No, but they’ll see the beam and where it originated. I suspect there will be more than a few return shots at us.” Leon moved to the oversized chair and fastened his safety harness. He also wrapped three of his arms around the chair and looked at Mitch. “Jumping in three, two, one…”

The massive wave of Rust Ships continued to emerge into normal space and suddenly a beam shot out and hit one of the warships. The rust colored ship glowed for a moment and then a hole was blown through the hull causing it to explode in a massive blast that pushed more than fifty ships away from it. Two thousand ships saw the beam hit the warship and they whipped around and fired a massive volley of red beams at the line the beam had come in on. The Rover was hit by three of them but then left normal space and skipped away. The two thousand ships were joined by ten thousand other ships that scoured space along the line of the beam that had destroyed one of their own. A recording of the attack was sent back to the Exalted’s ship.

The Rover was rocked by the three beams that hit it but the force field was not stressed. Mitch shook his head and Leon said, “What?”

“The only way a Rover is going to be able to survive in combat against these numbers is for it to have the stealth field. If they had been able to see us and hit us with all their beams…” Mitch shook his head. Mitch added speed and skipped away toward the Rust Ship’s Galaxy. After twenty random skips; he parked the ship and waited to see if he was followed.

• • •

Katherine watched the feed coming in from an Advanced Probe and saw the Rust Warship exploded from the Rover’s beam. She stood up and said, “YES!”

Dat blew out a breath and said, “We are going to have to update the Rovers with a Stealth Field. There’s no way they can handle that number of ships.”

Katherine nodded, “I know, but they are now back in the game. That’s eighty million more ships we can add to our inventory.”

Gresha shook her head, “We don’t have eight million Rovers.”

Brad said, “No, but if we include the ones in the colonies, we may have more than that.”

Dat looked at the monitor and shook his head, “We’re going to need a billion of them.”

Gresha slowly shook her head, “I don’t think that would be enough.”

Everyone turned to her and she took a deep breath, “There are eight galaxies they inhabit and every planet we’ve seen has a sole industry of building warships. Think about that. These creatures are conducting a holy war against all the universe’s carnivores and they don’t care what price they have to pay to achieve their goal. Those ships don’t care if they’re destroyed; you’ve seen thousands of them crash into the Blue Ships they were attacking. They are driven by a religious fanaticism and, if they manage to collect one of the damaged Blue Warships, what do you think they’ll start building into their fleets?” Gresha looked at the monitor, “They’re still coming and there’s no end in sight to their numbers.”

Katherine looked at Gresha, “Are you saying we can’t win?”

Gresha looked at Katherine, “Tell me how we don’t lose if they find us.”

Dat said, “What are those?”

They turned and looked at the monitor. The giant wave of rust colored ships had stopped and they saw hundreds of thousands of giant ships appearing in normal space. Dat looked at Brad, “Get one of the probes to give us a view of the planet they’re attacking.” The monitor’s view changed and they saw massive devastation on the planet’s surface. Every defense facility had been vaporized and the defense satellites were all blown into rubble. The millions of warships above the planet hung in space and were no longer being fired on. Dat shook his head, “Those are troop transports that are going down to the planet to remove all the carnivores on the planet.”

Katherine shook her head and saw Dat was right. “Show me the Pumgas’ Home World.” The view changed and they saw a planet burning in nuclear fire. There were no transports moving in on the planet. Gresha said in a soft voice, “They knew every intelligent being on the planet was a carnivore. They won’t waste time cleansing it. The other planet had a species the Pumgas conquered that aren’t carnivores. They’ll go in and eradicate the animal predators. I’m sure the intelligent inhabitants will be offered an opportunity to join them in their holy quest.”

“What if they choose not to do it?”

Gresha looked at Brad, “Those that refuse will be treated as infidels; I suspect they will be removed with the predators.”

Brad shook his head, “Surely they’re not that brutal?”

Gresha turned back to the monitor, “Record what happens on the planet. More lives have been lost in the name of religion than any other cause in human history. Why would they be any different?”

Ten hours later, the executions on the planet began and continued for three months.

T
he Exalted looked at the image of the Chosen High Priest on his panel and tried not to show his distress at the Chosen’s intervention into his day. He just didn’t need this field of weed now. There was a new galaxy to melt into the Herd. “Good Day, Chosen. It’s good to hear from you.”

“You can stop with the field droppings. I know you don’t like it when I contact you and I take no offense at your showing it.”

The Exalted forced a smile, “It is always good to hear from you.”

“What killed that warship?”

The Exalted was surprised with the speed the Chosen used to move directly to the point, “We’ve not been able to make a determination of what caused it.”

“I’m of the belief that the carnivore that was on our Holy Planet is behind it.”

The Exalted head lowered, “How were you able to make that determination?”

“I know you are responsible for the Herd’s military forces but try to understand that all of us aren’t dumb.” The Exalted did not respond. “Our trackers found the scent and evidence of a carnivore on my home. We have no way of explaining how that was possible and you remember the way you and I struggled with how that could have possibly occurred. However, that scent was also found on another planet in the Herd…a ship building planet. I must believe that someone is scouting us and I think whoever is doing it is a highly advanced civilization that can hide from detection.” The Exalted thought about what the Chosen was saying and he began to think he might be on to something. The Chosen stared at the Exalted and after a moment said, “The beam that destroyed that warship came out of nowhere. Your ships were unable to detect anything near where it originated. If that ship was invisible to your scans, it could have brought a scout to the Holy Planet and not be seen.”

“Were you able to find anything useful?”

The Chosen smiled, “As a matter of fact, I did.” The Chosen now had the Exalted’s undivided attention. “I had my scientists examine every Cirabow that carnivore took a bite out of and found cells from it in ten of them.”

“Were they able to do a genetic modeling from those cells?”

“They were and they did.”

“And?”

“You mentioned earlier that the carnivore must have been small based on the size of the bites.” The Exalted nodded. “Well, the model shows that the being is more than seven feet tall and has ten arms. It is also able to change shape at will and can probably enter a building through a small crack; its brain cavity is huge.”

The Exalted stared at the Chosen and said, “There’s no way it could have evolved on the Holy Planet.”

“No, there is not.”

“That means we are being watched.”

“That’s how I see it, Exalted. I am ordering you to release every probe in our inventory to go out and run scans for the creature.”

“This could wait until we have melded this galaxy into the Herd.”

“Ordinarily I would agree with you but this time I must insist.”

“Why?”

“They put a Carnivore on our Holy Ground. That is not something that can be tolerated and the communities around the Temple know about the creature.”

The Exalted blew out a breath and knew the Chosen was right. This was something that had to be acted on immediately. He looked at his Communicator and saw she was paying attention to the conversation, “I will issue the orders to prepare the probes for launch. I need the genetic pattern they will be searching to find.”

“I’ll have my Lead Scientist send it to the planet immediately.”

The Exalted nodded, “I’ll inform you if we find anything.”

“That would be good.”

The display went dark and the Exalted said to his Communicator, “Tell the Probe Priest to only program the probes to find that creature. We don’t need to find another carnivore civilization; we’re too busy wrapping up this one to move on another.”

The Communicator turned to her station, “Yes Exalted, I’ll send the orders now.”

The Exalted wondered what would turn up but pushed it out of his mind. He was shocked to find that many of the planets the Carnivores had conquered were angry at their destruction. How crazy can that be? They would accept the new structure or they would be eliminated. Dissension was not allowed. He was starting to believe that every intelligent creature in this crazy galaxy was going to have to be killed. They were too contaminated to meld into the Herd. That would be a real pity. This would have been a large expansion of the believers.

• • •

Dat Arvolo sat on board Lt. Mitchell’s Rover and debriefed him on what he discovered when he fired on the Rust Warship. Leon listened in to the conversation and remained silent. Technology was not something he was knowledgeable enough about to add anything to the conversation.

“Sir, the warships appearing in normal space responded to my beam at an incredible speed. I kept the beam firing until I had some sort of confirmation that it was having an effect on the target. I was being hit before that ship exploded.”

Dat nodded, “That would indicate their scanners and blasters must work together.”

“That is the only way they could have fired that quickly, Sir.”

“What was the intensity of the beams hitting you?”

“They were strong but not powerful.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Rover’s force field was not really affected by the three that hit it; however, if more than fifty hit…”

“The field will fail.”

Mitch nodded, “The vast majority of the beams fired at me missed. I believe if they could have seen my ship it would have been destroyed.”

“How do you see us using the Rovers against these creatures?”

“Well, it would have to be hit and run tactics. A Rover won’t be able…”

“Admiral, an incoming emergency message from the Admiralty!!”

Dat heard the computer and said, “Put it on the speaker.”

“Admiral Arvolo, the Rust Civilization is launching all the probes they have at that planet.”

Dat was stunned, “Brad, what would they be going out to find?”

“We don’t know, Admiral.”

“They wouldn’t launch all those probes without something for them to be programmed to find. I’m certain they didn’t get a scan of the Rover that fired on their ship; this doesn’t make sense.”

Leon said, “They’re looking for my species.” Dat and Mitch turned and looked at the huge Matador. “I was worried that this might happen.”

Dat shook his head, “Why?”

“I fed on several hundred of those dead animals. I know I had to have left some cells behind in them. If they’re really advanced in genetics, they could use those cells to model what my species looks like and get a genetic pattern to put into their probes to scan for. Admiral, they’re out looking for me.”

“Brad, did you hear that?”

“I did, Admiral. Do you agree with him?”

“I don’t have any other idea and they definitely have something they’re looking for, General.”

Leon’s head rolled down his body, “Admiral, I made the mistake of scouting the planet where their high priest, or whatever they call him, is located. This had to be considered a blasphemy and they are looking for blood.”

“Brad, get this information to Admiral Hull and see if she can come up with a plan on how to deal with this.”

“I’m sure she’ll want your input.”

“I’m going to the Matador’s Planet first. I need to discuss this with Jolam.” Dat looked at Leon, “You should be there with me.” Leon’s head went to the top of his body and he shrugged.

• • •

Jolam and Ringie looked at Dat and Gresha and they could see his anger, “So this civilization has decided to kill every predator in the universe?”

Leon said, “No Father, only the ones that prey on animals. They’re leaving insects and fish out of it.”

Jolam looked at his son, “That is a very small difference.” Leon shrugged, “Perhaps we should send out warriors to their planets and teach them a thing or two.”