Trail of Evil - eARC (25 page)

“What’s our play, DeathRay?” she asked Jack as he approached her from the other side of his mecha. The two of them popped their helmets and tethered them over their shoulders.

“Simple. We keep our mouths shut until we get to the lounge. No small talk, Dee no matter how much you want to. Your father’s orders.”

The two of them stood flank on the either side of the shuttle’s ramp. The hatch cycled with a hiss and the ramp lowered to the ground. The pilots of the Stingers had stayed in their mecha. Dee wondered why. As the ramp lowered to the deck a woman who looked just like Deanna and Sehera Moore other than a white stripe through her bangs stood looking back at them.

“My God, look at you. I was hoping to see you, my dear. But I had no idea you were a mecha jock!” Sienna Madira said. “My, you’ve grown since the last time I saw you.”

She was talking to Dee. The fact that she claimed to be the woman who had met Dee before was intriguing. Dee thought that she looked like the woman who had held her captive on New Tharsis all those years ago.

“Ma’am. Please follow us,” DeathRay told her.

“Very well, Captain, uh, Boland is it?”

“Yes, ma’am. Please follow us. I hope you don’t mind but we’ll have to place a security detail on your shuttle and your mecha until you return.”

“It will be fine, Captain Boland. I have no intention of causing a ruckus, son.”

Chapter 36

December 6, 2406 AD

61 Ursae Majoris

31 Light-years from the Sol System

Tuesday, 1:55 PM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

“As it stands right now, I have no intention of causing a ruckus.” Alexander stood at the end of the table in the captain’s lounge. He was still wearing his AEM suit and had the helmet tethered over the shoulder. All of them were in armor except for Madira who was dressed in designer style business attire. Somehow, she made Alexander feel underdressed. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t if pushed.”

“Hah, you came here all armored up, not me.” Madira told him. “Certainly looks like you’re looking for a fight. You always were. That part I could count on every time, son.”

“Is it really you, mother.” Sehera asked. She clanked closer too her and studied her like a specimen under a microscope. “The last time we saw you, you, uh . . .”

“Oh that,” Madira said with a frown. “I’m sorry I had to put you through that dear. But the last time you really saw me was in the Oval Office. What you encountered at my hideout was a clone being controlled by Copernicus. It was all part of the plan to allow you to end the war and pull humanity back together. It had to be done.”

“Mother, why?” Sehera gasped. “Why would you put us through that? Why would you cause so much death and destruction?”

“Stop right there, girl.” Sienna Madira held up her hand as if to shush her daughter. She then pulled a lock of her white streaked bangs and tucked it behind her ear. Alexander watched cautiously but held quiet. There was no telling where this was going and for now he wanted to let it play itself out.

“It is very complicated,” Madira continued. “Sehera my child, I was faced with a conundrum almost two centuries ago. A creature from somewhere across the galaxy spoke into my mind and warned me that humanity would soon be overrun and destroyed if we didn’t take steps to evacuate the entire population. I was told that humanity could not defend itself and that our only choice for survival was to give over the systems we were currently on and tuck tail and run away.”

“We know all of this, Mother. Alexander found the files in your presidential archive. And Nancy recorded your recent conversation with Copernicus,” Sehera interrupted her. Alexander liked the startled look on Madira’s face when she realized they had been close enough to her to record her conversations with the alien. On the other hand, he wasn’t entirely sure if she was truly startled or just impressed.

“We didn’t know what the entity had told you until a few days ago, but now we understand that part,” Alexander added. “We have a pretty good idea of what you have been up to. Or at least why.”

“Well, I figured you would figure it out. You always were the clever Marine,” Madira said to Alexander. “But imagine if this would have happened to you. There was no way I could tell this to anybody. I couldn’t prove it. They would think I was nuts! Then, the only hope humanity had would be locked away and medicated in some insane asylum somewhere. Or at the minimum they would have pulled Copernicus out of my head, which would have ended my communications with him. The end result would have been the total loss of humanity. I could only assume that the alien wasn’t bluffing. I had no choice but to do just what I did.”

“But why the murders and wars and all of these robot death factories scattered about the galaxy and all of the clones in this system?” Deanna asked. “You were president. Couldn’t you just do what needed to be done the legal way, without killing so many people?”

“Sweetheart, you are young and will someday realize that politics is a quagmire. I’m sure your father can tell you all about it.” Sienna Madira sat down and leaned back in one of the chairs at the table. “I had to make humanity tougher, grittier, and stronger if we were to survive what is coming. Can we get some coffee or something? What kind of diplomacy is this? Never mind, I didn’t expect any.”

“I sent the chief of staff for some refreshments,” Moore said. “They’ll be here soon. Please continue. You were about to justify how you killed and destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives.”

“Well, son, I can only justify it if it works. And even then I plan to spend a long time burning in hell for what I’ve done. But what I did do was spark a serious growth in military technology and might. In the civil war I created two very large armies and space navies that would eventually come back together. And don’t forget, the taxation and land grabs and unfair policies from one colony to another one already going on before I meddled with the system. There is no doubt that a civil war was bound to happen. Had it been allowed to happen on its own the might of humanity would have been splintered into pieces across our little tiny piece of the galaxy. But my war caused multiple outposts to be built. It enabled me to proliferate the QMT technology across the galaxy a little further. It allowed me to build a line between us and the oncoming invasion. And, it also allowed me to emplace a backdoor if we had to have it. The most important result is a unified, tougher humanity.”

“Enough,” Alexander raised his hand. He looked at his inner circle. His wife and daughter and Boland and Penzington were the only others who now knew the entire story. Did Madira’s bloody means justify the end? Moore didn’t know and he wasn’t the judge, for now. There was still a part of him that wanted nothing more than to put a HVAR round through her brain bucket, but humanity came first.

“You have something to say, “son”?” Madira raised an eyebrow at him.

“First, stop calling me son,” Alexander told her. “Second, we’ll worry about your justification later. You will somehow pay for all the deaths. You will pay for the 91st on Mars. You will pay for killing Sehera’s father in cold blood. But not right now.”

“You don’t think I cry every night about having to kill Scotty? He was the love of my life! He was the father of my only child.” Madira actually looked angry. Hints of the Elle Ahmi persona shown through as the corners of her mouth almost turned up into a smile. “He was starting to do end runs around the plan and could no longer stomach it. No matter how much I loved him, I couldn’t put my love above the survival of the human race.”

“Mother, there must have been another way.”

“You weren’t there, child. I’ve wargamed and simulated every scenario down to what I’ve eaten for breakfast everyday for the last century and a half. It was the only way for it to successfully play out. I’m so sorry.” Madira’s eyes looked sad. Alexander could see the deep soulful brown eyes of his wife and his daughter. For a brief moment he almost let himself get wrapped up in her pain and her woeful tale.

“We’ll discuss your crimes another time,” Moore grunted gruffly. “Right now we have more important business.”

“You need me and you know that I’m right,” Madira said.

“We need you. And, I believe that your solution is a viable solution. I don’t know that it is the only one,” Alexander replied. “The way I see it we have maybe a couple years to mount a complete plan. But that may be waiting too long. I’d prefer we strike now, as soon as possible. We need more on the threat. We need more on this Alpha Lyncis colony of theirs. If you have better intel than now is the time to share it. Somehow we have to confirm this intel because it will take a hell of a lot more than a good story from an old lady to convince humanity to invade the first aliens we meet.”

“I agree that your timeline is right. If we wait until they get here it will be too late. And I do have intel on the Chiata Expanse.”

“Pendind that intel,” I’d suggest within a month. And then move on to the next target if we can. I assume you recognize this ship?”

“Of course I do. I left it for you. This is a good ship. I used it for a few years during the Martian Exodus. Where are the others?” Madira looked out the window. “I did my best to create ships with the best of both Separatist and U.S. technology, plus additions of my own.”

“We have the others at one of your bot bases nearby. We have taken that system. Forty-four ships, all supercarrier class. We had to, uh, sacrifice three of them,” Moore said with a slight frown.

“Forty-four?” Madira laughed. “Forty-four?”

“What’s the joke, Mother?” Sehera asked.

“Dear, I’ve been bouncing back and forth out here for almost seventy-five years. I have nearly thirty billion clones under my control in this system alone. I built over twenty-five automated defense posts. You think I would only have the one weapons cache?” Madira laughed almost maniacally. “There are two more. The one you found was the first and smallest one I had attempted.”

“How did you manage that, Mother?” Sehera asked. “That seems impossible.”

“No, not impossible at all. Not with AICs and bots. I found a paper from the mid twentieth century by a Hungarian scientist from the Manhattan Project who had the right idea. He suggested that the best way to colonize space was to send robots first to build the infrastructure. Then humanity could venture out and supplies would already be in place for them when they got there. Very clever idea for a time before humanity had ever even been to space. And AI and robots were not even invented yet.

“I simply sent single AIC controlled builder bots at maximum hyperspace speeds to fledgling star systems. Once they were there they would start self replicating using the materials in that system. Once enough replicated they then turned to manufacturing starships. They had blueprints for everything right down to toilet paper in the bathrooms. Have you been to Vega lately? It is one of our backdoor locations. Well, it’s more like a side door, but it was loaded with materials. The bots are having a field day there. There are hundreds of starships being built there.”

“Hundreds?” Deanna gasped. “We might stand a chance.”

“Not likely, dear.” Sienna tilted her head slightly and looked at her granddaughter the way an elder does a child. “I’ll download all the Chiata data to you and you will see how outgunned we are. Although I am very intrigued as to why I couldn’t detect your ships and mecha and how you could possibly spy on me without me knowing.”

“You’re not the only clever one in humanity,” Nancy told her. “We have some tricks even your alien hasn’t thought of yet.”

Chapter 37

January 2, 2407 AD

61 Ursae Majoris

31 Light-years from the Sol System

Sunday, 1:35 PM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

Alexander wasn’t sure what he thought of the Copernicus clone body. It wasn’t one from his old squad and as far as he could tell it was very plain. There was nothing extraordinary about it, if you disregarded the fact that it was a human cloned body that an alien entity had somehow managed to download itself into.

Madira explained that they had taken multiple DNA strands from the clones she had acquired and created a particular one for Copernicus. Copernicus had helped pick the DNA sequence hoping to make assimilation into the body least troublesome. Moore wasn’t sure exactly how they’d managed to do that, but since he’d first met Elle Ahmi what he’d believed could be done had continuously been a moving target. And knowing there was some advanced alien species involved made it even easier to believe.

“So, you’re not humanoid, uh, I mean you were originally something else?” Alexander asked. The clone body displayed the strangest expression Moore had ever seen. It was clear that the alien didn’t understand facial communication. Madira made no notice of it. Alexander assumed she had been around him enough as to not be shocked by the weird and out-of-context facial expressions.

“No. Your species would consider us more like your mollusca animals. We were multipedal amorphous invertabrates and only about thirty centimeters or so across our largest dimension. It was quite strange the first time I entered this mammalian form. But it is not unlike the bipedal warm-blooded creatures we formed a symbiosis with and parasiticly controlled for mobility on my homeworld.” Copernicus answer was very animated and with all the hand gestures and facial expressions in exactly the wrong places.

“Controlled?” Moore was shocked. “Were these creatures sentient?”

“Oh, get off your high horse, son,” Madira scolded. “They were damned aliens with alien morals. Your Southern values don’t apply here.”

Alien morals
, he thought.
That troubles the hell out of me.

Yes sir.
Abigail agreed.
Would a parasite even be concerned with controlling a sentient creature?

My thoughts exactly, Abby. Sounds a lot like slavery to me.

“I think I understand your concern, Alexander.” Copernicus appeared to be laughing as he said it. Moore wasn’t certain if he meant to be or not. “But no, the creatures were more like your large primates or maybe bears from your world. They had very dexterious digits that were useful and highly controllable. My people believe that they evolved to become our perfect vessels. But the Chiata killed them. They killed them all.”

“I see.” Moore replied.

“Enough with the small talk,” Madira grunted. “We came here to show him tangible proof and the type of destruction the Chiata are capable of. So fire up this behemoth and let’s go.”

“Very well,” Copernicus turned to a large wall that was either a wall screen or a window because Alexander had a clear view of the large QMT transmission system outside. 61 UM was very small at the Oort Cloud distance where they were, but it was still the brightest star in the sky. Moore realized that he was about to see how the alien had managed to contact Madira across the galaxy all those years ago. What he didn’t get was how he had managed to build this facility by himself.

Copernicus reached into the clear wall with his left hand and the surface morphed around his fingers like pudding. The clear glowing pudding danced about his fingertips with each movement sending trails of green light shooting through the image in the window like fireworks. Then the large spires over the central QMT pad of the facility began to spark and glow. A large circle of rippling watery like blue light appeared and then flashed like an explosion. There was no sound or shock wave and there was no damage, but the phenomenon left Moore briefly lightheaded.

“What was that?” He shook his head back and forth to clear the stars from his vision.

“You get used to it.” Madira said.

“As you can see, this is my home star system over a thousand light-years from here.” The alien explained.

“Did we just jump the entire facility here?” Moore was amazed. There was a bright yellow star not much farther than four astronomical units away. If he hadn’t known better he’d think he was back at the Sol system.

“No, son, we’re snooping on it,” Madira replied. “We ain’t really there.”

“Snooping?” Moore asked all the while gritting his teeth wishing that Madira would stop calling him “son”.

“What she means Alexander is that we are in a hyperspace dimension, or more closely to your people’s understanding of modern physics, we are on a parallel quantum membrane peaking in at this one. They can’t see us and we can’t impact them. I have tried many times but cannot seem to connect with the Chiata brains the way I have with the human one. Their brains are quite different.”

Alexander looked out across the star system. As far as he could see there were glints from the inner star. That meant very large ships or material or asteroids. Moore wasn’t certain.

“What is all that?” He asked.

Abby, are you getting all this?
Moore thought to his AIC.

Yes, sir.

Make note of everything.

As always, sir.

“Each of those glints you see are fragments of my homeworld or from one of the other planets that used to fill this system. Here take a closer look.” Copernicus zoomed in to the largest glint. There was a large asteroidal object that had been transformed into some sort of factory system.

“I don’t get it. Where are the planets from this system? There had to be gas giants, right?” Moore hoped the answer wasn’t going to be what he thought it was going to be.

“There were seven planets, as you call them here. There were thousands of smaller bodies. The Chiata came here. In only twenty-five thousand years this is all that is left of my system.”

“Holy shit.” Moore said under his breath.

“Now you get the picture son.” Madira slapped him on the back. “They have even taken apart the gas giants for their purposes. They appear to have left nothing standing.”

“How many of your people lived here?”

“Well, there were over seventy billion of us, but many of us were able to escape before the invasion. Over forty billion of us died delaying them.” Copernicus attempted to make a sad face.

“What are they doing here?” Alexander asked.

“What they always do.” Copernicus turned his head toward him as he continued to manipulate the translucent pudding wall. “They used every bit of resources in this system to support their expansion across the galaxy. As far as can be estimated, the Expanse covers tens of thousands of star systems. We have no way of knowing exactly how many or if they are all used up like my world or if they are being inhabited. We only know what the worlds on the edge of the Expanse are like. They appear to prefer to inhabit on red star systems. Most of the other younger and hotter star systems on the edge are being used up in this fashion. My many millennia of observation tell me that these metal-rich systems are used to build their war machine and their habitation infrastructure which must be exceedingly vast.”

“If you didn’t catch that, son, he’s telling you that the Sol system will be devoured by these bastards just like this system was.”

“Right, I got that.”

“Yes, Alexander, I fear your only real hope is to escape. But Sienna has explained to me time and again that will not be your first response. You humans have a propensity to fight, even in hopeless situations.”

Well, that’s one thing me and the crazy bitch agree on,
he thought.

Oohrah, sir.

“Wait, why can’t you just use this device and spy on the other systems deeper into the Expanse?” Moore asked.

“It can only ‘sling-forward,’ as you say, so far. We are close to that limit now. The Expanse is too great.”

“Shit.”

“My sentiments exactly, son.” Madira added.

“Well, can you show me a skirmish between any other aliens and the Chiata? How about these Goothlyears you’ve talked about.” Moore was tipping his hand as to intel they had on their conversations. Madira looked surprised but only slightly so. Copernicus had the ultimate in poker faces in that his expressions were always random or off cue.

“Ah, the Ghuthlaeer are indeed in a continuous, bloody struggle with the Chiata and they would make a great ally, but probably not good, as Sienna says, bedfellows.” Copernicus replied. “Unfortunately, the nearest engagement zone between them and the Chiata is more than another thousand light-years from here. That far exceeds the range of this device.”

“Well, we need to figure out how to pay them a visit in the very near future.” Moore said gruffly. He hated being at the mercy of Madira and this alien, for all of their important intelligence information.

“I will think on that one.” Copernicus replied. “But for now, I would like to go back. Seeing this system is more than distressing to me.”

“I can understand that.” Moore believed the alien was sincerely distraught. Somehow he had to figure out a way to prevent humanity from suffering the same fate. While Alexander had some pity for the creature, he had been through too much shit because of the son of a bitch to start trusting him now.