The Siluvara Files
Act 0, Chapter 6
Don't Look At The Negative Mass
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"So when God made Man, the Devil came along and conned us into abandoning God. The Devil laughed, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed. Then he went and spawned the Grue in his own image. After about five minutes up in their faces... you know why that Old Scratch ain't laughin' anymore." - Gerald Johnson
"I'm not sure I want to agree with that. It implies the Siluvarans were God's response." - Vincent Hersch
"They weren't?" - Paul Hollings
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Paul Hollings and Kienna Lauacateine, naked but fully restored, helped Ocella switch the ship's engine back on as Ocella loaded the drained battery backup orb into the engine's undercarriage for recharging.
"How long do you think we have before more bugs will show up?" Kienna sighed as the engine came back to life with a slight hum, glancing at Paul, who was stealing a glance at her body. He snapped his head back to his duties.
"Not long," Ocella replied, walking over to the systems monitor console, smirking as Kienna went over and kissed Paul's lips. "Damn, we need to send them a signal and attempt to make peace with MJ-12, or SOMEONE of authority who will talk to us."
Paul smiled from ear to ear as Kienna cupped her breasts for him; then he recomposed himself and tried to monitor the computer in front of him while it ran an inventory of what might be damaged or not functioning. "Yeah.. um, that's the best we can, umm, do, really."
Kienna laughed and started the advanced monitoring program on her console. "We'll use more computing power and raise our heat signature with this, but what can we do? They must know we're here. We can't have them taking over our ship."
"You know... maybe the Cerulean Dawn actually likes us." Ocella suggested. The other two turned and paused to look at her as if she had a giant throbbing wart on her face. "No, really... they did warn us. And..." She sighed. "I did see one of the bugs... I saw its energy signature."
"Honestly..." Paul admitted, "now we're assuming they weren't the ones who bugged us... or using us for some ulterior purpose," Paul pointed out. Then, he noticed the screen did something he didn't expect. "Damn!"
"Damn?" Kienna repeated, glancing over at him. "What's 'Damn'? No 'Damn', please. That means bad things."
He looked up. "Well it's better than gawwwd dayum..." he replied. "I just went to the wrong screen, that's all. I went to the far sweep or star sweep or whatever this is."
Ocella came over and looked at the display, then sighed softly. "Oh, that's the deep space sensors." She reached out to the screen. "The ship's functions are right next..." The blood suddenly drained from her face as she was propelled back. "Oh, dear Gaia."
Kienna threw her hands down. "What is with you two? Dear Gaia means drama. We don't need drama, sis."
"Yeah," Paul said nervously, his fingertips growing cold; he knew Ocella had seen something terrible, and his mind was already racing to figure out what it was... and hoping it wasn't what he feared. "What's wrong now?"
Ocella looked to Kienna, knowing Kienna already knew what she was going to say. "Grue Mibothars. A whole fleet of them, sis."
"Mi... Mibothars?" Kienna's voice faltered as she staggered closer.
"They must have hypered into the area..." Ocella said with disbelief. "They're racing to the Ushali Line... the Kuiper Belt, as you call it."
"The Kuiper Belt?" Paul gasped, looking at the screen and the red dots plaguing the display like a deadly pox. In a flash, he nearly lost control of his bladder. "Jesus, that's the Kuiper Belt Defense Line they're coming up on! The Kuiper Defense Fleet has to be warned!"
Kienna trembled as she looked at the screen. "Oh Gaia help us... Mibothar refueling bugs... I'm guessing those other dots there are some new class of firebugs... heavy hosers and spitters... and the big one is the mother colony ship... and those other big ones may be guard bugs..." She looked at Paul. "That's what you'd call dreadnoughts."
Paul jumped back. "You gotta be kidding me... they're coming to stomp a colony into Earth already?"
Kienna nodded. "They may not realize that Rakshasa is dead."
"Damn... they're gonna be pissed when they find out, too," Paul sighed. Then, he pointed to the screen.
"Oh, they won't wipe your whole species out," Ocella was quick to say.
"They'll just farm us," Paul finished for her, folding his arms. "Like friggin' cattle."
Kienna confirmed, "Exactly. We've seen them reduce starfaring empires to what you would call midieval level worlds designed solely to raise humanoids as food."
Paul cringed. "Can we find the Earth fleet?" He asked frantically, suddenly tapping the screen to make it pan to the left and right across the solar system with his fingers. "Damn! We have to warn them!"
Ocella nudged his fingers aside and centered the screen on a small collection of green dots, with a very large one moving up from the rear. "They already know. They're moving to intercept."
Kienna looked over her shoulder. "That few ships against that many Grue? They're crazy."
"What's that large green dot?" Paul inquired.
"That..." Ocella tapped the icon in question. Suddenly, the image of the vessel appeared, and miscellaneous superficial information scrolled by its side. "Dear Gaia... what is that..."
Paul studied the thing. "I've never seen a ship like that before. It looks fucking huge." He jerked his head back. "God damn... are these readouts saying what I-"
"Yes!" Ocella said with amazement. "That vessel is hundreds of kilometers long. It's as big as some of our world-ships. And it's probably bristling with cannons!"
Kienna snorted a laugh. "Where the hell have you humans been hiding your technology? That ship is a monster. Our sweeps never even picked up this beast of a ship!"
Paul chuckled. "That, right there, is Majestic-12's handiwork. No doubt they've been hiding that thing in the asteroid belt for ages. If it was docked inside Ceres base, you'd never see it."
Kienna tightened her lip, looking at Ocella. "Sis, if we transmit to them, that'll only aggravate them."
Ocella nodded. "But if the Grue are coming to invade, they will see us soon anyway. I'd hate for us to get attacked by a crowd of Mibothars and their boarding parties." She looked to Paul.
Kienna moved over to another console, her fingers flying across the screen. "Forget this. We need to call out to our own fleet. NOW."
"Kienna..." Ocella's soft voice stopped her.
Kienna looked at her and Paul. "What else can we do? The Grue have to have spotted us already. They're bearing down on the Earth fleet. We have to call for our forces."
Ocella sighed. "Then we should go all out," she suggested, "put us on an intercept course with that monster ship. Broadcast to them that we come in peace, to help them. We have crucial intel on the Grue fleet. We are the Grue's enemies."
"We need to access a long range scanner," Lt. Kou Nakamura demanded, putting his hand on Vincent Hersch's shoulder as the crowd known as Team Satori hurriedly spilled into a cheerfully bright, two-level auditorium-sized room packed with seats, floating projection screens and computer consoles. "Is there one here?"
"And let's pray the enemy has computers," Gerald Johnson said, smacking his hands together and rubbing them loudly, "because if they have computers, I have their asses."
Vincent Hersch regarded Gerald for a split second; Gerald Johnson was the only man he had seen yet on this ship that was taller and broader shouldered than himself. Although he acted more like the love child of a circus clown crossed with an obnoxious teddy bear, one could imagine he could do a lot of damage by physically throwing Gerald at something.
Though he knew, given Gerald's personality, the time would come when he would have to see the results of this himself, for now, however, Gerald was more use on his feet than in the hospital recovering from an attitude adjustment. Knowing this, Vincent gestured to the nondescript techs in military uniforms. "They should know which system is hooked up to our far sweep sensors."
"Thanks!" Kou and Gerald replied hastily; both of them cleared an entire short flight of stairs to the bottom floor level in one leap, accosting the first person in their path, a woman tech flitting like a hummingbird around a pair of consoles sitting back to back. She gestured to a station near the front and they barely got out a thank-you, dashing to the consoles in question.
Briefly, Vincent stopped Daron Heppler. "Has Admiral Remington arrived yet?"
"Fleet Admiral Remington?" Heppler replied. "He's headed to the bridge to assume command. Supreme Commander Milton and Admiral Townsend are assembling the entire Joint Earth Defense Initiative fleet in the meantime."
"The President?"
"President Burton has chosen to stay here with the entire MJ-12 Council. He feels the Sojourner is the safest place in the galaxy right now, even if we could jump him back to Earth. Supreme Commander Milton is with him but will be joining the Eris Base Command when we arrive."
Lt. Cheryl Jenkins and Ensigns Julia Quan and Felecia Mendoza followed Nadya Demeter down to the first level. "How many people are at stake at the Eris base?" Jenkins inquired.
"Eris has twice as many personnel as we have, including some colonists we're bringing on board." Nadya pointed out. "But they're utterly swarming with GX-F44 Nightmare starfighters and MX-G55b Ogres modified for long range space combat, among other ships. It's also the second test pilot base for the YF-81 Reflex. At least one squad is supposed to be combat ready at any given time."
"The YF-81 is ready for combat?" Mendoza said with disbelief. "We've been working on that fighter for twenty years..."
"It'll have to be."
"Andrei!" Gerald shouted across the room. "President Federova on Line Alpha!"
Lt. Kuznetsov was already seated in his high-backed leather chair, wearing a headset; he raised his hand and made the ok sign with his fingers.
Gail Walters joined Kou and Gerald, and Daron Heppler soon followed.
"Those ships look biological in nature," Gail was pointing out the alien bug-like vessels on the screen as Gerald's fingers danced like a blur across the projected keyboard in front of him. "I bet those glowing lines across that thing's skin..."
"Electronic signatures. They're all over that thing," Gerald muttered. "It's more than just bio mechanical. There's a friggin' computer network in there. I can feel it."
"Feel it?" Gail's eyebrow lifted.
While Gerald was snarling and cussing under his breath at the computer, Kou Nakamura explained solemnly, "Gerald's head gear only amplifies his range."
"What range? For what?"
"Gerald Johnson is a cyberpath," Heppler's words turned Gail's head sharply in his direction. "The most powerful cyberpath that we know of." Gerald stopped momentarily to shoot him a puzzled look, before going back to work. "His head gear also provides the appearance that he relies solely on his equipment to achieve his cyber-jacking feats... which is why he has been able to hide his abilities so well."
"Won't mean shit if these electronic signatures are just electrochemical bullshit on STEROIDS!!!" Gerald screamed, jumping to his feet, kicking the base of the console. "Dammit! I know there are tons of electronics in that big mothership!" He pointed accusingly at the screen. "I know there are! Their shit's shielded! Or I just can't get good reception!" He turned to Heppler. "Dude. I gotta get in there. Or at least real close... within a hundred fifty million miles or less... TGD was an easy hack to jack because my range extender helped me get to them. But now we're almost half a billion miles away from that mother ship AT Eris base!"
Nakamura coughed, fighting back an incredulous laugh. Gail gawked at him.
"Look!" he pointed at the screen. "I can wait until this thing gets closer to the Kuiper Fleet but time's not on our side here. You've got almost a bazillion bug ships and a mother ship the size of Titan coming at us."
Heppler shook his head slowly, silently.
"C'mon, man, you said back on the train that we have a contingent of the Black Hand on here, and a buncha Valks and 'Wulves, and a squad of Reflexes at Eris base. Get me a Hawkeye AWACS escort to within a hundred fifty million miles and we can do this! I can get inside their computers and find a way to turn their shit against them!"
"With the Grue breathing down your neck?"
Vincent Hersch stood next to Gerald, opposite Heppler. "If you're planning on a raid, then I will-"
Suddenly, Lt. Kuznetsov cheered wildly, leaping into the air and pumping his fist as he threw off his headset.
All eyes turned instantly in his direction.
"The Siluvaran base ship we've been monitoring... they're hailing us, requesting permission to approach and dock..." he paused to catch his breath, a sense of concern tempering his explosion of excitement. "President Federova is requesting that Cypress Lake Combine allow them to land."
Jaws fell open all around the room; only Vincent Hersch remained calm.
Nadya wasted no time responding. "We are the Cypress Lake Combine," she looked to Daron, who nodded. "All of us," she gestured to Gerald, Gail and the others nearby. "As the leaders of the Combine, Heppler, myself... Vincent?"
Vincent raised an eyebrow. "I'm with you on this."
Nadya nodded. "...and Vincent... would like to extend Paul, Kienna and Ocella our invitation to join us... them and their starfleet, if they have one... to come to our aid."
The crowd gasped; Vincent Hersch cracked a rare smile that didn't even look right on his face. Then he furrowed his brows and turned to Nadya. "Wait, what was that about the leadership?"
Heppler gestured to him. "We will talk about that later."
Ensign Quan put her hands on her hips. "Well what do you know... we get to meet some aliens."
Gerald snorted. "Majestic-12 is definitely out of this picture now."
"Um," Nadya corrected him, "not exactly. They have twelve thousand troops here. And then there's Eris base."
"Well then hot diggity," Gerald threw up his hands. "What's the delay for me, then? I can either get in their faces or they can get in ours. What'll it be?"
"How long before they arrive, Lt. Kuznetsov?" Daron called.
"What line are the Siluvarans on?" Vincent asked.
"Line B36D1," Andrei replied. "They're live. All three present. I can connect to main screen if you want."
Paul sat upright in his chair in the base command center, tapping his arm rest nervously while Kienna and Ocella sat on either side of him with their hands clasped in their laps, when the faces of three human beings appeared on their main screen.
"This is the expedition flagship Sojourner to Siluvaran mobile base, Grand Magus Nadya Demeter speaking. We have you on screen."
Paul was the first to respond. Standing up abruptly, he saluted. "Petty Commander Paul Hollings here, reporting for duty."
Nadya nodded. "We're pleased to have you back, Lieutenant Commander Hollings."
His eyes widened, then darted around. "Lieu..."
"We have a special mission for you," she added, "I will explain once you arrive."
"Kienna Lauacateine, recon mission commander," Kienna nodded. "I understand the man in the middle is Vincent Hersch?"
He nodded. "Pleased to meet you, ma'am."
Kienna smiled proudly. "I must greatly commend you for killing the most wanted and despised Grue in the history of the galaxy, sir... next to his mother Rashanith, of course."
He chuckled. "Much thanks."
Ocella pointed to herself. "To keep this conversation manageable, my name is Ocella." Gesturing to the bald headed man on the screen, she said, "And you are...?"
He bowed. "Vice Grandmaster Darin Heppler, also known as Gavan Underwood. Pleased to meet you."
"We have a little problem..." Paul interjected firmly. "Majestic-12 has placed bugs on our ship, and though we've removed them, more are sure to come."
"There will be no more bugs in your base," Vincent asserted firmly. "We will make sure of that."
"We're about to execute a space fold jump to Eris base," Daron explained. "You'll have the coordinates momentarily. Please translate them into your system and meet us there. We do believe you have your own space fold engine, am I correct?"
Kienna smirked. "Space fold? You mean a circumventing hyperspace device? That we do. We already know of Eris base, it's the largest inhabited planetoid beyond Pluto, correct?"
Nadya and Daron looked at each other; Vincent chuckled. "Hang a right at Pluto, you can't miss it."
Kienna, Ocella and Paul laughed.
"We'll be there momentarily," Kienna saluted him. "We're also transmitting information on the alien fleet to you."
"HEY!" Gerald practically shoved his way into their midst. "Do these guys use computers?"
Vincent and Nadya scowled, but nonetheless stepped aside to let him speak.
Kienna and Ocella looked across Paul at each other for a moment.
"Ummm..." Ocella rubbed her chin. "Cybernetic brains? Yup. Got those, alright. Without either their bio- or cyber-neural nets, they'd be dead in the water."
"Good!" Gerald snapped his fingers. "I can jack into them." With that, he turned and left.
Vincent turned to watch him run back to his terminal to get lost in his work again, then shook his head. "Any hopes for reinforcements from your side?" he asked.
Kienna nodded. "We're currently sending a message out to our Siluvaran forces in deep space. The presence of the Grue will no doubt bring someone running."
"Good... I think we'd rather have Siluvarans in our midst than the Grue. See you at Eris."
Vincent turned to Gerald. "Mr. Johnson," he called, "our alien friends are hurrying to get to Eris base. You have five minutes to pack any gear you need if you want to head out."
Gerald turned and gave him a thumbs up. "All three of us are packed up and ready to go."
Vincent jerked his head back. "Three of you? I didn't say..."
"He means 'Me, myself and I'," Kuznetsov, now standing nearby, pointed out. Vincent rolled his eyes. Gerald clicked his teeth and gave him a thumbs-up.
Daron and Nadya came rushing back to the front of the command center. "We don't have time for a speech or any fanfare," Daron announced to Vincent, "but the Sojourner is carrying out its first full Eisenbridge Jump."
"Is the M-T element still stable?"
"M-T 238 is stable and as negative as the Grinch."
A brief chorus of chuckles helped ease the tension of the moment as scientists and engineers raced around the Engine room, a surprisingly small control facility that, through the miracle of panoramic surround-display technology, appeared to be nothing more than a giant bubble hanging in the middle of the cavernous, rocky chamber holding the quicksilverish orb that was the Morris-Thorne Element.
Half of the Hyperspace Engine Core Containment had been paved over, leaving the upper half still looking like a devil's playground of jagged rocks and evil shadows cast off dark crevices by the powerful floodlights from the more developed area below. The chamber was otherwise empty as of yet, although massive, strobing red lights from down in the depths seemed to indicate something was important about to happen.
"Tell that 'Satori' team I will see them later," Sandra Nagano shouted over her back as she dipped a foot cautiously into the engine room, then rushed through the doorway; against the seemingly transparent walls, it seemed as if she'd entered through a brightly-lit wormhole. The scientist on the other side of the hallway shook his head, turned, and walked hastily back to his own observation room before the door slid shut.
"Did I miss anything?" she asked frantically, her heels clicking as she rushed to her console to log in.
Even though it seemed as if she was walking across the sky itself, her mind was well adjusted to the tiny cat-eyes on the ground that provided the occupants with a sense of solid ground that was more logical than visual. Scientists called it the "Walk of Faith" for intellectuals - one had to see others standing around in midair and convince oneself emotionally that if they were not falling into the abyss below them, then there had to be solid ground below their feet and that the lack of a visible floor did not mean the lack of a floor. Many such rooms on the Sojourner became personality tests in and of themselves; some never got used to the concept, others charged across such surfaces with more ignorance and recklessness than knowledge. Indeed, quite a few 'trick rooms' were made as pranks, in which the foolish would step out boldly beyond the precipice; by the time they realized there really was nothing there, their center of gravity had pushed them over the edge into a pool of water. As such, one never entered such a place without tapping their foot beyond the precipice to see if there actually was ground there waiting for them.
"M-T Element deploying now!" her answer blurted from a white-robed scientist to her right.
"Visual shields up!" Captain Felix Uribe, a tall, stocky, gray-bearded man, stomped by, bellowing in his naturally powerful voice, "Don't need anyone starin' at the negative mass and hopping dimensions on us!"
Of course, no visual shields came into play, but once the superstition was raised, others just had to jump in and play along.
"Abracadabrus negativus mass-us! Eisenbrige aperture dilation set for one hundred kilometers."
"Circumventus relativitivus! Coordinates verified!"
"Fuckus thatus. Make me a friggin porno star." A yellow hard-hatted engineer looked around with confusion as not just a few heads turned. "What? What'd I say?" he shrugged.
"M-T element coming into position."
All eyes turned ahead as the tip of a great shimmering silvery orb rose into view like a quicksilver sunrise.
"Fabulous richus! Power levels at maximum!"
Sandra Nagano shook her head. "Overus weightus!" She chuckled. "Gravity projection system activating. No turning back now, folks."
"Visual shields, ladies and gentlemen," Captain Uribe pulled up his goggles dangling from his neck and placed them on his face to cover his eyes. Everyone else followed suit.
The Sojourner gradually accelerated; from far away, it appeared like a turtle, slowly crawling into motion, but from up close, the massive colony ship lunged forward like an arrow shot by God.
Ahead of the great vessel, a jagged rip appeared in the fabric of space, mauling itself into a perfect black sphere that swelled rapidly into a menacing void, and then a great funnel into the belly of oblivion itself.
A black hole.
Sandra Nagano fixed her goggles on her eyes not out of fear of staring directly at an object of negative mass; like the others, she was protecting her eyes from the potential retina-burning super-bright glow of the miniature star levitating into position before them, while keeping an eye on the orb and managing its connection to the ship's propulsion system.
"Negative mass projection system is operational," she announced, her voice now the only sound heard in the room over the whisper-quiet whining hum in the background.
Trails of energy bled off the M-T Element, forming a dozen rivers of quicksilver meandering down into the floor of the containment chamber.
"Negative mass for stability now feeding into the wormhole. Sufficiency level at twenty-five percent."
The black hole slowly became a dark, dreadful gray.
"Fifty percent."
The Sojourner's duck-billed tip parted waves of space dust and tiny rocks in its wake as the ship surged toward the now pure-white wormhole.
"Seventy-five percent."
The dazzling white brilliance of the wormhole gave way to a field of stars beyond.
Nagano's fingers flew across the virtual keyboard before her as the quicksilver streams of mass stopped flowing from the M-T element. "Negative mass deployment at one hundred percent. Wormhole is stable and fully dilated. We are receiving signals from Eris base directly through the wormhole. Loud and clear, data error rate within acceptable CRC limits."
The M-T Element began its descent, having completed its task without exploding into a blinding blaze of light.
She removed her goggles, pulling out her aged leather glass case and kissing the spectacles passed down to her from her ancient ancestor who first wore them. "Yoikus and awayus," she smiled.
The Sojourner accelerated drastically, leaping boldly into the vast, yawning breach before it.
Streams of silvery energy bled from the vortex back into the aft section of the ship, causing the wormhole to close up and disappear hundreds of miles behind the ship.
For a moment, the engine crew stood stock still, staring at rapidly changing footage from cameras around the ship.
Team Satori watched silently; and so did the hundred or so people in the Sojourner's Command center.
Finally, the cameras locked onto a featureless gray orb appearing above the ship's dorsal axis, with the sun peeking over its northern hemisphere, and a tiny egg-shaped vessel floating in between.
Eris. And the Siluvaran base ship.
The raucous cheers that ensued on Eris Base, and on every ship in orbit around it, resonated across the galaxy.
Act 0, Chapter 6
Don't Look At The Negative Mass
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"So when God made Man, the Devil came along and conned us into abandoning God. The Devil laughed, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed. Then he went and spawned the Grue in his own image. After about five minutes up in their faces... you know why that Old Scratch ain't laughin' anymore." - Gerald Johnson
"I'm not sure I want to agree with that. It implies the Siluvarans were God's response." - Vincent Hersch
"They weren't?" - Paul Hollings
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Paul Hollings and Kienna Lauacateine, naked but fully restored, helped Ocella switch the ship's engine back on as Ocella loaded the drained battery backup orb into the engine's undercarriage for recharging.
"How long do you think we have before more bugs will show up?" Kienna sighed as the engine came back to life with a slight hum, glancing at Paul, who was stealing a glance at her body. He snapped his head back to his duties.
"Not long," Ocella replied, walking over to the systems monitor console, smirking as Kienna went over and kissed Paul's lips. "Damn, we need to send them a signal and attempt to make peace with MJ-12, or SOMEONE of authority who will talk to us."
Paul smiled from ear to ear as Kienna cupped her breasts for him; then he recomposed himself and tried to monitor the computer in front of him while it ran an inventory of what might be damaged or not functioning. "Yeah.. um, that's the best we can, umm, do, really."
Kienna laughed and started the advanced monitoring program on her console. "We'll use more computing power and raise our heat signature with this, but what can we do? They must know we're here. We can't have them taking over our ship."
"You know... maybe the Cerulean Dawn actually likes us." Ocella suggested. The other two turned and paused to look at her as if she had a giant throbbing wart on her face. "No, really... they did warn us. And..." She sighed. "I did see one of the bugs... I saw its energy signature."
"Honestly..." Paul admitted, "now we're assuming they weren't the ones who bugged us... or using us for some ulterior purpose," Paul pointed out. Then, he noticed the screen did something he didn't expect. "Damn!"
"Damn?" Kienna repeated, glancing over at him. "What's 'Damn'? No 'Damn', please. That means bad things."
He looked up. "Well it's better than gawwwd dayum..." he replied. "I just went to the wrong screen, that's all. I went to the far sweep or star sweep or whatever this is."
Ocella came over and looked at the display, then sighed softly. "Oh, that's the deep space sensors." She reached out to the screen. "The ship's functions are right next..." The blood suddenly drained from her face as she was propelled back. "Oh, dear Gaia."
Kienna threw her hands down. "What is with you two? Dear Gaia means drama. We don't need drama, sis."
"Yeah," Paul said nervously, his fingertips growing cold; he knew Ocella had seen something terrible, and his mind was already racing to figure out what it was... and hoping it wasn't what he feared. "What's wrong now?"
Ocella looked to Kienna, knowing Kienna already knew what she was going to say. "Grue Mibothars. A whole fleet of them, sis."
"Mi... Mibothars?" Kienna's voice faltered as she staggered closer.
"They must have hypered into the area..." Ocella said with disbelief. "They're racing to the Ushali Line... the Kuiper Belt, as you call it."
"The Kuiper Belt?" Paul gasped, looking at the screen and the red dots plaguing the display like a deadly pox. In a flash, he nearly lost control of his bladder. "Jesus, that's the Kuiper Belt Defense Line they're coming up on! The Kuiper Defense Fleet has to be warned!"
Kienna trembled as she looked at the screen. "Oh Gaia help us... Mibothar refueling bugs... I'm guessing those other dots there are some new class of firebugs... heavy hosers and spitters... and the big one is the mother colony ship... and those other big ones may be guard bugs..." She looked at Paul. "That's what you'd call dreadnoughts."
Paul jumped back. "You gotta be kidding me... they're coming to stomp a colony into Earth already?"
Kienna nodded. "They may not realize that Rakshasa is dead."
"Damn... they're gonna be pissed when they find out, too," Paul sighed. Then, he pointed to the screen.
"Oh, they won't wipe your whole species out," Ocella was quick to say.
"They'll just farm us," Paul finished for her, folding his arms. "Like friggin' cattle."
Kienna confirmed, "Exactly. We've seen them reduce starfaring empires to what you would call midieval level worlds designed solely to raise humanoids as food."
Paul cringed. "Can we find the Earth fleet?" He asked frantically, suddenly tapping the screen to make it pan to the left and right across the solar system with his fingers. "Damn! We have to warn them!"
Ocella nudged his fingers aside and centered the screen on a small collection of green dots, with a very large one moving up from the rear. "They already know. They're moving to intercept."
Kienna looked over her shoulder. "That few ships against that many Grue? They're crazy."
"What's that large green dot?" Paul inquired.
"That..." Ocella tapped the icon in question. Suddenly, the image of the vessel appeared, and miscellaneous superficial information scrolled by its side. "Dear Gaia... what is that..."
Paul studied the thing. "I've never seen a ship like that before. It looks fucking huge." He jerked his head back. "God damn... are these readouts saying what I-"
"Yes!" Ocella said with amazement. "That vessel is hundreds of kilometers long. It's as big as some of our world-ships. And it's probably bristling with cannons!"
Kienna snorted a laugh. "Where the hell have you humans been hiding your technology? That ship is a monster. Our sweeps never even picked up this beast of a ship!"
Paul chuckled. "That, right there, is Majestic-12's handiwork. No doubt they've been hiding that thing in the asteroid belt for ages. If it was docked inside Ceres base, you'd never see it."
Kienna tightened her lip, looking at Ocella. "Sis, if we transmit to them, that'll only aggravate them."
Ocella nodded. "But if the Grue are coming to invade, they will see us soon anyway. I'd hate for us to get attacked by a crowd of Mibothars and their boarding parties." She looked to Paul.
Kienna moved over to another console, her fingers flying across the screen. "Forget this. We need to call out to our own fleet. NOW."
"Kienna..." Ocella's soft voice stopped her.
Kienna looked at her and Paul. "What else can we do? The Grue have to have spotted us already. They're bearing down on the Earth fleet. We have to call for our forces."
Ocella sighed. "Then we should go all out," she suggested, "put us on an intercept course with that monster ship. Broadcast to them that we come in peace, to help them. We have crucial intel on the Grue fleet. We are the Grue's enemies."
"We need to access a long range scanner," Lt. Kou Nakamura demanded, putting his hand on Vincent Hersch's shoulder as the crowd known as Team Satori hurriedly spilled into a cheerfully bright, two-level auditorium-sized room packed with seats, floating projection screens and computer consoles. "Is there one here?"
"And let's pray the enemy has computers," Gerald Johnson said, smacking his hands together and rubbing them loudly, "because if they have computers, I have their asses."
Vincent Hersch regarded Gerald for a split second; Gerald Johnson was the only man he had seen yet on this ship that was taller and broader shouldered than himself. Although he acted more like the love child of a circus clown crossed with an obnoxious teddy bear, one could imagine he could do a lot of damage by physically throwing Gerald at something.
Though he knew, given Gerald's personality, the time would come when he would have to see the results of this himself, for now, however, Gerald was more use on his feet than in the hospital recovering from an attitude adjustment. Knowing this, Vincent gestured to the nondescript techs in military uniforms. "They should know which system is hooked up to our far sweep sensors."
"Thanks!" Kou and Gerald replied hastily; both of them cleared an entire short flight of stairs to the bottom floor level in one leap, accosting the first person in their path, a woman tech flitting like a hummingbird around a pair of consoles sitting back to back. She gestured to a station near the front and they barely got out a thank-you, dashing to the consoles in question.
Briefly, Vincent stopped Daron Heppler. "Has Admiral Remington arrived yet?"
"Fleet Admiral Remington?" Heppler replied. "He's headed to the bridge to assume command. Supreme Commander Milton and Admiral Townsend are assembling the entire Joint Earth Defense Initiative fleet in the meantime."
"The President?"
"President Burton has chosen to stay here with the entire MJ-12 Council. He feels the Sojourner is the safest place in the galaxy right now, even if we could jump him back to Earth. Supreme Commander Milton is with him but will be joining the Eris Base Command when we arrive."
Lt. Cheryl Jenkins and Ensigns Julia Quan and Felecia Mendoza followed Nadya Demeter down to the first level. "How many people are at stake at the Eris base?" Jenkins inquired.
"Eris has twice as many personnel as we have, including some colonists we're bringing on board." Nadya pointed out. "But they're utterly swarming with GX-F44 Nightmare starfighters and MX-G55b Ogres modified for long range space combat, among other ships. It's also the second test pilot base for the YF-81 Reflex. At least one squad is supposed to be combat ready at any given time."
"The YF-81 is ready for combat?" Mendoza said with disbelief. "We've been working on that fighter for twenty years..."
"It'll have to be."
"Andrei!" Gerald shouted across the room. "President Federova on Line Alpha!"
Lt. Kuznetsov was already seated in his high-backed leather chair, wearing a headset; he raised his hand and made the ok sign with his fingers.
Gail Walters joined Kou and Gerald, and Daron Heppler soon followed.
"Those ships look biological in nature," Gail was pointing out the alien bug-like vessels on the screen as Gerald's fingers danced like a blur across the projected keyboard in front of him. "I bet those glowing lines across that thing's skin..."
"Electronic signatures. They're all over that thing," Gerald muttered. "It's more than just bio mechanical. There's a friggin' computer network in there. I can feel it."
"Feel it?" Gail's eyebrow lifted.
While Gerald was snarling and cussing under his breath at the computer, Kou Nakamura explained solemnly, "Gerald's head gear only amplifies his range."
"What range? For what?"
"Gerald Johnson is a cyberpath," Heppler's words turned Gail's head sharply in his direction. "The most powerful cyberpath that we know of." Gerald stopped momentarily to shoot him a puzzled look, before going back to work. "His head gear also provides the appearance that he relies solely on his equipment to achieve his cyber-jacking feats... which is why he has been able to hide his abilities so well."
"Won't mean shit if these electronic signatures are just electrochemical bullshit on STEROIDS!!!" Gerald screamed, jumping to his feet, kicking the base of the console. "Dammit! I know there are tons of electronics in that big mothership!" He pointed accusingly at the screen. "I know there are! Their shit's shielded! Or I just can't get good reception!" He turned to Heppler. "Dude. I gotta get in there. Or at least real close... within a hundred fifty million miles or less... TGD was an easy hack to jack because my range extender helped me get to them. But now we're almost half a billion miles away from that mother ship AT Eris base!"
Nakamura coughed, fighting back an incredulous laugh. Gail gawked at him.
"Look!" he pointed at the screen. "I can wait until this thing gets closer to the Kuiper Fleet but time's not on our side here. You've got almost a bazillion bug ships and a mother ship the size of Titan coming at us."
Heppler shook his head slowly, silently.
"C'mon, man, you said back on the train that we have a contingent of the Black Hand on here, and a buncha Valks and 'Wulves, and a squad of Reflexes at Eris base. Get me a Hawkeye AWACS escort to within a hundred fifty million miles and we can do this! I can get inside their computers and find a way to turn their shit against them!"
"With the Grue breathing down your neck?"
Vincent Hersch stood next to Gerald, opposite Heppler. "If you're planning on a raid, then I will-"
Suddenly, Lt. Kuznetsov cheered wildly, leaping into the air and pumping his fist as he threw off his headset.
All eyes turned instantly in his direction.
"The Siluvaran base ship we've been monitoring... they're hailing us, requesting permission to approach and dock..." he paused to catch his breath, a sense of concern tempering his explosion of excitement. "President Federova is requesting that Cypress Lake Combine allow them to land."
Jaws fell open all around the room; only Vincent Hersch remained calm.
Nadya wasted no time responding. "We are the Cypress Lake Combine," she looked to Daron, who nodded. "All of us," she gestured to Gerald, Gail and the others nearby. "As the leaders of the Combine, Heppler, myself... Vincent?"
Vincent raised an eyebrow. "I'm with you on this."
Nadya nodded. "...and Vincent... would like to extend Paul, Kienna and Ocella our invitation to join us... them and their starfleet, if they have one... to come to our aid."
The crowd gasped; Vincent Hersch cracked a rare smile that didn't even look right on his face. Then he furrowed his brows and turned to Nadya. "Wait, what was that about the leadership?"
Heppler gestured to him. "We will talk about that later."
Ensign Quan put her hands on her hips. "Well what do you know... we get to meet some aliens."
Gerald snorted. "Majestic-12 is definitely out of this picture now."
"Um," Nadya corrected him, "not exactly. They have twelve thousand troops here. And then there's Eris base."
"Well then hot diggity," Gerald threw up his hands. "What's the delay for me, then? I can either get in their faces or they can get in ours. What'll it be?"
"How long before they arrive, Lt. Kuznetsov?" Daron called.
"What line are the Siluvarans on?" Vincent asked.
"Line B36D1," Andrei replied. "They're live. All three present. I can connect to main screen if you want."
Paul sat upright in his chair in the base command center, tapping his arm rest nervously while Kienna and Ocella sat on either side of him with their hands clasped in their laps, when the faces of three human beings appeared on their main screen.
"This is the expedition flagship Sojourner to Siluvaran mobile base, Grand Magus Nadya Demeter speaking. We have you on screen."
Paul was the first to respond. Standing up abruptly, he saluted. "Petty Commander Paul Hollings here, reporting for duty."
Nadya nodded. "We're pleased to have you back, Lieutenant Commander Hollings."
His eyes widened, then darted around. "Lieu..."
"We have a special mission for you," she added, "I will explain once you arrive."
"Kienna Lauacateine, recon mission commander," Kienna nodded. "I understand the man in the middle is Vincent Hersch?"
He nodded. "Pleased to meet you, ma'am."
Kienna smiled proudly. "I must greatly commend you for killing the most wanted and despised Grue in the history of the galaxy, sir... next to his mother Rashanith, of course."
He chuckled. "Much thanks."
Ocella pointed to herself. "To keep this conversation manageable, my name is Ocella." Gesturing to the bald headed man on the screen, she said, "And you are...?"
He bowed. "Vice Grandmaster Darin Heppler, also known as Gavan Underwood. Pleased to meet you."
"We have a little problem..." Paul interjected firmly. "Majestic-12 has placed bugs on our ship, and though we've removed them, more are sure to come."
"There will be no more bugs in your base," Vincent asserted firmly. "We will make sure of that."
"We're about to execute a space fold jump to Eris base," Daron explained. "You'll have the coordinates momentarily. Please translate them into your system and meet us there. We do believe you have your own space fold engine, am I correct?"
Kienna smirked. "Space fold? You mean a circumventing hyperspace device? That we do. We already know of Eris base, it's the largest inhabited planetoid beyond Pluto, correct?"
Nadya and Daron looked at each other; Vincent chuckled. "Hang a right at Pluto, you can't miss it."
Kienna, Ocella and Paul laughed.
"We'll be there momentarily," Kienna saluted him. "We're also transmitting information on the alien fleet to you."
"HEY!" Gerald practically shoved his way into their midst. "Do these guys use computers?"
Vincent and Nadya scowled, but nonetheless stepped aside to let him speak.
Kienna and Ocella looked across Paul at each other for a moment.
"Ummm..." Ocella rubbed her chin. "Cybernetic brains? Yup. Got those, alright. Without either their bio- or cyber-neural nets, they'd be dead in the water."
"Good!" Gerald snapped his fingers. "I can jack into them." With that, he turned and left.
Vincent turned to watch him run back to his terminal to get lost in his work again, then shook his head. "Any hopes for reinforcements from your side?" he asked.
Kienna nodded. "We're currently sending a message out to our Siluvaran forces in deep space. The presence of the Grue will no doubt bring someone running."
"Good... I think we'd rather have Siluvarans in our midst than the Grue. See you at Eris."
Vincent turned to Gerald. "Mr. Johnson," he called, "our alien friends are hurrying to get to Eris base. You have five minutes to pack any gear you need if you want to head out."
Gerald turned and gave him a thumbs up. "All three of us are packed up and ready to go."
Vincent jerked his head back. "Three of you? I didn't say..."
"He means 'Me, myself and I'," Kuznetsov, now standing nearby, pointed out. Vincent rolled his eyes. Gerald clicked his teeth and gave him a thumbs-up.
Daron and Nadya came rushing back to the front of the command center. "We don't have time for a speech or any fanfare," Daron announced to Vincent, "but the Sojourner is carrying out its first full Eisenbridge Jump."
"Is the M-T element still stable?"
"M-T 238 is stable and as negative as the Grinch."
A brief chorus of chuckles helped ease the tension of the moment as scientists and engineers raced around the Engine room, a surprisingly small control facility that, through the miracle of panoramic surround-display technology, appeared to be nothing more than a giant bubble hanging in the middle of the cavernous, rocky chamber holding the quicksilverish orb that was the Morris-Thorne Element.
Half of the Hyperspace Engine Core Containment had been paved over, leaving the upper half still looking like a devil's playground of jagged rocks and evil shadows cast off dark crevices by the powerful floodlights from the more developed area below. The chamber was otherwise empty as of yet, although massive, strobing red lights from down in the depths seemed to indicate something was important about to happen.
"Tell that 'Satori' team I will see them later," Sandra Nagano shouted over her back as she dipped a foot cautiously into the engine room, then rushed through the doorway; against the seemingly transparent walls, it seemed as if she'd entered through a brightly-lit wormhole. The scientist on the other side of the hallway shook his head, turned, and walked hastily back to his own observation room before the door slid shut.
"Did I miss anything?" she asked frantically, her heels clicking as she rushed to her console to log in.
Even though it seemed as if she was walking across the sky itself, her mind was well adjusted to the tiny cat-eyes on the ground that provided the occupants with a sense of solid ground that was more logical than visual. Scientists called it the "Walk of Faith" for intellectuals - one had to see others standing around in midair and convince oneself emotionally that if they were not falling into the abyss below them, then there had to be solid ground below their feet and that the lack of a visible floor did not mean the lack of a floor. Many such rooms on the Sojourner became personality tests in and of themselves; some never got used to the concept, others charged across such surfaces with more ignorance and recklessness than knowledge. Indeed, quite a few 'trick rooms' were made as pranks, in which the foolish would step out boldly beyond the precipice; by the time they realized there really was nothing there, their center of gravity had pushed them over the edge into a pool of water. As such, one never entered such a place without tapping their foot beyond the precipice to see if there actually was ground there waiting for them.
"M-T Element deploying now!" her answer blurted from a white-robed scientist to her right.
"Visual shields up!" Captain Felix Uribe, a tall, stocky, gray-bearded man, stomped by, bellowing in his naturally powerful voice, "Don't need anyone starin' at the negative mass and hopping dimensions on us!"
Of course, no visual shields came into play, but once the superstition was raised, others just had to jump in and play along.
"Abracadabrus negativus mass-us! Eisenbrige aperture dilation set for one hundred kilometers."
"Circumventus relativitivus! Coordinates verified!"
"Fuckus thatus. Make me a friggin porno star." A yellow hard-hatted engineer looked around with confusion as not just a few heads turned. "What? What'd I say?" he shrugged.
"M-T element coming into position."
All eyes turned ahead as the tip of a great shimmering silvery orb rose into view like a quicksilver sunrise.
"Fabulous richus! Power levels at maximum!"
Sandra Nagano shook her head. "Overus weightus!" She chuckled. "Gravity projection system activating. No turning back now, folks."
"Visual shields, ladies and gentlemen," Captain Uribe pulled up his goggles dangling from his neck and placed them on his face to cover his eyes. Everyone else followed suit.
The Sojourner gradually accelerated; from far away, it appeared like a turtle, slowly crawling into motion, but from up close, the massive colony ship lunged forward like an arrow shot by God.
Ahead of the great vessel, a jagged rip appeared in the fabric of space, mauling itself into a perfect black sphere that swelled rapidly into a menacing void, and then a great funnel into the belly of oblivion itself.
A black hole.
Sandra Nagano fixed her goggles on her eyes not out of fear of staring directly at an object of negative mass; like the others, she was protecting her eyes from the potential retina-burning super-bright glow of the miniature star levitating into position before them, while keeping an eye on the orb and managing its connection to the ship's propulsion system.
"Negative mass projection system is operational," she announced, her voice now the only sound heard in the room over the whisper-quiet whining hum in the background.
Trails of energy bled off the M-T Element, forming a dozen rivers of quicksilver meandering down into the floor of the containment chamber.
"Negative mass for stability now feeding into the wormhole. Sufficiency level at twenty-five percent."
The black hole slowly became a dark, dreadful gray.
"Fifty percent."
The Sojourner's duck-billed tip parted waves of space dust and tiny rocks in its wake as the ship surged toward the now pure-white wormhole.
"Seventy-five percent."
The dazzling white brilliance of the wormhole gave way to a field of stars beyond.
Nagano's fingers flew across the virtual keyboard before her as the quicksilver streams of mass stopped flowing from the M-T element. "Negative mass deployment at one hundred percent. Wormhole is stable and fully dilated. We are receiving signals from Eris base directly through the wormhole. Loud and clear, data error rate within acceptable CRC limits."
The M-T Element began its descent, having completed its task without exploding into a blinding blaze of light.
She removed her goggles, pulling out her aged leather glass case and kissing the spectacles passed down to her from her ancient ancestor who first wore them. "Yoikus and awayus," she smiled.
The Sojourner accelerated drastically, leaping boldly into the vast, yawning breach before it.
Streams of silvery energy bled from the vortex back into the aft section of the ship, causing the wormhole to close up and disappear hundreds of miles behind the ship.
For a moment, the engine crew stood stock still, staring at rapidly changing footage from cameras around the ship.
Team Satori watched silently; and so did the hundred or so people in the Sojourner's Command center.
Finally, the cameras locked onto a featureless gray orb appearing above the ship's dorsal axis, with the sun peeking over its northern hemisphere, and a tiny egg-shaped vessel floating in between.
Eris. And the Siluvaran base ship.
The raucous cheers that ensued on Eris Base, and on every ship in orbit around it, resonated across the galaxy.
The Siluvara Files, Act Zero: Chapter 6
By jacquelope -- Report
The final chapter of Act Zero... the Sojourner hyperspaces into position to join the Kuiper Defense Fleet now assembled to repel the Grue.
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