City-Ship Ascension

Geostationary orbit

Many different things were going through Michael's head as he was walking to the next meeting. Two days ago, they returned from their rendezvous with the demon ship, and he was still trying to sort his thoughts and feelings from the terrible omens that encounter represented.

The trip back was uneventful and thankfully very short by using the Excalibur’s full speed. The alien spent it lying on the floor and screaming obscenities at them after they removed the oxygen mask from his face. Max was translating what the demon was saying, and there were no two words put together without one of them being a threat. Finally, Al used the last of their duct tape to shut him up, to everyone’s relief.

Interestingly enough, their unwilling passenger’s body odor was extremely unpleasant and potent. The best way it could be described would be a mix of ammonia, sulfur, and the smell of a wet dog. Since there was no way to filter it out, despite Max’s best attempts to purify the air in such cramped space, Michael and the others spent the trip home, sealed in their battle-suits—with their helmets on. Al suggested tying the demon outside the ship, as his father and he did on their old truck, with the deer they hunted. It was reluctantly rejected as it would undermine all the trouble they went through to get a live prisoner, only to show up home with a giant bug squashed on their windshield.

Pete glued on a wooden crucifix between their captive’s horns, to be on the safe side. His grandfather was a preacher and some of his bedtime stories involved demons, so he wasn’t taking any chances. It did look a bit hilarious, the way they managed to secure the alien. It was wrapped from head to toe in duct tape, with only his eyes and nose showing. The crucifix was prominent between the horns, and their sharp tips were safety-proofed by two bouncy balls, of all things.

Michael needed some time in the AutoDoc to thoroughly repair his broken ribs, which his internal nanites head already realigned. Max enabled his pain receptors, and he was in considerable discomfort until all ailments were mended.

As they were coming closer to the space station, Michael looked at their prisoner and couldn’t help but wonder who would create such an abominable race. The horns were long, curved, and sharp; very functional and deadly. The wings were leathery as a bat would have and the texture of the skin was something one would expect on a crocodile. All colored deep red, except completely black eyes.

The duct tape on his mouth stayed there for the rest of the trip; there was zero chance they would get any useful information while the creature was in its current predicament. That will come in time when they decide on the adequate procedures on how to deal with it. For now, Michael was just happy all of them were returning alive, if a little worse for wear.

More importantly, they had more information about this enemy than Ision and the angels in Atlantis ever had. He had no illusions about the future; sooner or later their two species would collide, or lock horns so to speak. Every scrap of information that would help them prepare for that eventuality was truly invaluable. In his soul, he could sense the winds of war coming, and his responsibility was to protect the people of Earth and the S.U. and to defend them from all aggressors. Losing would bring a version of the future he did not want to think about.

The first thing they did upon arriving at the new station, was to secure the prisoner in his cell, constructed on one of the empty levels. Build to insane specification, so that the creature would need to be stronger than Superman, with lasers blasting from its eyes, to get out. Not that it did not try; Michael watched on the security video how the demon was hitting his cell walls, leaving impressive dents. He was like one of those super-aggressive rats’ scientists studied, so full of rage that urged him to hit something, even if it was a metal wall.

A few days after they returned, the Excalibur towed back the scout ship close to the station and placed it in a holding pattern. With one transporter attached to its hull to provide the necessary changes in its orbiting trajectory. Max had already performed a preliminary investigation of it, and as soon as they briefed the larger population, many scientists would dismantle it to pieces and would try to discover all of its secrets. It will not be brought inside until they could determine that nothing could explode if handled incorrectly.

The meeting about to start was organized by Max, and it was a briefing about the things discovered so far. By a few of his vague comments, it seemed they had hit the mother lode. Those memory banks of the ship’s computer were filled with years of automatically backed-up data; extremely valuable information that would shed more light on the enemy. The tight-knit group of scientists, which were already read in the alien secrets, was summoned to the Ascension for this meeting.

***

“Now that we are all here, let’s start with the basics,” Max’s hologram announced as Michael entered the conference room. The place was packed, with the extended core group, and half a dozen scientists that were leading various projects involving their recent guest.

Max was standing in front of the holo-screen that showed the images of the ship, the demon, and the representation of the Solar System.

“From what we were able to discover so far, and retrieving an intact computer and its memory banks were mainly responsible for it, we now know that this was indeed a scout ship. It was checking coordinates that a guardian probe transmitted before it malfunctioned and self-destructed. It seems that it was left on the outskirts of our solar system 12900 years ago, by the very ship that destroyed Atlantis. When I sent construction probes to the asteroid belt, it detected their Gravity-drives and made a translation to the Hemina system, as it was programmed to do.” Max said.

“Is there a new probe there now? If that is their procedure, the scout ship captain may have done the same,” Ben asked.

“No, and I double-checked to be sure. The scout ship captain decided to disregard the procedure and go to the inner system alone, without any backup or informing his superiors of what he had found. He was simply too overconfident in his superiority, so he bent the rules he was supposed to follow. In his mind, we were not a threat to them, or to be precise, the angels he supposed were populating the system. You see, the escape of Mikell’s colony ship became a legend to them, so he was drunk on the possibility to be the one who would finish the conquest of the Angel race.”

“But if they sent that ship after the angels that escaped, why more of them didn’t follow?” Jack asked, scratching his chin.

“Oh yes, I did find some mention of that in their historical data. At the time, they sent dozens of ships to chase after Mikell. The one which arrived in our Solar System was simply lucky. None of them ever returned; the failure of that mission meant execution.”

“That doesn’t make any sense from a military point of view, who would ever follow such orders?” Jack asked, shaking his head.

“The artificial race exclusively composed of warriors, but I will get to that later; for now, accept that we are not dealing with reasonable beings here. The concept of peace on equal terms is simply not part of their worldview.”

“May I ask why did you decide to show yourself as angels, when you first made contact with the demon ship’s captain?” One of the anthropological scientists asked.

“We hoped that an image of a familiar species would be easier for them to process, but it turned out to be a mistake. Even so, it would not have made any difference if they had seen us in our true image. In truth, we were lucky that they never checked the data that their ship automatically collected, so they never figured out the Earth was populated by humans,” Max responded.

“Why wouldn’t they check their own data?” Emma asked.

“The answer to that question boils down to arrogance and the fact that these three demons were not the brightest minds of their species. As much as I can determine from their orders that were in the system, this crew was on some kind of punitive mission,” Max said and got a few inquisitive looks in return.

“That is the tone I got from the orders; it seems exploration is not in the top ten of their favorite pastimes; war and destruction take precedence over everything,” Max explained with a sour look on his face.

“One of the most important things we do know is that it took them three months of real-time to translate from the angel’s systems to this one. Consequentially, we don’t expect to see any more alien ships for at least six months, and that is if they immediately sent another one when this one fails to report.”

“It takes three months to travel from one system to another?” Elizabeth asked.

“Well, that one is a bit harder to explain,” the AI said, scratching his head. “OK, it takes three months of normal time, but for those in the ship no subjective time at all passes. Ancient angels were familiar with this phenomenon by observing the internal clocks of the interstellar probes they sent. It has to do with the traveling distance, so that time varies from system to system. Their leading theory was that during the translation, the ship slips into another dimension, in which time and distance are not the same constants as they are in ours. I found several scientific papers that they wrote on the subject, I will send them to whoever is interested in reading them,” The AI said, and immediately half a dozen scientists raised their hands.

Michael breathed a great sigh of relief when Max said that the trip to and from Hemina took so much time. He wished that it was longer, but beggars can’t be choosers. Still, it meant they had some breathing room before the next demon ship, or ships arrived. They would need that time to prepare for the next incursion into the Solar System.

Ision, who was present on one of the monitors, said, “It is the same technology Mikell’s colony ship used. In fact, Excalibur was made as an experimental craft with the main purpose to test a translation system that didn’t suffer from such a time deviation between subjective and objective time. The new translation engine was designed, but never built or installed; there was simply not enough time. The research started in the exile colony and was finished in Atlantis. There are schematics of it in the Knowledge Vault, so we have a bit of an advantage here, and time to prepare.”

“How can that bring us an advantage? We are in no position to attack them in the Hemina system, as things stand right now.” Jack asked.

Ision’s image lowered his head, and said quietly, “In case we are defeated again, as Atlantis was… we could run.” The last thing he said very quietly, but everyone in the room heard it. The entire room was in complete silence.

“Okay, stop with the doom and gloom,” Michael said when he saw their faces. “We are not planning to run away.”

“Leader Freeman, you must admit there is some value to that idea,” one of the scientists said.

Michael didn’t want to lose his temper, and he understood the man’s fears. Yet the warrior in him didn’t even want to contemplate the idea of a defeat. It would be debated, of course, as it would be stupid not to do so. Nevertheless, having a defeatist point of view from the start was no way to wage a war.

“We will discuss some contingency plans at a later date, but there is no way we could run away and leave billions of people on Earth to such gruesome fate. Let’s continue the meeting.”

“Did you find out from where they came originally? And why did they attack the angel system?” Elizabeth asked, quick on her feet to steer them back in the right direction.

Max shook his head. “No, their point of origin was not in the databases contained in that ship. Although from the star charts I retrieved, they are now occupying a large volume of space, all of it gained in conquest; but the first system they acquired was the Hemina system, home of the angels. It is still somewhat serving as their home base. They had subjugated dozens of star systems, but only those with life-bearing planets. Everywhere where they found intelligent life they attacked, then made the natives into their slaves… and a food source. Going by that, Earth would be a prime target,” Max said.

This information created a few shocked murmurs from his audience.

“The videos we saw from the attack on Gaina illustrated their common practice. They announce that they are coming in peace, and when they assess the victim—the attack begins. As far as I can understand, the reason they attack sapient races is that they need slaves to do menial tasks and as a food source. They do not grow any food themselves or keep domesticated animals; other species are used for that purpose. When we were looking for the food to supply our prisoner with, the first place searched was the ship’s food stores. There was food there… at least what they consider as such. Meat from murdered angels and half a dozen other species… all packed in separate bags, exactly as a human would treat meat from domesticated food animals.”

“Jesus,” Pete softly exhaled.

“Their society is insane by our own standards, artificial and hierarchical to the point. They have no family groups as we know them, but there are advantages to belonging to certain genetic bloodlines. Moreover, you will never find a female demon–there isn’t one; the entire race propagates using artificial means. Grown within mechanical wombs, they are decanted as adolescents, and from that point, everything in their life is a savage battle. These are the highlights of the things we managed to extract from the computer data, and I am sure we will find some other particularities. Furthermore, all my analysis tells me that there is someone behind them, the creator or controller if you will. Demons as a race are not that intelligent, and for them to create a space empire alone would be almost impossible. I might be wrong, hell, Genghis Khan didn’t lead an army of intellectuals, but he still managed to build an empire, and his grandsons almost conquered the entirety of Europe.”

Max looked around the table. “Essentially, ladies and gentlemen, the entire demon race is a genetically engineered weapon. Highly sophisticated one, but a weapon nonetheless; and we have zero data on who created it or for what purpose.”

Max’s rapt audience listened in silence, most of the people focused on the image of the demon; something they felt would haunt their dreams in times to come.

“What did you discover concerning their bodies?” Michael asked, remembering how the scientists chosen to perform the autopsy reacted when they gave them those corpses; it was like giving Christmas presents to a bunch of kids. In his whole life, he had never seen anyone being so happy to be given a cadaver. The world was filled with strange people.

Max nodded, “Dr. Takahashi is in charge of the autopsy team that conducted the post-mortem examination, so I’ll let him answer that question,” Max said and pointed at the elderly oriental man.

The man stood up, made a graceful bow to them all, and addressed them.

“Please consider that we had a very short time to study the corpses, so our results are not final. However, by what we were able to discern so far, these creatures have an unbelievable constitution. Their skin is more of a flexible exoskeleton, so durable that we needed to use monomolecular scalpels to make our incisions; regular stainless steel ones could not cut into it. Inside, they are biological perfections of functionality. Almost every system is designed for maximum efficiency, and there are redundancy systems everywhere. These creatures have two hearts, multiple lungs, and even if you managed to shoot them through their thick skulls, the brain is segmented in such a way that they would still be partly functional for some time. Their digestive system is capable of processing any organic matter, due to the extremely corrosive acid inside, so you would call them the ultimate omnivores, yet for their physiology, meat is the preferred food of choice.”

While Dr. Takahashi was talking, that demon’s image went through a transformation, layers of skin and internal organs were peeled back to better demonstrate the doctor’s presentation.

“They are oxygen breathers, but unlike humans, demons are able to function in atmospheres where there is only a minimum oxygen content present, and their thermal adaptability is equally impressive. Much higher temperature resistance to hot and cold make them suitable to function in a variety of different environments. The skeleton has a high metal content, grown in a complex matrix, which makes their fracture toughness equal to some alloy steels we use on Earth. Additionally, their horns are made of the same material, and the particular way they are fused to the cranial bone makes them into perfect natural stabbing weapons that could most likely puncture through two inches of solid steel plate. That skeleton, combined with muscles that have a tensile strength of spider silk, makes them quite resilient adversaries.”

Dr. Takahashi looked directly at Michael. “Leader Freeman, the fact you captured your prisoner was a small miracle. Impacts of the Hammers had managed to stun the creature and give him something of a concussion, and while it could still function in a vacuum, the cold did have an effect on him. If he was at full capacity, I am afraid the outcome could have been quite different. Also, its mask and your helmet prevented it from using his teeth on you. They are coated with a powerful neurotoxin; one bite would have been enough to completely paralyze you.”

He again addressed everyone. “As Max-sama previously mentioned, our findings are that these creatures were purposely designed to be biological killing machines.” Dr. Takahashi bowed again and sat down.

The silence once again settled in the conference room, with everybody looking at the holo-screen and the ominous demon’s image.

Michael cleared his throat. “Dr. Takahashi, can you tell us why our tranquilizers didn’t work? We must have hit him fifty times at least.”

The man nodded. “Their biochemistry is so different, that the doses your tranquilizers administered were minuscule. As well as the fact that only a few darts had managed to find softer spots, which enabled them to transfer the chemicals into the system; most of them did not even break the surface layer. For them to have any effect, I would suggest increasing the doses a thousandfold, and devising alternate injection systems.”

Michael bowed his head slightly towards the doctor, remembering that he saw a few darts bounce off its skin. At the time and in the heat of the moment, he thought they were hitting at a bad angle, but it would seem that the demons had their own natural battle suits.

“What are you feeding the prisoner? I hope it’s not what was found in the ship’s stores.” Emma asked.

“Of course not,” Max answered. “We give him regular food, and he hasn’t complained so far. All the remains that were collected from the ship are being analyzed, so we can better understand those alien species.”

The AI spread his hands. “Those are about all of our preliminary discoveries. Everything else is of a technical nature, and it can be accessed for further research on the secure part of the Solarian net.”

Michael cleared his throat. “So, to summarize; we have six months to prepare for another incursion of unknown size. Demons are literal killing machines that have an entire empire spreading over several star systems, and consider us as happy meals. And if the attack were to happen now, we wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell.” Michael put the thoughts and fears of everyone in the room into words.

“Yep, that’s about right,” Max answered.

Michael looked around the room and saw disheartened expressions on almost everyone’s faces.

“All right people, I understand that our situation is not as good as we hoped it to be, but if we take a defeatist position, this show will be over before we even begin to do something about it,” he said, capturing everyone’s eye for a moment. “Defeat is not an option, and it is our responsibility to make sure it never happens. Look where we are right now, and consider all the various technologies we have. Angels on Gaina were pacifists, and we most certainly are not. All the resources at our disposal are far greater than Atlanteans had. We need a solid plan of what we can do in the next six months so we would be ready when the next incursion occurs. And you better believe there will be one.”

Michael took a breath and looked at them with a fierce resolve.

“Ladies and gentlemen, for all intents and purposes, the Solarian Union is in the state of interstellar war. From now on, all our efforts must be concentrated on that endeavor.” He could see in the faces of people around the desk that spark of defiance he was trying to invoke.

“You have one week to come up with constructive ideas about this threat and how to face it. In a week’s time, we will have a strategy meeting about the plan we are going to follow. Consider all the things we can reasonably achieve in that time frame, all projects that will take longer must be given lesser priority.

That’s it, ladies and gentlemen, do your best because humanity depends on you.”

***

Only those of the inner circle remained in the room after everybody else left. Max waved his hand to a nearby wall and a secret compartment opened to reveal a mini-fridge filled with cold beers.

“What? The situation calls for it,” he said after receiving a few raised eyebrows.

“How sure are you that we have a full six months until they return?” Tyron asked the AI, as he stood up from his chair and went to the fridge.

“It’s a logical deduction, based on behavioral patterns I managed to extract from the stored orders in the scout ship databases. The demons’ command expects a report from the scout ship in three months, the exact time an autonomous messenger probe would take to translate to their system. It is only natural that they will send someone else to see what caused the delay, and it is highly doubtful that they will only send one ship. We may have some leeway if they decide not to act immediately, but it would be too dangerous to count on that time; six months is the maximum we can give ourselves for the preparations.”

Al accepted a beer from Tyron and pointed with it at the demon’s image on the holo-screen. “Damn, if I knew how badass those things were, I would have carried the Pacifier when we were boarding that ship.”

“Yeah, or an elephant gun, they pack quite a punch,” Pete said, and pointed his finger at the same image, mimicking a shooting motion.

“We can’t keep this secret for long,” said Elizabeth, massaging her temples. “It’s bound to leak out soon, especially in a tight-knit group as the Solarian population is.”

“And that’s why I’m going to tell them what the stakes are, very soon, since their own lives are on the line. We are going to need everyone’s maximum effort if we are to be ready in time,” Michael responded.

“And the rest of the world?” Jack asked, and grabbed a few bottles of beer, to help Tyron with the distribution.

“Them too, as soon as we can arrange another emergency special session of the UN General Assembly. God knows how they are going to react to be summoned again. After that, Max is going to release a few documentaries that will explain the entire situation to the world.” Michael said, and Max nodded.

“You know how that will be received,” Elizabeth murmured, shaking her head.

Michael nodded. “The usual—fear, panic, and mayhem. That’s why I wanted to keep the entire demon/angel thing a secret as long as possible, but it seems fate has other ideas.” He smiled sourly.

“It is going to become a madhouse,” Ben stated and pointed at the approximate direction of Earth. “Mass suicides, protests on an unimaginable scale, and many who will demand that we make peace with the demons or to surrender ourselves to their mercy. The religious nuts will go nuttier, and let us not talk about the various Satanist cults who will feel justified in their beliefs, and will go bat-shit crazy.”

Michael shrugged his shoulders. “So let them; there is nothing we can do about it. I realize that informing the public will probably be the cause of hundreds, even thousands of deaths. But I have no intention to take any responsibility for it. We are going to explain what is happening and hope for the best. It has become politically incorrect in recent years to say certain truths or to act in certain ways. As far as I am concerned, taking the blame for the actions of others is a brand of insanity. I don’t care how many crazies kill themselves, or if people’s religious views are hurt by reality. It is their problem, not mine, or ours. Our greatest responsibility is to the people of the Solarian Union, and I plan to do everything to make sure they are protected.”

He turned his gaze to the AI’s hologram. “Max, we need more offensive and defensive weapons. Hammers are not good enough for space battles, even if they managed to put a few dents in that scout ship. We also need new ships, more maneuverable, durable, and a hell of a lot faster. Search through the Knowledge Vault for anything that can give us an advantage. Ision and Ares are also deputized; maybe all the AIs combined can take up the slack for those of us who live at a slower pace.”

“I’m ahead of you, and you’re right, the performance of the Hammers was depressing. I have several ideas already, alien concepts that can be joined with earth weapons sciences to create something with more impact.”

Michael looked piercingly at the holo-screen while holding a cold bottle of beer in his hands.

“One week… we have one week to decide on our future course of action. I hope it’s enough time.”