Guardian Stone 1: Stone Genesis (30 page)

"There are those of my kind that would argue that we should merely drop a few planet-busters on you and forget that you ever existed. I do not wish to do that. It would make me the very kind of genocidal maniac that was your former Monarch. I will not go there. I believe that many of you would not wish to go there if our roles were reversed. I am prepared to lock you up here and throw away the key. That also I do not wish to do. I have seen in your race persons who are of high honor and who respect the rights of others to live. I have to believe that many of you are of this ilk. Today you have a new high ruler who I believe to be just the sort of person of whom I speak. He was my adversary, but even then I saw strength of character and honesty that leads me to believe you should have a second chance. If after a reasonable time, and I do mean years and not centuries, we can assure that you are ready for space again, we will determine how that can be accomplished. Your action during the last 500 years has led other peoples to a justifiable distrust. Are you capable as a people of discarding an invasion and genocidal mentality for one of trade and prosperity? Are you willing to take a pledge on your Taju that the evil that has been done at the order of your former monarch is no longer your way?" A huge roar of YES went up from the crowd that surprised Hank, so he said, "Very well, all of you who so wish either here or in your homes or other gathering places, draw your Taju. As far as he could see, there were raised swords in the air. He went on and said, "Now pledge on your Taju that you will no longer support genocide for frivolous reasons unless your existence is threatened." A murmur from the crowd told him that they had so pledged. "Pledge that your dealings with each other and with other races will be supported by strength of character, honesty, honor and fairness." This time a strong murmur arose from the crowd as they accepted the second part of the pledge. "Now, please, very carefully so as not to slice and dice your neighbor, return your Taju to its scabbard." This brought considerable laughter to the crowd. "That is all I have to say, I hope to soon welcome your return to space but that will be up to you. I believe your High Ruler wishes to address you." He was then transported back to the station.

High Ruler Dranz walked out on to a high balcony backed by his five advisors and wearing the crown of Gar. He said, "People of Gar, we have one item of business to conduct. My advisors and I have reviewed the charges and evidence against former High Ruler Sadex and his advisors. The following advisors have insufficient guilt to require their termination. Their Taju will be broken in half and they may continue to wear it. They are to be sent to the farthest parts of the planet. They may never again hold a position of authority. Each case will be reviewed every 10 years for possible revision. When you have your broken Taju in hand, you will be transported to your new living space. Any treasure you have accumulated becomes the property of the crown except for a pension sufficient to meet your needs at the level at which you will be living." He then read the list of names of persons affected and it included all but three members of the royal family.

He went on, "Former High Ruler Sadex and the 7 remaining advisors, two of whom were in the royal line of succession have been found guilty and the penalty is death. This choice will be offered to you. The first is to now draw your Taju and ritually execute the verdict. If you select this option a second will be offered to guide your hand and you will be buried with your Taju. The second option is that Taju will be melted down and the resulting droplets will be scattered across the depths of our oceans and the throats of our volcanoes. You will then be placed in a cell and no food will be provided. When you die, your body will be delivered to the volcano on Traitors Island. Please choose now." All elected the immediate route and all elected seconds. The event was over in seconds. King Dranz then said, "In the coming days there will be many changes. Not the least of these is how to establish a society that the Antorans and others will allow back in space. We must prove ourselves. I will be providing mechanisms for feedback and how to accomplish this. If you have ideas, you may provide them to us. Instructions on how this will be accomplished will be forthcoming shortly." He then turned around and reentered the Palace muttering, "just when I need to talk to Henry and he is not here."

Dranz heard Hanks voice saying, " but your Majesty, I am here. Would you like me to come down to talk."

"Yes, please." Hank appeared a second after the exchange.

"What can I do for you."

Dranz said, "The immensity of all this came home to me when the executions were underway. I know that you said that I could do this but all of a sudden the job just grew. I guess I am in a bit of a panic."

"Let us sit for a few minutes so I can give you an idea of the resources that will be here and available to you. Excuse me, Gloriana, would you ask General Tanaka to join us please." A moment later General Tanaka appeared. "Your highness, this is General Goro Tanaka who is commander of Division 5. That Division consists of 5 stations that will remain here for the next six months. Station 5 is similar in structure to the one you have been on and it is the Command ship for Division 5. The other four stations are smaller but still huge by any standards. Every six months a new Division will rotate in and the last Division will rotate out to go back home. In the next day or so all the rest of the ships will be gone. The reason for a Division here is threefold. The first is for your protection. There are a lot of people out there who are very much upset about what the Gar has done, so you need a defense. That defense is us. The second reason for their being here is one that I have been very upfront about and that is to monitor Gar activity and progress. The third is to provide you with the resource I promised."

"This Division is more than capable of performing all three functions. In addition they will not be visible. Only you and your selected advisors will know we are here. Part of the gift I gave you earlier today includes a communication component. If you want to talk to General Tanaka you need only to think his name and he will respond if available. The better course is to use the component to contact Gloriana and she will put you in touch with the one that can help you. Gloriana is smarter than all of us put together so generally you will be able to get a direct answer from her. She can also reach me even if I am on Earth. While none of us will take orders we will help when we can. This also includes humanitarian aid in the event of a major disaster. Our role is to prevent conflicts in space. When we reach the point where we agree that you can reenter space a device will remain in orbit to allow you continued contact. Understand that Gloriana is going to have a different perspective than you might have but she will try to help. Our AI's also learn from such exchanges. Everything we have discussed is in her memory so she has a continually updated perspective from which to provide assistance."

"I did want you to meet General Tanaka in person because he needs to understand your needs as well and we humans do like face to face meetings." Hank said with a smile.

Dranz said with an indication of laughter, "All too well do I know this human trait."

Hank chuckled and said, "If additional questions arise try Gloriana first. Gloriana are you there?"

Gloriana replied, <
yes I am General Stone
.>

"Good, I wanted His Majesty to hear what you sound like mentally. Remember Your Majesty, you need only think the desire for conversation and Gloriana will hear and understand.  You will be in contact with Gloriana as frequently as you determine is needed. This can be a great advantage if the person you are verbally talking with does not realize you are having a mental discussion. They will likely think about how deep in thought the High Ruler appears to be. Does this help with the trepidations you were having? You will not be alone."

"It does indeed. And I apologize for taking your time like this. By the way, that was an interesting thing you did with the pledge on the Taju today, it was exceptionally effective. I can see that I have much to learn from you. Thank you once again."

"I hope when I come to visit in a year we can begin to have you in space again."

"Do you think it is possible that soon?"

"It may be baby steps but I think it is possible. As a practical matter, the increase in population due to the return of all your people places a burden on the resources of your planet. We recognize that you will need to access the resources of other planets in your system so, initially, something will be worked out in that light. That can be the building block we will work on. Well, your majesty, I will be remaining in orbit for another week so if you need to talk to me directly, I will be available."

Office of General Brondin on Arber –

March 30 – C Day 212

General Brondin said to his aide, "Well Colonel Forrom, what do you have to report about our visitor. I can't believe that these upstarts have foiled a plan that has been underway for more than five hundred years. I can't believe that that they did so without even a hint of how they accomplished it. All those planets that were part of our plan, Gar, Linan, Glarin, Fullus, Cler and Antor all out of reach with the snap of a finger. What do we know of them?"

"I am afraid that the answer to that is very little. Their General Montoya noted they were a part of the Antoran Fleet and they were from a planet called Earth some 4,460 light years from here. That is roughly the distance of the human world we had directed the Gar High Ruler to attack. That does not seem possible since our probes from that time indicated that Earth was barely into its iron age. None of this seems plausible. Antoran technology was not advanced sufficiently to account for any of this. Yet clearly this General Montoya identified himself as being from Earth and was speaking Antoran. The vessel he hailed from was larger than anything any of the staff have even imagined. The vessel was fully invisible until it lowered its cloak and even then our scans could only confirm dimensions. We could see nothing inside. We found no trace of its means of propulsions. No trace. The shielding necessary to accomplish that is difficult to imagine. For all we know they could still be sitting up there and we would not know it. We do not know what kind of arms it has, however there are numerous features on the surface of the craft that appear to be energy projectors. Our analysts calculate there are somewhere near 36,000 of them. It is hard to imagine how they must power this thing but their appearing and disappearing act on so large a vessel requires immense amounts of power on its own."

"That is not much to go on Colonel."

"No sir, it is not and I have a team of 20 analyzing every bit of information we were able to gather or surmise. We have to see where that takes us. Meanwhile, we are close to outfitting the fleet with the new drive that will enable us to increase our FTL to about 5000xSL. We should be able to install that on the fleet and be operational in about a year. One more disturbing thought is that one of the team did some computations considering the time of disappearance of the last Gar ship in that invasion force heading here and the time that Montoya's ship appeared and it appears that their FTL drive is significantly faster than ours. He figures that that ship can probably travel at more than 100,000xSL."

General Brondin responded, "That is not possible."

"I'm afraid that his estimate may be overly conservative. There are indications that the vessels speed may be twice that. It was so striking that I have added some additional specialists to this project alone to consider these calculations and how we might further increase the capabilities of our own drives. Knowing that something is possible is often all it takes to accomplish that something."

"Good thinking Colonel, we may salvage something yet from this situation. How is the weapons development proceeding?"

"We are substantially ahead of schedule and in fact all systems are ready to go.  We have tested the weapon and it works fine. We tested it on an asteroid out at about six AU's out. All that is left is dust and nothing larger than a pebble."

"Does our visitor know of this?"

"I do not see how. They did not scan when the came in so I can't imagine that they suspect anything."

Brondin said, "Ok continue with the plan and consider contingencies in view of this development."

Station 1 in Earth Orbit –

April 14 – C Day 227

After the efforts and stress of the three or so months, Hank and Sam were taking a short holiday at the lodge in Juneau with Josh and Rose and Hardrock and Fudgenickle. They had been at the lodge since their return four days previously.  Joe and June were due to join them the next day. They had their gear in the car for a bit of late cross country skiing since the snow conditions were still favorable. He was just putting the key to his vehicle into the ignition when Barana asked,

"Anytime Barana, what is up ?"

"I am available right now and you are making this sound intriguing."

"Got it, is everyone available and where do we go?"

"Give us all fifteen minutes to change out of this cold weather gear and then we can transport up. Lets do this."

When Hank arrived, all invited were already at the table and waiting. Hank said, "I hope I did not keep you waiting too long, we were just on our way to do some skiing. Your Majesty Lord Dranz and General Tanaka, thank you for joining us" He went over to General Montoya and said, "Carlos, I am glad to see you. Barana tells me that you have something for us and that it is important. I also want you to know that I appreciate officers who take the initiative when the situation calls for it. So the floor is yours. I think you know everyone here." With that Hank went and took his seat at the table. "Is Sequoia able to join us here?"

General Montoya said, "Thank you for hearing me out on such short notice. As you know, Division 10 with Stations 10, 110, 130, 150 and 170 were part of the operation to stop Gar Fleet 4. When that was done we then proceeded to Arber to let them know that the impending Gar invasion had been averted. As we entered the system Sequoia noticed some unusual anomalies and I advised the other Stations that I wanted full but surreptitious scans of the entire system. The T Raptor teams were alerted and put to work. When we were within 50,000 miles of the planet above their busiest city, Station 10, waited for 4 hours before we uncloaked. I wanted to give the rest of the Division an opportunity to complete their scans. Within seconds of uncloaking we were hailed in a language unfamiliar to us, presumably Arber. They did not know we were there until that point. We first responded in English and as expected, they did not understand. We again responded, this time in Antoran and that was understood immediately and fluently. Their grasp of that language was flawless and that raised some flags. I decided at that point that they would not be invited aboard. They were actively scanning us the whole time but I had the shields up and I believe that they were unable to read us."

"I told their General Artus Brondin that this was a courtesy call to let them know that the Gar Fleet had been captured and that Gar was now under quarantine and was not to be approached. General Brondin did not show much but I had the impression that he was disappointed. I then cloaked and slowly left. We continued intelligence gathering until we left the system. For the last few weeks, Sequoia and her sister AI's in Division 10, Purnima, Alaia, Aria and Dafna have been analyzing the data gathered by scan and the T Raptor teams and the results, to say the least, are surprising and disturbing. We downloaded every computer file we could find. Some of the data took a while to digest particularly the archived material. Finally Sequoia was able to fit the data into a whole picture. This was all concluded late last night. To supplement what we learned at Arber, I instructed Sequoia to attempt to secure some brain cell and blood samples from the deposed Gar Monarch Sadex. We did this at the time of his execution by teleportation transfer so it was not detected. We also took similar samples from around the planet to use as a control. Sequoia, would you please relate your findings."

replied Sequoia,

1. Shortly before our arrival at Arber, a weapon was tested on an asteroid at about 6 AU's. Nothing larger than 3 inches in diameter was left. The significance of this test is that the residue indicates that the test object was originally about 55 miles in diameter. The weapon appears to be an energy weapon.
   
2. In the Arber System we detected at least 10,314 warships. The ships are each about a mile in length and appear to be heavily armed, many with the energy weapon tested. These ships also have the capacitor weaknesses we noted in the Glarin and Linan constructions.
   
3. A scan of one of warships indicate a drive that is capable of 5,000xSL to 6,000xSL.
   
4. On the planet we noted at least 3 facilities for making four kinds of symbiotes. We took samples and isolated and tested them. Testing of this material was completed yesterday and until then we were not certain that these were indeed symbiotes. The subjects for the material are Human, Glarin, Linan, and Gar. The Gar symbiotes leave the subject highly receptive to coded suggestion.
   
5. The symbiotes have the same destruction code as that with which we are already familiar, except that the Gar version has an additional sequence that I am sending to Gloriana as we speak.
   
6. We ran tests on the brain cells for High Ruler Sadex and he was clearly under the influence of Arber generated symbiotes. Others tested indicated that about a quarter of the Gar population was similarly infected. All of those infected were at least 500 years of age suggesting that the symbiote distribution occurred about 500 years ago.
   
7. The Gar targeted symbiotes appear to lose potency over time but appear to leave the infected individual mentally impaired or insane.
   

The conclusions that my sister AI’s and I share are

1. The true villains in this case are not the Gar but are rather the Arberites.
   
2. The next target of the Arberites is the Gar.
   
3. The Gar symbiote destruct signal should immediately be broadcast.
   
4. Nanite protection should be provided to all of the Gar population as soon as possible.
   
5. The Arberites goal appears to be a massive land grab of the Gar, Linan, Glarin, Cler, Fullus and Antor systems.
   
6. The job is not yet done.>
   

<
The final piece to the puzzle was found about an hour ago. The inventor of the symbiotes was none other than General Artus Brondin who was a Major in charge of a research laboratory on Arber at the time. He perfected it and released it upon portions of the population of Arber. He then staged a coup and took over the planet. The records are indisputable. General Brondin has been the puppet master all along. All those deaths rest squarely on his shoulders.
>

The shock around the table was palpable. Hank spoke, "By heaven that all fits, Your Majesty Lord Dranz, it appears that your people have been substantially exonerated. We will get you back into space and soon. Meanwhile we must do something about these Arberites. We need to get the fleet out there and dispose of this mess before they have a chance to act. Everybody, please keep a lid on this so we do not lose the element of surprise. Barana please link in General O'Connor and bring him up to speed."

"I want Divisions 1, 2, 7, 17, and 20 ready to embark at 6 am tomorrow morning.  General Tanaka, I want three of your Type 2 stations ready to embark when General Sean O'Connor with Station 16 arrives from Linan in about 12 hours with three of his Type 2's. Your ships will be temporarily attached to Division 16. They are to immediately proceed to Arber, locate all of those Warships. If they attempt to leave destroy them. We will want to destroy all their capacitors and spares and reprogram their self-destruct mechanisms. Do not uncloak. Do not let them know you are there. Their weapons are stronger than anything we have encountered short of a planet buster. It is our belief that they cannot hit you if you remain cloaked and keep your shields up at full strength, so lets not take unnecessary chances. Division 16 will arrive 5 days before we do, so save us some of the action if you can. In 7 days I want these findings that have been noted today released to all our worlds so they will know the Gar have been made to look like the bad guys in much the same way as the Glarin before them. Provide full documentation and support. I want everyone to know what a prize these people are and what they have been up to. That will comport with the time of our arrival at Arber. You all have been well trained and can resolve this. Does anyone have any questions or comments."

              "General Hank, this is Dranz. As you know, I cannot leave my people to satisfy my own whims and desires so as much as I itch to be part of this expedition I cannot in good conscience leave Gar at this time. However, you also know that I have many good warriors here who would feel dishonored if they were not able to participate in some way. My request to you is that you allow at least some of those troops to represent Gar with your Fleet. Is that possible?"

"Indeed it is Lord Dranz, forgive me for shortening the honorifics, but, yes there is a role that your people can play. We will want to board as many of those Arberite warships as is possible and take them without destroying the ships. Do you have troops willing to be part of boarding parties but are disciplined enough to show restraint as necessary?"

"You mean like your troops did when you took our ships. Yes we can do that. My people and I hold you in high regard and would be honored to be under your command. They will act honorably. They remember your impromptu oath on the Taju. I can have 100,000 ready in two to three hours and ready for transport up to your ships."

"In that case, get them ready and armored. General Tanaka will make the necessary arrangements for housing and transportation. After your troops are on board the stations. I would like to have a chat with you, would that be convenient?"

"Yes and I look forward to it."

Four hours later the fleet units assigned were underway. Hank gathered his T Raptor team together and told them he was going to contact Lord Dranz. He told them that he might have a surprise for them if things worked out as he hoped. They then entered into rapport and appeared in the antechambers to the throne room. The startled aide was Trilx. Hank said, "Greetings to you General Trilx and congratulations on your promotion. We are here for a meeting with His Majesty Lord Dranz."

Trilx responded with a smile and said, "I was not expecting to see you in person since I was told you were on Station 1 just leaving Earth."

"That is accurate. Those you see before you are telepathic projections but I can explain that later."

"Come this way, the High Ruler is expecting your call. He will be very pleased to see you, um, 'in person.'" 

Dranz was startled but recovered quickly. "Ah, it is good to see you friend Hank and you have brought other visitors as well, Sam I know but the other humans and the Glarin I do not."

"This is Gambel and his mate Hanser. And the humans are Captain Benjamin Pine and his mate Mary. Lord Dranz, would it be possible to have General Trilx remain. We have things to say he should hear."

Dranz nodded agreement and said, "I also have a guest to introduce, this is Lady Meri and she is my betrothed."

"My friend, you have our very best wishes for a long, prosperous and joyful life. You have most certainly earned it. I think it would be good if Lady Meri were to hear what else we have to say."

"We six are mental projections of ourselves and we can take on a variety of forms in this state. This ranges from invisibility to our actual form. We can appear as a ball of light or a ghost like form. All of our top command positions have this are telepathic ability. We six are among the most adept of our species. The six of us are in rapport and have been 'boosted' by our AI, Barana. Our range is quite extensive. Our particular team can project about 5,000 light years. In this form we are able to manipulate objects at the site to which we have been projected. Most of our T Raptor teams have a practical range of about 1,000 light years. As you might imagine and have in fact experienced, this gives us a substantial tactical advantage. The intelligence gathering capability alone is awesome."

"Gloriana recently advised me that you are a latent telepath as is your Lady Meri. For some reason telepaths and latent telepaths seem to find each other. If you are willing to spend some time on Station 5 this talent can be triggered and trained. You will want guidance for about a day and Gloriana is quite adept at providing that. Once you have followed her instructions we would like to suggest that you enter in rapport with this team and you can actually be involved in dealing with the Arberites while still being on Gar. Interestingly, General Trilx and his lady are also latent telepaths. We would like to offer the same to them. What do you both think?"