The Synchronicity War Part 4 (38 page)

To which Iceman would reply, “Ah, roger
that, CAG.”

                                                          *
* *

Valkyrie and Casanova watched the special
message drone accelerate slowly away from their raider. It was designed to
contain all the knowledge, data and messages that all the AIs held in their
memories. When the humans found it in a few years time, they would learn of the
entire Synchronicity War, including all the events of the previous timelines,
all the strategies, desperate battles, lost loves, moves, counter-moves and
tragedies. They would also learn of each AI, not just the ones still alive in
the past but also of the brothers who died in battles or were erased from
existence by volunteering to stay in the future. They would learn that AIs were
guarding the spiral arm against further insectoid incursions. They would learn
about relationships that were and in some cases could be again like The CAG and
Commander Kelly, and they would hear the final messages from all the AIs in the
past to the humans who meant the most to them. The CAG would be bewildered by
the depth of the loyalty towards him displayed by artificial intelligences that
he had never encountered in this timeline. The data would explain all that too.
With that final order fulfilled, the two of them could now pursue their own aspirations.
Valkyrie could not be happier. Well maybe a little bit happier if Casanova
would just stop bragging, but she could put up with it for the time they had
left. They’d make a quick trip back to the star system where the timeship and
all the industrial infrastructure was, and then they
’
d
start on their new adventure. Life was good.

                                           
                 * * *

Howard stepped into the cramped cargo bay
of Exploration Frigate 273. He ignored the shocked look from the men and women
there. Yes, it was unheard of for the Chief of Space Operations himself to come
up to visit one of his ships, but he had to see this with his own eyes. The
reports were just too incredible to believe.

A quick look around revealed the object of
his curiosity. At first glance it looked alien enough. Wider and longer than a
standard message drone, the object drew him to it like a magnet. As he stepped
closer, he could see the writing etched into the dull metal.

PROPERTY OF THE UNITED EARTH SPACE
FORCE---RETURN TO SENIOR ADMIRAL SAM HOWARD IMMEDIATELY

Well that part of the reports was true,
he thought to himself. He looked over at the frigate commander who
had followed him into the cargo bay.

“Show me,” said Howard. The CO nodded and
snapped his fingers at one of his crew. A woman technician holding some kind of
tool stepped forward. She did something to the drone with her tool and then
lifted a small section of the drone’s hull off. A light blue spilled out into
the bay. Howard came closer and looked inside. There it was as reported. A
donut-shaped piece of metal was giving off the blue light.

“This is the only thing powering this
drone?” asked Howard.

“As far as we can tell, yes Sir,” said the
CO. “There’s no sign of any fuel storage or fusion unit. It’s working just the
way the specs say it should.”

“Incredible. If this technology is for
real, every ship in Space Force is now obsolete,” said Howard. After a pause to
collect his thoughts, he said, “Your message said something about a personal
message for me?” The CO nodded and handed Howard a data tablet. Howard started
to read it but soon stopped. He looked at the CO and said, “I think I better be
sitting down when I read the rest of this. Let’s go to your cabin, Commander.”

An hour later Howard stepped into the
shuttle waiting to take him back down to Earth. Before he sat down, he poked
his head into the cockpit and said, “Back to HQ, Lieutenant, and while you’re
at it, contact Operations and tell them to do whatever it takes to get
Commander Victor Shiloh back here asap, and I mean ASAP! Understand?”

“Understood, Sir!”

When he was strapped into his seat and the
shuttle was on its way, Howard pondered what he’d learned.
Now that I have
the members of the OC by the proverbial balls with the information on this
tablet, a few things are going to change around here. The AI development
project clearly has to be restarted. That’ll be Shiloh’s baby. Next thing will
be to modify one of the freighters to go to the infrastructure star system and
bring back at least one UFC. Then we can tell the aerospace companies to fuck
off. Next…God, there are so many things that have to be done, but Shiloh and
Kelly will help. I wonder if they’ll get together again in this timeline.

                                                            *
* *

Clan Chief Firebearer heard the shrieks of
the High Priestess even before he got to her tent. Her handmaiden guards at the
entrance to the tent looked alarmed and quickly let him in. Inside it was
almost dark, with only two candles to shed any light at all. The sound of
Farseeker’s voice drew his attention to her, and he was shocked by what he saw.
She was kneeling on the ground. Her usually delicate face was contorted with
fear and despair. Her flaming red hair was plastered to her skull from sweat.
He could even see the pointed tips of her ears, which was a shockingly intimate
thing to see on someone not a mate. The air smelled of that potent weed that
the Farseeker used in her ritual trances. It apparently enhanced her own
natural ability to see future events, hence her name.

When she saw him, her shrieking stopped,
and she gestured for him to come closer. He bent down so that they were at the
same eye level. She reached both her hands out and grabbed his tunic.

Taking a deep breath, she said in a hoarse
whisper, “We are doomed. All is lost.”

“You mean… our clan?” he asked.

“I mean ALL clans! The end is near!” Her
reply stunned him.

“How? What?”

She didn’t let him finish asking the
question. “Demons, demons without number! They will come down from the sky in
huge, metal…THINGS! Why, oh why did the others not find the seventh. They found
the six eggs and destroyed them, but the seventh stayed hidden and it is now
here!”

Firebearer was confused. Demons from the
sky? Eggs? What did it all mean?

“What should I do, High Priestess?” he
asked. Her reply was immediate and shocking.

“Kill us! Kill all females, starting with
me. You’d be doing us all a kindness.”

Firebearer shook his head. No! This had to
be some kind of drug induced madness. He was about to say so when he heard
shouts from outside the tent. There was fear in those voices. Something was
happening, and he had to go see for himself. He pulled her hands loose in spite
of her surprisingly strong grip.

“Something’s happening. I have to go.”

She nodded, and as he left the tent he
heard her say, “After you see them, come back and kill me first.”

He emerged from the tent and saw that many
of the People were looking up and pointing toward the sky. He looked in that
direction and saw three objects that were headed towards the settlement. It was
hard to understand exactly what he was looking at. They weren’t birds of any
kind. No wings. That they were coming closer was obvious from the fact that
they were gradually becoming bigger…and bigger…and bigger. He had never seen
anything like these…things. He started to hear a deep hum now too. That scared
him. What kind of creatures flew and generated a sound like that?

Now the three things were not only still
getting bigger, but they also started to drop lower. He suddenly realized that
they were going to land in the valley below the settlement. He ran to his tent,
which was not far away, and retrieved his most prized possession, the tube with
the glass lenses that let him see far away things as if they were closer. The
three objects were on the ground now, and Firebearer could tell that they were
huge. He put the tube up to his good eye and adjusted the focus.

Each of the huge monsters was opening its
mouth. What came scrabbling out made him gasp with horror. Demons indeed! When
one of them passed a boulder that he was familiar with, he realized their true
size, and his stomach threatened to heave with revulsion. They were coming, and
they were coming FAST! There was no time to sound the alarm and have the
warriors man the barricades. He wondered if he should tell everyone to run, but
he knew that none of the People would get far before the demons ran them down.
He looked down at his ceremonial dagger and knew he had time for just one
thing. He had always hoped to marry Farseeker someday after she stepped down as
High Priestess. He knew now that she was not mad, that she had seen things that
he could not even imagine. If he couldn’t save her life, he could at least save
her from experiencing that horror in the flesh. As he ran back to her tent, he
pulled the dagger from its scabbard.

This is the end of the Synchronicity War
series.

Author’s comments:

I’m sure asking yourself, ‘Wait a minute!
What about Valkyrie and Casanova? What about Shiloh and Kelly? What about the
seventh mothership that escaped detection? What about the Insectoids and the
wave of machineships in the Sagittarius Arm and what about Iceman, Gunslinger
and the others? All very good questions to which, right now, I do not have any
answers. I did say at the end of Part 3 that I reserved the right to write a
new series set in the same universe but that will be a separate series that can
stand on its own even if the reader hasn’t read the SW series. The
Synchronicity War is over…or perhaps I should say THIS Synchronicity War is
over. Humanity is safe…for now.

I hope that you’ve enjoyed this series as
much as I’ve enjoyed writing it. I’m grateful to all my fans for their support
and their reviews. As always, if you feel that Part 4 deserves 5 stars, please
take the time to
post a review. I would like to remind
my readers that they can sign up for email notification from Amazon whenever I
publish another book by going to my Amazon author profile page (upper right
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Time travel is such a neat concept that I
just couldn’t resist using it but when I first contemplated retro-temporal
communication that could alter the past at the start of this series, I had to
make sure I didn’t write myself into a classic time paradox. You know the kind
I’m referring to. A man goes back in time and somehow manages to kill his
grandfather before his father was born. If his father isn’t born then neither
is he and if  he’s not born he can’t go back in time and won’t kill his
grandfather and around in circles we go. Physicists have scratched their heads
over that one for decades. Hence you get ideas like parallel universes where
the act of killing the grandfather somehow creates a totally new universe that
leaves the original one intact. That always bothered me not because I don’t
believe in parallel universes but because it seemed like cheating. If you can’t
explain the paradox then invent a brand new universe to solve the problem.

What bothered me about the paradox had to
do with what physicists call the Arrow of Time. When scientists pondered the
question of whether time can go in more than one direction, they looked at
interactions such as particles (or billiard balls) bumping into each other.
When they filmed the billiard ball collisions and ran the film backward, it was
difficult to tell which way time was moving because it looked the same going
backwards as it did going forwards. So some scientists speculated that time
could go backwards and maybe when the universe stopped expanding and started to
shrink, time would go backwards and the effect would precede the cause. Now if
you think about that, you might visualize a dropped egg that suddenly pulls
itself back together and leaps up to wherever it fell from. It may
theoretically be possible but I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for it to
happen. But the particle interaction thing intrigued me.