Waking Olympus (The Singers of the Dark Book 1) (35 page)

The creatures were about 1.6 meters high, bipedal. They all seemed the same, no specialized forms, encased in what at first seemed to be exoskeletons but now appeared to be a separate constructed material, like a mobile cocoon. Were they trying to establish a new nest? There were too few for that even though they were very large. This was her territory, normally that meant a battle to enforce her rights and enter into some negotiation, the other party would retreat but now know the boundaries; perhaps trade in various commodities could be arranged to gain future trust. But the technology these creatures had brought with them suggested this was not simply a matter of colonization by a new sub-species of her kind. This deserved investigation. But they moved so much faster than she could think.

She looked at them scurrying and came to a conclusion. They didn't move or interact the way her
carpis
did. Each
carpi
was a small reptilian creature about three centimeters long with specialized chemical sensor organs, her very body was made of thousands of them. Her carpis slowed down at night, due to the drop in temperature, so she started changing the network of nests, increased nest heating, extra flow between nests to get greater and faster cognition. It would drain her fuel and food reserves if she persisted but she needed to solve this to prevent bad decisions.

The strangers appeared to be individual creatures, like food animals, but they had built this vehicle. Individually intelligent and aware, how could that be? She understood the concept of machines, sometimes she had designed and built such things: dams, windmills, electronics factories. These creatures were an unknown, but how to talk to them …

Above Earth: 2201 CE (Earth Calendar)

Galactic Calendar: 11.11.64.60389

He had picked the right moment by accident. Now the Earth lay before him, giving the impression of Earth and Space as separate layers of the universe like some medieval cosmology, minus an intricate clockwork mechanism, he wryly noted. It looked calm and peaceful, which it was not, just as Space and stars seemed empty of humans, which they were not. Something caught his eye, a star winking out, then back on, a platform occulting a star, not a rare phenomenon at all, it should be quite common. There were many, many solar mirrors in orbit, highly inclined orbits of course; trap and reflect sunlight for power generation, reduce insolation on various critical areas to trigger snow buildup, part of the long term plan to reverse the warming. Fast by Earth's standards, he almost thought 'glacial by human standards' but that was too bitter an irony for him to complete the thought, yet there it was. In thought the act is complete even as the conscious questions it, but in the physical realm painful effort was required. The orbitals were a testament to a great effort, humans could be proud that they had managed to get back into space, and in such a dramatic way, to aid the planet when they had been so hard pressed.

There was a slight shudder as the ship left the spaceport, drifting slowly like a feather on a breeze where there is no air. The pulse fusion engine started up. He felt like that feather now, slowly falling, must be about 0.01g at most. He felt the slight push as gravity returned when his feet came to rest on the floor, he still held onto one of the many cushioned grab rails. But his weight would build as the engines output increased and the acceleration with it. He would hold onto the zero-g hand holds for some time, he decided, he was still too used to Earth and Luna; only when it got to Luna grav would he let go.

Destination Mars. He had never been there, few others had either, it was simply too far. He laughed at that, looked around to see if anyone else was in the observation deck. Alone, fortunately. Too far for casual or even moderately desirable travel, and he was going to the orbital labs around Mars to test a jump engine; destination Alpha Centauri, not far at all. He laughed again.

Aboard the "Pharens Nee Ko" near SharTohSi (Neti) about 22.1M Years Ago

Galactic Calendar: 11.10.57.8967

He-She, whom the Exalted and Wise Elders called to this task, considered the display. Three fleets were arrayed, representing the Koelli, Ralewa, and his-her people the Lacak. He-She quieted his-her sub-minds. He-She could only be one-mind now, the shrewd fighter. He-She looked up at a suddenly darkened screen above, momentarily his-her dimmed reflection showed. Even through the suit the still healthy lines of his-her body showed: four legs, two tentacle arms, a hangover from his-her kind's squid-like ancestors. He-She wanted to blame all of this on some remote ancestor for adapting to the land, it was a very old joke.

It would be here soon. The enemy ship had exited the portal hours before and set off alarms in half a dozen systems across a significant fraction of the galaxy. Everyone knew that after it had recovered it would make its way to the nearest life capable star, this one. The Intelligence on SharTohSi had already mobilized its drone forces, which were a fourth fleet approaching from an odd direction, also the automated systems on various moons and asteroids were now registering high levels of electromagnetic emissions; factoring in speed of light the SharTohSi systems had all activated together, whether they were under direct FTL control or had all responded to the superluminal transponder was not known, either way they were all powered up.

The Dawn Ship materialized instantly close to the predicted location. At high mag it looked like a golden arrowhead, ten kilometers long and three wide. Much larger than theory said a starship could possibly be. Weapons systems, high impulse thrusters, short range jumpers were all hot. The fleets jumped to close range on the enemy, they were now much less than a one hundredth of a light-second from it.

No one waited for the Dawn Ship to fire first, bitter lessons had been learned long ago. There was actually little to see in the first moment. The projectiles were invisible, the energy beams invisible, the return fire was also invisible. The particle beams hit first traveling close to lightspeed creating a dazzling effect over the skin of the Ship as some strange defensive screen protected it. Regardless of the high energy of the particles they couldn't penetrate it, somehow it still survived. The slower stuff was traveling much slower than lightspeed so would take several more seconds. Until the target was reached nothing seemed to happen. Then everything turned into a chaotic blinding frenzy.

The outside of the Dawn Ship erupted in a blaze of light as multiple 5 and 10 kiloton rail gun projectiles detonated near the surface in spite of its defenses. The projectiles had shaped charges that deflected a lot of the energy into hardened projectiles that the explosions accelerated to tens of kilometers per second, devastating kinetic weapons. At the same time more heavy nuclei munitions, both projectile and particle beam hit the ship. Several of the nearby allied ships erupted in a burst of light and fire as heated gasses and escaping oxygen momentarily reacted, and then became simply dangerous debris. Many others he-she could not see but their symbols disappeared from the combat map. Twenties of squadrons of interceptors now matched the emerging Dawn interceptors. Seemingly out of nowhere the SharTohSi ships arrived like demons with their integrated defenses firing. It was chaos, the only chance to survive was to keep moving, sometimes by reaction engines that are slow, sometimes by jumping short distances, though that was problematic of course, jump engines are fragile, short jumps are hazardous and energy draining. Fortunately, the Dawn Ship could not make such jumps as it was hammered by the disrupting rain of energy and particles on its hull.

Some ships now resorted to heavy munitions; rail gun 5 and 8 megaton yield warheads detonated. They weren't the single instant flash of the kiloton stuff, these lingered for a few seconds like many new suns enclosing the enemy; a cage of light. They didn't do that much damage though, apart from some directionless intense photons they were almost useless, worse than useless because they threatened to vaporize incoming munitions. Many of their own ships were too close, their external sensor circuits were fried. The enemy, somehow, fired back through the expanding false suns. Closer ships flared, and were gone, their detonations not even noticed in the conflagration.

Then there was a blinding light on the screens. There was a shudder, a concussive bang; the displays were dead, black, lights failed, emergency power kicked in, the sounds of motors and systems failing then restarting. Alarms went off; hull plating was damaged, there were hull breaches, systems were offline for several seconds. Displays came back. They had had a near miss. The previous round of heavy nukes had dissipated, once more there was black space. Then there was another flash on the large screens, not quite as bright, simply because it was so far away. The Dawn Ship broke up, its defense systems overwhelmed, liquid metal glowed as it sprayed from the breach, there were multiple detonations on and within the pieces as the allied forces made sure of the kill. In a few more tens of seconds it was over.

He-She was injured, radiation burns. Her suit injected anti-radiation drugs though he-she didn't know what the prognosis was, the medlogic sensors were fried, he-she hoped from secondary EMPs in the ship rather than hard radiation; only the hardened emergency stuff had kicked in with the medicinals. In the meantime he-she must attend to the crew and arrange repairs. He-She switched to She-He and went to assist.

Sydney, Neti: 2376 CE (Earth Calendar)

Galactic Calendar:
11.11.64.60503

The sirens continued to wail inside Sue's head pointlessly. Above, the daytime sky flashed brightly as if the sun was going insane, except the flashes weren't from the sun, they were from detonations high above the planet. Sue scrambled across the street, looking for the pathway to a cellar restaurant she knew, the closest thing to a shelter in running distance.

Marjori, do you hear me?
No answer.

She saw the descending stairs and ran down, the door to the restaurant was locked but the deep stairwell was still protective. There was a blinding light, she covered her face. Even through her protective eyewear and her cupped hands it was bright, the light penetrating not just through her eyes but her skin and bone. It seemed to take an eternity before the light eased up and the world behind her closed eyes went dark again.

She popped her head up, between buildings to the east she could see a bright rising new sun, a magic mushroom of fire rising over the horizon.

Marjori?

Sue called again on her link.

Marjori: Sue? Oh god, what's happening? The links aren't working properly. All I can get is voice, no deep link.

We are under attack. Must be Dawn Ships. I think they've nuked Beijing.
Sue said.

Marjori: What? We estimated that wouldn't happen for more than a million years. Fuck. Beijing? Shit. Oh no, Luli and Tomas. My brother.

Marjori! Snap out of it. Get to the Library, it's built out of tolan, super-hard smart graphene, won't survive a direct hit though. I'm on the way to work at AgSci, also has tolan. I hope Mike is there.

It wasn't Marjori's fault that she was edging on panic, Sue felt it in herself, she almost slipped when she said her husband's name, and there were no deep links, she felt alone. She should have been better prepared, the sudden mobilization of ships, the flurry of inbound jumps to the system in the last hour. Zeus' early warning system must have been triggered. Why didn't they tell us? No point wondering now.

She took a deep breath, and knowing that she was probably going to die anyway, she launched herself out of her hidey-hole and down the deserted street. Waiting for the flash that she wouldn't feel, never know, that didn't come.

Marjori: Sue, I can't contact anyone in the cities around Baikal. I've tried New London, Moscow and Paris, nothing.

Sue wasn't sure herself.

Maybe the network is just knocked out. We never did harden our infrastructure as planned, just a temporary thing, it'll be ok. I'm heading down Wilson at the moment should see the AgSci building in the distance.

She could just see the building now. Beyond it to the south she saw several mushroom clouds rising over the southern mountains, in the direction of Baikal. She had family down that way and so many friends.

There was an almost infrasonic boom, followed by more. She looked behind her, toward the north at the wonder that is Olympus Prime. It was glowing with a soft white light. Explosive violet flashes could be seen at its blued tip. She thought they weren't impacts but guessed it was likely Zeus firing back. There was a sudden lance of blue color, then several, striking down, converging on Olympus, that was almost certainly an attack. Lightning arcs spread over the structure becoming auroral on the higher slopes. She wondered if just being able to see it doomed her by the backwash of whatever radiation was hitting Prime.

To the east, she saw the vast cloud was drifting inexorably towards her. She knew what that meant. Then she heard the bangs, so loud, stretched and distorted as to be like the roar of some monster. She tripped and hit the road face down. She raised her head and looked down the deserted street. Everyone was hiding, they were trapped here she knew. The aircars were grounded, the integrated navigation system was down so they were automatically locked out, she was sure that could be overridden. No time for that now, too late. There was no escape, the buildings might be tough but they weren't airtight although she thought about ways they could do it. There would be no help arriving, they would all die.

No, we aren't dead yet.

She got up and started running towards AgSci, the tears running down her face, rivulets of chill on her skin, heart pounding, lungs and throat stinging. Ash was falling, the funeral pyre of her family and friends raining down on her.

He staggered backwards.

Kay reached out grabbing his arm to steady him.

"What's wrong, Mikel?"

"I — I had a, what, vision I think. Or memories."

"Activation of the neural link can allow some personal stored memories to be accessed. It should have settled down by now. Though if you wish you can access such memories again. However, strict caution is advised." Zeus spoke over the ship speakers.