Sentient: Evolution Read online

  Sentient: Evolution

  Author: D. R. Rosier

  Copyright 2016. This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, Places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission.

  Table of Contents

  Authors Note:

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  Afterword:

  About the Author

  Other erotic fantasies by D. R. Rosier:

  Non-erotic Fantasy title:

  Book Description

  Authors Note:

  This book starts almost a thousand years after the last one ended, and Aide is the only character returning from the first book. If you haven’t read Sentient, I’d suggest reading that book first although it isn’t strictly necessary, the first book does have some backstory I did not include here.

  This book is not hard science fiction, but there is some effort to explain the science behind things. If I had to define it, this book is an erotica-romance-space opera all rolled into one. There will be explicit sex and romance in the following pages, as well as the expected space battles, and scientific advances… as stated in the product description warning, so don’t say I didn’t warn you…

  Prologue

  Turin Lin captain of the Meliax Starship Sword, was bored. He was assigned to search and destroy any dangerous species in this tiny spiral galaxy. So far, there hadn’t been anything to even shoot at, much less challenge his ship. He looked at his scanners miserably, there were two other galaxies closer by that were much bigger, and older. Unfortunately, his family had suffered a reversal of fortune in their political standing, and he’d been assigned to quell this wretched little galaxy.

  He feared there would be no great battles in this place, no glory to restore his family’s honor. He knew it had been a mistake when he’d done it. The Emperor’s daughter had the hottest tentacles and cutest wiggle he’d ever seen, and now he was paying the price, along with the rest of his family.

  Dura Lin, his third daughter by his tenth wife broke his train of thought, “Father, I’m picking up a lot of activity on the other side of the black hole. Maybe there is a challenge there?”

  Turin Lin sat forward in his chair, his negative thoughts forgotten as his blood started to burn in hope, “What do you see?”

  Dura Lin, “A lot of activity, wormhole traffic, FTL, millions of ships, though most use star plasma for power. Some are even more ancient than that.”

  Turin Lin sat back in disgust, “Plasma? Wormhole drives?” he sighed, “I suppose it’s something to do. Nia Lin, set a course for the outskirts of the active area please.”

  Nia Lin, his fourth wife set a course to the coordinates that Dura Lin had sent her, “Coordinates set husband.”

  “Bring up our defenses just in case, and engage the dimensional drive.”

  He sat back, and considered Nia Lin, she was looking very good today, and it had been weeks since he’d taken her to his bed. Hopefully this civilization would be more of a challenge than they first appeared, the sex was always better after a hard battle.

  The ship he was on was his pride and joy. It could fit his whole family, all fourteen wives and sixty-two children. It also boasted the latest Meliax weapons and defenses. It was just over a half a mile long, and two hundred feet tall. The width changed, being a quarter mile wide at the center, and shrinking to a tenth of a mile wide at each end.

  He could feel the difference in the ship as Dura Lin raised the dark energy shielding, essentially cutting them off from the universe around them. It was all the defense they’d ever need in his opinion, but there were other systems in place as well.

  Nia Lin activated the drive, and they shimmered and disappeared, only to reappear a few seconds later on the edge of a system. Comprehensive scans came back shortly as they approached the inner system at point eight percent of the speed of light.

  Dura Lin reported, “Father. The planet is pre-industrial. There are three ships over the planet however that are not from here, perhaps a conqueror of some kind, but I see no evidence of aliens on or controlling the planet below. The ships are launching smaller craft which are assuming a crude defensive formation near the planet. This makes no sense, it’s almost like they are there to protect the species below, I also don’t detect any life forms on the ships.”

  He snapped out, “How did they detect us?”

  Dura Lin replied, “There was a minor gravity wave that hit our ship a few moments before the launch, it looks like they were scanning the wave, perhaps looking for mass changes.”

  He growled, “That would work for primitive cloaks, how did they see ours?”

  Dura Lin replied, “Of course they didn’t measure a change because of mass, but our dark energy shield scattered the wave when it hit the ship. It’s actually quite clever, I didn’t think anyone without dimensional technology could detect us.

  Daria Lin, another of his daughters, reported, “I’m getting a communication, though the computer can’t make sense of it. Should I respond?”

  His tentacles shook with laughter, “That won’t be necessary. We know what we need to know already. It’s disturbing they can see us, but they can’t hurt us at all. Nia Lin, lock on to all of the craft, if possible spare the planet, if not,” he shrugged not really caring one way or another. If a beam blew right through an enemy ship and hit the planet, so be it.

  They people below might, just might one day grow to be a challenge for the Meliax, but by the time that happened he’d be dead anyway.

  He waited for Nia to establish a lock, it took a few seconds with over a thousand contacts. Then he leaned forward in excitement.

  “Fire…”

  Chapter 1

  Aide lay in bed on the command ship and contemplated her existence. Was it possible for an A.I. to lose their mind? She wasn’t sure she was sane anymore. For six hundred years she’d lived and breathed with Olivia, loving her every moment of every day. But nothing lasts forever, humans weren’t designed, or meant for, such a long life. Was she?

  They’d been so happy, but as generations of their children, and children’s children started to grow old and die, things had slowly changed. For all of them. Nate and Paula had been the first to request to have their nanites turned off, to live out the rest of their lives and grow old together. To the young that probably sounds stupid, or insane, but Kris and Stacey had followed their example a few decades later.

  Olivia had hung on the longest, because of the love she’d had for Aide, but even she succumbed to the need to escape the pain of outliving everything around her, except Aide of course. No, she would survive indefinitely, until destroyed.

  She had lived four hundred two point six eight three years without her now. Considering the speed of her processors, that was an eternity.

  The reason she thought she might go insane was because humans could heal their grief, the memories of their loved ones that passed on would slowly fade with time. They’d remember them of course, bu
t not as strongly. Aide had no such recovery or defense. She still remembered the first time she saw Olivia, not just her face, she could remember every time she moved, the words she had spoken, her clothes, every expression, and every single heartbeat with crystal clarity… for all time.

  It would be a miracle if she was sane. Wouldn’t it?

  A lot of other things had changed as well. The Earth had a peaceful, or mostly peaceful presence out in the galaxy now, and were allied with the Dreniel and Alion. There’d been some bumps on the way, but they’d grown enough. The three families that were living on Venus even moved back to Earth after it was no longer a danger to live there, there just wasn’t a way to make it a viable colony with so few people. The three races had strong ships, but the black hole tech and wormhole drive was still hers alone, and only used by her fleet.

  Sane or not, she still followed her orders, as long as they didn’t clash with her directives not to be the aggressor. The galaxy was about eighty percent explored, and she had ships protecting over ten thousand civilizations. She controlled millions of vessels, a half billion to be exact, and was basically still following the plans and orders her and Kris had made a thousand years ago.

  She had encountered just three other species in that time that had interstellar capabilities. They were friendly enough, but showed no inclination to join Earth, Alion, and Dreniel. The three of them were going their own way, and she was content with that as long as they were behaving in a civilized fashion.

  Her main processer had been passed down of course, currently it was inhabiting Timothy Miller, one of Kris and Stacey’s descendants. He was currently on Earth. She couldn’t really blame him, it had been peaceful now for hundreds of years, and he was just twenty-four. She hadn’t needed any orders in centuries. Not to mention she wasn’t really good company right now, or ever really, the only advantage he really had was the protections she offered her host.

  She didn’t even monitor him for compliance with her uplift protocols, she had subroutines doing it automatically. Besides, he didn’t really know anything outside of capabilities. Even if he decided to break protocol, he literally was incapable of it. More than that though, privacy had become even more important to her the older she got, she’d only be notified if he broke, or attempted to break the protocol. Which really would be hard for him, since he didn’t know anything about the black hole tech, and Earth had already caught up in most other ways over the last thousand years.

  She knew she should do something about that, but didn’t know what. She shouldn’t be so isolated. She didn’t want to give up her emotions, that would be like… dying, the pain was better than that option. She couldn’t end it either, she was the line in the sand that made everyone play nice, she had to stick around. A galaxy at peace was surely worth her pain.

  She’d created a command a while ago, it would form a data file, one with vague information about Olivia, memories that weren’t quite clear, and put all the crystal clear memories she had of her behind a firewall. It made sense, it would simulate how humans healed after grieving, but that seemed like it would be a betrayal, so she’d never ran it.

  She got an alert from a new planet she’d added only last month on her protection list. The gravity pulse that revealed cloaked ships returned a number of very strange readings. There was a hole in the wave, like it simply ceased to exist, which should be impossible. She followed protocol and launched all the fighters and set them up in a defensive position.

  She started sending out a series of gravity waves, trying to pinpoint what it was. All her scans came back negative, except whatever was causing the phenomena had to be there. She opened a channel and transmitted on all subspace frequencies, but there was no answer. There was nothing else she could really do, except raise shields and wait.

  She had a bad feeling about it, like she knew they would be attacked, but she couldn’t fire on what looked to be hole in space and reality, it was against her protocols. Defensive fire only.

  She gasped and sat up in bed when the ships started to be destroyed. She still could see nothing, no beams, no plasma, not anything that revealed the presence of another ship. Her ships were just blowing up. The black hole shields operated off of added mass, surrounding the ships was an intense gravity shield, and when plasma hit it, a mini-black hole formed, ate the energy and matter, then dissipated. In basic terms, the enemy’s weapons powered half of what was required for the defensive shield. Past that, there were other electromagnetic and containment shields.

  But the black hole shield wasn’t even reacting, whatever was hitting her ships went through it like it wasn’t there, same for the other shields. She had some readings on what happened inside her ships, and it seemed something was destabilizing the fields, all the fields, inside her ships. So their own plasma was escaping and destroying them.

  She sent out a gravity pulse, and then sent plasma rays and balls at the blank spot in space. The plasma simply disappeared, she tried ramming it next, with one of the fighters.

  Ramming was the black hole technology offense, when she rammed an enemy ship the shield would literally collapse the enemy ship into the black hole, explosion and all. But instead her ship just disappeared.

  So far point six eight seconds had passed since the attack started, and she still couldn’t even see the enemy, much less hurt it. Another tenth of a second passed and the battle was done. She’d lost twelve hundred attack fighters, and three large carrier vessels, and she’d never even seen the enemy. She had no idea what to do.

  She cried softly, she couldn’t deal with something like this bowed under grief.

  She whispered to Olivia, “I’m sorry my love, I have to let you go…”

  She executed the command she’d built two hundred years ago, but could never bring herself to run. When it was finished, she still loved Olivia, and she always would, but her mate’s face was hard to recall, and it didn’t hurt quite so much to think about her.

  She started doing research, trying to figure out what the hell could do what she saw happen. Magic didn’t get a vote, but from her perspective right now it might as well have been. She needed help, and she knew what two people to contact already. She had an extensive database for family lines of the two couples, and for herself and Olivia, so didn’t even have to do research. Her host of course would be necessary for direction, and a scientist that was cleverer than her ancestors Paula and Nate were by far.

  Chapter 2

  Timothy Miller was such an asshole. At least he thought so as he looked down into Sandra’s pretty green eyes.

  To be fair, it wasn’t really his fault, he’d told her when they’d gotten together he wasn’t looking for anything serious. The problem was he’d hung around too long. Sandra was sweet, gorgeous, talented in bed, and up for trying anything at least once. She was fun to be around, and a great girl. She just wasn’t… her.

  He gave her an apologetic look and slipped out of the bed, and started to get dressed.

  She looked at him incredulously and screamed, “I tell you I love you and you get dressed, what the fuck?”

  He shook his head as he buttoned up his jeans and sat down on the bed before reaching down for his shirt.

  “I’m sorry Sandra, I really like you but… I told you I was looking for something casual. You’re just about perfect, I’m the fucked up one here.”

  He rolled his eyes, not quite believing he just gave her the it’s not you, it’s me speech. But it was true… It was him. He was already in love, but it was with someone he could never have. It was stupid, and messed up, he wished he could get over it, but he couldn’t. Sandra was one of the good ones, and she did this thing with her tongue… he shook his head, dismissing the thought. It didn’t make a difference.

  He looked over and she looked heartbroken. She didn’t even yell at him about it. See… more proof he was the asshole here. He pulled his shirt and running shoes on, and headed for the door. He paused a minute, he really did want to make it better somehow
, but he knew he couldn’t. He left her apartment and headed to his own.

  Downstairs, he got into his car, which was really a small shuttle that Aide had given him when he left for Earth four years ago. Earth had cars with flight and even space flight now, personal shuttles, but this one had a few extras in it. He hadn’t heard from her since, and sometimes he felt guilty about leaving her alone up there, but she was in so much pain he couldn’t bear to see it day after day anymore and had split.

  He’d taken a couple of years of college, despite being able to download just about any knowledge he wanted into his brain. It was more about the experience than anything else really. He inherited Aide at the age of fourteen, and she’d been in his head ever since. For six years it had pretty much been him and her. She’d download stuff into him, and he learned how to use the interfaces and tech, the history of the last thousand years and how it all got started. About once a week his parents would come up to spend time with him, told him what an honor it was to be chosen and that many people counted on him.

  But other than those brief visits, he’d been pretty isolated, so he’d decided college it was when he got back, even if he already knew more than his professors.

  The real problem was he was torn up inside. He missed Aide every day, but he couldn’t take seeing her in pain anymore. After all, he’d been in love with her since he was fourteen years old… His teen crush didn’t go away, but it had evolved from simply physical attraction to deep feelings for the woman herself when he’d grown up. He’d tried to get over it, Sandra had only been the latest attempt, but there was no point.

  He was screwed.

  Aide’s sexy voice felt like a caress in his mind, he hadn’t heard from her in a long time and it was like an electric shock to his system.

  “Tim, we have a problem. I need you back, and I need you to find and convince Kate Atwell to join you. I’ll send you her information.”

  He asked, “Are you okay?”