Sentient: Evolution Read online

  She had no idea what to say to that, and she was blushing furiously. It didn’t help that Aide had a sexy bedroom voice most phone sex operators would kill for.

  Finally, she sent back, “Thanks.”

  Aide sent, “We’ll have dinner soon, take some time and think over those attacks, I have no idea where to go with it next.”

  She nodded, offhand she wasn’t sure either, there were a lot of reports to go through. She waved a hand and several holographic monitors came online, and she splashed the different data points onto them. It helped her to be able to see it, even if she wouldn’t ever forget the data in the download, she seemed to have a hundred percent recall on all that information.

  Her being here was both amazing, and horribly intimidating, figuring this out could mean the difference between so many lives. This wasn’t even about protecting just Earth, as if that wouldn’t have been too much on its own, it was really about eight tenths of the galaxy. She shook off that thought, it was too big, suddenly she didn’t feel nearly as intelligent and capable as she thought she was...

  Chapter 4

  Turin Lin was back to bored. He wasn’t so much a conqueror in this place, as an exterminator. Yet this… infestation had over a half a billion ships, even if he only spent a minute at each location they gathered it would take… a very long time to finish them off with one ship. That meant he needed to call the emperor and request a commoner fleet. Their ships weren’t as strong as his, but still much more advanced than what they were facing here.

  The common fleet had no standing in their society, and served at the emperor’s will.

  “Dura Lin, do we have comprehensive scans of this galaxy yet?”

  She replied promptly, “Yes father, I can confirm these ships we fight are the strongest in the galaxy. There are also five other civilizations slightly behind them in technology. All together close to two billion starships of various types.”

  He raised a tentacle in surprise, “And they aren’t fighting each other?”

  Dura Lin shook her tentacles in the negative, “I believe the most advanced civilization keeps the rest in line.”

  He sighed, “Very well,” he turned to Daria Lin, “Contact the emperor please.”

  He waited too long, and not long enough in his opinion before the screen activated and he was looking at his emperor. The emperor’s daughter was as lovely as he remembered standing at her father’s side, and he had to make an effort not to stare. Maybe he should have bid for marriage instead of seducing her that night in a fit of shared lust, but such is life.

  The emperor’s tentacles showed disgust, “What do you want Turin Lin, I didn’t expect to hear from you for a while.”

  He held his tentacles still in respect, “Lord, the threat we face is as nothing here, yet there are close to two billion of the vermin to wipe out. It would take me several lifetimes to see that done alone. I request the use of the common fleet.”

  The emperor demanded, “Send me the scans.”

  He signaled Dura Lin to do so, and then waited patiently for his emperor to go over the scans, he couldn’t help but look to the emperor’s right side, and stare at his daughter. She was stunning with her petite thin tentacles, brightly colored on the tips and flowing down her rounded sexy body. Sure, he was in disfavor, but he thought it might have been worth it.

  He returned his eyes to the emperor before he got caught, the reports weren’t all that long.

  The emperor nodded in satisfaction, “I will send the third common fleet. You will stay and take command of it. They are currently on assignment, so expect them in two weeks.”

  The screen went dark and he felt a growing rage. The emperor should have sent the fleet and released him to another duty… to be ordered to command the commoners had been a grave insult. Perhaps sleeping with his lord’s daughter had been a mistake, he wasn’t even sure if her tail was worth the ridicule he would now face before his peers from this insult.

  No… it was worth it.

  There were also only a hundred thousand ships in third fleet, and that assumed the fleet was intact when it got here. That meant each ship would have to destroy over five thousand enemy ships each, it would take months just to track them all down.

  His daughter’s neck was mottled in shame when she asked, “Orders?”

  He clicked in anger, which was the equivalent of a growl.

  “Stand down the ship and wait for the third fleet. I’ll be in my quarters.”

  Halfway to his quarters he called engineering and ordered his sixth wife, Sera Lin to join him there. He needed the relaxation his wife could provide very much right now. He was thinking dangerous thoughts, he wanted revenge on the emperor now for such a slight. It would never happen of course, their version of nanites were locked down, so even if he wanted to create more ships he could not.

  The last Meliax that had tried to bypass the control protocols had taken years to die. He shuddered, no it was better to bear the shame and hope for a reversal in the future, in the meantime his wives would be a good distraction. Not to mention he’d be able to take out all his frustration and anger on the vermin in this galaxy in just a couple of weeks.

  Arimetria Enellon stared at the data in confusion and her tail drooped lower to the floor. The Dreniel were a peaceful race, but ironically they had a fierce appearance. Arimetria, or Ari to her friends, was short for their race at six foot one. They were humanoid in appearance. They were thinner and taller than the humans were, much like the Alion race, but that’s where their similarities to the Alion stopped.

  Ari had long platinum hair, ochre golden eyes, with a dainty nose and thin lips. Although her face was lovely, it was also thinner than a human, more oval which gave it an alien appearance. The eyes were larger, and closer together, not to mention the fangs that were clearly visible if she were to give a smile. Her skin was the color of ivory, but that was covered by thick platinum blonde hair over most of her body except for her face, chest, and stomach. Her tail was four feet long, and thin, and right now was swishing back and forth in irritation.

  She was one of their top scientists, and completely autonomous on what she worked on. The Dreniel were peaceful, and would never dream of telling her what to work on, even if they thought she was crazy with her latest theory and tests.

  She was determined to figure out the dark energy and matter conundrum. Her colleagues were polite, but had started to distance themselves from her over the last year. There’d been many theories of dark matter, why it must exist, but it was all based on indirect proof and theories that couldn’t be substantiated. If dark matter and energy existed, why didn’t normal matter interact with it? There’d been several half-baked theories on the issue, but she discarded most of them and had been determined to find the truth of it.

  She believed the extra-dimensional matter theory to be the most likely, just like gravity is believed to come from other dimensions, it would explain why dark matter and energy simply has a gravitational effect on the Newtonian universe but no other effects, because only gravity can cross the dimensional thresh holds. Over the last year she’d spent a lot of time with mathematical models, and building out prototypes that she hoped would scan not only this dimension, but other dimensional layers of reality.

  It seemed to work on her fourth prototype which she’d finished just last week, her scans seemed to verify the theories. The numbers had made sense. Yet, when she reran the scans yesterday there was conflicting data on the edge of explored space, but she had no idea what it meant. Her tail froze as she saw the pattern, it wasn’t a natural pattern, it looked artificial.

  Several moments later, she decided to send a message to Aide with all the data, she had met the A.I. who had brought them peace when she was still a child, a little over a hundred years ago. She’d been a little awed at the being, and it was what had inspired her to become a scientist. She rejected the idea of sending it to her Dreniel associates, she doubted they’d do more than decide that the data merely prov
ed she was wrong. But there was something here, and she knew Aide had ships out that way, Aide had ships everywhere, maybe she’d know if anything was going on in that quadrant of the galaxy.

  She was surprised when less than two second later she got a reply, asking for her help and permission to build one of her detection units. She sent back an answer in the affirmative and waited for Aide to pick her up off the research station. With a subspace tunnel drive, it wouldn’t be long. She’d have to remember the humans called it a wormhole drive, strange name. She smiled when she realized her equipment was working, Aide’s strange request had to mean something was going on to explain it.

  General Townsend stared at his screen in annoyance. For most of his life he’d resented the fact humans had to kowtow to a damn alien AI, that even the aliens who created her had no control over it, although that might actually be a plus. He didn’t even really want to go out into the galaxy and conquer, and outside of that Aide didn’t ask anything of Earth or humanity, but it still rankled, and he knew quite a few other people that felt the same.

  He looked down at the message, it was one of many he’d received over the last few years. It showed no originator, there was no way to track it, he’d tried. All it showed was a signature with an Alion name, Kiala. He wasn’t sure how the Alion had found out that he wanted to get the advances Aide was hiding and get Earth out from under her thumb, but the Alion woman, or was it man, had somehow.

  He didn’t trust her at all of course, but he had to admit this Alion had been useful in the past, and even surreptitiously passed along some tech over the last few years. Kiala had written this time to tell him that Aide had lost several vessels from a new species, although he couldn’t verify that, and didn’t really trust her, he had to admit she hadn’t lied to him yet.

  What harm was there in making a few plans? The leaders of Earth didn’t know about his leanings, so even if he was caught he wasn’t worried about the Earth coming to harm because of it. It was time for humans to take control of their own destiny again, and get out from under the heel of Aide. If there was a new enemy, perhaps he could take advantage of it somehow.

  He started making calls to the ones he knew felt the same, and set up a meeting. It wouldn’t do to say anything incriminating over communication lines. He wondered if this Kiala was doing the same on the Alion world.

  Chapter 5

  Aide waited in the bay for the shuttle Ari was flying over from the station. She wanted to kiss the Dreniel for sending her a message, it had given her hope and explained their impossible enemy. Of course, they still weren’t in any position to fight back, not yet anyway.

  She’d been thinking of Timothy, and he was attractive, had the same qualities Kris did, if not as military minded, but she still wasn’t sure. She was conflicted, she’d already betrayed the memory of Olivia by paring down her memory files so she could quit grieving, would taking a chance with Timothy be another betrayal? She knew what Olivia would have wanted, her lover would have wanted her to move on, but did she see it that way?

  She had to admit she was also curious. She’d never been with a man before, and although she’d had a lot of toys, and Olivia’s tongue and fingers inside of her, she’d never felt a man take her before. Her research indicated it was supposed to be better somehow in comparison to a dildo, but nothing said why that was. Not that she’d get with Timothy just because of that, but it was one more data point for her to consider.

  She had nanites currently building the dark matter detectors on all of her ships, but she’d also tweaked it. It would also detect normal matter inter-dimensionally when it was done and was integrated into her current scanners so she really only needed the new sensors, which created the exotic particles that could detect dark matter and energy. If she was right, she’d be able to see their mysterious attacker that way as well as the dark energy. The shuttle set down and Ari exited looking a little nervous.

  “Arimetria, welcome to my ship, it’s nice to meet you.”

  Ari replied, “Please, call me Ari, and thank you for inviting me, that data was driving me crazy.”

  She nodded, “I’ll explain what your sensors were picking up shortly, as well as brief you on what’s going on, please follow me.”

  As they walked Aide said, “I see you have an Dreniel made integrated personal assistant AI? May I interface with it, I can brief you that way and you’ll be caught up to the rest of us. I’ll also introduce you to Timothy and Kate.”

  Ari bowed her head, “That would be convenient, you have my permission.”

  Aide connected to the primitive A.I. and dumped all her scans and files on the phenomena, while at the same time dumping the information Ari provided to Timothy and Kate. They walked into the briefing room and sat down. Both Kate and Timothy looked intrigued by Ari.

  She got through the introductions, then got right to the point. She was sure the two scientists would agree with her conclusions, but it would take them longer than point one three seconds to get there. Aide did have an advantage there after all. She wasn’t as creative as the scientists, but interpreting large amounts of data was child’s play.

  Aide explained, “I believe the ship that attacked us is invisible because it’s in another dimension, I’m having a scanner built that will find it if that’s true, and it should be completed shortly. Ari, I believe what you were scanning was the weapon, or ray, that this new enemy was using, and possibly dark energy shielding. For the sake of argument, let’s call it the dark dimension, where dark matter and energy reside naturally.

  “I believe they have a way of collecting it safely and then firing it inter-dimensionally, possibly with small bits of dark matter mixed in. Apparently, dark matter and energy are an integral part of our universe, but it is also inimical to normal matter when brought into this dimension. You can see where the time and place of Ari’s strange readings are the same points in time and space where my ships were destroyed. Dark energy seems to rip apart normal matter, and also destabilize our plasma containment fields.”

  She took a drink of water before going on. The nanites were done, and she started a scan at the last known coordinates of the new enemy and brought the data up overhead.

  “Okay, I was right, which is both good and very bad. The ship is in another dimension, and it seems to be surrounded by a dark energy field, which is no doubt the reason that dimension didn’t just eat their ship up. It would also account for the ramming attacks failing, as well as the plasma. That dark energy field simply atomizes any normal matter that touches it. They must have to open some kind of window back to normal space before firing, or the ships wouldn’t have hit anything and just passed through harmlessly.”

  She frowned, “The very bad part is, all we can do now is watch as they kill us, instead of being blind while they kill us. We need more than the ability to scan in another dimension, we need to find a way to move between dimensions, and manipulate dark energy and matter into weapons if we’re to have any hope of surviving the coming attack.”

  Ari fidgeted a bit, “Are you sure they will attack, have they done so again?”

  Aide shook her head, “I can’t be sure of course, but there is a ninety-six point four three seven percent chance that the attacker is just a scout ship. It could kill us all on its own, but it would take a few lifetimes for one ship to hunt down all the ships in this galaxy. I believe he’s waiting for the main invasion fleet. There have been no attempts at communication, merely attacks to determine our readiness and ability.”

  Kate frowned, “So you want us to come up with several entirely new technologies? That won’t be simple.”

  She nodded, “I’ll be helping both of you of course, so we’ll be sharing heads for a while. But yes, we have no choice. The math is all in the scans, we already have wormhole drives and FTL, both of those technologies take us into a different space. The dark energy beam and shields must be similar, so really that’s only adapting one technology we have, and coming up with one other that will be
loosely related to three new applications.”

  Timothy asked, “Three? I only see two, weapon and shields.”

  Kate grinned, “Yes, but we need to pull dark energy into a shield around us before we jump dimensions, otherwise we’d be destroyed in that dark dimension. That means we need to figure out not only how to transfer us there, but also how to transfer energy from there.”

  Timothy tilted his head, “If you can do that, why go there at all? Why not just pull dark energy in and fire it at the enemy ship?”

  Ari answered that one, Aide was impressed the Dreniel woman saw it so quickly, “Because the window, or as I’d prefer to call it, trans-dimensional aperture, that they fire through is offensive in nature. They left it open simply because Aide’s ships were no danger, but if we had weapons that could hurt them, they could switch off the aperture when they weren’t firing, and our attacks would just go right through the area without effect.”

  Timothy nodded, “Why couldn’t we just open our own?”

  Aide replied, “We may get to that point, but we also may not. You’re right though, it may turn out we can do that, on the other hand, there may be some reason we need to be in the other dimension.”

  Timothy nodded, “Okay, I guess we should let the ladies get started? Ari, will you help us? I know the Dreniel are peaceful, we’re asking you to help design and give us more weapons.”

  Ari smiled at Timothy, “Thank you for your concern, but I trust Aide to use these new weapons in defense only as I would my own people. Perhaps even more so.”

  She asked, “So you’re okay with the plan Tim?”

  Timothy nodded, “Make it happen.”

  Kate looked confused by that, so Aide explained, “I have a lot of latitude in my orders to protect the galaxy, but new situations call for new decisions and actions, which require approval, or more specifically, orders. Didn’t you know that? I have to obey all of Timothy’s orders as long as they don’t conflict with my protocols.”