Talisman of Earth Read online

  Her father tried hard to build businesses, but they always failed. Every idea had to include ten others, splitting his attention and resources. It seemed that the harder he tried, the worse were the results. He was an asteroid broker once; then a rare gem seller; then an atmospheric cleanser refurbisher. His unwillingness to fight toward reaching a single goal was his downfall. It broke up his family, and sent his wife and children to Europe.

  Unknowingly and unintentionally, Kyra’s father had set her path in life. She never took that for granted. His gift to her was wisdom.

  One of the keys to being wise was knowing the past, and knowing when something was a mistake or if it was a moment of genius. Because of this, Kyra was also an amateur historian, and found herself often recounting long tracts of past happenings for her own enjoyment in quiet moments. She was generally a quiet person, some would say shy, and tended to often be alone. But having an eidetic memory meant she was never really alone. There they were, the events and people of thousands of years of human history, always at her disposal:

  By the year 2480, humanity had thriving orbital outposts around Earth and on the Moon, several colonies on Mars, and dozens of resource extraction facilities stationed in the Main Asteroid Belt and around Jupiter. Much of our advances during this time were directly attributable to Donal Banyan, the man who founded the First United Powers Congress. He was 114 years old then, and still as compassionate and charismatic as ever. He was a true hero in many ways.

  Alien life had been ruled out conclusively in the Solar System, and the first interstellar explorations had already returned from Alpha Centauri and several other nearby stars.

  Humanity was still very alone in the universe.

  The Talisman was a Moderator Class ship, capable of reaching a speed of nearly 10 times the speed of light using multi-stage acceleration. Tasked with carrying out research in alien star systems, and to act as a medical support vessel during times of need, the Talisman’s first journey, under Captain Akash Bandari, took her to the Tau Ceti system, nearly 12 light years distant. Life had long been suspected on Tau Ceti e, and was confirmed by the Talisman. The voyage took less than 15 months, and the crew spent an Earth year exploring the planet and cataloguing their extraordinary findings. With a mass more than twice that of Earth’s, and receiving over one and half times more stellar radiation, the life forms on Tau Ceti e were hardy creatures adapted to a world only a bit less harsh than Venus. Captain Bandari’s crew documented twenty-odd species of silica-shelled animals resembling various crosses of tarantulas and armadillos. Some were smaller than lab mice and lived in massive hives that covered acres and reached 100 meters in height. Others were nearly as large as squat housecats and roamed in packs the forests of short, broad bushes with leaves grown from meshes of silica and a chlorophyll-like analogue.

  On their return to Earth, Captain Bandari and many of the Talisman’s crew members were decorated, and went down in history as the first humans to make contact with an alien species. It was then, on May 8th of 2481, that Earth was visited by a football-shaped object 300 miles long, with a mass not much greater than that of the Empire State Building, only a bit more than 360,000 tons. This was much like seeing an elephant walk onto a scale and weigh the same as a duckling.

  This humongous ovoid structure appeared seemingly out of nowhere, materializing in empty space, and immediately started transmitting information.

  It came in waves: First it sent what may have been a geopbyte. No one was, or could have, known for sure. This was followed by hundreds of brontobyte transmissions, then millions of yottabyte bursts, billions of zettabyte transmissions, and finally trillions of exabyte packages. The ovoid was soon dubbed the Torrent. For months, it did not react or reply to humanity’s attempts to communicate with it. All the while, the world’s best minds worked to unravel the flood of knowledge that had been given us. In short order, it was apparent these alien visitors were benign for the time being.

  The Torrent had gifted humanity with apparently the total sum of objective data, compiled over nearly eighty thousand years by seven different intelligent races, spread throughout most of the Milky Way galaxy. It would take centuries to make sense of it all, but it was organized much like a library. Soon, we were capable of designing star drives that could propel us to 100 times light speed using a perfected Alcubierre warp system, and unlocked ways of curing disease and producing food that would ultimately save billions of lives.

  Although for a long time Earth scientists believed that one in five star systems might contain a planet that could exist in the habitable zone, the Torrent’s database made it evident that the amount was closer to one in ninety systems actually did harbor some form of life, and roughly one in 270,000 stars actually harbored life that had evolved to a sentient stage. However, despite this, the fact that there were confirmed to be sixty-eight billion stars in the Milky Way meant that a staggering 750 million of them probably had within them some form of life, and an astonishing 250,000 worlds might have given rise to races of beings that at some point contemplated the meaning of life.

  In just hours after these discoveries were made among the Torrent’s repository, Earth’s first extraterrestrial guests descended on gravity-repelling crafts with hulls of a polished metal resembling gold.

  The Torrent’s ambassadors arrived in two groups of seven, and belonged to only two of the seven races described in the Galactic Catalogue. These were the Althorians and the Kenek.

  The Althorians were human in shape and height, thin, with a bronzelike tinge to their skins, and all very beautiful. There were female and male Althorians, as well as a third sex that was neither strictly male nor female, but could alter its biology to perform as either role. Male Althorians were on average a couple inches shorter, but more muscular, than the females. Each possessed an array of soft reddish frills extending from the crown of his or her head to the middle of the back.

  The Kenek, on the other hand, were much larger than humans, eight to nine feet in height, weighing between 500 and 700 pounds. They appeared almost like miniature tyrannosaurs, but with much larger arms in proportion to their bodies that ended in powerful four-fingered hands. Kenek also had small, almost vestigial, tails, rarely more than two feet long. Their facial structure was much closer to that of a pitbull than a predatory dinosaur, however, and they carried themselves with a grace that was hard to understand based on their sheer size.

  The Ambassadors spoke to the leaders of the United Powers, aided by a telepathic ability of the Althorians. The humans understood their alien counterparts, and vice versa, with all translation happening within their minds in real time. Only five of the original seven intelligent races who developed the Galactic Catalogue still survived. The Kenek and Althorians formed the League of Kindred Worlds, made up of peaceful races, along with the Insigari, a wormlike race which evolved in the Gliese-876 system. The Insigari preferred to remain in their star system, analyzing data, while the Torrent transported Althorians and Kenek across the galaxy in search of other developed worlds.

  Another species, the Valgons of Kepler-22b, 600 light years from Earth, was the most ambitious of the races. After reaching a point of technological dominance, they formed the Valgon Alliance along with the Malign, a race of sentient machines. The Valgons would lay claim to every new star system they reached, and install a colony of Malign there who would in turn reproduce in vast quantities and mine the system of every available resource.

  Their joining forces with the Malign further cemented the Valgons’ advancement when the Malign Central Intelligence, based on a planet no living creature had ever seen (as the legend went), developed extradimensional communications abilities. Tapping into the universe in what might be described a sideways manner allowed the Alliance to send messages nearly instantaneously across millions of light years. The League, on the other hand, was still bound to Alcubierre “warp speed” when not being moved through a wormhole. The Alliance’s secret of extradimensional communication stayed
with the Malign... Even the Grand Krells of Valgo were not privy to that.

  There were many who believed that the Malign were actually just an ancient invention of the Valgons, rather than a separate species. There was no argument, however, in what role the Valgon Alliance had played. The other two mother races of the Galactic Catalogue were the graceful, almost feline, Pernet, and the peaceful octopod people called Yln. They fell afoul of the Valgons, and found their home systems afflicted with the cancerous Malign. Both races were marked as extinct.

  When the Secretary General of the United Powers saw a 3D holographic image of a Valgon for the first time, it was said that he gasped and cried out, “How could such a thing live?”.

  Of all the alien races in the Catalogue— indeed, of all of the alien life forms, sentient or not— the Valgon struck the most terror in all those who saw them. A thin layer of powder blue flesh, streaked with dark veins pumping copper-based blood, covered an exoskeletal body. Valgons walked on four cantilevered legs, with a curved tapered tail with ridged bony plates from collar to tail tip. They possessed four arms of two types: two arms ending in large, sharp claws, and two arms with double elbow joints and small, six fingered hands. Each arm type was arranged at a 180 degree angle from its counterparts, forming an X on a Valgon’s thorax. Their heads set inside an armor-ridged opening, with four black compound eyes and a complex mouth surrounded by sharp mandibles capable of creating almost any sound imaginable, and the power to chew anything softer than steel. For all intents and purposes, a Valgon resembled a nightmarish, seven foot tall, inside-out lobster.

  The Malign, on the other hand, had myriad forms. Rather than reproduce, the Malign constructed new selves or reconstructed their existing selves into whatever form their environment or assigned task might require. A Malign might be four millimeters long and function as a medic, operating inside a Valgon’s pneumatic musculature, or four meters tall and act as a heavy construction worker building liquid methane wells. A Malign’s intelligence varied as much as their size. A soldier needed knowledge and reaction speeds far different than a simple farming form whose job it was to grow fat animals for Valgons to feed upon.

  With the appearance of the Kenek, Althorians and Insigari, their working warp drive technology, and other advances, humanity had the means to expand further than ever before. But it was readily apparent that the League needed us as much as we needed them. The Kenek were rather good at building things, but the Althorians and Insigari were little help when it came to manufacturing the tools needed for defense and war.

  The League set up a permanent embassy on Earth, and left 12,000 Kenek behind before the Torrent ovoid ship warped away to continue its exploration of the galaxy in hopes of finding more friends. The Kenek worked with the United Powers to create dozens of factories on Earth and in orbit. Within five years, two new battleships were being commissioned every month, along with a dozen support vessels. The battleships were outfitted with powerful high-energy magnetic fields to repulse projectiles and debris, and an advanced reactive hull armor that could heal itself from laser or plasma strikes and anything else that got through the shield.

  The Earth became the home base for the League’s defense activities, and in return the people of Earth prospered like never before in their history.

  In 2492, Captain Bandari was promoted to a Vice Admiral of the United Powers Star Navy, or UPSN. The Talisman was refitted with the newest Kenek technology, and given a new leader: Captain Reina Lancer, a respected Navy tactical scholar, decorated for bravery in a confrontation with pirates near Venus.

  Lt. Gray Rhodes, with combat experience during the Saturnine Colonial Rebellion, was promoted to Deputy Commander and placed as Lancer’s XO.

  The Talisman was going to have the honor of being the first human starship to voyage to the center of League civilization in Althorian space. Vice Admiral Bandari and several human ambassadors would travel there, across forty-two light years to the sixth planet of the HD 30407 system.

  Althori was a cotton-white world of clouds and 30-mile-high plateaus full of thriving cities that existed in a perfect harmony with nature. Kyra wanted to see that planet as badly as anyone, and luckily she would get her chance as part of the Talisman’s crew. That moment of bliss, knowing that her future held wonders, lasted only a few days. That was when the Valgon Alliance struck at Mars with the full force of an entire fleet. A desolate world turned into a living planet through decades of engineering brilliance, Mars was cracked like an egg in only minutes.

  Kyra’s would-be colleague aboard the Talisman, Deputy Commander Rhodes, was listed as deceased for several hours, as all communications from Mars, and near space, were disrupted. When Rhodes finally appeared at the Talisman’s Star Navy dock, he was disheveled, nearly incoherent, and distraught. His wife and daughter were listed among the 2.3 million casualties on the Red Planet.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Gray Rhodes sat in his bunk and scrolled through an album of pictures of Kina and Valia on his tablet. It had taken him almost a year before he found the courage to open those files again. The pain never went away, but he had at least found a way to see through the pain for an instant at a time. He felt that he honored them with every image he was able to look upon. Dr. Weller--Kyra—-always said as much. It was definitely therapeutic for him.

  He remembered the first time he saw Kyra, as he boarded the Talisman. She was the first face he actually noticed. Everyone else was in a rush and existed in a haze of confusion. Around Kyra, though, was an aura of calm and peacefulness that immediately began the long process of cooling Gray’s anger and loss.

  As the Talisman’s mission of peace was put on hold and the League’s Fleet began preparations for war in the Solar System to defend its new ally Earth, Gray and Kyra grew closer. Gray’s loss was too new, though, and both of them realized he needed time to deal with what had happened. They had to make a concerted effort to maintain a professional distance, with the understanding that maybe one day they could revisit what showed promise.

  Three months later, everything changed again.

  A Valgon battleship, a gleaming juggernaut made of palladium and silver metallic glass alloys and bristling with dozens of weapons, reappeared near Mars, along with a large formation of several dozen Malign vessels. It seemed as though they intended to make Mars a Malign colony. This time, the League was ready for their enemies’ return. Admiral Bandari awaited in a remote Martian orbit with a large strike group of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. The Talisman was one of six support ships that followed them, at a great distance, into battle. The League’s forces fell upon the Valgon Alliance ships like hawks on doves. Hostilities lasted only minutes, ending with all Malign vessels being destroyed. The Valgon battleship retreated toward Jupiter with great haste.

  Admiral Bandari pursued the Valgons in his battleship, the Hartford, escorted by two destroyers and the Talisman. The Valgons dropped out of warp in the Trojan Asteroids, at the Sun-Jupiter L4 (Lagrangian) point. The Valgons had placed one of their Einstein-Rosen Bridge stabilizers there, which they used to create a wormhole that allowed them to travel nearly instantaneously across unbelievable distances. It was their beachhead in the Solar System.

  It took a tremendous amount of power to stabilize a wormhole. The League had the ability to do so, using antimatter, but could not keep one open for long enough to transport more than a few starships at a time. The Valgon Alliance held the advantage, though, having nearly mastered the control of zero-point fields and vacuum energy. With this, they could open and hold a wormhole with such confidence that a whole fleet of Valgon and Malign could come and go as it pleased. The only thing keeping them from scourging the entire galaxy at will was that to take full advantage of such transportation would require a network of black holes at useful coordinates, which didn’t happen in nature. So the Valgon Alliance had to traverse light years in normal superluminal space for months or years to find worthwhile black holes, and need to expend a great deal of time an
d effort to turn them into usable wormholes. Earth’s Solar System just so happened to have a pinpoint black hole the Valgons could use. Lucky us.

  Bandari gave the order, and the Hartford and its destroyer escorts attacked the Valgon battleship and the wormhole stabilizer, an 800 mile wide metallic donut with a 50 mile wide hole at its center. Unfortunately, Bandari had not just launched an attack on the relatively small Valgon ship. He had swatted a hornet’s nest. The stabilizer had defenses, and in moments the two destroyers were blasted into little more than clouds of molecules.

  The Valgon ship headed into the center of the “donut hole” as the wormhole was activated. Bandari ordered the Hartford and Talisman to turn about and retreat, but it was too late. Caught in the wormhole’s gravitation, they were both pulled after the Valgons. Meanwhile, the stabilizer’s defenses continued their withering fire. The Hartford’s shields gave out, and a massive beam of plasma seared through the huge ship’s reactive armor. The Hartford exploded just as the Talisman was pulled into the wormhole. Several large pieces of the battleship speared into the Talisman, resulting in the deaths of five crew members and leaving fourteen others injured.

  Gray Rhodes’ left arm was severed at the shoulder by shrapnel, and unceremoniously blown into space through the hole the shrapnel made on its way through the Talisman.