Deadly Squad (Logan Ryvenbark's Saga Book 3) Read online

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this is a red alert. Red alert. Get to your battle stations. This is not a drill. Enemy ship forty-five minutes away.”

  What exactly were we facing? That nagged at me. I’m a sports fan and I will make an analogy between sports and war. In football, a team will play its interdivisional rivals at least twice a year. You begin to know your opponents, their strengths and their weaknesses. What they can do and what they can’t do. You know when their receivers are ailing or are having a bad year. If so, you switch to the passing game. If their front line is playing poorly, try rushing the ball down their throats.

  Baseball teams has scouts to tell them every detail about their opponents. Does the leftfielder have a weak arm so can’t cut down the runner at home? Is their slugging first baseman having a problem with inside curveballs? If so, then that’s all your pitcher will throw. But you know your opponent and that helps your battle plans.

  I have fought many aliens, some had skin and some only plastic. But after fighting them you have knowledge and wisdom of their tactics and strategies. But I knew nothing about this enemy.

  But if this enemy were golden boy’s friends, I didn’t have a valuable weapon I had when I fought humans.

  The Gold Ones would have no fear. They were technically not alive so they couldn’t fear losing a life they never had. Machines wouldn’t mind launching a suicide attack, and they generally didn’t retreat even if the battle was going badly for them.

  So the obvious solution was to blow them out of the sky.

  “Admiral, I assume our Disintegrator Ray is ready for us.”

  “Yes, but it’s only been tested. It’s never been used on an actual battlefield. It’s worked so far.”

  “Let’s hope we can keep that record intact. Been hailing them, admiral?”

  “Yes, they’re not replying. Not even acknowledging our signals. They don’t appear to be very talkative.”

  “There goes our chance of opening up a dialogue. I was hoping to discuss interstellar understanding,” I said.

  “Taking a wild guess, I don’t think they’d be interesting in that conversation, major.”

  “Yes, if they’re anything like the gold guys on Verdunne, they are only interested in killing us.” I buzzed Anson and asked a question. Five second later he buzzed back.

  “Ralph said he was transported in a black ship. They dropped him and the other soldiers here and then left. Ralph said he had no idea where the ship was going. He was not aware it was coming back either.”

  “I’m guessing Ralph, simply being a soldier worker doesn’t know anything about the ship’s weapons or defenses.”

  Ten seconds later Anson confirmed my suspicion. It’s a pain being right all the time.

  “Admiral, can we tell anything about the ship at this distance?”

  “Not much, major. It doesn’t appear to conform to any type of ship we know but there’s nothing really unusual about it either. We’ll still too far away to discern what weapons it might carry.”

  “Still maintaining speed.”

  “Yes. Haven’t speeded up or slowed down.”

  “Something to be said for consistency, I guess.” I buzzed Anson again. “Lt., bring Ralph up here. I want to try something.” I turned to the admiral. “Let’s have him speak to his colleagues. They will ignore us but maybe they will talk to him.”

  Ralph and Anson walked onto the bridge three minutes later. Anson saluted but Ralph just looked puzzled, if an android can be said to look puzzled. I directed him to the communications panel and told the communications officer to hail the black vessel again. I told Ralph to say something.

  “You don’t have to be creative,” I told him. “You can talk about the weather for all I care.”

  “This is SI 1308. I was transported and dropped onto a planet and my orders were to kill humans.”

  At first, there was no reply. I looked toward the screen and the small black became bigger. Still didn’t look distinctive though. More silence. Of course, semi-machines are not the best conversationalists. Then we heard the static.

  “Where are you calling from?”

  The voice was flat, emotionless. Monotone.

  “From a ship piloted by humans.”

  “Why did you not kill them?”

  These guys have a one-track mind, I thought.

  “They captured me during a battle.”

  “Why did you not destroy yourself?”

  Ralph said nothing. He didn’t have a ready answer for that. The question was repeated.

  “Why did you not destroy yourself?”

  “I… don’t know.”

  “It does not matter. You will be destroyed soon with the humans.”

  The screen went blank.

  I turned to the admiral. “How long before that ship gets here?”

  He looked toward the screen. “Considering they are on a leisurely space voyage speed, it will take about four hours to get here, sir. They’re not stopping to see all the tourist sights but they’re not at top speed either.”

  “Admiral, if you and your second in command would meet me in my cabin in five minutes. Rab, you and Astrid come too. You are also invited, Lt. Anson. Five minutes. We will have a war counsel.”

  All the officers were assembled in three minutes. We sat at a round conference table. One dagger was in front of each officer. I flicked on a hologram that showed the single black ship heading for us.

  CHAPTER 9

  “I assume all of you know about our engagement on Verdunne so I won’t repeat it. After we retrieved our people, this ship appeared out of the blackness of space and is on what appears to be a collision course with, well, us. For reasons unknown but which are probably related to how and why they were created, the crew is in no hurry. We have never seen inside this Black Ship but we assume the crew looks a bit like Ralph, as Lt. Anson has so affectionately named our prisoner. We have two choices. I could make an arbitrary command but I wanted to listen to my general staff. We can exit immediately and head back to Belen’s well-fortified planet. At that time we will transmit all the information we have about the invaders who call themselves ‘The Destroyers’ to the Federation. And we will no doubt carry Ralph to the nearest Federation military base so they can have a look at him. From what we can ascertain, the Destroyers’ mission is to kill all human being all over the galaxy. It’s something of a big job but they seem to be confident they can carry it out.

  “Our second option is to stay and fight the Black Ship and hopefully destroy it. If so, we can take the ship or what is left of it back to the Federation where it would yield valuable information about our enemies. Of course if we tangle with these ‘Destroyers’ we have no information on them or their ship. No knowledge about weapons, defenses, etc. However, since they named themselves the Destroyers I think it’s safe to assume that they don’t take prisoners.”

  I stayed silent for a moment.

  “I’m open to options.”

  I figured Astrid would be the first to speak up and she did. She raised the dagger and plunged its blade into the desk. She was an idealist.

  “We fight and annihilate the Black Ship,” she said.

  “Your reasons for this course of action are…”

  “Are a combination of logic and common sense. If we leave we must assume the Black Ship will track us and know exactly where our home planets are. That’s something we don’t want them to know. They may be a technologically advanced race but this is also a real big galaxy. They may have to search a long time to find us before they can start obliterating us. But if we lead them to other humans, it’s a different story. Plus, the Destroyers must know something about Earth and human beings.”

  “At least enough to hate us,” I said.

  “Why they hate us will have to be left to another day but they must know some basic things about us. But we know nothing about them. Before we grabbed Ralph we knew nothing at all. We need to find out all the info there is on this new enemy. If we could c
apture a ship or even parts of it, it could yield valuable information that the human race will need.”

  The admiral shook his head. “Your proposal has good intentions but a very high degree of risk. You have said the Destroyers must have information about the human race. And I agree. So there is a good chance they know about our military and what it can do. How they obtained this information I don’t know but we must assume they have it. If they sent only one ship against us, it means they are very confident that only one ship is needed. If two were needed they would have sent two. If three… It is wiser if we return and warn the Federation of its new enemy.”

  “We have already sent them warnings,” Astrid said. “They will be on red alert. All leaves will be cancelled. All soldiers and sailors will be reporting for duty. But they will not know what they’re fighting.”

  “But there is no guarantee we could provide additional information even if we did engage the Black Ship,” Rab said. “If we are successful in blowing it out, the parts will be scattered all over space. Even if we could retrieve the bits, they wouldn’t tell us much. To gain information about an opponent’s technology it helps to have the entire ship. Staying here is high risk for low gain. I vote no. We head for home. We have Ralph which our technicians can go over. Perhaps they can discern some information about his creators. If we stay we risk losing him. If the Black Ship wins the battle, then any valuable information he possesses stays here.”

  I looked over at Anson. “What does our science officer say?”

  “It is obvious that any and all information we could obtain about this new enemy would be helpful to the Federation scientists and military. We need to know everything we can about the enemy, especially one that wants to exterminate us. But it must also be noted that it is dangerous to go up against an enemy when you know nothing about him, which is our situation in regard to the Black Ship. The technology I have seen in the building of Ralph doesn’t appear exceptional. It certainly isn’t beyond the comprehension of our science. It is first-craft workmanship but many races do first-craft work. Whoever the creators were who built Ralph, they are solid, competent and on a scale of one to ten, would get about an eight. Solid but from what I’ve seen, not too creative or innovative. But whether those traits are also part of their weapons technology, I can’t say. They could have a weapon that will be a complete surprise to us. And maybe too powerful for us.”

  I flicked the hologram again. The Black Ship trudged forward. It was still in no hurry.

  “Admiral, when you get back to the bridge, check if our adversary has increased his speed. If not, I may release the ‘toys’. We’ll see what they can do. We still should have enough time to exit. Monitor them closely. I want to see if we can shake up our adversaries. I admit I’m troubled by the fact there’s only one ship out there. It shows either complete confidence or complete stupidity. Let’s hope it’s the latter. If the Black Ship keeps its speed, we will exit in three hours and head for home. Dismissed.”

  CHAPTER 10

  I headed for the shuttle deck, which is where we keep our battle ‘toys’. They are actual mini-battleships and cruisers designed to be manned by our androids. They are in essence suicide vessels that directly attack enemy vessels and draw their fire. Our technicians can tell a great deal about an opponent’s forces after a fiery exchange with the Toys. The Toys are much more difficult to kill than the name implies. When an enemy ship targets them, their sensors might see three or four or even five battleships spread out over fifty miles of space. Even high-tech sensors can be confused by the camouflage. Due to Federation technology it will even seem to the enemy sensors that one or more of the fake ships are firing at them. They will return fire but hit only empty space. During the fake battle, our Toys are moving closer and closer to the enemy, close enough, in theory, that they can do real damage when they start firing their hyper-lasers.

  It would be informative to see how the Black Ship dealt with the Toys. Their reaction might reveal information about not only their weapons but also about their strategies and tactics.

  As I walked onto the shuttle bay, I saw the half-dozen toys. They didn’t look all that impressive from the outside. The basic shape was of a shuttle ship with some minor modifications. Inside, they were mostly empty. We needed shields and weapons for a Toy. We didn’t worry about comfort or life services since only androids would be riding in them and Andys – another word for MITTS – didn’t need oxygen.

  The MITT officer approached and saluted. I saluted him back.

  “Any special orders, sir?”

  “No, for the most part, this will be a routine mission. We know nothing about the Black Ship and nothing about the race who runs it. We don’t even know if the race is carbon-based or metallic based. So our store of information about our opponents is zero, zip, nada. I want to draw them out, watch them in battle, observe what weapons they have and maybe we’ll get a break and find out something about the occupants. Use your own discretion during the encounter.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Use top speed in getting the target.”

  “We will, sir.”

  The doors to the Toys opened and four MITTS walked in each ship. I backed away and entered the enclosed command center with Rab. He stood smoking a small cigar.

  As the massive door opened onto the darkness of space, I felt the slight tinge of regret you feel when you even send machines to their deaths. I guess, in a sense, it’s a plus because only humans can feel it. But the MITTS are machines, highly sophisticated machines, yes, machines that can fool you into thinking they are human, machines that will dazzle you with their ‘intelligence’. But they are not human. Despite their incredible sophisticated programming, it akin to sending a bunch of used cars toward the enemy. Even so, you have talked to these used cars and they have talked back. They also falsely display a sense of loyalty. They have the fealty of a dog, always willing to walk with you as a loyal pal without a second guess. In many ways, one supposes, they are superior to humans.

  Perhaps they are somewhat analogous to the angels before the fall. The moral code is written into their programming. If a man is assaulting a child the MITTs will intervene because it is programmed to. If a woman is fleeing from a huge man with a knife, they will stop the guy and hold him until police come. Like the angels before the Fall, they have a physical ability to revolt against their orders but no moral right to do so. Perhaps someday they will exercise their physical ability and revolt against their creators.

  Who knows? Maybe that’s what Ralph’s creators did. Their programming said keep the peace, don’t kill anyone and certainly don’t exterminate entire races.

  Maybe they decided they would revolt against their non-extermination orders and challenge the status quo. Of course that didn’t work out too well the first time.

  Philosophers claim man loves light and seeks Utopia. That has always seemed an infantile belief to me. Our history tells us that, on the whole, men love darkness.

  In Revelation it tells of a time when Jesus will return and establish control over the Earth. A thousand year Kingdom of peace and harmony. After that thousand years, Satan will be released from his prison below the Earth. He will appear after a thousand year reign of peace and multi-millions will follow him. They will seek to overthrow the Reign of Peace and establish something else, a Kingdom not quite so serene.

  Too often men reject light and accept darkness, despite what the philosophers said.

  Perhaps that was the answer to the riddle of all our golden guys’ creation. Perhaps evil men who turned to the darkness created the golden guys in their image. To set up the Kingdom of Darkness. Which was sort of a backhanded compliment to humans. To establish the darkness, first you had to eliminate the light.

  Maybe despite their golden hue, that was what the Destroyers wanted to destroy – the light.