Emergence ascendancy, p.1
Emergence- Ascendancy, page 1
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
RECALL
PLANNING
NEW YEARS
EXPLORATION
CLAIMS
ACCEPTANCE
ESCORT
TRADE
DEALS
ALTERNATE
MONEY
TRAP
AGREEMENT
LOG JAM
RESOLUTIONS
PREPARATIONS
INVESTIGATION
CONTACT
EMERGENCY
ROUND UP
RESOLUTION
HOMECOMING
EPILOGUE
PROLOGUE
Twenty Years Ago…
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
It was Thanksgiving, 2011. David was in tenth grade.
He had won the lottery this year, so to speak. His mother had applied for David to go to a new charter high school opening in inner-city Baltimore. His was one of 342 applications for the 100 seats. He was now enrolled in the school, enjoying his first semester there.
The thing his mother said she liked most about the school was that it would give him a shot at the same quality of education the white kids in the suburbs were getting. The thing David liked the most was that it was a project-based school. All the basics were taught as part of a project. This semester, the project was cooking. They used math to do things like scaling recipes up or down. They did science experiments like measuring the exact temperature at which egg whites solidified. And they practiced creative writing, by writing critiques of various recipes they tried.
Although the whole thing seemed a bit hokey to David, it seemed to work. And, he’d discovered that he liked cooking and was getting pretty good at it. But today was the real test. David had volunteered to make the mashed potatoes and stuffing for the turkey. His mom had made up everything else and had approved his recipe and cooking plan. The kitchen was now his.
“Hey sweetheart. You OK if I go with your Dad to pick up Gramma and Pop?”
“Sure Mom. I’ve got this.”
“OK. We’ll be about an hour. Shelly and Jake should be here soon. Shelly’s a great cook and can help if you run into any trouble.”
“I’ve got it covered, Mom,” David said with some exasperation.
Shelly was David’s sister. She was 12 years older than he was. Jake was her husband. He had some sort of job with NASA and had just returned home from a trip to the Amazon, where they were searching for something. But David didn’t know what.
David had peeled, boiled and mashed the potatoes by the time the front door opened.
“Mom, we’re home,” Shelly called out as they came in.
“They’re out getting Gramma and Pop,” David called back from the kitchen.
“What are you doing in the kitchen?”
“I’m cooking.”
“You can’t be serious,” Shelly said with disdain.
“The new high school teaches math and science in the kitchen.”
“What? There’s no science in food,” Shelly said.
“Did you know that egg whites harden at 176 degrees? Or that you can make salad dressing as either a suspension or an emulsion, which impacts flavor and shelf life?”
“What?”
“Sounds like you should be taking my class,” David joked.
“Food science, even more fun than real science,” Jake added, sticking his finger in the mashed potatoes and taking a taste. “Wow. That’s good. What did you do to these?”
“Added butter and herbed cream cheese,” David replied.
“Dude. Keep cooking like this and they won’t let you out of the kitchen,” Jake added.
“Can I try some?” Jeremy asked. Jeremy was Shelly and Jake’s oldest son, five years old. His sisters, Darla, three, and Shawn, one, both slept in the double stroller.
David scooped up a little on a teaspoon and gave it to him, whispering, “Don’t tell your mom.”
“Do you know if Darrel will be back from school?” Shelly asked as Jeremy scooted around her into the living room.
“I think so. Heard mom talking with him last night,” David said. “She seemed happy, so I’m thinking that means he’ll be here.”
“Then lucky Mom. The whole family will be here.”
David noticed Jake scratching his arm and a lot of dandruff coming off.
“Dude. What’s up with the arm?” David asked.
When Jake turned to look at him, David sensed anger, bordering on hatred, in his expression and took a step back.
“What?” Jake asked, all smiles.
“Nothing.” David, still staring at Jake’s arm, was suddenly confused about what he’d just seen.
“Oh. A little bit of jungle rot. Nothing to worry about. The NASA doctors gave me something for it.”
David found himself a little bit grossed out and not really believing Jake’s story. “Sorry about that.”
Then with a big smile, he added, “Maybe you should stay out of the kitchen.”
“Exiled from the kitchen on football day! Owe you one, buddy.” Jake grabbed a beer out of the fridge. Moments later the sounds of football could be heard from the living room.
“What was that about?” Shelly asked. “You looked like you thought he was going to hit you or something.”
“Nothing. Want to help me put this in a baking tray?”
“Ooh. Baked mashed potatoes. I think I’m going to let the chef prepare his own masterpieces.” She turned to head back out into the living room.
…
The table was set, the family seated. Dad sat at one end of the table, Pop at the other. Mom, Gramma and Darrel were on one side, David, Jake and Shelly on the other.
“Dad, would you say the blessing on this meal?” David’s father asked Pop.
“OK.” Taking Gramma’s hand, then Shelly’s, he said. “Everyone, let’s join hands to give thanks to our Lord.” As he closed his eyes and lifted his head toward the ceiling, Pop started.
“Our Father in Heaven. Hallowed be Your precious and holy Name. Your kingdom come; Your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.
“I would normally say, give us our daily bread. But today, I say thank You for the feast that You have blessed us with.”
A thought ran through David’s mind. Last time Pop went off script like this, the bishop was here for dinner. And he was none too happy about it. Told Pop to make up his own prayers if he wanted, but not to abuse the sacred ones.
“And forgive us our sins, as we also have forgiven those who have sinned against us.”
David felt something crawling up his arm and struggled not to let go of his mother’s hand to reach over and slap it.
“Deliver us from evil.”
As Pop said the word “evil,” David felt something like a pin prick his arm. Piercing pain shot up through it. Unable to control the impulse, he opened his eyes and let go of his mother’s hand to slap whatever bug just bit him. His hand reached its apex as David’s eyes focused on his arm. What he saw terrified him. Long strands of dust had slid off out of Jake’s sleeves and were entwining his arm.
“What the hell!” David shouted.
Time seemed to slow down, as David jumped up and to the side. Just as he passed his father, he saw Jake. There was an evil smile on his face. A blood vessel had apparently burst in Jake’s eye, and the white slowly turned blood red. More strands of dust had already snaked across the table and touched Darrel and his mom. Strands were coming out of Shelly also and touching Pop.
David’s hand had finally come down. It smacked the dust entwining his arm. There was an explosion of dust.
“You’re going to pay for that,” Jake sneered. Two columns of smoke shot out of Jake’s mouth and wrapped around David.
David struggled to get away, but the smoke bound him tightly and wore on him like sandpaper as he struggled. Another tendril of dust came at him, penetrating his chest like a searing poker pulled right out of the fireplace.
As the pain peaked, David found himself starting to float away. Looking down, he saw his body go limp and fall away.
David thought. Have I died? Am I a spirit now? He also noted two things. His fallen body had the carving knife in his right hand. And the dining room was unusually brightly lit.
When did I pick that up? He thought to himself. Am I glowing? As the thought shot through his mind, the glow intensified.
Jake glared at him. “You might be able to evade me. But they can’t!” he shouted, waving at the rest of the family.
Impossible amounts of smoke poured out of Jake and started spinning like a tornado. The tornado flattened into something that looked like a giant chain saw blade. Its first victim was Pop, cut in half through the middle. As the blade started moving toward his grandmother, David, in his glowing form, blocked it. Unable to penetrate David, the blade went the other way and got his father.
The battle went on for a few more minutes, as chainsaw Jake destroyed everyone but the little kids.
Suddenly a brilliant light appeared and a voice that seemed infinitely large snapped, “No more!”
The spinning cloud of dust fell to the floor.
“David. There are more of them coming. I leave you now, so that I can battle them. But I’ll be back for you soon.” The brilliant light spoke in a calm, reassuring voice, then disappeared.
As he looked down at the blood and carnage, David was sick with grief. Then he blacked out.
Ten Thousand Years Ago…
The Captain mused about
The fools! Nearly half our ships were lost. All of the capital ships were lost because they were too large to withstand the dimensional shear. Lost with them were the ranking officers and the attending priests. Another 10% were lost in the chaotic fight for leadership that ensued.
Me? I took my ship and ran. We ambushed a small military vessel operated by the Tezzlorans and feasted on the crew. Then we found the prize that we’d all dreamed of... The coordinates of the promised land.
His ship was one of about 5,000 that had left the home world on this crusade. They were known as the Qopajin, the holy warriors of the people known as the Qopadan. The Confederation called them the Enemy.
The Qopadan were a created species. Their creators were a species known as Tezzloran.
The Tezzlorans occupied the three habitable planets in a star system located a little over 1,000 light years from Earth. Eons ago, they had sent thousands of probes throughout the galaxy looking for a theoretical substance that could bend space-time. Those that built the probes knew that they would die long before any word of a discovery would return. Nonetheless they sent them, hoping their work would allow some future generation to finally break the speed of light.
One of the probes found Earth, which contained trace quantities of the substance in its core. Another found a planet with very high concentrations of the substance. A foolish attempt to mine the other planet failed, breaking it apart and killing the fools that made the attempt.
But from that day, Earth became their target, the promised land, because they coveted the secret it held inside.
The Tezzlorans considered themselves to be gods. Long ago they mastered the means to create life. Their system was populated by the creatures they created, and they created creatures of every type. There were species intelligent enough to serve, interact with and fear them. There were less intelligent species that were functionally the beasts of burden serving an industrialized economy. There were others raised for food.
One of their most unique creatures could work in space, surviving for hours at a time in the void. Those had built the shroud that surrounded their system and hid them from other spacefaring species.
Only one of their creations had gone wrong, only one had turned against their makers, the Qopadan.
The early predecessors of the Qopadan had been created in hopes of finding an organic means to achieve superluminal transportation. The first step along the path had been development of a microbe that had quantum properties, here one moment, there the next. But their creators had failed to anticipate that their creations could escape their confines without being detected. As they used their technology to build increasingly more complex species from this base, they also failed to detect the underlying intelligence of quantum creatures. This had come to a head a little less than one million years ago, when a significant number of their creations escaped and started feeding on the Tezzloran population. In the purge that ensued, the Tezzlorans used a previously untested weapon. Unfortunately, it didn’t work as expected. The Qopadan were unaffected, but the weapon created a great rift in space-time that extended up into the high dimensions. The creatures fled through the rift, ultimately settling on a planet they found in a high dimension.
Over the million years that followed, the Tezzlorans found ways to harness, then weaponize the base Qopadan design. These were potent weapons that the Tezzloran continued to produce. They were mindless, not self-aware, simply programed to consume. They were used to attack and consume nearby worlds that refused subjugation.
But the initial group of escapees reproduced, evolved and began plotting the demise of their cruel masters. Their hatred morphed into a religion run by a priesthood of warriors. This was the tenth crusade.
The Captain now understood how misguided and unprepared this, and all the previous, crusades had been. But he also knew that he could ultimately rule this galaxy, IF he could take the very special planet that the Tezzlorans coveted, the one they called the Promised Land.
The ship he captured had a maximum speed of one tenth the speed of light. His warriors had the ability to hibernate. He disguised his ship as an asteroid, set course, then went to sleep. He would awaken at the half-way point to adjust course. Then again at each subsequent half-way point. When they were a few weeks out from the coveted planet, the one known as Earth, he would awaken the crew.
Twenty Years Ago…
JERUSALEM, ISRAEL
He was the last of his kind. The Lorexians called him the Ancient Sentient. On Earth, he preferred to go by the name James.
James had first discovered Jerusalem thousands of years ago and, for reasons that were hard to articulate, had developed a great affinity for the place.
Some millennia ago, he had persuaded the Confederation to begin preparations for a Revelation process here on Earth. He had pushed hard for the process to begin.
Earth was a gem that the High Council could not even begin to comprehend. It was also one so valuable that they could never be allowed to control it.
It would be a while before the humans would learn of the Confederation. But once they did, they would quickly rise to become its masters.
James had only met one Lorexian that he believed to be capable of handling the Revelation, only one capable of shepherding the humans toward their destiny. He had spent centuries grooming him; decades pushing for his elevation to the Central Council. Then, once there, he had succeeded in getting him appointed as the Ambassador to Earth.
A great cataclysmic event had occurred in this region of the galaxy’s spiral arm at some point in pre-history. It had created a rift through space-time that would periodically reopen. It would be opening again in a couple weeks. For the last hundred thousand years, a horde of Enemy combatants had flooded through the chasm each time it opened. The last time it happened was 10,000 years ago. Thankfully, most of the creatures in that horde had been stamped out, although there were still a handful that showed up now and again.
The next opening was still a few weeks away. The Fleet had begun to mass in the area where the Enemy was expected to emerge. James decided to wait for it in Jerusalem.
James expected more Enemy combatants to come through the rift this time. The hordes seemed to increase with each reopening event. There had been ten previous events like this that James knew of.
He would meet them when they came through and would hopefully stop most of them. But whether he stopped them or not, he would pass through the anomaly before it closed, so he could seek out the Enemy home world.
CAPTURED TEZZLORAN WAR SHIP
The Captain woke to an alarm. They were close to their destination, but many systems on his now antique ship had failed during the last sleep period. The worst hit was the hibernation support system. Only twelve of his crew, including himself, had survived the journey. They were now awake, but near starvation. He had eaten the last of the food during his wake cycles.
The warriors that had died, along with their failed hibernation pods, were strapped onto the hull. As they entered the atmosphere, the deceased warriors and their hibernation pods burned and separated from the ship. The rocky exterior mostly burned away. Their entry perfectly mimicked a meteor streaking through the sky. Despite the fiery illusion, they landed safely in the Amazon Basin and, once offloaded, the Captain programmed the ship to dig itself a thousand meters into the bedrock. There, it would never be found.
Over the coming weeks, they feasted on the aboriginals in the area and slowly built up their strength. Then, they waited.
The ploy worked. Their entry was reported as a meteor strike. Researchers and adventurers from around the world came in search of the meteor.
AMAZON BASIN
Hundreds came from all over the world to search for the meteor, but no one ever found it.
The twelve infiltrators watched as the humans came and went. Each chose a host to occupy. The hosts were chosen from different nations. Some chose hosts from lesser countries with dictatorial governments. They thought they would be less likely to be discovered in these countries and more likely to be able to seize and hold power. Some chose larger, more powerful countries. They knew it would be harder to take control of these countries, but they would become vastly more powerful if they succeeded.
