Escape to Earth-Living Legends (20 page)

The Computer announced, “There is a frequency in the void that originates at that planet. The communications are encrypted.”

“Can you break the encryption?”

“I am not advanced enough to do that.”

“Send a copy of the transmission you intercepted to Averel and request her to see if Fleet Operations can break the encryption.”

Hengel waited and thirty minutes later Averel said, “You were lucky! What possessed you to run?”

“I don’t know. I just had a thought about that telepath that took the Monster to the Bullet Cluster and from the meeting you fed to me, I realized it was pretty adept. It had to be as good as we are. Once I saw that, I realized that my thoughts aren’t being blocked. If there was one of them, there could be more. I decided to run.”

“That transmission you sent us gave Intelligence fits but they managed to decrypt it. The transmission was directing more than a hundred ships in on your location.”

“Averel, two scouts didn’t respond.”

“It appears they planned to attack all of you simultaneously. Hengel, where did that warning thought come from?”

“If it wasn’t my own, I don’t know. I didn’t feel any outside presence. Why couldn’t it have been my own thought?”

“The timing.”

“I’m coming to Earth to pick up a Battle Pod with the Telepathy Module. I’m going to order all scouts to start wearing a thought blocker and use the ship’s computers to listen.”

“I know where there are more than five hundred Battle Pods that are available.”

“Where!?”

“I’ll contact Admiral Greenwall under Michael’s signature and order her to make them available to you and the other scouts. Bring them to Earth and Budge will install the Telepathy Modules.”

“You know I won’t be able to communicate with you if I’m wearing a thought blocker.”

“You’re not getting out of it that easy. If I need you, I’ll send a thought to your new computer.”

Hengel smiled, “You are so amazingly brilliant.”

“Not enough to anticipate the attack on you and the other scouts. One of us should have seen it coming.”

“Are you going to tell Michael?”

“No, I’m going to contact someone that can help me understand what’s going on.”

“Who is that?”

“His father.”

“Is it your thought to do that?”

Averel paused and said, “Now you’re making me paranoid. I can see what you’re saying; perhaps I’ll have an answer after I speak with him.”

• • •

“What do you mean you only killed two of them!?”

“The one that warned them away is incredibly slippery. It somehow determined he was in danger and ordered the others to flee. I’ve got that one’s pattern and I will kill it.”

“You sound pretty certain about that?”

“I can prevent it from hearing me. The same cannot be said about it. I will remove it from existence.”

“When are the ships arriving?”

“Be patient. It takes time to build a small planet.”

“I do trust the next ones will be better than the one your brother had blown out from under him.”

“The ships are being modified. The disrupter patterns have been changed and they are now able to fire at angles at any vessel stupid enough to try that maneuver again. That is why they’re being delayed. Those changes will take time to implement.”

“If you’re successful, we will give you your own galaxy to rule.”

“I look forward to it. What galaxy have you chosen?”

“It’s a large spiral galaxy a long distance from here. It’s inhabited by thousands of intelligent civilizations.”

“I’ll enjoy consuming them. The smarter the better.”

“C
hris.”

“Averel, you will not invade my privacy, is that clear! If you can’t do that, then leave!”

Averel paused and then thought, “I’ve wondered why you isolated yourself. You’ve been hiding the existence of someone who is inserting thoughts into our minds.”

“What’s happened?”

“Hengel was nearly killed by an ambush set up by a telepathic being in the Legends’ Cluster. He had a thought and managed to barely save himself and the other scouts. Two of them didn’t make it.” Chris was silent and Averel said, “I was going to take this to Michael and I suddenly had the thought to contact you instead. Is this a mistake?”

“Averel, look in my mind at what I see and you tell me.”

“But you said…”

“Shut up and look. You know you are anyway you old busybody!”

“Hey, I’m not old.” Averel looked at Chris’s mind and after a few moments she recoiled out of it. “Chris, this is…I don’t have the word for what it is.”

“Somewhere between catastrophic and wonderful.”

“You know that if my contacting you is not my own thought, we’re being listened to.”

Chris sighed, “I know.” Allison walked up and Chris mouthed, Averel. Allison grabbed her neck.

“So Allison knows about this, too?”

“She does.”

“Chris, help me understand this. What should I do?”

“That’s just it, Averel, you can’t do anything. Think about what would happen if this got out. No one would make a move until they had a thought on what to do. They’d be frozen into immobility. Can you see that?”

• • •

Averel sighed mentally, “Yes and then who, or what, ever is doing this will have to make direct instructions.”

“Or stop communicating with us.” Averel was silent and Chris said, “Averel, that’s why I’ve avoided you like the plague. I didn’t want you to have this information and not be able to hide it. You know, at the very least, Hengel will see it. I knew you wouldn’t just take my word and not pry open the cover of this box.”

Averel sighed, “You’re right. Do you know if whoever is doing this has good intentions?”

“It appears they’ve been good so far but that’s like falling off a fifty story building and falling twenty floors; you can honestly say, ‘So far; so good’.”

“Chris, it’s strange you used a box metaphor.”

“Why?”

“Because Goran’s do have the ability to hide some thoughts from other telepaths. We mentally create a, for lack of a better term, box and place all the thoughts we don’t want known inside it. We’re extremely reluctant to do it because any telepath I communicate with would see that I was hiding something.”

“Averel, you work in the most sensitive job in the Alliance. If anyone questions you about hiding something, simply say, ‘Duh, do you know where I work? There are some things I’m given direct orders to keep secret’.”

Averel was silent and said, “Was that your thought, Chris?”

“Now you see why I had to go into exile. You’ll start to question everything you do from now on.”

“Chris, I can’t live that way.”

“Yes you can.”

“How?”

“Hengel is alive and by all rights, he should be dead, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then thank whoever saved him and assume these things don’t happen normally. I wouldn’t be given a thought about a box and you wouldn’t be directed mentally to lock that information away. If you look at all that’s happened, they just don’t do it unless it’s absolutely critical.”

“So Hengel is critical?”

“It appears he is.”

“Thanks, Chris. I’ll not reveal this to anyone. Especially anyone in a leadership position.”

“You would freeze them if you did.”

“Chris, I never told you this, but I love you. You are really special and I’ve never told either of you how wonderful the two of you are.”

“Thanks, Averel. You already know how we feel about you.”

“Would it be alright for me to contact you occasionally?”

“Now that the cat is out of the box…there’s that metaphor again. Sure.”

Averel ended the contact and immediately contacted Michael, “Have you decided who you’ll be flying with?”

“No and don’t you look to see!”

“Ooops, too late. I’ll keep the information hidden.”

“Can you do that?”

“If you give me a direct order to do it.”

“Then consider yourself ordered.”

“Talk to you later.”

• • •

“Hengel.”

“Yes, Love.”

“There wasn’t anything to it.”

“Why are you hiding something?”

“I’ve been ordered to by Michael.”

Hengel saw the last conversation Averel had with Michael and smiled, “I don’t want to know. I want it to be a surprise.”

“It will be. Hurry back with your ship. I can use some alone time with you.”

“I’ll hurry.”

Suddenly, Averel felt a warm feeling permeate her body. She smiled and looked at the list of things that needed completion. Chris was right.

• • •

“Michael.”

“Hello Audrey. What’s going on?”

“You ordered me to send some scouts back to where that ship was destroyed and they waited until the ships sent from that galaxy to investigate left the scene.”

“I don’t like your tone of voice. What did they find?”

“There was a huge portion of the ship that wasn’t totally destroyed and they went inside it and took a look around.”

“And?”

“They found numerous pressurized boxes with dead bodies in them.”

“What?”

“The scout that found them used a bio-scanner on some of them and the readings were abnormal.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“We had enough dead bodies floating around inside it to compare to those in the containers. It appears that something killed those bodies inside the containers by removing every nerve tissue in their brains. Their bodies died from not having neural impulses being able to go from the brain to their vital organs. Everything just stopped working.”

“How many containers were there?”

“Two hundred.” Michael was silent and Audrey said, “Michael?”

“Audrey, that ship wouldn’t transport dead bodies. You know how valuable space is on a warship.”

“This ship had that space built specifically for those bodies.”

“Then something consumed them during the voyage; that is the only possible answer.”

“We’ve not seen any evidence of the Legends doing this. There was no trace of a dead body in the Residence in M-87.”

“Then it has to be that telepath that commanded that ship. It wasn’t a Legend and I’ve been wondering why that ship was taken to the Pandora Cluster by a different being. It must feed on the minds of intelligent beings.”

“Why not animals as well.”

“Because if it could feed on animals, some would have been present in containers. That doesn’t rule out the ability to do it, it just means the preferred meal has to be creatures with larger brains.”

“Hengel says that the being giving orders to attack the scouts was telepathic.”

“Audrey, if what we suspect is true, it begs the question of whether or not the one eating those brains has to be in physical contact to do it.” He thought a moment and said, “Audrey, find out the ship frequencies of the two scouts that didn’t report in and have their self-destruct signals sent out.”

“What are you thinking?”

“If they were killed from a distance, they could still be in their ships with a mind that doesn’t work. The Legends will want to see our technology.”

“I’ll get on it.”

• • •

The engineers had almost managed to cut through the silver hull. It had been a monumental struggle to even dent it but soon the hole would be big enough for one of them to slip inside the ship. They made the final cut and one of them slithered inside the ship’s hull. It arrived at the bridge and saw the unmoving body of the pilot. It smiled and then heard, “Three, two, one…” It ran at full speed toward the control panel and arrived just in time to be blown into atomic ash as the massive reactor went critical.

• • •

The dark green colored being sat in a ship and felt it shudder as the massive shockwave blew past it. The twenty small ships gathered around the small silver colored ship were vaporized in the blast. It focused on the other ship and did not hear the thoughts of the ones that were attempting to force their way inside. It appeared to be calm but inside it was seething. How did they know? It closed its single large eye and focused. There was no being anywhere near the ship. It didn’t like being faced with an unknown. Its arrogance was off the scale but it was tempered with something it was not familiar with: fear.

• • •

Averel listened to Michael’s conversation with Audrey and went to the center of Fleet Operations. She went to Major Anez’s desk and thought, “Did you send the signal?”

“I did and received a confirmation that both self-destruct circuits were still operational and activated.”

“Thanks, Susan.”

“No problem.”

Averel went back to her desk and thought of a very old song sung by Jimmy Jones on Earth around 1960. What was the title…oh yeah, Good Timing. She loved music the humans used to make and especially what they called the oldies. How did it go…’But we had timing, a ticka, ticka, ticka timing, a tocka, tocka, tocka, yeah timing is the thing that’s true. Yeah timing brought me to you’. She stopped singing and wondered if that was true. Were she and Hengel…? She stopped the thought and started singing again. She took the thought about her and her mate and put it in the box. She felt the baby growing inside her and wondered what it was going to be capable of doing. She stopped singing again and saw one thing she began to understand, timing was everything. She remembered the human warships above her planet preparing to bombard the surface, when they were suddenly recalled. She took the thought and put it in the box. She realized that the things Chris saw were not the only instances of stretched coincidences. She smiled and started singing again. She didn’t know who Queen Isabella and the Moors were but the lyric was really catchy.

• • •

Chris looked at Allison, “Do you think she can pull it off?”

“Chris, I suspect they probably want her to know.”

Chris was silent and then his eyes opened wider, “Averel is pregnant.”

“WHAT?”

“I saw it in her thoughts. She and Hengel are the two strongest Goran telepaths in existence.”

“Do you honestly think they have that much control?”

Chris looked at her and smiled, “You’re here.” Allison smiled and moved to join him on his beach chair. They both felt the warm feeling but didn’t know if it came from them or…