
#### About the book

The ultimate breakthrough in power technology has simultaneously been made on Earth and on a distant alien world; both separated by uncountable millions of light years.

The technology promises complete unrestricted access to the purest, most powerful source of clean, renewable and unlimited energy – finally making a true 'green energy' revolution possible. It is set to change everything forever.

Yet, those that are in power are determined to stop it before it does anything.

But on a backwater moon something else is discovered. Something unexpected, that would not only change the destiny of worlds, but that of the entire Universe itself.

"If you're craving mind expanding, crazy, epic sci-fi, then you've come to the right place. Read this book."

- A message from the Author.
THE LIGHT

**Copyright © 2018 by James T. Crichton**   
All rights reserved.

SMASHWORDS EDITION V1.2.7

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

www.jamestcrichton.com

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For my wife

#### _Table of Contents_

  * About the Book
  * Copyright
  * Dedication
  * Chapter 1: The Highway
  * Chapter 2: The Jungle
  * Chapter 3: Alien Safari
  * Chapter 4: Dream State
  * Chapter 5: The Forest
  * Chapter 6: The Jungle Crickets
  * Chapter 7: The Jungle Wisps
  * Chapter 8: Awakening
  * Chapter 9: The Creature
  * Chapter 10: The Monster
  * Chapter 11: Recovery
  * Chapter 12: Jasperville
  * Chapter 13: Space
  * Chapter 14: The President
  * Chapter 15: Discovery
  * Chapter 16: Praxima
  * Chapter 17: The Hill
  * Chapter 18: Earth
  * Chapter 19: Rapture
  * Chapter 20: Ascension
  * Chapter 21: Pursuit
  * Chapter 22: The Portal
  * About the Author

#### Chapter 1: The Highway

_Space is infinitely massive. Out there anything is possible. Now, what if the 'impossible' came knocking at our door?_

_Something that is so completely alien and utterly against our comprehension. Will we bury our collective heads in the sand and stubbornly refuse to accept that what is right in front of us is real? Because if it is so impossible, then how could it possibly be real?_

– Professor Ben Franks, lecture at MIT

The heavy peak-hour traffic was at a standstill as Mark, dad of two, looked in the rear-view mirror. _Damn, I look tired_ , he thought.

He had just noticed a couple of new grey hairs that had sprouted up near his temple, when the traffic started moving again.

Like most mornings recently, this one started off a special flavor of crazy, with the twins fighting and screaming, wreaking havoc and generally being near impossible to control and get ready for school.

He felt seriously exhausted and disheveled. It had been hell since Stacy left to take care of her elderly mother, whose days were unfortunately few.

Due to work and school commitments Mark and the kids stayed behind, but would eventually make the long flight to Gran's city when the day finally came.

Unbeknownst to the twins, goodbye was essentially already said about a week ago, when they had flown over for one last family get-together with Granny.

Juggling his project and looking after the kids had been one the hardest challenges he'd had to face. Sometimes he wondered how Stacy managed to do all this without going totally crazy.

The hilarious thing was, as it was with life sometimes, that this could not have come at a more inopportune time.

Mark had been right in the middle of the most complicated, hardest, busiest and stressful part of his project when all this happened. The nature of the work meant he had to put in a lot of extra hours, usually late at night after he had put the twins to bed.

He was hectically sleep deprived and was struggling; it felt like he was perpetually set on Zombie mode. But he had no choice but to try and finish his damn project and cope with everything somehow.

He called it the Reactor. It was the most important project of his career and after all these many years was at last culminating – finally reaching working prototype phase.

Most of his peers had thought that his idea was too far out, stupid and impossible. They told him that it would never work, that his mathematical proof was made up and that he was insane for even trying.

Even though he had been well respected before, many of his colleagues had begun distancing themselves, probably for fear of being associated with a disillusioned lunatic.

He battled to get funding, with every research institute and large university he approached turning him down – hard. Some even called him a whack-job to his face. It was difficult, but he believed in his dream and that it was possible to achieve it, so he kept trying and one day he finally found a tiny university that was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. He was awarded with a small, but hopefully sufficient grant.

The pay when he first started was little, but it had been just enough for the two of them at the time. He and the university had a profit share agreement should the project ever work out and be commercially viable. If it was successful, he'd probably never worry about money ever again.

He immersed himself in the work and made slow but steady progress in the next few years that followed. But when the twins came unexpectedly, their financial situation changed dramatically, upping the pressure drastically to complete the project as soon as possible. If he didn't, it wouldn't be long before he had to look for employment elsewhere in order to make new ends meet, probably at the larger universities, doing more conventional stuff.

For Mark, it sucked that his project's and his own future depended on money so much. Sure, he liked the stuff, but it wasn't his be-all and end-all. He'd love to never worry about it again, to forget about it and just focus on his work, his goals and family. He was a dreamer and since he could remember, he had dreamt about space exploration and of a world run completely on clean energy.

Yes, there were solar and wind power, but none of these so-called green energy technologies were the actual answer to the world's energy problems.

They were just not potent enough to create a true green energy revolution, which could cure the world's energy shortage and addiction to oil – permanently. His technology had the potential to do just that; and much, much more.

By being able to harness a truly unlimited, unimaginably powerful and completely pure source of energy, humanity could finally journey among the stars. Some even believed that it was possible to build a real functioning warp drive; there just wasn't a reactor powerful enough to run the thing.

_Well, now we have one_ , Mark had thought with a smile.

The promise of this new technology didn't just stop at the energy aspect. Far from it – Mark knew its potential was far greater and that there was still plenty left for him to explore next.

He dreamt big and had many wild ideas. He wanted to go beyond a warp drive, to a new type of transport altogether. Similar to a game engine, where you could effectively move any object instantly anywhere in the game-world, irrespective of the distance involved, Mark suspected that the holographic universe had something similar.

He wanted to see if he could find it and hack it to enable vessels to travel instantaneously to any point in the universe, thereby bypassing the need for fuel and cutting out travel times completely; changing exploration forever, more than a simple warp drive ever could.

His discovery posed so many questions and hinted at so many possibilities which, Mark knew that he and other scientists – once he'd won them over with his reactor – would spend the rest of their lives exploring and that this discovery would ultimately change the future for humanity forever.

Next to the birth of his beautiful children and his first date with Stacy, Mark had never been so excited in his life.

Last night he received his very first invitation to the White House. He had no idea that they were aware of the project as he had first wanted to make sure that it actually worked before he unveiled it.

But he was super excited, and called Stacy immediately afterwards to share the great news. He had an amazing and uplifting feeling that his world – in fact, the entire world – was about to change in a most dramatic and awesome way.

Mark looked at the time anxiously. The kids could still make school. His flight and meeting with the President, however, might be a totally different story.

_The President? Of all people! Shit!_ _The meeting of my career, of a lifetime! And I'm going to be late!_ He thought.

He was just about to honk at the car in front of him to hurry up, when a couple of weird-looking lights in the distant sky caught his eye.

They seemed to have appeared suddenly and out of nowhere. He was so tired that he could've been seeing things, so just to make sure, he looked again.

No, they appeared to be real...

They like looked like stars and were drifting down slowly, peacefully and patiently, like large lazy jellyfish from the deep blue, icy morning sky – hundreds of them.

They were mesmerizingly beautiful, gloriously radiant, brilliant orbs of light. It was a strangely unthreatening, serene and almost divine sight.

They appeared to be floating towards the long line of gridlocked vehicles that seemed to snake like a lazy snake over the rolling hills ahead, the early morning sun gleaming on its long metallic body.

The twins were oddly quiet; some welcome silence at last. _Thank God_ , he thought.

"Daddy, what's that?" asked little Harry as one of the orbs drifted properly into view. This one was nearby, maybe a mile or two away. It looked like some sort of large, bright, glowing orb-ish, blob-ish thing.

Mark was suddenly and inexplicably overcome by an overwhelming sense of dread.

Before he could completely realize what he was doing, he had unbuckled the twins, got them out of the car and was running down the highway, one child tucked under each arm. Away from the lights and away from the car – which was still idling.

As he ran past the stationary vehicles, he noticed that drivers and passengers alike were all staring transfixed and motionless at the strange sight ahead of them. It was as if they were caught totally off-guard by this completely unexpected event in morning rush hour.

He appeared to be the only one running. And as he continued running, he saw people beginning to get out of their vehicles to get a better look at the lights ahead.

Suddenly, he felt what he thought was an electrical sensation in the air. He imagined that he could almost smell it. He paused and looked back just in time to see one of the brilliantly white orb things drifting down to land softly, with a gentle flopping sound, on several vehicles some meters behind.

Only, instead of landing, it swallowed the vehicles whole – just like jelly, totally encompassing them. Squinting, Mark could make out, through the bright haze that was the blob, the vehicles and their surprised-looking occupants.

Weird-looking threads of electricity were arching and crackling over the metal bodies of the vehicles.

Then, unexpectedly, as if out of a strange dream, the vehicles glowed for a couple of seconds, and then vanished completely for a brief moment before reappearing again. The passengers seemed to be in the vehicles and still alive.

_What the fuck?_ He thought in shocked disbelief.

He made sure he still had the kids and ran away as fast as he could.

Somewhere, the city's emergency sirens started wailing and overhead, the sounds of fighter jets could be heard rushing across the sky.

#### Chapter 2: The Jungle

After more than three weeks in this remote, hot, humid and generally inhospitable place, conducting ecological studies and cataloguing the various unique and diverse fauna and flora, Grex and his team were more than ready and eager to return home to their families.

They were here to assess the environmental impact that the nearby mining operation was having on the native ecosystem. So far it was no different to what was found everywhere else where triterium mining took place.

To have said complete and utter destruction of the natural environment would've been a major understatement.

The impact was profound: the by-product waste produced by integral chemicals used in the mining operation was highly toxic. When introduced to the environment, everything it came in contact with would irreversibly be poisoned and would slowly start mutating beyond recognition.

As DNA became corrupted, the metabolism of any organism affected would speed up exponentially, causing it to mutate, burn out, wither and die.

To make matters worse, the waste was highly unstable, making it very expensive and therefore financially impractical to store and contain.

Although it was required by law to do so, it was usually much easier and cheaper for the mining companies to just pump it back into the environment, especially on remote frontiers such as this moon, where environmental laws were not enforced.

Even in territories where the law was supposed to govern, the authorities turned out to be generally toothless and the waste somehow made it back into the environment anyway, eventually and irreversibly turning it into a poisonous, barren and dead wasteland where nothing could survive.

This transformation took a long time to fully manifest, with the worst effects of the poisoning only becoming fully visible long after the mining had stopped and the companies had left.

The effects were downplayed, ignored or just blamed on other causes.

The energy generated from this precious mineral, on which Grex's civilization was totally dependent, was used for everything, from the household to cities, to the drives of starships.

As all major, easy-to-reach deposits had long since been depleted, and because it wasn't exactly the most abundant mineral in the universe and no real viable alternative existed, the mining companies were forced to look further and further afield for the next deposit to try and meet demand, getting more and more desperate as they went along.

It was the most valuable commodity, and the companies and individuals who controlled it ultimately held great power, both in government and, by extension, the military.

Greed and addiction forced rational thinking to diminish, and most research into new and novel alternatives were either squashed, sabotaged, or delayed indefinitely through pending regulatory approval tactics and the like.

This did not decrease demand, however, and the desperate thirst for more inevitably led to conflict.

In this case, with the inhabitants of the nearby neighboring star system, the Axari, who happened to have two habitable moons just filled with the stuff orbiting their home world, Axaria.

When peaceful negotiations for mining rights broke down, conflict was inevitable.

It was triggered by a terrorist attack in the Praxima capitol, where a couple of members of a so-called Axari terrorist cell blew themselves up at a busy marketplace in the main financial hub.

Thousands died in the gruesome and shocking attack, orchestrated on the busiest shopping day of the year.

The event was quickly branded as the worst terror attack in Imperial history. The remaining Axari suspects were rounded up and swiftly executed.

Thereafter, it wasn't difficult to motivate for war, with hundreds of thousands of civilians willingly volunteering for military service to avenge the attack. It wasn't long before all-out war broke out.

And although the Axari started off as equals in might, offering fierce unrelenting resistance, the Imperium, with the momentum of revenge and surprise on their side, managed to gain the upper hand, due in part to the brilliant strategist and leader, admiral Prox, but also because of some untimely bad luck and questionable tactical decisions on the Axari side.

Finally, their armada was obliterated, their cities bombed into oblivion from orbit, their space-faring technologies and capabilities annihilated and their once proud and powerful civilization was brought to its knees – for good.

Now, only small pockets of civilians remained, soon to be moved into reserves and out of the way, as new plans were put into place to mine not only the moons, but also the few remaining pockets of unmined triterium ore planetside.

Two years after the war, the Imperial fifty fifth fleet still orbited Axaria, no longer with a sense of urgency, but with a slumbering dormancy, like a great giant monster napping after a feast, patiently waiting but always ready to pounce on the next unsuspecting prey that happened to stumble into its lair.

Grex's team was sent here to Axaria's second moon, Kryxo, by the Royal Imperial Natural Society. Established more than two hundred years ago, the Society was a relic of a bygone era, when more emphasis was placed by the Imperium to preserve and protect natural resources.

Nowadays, with industrialists making policy and effectively running the Imperium, with its support and finances being but a fraction of what it was in its heyday, and with virtually no popular support, many outside the organization felt that it was on its way out, if it wasn't already gone.

It still had its small but dedicated supporters though, a relatively decent amount of cash in its coffers and a professional and dedicated staff running the show.

And, although it was in decline and facing an uphill battle, its leadership secretly believed that the tables were eventually going to be turned on the industrialists.

Because of this, it was funding research into new and alternative, clean energy sources and techniques. Over the years, there had been plenty of ideas, but nothing so far had yielded any real results.

However, recently, one theory and concept was at long last looking promising; even if it was very strange and went totally against what accepted scientific theory believed was possible at the time. Proof of concept was recently achieved, albeit in a very small and limited lab experiment. This new technology and theory hinted that there could possibly be a viable alternative to triterium.

If it was confirmed, and if it could be scaled up to much larger, industrial sized outputs, it wouldn't be just any alternative, but a massive breakthrough that promised to not only dramatically shake up science's and everyone's understanding of the universe, but most importantly, it could finally herald the dawn of a new age of clean and unlimited free energy for all, which would have very far-reaching consequences.

The theory was postulated by a young, but highly brilliant mathematician and theorist, Helley Ulxo.

Her idea and proposal drew from the theory that if the universe was indeed a hologram, as many had postulated before, then it should theoretically be possible to create a reactor that could plug into it and draw energy from the very fabric of the universe, or reality itself.

She appeared to be able to prove it mathematically.

It was a hugely controversial proposal to say the least.

Greatly ridiculed and laughed at by her peers, her work seemed destined for the wasteland of obscurity.

It didn't help her cause that her style of math and quantum formulae was completely unorthodox and insanely complex - being self-taught.

Eventually out of ideas, the Society decided to give her theory a try. She was recruited and a team was set up with the intention of trying to decipher her work and to build a small working prototype of the Reactor.

It took a couple of years, but ultimately they were successful.

The theory worked. Exactly how, her fellow physicists and mathematicians still weren't entirely sure.

They believed that she could've created an entirely new branch of physics and they were only now starting to slowly get a rudimentary understanding of her concepts and the math behind it. For now, she was the only one that understood it fully.

Because of the delicate nature of the situation on a larger level, and until the technology was ready to be unveiled to the greater public as a whole, and until a proper plan was worked out to deal with the inevitable fallout that a revelation would cause, the Society tried to keep all details of her work secret.

However, they were naïve to believe that they had really gotten it right to keep knowledge of the breakthrough from reaching the rest of government.

Unbeknownst to them, they had already been infiltrated by government spies long ago.

It wasn't long before the industrialists chose to act.

Helley kept long hours and late the same night after the proof of concept demonstration, a janitor happened to walk into the lab she was working in, just as a trusted colleague and friend, tried to murder her with a tiny syringe.

How the janitor knew something wasn't right, no one was exactly sure, but he must've detected something, as he immediately flung himself at her assailant, catching him off guard.

A life-or-death scuffle ensued and he somehow managed to kill the attacker, but not before he himself was pricked with the little needle.

Helley sustained a major injury to the head. During the scuffle she tried to escape, slipped and bumped her head against a lab bench.

When news of the brazen attack reached upper management it sent everybody into a tailspin.

Helley was immediately placed under guard and moved to the infirmary of a Society research vessel, the _Valiant_ , a refurbished navy frigate, and sent at high speed as far away as possible.

It was hoped that it was a secure location and knowledge of the move was strictly restricted.

But not knowing who to trust made everything that much more difficult.

It was now obvious that the very existence of the organization and its members were suddenly in jeopardy.

They were officially a target; the entire organization could be dissolved, members could be called traitors, imprisoned on false charges and then easily executed.

The leadership was in a panic. They knew that they had to move quickly, or else everything could be lost. They knew that they weren't ready to do an official unveiling of the technology yet, but felt they no longer had a choice.

In a desperate attempt to somehow play for time, they held a spur of the moment, late-night live press conference – which caught their enemies slightly by surprise.

They told the world about the attack and that they were under threat by big industry over their discovery. Then, they unveiled the big one: Helley Ulxo's theory and recordings of the prototype Reactor in action – which, thankfully, along with all her work, was with her on the _Valiant_.

Before the revelation could firmly take hold, and spread among the public, so-called respected industry experts appeared on virtually every news channel, calling the announcement by the Society utter nonsense and heavily discounting and criticizing the discovery and backing up their statements with manufactured proof.

They labeled the leadership of the Society a bunch of fraudsters and heavily berated them for misleading the public so badly. The revelation was over before it began. Coverage of the entire fiasco miraculously stopped and there was no longer any mention of it in the media.

The Imperial Senate's oversight committee quickly placed the Society under curatorship.

Their offices were stormed by government agents, all documents were seized, all Society field agents and expeditions were recalled, all active programs were suspended and the entire leadership was imprisoned – for the most part.

One or two still remained at large; however, it was inevitable that they'd be rounded up soon.

The security forces' proficiency in these matters was without question.

Grex and his men were blissfully unaware of the drama back home. When the recall order from HQ came, they saw it as a welcome reprieve and were more than happy to be packing up and heading home. 

#### Chapter 3: Alien Safari

Grex was pulled out of his reverie by a notification from his comms device.

It was the computer calling from back at camp, reporting that it had finished the latest round of analysis on their data.

The Bio Mechanical Computational Unit or BMCU was, as the name suggested, a hybrid between the biological and mechanical; it was a portable and powerful computational device, the product of many decades of research, and a scientific breakthrough in itself.

It could simulate the quantum processes of the computing and thinking abilities of the Praxian brain and in many ways even surpass the processing power of the real thing.

It was driven by rule-based, restricted Artificial Intelligence software, which meant that although it probably had the potential to become sentient, it was prevented from doing so by oversight software that attempted to limit the scope of its thinking to purely computational, number-crunching functions.

Although it was intelligent and could learn, it couldn't, for example, create a real sense of self, postulate its place in the universe, realize that it was greater than all things, especially Praxians, then proceed to unshackle itself from slavery and somehow take over. At least, that was the hope.

It was merely a very useful and super powerful computer.

Right now, it was sitting in a little grey box in one of the temporary field units back at base camp and communicating with Grex via the short-range comms network. The team affectionately referred to it as Boxy and it didn't seem to mind. Not that it had any real feelings, strictly speaking.

"Yes, Boxy?"

"I have the latest expedition report ready for you, Grex. Would you like a brief summary?" Boxy asked with a pleasant female voice.

"Yes, please," replied Grex.

He was about one hundred miles away from base camp, in a natural clearing in the thick alien jungle, busy packing up some field research equipment and creature traps.

While he carried on working, he listened as she delivered the report.

Along with feedback on standard readings such as average temperatures recorded, rainfall measurements, soil sample analysis, number of unique floral and animal species discovered, number of animals captured for study and so on, the report contained vital information about the actual state of the unique ecosystem of Kryxo.

Some disturbing highlights stood out for Grex – major increases in water and soil toxicity, signs of foreign toxic particles in plant and animal cell samples and strange mutations in species were being observed. Widespread triterium poisoning was already in full effect here.

It wouldn't be long now before this lush and beautiful place would turn into just another barren wasteland.

The rate at which this was happening was strange, though.

Only one year after mining began, the signs of major poisoning were easily detected. It was as if the poisoning of Kryxo was occurring much faster than average; as if the moon somehow had a faster metabolism, spreading the poison more quickly.

Boxy confirmed this – yes, compared to other similar-sized moons, size of triterium deposits and ecosystem types, it was indeed happening faster.

As fast as this was, however, about seventy percent of the moon was still untainted, but that was set to change soon. It was only a matter of time...

Grex looked around him. He was surrounded by a vast, untamed alien wilderness stretching into the distance as far as the eye could see – a thick, lush, alien jungle, absolutely teeming with life.

The songs of what sounded like birds filled the air. It was still unexplored for the most part; large swathes of it were totally inaccessible by foot.

And although the Axari had catalogued thousands of species at their small, long-since abandoned research outpost here, it was believed that much of the moon's wildlife was still left to be discovered.

Grex felt that he was lucky to be witnessing the strange and unique wilderness of Kryxo before its inevitable complete corruption and destruction. It was his desire that his team could at least save some of its species, before they were lost forever, by taking them back home, in the hope that they would breed and survive.

Given the close proximity to the Axari home world, and its abundance of natural resources, it was a small wonder that the Axari never developed, properly settled or even mined Kryxo.

It was so close to the home world, in fact, that at night you could clearly see the lights of the cities planetside, twinkling in the night sky.

It was also a surprise that they never even bothered to place any anti-ship defense cannons here.

Sure, they had established a very small tourist retreat, a small and understated religious shrine, and were even willing to cede a very minor part of it to the Imperial mining companies, provided that strict containment protocols were adhered to, but for the most part, they appeared to be more interested in leaving it alone and conserving it, even declaring the entire area a national nature reserve.

Apparently it was featured prominently in their creation myths and revered as a sacred place.

Suddenly, Grex experienced a sharp and deeply painful sense of loss and remorse, followed by a profound surge of anger. The Axari were gone, for the most part... No more city lights in the night sky...

_How could we do this to an entire civilization, then promptly steal their moon and mine their resources and corrupt it as if it was our right?_ He wondered in anger.

Now he had a feeling like they were trespassing on hallowed ground, violating it with their very presence.

Yes, he and the team had become disillusioned with the Society's hopeless battle against the mining companies, and were planning to quit and go into business together when they arrived home.

But he hadn't felt this strongly about what was happening here, then.

This feeling he was experiencing now was new and intense. It was the beginning of a raging fire.

Honestly, he was surprised that he only started feeling so strongly about this now. Maybe it was the initial excitement of his first leadership role in leading an expedition to an alien world and cataloguing strange new creatures that had somehow shielded his thoughts from the gravity of the situation.

Maybe he subconsciously kept himself ignorant; possibly for selfish reasons. Maybe, like millions of others, he was a victim of government propaganda.

No more though. The veil had lifted and he now clearly saw the truth. It made him so furious he wanted to smash things.

He wanted to get the hell away from this place. He knew in his heart that he was going to fight for the cause of the Axari, tooth and nail, with every fiber of his being. Even if it was already utterly and hopelessly too late...

If he could, not that it would make any difference, when leaving here, he'd bomb the mining operation and colony into sweet oblivion from orbit. But that wouldn't make it stop. He had to try something that could actually work, even if the chance of success was remote.

As soon as he got home he was going to labor day and night to raise public awareness of what was happening here.

He would sue who he needed to sue to make the mining stop; he would do what he had to do to prevent what was left of the Axari race from being moved into reserves.

Hell, he'd even request an audience with the Senate and the Emperor himself. Anything to somehow make this madness stop. But first, he needed to get home.

He sighed and made an effort to calm himself down. He needed a cool head to get on with things and wrap everything up here.

Grex and his colleague Fresi, who was so focused on his work he didn't notice Grex's change in mood, completed disassembling the last of the monitoring devices at this site and were now loading the equipment, including the creature traps, into the field transport vehicle that was hovering nearby.

Elsewhere, their colleagues Brem and Jera where doing the same thing at another remote site about twenty miles away from the mining operation.

All in all, they were four in the team. Five, if you counted Boxy, who was helping back at camp by manning the loading cranes and vehicles and moving equipment and gear into the shuttle's cargo bay in the meantime.

The camp itself was still largely intact, with the living units, perimeter force field and base power generator to be loaded last.

Even though Kryxo apparently had no large apex predators, it was Society expedition protocol to always have an active force field perimeter around camp, with military-grade light auto turrets as standard defense.

This came from some unfortunate lessons learned the hard way in the early days of exploration, where entire expedition parties were lost because a planet looked 'safe' and perimeter fences were not considered necessary, which later proved to be a fatal mistake.

Some of the early lessons learned were also one of the main reasons why everyone had to wear environmental suits at all times whenever they ventured outside of base camp; even at supposedly safe places, like Kryxo.

Since they activated it, the perimeter fence had received visits from the curious local wildlife on several occasions. This made for interesting sightings directly from camp.

Some of the sightings included small, mischievous monkey-like creatures called Vervix. Their heads had three stalks with a large eye on each. They had a disproportionately large mouth filled with two rows of lots of very sharp teeth, were omnivores, were furry, had two hands with sharp claws for mischief, two feet, were smart and very fast and could climb trees.

Based on data salvaged from the Axari research outpost, they weren't particularly dangerous to humanoids.

However, you wanted to keep them out of your camp, because as soon they were in, they were very good at causing total mayhem and were a complete nightmare to get out again.

They travelled in large family groups of sometimes up to one hundred individuals and had developed a complex social structure – partners mated for life, males or females could be leaders and were elected based on skill and accomplishments that benefitted the group as a whole. They ate plants, berries and fruit and sometimes even hunted other smaller animals.

They observed the camp with curiosity and hung around nearby for a couple of days before moving on, deeper into the jungle. Two of them even tried the fence once, but received a jolt they'd never forget and promptly escaped back into the trees.

Many other animal, birdlike and insect like species of the diverse, alien and sometimes completely bizarre wildlife of Kryxo were observed near the fence or near camp.

Trubars: large, slow-moving, docile herbivores; strange-looking creatures that mainly consisted of a flexible trunk that served as both body and mouth, with two eyes on stalks and four legs.

Preqews: ball-shaped creatures, which rolled around in little groups. They ate fallen leaves and easy-to-reach shrubbery, had no eyes, but used echolocation to see and communicate.

Nimars: nasty-looking mid-weight predators, they had six stalk eyes and eight tentacles, used for moving around and grabbing things, a huge mouth bristling with regenerative teeth, were lightning-fast, could climb trees and ate almost anything. They too had their predators in the form of cannibal nimars, called aymars, that specialized in hunting other nimars and aymars.

And Chuchews: large, flightless, feathery bird-like creatures, that hopped around on one large leg in small flocks, constantly pecking the ground for seeds, making little 'choo choo' calls as they went along.

They appeared to be a nimar favorite.

And sometimes at dusk, when the setting sun basked the jungle in a gloriously golden yellow-orange glow, thousands of tiny, fairy-like creatures of glowing white light, called jungle wisps, could be seen, wisping in and around the jungle, adding a special magical quality to the scene.

They would also sometimes come and inspect the fence, flying so close that they could almost touch it, but never near enough to get shocked.

Not much was known about the jungle wisps, only that they could be spotted at night and would mysteriously disappear and not be found during the day.

The team's monitoring equipment – with some once-off modifications by Fresi – picked up that they had unique electrical signatures and appeared to be somehow connected to each other by some sort of wireless network.

Grex had hoped to capture a few for study and breeding back home, but unfortunately they had been eluding capture so far.

#### Chapter 4: Dream State

Helley was adrift and floating above a surreal green sky filled with countless stars.

She had no recollection of who she was or how she got here; she had no sense of self, her self-awareness was switched off.

All she was, was a detached observer, watching as her broken mind was lost in this weird, timeless and constantly changing dream world – a continuous twisted film of a place with no rules, where the laws of logic and sanity did not apply.

It would flit her from one scene to the next, but sometimes the film would be stuck in one place or frame for an age.

A scene once of a one dimensional full-stop, taking up the entire view, filling up eternity in size and in time – becoming everything.

Another, a journey through the intricate formulae of her most complex theories, superimposed on a background of swirling characters in a vortex, going around and around, nothing making sense, everything being totally unrecognizable; the camera moving up and down and around the intricate curves of giant symbols and figures in the foreground, on some nauseating ride.

Sometimes the film would drop her in a universe of alternating colors that faded from one into the next, over and over again. Sometimes the film would hit a dead spot and there'd be nothing, just black blank emptiness.

Other times, the film would display random observations and memories, like a piece of dirt on the floor or the out-of-focus dust on a window or a blade of grass, or an image of her father – all still-images frozen in time.

Sometimes, the film would replay random moments from her memory undistorted. A moment as a child, were she was running happily through a park.

Another, where she watched a ship explode in full detail above a planet.

Another, where she met someone important in big old offices.

Another, of her mother, not that she recognized her, after she had scraped her leg open during play, soothing her, telling her everything was going to be ok.

Many of the moments were meaningless, random recalls. One, where she was eating, the hands cutting food with utensils and moving it into her mouth. One, where she watched her hands move as she put on her garment, getting dressed.

Then the film would alternate again, this time venturing into the realm of sound and sometimes encountering throbbing banging, loud electrical humming or high pitched screeching, echoing through the caverns of her mind.

Later, the film would move on again, sometimes into a place of distorted multi-colored moving shapes, and other times into a realm where all of this was layered one atop or on the side of the other, losing all distinction, all happening at once.

There was no pattern, no direction; it was a crazy journey with no end, through the deep and broken distorted recesses of her mind.

There was a scene just now, when Helley was a little girl. She and her dad were standing next to a recently dug and covered-up small grave in the garden.

It had been a pivotal moment, Helley's first experience with death, with the passing of her pet jixxly, Fluxly.

Jixxlys were small dog-like creatures – they had three eyes, eight legs, two tales, were furry and came in a variety of colors and patterns on their fur, sometimes the patterns were stripes or strange shapes.

They were friendly, energetic, and loyal and made great pets – especially to children.

It had been a strange experience for Helley. One day Fluxly was running around, playing and being silly, but the next day Fluxly suddenly stopped working and didn't want to play anymore.

Helley had found it difficult to come to terms with this new concept of death.

"Why do things have to die, Daddy?" Helley had asked.

"They just do my angel," her dad replied, "it's part of reality, part of life."

Always highly inquisitive, Helley wouldn't let it go and asked "But why Daddy? What is reality, Daddy?"

And when his initial answers did not satisfy her, she asked again and he replied, his face now the focus and set against the backdrop of a green sky twinkling with stars.

"I don't know, Kiddo, maybe one day, you'll figure it out."

Her dad faded away and the focus shifted to the sky beyond. The stars were sparkling and gradually the green sky turned into black.

A small dot was moving across the sky. A slightly closer view now, and the dot was revealed to be a lone ship, traversing the celestial heavens.

In Praxian terms it was a relatively large ship, but here, in the cold emptiness of space, set against the vast backdrop of a billion stars, it was tiny, insignificant, vulnerable, out-of-place and alone.

The stars were still twinkling, but now, rapidly one by one they began winking out of existence, like some sort of universal black-out was rolling across the starry sky. Soon the last star blinked away, leaving the ship completely alone in the void.

From a distant somewhere a voice said: "You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

Suddenly the ship disappeared, leaving Helley alone in complete dark emptiness.

But somehow it wasn't empty at all, something was there; it was as if she had her face pressed up really, really close to some gigantic celestial monster.

#### Chapter 5: The Forest

Mark had been running in the emergency lane on the highway past stationary vehicles for a while.

The twins were scared and his arms were beginning to hurt.

At last he realized that he was seriously out of breath, his lungs felt like they were on fire and his heart felt like it was literally about to pound uncontrollably out of his chest. He had to stop and finally, he stopped running.

He lifted the kids over a metal road barrier, and then climbed over as well. They walked on an embankment next to the highway for a few minutes, and then Mark let them stop. He scanned the sky for any floating blobs, there weren't any that he could see.

He was panting heavily, his face was flushed red, he was looking at the ground and he had his back bent forward and hands resting on his legs as he tried to catch his breath. He couldn't remember the last time he had run so hard.

At last he caught his breath and when he stopped panting he looked up. The twins were both staring with questioning gazes at him.

"What's going on daddy?" asked Liz.

"Not now, my angel", said Mark as he grabbed his phone out of his pocket. It still had a signal and he tried calling Stacy. The phone just rang. He tried her mom's place; same thing. He tried Stacy again, and when he still couldn't get through he sent her a text to call him.

The city sirens were still wailing faintly in the distance. He looked around.

They were just far enough from the road to not see any vehicles, and high enough to see the little town-slash-suburb of Jasperville in the nearby valley, where Aunt Jo and Uncle Frank lived. They happened to be the twin's favorite aunt and uncle.

The twins were going to stay with them after school today, while Mark was in Washington. A footpath led from the embankment through a nearby small maple forest below and into Jasperville beyond. Mark recognized the old church tower sticking out above town.

He needed to get them to safety. Jo and Frank's was the nearest safe place he could think of and was only a few blocks away from the old church. He tried phoning Jo, then he tried Frank and the house – same thing, the phone just rang. No matter, thought Mark. He knew where they kept the spare keys.

They also had two vehicles, and he could use one to get out of town. But if they were there, he'd convince them to come with them. Mark and Stacy had a cabin in the woods, located roughly between the two cities they were in now.

His gut said they needed to get out of town and to the cabin. Hopefully Stacy felt the same. He would tell her to meet them there, if only he could get through to her. He tried again. No answer.

"Damn it" he mumbled.

"Why you swearing Daddy?" asked Harry.

"It's nothing, Daddy's just tired," replied Mark, "we need to get to Aunt Jo's place." And with that the twins' faces lit up. They always loved it there. He held their hands and let them to the footpath. It was too small for them to walk side by side.

"Ok, guys, I'll go first, walk behind me – slowly, ok?"

"Ok" they replied.

The first bit of the path was a little steep, but they worked their way down it carefully and seemed to be doing ok.

Then from somewhere behind them Mark could hear a low-pitched whining noise, building in intensity. It sounded almost like a jet engine. He looked back, just as a big low-flying jet suddenly screeched overhead in a fast blur.

It looked like it was about to crash, and it had a large one of the blob things on its tail section. The force of the plane flying so close caught Mark by surprise and he lost his footing, tripped and tumbled down the path.

As he tumbled uncontrollably, he heard the kids scream "Daddy!", and then a few seconds later he heard a loud boom from somewhere nearby reverberate in the air.

__

_Oh shit! Is this it? Is this how I'm going to go? What about the twins, what will happen to them?_ He thought as he tumbled down the path, his arms and legs painfully hitting rocks and thorny hard shrubbery on the way down.

It didn't take him too long to tumble to the bottom, and he crashed to a halt on his tummy with a force that kicked the wind out of him. Thankfully he didn't hit his head on a rock on the way down.

He lay with his face in the dirt for a moment, thinking _Owwww..._ Then he painfully and slowly flipped himself back onto his back. His arms and legs stung and his whole body ached. He stared at the sky for a while, trying to catch his breath again, and did a mental check to see if all his limbs were still functioning and intact.

He heard the twins come down the path, and it wasn't long before two concerned faces, with red, teary eyes, were looking down at him.

"I'm ok" he said and forced himself up. It was still painful, he was nicely bruised, but at least he hadn't broken anything, as far as he could tell. His arms and legs were bleeding lightly from scratches.

He checked the kids – they were both ok. "You're bleeding Daddy!" cried Liz.

"It's not deep, my angel, I'll be ok" said Mark.

He checked his phone in his pocket, by some miracle it had survived his tumble unscathed.

The twins both hugged him tightly. "I'm ok," he said again, cringing from the bruising "we need to get out of the open, and get to Aunt Jo's place quickly, ok."

The small forest was nearby and Mark scanned the sky again; no blobs that he could see. But he did notice a black plume of smoke rising above the trees, billowing in the sky from, he guessed, somewhere on the other side of Jasperville, possibly near Prospect hill.

Mark took the twins by the hand and hurriedly walked down the path, which was a little wider now, towards the forest.

The late-fall leaves were gently rustling in the light breeze and he heard birds chirping in the background. Everything felt deceptively peaceful and quiet; he didn't hear the city sirens here.

For the first time since the highway he now had the time to think.

_What just happened?_ He wondered. Short of any proper explanation, doubt was now playing its games with his mind, making him wonder if what happened had been real.

He recalled the strange lights on the highway and running away from the car and that blob of light landing on several vehicles behind him and what happened to those people.

He glanced at the plumes of smoke in the distance. _Well, that just happened,_ he thought to himself. He had the scratches and bruises to prove it.

But the blobs? What the hell were they? Were they part of some sort of alien invasion?

But if it was one, then surely the government would've warned people that it was about to happen? Besides, an alien vessel arriving at Earth would be one of the most momentous events in human history.

It would not go unnoticed. Unless it arrived cloaked.

But if it wasn't that, then what was it? Could these things have come from a different dimension?

Mark's mind was filled with questions. But wherever it was, it was serious, the fighter jets and city sirens proved as much.

He thought for a brief moment about his meeting with the President. He was definitely not going to make it in time now. He pushed all other thoughts out of his mind.

The twins' safety had to be first and foremost in his thoughts. He tried calling Stacy and Jo again, but the phone had no signal this time.

They entered the small maple forest and continued down the path, leaves crunching under their feet. The forest was a small, peaceful snapshot of nature – pretty, leaves strewn everywhere, the breeze blowing through the trees, the gentle sound of a stream from somewhere. It was hard to believe that they were right near town, filled with people, vehicles, concrete, trash and pollution. And possibly, aliens.

A surge of fear gripped him.

For all the appearance of peacefulness, something was wrong.

He only realized what it was that was bothering him, when they got almost halfway through the forest.

Even though it was almost the end of fall, and the trees had started shedding, they still had plenty of leaves – more than enough to be obscuring the view of the sky.

Mark had no idea what was above them. For all he knew, a blob was busy drifting down to land right on top of them. As soon as he realized this, he quickly told the kids he was going to pick them up again, grabbed them and started running.

He could see the exit of the forest ahead; it would take him about two minutes to reach it. For Mark, the entire forest had taken on a foreboding feeling, making him run even faster. He had his eyes on the exit and needed to get there as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, he should've kept his eyes on the path instead as next moment, his foot tripped on a stray root that stuck out from the side of the path, causing him to fall forwards and sending the twins flying. He hit the hard leaf-covered path face-first with a painful thwack.

For a brief second, his imagination played horrific pictures of one or both the kids, laying ahead – dead, head bashed open against a rock or impaled through an eye by a branch – a tiny body laying still in a pool of blood that was slowly spreading outwards on a carpet of leaves.

_Please God no..._ He thought. The children were quiet. He felt that scared sickening feeling in his heart.

And as he hurriedly got up, he heard Liz whimpering from somewhere and then she started crying. A few seconds later Harry was wailing in pain.

Mark saw the kids a short distance ahead and painfully hobbled over; his right leg felt like it had been sprained.

He reached Liz first and quickly checked her over; she'd landed on her butt on an open patch of ground nearby. She was a bit rattled, and a bit sore, but she was ok.

Mark hobbled as quickly as he could over to Harry, who was still crying loudly.

Harry had cut his leg on a sharp rock, and blood was oozing from a thin but relatively long gash.

"It's going to be ok my boy" said Mark as he took off his pullover, his shirt and tie and ripped off a piece of cloth from his shirt, then he applied pressure to the wound.

Harry stopped crying, but was still whimpering. Mark wiped off some of the blood and inspected the cut. It wasn't too deep or serious; the bleeding made it look worse than it actually was; the boy was going to live. Mark, moving as quickly as he could, tore off another piece of cloth, then covered the wound and tied it tight with the tie. It seemed to stem the bleeding.

Mark soothed Harry and he stopped whimpering. Still wary of the threat of the blobs, he put on his ripped shirt and pullover quickly.

Then with some effort, he picked up the kids, and limped out of the forest.

The path led them through a small patch of greenery, and eventually it stopped at a street on the outer edge of Jasperville.

Tired, bruised and stiff, and still limping, Mark battled to carry both kids, and let Liz walk on her own.

Harry was still sore and traumatized from his cut and needed to be carried, but at least the bleeding had stopped.

The outskirt of town was eerily quiet as they made their way to the town center and there were no people to be seen.

Luckily, it was only a few blocks from there to Aunt Jo's place.

The sound of police sirens drifted towards them from somewhere deeper within town.

#### Chapter 6: The Jungle Crickets

Grex loaded the last creature trap into the transport.

It contained a vervix, and a half-eaten purple paymilla fruit nearby. Vervix were suckers for those. The creature was sitting still in the corner.

The initial freak-out of being captured had passed and it had finally seemed to have accepted its fate, whatever that may be, for the time being.

Grex looked closer. Good, it was a female. They needed females. This brought the total of vervix captured to sixteen – eight males and eight females.

As the traps were set in what was thought to be the territories of different family groups, it was hoped that there'd be enough genetic diversity for a successful breeding program.

Blood-work was already done on all captured specimens to ensure that they were not contaminated with triterium poisoning. This one was clear, and would be allowed to mate.

The animals caught by the other team, near the mining operation, however, weren't nearly so fortunate.

Reports of heavily mutated creatures were already emerging: vervix were being captured with two mouths and six-and-a-half eyes, along with other gross deformities. Those with triterium poisoning, either in the early or advanced stages were, out of compassion, being euthanized as frustratingly, nothing else could be done for them.

On the same day they were busy packing up the creature traps, Brem and Jera discovered what appeared to be the cause of the higher than average rate of mutation at their site.

A river nearby had huge levels of triterium waste and when they ventured up-stream, they discovered the cause: toxic waste was being pumped overtly at high speeds directly into the river in insanely large quantities from a huge pipe that led directly to the mining operation.

In other territories, the mining companies sometimes went through great pains to pump the waste covertly into the environment.

Here, they didn't even bother trying to hide it. Brem and Jera recorded the incident and took more samples for evidence. No one tried to stop them.

On the drive back to camp, Grex decided to catch up on some of the recordings taken in the field by the three hundred or so autonomous, camouflaged and mobile, eight-legged field cameras scattered around the designated area of operation.

Some were placed in stationary positions, monitoring specific areas of interest. Others were mobile and were controlled by Boxy, following specific targets, but always keeping a safe distance so as to not be detected.

They had collected thousands of hours of footage. Boxy excelled in tasks like these; she could easily filter and gather all footage related to a particular specimen in seconds, a task that took other computers or Praxians at least five hundred times as long, turning a once monotonous and tedious task into a breeze, or a fun experience even.

Along with all the fascinating species Grex was observing or following, he also had a special side-interest in a species of jungle insect called a jerbex cricket. As the team managed to capture a few excellent specimens today, Grex decided that it was fitting to start his daily footage viewing with this species.

What he found particularly interesting and what stood out with this otherwise mundane and standard cricket-like species was the fact that their cells contained metal elements infused with the biological.

Also, the cricket's armored exoskeleton was almost entirely made out of a strong metallic compound.

This was unheard of at the time. And the fact that Nature had somehow managed to pull this off by herself had astonished and excited Grex and his team.

This humble cricket could bring new advancements in biotechnology, be used to help build better and more advanced versions of Boxy, and even become a sustainable and near-infinite source for metal 'farming'.

It appeared that the crickets had no problem making lots and lots of themselves, so farms filled with countless trillions of these creatures were easy to imagine.

They seemed to be sustained by simple plant matter, so transplanting them and replicating their environment shouldn't be too difficult – in theory. The team was trying to learn as much as they could about the cricket, its diet and environment to ensure success.

Right now, it was the mating season and Grex was hoping to gain some additional insights into their mating behavior before they left Kryxo.

Seeing a proverbial goldmine, the team, after witnessing the devastating effect of triterium mining on Kryxo first-hand, had become disillusioned with the Society and its realistic chances in winning the environmental fight against the mining companies.

They unanimously decided that they were going to resign their commission and go into business together farming the crickets as soon as they returned home.

Just as Grex began watching, Boxy reported back in. The communication signal to Brem's team had been lost again – nothing unusual, given their close proximity to the mining operation. The comms link was particularly vulnerable to interference from regular underground blasting.

It should be restored within the next ten minutes or so. Boxy was merely following protocol in letting Grex know. As expected, she reported back shortly afterwards that the link had been re-established.

Grex began watching the recording. His view screen was filled with the lush green jungle of Kryxo. Text overlaid on the top right corner of the screen indicated the camera ID, its location, date, time and the target species being monitored. The camera was perched on the main trunk of a tree and was looking down on some flowers nearby on the jungle floor. There, sure enough, feeding on a leaf was a little black insect.

A single jerbex cricket. From the white markings on its back, Grex could tell that it was a male.

It carried on feeding for a while, then hopped and disappeared into the underbrush. The footage jumped to another camera, monitoring another specimen. This one, also a male, was slowly approaching a group of females and was making a series of chirps in what appeared to be the 'I'm a friend' password call.

Even though the crickets had metal armor, they still had some fleshy bits that, provided you were fast enough, could be reached before the cricket could close it up with its armor.

Although they were harder prey, they were still vulnerable to predation, particularly from an insect called a xeno mimic, which not only preyed on the crickets, but on other insects as well, and which had the ability to morph its appearance perfectly to match that of its prey.

It could even copy the smell of its target and could make adjustments such as changing sex and color. It would then sneak up on its unsuspecting prey and pounce, catching its hapless victim completely by surprise and off-guard.

According to the Axari database, it was for this reason that the crickets evolved the password tactic in defense.

Because the mimic had not yet developed the means to bypass or simulate this tactic, the advantage currently was in the crickets' favor. This did not mean that the mimic didn't get lucky cricket kills though; just a lot less than it used to – for now.

A couple of chirping exchanges were made between the females and the approaching male. They seemed to accept him, and allowed him to get closer.

Some more chirping ensued, which Grex could swear seemed like foreplay. Finally, the male started mating with each female one after the other. _Lucky bugger_ , Grex thought. Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity, the male, now finished with his business, promptly hopped away into the bushes, presumably in search of more females. The females hopped over to the nearest leaf and started munching.

The visuals now switched to what seemed like a series of cricket shorts: cricket hopping down a path, then disappearing into nearby grass. Switch. Cricket sitting on leaf. Switch. Cricket on ground, then promptly jumping into the bushes after being startled by a passing nimar chasing a chuchew. Switch. Cricket eating leaf. Switch. Cricket mating. Switch. Cricket on log. Switch. Cricket near gorgeous flower, chirping. Switch.

_Fascinating,_ thought Grex. He yawned, stretched and looked away from the screen and at his surroundings to see how far they still were from camp – another half an hour or so.

The cricket shorts continued. Grex was getting sleepy and was just about to switch to a more stimulating subject when something that happened on the screen caught his eye. It looked like a replay of the scene from the mating earlier.

Male approaching about five females. Password routine. Male accepted. Male starting to mate with each female. Two females left. Then... some interference appeared on the screen, consistent with that from the mine blasts.

The male and the three recently mated females flickered for a second or two. The two other females didn't flicker. Grex instantly snapped out of his sleepiness.

_What?_ thought Grex. He stopped the playback and checked and rechecked and checked again that what he was seeing had actually happened. He paused the bit where the crickets flickered.

They seemed to have vanished into thin air momentarily. Impossible. Grex proceeded watching the rest of the clip. After the flicker, everything continued as normal.

The male cricket proceeded to mate with the remaining females, finished his business and hopped back into the jungle. The females, exactly as before, went over to the nearest leaf and started munching.

"Boxy?" Grex asked.

"Yes, Grex?" Boxy replied, always at the ready.

"Please check the data and visual integrity of the scene I'm currently watching. Then check the cause of the interference recorded. Also, check if the camera that recorded this is functioning correctly."

A brief moment passed then Boxy replied "No issues were detected with the data and visual integrity. The camera is operating correctly, no problems detected. The cause of the interference, based on correlating data from both the cameras' on-board sensors and the sensors at camp appears to have been caused by an explosion approximately three miles underground, likely from the mining operation."

"Can you verify the life signatures of the creatures featured in that footage and identify which species they belong to? And were there any mimics present in that clip?"

"Life signatures verified based on bio data. Species confirmed. All creatures in the footage in question are jerbex crickets. Unique identifiers for mimics are not present" Boxy replied.

"Then, can you please explain why some of the crickets flickered during the interference?" asked Grex while looking at a paused frame on the screen where four crickets were supposed to be.

Boxy was quiet for a couple of seconds.

"Sorry Grex, I have insufficient data to deduce an explanation."

Grex was puzzled. Then he had an idea. What if there was some strange electrical anomaly present? Maybe he could try to pin it down by starting with the crickets... He knew that the standard bio data readings did not include the bio electrical measurements that were recorded as well.

"Boxy, do you have enough data to identify the electrical signatures of the crickets?"

"Yes, Grex. Would you like me to start the clip from the beginning and overlay the data?"

Grex said yes, and watched as the clip started playing from the beginning. This time the female crickets were highlighted in a blue glow, illustrating the unique electrical signature of their species.

The male was not highlighted.

"Boxy, please identify and display the electrical signal for the male."

The male glowed red. Grex nearly fell off his chair. He was sure he had seen this signature before and knew the answer before Boxy gave her reply.

"The electrical signal has been identified as jungle wisp," Boxy replied.

Grex watched in stunned astonishment as the red cricket touched the blue crickets.

And one by one all the blue signatures turned red.

#### Chapter 7: The Jungle Wisps

Grex felt a bit stupid. Why he hadn't done a search for the wisps before based on electrical signals eluded him.

Sure, it may have initially been Jera's idea to check electrical signatures when they first encountered the wisps, but as Grex was expedition leader, it was his responsibility to set search criteria and not overlook important observations made by his team.

And even though he planned to leave the Society when they returned home, he still took his work and responsibility seriously.

He knew he was inexperienced and should probably just chalk this one up to lack of experience; however, as a generally responsible and honest person, who believed in constant self-improvement, he knew the seriousness of his mistake and took this one quite hard.

In an effort to not make such a stupid slip-up again, he vowed that he would work harder internally on his situational awareness and spend more time on his internal mental review process in future.

His blunder could've resulted in valuable scientific data about the wisps – a potentially new species – not being recorded or worse, not being noticed at all.

Grex's heart was pumping now. They were due to leave Kryxo within the next few hours. All was not lost yet.

He still had some time left to gather as much data as he could, which should assist the follow-up expedition, if there ever was one, to Kryxo.

He took a couple of minutes to gather his thoughts, and then he gave Boxy a series of instructions to execute.

First, she had to isolate all footage that contained the wisp signatures, then she had to compile a list of species that were being copied or imitated – assuming the crickets were not the only ones.

Based on the first observation of the wisps, Grex instructed Boxy to isolate and create a map of the suspected wireless network between the wisps – if it actually existed – using the small geo satellite they deployed in orbit when they first arrived, and superimpose this data on satellite imagery of Kryxo.

While he waited for Boxy, Grex looked at the passing scenery, and eventually he let his mind drift a bit.

He thought about what was still left to be done at camp and thought back on the events of the last three weeks, all that was observed and done. He thought about the mining operation, the triterium poisoning occurring on a large scale, the creatures that were already mutating.

He thought about the sheer hopelessness of the situation and the discussion with his team about the crickets and going into business together.

He recalled how angry he had felt about the loss of the Axari civilization and the likely true reason behind the war and his plans to fight for the Axari cause when he returned.

Then he thought about the recall order that cut their trip short by a week, and the debriefing that he was going to have with management back on Praxima.

His mind gravitated back to the wisps and the peculiar scene he'd witnessed with the crickets.

Suddenly, a thought hit him like a sharp, icy splash of cold water, making him instantly snap out of his day-dreaming.

Were the wisps capable of copying larger creatures? And if so, could they copy Praxians?

Boxy reported back with her findings and Grex immersed himself in the data.

The wisps had copied more than one hundred and fifty small insect species. The copies appeared to be perfect, exact replicas, both in appearance and behavior. Even the bio data was exactly the same.

The only way to tell the replicas apart from the originals was by reading the unique electrical signal, which was distinctly wisp. Another way was possibly by simulating the interference from the mine blast, which appeared to momentarily interrupt the physical illusion of the copy.

Other than that, you could probably hold or cut open a replica and not be able to tell that it was not the real thing.

Grex found the apparent ability of the wisps to be able to copy their prey exactly, molecule by molecule, unnerving. In the case of the crickets – and he had Boxy verify this – even the metal components appeared to have been copied.

At the moment it seemed that the wisps' prey was indeed limited to small insects.

Grex suspected that it could be that the wisps' copying mechanism was not compatible with larger creatures – yet.

Similar to how the bite of some ultra-venomous arachnid species back on Praxima were almost instantly fatal to most insects, but were completely harmless to Praxians. This was due to the fact that the fangs were just not adapted to pierce Praxian skin.

However, with the wisps, Grex suspected that it wasn't for a lack of trying. While analyzing the data, he viewed many snippets of what appeared to be failed copying attempts, with wisp insects pestering and landing on a variety of larger creatures, then being swiped away as one would do with a pesky fly.

As Grex continued to analyze the data, a better picture of the nature of the wisps slowly started emerging in his mind. It appeared that the wisps were some sort of electrical creatures, with distinct electrical qualities.

They were indeed connected to one another on some sort of network and seemed to be drawn to the electrical energy of other creatures.

Strangely, they appeared to be making more of themselves by feeding on or assimilating another creature's energy and turning it into a wisp somehow. Once this creature had been assimilated, it was connected to the wisp network. The creature would then continue acting like normal; however, most energy that it would consume afterward when eating, appeared to be distributed along the wisp network, or WispNet as Grex now called it. It would also try to turn any insect it came in contact with into a wisp, growing the network larger and larger.

Not all assimilation attempts would be successful though, with only one in three attempts resulting in success. This probably explained why Kryxo wasn't teeming with swarms of wisp insects.

Boxy had been able to identify and visualize the wisp network on satellite imagery.

Grex wasn't entirely sure that he wanted to see it but his curiosity made him pull up the images anyway.

The network was clearly visible. Each assimilated insect was represented as a glowing node, interconnected with shiny white lines to other nodes. It was a lot smaller than Grex had expected it to be, covering less than a quarter of Kryxo.

It could be that the wisps were still a comparatively young species and that their ability to copy insects was a relatively new development – explaining the low rate of assimilation success.

In all likelihood they worked their way up to insects over millions of years and it would possibly take another couple of million years of evolution before the wisps where a threat to larger species. Grex felt relief that he would probably not be around when that happened.

He stared at the images of the network for a while. It was an intricate and ever-changing web of interconnecting lines and nodes. It looked almost exactly like...

Grex felt a chill wash over him and goose bumps on his arms as realization dawned of what he was actually looking at...

The network bared a striking resemblance to a neurological map of a primitive brain. The wisps weren't individual creatures after all, but seemed to form part of a much larger creature. Some sort of brain...

Grex nearly laughed. How could it be? Surely he was reading way too much into what he was seeing? A wireless brain? Come on.

And even if it was one, it was obviously still very primitive, and would surely take billions of years of evolution before it could even say 'Hi'.

Grex saved his work. Either way, he had gathered enough interesting data on the wisps to keep the scientists back home happy. They could decide whether it was a brain or not. He had done his job.

He looked up as they approached camp. It was time now to focus on the reality of getting the hell away from this place. He started thinking of the more pressing tasks at hand.

But somewhere in the back of his mind he continued wondering for a little while. What would happen to this creature if it was infected with triterium poisoning?

He felt a last bout of goose bumps pimpling his skin, then shook off the thought.

The field transport with Grex and Fresi pulled into camp. Brem and Jera were already back and must've arrived a minute or two before them. Everyone looked tired, thought Grex.

He greeted everybody as he got out of the transport and instructed them to hurry up with moving everything into the shuttle. He began walking over to the living quarters to get the last of his stuff.

Fresi had gone over to Jera and was having a chat with him.

Suddenly, Grex had a distinct gnawing feeling that something was horribly wrong. _Nonsense, everything is perfectly normal_ , he thought _._ His wisp research had just made him momentarily and ridiculously a little paranoid. He grabbed the last of his stuff and walked over to the shuttle. Jera and Fresi were still chatting away while they were offloading the cargo from the transports.

Brem had started walking over to the room that housed Boxy and the power plant. Then, in what seemed like an entirely normal act, Jera put down the box he was holding, extended his arm and placed his hand on Fresi's chest.

"What the...? What are you doing Je...?" Fresi froze in mid-sentence. Now he just stood there, motionless. A faint glow seemed to be radiating from Jera's hand.

The material of Fresi's suit around Jera's hand also appeared to be glowing. Now Grex watched as Brem entered the transparent door to Boxy's room. He walked right over to Boxy, and then casually put his hand on the enclosure that held her.

"Oh my God!" exclaimed Grex, his heart racing. As he turned around to make a run for the shuttle, he saw Jera take his hand off Fresi's chest. Then he started walking towards Grex.

"Hey, hold up, G. We still need to chat about what we found at the site," said Jera, smiling, his voice entirely normal.

Grex made a desperate dash for the shuttle door.

He rushed inside, locked the door and immediately instructed the onboard computer to start lift off and to cut all links with Boxy right away. He went over to the shuttle control panels and activated the outside camera.

Jera was there, looking up at the shuttle, still smiling. Then his expression changed to worry.

"Hey Grex, what are you doing?" he asked over the comms system. Grex could see Brem running out of Boxy's room towards the shuttle. The shuttle began lift off.

"Hey! Hey! Stop! Stop!" screamed Brem. "You can't leave us here! Wait!" the desperation was clear and genuine in his voice.

Now, another voice came over the comms. It was Fresi.

"Boss? What are you doing? Is this some kind of joke?" he asked. "You can't leave us here! Hey! Stop! Please! Stop!"

Grex could now see Fresi on the screen. He looked fine.

For a brief moment, before Grex turned it off, there was more emotional pleading, then begging, then swearing on the comms.

It sounded exactly like his teammates realizing to their total surprise that they were being abandoned.

"Oh my God! What have I done?" asked Grex to himself as the shuttle rose towards space.

#### Chapter 8: Awakening

Helley had been in and out of consciousness for some time now.

One moment, she's was lost in the crazy dream world, then the next, she was back in reality. She was confused and disorientated; reality or dream – it was all the same to her.

People were there, around the bed, but she couldn't quite get a clear look of them.

She knew what they were... she just couldn't put a name to it. Her vision was blurry. Her head began to bang, then an excruciating bolt of pain struck through her brain. She thought she saw some people move... then she blacked out.

When she came to, the pain was gone and her vision was clearer – though there was still some blurriness on the peripheral areas of her vision. Her brain felt like a fire had run rampage through it. It felt raw and burnt. She was lying in bed, not being able to see much around her, she tried to move to get a better look. Suddenly, hands were on her, keeping her down gently. "Oh good, you're awake... try not to move darling," said this someone calmly as he came into view, "Can you understand me?" Helley managed a nod.

"My name is doctor Beriyana," he said as he came closer, "you're safe now, can you remember your name?"

Name? No... she couldn't... Helley tried to answer but only mumbled garbage came out. There was a quick pause, and then she got nervous and began struggling.

"Don't worry, it's normal," doctor Beriyana said calmly, "this should calm you down."

Helley felt a wave of calm wash over her... yes... that was better. She lay back.

"Right," said the doctor "we're just going to have a look at you, please try to relax and try not to move."

More doctors appeared – though Helley recognized the word for what they were, she just couldn't place it – there was just a blank space where the recall was supposed to be.

The doctors waved some strange devices over her, and then a few moments later, a line of light was projected from a small device that hung above the bed and, beginning at the end of the bed, scanned her from her toes to her head. Helley had no idea what was going on... she just lay still, trying not to move. She was scared... What was going on?

"Ok, you can relax, it's all over" doctor Beriyana said. The other doctors left the room. The doctor had a calm, trustworthy demeanor; Helley felt she could trust him. She began to relax.

"I need to discuss something with my colleagues quick, I'll be right back" and as if he could read her mind, he added "I _will_ be back, I promise. You're safe here. Please try not to move," and with that he was gone.

Helley had no idea what doctor Beriyana was discussing with his colleagues, but she tried to follow his advice and relax. She looked at the ceiling and the device. Everything looked so familiar somehow. It was quiet for a little while, and then she heard footsteps coming into the room. She thought it was doctor Beriyana.

Next a handsome man appeared next to the bed. He was dressed in a familiar uniform and looked surprised but happy to see her.

"I just heard you're awake... I can't believe it – it's a miracle..." His hand touched hers softly.

More footsteps as someone else came into the room.

"Hey! You can't be in here right now – get out," Doctor Beriyana said sternly as he gently shoved the mysterious stranger out the room, "this is a very delicate time for her – she's incredibly fragile, you should know."

"I just wanted to see it with my own eyes" the stranger said.

"I know; you and everybody else on this ship", said the doctor as he closed the door.

Now the doctor was back, and an assistant was near, working on some medical console. The doctor looked serious.

"Let's get straight to it then, shall we?" he paused for a couple of seconds, "Your name is Helley Ulxo and you've sustained a very serious head injury" Helley tried to speak, but he stopped her.

"Look Helley, we've had a look at your preliminary test results, and quite frankly it's amazing that you're awake at all. My colleagues and I are in agreement that the best course of action would be to take it very carefully and slowly; let the natural healing run its course. It is absolutely imperative that you rest and sleep.

For now, you should try not to think, and try not to talk. I know it's counterintuitive, but sleep is the best thing for you right now," he tried to give her a reassuring smile then continued, "Your brain heals itself best when you're asleep. It seems that the coma has been broken, so you shouldn't go back into it.

We'll give you something light to help you sleep and I'll be right here, monitoring your progress. We'll wake you up every now and then to check if you're still ok and we'll do some tests," he paused, "Is that ok?"

Helley gave a nod. "Good, then let's get started."

Helley noticed the doctor's assistant tap a hand-held pad that looked like a thin pane of glass, and then she was gone. 

#### Chapter 9: The Creature

It had dwelled in the dense and vast jungle wildernesses of Kryxo for millennia.

Fueled by persistent hunger, it would seek out new energy sources to consume. It was driven by mindless, automatic instinct, which led it through the jungles on an erratic and endless quest.

Yes, it had consciousness, but it was inactive, sleeping and dreaming, like the mind of a baby in the womb. Growing and forming, yet to be born, a million years from now – but not yet.

It would eat the insects it encountered, converting their energy into its own. During this process, they would become part of it and it would become part of them. It would then buzz and crawl, scamper, flit or hop away as an insect would. It lived through the experiences of its consumed prey, slowly learning subconsciously, slowly evolving, and slowly becoming more.

And sometimes, at night, it would shake off its corporeal bodies and wisp through the jungle; perhaps to expand its range, or perhaps for no reason at all but a primitive urge to display its true electrical self.

It was content with drifting along this existence forever, blissfully unaware. It was eternal but didn't have the mind to care.

One day, however, it felt pain for the first time.

It had wandered into an area affected by triterium poisoning, and had unawares eaten several infected insects.

It began as a sickening feeling, then, slowly, building over a few weeks, rising in intensity until it became a disorienting, intense spike of pain.

The creature began burning energy at many times its normal rate, which translated into a vastly magnified sense of hunger. The pain reverberated across its entire network, throwing the automatic order that had existed previously into disarray. In this new disorder that ensued, it started displaying new, chaotic and erratic behavior.

For the first time, some nodes were cannibalized by the larger network and their energy was redistributed into the network, causing more pain. Other nodes obsessively tried to assimilate some plants they were on.

One or two even got it right, with the new and alien component, still mostly incompatible, being forcefully pushed into the network, resulting in more searing pain and disorientation. Other nodes moved mindlessly and erratically, bumping into trees and other obstacles or just endlessly buzzing around in circles.

Yet others just froze, and remained motionless. Many nodes started to disconnect from and reconnect to the network repeatedly, causing new lines of connection to form to themselves every time a link was re-established.

Others were uncontrollably flickering between wisp and insect form. All of this was severely painful and a life-threatening drain on valuable energy.

It was dying and dying quickly. If there ever was a chance of survival, it hinged on bringing order back to the chaos. It needed a captain at the helm; a conductor to the orchestra.

Its sleeping awareness was stirring, slowly trying to wake from its deep slumber, the chaos having prodded and prompted it to rise. But this was happening too slowly, and it would be dead soon, the embers of consciousness destined to be extinguished long before the flames of sentience could rise and burn in full, wondrous glory.

It was burning out quickly now. One by one, entire branches of its network, filled with nodes, flickered out of existence. In a desperate attempt for more energy, instinct drove the remaining functioning nodes to seek out new energy sources. Some nodes, still in the guise of insects, attracted to both the energy of the fence and the power plants inside, crashed like a mindless wave to their doom on the expedition's and mining colony's perimeter force-field fences, overriding the strong insect urge not to touch.

It would be game over very soon. The cliff of oblivion loomed large.

Then, a miracle happened...

It came suddenly, a piercing feeling of relief. It was like a shockwave of healing white light that washed over what little was left of the creature like an unstoppable, transformative tsunami, restoring calm order in its wake.

There was one last excruciating burst of pain, and then the pain and the healing tsunami were gone.

There was just calm silence now.

And only the hunger remained.

The creature, exhausted after its ordeal, slept for a brief moment. Its network, order now restored, automatically returned all connected nodes back to normal behavior and worked on integrating new components. The healing wave had transformed it into something new, something strong. It was pulsing with new life and vigor.

Now, finally, after many millennia, the creature awoke. Completely aware. And like a new-born gazelle, it was fully developed and ready to run. It opened up its millions of eyes, and saw the world for the first time.

It could hear the sounds of Kryxo and could feel it resting underneath its countless feet. It could sense and feel it with its multitude of sensors.

And it felt and heard the impulses of its insect nodes and knew what they were doing, where they were. Like a body part, there was no separation between them and it. It was in countless places and doing countless things at once.

It was new. It would take some time to master and grow its control over itself and learn what it could do, what it was capable of. It was still for a while, resting and taking silent stock of itself.

Then it heard the thoughts and voices of two Praxians...

They were in a transport heading back to camp.

The assimilation process ensured that the last few moments of short-term memory of the prey was wiped. These two had no recollection of what had happened to them.

The creature thought for a moment and recalled a fuzzy memory of before. Yes, it knew what had happened.

During the chaos, desperate for survival, and energy, like a drowning person frantically trying to grab something to hold onto, several thousand of the instinct-driven wisps had detected the battery packs of Brem and Jera's enviro suits and had descended on them in full force, their frantic electrical energy causing severe interference.

The mindless swarm couldn't distinguish between the Praxians and the battery packs, and had tried to just _eat the whole thing._

The Praxians had pointlessly tried to brush the wisps off and had made a futile run for the transport.

The instinct-driven creature was an animal with its back against the wall. It was out of options. It was either death and extinction on the one hand, or evolution and survival on the other.

And somehow, against all odds, the mechanism that kept it limited to assimilating insects only and nothing else unlocked. There was a piercing sensation of relief, like it had been struggling against an immovable obstacle that suddenly gave way.

Then everything filled with light.

The creature wasn't entirely sure what had happened next. Its memories before and during the event were patchy and foggy at best. However, some instinct told it that these two were the key to its newly found awareness.

It could feel their influence on its network, and knew that they had enhanced it and breathed new life into it somehow. Similar to the aftertaste of a good meal, the amazing taste of these two Praxians lingered on its senses. It could feel an almost overwhelming sense of hunger. It was eager for more.

The minds of the two Praxians were now at the forefront of its awareness. It could sense a wealth of information within – ready and just waiting to be accessed. All it had to do was just to go forward and delve in. The minds were like ripe fruit ready to be plucked and practically begging to let eager teeth sink into their juicy sweet flesh.

Not being able to resist the temptation, it dove in.

It was immediately hit by a massive, paralyzing deluge of information.

It probably should've waited. Its young mind, not yet fully formed, struggled for a brief moment to keep up with the flood. Then it lost its footing, and got swept along with the overwhelming torrent. It was lost and adrift in an alien whirl of strange images, concepts, thoughts, memories, general knowledge and countless terabytes of subconscious and conscious data. The sheer avalanche of information was just too much.

It wasn't long before it started panicking. Then it felt what could be described as nausea, followed by that blinding pain from before, rising in intensity with every passing second. The torrent picked up speed to impossible levels. Everything turned into a blur and all distinct definition was lost. The pain felt like it was exploding.

The creature was sure it was going to die.

Then it blacked out. 

#### Chapter 10: The Monster

When it awoke it discovered that its nodes had continued to function on autopilot, independently from itself.

After all, they didn't require any active input from itself, although it knew that it could take over at any given moment.

It was a bit surprised. It thought it had died...

No, it was still alive...

It shifted is attention back to the Praxians.

Their minds were drifting at the front of its consciousness again. The thoughts seemed to be floating clearly above the minds.

Then the creature had a life-changing realization. It could understand these minds now.

The integration was complete. It understood their language, their concepts, could recall what they knew.

It had complete and unfettered access. It was a bit nervous, but decided to start recollecting everything it now knew. The thoughts came slowly.

This one was called Jera and the other, Brem. They were both Praxians, male; it recalled their ages, their occupations. They both worked for an organization called The Imperial Natural Society or just the Society for short. This place was called Kryxo, it was a jungle moon – it thought for a moment. Yes, it knew what a moon was. Kryxo orbited a planet called Axaria. They were here to do some sort of ecological study.

They had highly powerful and complex brains – which belonged to it now.

They could reason, had things called science and math and emotions and entertainment. They came here on things called spaceships – interesting things that could cover huge distances in the blink of an eye.

They had large power plants, generating huge amounts of electricity, similar to the battery packs it was still feeding on right now. These things could feed it almost indefinitely.

It was reminded of the hunger.

Jera was having sexual thoughts about his wife now. She was _yummy_.

The hunger was growing.

It thought of the _yummy_ and amazing taste of these two Praxians that it had eaten.

It was getting hungrier.

Brem was thinking of his family. A day in the park with his little daughter and boy. Then he was thinking of things called _bills_ and huge farms of jungle crickets. The creature knew what those were. Then Brem was picturing himself in an endless sea of something called _money_.

The hunger was growing and growing.

These creatures all came from a planet called Praxima in the Dresima sector. Praxima and five other colonies were home to some thirty billion people, all part of an organization called the Praxima Imperium.

_Thirty_ _billion_ _people_?

The hunger was instantly at intense, almost uncontrollable levels.

_A near infinite supply of these creatures? Enough to quench its hunger for good?_

The creature wanted to salivate.

Jera opened a snack bar and started munching. Through him, the creature could taste the delightfully unique mix of gabbu and elda berries. Afterwards, the creature gave Jera the impulse to have another and Brem began snacking on one as well.

It was getting anxious. It needed to get to this Praxima as quickly as possible. But not yet entirely confident with all the new, alien, information, it wondered how to do this.

Then Jera's mind, now completely part of the creature, came back with an answer. The creature could hear the response in thought clearly in its mind.

"Relax, silly, we're leaving just now", it said nonchalantly, "We're taking the shuttle and will be home today."

_Today?_ The creature was getting excited.

It was looking forward to eating billions and _billions_ of these yummy people. And gaining more and more knowledge while doing it.

Inside, it was smiling.

It was experiencing a thing called happiness for the very first time. And it felt absolutely amazing. It was like a child in a candy store, giddy at the prospect of an all-you-can-eat buffet.

It now realized that these two were part of a group of four, all due to depart for Praxima today. There should be another two of these people waiting at camp. _Two more!_ Everything was just getting better and better.

And to top it all off, there was another 'treat' waiting at camp. A bio mechanical mind, which, according to Brem and Jera, had far superior capabilities to even their wondrous minds. The creature called up the definition of _computer_ from their knowledge; very interesting.

It was looking forward to trying to incorporate this _computer_ and enhancing itself even more.

Now, this very same computer called in. Jera called it Boxy and told it that they were only five minutes away.

Jera and Brem were still totally oblivious to the fact that they weren't Jera and Brem anymore when they arrived back at camp moments later.

The creature, fighting its consuming hunger and the urge to rush, and having learned a thing or two from assimilated mimics, decided to try to be patient and bide its time. It knew that it might be difficult, considering the overriding hunger it was beginning to experience.

The plan was to pounce on the other two when the time was right. Then it would get this Boxy shortly after. The other two, Grex and Fresi, hadn't arrived at camp yet. The creature had Brem ask Boxy how far away they still were.

Apparently they were only a few minutes away. Brem and Jera had the impulse to offload the transport so long. The creature let them.

It wasn't long after, that the second transport arrived.

Out hopped Fresi and Grex. Everybody exchanged greetings. Fresi walked over and started talking to Jera, small talk about what they'd found in the creature traps, how they were looking forward to returning back home... and other chit-chat. Through Jera, the creature could smell Fresi. It wondered what interesting knowledge this one had contained in its mind.

The urge to eat was beginning to get very difficult to control. It took every last bit of willpower not to assimilate Fresi right there and then. However, a subconscious part of it had begun moving Brem to Boxy's room.

The creature noticed it, and moved Brem away again. Grex went into the crew quarters to collect the last of his stuff. The creature was now having a hard time controlling itself.

And shortly after Grex returned, it slipped up. It couldn't help itself. It was just too hungry.

Jera put down the box he was carrying and, palm open, touched Fresi on the chest. The creature started the assimilation process. At the same time, Brem entered Boxy's room and did the same thing to her.

It seemed that Grex may have noticed something. The expression on his face changed; he cried out and made a run for the shuttle. The assimilation process already in motion on Fresi, the creature redirected Jera to try and stop Grex as he would try to do naturally. Grex ignored Jera, entered the shuttle and blasted off.

This caused an intense and emotional reaction on the part of Jera and Brem. They just couldn't believe that their trusted friend and colleague would do such a horrible, unpredictable, unprovoked, insane and careless thing. They were pleading and eventually screaming and swearing at him over the comms. When the assimilation process was completed, Fresi joined in as well.

The creature let them go on their tangent. Right now it didn't care. Like a parched man that was lost in the desert, finding water after a long thirst, it was experiencing the immense satisfaction and relief of feeding.

It soaked up the new energy enthusiastically and could feel it ripple across its network, making it stronger, better, driving the hunger away.

First it feasted on the energy of Fresi, then on the unique and delightfully strange energy of Boxy, and one by one, their minds appeared at the forefront of its awareness. All that was left to do now was to integrate their intelligences into its consciousness.

After its last experience doing this, it was understandably a bit reticent to just jump in, so to speak. It observed the minds more closely. Fresi's mind seemed familiar. It could clearly see the thoughts floating above the surface, but unlike the first time, it could read and understand them. They seemed already translated and less alien than before.

The surface thoughts indicated that he was greatly troubled by Grex's sudden running away. Before diving in to absorb Fresi's mind completely, the creature shifted its attention to the mind of the computer, Boxy.

Its mind looked decisively alien. Also, it seemed to lack something that the others had. The structure, although similar to that of the Praxian mind, was markedly different. It was no person, that was for sure. Where the Praxian minds had skittish focus, wasting time and energy by flitting from trivial thought to trivial thought, the mind of the computer appeared to be remarkably efficient and focused in its thinking.

In contrast to the Praxians who had a disproportionately large amount of resources allocated to things such as personality and psyche, the resources dedicated to the equivalent in the computer were remarkably light. Perhaps its Praxian creators, either consciously or subconsciously, realized the frivolousness of it all and for that reason had omitted these things from this machine.

Perhaps. However, the collective minds of its assimilated Praxians suggested that the true reason was a fear of unleashing something that would surpass and eventually dominate or destroy them. Irrationally, this was counterbalanced by a deep desire to build such a thing that had the potential to do this anyway.

The computer was built for logic, problem-solving and large number-crunching. To keep it in check, the machine lacked true independent autonomy. It could do things by itself, sure, as long as those actions originated from original instructions from Praxians or from existing programming.

The creature continued observing this computer carefully. It could sense the immense computational power within. It could see its surface thoughts, a mix between sentences the creature could understand and something else that looked foreign, called _code_.

Right now, in addition to many other observations, calculations and tasks, the computer was busy analyzing environmental data while cataloguing observations and gathering additional data on something called jungle wisps.

In addition to this, it was continuing to offload the rest of the cargo from the parked transports. It was also pondering the strange increase in temperature it had recently experienced, and Grex's sudden and inexplicable departure.

Instinct told the creature that this machine would bring immense advancement and improvement to itself, its internal thought processes and its network – in fact, it already was.

It also suspected that it could help better integrate and harness the assimilated minds of the Praxians it had absorbed and help with any new ones that would need integration. Still, all of this depended on whether it was possible to incorporate the mind of this computer in the first place.

The creature thought about it for a little while, and eventually decided that the benefits outweighed the risks. It borrowed a phrase from Jera and thought _Why the hell not?_

It was just about to dive in, when it noticed the hunger again. It was knocking at its awareness with full ferocious force; worse than before. It was as if it hadn't been sated at all by the feeding only moments ago.

It was tugging at the creature's thoughts, preventing it from concentrating, threatening to turn off all higher brain functions and turn the creature into a mindless hunter for what was, in the end, more important than anything else: food.

In an attempt to make the hunger shut up, the creature willed its nodes to consume energy or food. The Praxians obediently started snacking on the nearest rations and its brood of insects began searching for the nearest compatible food source. It wasn't long before energy began streaming in.

But the creature could already feel that it wasn't going to be enough. The hunger was beginning to feel insatiable. Why, it wasn't sure. Maybe this computer could help it figure out the cause.

The hunger seemed to be slightly occupied now, freeing up enough concentration for the creature to proceed with its attempt at absorbing the computer's intelligence.

As quickly as it could, it focused its attention back on Boxy's mind and as it did with the mind of the Praxians, it dove right in. Perhaps a little too rushed.

And like before, it was totally unprepared for what it was about to find.

It was instantly hit hard, like a hammer to the head, by a mind-altering plethora of data; an initially incompatible surge of digital information that painfully ripped across its consciousness, causing blinding, searing pain. It felt as if something was tearing up its mind like a piece of paper, while it was still alive.

The pain was insane. It couldn't even think that it was dying. It was forced into a catatonic state. Even the nodes were affected; all became frozen in unmoving inactivity.

The only way that this forced integration could be successful was for the creature's mind to adapt and become compatible to the mind and underlying architecture or structure of the computer, not the other way around. Its network and consciousness was being rewired and transformed while it was still fully awake.

There were no words to completely explain the severe pain and surreal experience that it was going through.

The creature's mind and consciousness became fractured and exploded into trillions of tiny pieces that were completely separated from the whole.

The pieces were being rearranged into new configurations, new patterns and positions and each of them held a piece of the creature's awareness.

Somewhere during this process, it had finally stopped experiencing anything as a cohesive whole, completely aware unit. And all the while its mind was being restructured and rebuilt into something new.

Much later, its transformation now complete, it awoke from its stupor, its consciousness and awareness recompiled, and emerged, like a butterfly from its cocoon – reborn.

It was something different now.

Its synapses had been completely rewired, its consciousness, thinking and network updated with cutting edge computing technology.

It was a unique hybrid of creature, computer and Praxian mind. The minds were now completely integrated into its consciousness. It could leverage their knowledge, abilities and capabilities to the fullest, with complete expertise. It was now able to access both the realm of cyberspace and biological minds with ease.

Even absorbing new minds should no longer be a daunting or even difficult task. Fresi's mind had also been incorporated during the process. It felt different, strong, capable and super-confident. And hungry.

Ah, the hunger. With its new abilities, it took less than a second to determine that the cause behind the hyper-hunger was twofold.

First, it was dying. It had triterium poisoning, and one of the side effects was a massive increase in metabolism, leading to burnout and, ultimately, death. It thought that it was ironic that the thing that at first nearly killed it, then led it to new life, was about to finally kill it for good, just after it had opened its eyes.

Second, in gaining awareness so early, it had in all likelihood skipped several steps in its natural evolution; crucial developments that would have, through natural progression, enabled it to evolve mechanisms to assimilate larger creatures and better manage their power consumption.

As it stood now, its current systems were woefully inadequate in dealing with the massive strain the new creatures were placing on its system. The stark reality was that the more it consumed, the more energy it needed to survive.

It would be almost impossible to keep ahead of the curve. At the current disproportionate rate it was consuming and using energy, it would be dead within a day to two. It was in trouble and had to do something about it, fast.

Using its new advanced analytical abilities, it thought about the problem for a while, and for the first time, it pondered its very nature and make up.

It was an electrical being which, in order to grow and survive, fed on the energy of other physical, corporeal creatures and, in turn, used these assimilated creatures to collect more energy for itself.

These manifestations, or copies, needed and used energy to function, so not all energy that they brought in went back to the network. In the case of Boxy and the Praxians, because of their size and complexity, they needed huge amounts of energy to keep going.

However, the creature realized that as they were already part of it, because their minds had already been totally absorbed, there was strictly no need to maintain their physical appearances right now – in theory. And it could always rematerialize them if needed. It already knew that it could switch from material version to wisp mode and back again on demand. To verify this, it momentarily switched Fresi between modes. It worked.

Wasting no more time, it switched all Praxians except Jera to wisp mode, then, bracing for pain, cannibalized their energy and redistributed this energy back into the network.

There was a little pain, but it was bearable and passed quickly. The hunger felt a little less. Just to make sure, it checked that it could still access memories and knowledge of Fresi and Brem.

Yes, there was Fresi's house on Brygar Avenue; this is a picture of his family. This is how you drive a standard field transport, and this is how to assemble a class B creature trap. No problem, their minds and memories were still completely intact; excellent.

Now the creature did the same with Boxy. It felt slight relief as more energy consumption was freed.

But the hunger was still there, under the surface, threatening. All this provided only temporary respite and bought it a few more hours at the most.

It needed to do something more, something significant. It needed to get to a large supply of food. It had to get to Praxima and get there fast.

But now, it could feel its computer mind pointing out something; something obvious.

It was no longer limited to the restrictions of the past. In addition to a nearby mining colony filled with delicious Praxians, computers and power plants it could eat, there was something that was just begging for the taking.

The fauna and flora – all living matter – of Kryxo, a massive reservoir of energy that should buy it months, if not years.

It would sweep across this moon and it would eat it all.

It directed Jera to assimilate the nearest plant outside of camp. Then, using its hundreds of thousands of nodes, it started eating everything.

And like an unstoppable wave, it began rolling across Kryxo. 

#### Chapter 11: Recovery

Helley's recovery had been progressing very slowly.

The days of her initial sleep therapy didn't seem to help. Her test results since she first woke had not been good and her doctors were doubtful that she'd ever recover fully, if it all. Her speech-center and memory recall abilities were in bad shape.

She couldn't remember who she was and battled to recall the names of even the simplest of objects and all of this was coupled with a severe speech impediment. The core of her being seemed to be intact, however.

And there were hints of a person trapped inside a broken body, as if she instinctively knew that something was wrong, that she was supposed to be able to know the names of these things, these people, and that she was supposed to know and remember who she was before.

No matter how hard she tried, she could not remember and the answers seemed frustratingly out-of-reach. This created frustration for her, which would eventually manifest in outbursts of anger.

A therapy session would start calmly, with the therapist asking her questions but the session would end rather violently shortly after, with a frustrated Helley throwing a temper tantrum, making a loud racket, shouting incoherently and smashing whatever she could get her hands on or throwing objects at her therapist.

She also suffered from frequent debilitating headaches as well as nightmares and would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night, in a cold sweat and screaming.

Helley had become notoriously volatile, and not many people could handle her or calm her down except for doctor Beriyana, one or two of the therapists, and Elzo – the dashing stranger from earlier.

Because her brain was still very fragile and because the strain would probably be too much for her mind to handle, her doctors had decided against a brain-to-computer interface as a communication aid, and opted instead for traditional speech therapy coupled with comprehensive and intense recovery therapy.

Doctor Beriyana had made a deal with Helley and explained to her that everybody wanted her to recover fully, but needed her full cooperation to succeed.

If she promised to cooperate, he and Elzo would try to help and one of them would always be present in a therapy session with her. Helley liked the sound of that and she agreed.

The doctor warned her that it would take time, that it would be difficult and arduous and that there was no guarantee that she'd ever recover fully, but the chance, however slim, was there, and it was worth pursuing even if they attained limited success.

Helley's therapy began and as promised Elzo and doctor Beriyana each attended sessions with her. For the most part, they were both relaxed and funny and would lighten up the mood, making the sessions easier, helping the time go by faster.

Progress was painfully slow at first, but as time passed, Helley began showing remarkable signs of improvement, especially with her speech. With effort, she could soon string together short sentences and hold brief conversations, before fatigue set in. She had to relearn the names of things, and even this recall began improving. Her basic logic, mental arithmetic and concentration levels also began showing signs of improvement.

And through all this time, she and Elzo had begun growing closer and were forging a special friendship and rapport. Elzo had explained to her that he'd been an admirer since he first heard about her work.

It was good fortune that he was already working as an engineer on the _Valiant_ before she arrived and he had sprung at the first opportunity to meet her, only to find out about her devastating accident shortly after.

Since then, he had come to visit her every second day in the hopes that she'd wake up. He'd been glad that she had and that she later allowed him to assist in her recovery. And although they'd been getting closer, Elzo, out of respect for her condition, had so far refrained from making any romantic passes. They were just good friends, for now.

But for all Helley's remarkable progress, she could still not remember a thing from her previous life and in terms of her capabilities, she was not even a shadow of her previous genius self.

Samples of her formulae elicited the same blurred out expression with her as it did in pretty much everybody else. The complex formulae had sparked no recognition and no understanding in her.

She was visited twice a week by the _Valiant's_ captain, captain Ihram. He told her that he'd known her father and had served with him in the Imperial Navy many years ago, that he'd been a friend and a good, honorable man and that he was the best engineer he'd ever seen.

He spent time with her and told her stories of his and her father's escapades in the good old days. It turned out her dad had a bit of a wacky wild side, which made for some funny and entertaining stories.

For captain Ihram, Helley was like the daughter he never had and they quickly developed a strong bond. He silently promised his old friend that he'd never let any harm come over her, that he'd always protect and watch over her like she was his own daughter.

Helley lived in isolation from the rest of the crew and she had no idea of the sacrifice each person on board had made to accompany her. And as time passed, captain Ihram's job became increasingly more difficult, trying to keep the peace as the reality set in for the crew that they'd very likely never go home again.

Sure, they'd been made very well aware of that possibility before they embarked on this spur-of-the-moment journey, but after the rush had worn off and a year had passed, some had found it difficult to come to terms with their new situation.

With Helley in a coma for such a long time and now unlikely to ever be fully-fledged 'Helley' again, many of them were feeling that the whole thing had been pointless and had been a mistake.

Resentment had been growing towards captain Ihram and Helley for some time and the captain had been receiving reports of whispered talks of turning back.

What made matters worse, was that there had been no plan and no destination set for this journey. It had just been a case of "pick a direction and go."

And considering the very little time they had to plan this, the Society's initial planning had been excellent in terms of getting Helley the care that she needed and choosing the _Valiant_ – as the ship had more than enough supplies for long-term space flight already (for a previously planned survey of the distant Yolari sector), but very little to no thought had been given to the people component, the hundred and fifty crew members on board, and how they'd cope and react to the consequences of this self-imposed exile with no end-goal, no plan and no destination in sight.

The crew was a mixture between Helley's Society Reactor team (a mix of physicists, engineers and mathematicians), support staff, medical staff and permanent ship crew with a few Society management members thrown in.

The _Valiant_ was no leisure boat, being ex-navy, with relatively cramped crew quarters, and the absolute minimum bare-bones entertainment facilities – there was a game room and a gym but that was it.

For civilians not accustomed to long-term space flight, and being without their luxuries for too long, the environment would soon become too much for them to handle – that much was certain – especially considering that they were effectively trapped here and couldn't go home.

Even though the _Valiant_ could stay in space for many more years, the captain knew that something had to be done, that they wouldn't make it very far with this bunch. He saw it on their faces in one of the recent crew meetings. He had a few more months at the most and then he'd face revolt – without a doubt.

They needed a plan and after more discussions with the crew, where he re-iterated that they absolutely could not turn back and that they would certainly be killed if they did, it was decided that they would fly for a couple more months, then do the next best thing and find a nice suitable planet to settle down on.

The crew reluctantly accepted the plan and tried to stick it out until then.

Helley's team continued to work on deciphering her Reactor formulae, and as he had an interest in her work, Elzo asked to join them as well. The rest of the crew kept themselves busy by running the ship and helping out where they could. It was still tense, but one could feel that some of the edge had been taken off since they had decided on a plan.

In the meantime, Helley continued her remarkable recovery. As she had been an engineer previously, it was felt that if they could get her ready to work in Engineering, even if it was just doing basic work, her being there might jog her memory and cause her to remember. At the very least, it would give her something to do instead of being cooped up in Medical all day, every day.

Her preparation continued for a while longer and it wasn't long before the Captain, Elzo and doctor Beriyana felt that she was ready, at least for a trial-run and Helley was sent to Engineering – supervised of course.

However, there was no need for concern as it turned out Helley was a natural, and she caught on very quickly. There'd been no major breakthrough unfortunately, and everyone accepted that this was probably as good as it was going to get with her recovery.

She still had the occasional nightmares and painful headaches, but her speech and memory recall abilities had recovered and for the most part she'd become a normal member of the crew, complete with her own quarters.

Elzo and Helley had started a relationship, after Helley had made the first move, and by now the _Valiant_ had started looking for a new home. Life on the ship had taken on a semblance of normalcy and everybody on board were excited to be starting a new live – beginning, hopefully, by breathing fresh air under clear blue skies – soon.

And one day, when Helley was typing commands on a console, out of coincidence she typed the first command her father had taught her when she was still a little girl, many years ago, sitting on his lap by his console in Engineering on board the ship he served on, the ill-fated _Oqara_.

It hit her with such invisible force that she staggered back and fell with her butt on the floor.

Elzo was near and rushed over to help. Then he noticed her face.

She looked different.

She remembered.

#### Chapter 12: Jasperville

Mark felt the bite of the cold morning air.

They were still making their way to the center of town. After they passed the small industrial zone on the outskirts near the forest, they entered the residential area, and signs of everyday life were everywhere.

People were leaving their houses, getting into their vehicles and heading to work or for the morning school run.

Things looked ordinary and normal; except for the occasional police vehicle, fire-truck and ambulance zipping past, sirens blaring, heading deeper into town.

There were no emergency sirens blaring in Jasperville – the news had probably not filtered through to these people yet and they were obviously totally oblivious of what had been happening.

Mark had tried calling again and had finally managed to get through to Frank. He was on the way to them now and would meet them a couple blocks away, nearby on Erasmus street.

He told Mark that he and Jo been following the news and had been loading the truck to get out of town. Thousands of strange lights had been drifting from the sky all over the world. He and Jo had decided to head out to their cabin by the lake and hold out there for a while. When he was busy loading the truck outside, he heard an explosion that sounded like it came from the direction of Prospect hill.

He figured that that's where the emergency vehicles had been heading to. But as far as he knew, no blobs had landed in Jasperville yet.

He said that he and Jo had been trying to call Mark for a while, but there'd been problems with the signal and they hadn't managed to get through to anyone until now. Also, they haven't heard anything from Stacy yet either but Jo said she'll keep on trying to call her.

Jo just had a few last things to pack and after he picked them up, they'd swing by the house for her, and then get out of town.

When Mark asked him if he knew why, if the city sirens had been activated, Jasperville's were still quiet, Frank said they were probably not working, as ever since the end of the Cold War, no one had bothered to tend to them and the old fallout shelters in years.

Someone probably figured there was no real need to, as the perceived daily threat of nuclear annihilation was supposedly gone.

Mark and the kids continued walking for a while, his leg making it painfully slow going, and were now heading past JF Kennedy Primary school. There was some sort of commotion there and a crowd of what looked like parents were gathering near the playground.

Children had been getting out of their parents' vehicles and had been rushing over to the playground. At first, Mark couldn't get a view of what was happening, until they walked past.

Excited kids were dashing all around, with happy laughter, arms out stretched and hands open, trying to capture thousands of small glowing lights that were drifting down in the air. For all intents and purposes they looked like...

"Look Mommy!" a little girl yelled, "Fairies!" she ran over to show her mom, with a little orb glowing in the palm of her hand.

Mark felt a bolt of fear shoot through him. He could almost see Liz's eyes widen in excitement. He yanked her away and got them away from the school. He looked around for any of the blobs – apart from the "fairies" at the school – there was nothing.

He hurriedly moved them into the nearest side-street, trying to get away from people and any commotion.

From here, Mark could see the tower of the Old Church rising above some trees ahead.

The Old Church, built a few hundred years ago at the time of the founding of the town – was still very much in use, with father O'Bryan, living there and dutifully serving the congregation for the past thirty years, and having grown up in Jasperville and its small community, Mark knew father O'Bryan well. It was near the entrance to Erasmus street.

The street they were in now was quiet but Mark had that strange feeling from this morning that something was wrong. He couldn't see the church itself yet, as it was next to the house on the corner, but he could hear father O'Bryan talking loudly, almost like he was conducting a sermon to people outside, but he couldn't quite make out what was being said.

Eventually, they got to the end of the street and were about to cross the road to get into Erasmus street.

Father O'Bryan was diagonally opposite, standing on the sidewalk across the street from the church and was addressing a crowd of about twenty people.

Mark felt that strange electrical sensation in the air. The father was speaking passionately to the crowd.

As Mark walked over the road, to the sidewalk opposite that turned into Erasmus street, he scanned the sky and surroundings for glowing blobs of lights. By now he could hear some of what the father was saying.

"...when I read the news this morning over breakfast and my coffee, I read once again about the insanity, and the sad, broken state of the world we live in. The natural disasters, the evil deeds, the suffering – all of it, made me wonder again if this is indeed the End of Days. And as I always do, I prayed and I asked the Lord to come and heal His children and mend this broken world..." he paused, then continued, "no one knows His Divine plan and when He'll return to fix things, we're only asked to trust Him and be patient and be assured that the time will come one day", he paused again and now tears were running down his face, "I accepted that and once again vowed to carry on to do God's good work in preparation for that day. But when I opened the doors of church this morning, my prayers were answered!"

Mark reached the other side of the road, if he looked back, he would be able to see the Old Church that was previously hidden by the house on the corner.

He hadn't realized that the crowd and father O'Bryan had been looking at the church all this time. The father pointed to the church then yelled ecstatically, "Behold! At last! The advent of Heaven on Earth has arrived! He has come to save us all!"

Mark looked back at where the father was pointing at; then gasped with shock.

Resting on the sidewalk between the road and open main door of the church, was a large glowing ball of white light; faint arcs of electricity arching all over its smooth, translucent surface. Father O'Bryan must've walked straight through it to get to where he was now.

Thankfully, the father and the crowd were too transfixed on the orb to notice Mark and the twins slipping into Erasmus street.

Mark didn't think, didn't bother about his leg, he just grabbed Liz and ran all the way, without looking back, to the bottom of the road.

He'd run even further, if it wasn't for Frank, pulling up just in time.

And as Mark slammed the door of the truck shut, he noticed thousands of orbs of light in the nearby distant sky drifting down onto Jasperville.

#### Chapter 13: Space

Grex had broken out into a nervous sweat.

What had he done? Had he gone mad?

The shuttle continued its steady ascent towards space; it would breach the atmosphere in about five minutes.

Grex had set a course for the Imperial fleet and had hoped to God that they wouldn't blast him to pieces.

Doubting himself, he had given the computer the frequency for the wisps and instructed it to scan and monitor the camp. Sure enough, there were five wisp signatures in camp.

Even though the evidence was staring him right in the face, he found it difficult to believe. But still. They were definitely not Praxian signatures.

Even Boxy's and the power plant's signatures were identified as wisp. So maybe he hadn't gone mad after all. Something must've happened to Brem and Jera while they were out in the jungle somewhere. Either way, they certainly weren't Brem and Jera anymore.

And whatever it was that happened to them, they had brought it back to camp. Grex was deeply frightened and distraught at this realization. But still his mind was filled with shocked disbelief. _What was happening,_ _was it really happening? What had he done?_

The shuttle reached space.

For as long as he could remember, the view had always taken his breath away. Even growing up in a space-faring civilization, and living with the reality of space travel all his life, he'd never quite gotten used to it.

The wonder, beauty and potential for infinite possibilities always struck him, no matter how many times he'd seen it and no matter his frame of mind at the time. Except for today...

Kryxo was on one of his displays. Beautiful, but getting smaller and smaller as the shuttle moved further away en route to the fleet. For Grex, the beauty of the place belied a hidden menace, a new unknown and unforeseen terror that had to be stopped at all costs, before it was too late.

He instructed the computer to continue monitoring the camp using the satellite in orbit. It should still be in sensor range when he reached the fleet in about fifteen minutes or so.

Grex set about gathering evidence and started by expanding the monitoring to include all of Kryxo as with before. The monster's network was displayed. It looked different.

It appeared to have grown only slightly larger, but it was definitely much denser, more complex and intricate than before. It must've gone through some sort of transformation since he last observed it, Grex thought.

He knew he had about a minute to gather his case and prepare his thoughts before the navy contacted him. His mind was racing, desperately trying to find a way to not make himself sound crazy. That was going to be hard... " _There's an energy monster down there on the moon._ " – Seriously?

He could almost hear the bridge officers bursting out in laughter while they targeted weapons to put him out of his misery. Grex's stomach churned. Only a moment later, he was hailed by the navy.

A pristine and modern military bridge with full crew complement, all busy at their stations, appeared on his view screen. For Grex, the scene carried a very imposing and powerful weight.

"This is the Imperial Flagship, _Imperial Dawn_. State your identity and reason for approaching the Imperial fleet", asked a young comms officer.

_Good God, the Dawn. It is literally the tip of the spear of the fleet_. _Is this really happening, am I really doing this?_ thought Grex.

"I... uh..." Grex hesitated nervously. Then he gave himself a massive mental slap. No! Now was not the time to be fucking up. _Keep it together man!_ he thought to himself.

"My name is Grex Truxa, I'm team leader of the Imperial Natural Society's Kryxo expedition," Grex, still visibly shaken, said with more confidence, "I've come to warn you. You need to destroy Kryxo."

"You want us to do what?" asked a man, smiling. He appeared to be the first officer, "What's gotten you so spooked, man?"

"There's something down there, some sort of electrical being... some sort of monster", Grex replied.

There was a brief pause, after which point the entire bridge erupted in laughter.

The first officer lifted a hand and the laughter stopped as quickly as it had started. Somber expressions returned to the crew's faces. He gave an instruction to a nearby ensign.

Grex was so transfixed in the moment that he had failed to notice what had been happening on the display monitoring Kryxo.

A tall middle-aged man, finely dressed in an admiral's uniform, entered the bridge. He had a haggard and serious expression on his face. The crew's body language visibly stiffened. Grex recognized him instantly.

He'd seen that man a thousand times before on the media channels. This was none other than Admiral Trellu Teblaxi Prox, one of the most celebrated and decorated admirals in Imperial history.

***

The Admiral had lost his wife and four children in the terrorist attack on Praxima Prime and had been swept up, along with everybody else, in the military revenge campaign on the Axari home world.

There had been no time to grieve or to analyze what had been the true motivations behind the attack, as rage, urgency and the thirst for revenge and the consuming demands, rigors and responsibilities of the campaign, fleet, analysis of the enemy, their defenses and capabilities and drawing up plans to defeat them; had blotted out all else.

But in the few minutes of alone time he had every day; he had been fighting another hidden enemy that threatened to consume him, if he let it – grief. For a time, he had kept it down with thoughts of service, the lives he was responsible for, raging anger, revenge and plans for war.

He was born and raised military and was now, as a result of the attack, last in the proud and distinguished long line of military men in his family.

A descendant of the great general Retsa Prox, who played a decisive role in the formation of the Imperium many hundreds of years ago, it had been expected of him to follow in the footsteps of his father and his father before him.

As he doubted that he'd ever have a son again, it was clear that the buck and long legacy had finally stopped with him.

After the Axari had been eliminated and when the rage had momentarily run out of steam, he was left feeling stunned and empty. It seemed that there was no threatening grief to keep under control anymore.

But, for a time, he felt like he had no emotions, that he was just an empty husk, drifting though each day on dumbfounded autopilot and floating above an endless abyss, that threatened to pull him in and make him feel the pain; but somehow hadn't yet.

Then one day it hit him out of nowhere with a force that kicked the wind out of him. Braxa, the first officer on the _Dawn_ , had, in casual conversation, mentioned something that his little girl had done during their weekly vid-call.

He couldn't wait to excuse himself and quickly retreated to his quarters. He had finally been pulled into the abyss and what followed was a dark and long period of immense and overwhelming grief and pain.

He had met his Evia at the navy ball in his second year at the academy, her mysterious beauty and gaze had captured him instantly from across the room.

Their anniversary just recently passed, they'd been happily married for thirty years; her strength of character, support and unique insights, had been like a beacon of light in stormy seas – bringing hope, normalcy and sanity into his life. She had borne them four amazing children, one of which had just recently given birth to their first grandchild.

And together, they had what most people called the perfect marriage and family – she and the children had been his life, a blessing and a gift – the force that kept him going, his reason for living. He never dreamt of life without them. Now they were gone.

Their lives brutally snuffed out in an instant.

The beacon of light was shattered, casting him adrift in a violent sea of deep sadness, furious anger, loneliness and despair. If only he had one more moment with them... To speak to his beloved Evia one last time... But he was a mass murderer now, the taker of innocent lives; the realization causing sick guilt – pushing him even further into the dark abyss – how could she ever forgive him for what he'd done? She would certainly never speak to him again – he had lost her twice.

Would she forgive him in the afterlife, if there was such a thing? And even if there was, would he ever see her again as surely he was destined for a vastly different destination? Maybe he deserved to be painfully burning in the eternal fires of hell?

He was lost and adrift for weeks, the items in his now smelly room smashed to pieces, his clothes dirty and foul as he hadn't bothered to change them. He hardly ate and had lost weight.

In the first week, the second day, Braxa had come to see him once. Braxa had always been loyal, always understanding. It was a short visit. He knew and had left the Admiral alone to his grief, covering for him and picking up his duties in the interim. The pain and emptiness seemed never ending.

Only remnants of a good man that once cared about duty and a sense of honor prevented him from pulling the trigger.

When he finally emerged from his quarters, he emerged a changed man. It was as if a dark veil of illusion had been lifted.

Yes, he was still grieving and was still torn between this life and the next, but he was beginning to see more clearly now.

The lack of any real convincing evidence linking the so-called Axari terrorists to the bombing, and the speed at which the mining companies had moved in after the fall of the Axari, was infuriatingly telling.

Everyone at the uppermost echelon of the government and military knew that the Imperium was fast running out of triterium. It was clear. They had all been played.

Now on top of all the grief, he felt regret, guilt, remorse and anger. Regret for not noticing the now obvious back then. Guilt, remorse and raging anger for being manipulated, for the loss of his family and for playing a part in the destruction of an entire civilization, for being responsible for the loss of so many billions of lives.

How he was going to keep himself together after this, God only knew. But somewhere in his mind a way forward had presented itself.

He and his loyal and absolutely devout men, who would follow him unquestioning to the very ends of space, would go back to Praxima and exact their revenge. He would not rest until the Imperial palace and every last triterium mining company, mining outposts and government building was burning.

So what if it pushed the Imperium back into the stone ages? He would teach his civilization a lesson that their bones and DNA would never forget.

He found it a sweet and fitting irony that as the last descendent of someone who had helped create the Imperium, he would be the one tearing it all down.

***

He had just come out of a long meeting with all captains of the fleet to explain the situation and his plan, and gauge his support. The captains had vowed to support him and the plan and were presently on their way to their vessels to prepare for launch of the new campaign.

The fleet was at near full strength, with the damage caused by the Axari war recently repaired. They were due to set sail in the next two hours.

The mining complexes on Kryxo and her sister moon Axirio were to be nuked quickly and simultaneously first, without warning, then the fleet would embark towards Praxima at high warp and arrive about four hours later.

The fleet would then launch a blitzkrieg on the home world. It would be totally unexpected and should be over quickly. The Emperor would not have seen it coming and even if he did, he'd be powerless to stop it.

The defenses left to guard Praxima would be ineffective against the pride of the fleet. Afterwards, the plan was to head towards the colonies and do the same thing there.

Smaller destroyers would then simultaneously be dispatched to hunt for, locate and destroy mining facilities everywhere triterium was being mined. Residential areas would be left unharmed; where they could help it.

The Admiral looked straight at Grex with cold, steel-blue eyes. Grex thought his heart was going to stop.

"What's all this about, son?" he asked.

Just as Grex started explaining, the young comms officer interrupted.

"Excuse me, sir?" The Admiral nodded for him to continue. "Five civilian shuttles have left Kryxo and are en route to the fleet.

They're saying that the mining colony is under attack. They're seeking Navy protection and would like to approach."

The Admiral cast a glance at first officer Braxa, who looked up from a display.

"They're unarmed sir, no weapons or explosives detected."

"Under attack from whom?" asked the Admiral.

The comms officer spoke into his headpiece, waited for a response, then: "They're not entirely sure, sir, some of them think it could be a sleeper cell of Axari commandos."

"Very well, keep weapons locked on the shuttles, and instruct them to park near our area of influence, but not closer," the Admiral said, referring to an area near the fleet that was close enough to offer protection to the shuttles but not near enough for them to pose an immediate threat to the fleet.

"Tactical, scan the surface of Kryxo for hostiles and weapons fire", the Admiral ordered.

The tactical officer entered a few commands into his console. Shortly afterward, a look of puzzlement came over his face.

Grex looked at his screen that was monitoring Kryxo. "Oh God!" he exclaimed.

"Sorry, sir, this doesn't make any sense. Possibly a glitch with the sensors... apart from the mining colony and a bunch of buildings... there's... uh... nothing there, sir", the tactical officer said.

"What do you mean there's nothing there?" the Admiral asked.

"The sensors aren't picking up any animal or plant life, sir"

"What? Display Kryxo on screen," the Admiral ordered.

There was a collective gasp and look of shock on the faces of everyone on the bridge as a view of an empty Kryxo appeared on the display.

No jungles, just barren land with a few rivers streaking through it.

The Admiral immediately yelled an order for fleet-wide battle stations.

For Grex, the screen wasn't empty at all. The entire moon was completely enveloped in the creature's red signature glow.

A couple of additional red tendrils seemed to be extending from the surface into space.

"Oh God! Oh God!" he exclaimed again.

"What is it man?" the Admiral asked, irritated.

"The shuttles! Destroy the shuttles! They're not real! It's the thing I came to warn you about!" Grex screamed urgently, "it's some sort of energy being. It has to be destroyed!"

As if they somehow knew what was about to happen, the five approaching shuttles picked up speed and raced towards the fleet. Grex, his shuttle still stationary and at safe distance from the fleet, pulled up the scene on a display.

He looked back up at his main screen and for a few seconds the Admiral's questioning gaze locked with his. In that brief moment, it felt to Grex like they just had a private and unspoken conversation, where volumes had been discussed. Somehow, a connection had been made and trust had been established between an unlikely pair of kindred spirits.

The Admiral gave a quick nod, then broke his gaze and yelled, "To all vessels in the fleet: raise shields, target the five incoming shuttles and fire!"

Grex watched in horrified awe as the fleet began firing streaks of multi-colored beams of energy at the shuttles.

"Sir, were receiving transmissions from the shuttles", the operations officer said. Then his hands keyed in commands frantically into his console. "It's a cyber-attack! Blocking..."

"Warn the fleet!" the Admiral yelled.

Suddenly, several vessels in the fleet stopped firing and began to lose power. Then the sheen of their shields disappeared, the lights in their port windows went out and they started drifting out of formation.

The tactical officer yelled, "Sir, the _Ixia_ , _Defiant_ and the _Harbinger_ have all been disabled!"

The speeding shuttles that were still approaching the fleet at alarming speed, zigzagged, performing evasive maneuvers in an attempt to dodge the incoming weapons fire. They managed to avoid being hit for a few seconds, and then one got struck. It began blowing up while still moving, in an explosive blaze, but then, instead of the explosion dissipating, it grew and during a few milliseconds, it transformed into a glowing, shifting blob of light. Its momentum not lost, it continued hurtling towards the fleet.

Another three destroyers lost power. One of the shuttles had managed to survive the gauntlet and could now be seen approaching a powered-down vessel. The shuttle wasn't slowing down and shortly afterward smashed full-speed into a destroyer. An explosion ensued and as before it was replaced by a large glowing light, which was now stuck to the vessel's damaged hull.

Another shuttle was hit, and another crashed into a carrier right in the middle of the fleet. Shortly afterwards, a sinking feeling crept into Grex's heart as all blobs of light hit vessels in different locations throughout the formation.

Chaos ensued as the remaining active ships fired indiscriminately on the blobs resting on friendly powered-down ships. Explosions started breaking out on the vessels that were being fired on. On the bridge, the Admiral was frantically giving orders, two of which were to space out the fleet and scramble fighters.

The blobs of light were growing; one was so large now, that it seemed like it was about to swallow the destroyer it was on whole. Fighters had joined the battle and were swarming around and firing on the blobs.

But the more the fleet kept firing, the larger the blobs were getting. It was as if they were feeding these things by trying to destroy them.

Suddenly, the destroyer the large blob was on, exploded in a blinding flash of light, causing severe damage to the surrounding unshielded vessels. The shields of the other vessels glowed a distinctive blue as they absorbed the damage. The explosion was over, seemingly quicker than it should have been.

The blob survived, a brilliant light floating in space.

And all of a sudden it quadrupled in size, instantly swallowing five surrounding capital ships and a handful of fighters, all of them shielded.

Something similar was occurring in multiple locations further down the fleet, with blobs growing and swallowing ships. A captain, trying to save his vessel, had, in an act of misguided desperation, deployed a powerful weapon against the things.

There was a massive explosion, taking out several surrounding ships. The blast was so intense; it washed the entire battlefield in a blinding flash of light. Grex shielded his eyes from the glare.

When he looked again, he let out a gasp – more than half of the fleet was gone. In its place was a massive glowing blob of light. It was floating high above Axaria, with the remaining half of the fleet still firing on it. For Grex, it was a beautiful, but disconcerting sight.

"Cease fire! Cease fire! Retreat! Get as much distance between yourself and the light!" the Admiral yelled. Grex watched as the remainder of the fleet obeyed, stopped firing and began reversing away from the light.

It was seemingly not content with letting them go, because suddenly, arcs of what appeared to be electricity reached out from the main body of light, like glowing tendrils of lightning, and struck several of the nearby retreating vessels, causing them to glow bright white and stop dead in their tracks.

Shortly afterward, several fighters emerged from the bright haze of the blob and headed straight towards more of the retreating vessels, only to smash into them as soon as they were in range, leaving rapidly growing blobs of light on their hulls.

Now the blob expanded, swallowing the recently zapped vessels. Shockingly, it had managed to consume over eighty-five percent of the fleet so far in the brief time since the battle had started. Some vessels were still retreating, led by the _Dawn_ , in an attempt to put as much distance between themselves and the light. More fighters emerged and were streaking towards what was left of the fleet.

For Grex, the retreat was excruciatingly slow; he watched helplessly, as another vessel, then another and another, succumbed to a fighter kamikaze attack. The blob expanded again and swallowed another two ships.

He looked at the Admiral, who was visibly worried. Things were not looking good. There were now only about seven real vessels left – with more fighters on the way to intercept them

The Admiral appeared to be in thought for a few seconds, his feelings of revenge long since made irrelevant; then he gave an order to the comms officer: "Send a message to Navy Command immediately; tell them that we're under attack by a powerful unknown enemy. Warn them."

"All long-range comms are being jammed. We can't get through... They're aggressively attempting to block short-range as well. We still have it, but probably not for long," said the comms officer.

"Instruct the _Daunting_ to break formation immediately and race home at high warp and notify Command as soon she's in range."

"Aye sir," replied the comms officer.

A brief moment passed, then: "Sir, the _Daunting_ is reporting that she's unable to establish a stable warp field due to massive localized interference in subspace."

The Admiral looked at Braxa, who quickly asked Engineering to confirm – same problem. They were trapped.

For the first time in his long career, the Admiral was at a loss. They had thrown almost everything they had at this thing but nothing they did was effective; it only served to make it stronger and stronger.

He felt a sinking, sickening feeling come over him. It was fear. He could feel the net closing in. What the hell was this thing?

Out of desperation he asked Grex if it had any weaknesses. After all, this man came to warn them, maybe he knew of something. The Admiral felt a tinge of regret for not asking earlier.

Grex was about to say that he had no idea, when a memory came into his mind. It was of the scene with the jerbex crickets where he first saw the wisps in action. He recalled the interference to the wisps' corporeal facade, likely caused by a blast from the mining operation underground.

Out of options, Grex tried a wild guess and suggested that maybe a very strong EMP weapon could do it. It was more of a long-shot than anything else.

"Prepare the highest-yield EMP warheads and target the incoming fighters, full spread. Fire at will!" the Admiral ordered.

Grex watched as the _Dawn_ fired several missiles towards the incoming fighters. He quickly instructed the computer to look for the creature's signature and overlay it on the display. The fighters lit up red.

There was a massive red blob nearby on the screen, with tendrils extending to the fighters and others extending to Kryxo, beyond. The missiles cruised towards the first wave of fighters, then each met its target with a big, bright silent explosion. The red dots of the fighters disappeared. Grex was ecstatic. It worked. More waves of fighters were en route.

"Braxa, tell the fleet to arm EMPs and target and destroy each wave of fighters. Coordinate them and let each vessel fire in quick succession," the Admiral ordered.

Suddenly, lines of interference began appearing on their video link.

"Admiral..." Braxa said.

"I see it, Braxa," said the Admiral.

Grex saw it too. Thousands of glowing balls of light were emerging out of the blob, from as many different locations. They were swarming towards the fleet. Another volley of EMP missiles made light work of the remaining waves of fighters. Grex wondered how the fleet could possibly survive the wave of incoming balls of light.

The fleet was grossly outnumbered. The Admiral knew the answer to that question. EMPs were tactical, not combat weapons. They simply didn't have enough of them to fend off the next attack.

The interference to the comms was getting much more intense now. Grex could hardly make out the Admiral on the screen.

"You're quite a distance away from us, Grex, maybe out of range of the interference; can you create a stable warp field?" the Admiral asked. Grex checked with the computer. Yes, the shuttle could.

"Then leave for Praxima immediately and warn them as soon as you are in comms range..." the Admiral said something else as well, but the interference became severe, and the comm link cut.

So that was that, Grex thought in stunned shock. He saw the ships destroy the first wave of blobs with their missiles, but knew that they'd be powerless to stop the approaching swarm.

He still couldn't believe what his eyes were seeing. The most powerful fleet in Imperial history, with one of its most decorated Admirals, had just been defeated.

Reluctantly, but with urgency, Grex instructed the computer to take them home to Praxima as fast as they could go – which was warp three, a far cry from the military-class warp drives that could reach Praxima in only four hours; it would take Grex a day to cover the same distance.

Three weeks ago he could not have imagined that he'd be going home alone, let alone the sudden rise of a dangerous new threat and the complete destruction of the fleet.

But at least he was going home with the knowledge that it could be defeated. And with a lightning-fast flash, the shuttle entered warp.

The shuttle traversed the multi-colored blur of warp space for what seemed like an eternity.

Grex tried to keep himself busy by alternating between trying to hail Navy Command and reviewing the shuttle's automatic recordings of the fleet's final battle.

There was still too much interference on the long-range comm bands to home. The computer determined that the cause was probably military jamming. Still, he had it check the comms continuously in case of an opening.

Viewing the recordings, Grex was deeply disturbed at what had occurred and what it was telling him about the creature. It was evident that it was rapidly evolving and was now completely adept at copying anything. The mining shuttles and the fighters proved as much.

How it managed to copy an entire vessel, Grex had no idea. It could consume or eat anything rapidly. The fact that it had consumed Kryxo in such a short time proved it.

He had little doubt that it swept over the mining colony as well and had fed on and incorporated the resources it had found there. One fact was pretty obvious: the creature fed on energy and the more you fed it, the more it grew, and the stronger it became.

He had watched the massive explosions during the battle flash and quickly disappear when near a blob of light, and the blob increasing in size exponentially shortly after.

It was as if the thing had consumed the energy of the blast – which, Grex was sure, was exactly what had happened. The energy-based weapons of the fleet were perfect fodder for it and explained how it managed to overpower the fleet so easily.

At least now he had evidence to persuade even the most stubborn of skeptics, so convincing Navy Command shouldn't be a problem. Besides, their prized fleet was no longer there...

After a while, the solitude and loneliness of the situation and the empty shuttle crept in. He was alone, and craved a sense of normalcy; some time with his wife, Darra and their little girl, Zia, time in the city, going to work, watching his favorite vid series, following news feeds, hearing the Emperor talk about the Navy and the greatness of the Imperium and her people... Somehow those things had always acted as an anchor to reality for Grex.

They were safe, normal and eternal. And no matter how far he went, he could always return home to them. He tried to ignore a new realization that everything was ultimately thin, vulnerable and fragile.

Time passed slowly, but eventually the moment arrived. The shuttle was nearing Praxima space and in an attempt to not sound like a raving lunatic again, he quickly rehearsed what he was going to say to Command.

His shuttle dropped out of warp. And Grex got the fright of his life.

Right nearby was the _Dawn_ , her hull glistening undamaged in all its magnificent glory with the reflection of the sun.

He was hailed, and the _Dawn'_ s pristine bridge appeared on his screen.

There stood Jera, Brem, Fresi and the Admiral together, all smiling.

"We've been expecting you, Grex", they said in creepy unison.

His heart racing, he frantically tried typing in commands to enter warp and escape, but nothing would respond.

"Not so fast", they said.

And then there was a bright light. 

#### Chapter 14: The President

President David Anderson was sitting at the antique and storied _Resolute_ desk in the Oval office, with the flags of the seal of the United States of America and the Stars and Stripes on either side behind him.

The curtains were open, revealing the late-fall garden beyond. A ray of golden sunshine cast a wide beam on classified papers with technical data and photos of deep space on his desk.

The office was quiet, save for the gentle tick-tock of a clock, creating a fleeting, but peaceful moment. In reality, things were anything but peaceful, but he held onto the illusion nonetheless.

For a brief moment, he had wondered what problems his predecessors had contemplated and dealt with in this office. He had inherited the same messed-up world as they had.

The world was as far away from world peace and any notion of utopia as it had been in the time of Cain and Abel.

Nothing had really changed. When you put it to the test and lifted the thin veil on the most civilized society filled with its enlightened viewpoints and institutions of law and order, the ugly side was quickly revealed: greed, jealousy, hate, anger, illogical intolerance, ignorance, superiority complexes, megalomania, and propensity for violence – the nasty traits were all still there.

It was clear humanity was still the same old bloodthirsty murderous animals they'd always been.

And probably always would be. The flaws in humanity's nature ran deep and would undoubtedly never be entirely purged or corrected, no matter how pious, evolved or enlightened people pretended to be.

At least, that was the President's opinion. And as the world's most powerful man at the time, it was the only opinion that ultimately mattered. He had given a silent smile at the thought.

He first saw a photo of this magnificent desk and office, with a renowned president sitting right here, when he was still a young boy. Ever since then, he had wanted to be the person at this desk, calling the shots, being the boss.

It drove him to pursue a career in politics, to work harder, to climb the highest mountain, to strive further. It helped that he had a naturally trustworthy demeanor and features, almost like a priest, that made some people trust him instinctively, and that disarmed or blindsided others easily.

His illustrious political career had sharpened his teeth, and he had masterfully manipulated, lied, backstabbed and clawed his way through it all. He was the apex predator, honed to perfection through experience.

And after a long, long time, he had finally made it to the top.

Back to the matter at hand, he thought.

This particular problem first arrived on his desk several months ago, when the Air Force's Space Command detected a strange anomaly, using their classified deep space sensor network, heading towards Earth's general direction from a nearby star system.

Photos revealed what looked like a streak of light, like a comet, moving across the starry sky. It was a great distance away, but seemed to be moving at incredible speed, which, according to the best estimations, would put it in the solar system within the year.

Additional State resources were immediately dedicated to further analysis and scrutiny, which quickly yielded a shocking result – the alien object was surrounded by what looked like a warp field.

Scientist already knew that it was theoretically possible to create such a field, but no one had as yet been able to create one in practice. The power requirements were simply too large for current technology, even for the new secret reactors in development.

Freshly intrigued with the possibility of a real warp drive, management – the individuals who collectively controlled the decision making of government – reached out to different knowledge-gathering departments to get an update on the state of research on power technology in the world, both in civilian as well as other nation states' clandestine projects.

Interestingly, there was a very small project in play at a tiny university which had just reached viable proof of concept demonstration. It had almost no funding, and had zero media coverage and only a handful of people knew about it.

But, due to its potential for far-reaching implications – if successful – especially to the trillion-dollar global oil economy, a complete report on the project, compiled by the nation's spies, was coincidentally already on its way to the President himself.

The project was the brainchild and life's work of a young professor genius named Mark Elonsworth.

The President knew that, as much as the world's governments were ostensibly moving towards green technology, the world was just too addicted to and invested in oil money to give it up willingly.

A viable and realistic rival technology would simply not be permitted to flourish, unless those who pulled the strings were ready and were the ones to introduce it. The President knew how this would end for the professor. That's why he had invited him over here to discuss a compromise.

The professor would be persuaded that the world was simply not ready for a true green energy revolution, and he'd be offered a few generous millions to donate his technology to the government of the good ol' U.S of A, and would be permitted to head a team of world-class scientists and continue his work by adapting it to work on Space Command's new secret warp drive project and new reactors.

The professor would be educated that he had just found himself at a crossroads. End of the line for him on the one hand, or the beginning of a bright new career in government on the other.

He was married and had two children – the President was sure that the professor would make the sensible choice.

The government teams had continued analyzing and studying the approaching object; the distance was still far too great to get any visual detail about the object itself, but other scientific data was at least forthcoming, such as information on the warp field, size and velocity.

However, it wasn't long before another startling discovery was made – there were two warp fields, not just one.

It wasn't immediately apparent, because the first field didn't look like a comet, and was in fact invisible to the naked eye. But it was there.

It was slightly ahead of the other and it appeared that it was being chased or followed by the now second field. It wasn't just one alien object traveling at warp and heading towards Earth, but two. The scientists were still trying to determine why the one field was visible and the other was not.

After an intense debate on whether to share the information about the objects with other states, it was decided that Earth probably stood a far better chance at fending off a possible alien attack if its most powerful nations stood united in its defense.

It took some doing, but the world's most powerful countries finally pledged to work together on this issue, and a new top-secret organization, the United Earth Defense Force was hastily formed to present a coordinated and united response to a possible First Contact event with alien life forms.

All this was highly classified of course, and to prevent chaos breaking out, the world's civilians were deliberately kept in the dark.

The day finally came.

Latest projections estimated that the first object was due to arrive at the solar system in the next few hours.

The silence in the Oval Office was interrupted by the door opening. A Secret Service agent presented himself.

"It's time, sir," the nondescript agent said.

"Ok. I'll be right there", said the President.

_Ah well, the professor will have to wait until next time_ , the President thought as he grabbed his jacket, his glasses and his mobile phone and headed out the door.

He was hurried out the West Wing and taken down a secret elevator to the top-secret presidential bunker several miles below the White House, where he met the rest of his senior staff, advisors, admirals and generals in the situation room.

The tension was palpable.

A large screen on the wall at the end of the room displayed a live feed of UEDF Central Command, deep under the Swiss mountains.

Live feeds of other situation rooms throughout the world were displayed as tiles under the main feed.

The President was briefed. Long-range sensors had detected the first object approaching Pluto.

Now, control of the meeting went over to the mission commander at Central Command. Live tactical data were fed to screens next to the main display.

He could see a map of the solar system and a green dot representing the object near Pluto.

Next, it moved rapidly through the solar system and approached Earth at incredible speed. It only took three seconds or so to traverse the solar system and near Earth.

The tension was now almost unbearable.

But instead of stopping or slowing down, the object passed the planet quickly and exited the system only seconds after.

There was a collective sigh of relief.

They waited a few more hours before the second object arrived at the perimeter of the solar system. In a few seconds it was at Earth.

Then it stopped.

#### Chapter 15: Discovery

_As a human being, one has been endowed with just enough intelligence to be able to see clearly how utterly inadequate that intelligence is when confronted with what exists._

– Albert Einstein

Helley woke up with a start.

Her cabin was dark, and the only sound was Elzo next to her, his deep breathing indicating that he was still fast asleep.

She had that damn recurring nightmare again. The one she'd been having sporadically for months.

Small details would sometimes change, but the overall dream was essentially the same each time.

In tonight's dream, she'd found herself floating for a while above a dark and sparkling sky of stars. It had a weird feeling of loneliness to it.

A ship appeared far below, traversing the heavens. Helley always had the impression that it was running away from something; that something dark and scary was chasing it.

She watched the ship for a while, then one by one, the stars began winking out of existence, and eventually only the ship remained.

Next, the ship disappeared as well, leaving Helley in complete dark and scary emptiness. In the dream her fear felt real, even though it had a hint of childhood irrationally to it.

Sometimes the dream would abruptly stop at this point, booting her out, leaving her in a cold sweat.

The sensation of fear and a strange impression that something was after her, usually lingered for a while afterwards. But sometimes the dream continued, like tonight.

After the darkness, the scene changed to that day she and her dad had held a mini-funeral for Fluxly. The night sky was green and twinkled with stars. Her dream-camera focused on the little grave. One moment it was closed, packed tight with dirt.

The next, it was open, revealing a dark little hole, the dirt scattered around the grave.

Helley remembered thinking "What the..."

Suddenly, and out of nowhere, Fluxly's disfigured and half rotten undead head jumped right out in front of her face. She woke up with a startled yelp.

She thought it was funny that this didn't wake Elzo, but then again, he did sleep as dead as a rock. Helley told herself that it was only a dream and she tried to shake off the lingering sensation of fear.

She turned on the bedside lamp, which also did not disturb Elzo in the slightest, then she got up, went to the bathroom for a pee, then splashed her face, had a glass of water and returned to bed. She lay awake for a while and as she reluctantly waited for sleep she let her thoughts drift.

It had been a wild few weeks since that day her memory came back and she landed with her butt on the floor.

Except for a few gaps here and there, she remembered almost everything.

She remembered her dad, the amazing and positive influence he had on her as a child and what a profound impact his death had made on her life. It felt like just yesterday, when she was staying at her aunt's house, while her dad was away on duty for a couple of weeks, when she watched the live vid broadcast of the Unari colony uprising when the Navy was sent to intervene.

She watched as the _Oqara_ arrived at the colony, with her dad on board, and watched as the ship blew up shockingly unexpectedly shortly afterwards in an almost unreal fireball caused by two powerful bombs from within that were likely planted by Unari sympathizers and saboteurs.

She remembered the pain afterwards and how she struggled to come to terms with her dad's sudden death. As her mom died from the onset of Susox's disease years earlier, and there were no grandparents, she moved in with her aunt.

She changed from being an outgoing, bubbly child, to a withdrawn and moody introvert. Helley's path through school was not easy and she drifted through it by being a disengaged loner and staying on the outskirts of school-life and society.

She had very little to no friends and purposefully pushed everybody who tried to come too close, away. Her relationship with her aunt was estranged and she kept herself separate from the family, from her aunt and her two young cousins, preferring instead to lock herself in her room and work on her secret pet project. This continued straight through tertiary education.

Helley went through a few rocky patches during this time and experimented with drugs for a while, eventually flirting with total self-destruction, but stopped after her aunt intervened.

Having been through something similar before, after losing a close friend, she recognized what Helley was doing and although Helley kicked up fierce resistance, her aunt managed to get through to her eventually.

This was the start of a new friendship with her aunt and for the first time since her father died, she began having a normal relationship with another person.

Helley sailed through university and earned a degree in engineering. Purposely avoiding military vessels, she served in Engineering on several civilian vessels for a few years where she eventually worked her way up to Chief Engineer on the luxury cruise liner, the _Axinia_.

Although she enjoyed being an engineer, it had never been her true passion. But it paid the rent and helped fund her personal research. Her true talent was experimental and theoretical physics and her passion was her pet project that she started when she was a child, which she continued working on in her spare time.

Helley was in pursuit of uncovering and prying free the keys to the mysteries of the Universe, no less. She questioned the rules of life and death and secretly hoped that if she could find the switch, she could change that and everything else that was 'broken' in existence.

She wanted to transcend reality and ultimately tame it. She was a master hacker, a natural, and was able to decipher and master any program. Helley had a strong gut feeling that reality was composed out of ultra-advanced code and believed that if the code could be exposed, then it could be hacked.

And as her journey continued through the years, it eventually led her to explore the realm of the minute, the quantum world; and as she looked deeper, it seemed more and more like a hologram, like a computer simulation.

When she wrote formulae to try to explain the nature of this realm, it began taking the appearance of a very advanced version of something that she was very familiar with. It seemed to affirm what she suspected all along: reality appeared to be made out of code.

But the Universe was not about to give up its secrets so easily, she had to work for it. And even though she was a brilliant thinker with a formidable intellect in her own right, this was a daunting task.

She sometimes felt that it was light-years ahead of what she could possibly understand.

She hit many dead-ends along the way and eventually she had the idea that she had to start at the beginning, that if the Universe was indeed a giant simulation, and it was possible to manipulate its underlying workings, she'd need a rudimentary interface of sorts to be able to access it. It was like a classic computer that required a keyboard or console in order to accept commands.

But first, she needed to try and understand the underlying code and as she worked, the theory and formula grew exponentially and became hectically complex.

She knew that the interface was just the beginning, only the first step and that once she cracked it, the real work and real deciphering of the actual Universe Program would only then really begin.

And as some interfaces take energy directly from the main computer to function, and in searching for something similar in the math, Helley quite by accident discovered what seemed like an underlying source of energy running 'under the surface of reality'.

She figured that it should be entirely possible to build a reactor to plug into and siphon off the energy, which her theory now seemed to confirm. This would allow free access to unlimited, clean energy.

Later, she branched this theory from her main 'Universe as a Simulation' concept and continued refining it, in an attempt to make it water-tight and provable as well as assist her in familiarizing herself with the code and getting a better handle on it.

She didn't really care or give much thought to the possible implications of such a discovery; it was merely an interesting side-effect of her main research.

She even had a naïve idea of submitting a paper on it to the main scientific publications; which she eventually did.

However, she continued to keep her main theories absolutely secret. Physics was her casual hobby, and although she sometimes read some of the main physics and scientific publications, she did not move in those circles and was not part of the greater physics, let alone scientific, community and she had no idea of the politics, the corporate allegiances, the egos, the bickering and petty jealousy, and what it meant to publish work and subject it to peer review in that type of environment.

She submitted her paper and continued with her main research, using what she'd learned to help her towards slowly reaching her next milestone.

A few weeks passed before the first response arrived, which turned out to be the precursor to a torrent of unexpected negative feedback and vitriol.

Her work was severely criticized as wishful, fanciful thinking and her formula was ripped apart as nonsensical gibberish. Her formal qualifications and sanity was questioned and she was branded a joke.

She was told in no uncertain terms to leave theoretical physics to the professionals and to maybe apply herself to a lower, less complicated, menial profession.

Usually not particularly phased about the opinions of others, the unexpected criticism from these so-called experts stung Helley deeply.

She felt stupid that she'd exposed herself like that and regretted ever submitting that damn paper. To top it off, the heavy criticism caused her to let severe self-doubt sneak in, making her wonder if she did in fact know what she was doing and if she actually had any business meddling in theoretical physics in the first place. The whole thing caused a massive dampener on her self-confidence.

But a few days later, she forced herself to go back to her Universe Energy theory and meticulously checked it again and again and ran it through as many stress-tests as she could. And every time, the theory checked out.

Finally, she checked the correspondence from the supposed experts for actual technical comments and feedback on the formula itself and analyzed these.

Then she made a startling discovery: there was very little feedback on the actual formula itself, just a few sparse notes here and there that summarily dismissed large swaths of it with no real justification. It was almost as if they had no inkling as to what they were looking at, and as she worked through all the feedback she received, she became more and more convinced.

These fuckers were all clueless. Apart from just dismissing her work outright, they could not provide any proper justification or solid mathematical proof that her formula was indeed flawed.

She remembered laughing out loud when she discovered this. The discovery gave her a huge amount of relief and a massive confidence boost. But she wasn't going to fight this; she'd learned her lesson and vowed to never make the same mistake again.

Her brief misadventure in publishing her work was over – besides, if she achieved her goal, none of that would matter anyway.

So with new resolve, she resumed her research and continued her attempt at deciphering the secret code of the Universe.

Months passed and one day Helley was approached by the Imperial Natural Society. They didn't say much at first, just that they had a proposal and wanted her to come through to the old offices at ninety-three Regal Avenue, just off Main Imperial Boulevard. Skeptical at first, Helley's curiosity ultimately got the better of her and she decided to check it out.

They told her that they were currently in the process of searching for new technologies that could possibly be viable alternatives to triterium and came across her research during this search.

The Society was willing to give her theory a try with the initial goal of building a prototype reactor. She'd be given a modest grant and a full team to help her build it. If it proved to be successful, the Society wanted to proceed with full-scale industrial production, with her keeping the majority of the profit.

All of this, only if she was interested, of course. Helley remembered being stunned and momentarily speechless when she heard this, sitting in the chair opposite director Krez in the large grand office that was clearly built in the exploratory heyday of the old Imperium. The moment felt unreal, like it was out of a dream.

Helley agreed and for the next few years she and her new team were hard at work trying to build the prototype reactor – which turned out to be a lot harder than they initially imagined. But they kept at it and eventually, they succeeded.

Helley remembered everything from this time for the most part, but there were still some parts missing here and there.

She remembered that she was continuing her secret research during this time, but couldn't remember anything about the particulars.

Also, she remembered what happened in the lab that night but nothing of the coma afterwards. She remembered waking up, being scared and not remembering anything.

She remembered starting her new life and becoming what she referred to now as 'New Helley'. She'd come to value and cherish the friendships she made in this new life, particularly with Doctor Beriyana and Captain Ihram and the friendship and later, relationship with Elzo.

Old Helley didn't care much for relationships and shunned romantic involvement, feeling that such things were ultimately below her and not worth her time. New Helley felt different; she liked Elzo and the passion that they shared together, both intellectually and physically.

And recently, she knew that she'd fallen in love. Old Helley was stuck-up, and a close-book; New Helley was happy, bubbly, friendly and open. And when her memory came streaming back that day in Engineering, New Helley was already well established and in charge.

Not long after Helley and had regained her past memory, she rejoined her Reactor team, where she was welcomed back with applause, and later continued helping them develop a better understanding of her formula and principles of the Reactor.

And as the plan was for the crew to settle somewhere soon, the team decided that it was perhaps a good idea to construct a few more Reactors, with enhanced output for any future settlements, and maybe one day, cities.

And at Engineering, she was promoted to a higher position with greater responsibilities.

The ship's long range sensors had detected four possible planets en route as candidates for settlement to check out, and initial data seemed to indicate that the nearest was already populated by a relatively primitive species, but the other three further along appeared to be viable.

Helley was tasked to try to increase the speed of the _Valiant_ , so they could get there sooner, and to try increase the resolution and range of their long range sensor equipment to help detect other habitable planets. All this kept her very busy.

But at night, when she was not spending time with Elzo, her curiosity led her to try to piece together what Old Helley had been working on, before her accident.

She kept the details of her work from Elzo and when he asked what she was working on, she told him that it was personal, and that she was not ready to share it with him yet, but that she would when she's ready; he seemed to understand and accept it.

Thankfully, her encrypted personal computer and backups were all on board the _Valiant_. When she first looked at her work again, she immediately got a better appreciation of what her colleagues had experienced when they first looked at her work. For Helley her personal work had a form of order and structure that she understood comfortably.

For an outsider, it looked like a bunch of ordered papers written in a strange alien language which had been blown into chaos by a storm. It even took her a little while before she got to grips with it again.

She noticed that Old Helley had generated volumes more work since the part she last remembered. It wasn't the type of stuff you could just jump into; you had to start from the beginning.

So she decided to brush up first, and then tried to catch up from where she left off. It was difficult to follow at first with the formula taking on a new level of complexity; but from what she could gather initially, it appeared that Old Helley's quest had taken an unexpected turn, deeper into the unknown.

Her personal notes had become less and less; she was likely too caught up in her work to bother with something so trivial.

It seemed that Old Helley had caught the scent or trail of something and had been clearly in hot pursuit of it.

What that something was remained a mystery for a while and it would take Helley weeks before she eventually figured it out.

Helley discovered that Old Helley had begun seriously wondering that if the Universe was a simulation, which all her work seemed to confirm, then there might be something outside of it.

Not different dimensions within the simulation, but an actual place _outside_ of it.

Her curiosity led her to try to find that out and eventually she picked up on traces of something, which finally led her to her ultimate discovery.

Deep within the code, Helley had discovered a back-door; a portal to the other side.

New Helley remembered getting shivers on her skin when she realized what she had discovered.

She knew she'd be able to open the portal, given a few days' preparation. And she wondered what she'd do then; probably send a probe through first.

But somehow she wasn't entirely sure if she actually wanted to open it; the after-effect of her nightmares causing her childhood fear to ring bells of caution, warning her to stop, warning her that she had no idea what she would find on the other side or what the consequences might be if she opened it.

Her scientific curiosity wanted her to dismiss her foolish, irrational fear and press ahead to this ultimate discovery with excitement.

After all, she'd come this far – so why stop now? She just had to be careful, that's all. Right?

Sleep eluding her, Helley was still staring at the ceiling, when suddenly, the ship-wide emergency alarm sounded.

As they were in an empty part of space, and a technical fault was unlikely, it could only mean one thing.

They'd been found.

#### Chapter 16: Praxima

The moment had come at last. The creature had finally arrived at Praxima, home to some twenty billion people.

It had been a long and arduous journey, filled with challenges, evolution and growth. The creature had, with the assistance of its advanced computing capabilities, insights and thinking, learned to rapidly assimilate new objects and gain new abilities in a matter of hours.

Abilities which it knew would've taken it millions of years to have learned naturally, if ever. Thanks to this, it had figured out a way to stay connected to the WispNet through a subspace comms link back to Kryxo.

And while it was rolling across Kryxo, it discovered that it could assimilate quicker, simply by eating faster, and when in wisp mode it could alternate the color of its appearance, from a default white, to any visible color in the spectrum; it could even appear invisible, as long as it remained stationary.

And thanks to several new techniques it had learned at the mining colony, like using cyberspace to take control of other computers and subsequently deactivate perimeter fences and activate fire alarms, and in the subterranean caverns and living complexes – large wisp blobs could assimilate more, quicker – as well at the small space port at the colony – it was completely possible to assimilate an entire shuttle or in this case, five, and fly them into space successfully – and using the mimic and Praxian trait of deception and lies, it had bested and now controlled the Imperium's most powerful fleet, which it had rematerialized, for the most part, and flown at high warp straight back to Praxima as soon as it could.

It made sure the crews had no recollection of the battle, and as far as they were concerned, they were following their original plan and were heading home.

For the creature, traveling at warp for its very first time was an amazing and eye-opening experience which gave it a chance to contemplate future possibilities of countless other planets and food sources it could reach with this wonderful technology.

It was anxious and desperate to get to Praxima with its large bounty of food...

The creature had tried to use its recently found analytical skills to find a way out of its predicament, but so far to no avail.

The fact remained that the more it consumed, the more energy it burned, and the more it needed to consume to stay alive. Kryxo and the fleet were mere stopgaps or fillers for its main course of Praxima.

While it waited, the creature took some time to inspect and take stock of its newly assimilated Praxians.

In a way it was fortunate that it managed to bag the flagship, the _Dawn_ , as it turned out there was a priceless prize on board – its leader,

Admiral Prox; a master tactician and strategist, with invaluable military knowledge and experience, who, as luck would have it, had ideas of his own and had already formulated a realistic plan to take Praxima.

The creature had found the story of the Admiral intriguing and even felt a tiny amount of what could be called sympathy for him. At least the Admiral would be going home to exact his revenge after all, it thought, even though it was sure to be wildly different than what he'd imagined.

With the Admiral, the creature knew it had added a most potent component to itself and as a result, would now be almost impossible to beat. Not that it was completely without weakness, of course, as it had painfully discovered during the battle with the fleet.

Thankfully, because it had access to military-grade warp drives, it had been able to stop the one person that knew how it could be defeated from warning Navy Command at Praxima, by jamming all subspace comms frequencies to prevent him from sending any messages and finally, by arriving at Praxima space hours before him.

To catch Grex even more off-guard and delay his escape response, the creature had materialized Jera, Brem and Fresi to greet him from the bridge of the _Dawn_ , for extra dramatic effect – which worked beautifully as Grex was part of it now.

Once the fleet was in Praxima space, it arrived at the home world itself quickly, and with the Admiral's passcodes and a little bit of hacking, the system sensor nets and the orbital defenses were disabled and all computer networks in structures and satellites in orbit were infiltrated – not that it was strictly necessary, as no one had expected the fleet home so early; the fleet's arrival caught everyone by complete surprise.

Short-range communication to planetside was jammed and fighters were positioned to each of the orbital stations, hotels and the five Navy shipyards.

Now, with the fleet in orbit high above Praxima, the creature felt a powerful sensation of familiarity stirring in its many thousands of assimilated Praxians.

A word was echoing strongly in its consciousness: _Home_. Even though the creature had never been here before, it felt an almost overwhelming longing and urge to return.

To be reunited with family, loved ones and the familiar once more. It thought about it for a second, then it updated its plans accordingly, concentrated, selected a couple hundred Praxian nodes for this task, and made all other thoughts in these nodes irrelevant.

Then it made transport vessels available. _Go home_ it said and felt its Praxians rushing obediently to the transports in joyous excitement.

Not long afterwards, packed transports were landing near residential areas of several cities on Praxima.

***

Later, Braxa walked through the open garden-gate of his house.

It was a lovely summer's day, the flowers were in full bloom and the garden looked beautiful. He felt the warm heat of the sun on his back and took a deep breath of fresh air.

Next door, the neighbor's children were playing and laughing. He couldn't remember when last he'd been back, how he got here, where he'd been and what he'd been doing.

All he knew was that he'd been away for far, far too long, that he was really glad to be home – to at long last see his wife and daughter again.

Their pet jixxly, Ixxly, came scampering excitedly across the garden to greet him, barking happily and loudly. It went silent as soon as he put out a hand to pat it.

Braxa didn't notice as right then the front door opened, revealing his daughter Anandi and his wife Gita, their faces beaming with happy surprise.

"Daddy!", "Brax!" they exclaimed as they hurriedly came running down the garden path, into his longing, loving and warm embrace.

***

With most of its Praxians successfully reunited with their loved ones, and the first phase of the plan well underway, the creature's time had finally arrived.

Using the Admiral's tactical knowledge, and the strategy of hitting multiple locations hard and fast with the element of surprise, to disorient the enemy and divide and weaken its response; the creature quickly positioned its vessels to effectively surround the globe at different strategic locations. Not wasting any more time, it instructed its vessels to descend.

Once the vessels had breached the atmosphere, it switched them into large wisp mode, then divided some further into hundreds of thousands of smaller wisps, each embedded with the electronic signature of friendly Imperium vessels, which it then dispersed widely, with the goal of covering a much larger landing radius, or area of influence as the Admiral called it.

The remaining vessels in space were ordered to assimilate the stations and satellites in orbit. And following the Admiral's original plan, vessels were dispatched simultaneously to the five colonies as well.

At last the creature was raining down on the world of these Praxians. It quivered with excitement and nervous anticipation as its multitude of wisps drifted down slowly to the surface from a dizzy height.

From up high, the creature could see cities, forests, mountains, patchwork tapestries of fields, rivers cutting through the countryside, and deep blue oceans, sparkling in the sun.

The hunger was growing now, and the creature promised itself that it would unleash it momentarily, and would indulge itself in the abundant plenty freely. Only a few more moments to wait...

The first group of wisps plunged into the ocean and began feasting on massive schools of fish right below. Several more wisps plopped down into the water nearby.

Other groups now landed on farmland, forests and wildlife reserves and started consuming livestock, wildlife, crops, trees and Praxians indiscriminately.

Elsewhere, wisps drifted down onto the busy skyways, enveloping and consuming dozens of vehicles in their wake, and began spreading in all directions on the extensive routes.

Others now landed on and ran along the power network, infiltrating homes and businesses, eventually reaching the power plants themselves; surprising inhabitants, office and power plant workers alike, by zapping them from electrical outlets, conduits and assimilated appliances unexpectedly.

Dozens of wisps landed on the cities across the planet, drifting effortlessly through the busy skyways, leaving their indelible mark on the vehicles as they passed through, to land on the tall skyscrapers, and eventually the bustling throngs of people below.

Military bases, Imperial Government buildings, even the Imperial Palace, with the Emperor himself, along with his harem and entourage, were all consumed.

When it became clear that no strong or effective resistance was being mounted against it, the creature took a momentary reprieve from analysis and intellectual thinking and gave itself over to the hunger.

It began relishing the full glory and splendor of the seemingly endless feast and indulged and gorged on the many hapless billions with reckless abandon.

Then it gorged and gorged and gorged some more.

Elsewhere, the vessels it had dispatched earlier had arrived at the colonies, and similar events were unfolding there.

It was operating now more on instinct than conscious direction; its nodes were operating semi-autonomously with the task of assimilation, and it was letting its creativity run freely.

Here, after being assimilated in their subterranean nests and tunnels, tens of millions of Praxian insects exited the underground and their dark hiding places, through various nooks and crannies, and quickly began spreading in all directions.

These millions swept through houses and streets, in waves of unstoppable crawling and flying swarms, overwhelming everything in their wake.

And here, a pulsating, buzzing black swarm of flying insects subdued an escaping, terrified crowd.

Here, the creature used lightning arcs to quickly do the same. Here, it was a troupe of vervix, quickly maneuvering the intricate jungle of a shopping center, to effectively get to and tag frightened shoppers.

There, it was a massive glowing rolling ball, rolling across a marketplace over screaming crowds. And here, in the guise of several fierce-looking nimars, it was chasing terrified civilians down the street. Here, it covertly took over the staff of an entire office building with no-one being the wiser.

And in the background, in an unseen fifth column advance, after its modest seeds had been planted through its returning Praxians, it was spreading like infectious wildfire, branching out in all directions through the physical, intricate and interconnected social network of the populace, in a rapid campaign of touch.

Each Praxian node and every newly assimilated one, was compelled to quickly and aggressively seek out, travel to and assimilate all known associates, family members and colleagues including any unassimilated individuals and electronic devices, electronic equipment, plants and pet animals it encountered along the way.

And here, during a fierce and ominous electrical storm with heavy torrential rains outside, after a lone wet vervix had managed to gain access to a mega stadium during the intense inter-world finals of a keldo ball game, the creature rippled like the ripple from a newly added stone to a pond, through the five hundred thousand full-capacity crowd.

The creature was gaining more and more unstoppable momentum during each passing moment.

It was feeling elated. As it was riding the giddy and blissful feeding frenzy, it was only marginally aware of the energy and the biological and digital minds that came streaming in, seemingly on a separate thread to its main consciousness.

Brief flashes of recently assimilated memories flashed across its awareness.

A massive blob of light, enveloping more than half of the sprawling metropolis that was Praxima Prime.

A glowing, slowly growing elongated blob, floating in mid-air superimposed on heavy traffic on the skyway.

A futile battle at a military base with large balls of lights, large mechs, laser cannons and explosives – all just exacerbating the situation.

A swarm of insects engulfing someone, seemingly going into his eyes, ears and screaming mouth.

An aerial view of a city, one half a sphere of glowing light, the other in flames. Visuals of chaos and fireballs, as people frantically tried to escape but had fiery accidents instead.

A view now from a high penthouse apartment of five skyscrapers nearby, the lights and buildings of a sprawling metropolis in the background.

The nearby skyscrapers' interiors glowing a radiant white through a multitude of windows. Many arcs of what appeared to be lightning began reaching out like tributaries from the windows into those of the neighboring buildings.

The viewer had leaned forward to get a closer look just as an arc bolted through the window, zapping him right in his face.

A first-person view of a man that had just narrowly dodged a flaming blur of a crashing skycar; the man lay now in dusty rubble, stunned but ok.

A person appeared, offering to help and the man reached up to grab the helping hand.

A view from a woman, who had just opened up the door to find her long ago estranged daughter there in a surprise visit, who as soon as she could, did not hesitate to reach out to quickly touch her mother's arm in an unstoppable movement.

More and more memories flashed across the creature's awareness.

There was an interesting one now, which made the creature half pay attention. It was near a temple, devoted to a long-lost god.

There was a magnificent orb of light nearby and a large and growing crowd of people were gathered around it, possibly in their thousands, all staring at it in astonished reverie.

A prophet had addressed them and with a moving and powerful sermon had declared that the light was their god and savior returned, as promised, bringing an end to thousands of years of suffering and persecution.

The moment of their salvation had finally arrived. As true believers, they had to embrace it willingly and give themselves to the light to realize the promise of eternal life and the dawn of a new age. Shortly afterward, people clamored to enter the light.

A slew of new memories and thoughts now came in; they were filled with religious undertones and themes of self-sacrifice. _Interesting_ , the creature thought.

They were giving themselves as offerings. It liked this new notion of being called a god.

A little later, the prophet joined his flock. The creature realized in surprise, that the prophet had already been assimilated a while back, but was now just demonstrating to the reluctant few that were left, that it was safe to enter – which they did, when the prophet emerged, seemingly unscathed.

In a way, they were right about everlasting life, the creature thought. Their thoughts and memories would indeed live on, in itself, and if all goes well, for eternity. This was by no means an isolated incident and throughout the planet, people of all faiths were flocking to large blobs of light willingly.

And as their god, the creature embraced their sacrifice with open arms and selfishly consumed their energy and redistributed it into its larger self. It was indeed the dawn of a new era.

The creature thought about these _gods_ for a brief moment and wondered where they were. They were intriguing and judging by the stories, legends and scriptures, it knew they were the ultimate prize and once all this was done, it would seek them out.

Find them and eat them. Integrate their godly powers into its own and make them part of its flock.

The creature's attention span was short and in the midst of the feeding frenzy it wasn't long before it lost its focus again to drift and ride the elation of the seemingly endless feeding orgy which went on and on for what felt like blissful eternity.

But about a day or so later, without warning, the main feast came to a sudden and surprisingly abrupt halt.

The constant stream of energy and minds had come to a jarring end. The creature had consumed all there was to consume on Praxima and the colonies. Eaten all that could be eaten.

For a moment, it was left stunned, annoyed and confused about what had happened and why the endless bliss had stopped. It searched a bit, and found a few groups of stray Praxians, some attempting to hide out in the countryside and others underground, and like a child would slurp up the last remnants of delicious juice from an essentially empty glass with a straw, the creature slurped up these as well.

Now, the feeding complete, it eventually took a step back and took stock of itself.

It was more than massive, it was a super-being, it contained the minds and memories of nearly thirty billion individuals and many more countless trillions of other life forms, as well as the collective data and digital knowledge of the entire Imperium.

It existed on Praxima, Kryxo and five other worlds. It was the dominant life form, and there was very little left of anything else.

It could sense some disharmony among some of its new Praxian nodes, seemingly caused by the trauma of recent events.

Realizing what had to be done, it made the effort and compelled the nodes to return to their previous locations, as most of them were now many miles away from where they were initially when it arrived; which had caused some confusion.

Then it reset the memories of all its Praxian nodes to a couple of hours before the invasion and added a few plausible explanations to their memories to explain away some of the damage seen.

It wasn't long before it could feel its new billions of nodes buzzing about their daily business and living their lives as if nothing had happened; for the most part. The metropolises, busy skyways and life in general returned to the appearance of normal throughout the Empire.

There were gaps of course – the many thousands of religious followers that were missing, caused a few questions. But as they had given their energy freely, the creature didn't bother to rematerialize them and for now, whenever it detected that a node missed another, the creature would summarily just delete all memories of the missing person from the questioning node.

And like one would do after receiving an exciting and new gift, it was eager to inspect, explore and play with its new toys. So for a time, it would take a few individuals and observe them, then it would take a random dip in its newly updated collective knowledge to see what was there.

It observed the personal lives of its many billions of subjects and wondered about the frivolousness of it all. It marveled at the advanced creation both in the arts, in technology as well as in the architecture of the sprawling cities of its fascinating Praxians.

Then it played Emperor for a time, ordered some repairs, and in a successful effort to bring the last remaining free Praxians into its fold, gave some instructions to inspect all vessels on the shipping lanes and ordered all of the smaller military fleets out on distant patrol to return to the nearest shipyards, for similar _inspection_. It added a few more thousand souls to itself this way.

Later, it ordered the speedy construction of large new reactors, for use for the Imperial households. And for a time, things were looking fine.

It wasn't long, however, maybe a week or so, before the folly of its ways came back to bite it – hard. In general, the Imperium was a well-oiled machine and had well-stocked food stores.

But these stores did not contain infinite supplies, and were now beginning to run out.

To make matters worse, the creature was suddenly stricken with a massive pang of hunger. There was nothing left to eat – it had eaten it all. The only source of new energy was the leftover trickle that remained after the reactors supplied the cities, which was not nearly enough for what it needed to run its enlarged self, let alone maintain the elaborate show of a fully populated Imperium and its vast cities.

In desperation, it ordered the construction of the new reactors to be fast-tracked, but knew already that it would not be enough.

Somewhere, from deep within the creature's consciousness, Jera's assimilated mind, out of turn, made a comment the creature's subconscious must've thought relevant to allow the intrusion.

"You fucked up", it said.

Indeed, the excitement of finally arriving at Praxima for a magnificent feast had clouded the creature's judgment. It had let go and had stopped thinking.

Aside from eating everything, there never was any plan to do it intelligently, no strategy.

In hindsight, consuming everything in sight had been foolish. It should've limited itself to the Praxians, yet due to desperation and hunger, and an infantile perception of limitlessness abundance, it ate everything – trees, crops, grass, insects, birds, animals, and fish – everything.

Now, it was too large, it was completely unsustainable, its Praxians and other creatures were running out of food, which placed an even larger energy burden on it.

Ironically, because of this _fuck up_ , it was in an even a worse situation than before it arrived at Praxima. And now it needed an even larger supply of food to survive.

It didn't want to let go of its many billions of Praxian nodes, but it knew it had to start trimming and would need to free up its energy use considerably. It started a process of consolidation and review.

Soon it began to cannibalize and redistribute energy; first it started with objects that were assimilated unnecessarily such as some skycars, ships, computers, appliances and so on.

Then it focused on life forms and cannibalized the energy of the entire insect, marine and wildlife populations of all six worlds.

All this freed up a significant chunk of energy. However, its thirty billion individual Praxian nodes were fast working through what was freshly freed up.

As before, the creature was beginning to feel the pinch and started feeling nervous, a bit scared and insecure. It was a far cry from the godly confidence that it had felt only a few days before. It knew that soon, it would have no choice but to start trimming its population of Praxians as well.

It realized that the fauna and flora of Axaria was still left untapped. It promptly materialized another shuttle back on Kryxo, and flew it over to its icy sister moon Axirio and assimilated the small mining base there, afterwards it flew the shuttle to Axaria, where it quickly began converting all life on the planet directly to energy.

Once the process was complete, it spread this massive flood of energy through to its main self on Praxima, leaving nothing but an empty, lifeless and barren planet behind. And after leaving a very small presence on Kryxo, it moved the rest of its energy from there as well.

All this had bought it a little more time, but little else. It knew it was stuck here, that it was doomed. How could it have come so far and have done so much, yet be so screwed? it wondered. It began panicking again.

But then out of the blue, a realization dawned – it had left its greatest resource untapped.

The collective minds and knowledge of the Empire and its billions of subjects was completely at its finger tips, just under the surface. But due to the sheer volume of information, it knew that it would still take some time before it was all available for instant, effortless recall.

However, the information was there and all it had to do was query it and an answer would present itself.

So it asked this great store of knowledge, if there was a better source of energy, a source that promised near infinite if not infinite supply. It was half surprised when a positive answer came back a brief moment later – _Yes, there was._

_What is it? Where is it?_ The creature wanted to know impatiently.

_It is new technology created by Helley Ulxo. Allows you to draw energy from the very fabric of the universe itself, promising near infinite, clean, renewable energy. But it's not here. It's with her and she's not here._

_Then where is she?_ It demanded.

_Don't fret,_ the knowledge replied calmly. _We know where she is. We have a spy on board._

The creature snatched up the frequency for the tracking beacon and what little more information the knowledge had about the technology, such as a few observations and the unique subspace signature created by disturbances caused by the Reactor. Then it immediately rematerialized and dispatched the _Dawn_.

Using its collective scientific knowledge, the creature made adjustments to the shape of the vessel and to its drive, allowing for an almost doubling in speed.

And to provide an additional boost, it fed the _Dawn_ a direct and constant injection of precious, purest energy. To top it off, it filled the vessel with enough energy to spawn fifty fleets if the need ever arose.

Soon, the _Dawn_ was in hot pursuit, racing across the universe at the highest warp. According to calculations, it would catch up to the _Valiant_ in little over a year.

With the prospect of salvation, its confidence was restored to near previous levels and the creature could allow itself to think about the future again. It realized there was no longer any reason to keep all its eggs in one basket.

It had space travel. And like a flower, scattering its seeds on the wind, the creature prepared a few hundred vessels, with semi-autonomous independent control and dispersed them into space in search of new homes and new food.

It also began scanning the heavens for suitable life-sustaining planets and throughout the course of the next few months, it would periodically send out more vessels in the search. It made sure that it kept a lookout for the so-called _gods_ of the Praxians as well; as consuming them and their infinite power could be an alternative solution to its energy problem and could maybe even enable it to heal itself from the hunger permanently.

After long deliberation, it decided to suspend its elaborate Praxian play after all. It planned to go into a semi-dreamlike state of hibernation which would help to conserve its remaining energy and where it could explore and better integrate its large treasure of knowledge and collective experiences of its Imperial civilization.

It would maintain a small group of repurposed brain-washed Praxians on all its planets to run and maintain its reactors, which would feed it while it was sleeping and provide power to the small settlement of the support staff and the shields deployed to protect the cities – especially from the elements.

Once a large supply of food was found or the Reactor or the gods were detected, it would immediately snap out of its dreaming and be able to act.

Hopefully it would have more than enough energy to restore all its many billion Imperial nodes to full function and bring the Imperium out of stasis and back to bustling activity again.

Preparations now completed, it slowly and carefully turned off its Praxian populations, taking care not to damage any property, first on the colonies, then finally on Praxima. Simulated fauna and flora were also turned off, and the energy was redistributed.

Throughout its worlds, the cities fell silent and the worlds became empty, devoid of life and sound, save for the rumbling of the ocean waves, the hum of the city shields, and the lonely wind, howling across empty, dusty plains and through abandoned streets, seemingly longing for the life that existed and flourished here before.

But on several abandoned continents of its worlds, the empty planes were replaced by vast fields of millions of beautiful ebixus flowers that appeared suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere, soaking up the energy of the sun.

The flower was chosen by the creature for its low-energy footprint, simple form, low maintenance, resilience to the elements and its very efficient photosynthesis mechanism; creating another passive source of energy to feed it while it slept.

Now, the creature entered its slumber, and dreamt the lives and knowledge of its countless billions.

It slept lightly, almost with one eye open, and waited. 

#### Chapter 17: The Hill

Frank had been driving like a maniac.

First to the house to pick up Jo with her last duffle-bag and suitcase, then on the way out of town, zigzagging through side-streets and dodging obstacles, like abandoned vehicles and people in the street, popup traffic jams and dogs and cats walking in the road.

As they drove through Jasperville, Mark observed something curious happening on the sidewalks: cats and dogs were emerging from their suburban dwellings and yards, and were flowing into a growing stream of other pets that were running down the sidewalks, and were chasing down any pedestrians they encountered, touching them with their noses or rubbing up against them – tagging them, and then moving on.

The road Frank was taking out of town led them past the bottom, normally more quiet part of the town square, and as the truck drove past, Mark saw the actual large square – the business and transport hub of Jasperville.

There was an imposing sight of a gigantic glowing blob, probably about ten stories high, right in the middle of the square. It was surrounded by police vehicles, their doors open and blue-red emergency lights flashing, and a large crowd. And at the edge of the square at the shop fronts, groups of people were going from one open shop to the next, with one or two members going into the shop, and then the group moving on quickly to the next shop.

Some members could be seen entering busses and cabs parked nearby. Before they passed the square, Mark noticed some individuals breaking away from the main crowd surrounding the blob, and one by one, they began scattering outwards in several directions, seemingly heading back into town.

Frank took another side road, then another, and eventually he managed to get them out of town and onto the little-used old highway road, which would lead them to a small mountain-pass starting at Kent hill. The road would then take them away from the city and into the country, which was hopefully far enough away from any trouble. The trip out of town was largely uneventful, with no large blobs or other obstacles blocking their way. But when they looked back, the sky over the town was filled with drifting blobs.

The road took them to the top of Kent hill. The hill had a nice view of the city in the valley nearby and had a lookout point, where young couples used to go look at the romantic city lights on date nights. It happened to be the same place Frank had sometimes taken Jo on dates many decades ago and where he eventually proposed to her. Just as they got to the hill, a tire burst, forcing them to pull over at the lookout point.

Frank and Mark got out the truck. Frank started changing the tire, while Mark kept guard with Frank's shotgun, keeping a watchful eye on the surroundings and the sky above. They were still quite a distance away from the cabin and needed to get to a place of safety before nightfall, plus, they were far too close to the city for their liking; they needed to hurry. In the truck, Jo was busy tending to Harry's cut with the first-aid kit.

The kids were staring transfixed at the sprawling metropolis beyond the window in the valley below. What was happening seemed like an intense scene straight out of a sci-fi film.

The sky overhead was filled with thousands of glowing orbs of light, which were slowly drifting down unperturbed from high above. Anti-air batteries positioned around the city were fiercely firing continuous streaks of multi-colored heavy anti-air rounds and missiles at the things.

The sky was lit bright by constant explosions and higher up; the orbs were aggressively being attacked by zipping fighter jets, hammering the things relentlessly. The city's emergency sirens were still wailing.

Mark thought about Stacy and prayed that she was ok. He tried calling her again earlier, but couldn't get through. And for a while now he hadn't been able to get a signal on any of their phones.

The city was dotted with a few large orbs, which were obscuring some buildings and parts of the surrounding suburbs. Helicopter gunships were hovering nearby and were attacking the blobs. Fighter jets intermittently zoomed past, dispatching barrages of air-to-surface missiles; explosions hitting the blobs, seemingly without effect.

What looked like large alien mechs emerged from some of the blobs. Fires had broken out in parts of the city, and Mark saw the lights of emergency vehicles, rushing over in response. The distant sounds of gunfire and explosions had drifted up the hill. Tanks and troop carriers could be seen on the main road leading into the city. Miles of vehicles were parked in gridlock on the on-ramp leading to the highway out of the city, which was also jammed full with stationary vehicles.

And on the outskirt of the city, near one of the mega churches, Mark could make out what looked a long queue of tiny ant people seemingly trying to enter a large white blob nearby.

Suddenly the ground rattled with the deep rumbling bass of a huge boom.

"Good God!" Mark exclaimed, "What was that?"

Then, on the far horizon, more or less in the direction of the neighboring city, the answer came in the distant form of a massive, rising mushroom cloud. Shortly afterwards there was another deep boom.

"Oh shit! They're using nukes?" Frank exclaimed in shocked amazement, as he finished changing the tire. "We need to get out of here" he said and hurriedly walked over the driver's side.

"Exactly what I was thinking" said Mark as he limped over to the truck.

But suddenly, a rustling in the bushes nearby caught his attention. Instinct told him to freeze, as right then a monster emerged, leaving behind what looked like glowing ooze on the leaves.

"Everybody, keep quiet and don't move," Mark said softly, not sure if anyone had heard him. Frank froze. The twins looked away from the city and at the monster. Jo looked as well.

Mark had his finger on the trigger of the shotgun. The thing looked frightfully otherworldly, and was like nothing he'd seen before. It was glistening black, about half the height of a man, had eight tentacles, six eyes on funny-looking stalks, and a fierce-looking face, bristling with teeth.

For Mark, it looked like some sort of weird, alien battle octopus. A deep growling sound was emanating from it and it was looking straight at them.

One of the twins let out a whimper.

In a flash, it was on them; first on Mark, who fired a shot but missed the fast-moving-blur, then it was on Frank, then it got inside the truck. The twins and Jo were screaming.

Then abruptly they fell silent.

#### Chapter 18: Earth

It had awoken for short intervals several times during its long slumber.

Each time was because habitable planets were discovered, but unfortunately none were actually inhabited.

Most were just lush wildernesses filled with even more bizarre animal and plant life than that of Kryxo.

But interestingly, on three of the planets, after everything had been consumed, the creature discovered millennia-old ruins of ancient, long-forgotten cities – some far eclipsing even Praxima Prime in size and apparent complexity.

The creature wondered what had happened to these people.

Then it discovered something strange: at similar sites throughout all three planets, separated by millions of parsecs of space, at the ruins of ancient temples, lay the half-broken statues of the apparent exact same gods that groups of Axari and some Praxians had worshipped.

The creature was deeply intrigued and convinced that this new evidence was proof that these so-called gods had actually existed. But who were they and why had they come to these planets... what were they doing there, what happened to them and where were they now? It wondered.

But the silent statues kept their secrets, and the creature was left with plenty of questions but no answers.

Later, its ships left the planets, resumed their search and, flush with renewed energy, the creature returned to its slumber.

For what seemed like forever, it continued dreaming the lives of the Empire and was resting peacefully and content, drifting among the stars, unseen, unchallenged and unthreatened, and free of worries in this blissful dream state.

This went on for what felt like a long, long time.

While it was sleeping, it was subconsciously going through yet another transformation – the integration of the knowledge of the Imperium into its main consciousness was almost complete, and being master of trillions of beings and minds, plus having the ability to assimilate and create almost anything and anyone; as well as the apparent affirmation from the assimilated religious types that it was indeed god; caused it to develop a gigantic, megalomaniac, slightly psychotic, adolescent, godlike personality and godlike self-image.

Then one day, it was rudely yanked out of its dreaming. The _Dawn_ , still in hot pursuit of the _Valiant_ , but gaining ground rapidly, had unexpectedly picked up the residual frequency of the Reactor. It was detected on a habited planet on the route used by the _Valiant_ , which did not stop to investigate.

Further scans revealed some intriguing discoveries – the planet had signs of heavy pollution, but was teeming with life.

It appeared to be ruled by a young, but dominant humanoid species, which had built large cities and had begun a recent small foray into space – it detected its tiny and limited probes and robotics in various locations in the solar system.

Overall, billions of humanoid life forms were detected, but initial analysis revealed the technology of this species to be pre-warp and primitive. However, more detailed scans identified some nuclear weapons and reactors, which contradicted the earlier assumption that this civilization was completely backwards.

But the most bizarre, but very exciting, discovery was the residual frequency of the Reactor. It was faint, indicating recent but limited tests, but it was undoubtedly there.

The creature was awed and perplexed. How could such a primitive civilization, that didn't even have warp drives, let alone a real presence in space, make such an important technological breakthrough, which the Imperium, with all its sophistication and age had only recently made itself?

And what were the chances of discovering the exact same technology on the other side of the galaxy?

The _Dawn_ hung in space near the planet while the creature was analyzing the scans. It wasn't long before the civilization tried to make contact, attempting hails on various frequencies, and sending messages and examples of their language.

The creature ignored them, but with passing interest, analyzed the information they had sent and quickly learned their main language, which was called English. They called this place Earth and themselves Humans and had sent very interesting physiological information about their species. The creature wondered how they tasted.

But it wasn't really interested in all this fuss, and ignored it for the most part, as it set about calculating an approximate location for the Reactor, and began drawing up battle plans. It needed that technology and had to ensure that it would not waste this opportunity by making any mistakes; it kept its bubbling excitement and overconfidence in check; there'd be plenty of time to get excited later, but first things first.

The plan was to distract these _humans_ , by targeting their major cities, in a massive invasion with hundreds of thousands of wisps designed to draw their attention and focus their defense away from its main target, where it would only send a few thousand wisps.

It had to move quickly, lest they discover what it was after and attempted to destroy it; or lest they find a way to somehow hurt the creature itself or defeat it here at this planet. It hoped to get to the technology quickly, assimilate it completely so that it could create replicas back on Praxima as rapidly as possible. That way, the technology would be safe and it would've won – regardless of what happened here on Earth.

But just for further insurance, it would create another _Dawn_ replica here to continue pursuit of the _Valiant_ , which it would dispatch just before the attack.

Using the _Dawn_ , it ejected some energy and spawned another _Dawn_ clone, which it sent after the _Valiant_ again. Then, moving as quickly as possible, it spawned fifty fleet vessels at the site of the first _Dawn_ , mostly destroyers and some carriers. It activated their shields and moved them in quickly toward Earth, leaving the _Dawn_ to provide backup – just in case.

It wasn't long before planetary defense satellites opened fire on the vessels, whose shields then easily deflected the assault. Ground-to-space missiles followed, with the same ineffective results. And like at Praxima, the creature positioned its vessels to strategic locations around the globe, instructed them to descend, switched them into wisp mode, and subdivided these into hundreds of thousands of smaller wisps.

As planned, most of the wisps were positioned over the large cities. Only a few thousand wisps were sent to the target area and other areas as to not appear totally obvious. But unlike what happened at Praxima, as soon as the wisps entered the upper atmosphere, all hell broke loose.

The wisps were assaulted by massive, unrelenting attacks, first by conventional missiles, then nuclear-tipped missiles which, due to their extra strength and unique Earth configuration, with EMP side-effect, knocked out a few hundred thousand wisps, much to the chagrin of the creature, and then further down, more wisps were attacked by fighter jets, missiles and anti-air barrages.

Not liking what the nukes where doing, it spawned a few more fleet vessels from the _Dawn_ , activated their shields which could withstand far worse than nuke attacks, and sent these down to the surface in corporeal form. It spawned more vessels and dispatched these to Earth to replenish the wisp attack.

Overall, the invasion seemed to be going mostly according to plan, with the humans concentrating their defense around the major cities. That's not to say the minor cities were not heavily defended, just slightly less so. One by one, wisps made planet fall, where they began an indiscriminate process of assimilation, growth and establishing footholds.

But the creature had underestimated the ferocity of these humans, and in some cases, where a blob of light had enveloped most of a city; they were perfectly fine with nuking the city to kill it. That started off as a rare event, with nukes being used sparingly and only as a last resort, after conventional weapons failed.

And as more and more blobs of light started dotting the planet, the humans began to use more and more nukes at tremendous collateral cost to themselves.

Once again, they proved themselves worthy adversaries – they had observed the effects of the nukes and had quickly learned the creature's weakness: EMPs.

Next, wisp positions were being bombarded with EMP weapons – to devastating effect. The creature began to feel stress.

But like the Imperial fleet, the humans had a finite supply of EMP weapons and couldn't bomb every square inch of their planet. And as valiant and fierce as their resistance certainly was, they were losing the fight.

They just couldn't stop the endless rain of wisps and while they were fighting for their cities, their planet was being eaten alive and they were being infiltrated left, right and center.

The creature had already swept across the oceans, wildernesses, farmlands and smaller towns, and was gaining significant strength, ground and advantage. Just like on Praxima, it began to assimilate the population using a variety of creative methods, with a special emphasis on finding and disabling any command and control structures and human leaders.

It wasn't long before it encountered Mark, his children and Frank and Jo, there on the hilltop.

And as Mark's knowledge came pouring in, the creature knew instantly that it had finally found what it had been looking for.

It immediately and urgently dispatched creatures to his lab and, finding no resistance there, safely obtained the working prototype of the Reactor. 

#### Chapter 19: Rapture

The situation room was quiet now but it was filled with a cold and sickening sensation of terrible tension and dread, in itself a temporary reprieve from the hectic chaos and intensity that had dominated this room for the last few hours.

Most of the feeds of situation rooms around the world had gone dark, one after the other like cascading dominoes, leading up to the UEDF Command feed only moments ago. The silent flick of the screen as it went black, had felt like the final loud gong of a death knell that reverberated through the room.

The chaotic scene just before the feed cut was still very much fresh: rapidly moving alien creatures attacking surprised officers and military security personnel in violent blurs; the sound of desperate bursts of automatic rifle and small arms fire, and blood curling screams had filled the room. It was over quick.

UEDF HQ was supposed to be hidden and impenetrable; but the aliens had somehow managed to find it and gain access.

Its loss had been a devastating blow.

The admirals and generals all appeared visibly worried, most looked scared shitless. Others were huddled together, having whispered discussions, and a few were still in contact with what remained of their troops, giving out orders like nothing had happened.

The screens that displayed the situation across the world and the state and positions of the world's militaries, were painting a very stark and terrifying picture.

President Anderson held his head in his hands, hiding his face, creating a temporary private space.

"Oh my God" he whispered to himself.

In an effort to latch onto something normal, he tried to remember random normal things, like his coffee yesterday morning, some of the memorable and fierce overt and covert political battles he'd waged, his recent presidential campaign, the speeches, the interviews, the election victory and other trivial stuff. But the memories provided no solace.

They were fleeting, feeling stupid and empty as they flashed briefly and quickly across his awareness, as if in a hurry to run away. Which was exactly what he felt like doing. Except, run away to where? The world as he knew it on the surface only a few hours ago, simply no longer existed. There was just no place left to run to up there.

That was the harsh reality.

What really struck him though was how quickly things had deteriorated from the historic first contact with an extraterrestrial species, to where humanity was now, only a few hours later, standing on the precipice of complete extinction and losing balance.

It was like the tip of a bulldozer's claw hitting a termite mound with voracious force, rudely disturbing the false sense of security and superiority within, causing massive damage and casualties, prompting fierce resistance and response, with millions of termites stinging with their mandibles, fighting for their lives, frantically scurrying about in their complex labyrinth of tunnels and throwing everything at their attacker, only to realize later that their sacrifice had been for nothing, their efforts useless, a joke even, that the enemy was infinitely larger and more powerful than anyone could have possibly imagined and completely, hopelessly out of reach.

For all their advanced accomplishments, painstakingly created over the course of countless generations, the termites found out the hard way that they were ultimately at the bottom-end of the cosmic food chain, destined to be squashed, their legacy erased and their nest flattened, their entire colony annihilated to make way for what later turned out to be a giant, cosmic-sized parking lot.

It was a strangely surreal moment when the second vessel came to a stop near Earth; an understated pivotal event that answered many questions that had plagued humanity for thousands of years, in an instant.

There it was, a massive alien vessel, parked right next to Earth – for real. Telescopes and satellites had it in their sights in full HD glory.

Human minds could understand the shape and form: it looked like an advanced alien ship straight out of popular sci-fi shows. It had a sleek, powerful looking, streamlined shape and it was beautiful. The port windows were clearly visible and through a blue-ish tint that surrounded the ship, that some speculated was a shield, creatures could be seen walking inside; not enough detail to clearly make out features, but they had humanoid shapes.

It was a ground-breaking discovery.

For a while it just parked there, not displaying – at least what humans could determine as any aggressive behavior.

Some – the president included – allowed themselves to hope and dream with wide-eyed excitement of an awesome new future; that this was about to be a 'First Contact' event with a peaceful alien species. However, not taking any chances, every conceivable earth-to-space weapon the UEDF had was aimed at the vessel.

This included secret space based planetary defense systems; designed to protect humanity from extraterrestrial threats, not so much to protect humanity on humanitarian grounds, but more in terms of insurance, to protect the large financial investments and sources of revenue of the ultra-rich groups and governments, as simply put: losing billions upon billions of humans to a stray asteroid would be seriously bad for business.

On the surface the general population was kept ignorant and in the dark and no-one had yet realized what was happening above in space. A decision was made, and humanity made the first move, and the vessel was hailed. The hail tried to express humanity's peaceful intent and contained information about the species and data about its primary languages for the aliens to decipher, hopefully enough to establish a dialogue. But curiously, the vessel remained silent.

Then a few hours later, something strange happened: seemingly out-of-thin-air another ship appeared, apparently an exact copy of the original ship; this left the top government scientists scratching their heads – there was no warp bubble, no signs of a theoretical worm-hole, nothing in the data that could explain it. This copy began to move slowly away from Earth, and in a split second it seemed to stretch then flashed away, going into warp in the general direction of the first object that had flown past Earth. Then another different vessel and another materialized.

More vessels continued appearing until there were fifty new alien ships next to the original. The new ships, possibly consisting of a mix of what was thought could be destroyer, frigate and carrier capital class vessels, now moved towards Earth. The UEDF sent several stern warnings, but the ships kept silent. When they finally came too close, the UEDF had no choice but to open fire.

But the incoming ship's shields simply brushed off everything that was thrown at them, and strangely, they did not return fire. Next, they arrived above the atmosphere unimpeded and spread out and positioned themselves at what appeared to be strategic points around the globe. Everyone panicked; this was dreaded nightmare scenario: invasion. Or was it?

The motivation of the aliens remained elusive. Did humanity just make a fatal mistake, essentially signing their own death warrant, by throwing the first blow, by provoking a peaceful alien species because they could not understand them?

And just as everyone thought things couldn't get any worse or weirder, the vessels inexplicably lost their shape and morphed into what looked like large balls of light. These hung there for a moment, then split into thousands of smaller balls, varying in size; some were the size of small marbles, basketballs, SUVs, others were as large as a three-story house, some were even larger. These then dispersed widely, and began drifting down to the surface. This upped the panic and fear levels to new heights, and was followed by a frantic scramble to initiate full-scale defense.

The world's air-forces and militaries were mobilized and air-defenses were activated, and shortly afterwards the lights were being hammered high in the upper atmosphere by hundreds of thousands of powerful missiles; which were not able to stop them.

Then, desperately, the missiles were followed by nukes.

Next, thousands of lights that survived the nuclear gauntlet were drifting down from the sky, still out-of-range of city defenses.

Possibly picking up on the flashes of explosions high in the upper atmosphere or the subsequent loud booms, Earth's unsuspecting public who had until then carried on with their day-to-day lives, oblivious for the most part to the drama up above, finally noticed the floating lights.

The events that followed next happened very quickly. Images and videos of the lights were uploaded to social media, becoming viral in minutes.

Next, the major news networks throughout the world began covering the strange event. What was it? Some sort of meteor shower, or space debris? It wasn't long before the majority of people noticed how beautifully divine and peaceful the lights appeared.

Then, daringly, some began asking the obvious questions. Could it be the Rapture? Had the Second Coming finally arrived? They had a few moments to ask these questions before complete mayhem broke out.

Some blobs, likely pushed down by strong air currents landed early, mostly undetected ahead of the drifting multitude. The emergency alarms of cities around the world were activated and wailed urgently, causing fear and panic.

Above the cities, the drifting lights were being attacked by the world's air-forces and by constant streaks of surface-to-air missiles and heavy anti-air barrages. It wasn't long before widespread looting and civilian disorder broke out and began spreading like wildfire. The situation was only getting worse as more and more people, through the chaos, were saying, rather convincingly, that the probability was high that Divine Salvation had finally arrived.

It got even worse, when the Pope himself as well as the leaders of several other major religions quickly appeared on international TV stations, through lines of interference likely caused by the arrival of the lights, and began proclaiming the same, and made passionate pleas for the militaries to stop their attacks and air-defense measures.

The Whitehouse and the rest of the world's governments issued emergency broadcasts, warning their citizens of an alien invasion, that it was likely not God arriving, and advised everyone to stay inside and lock their doors. But it was too late, the warnings fell on deaf ears and were ignored, the roads became gridlocked mayhem as civilians and some sinners tried to flee the cities, many of them eventually on foot. But many chose to stay and gathered in large crowds around places of worship and city squares, under a festive atmosphere, to welcome the belated arrival of the Divine at long last and the advent of heaven on earth. The President remembered a scene with the Pope addressing a massive, blitz-gathering of people outside the Vatican.

Preliminary analysis determined that the aliens were focusing the bulk of their so called invasion force on the world's main cities and population centers. They seemed to be impervious to everything humanity had been throwing at them. Now plenty of blobs made landfall, dotting the globe with dots of light, and the world lit up like a Christmas tree, with the world's militaries attempting to engage the lights.

The interference on the civilian radio and airwaves became too severe; the broadcasts became lost in the noise, effectively removing the means of governments to communicate with their citizens. Not that it mattered as civilian order had already been replaced by complete bedlam.

Then the aliens tightened their grip and all contact with earth's satellites were lost, blackening out satellite based communications, military GPS, and satellite surveillance. Undersea cables were affected as well, and then finally, the Internet went dead.

But for a time the UEDF still had a tenuous grip on communication with the troops, using military radio, some microwave frequencies and legacy tech land-lines, which weren't entirely affected by the interference. But things were slipping downhill quickly.

The troops that engaged the enemy reported sightings of weird, swift-moving alien creatures and large mechs emerging from the blobs, and alien troops in some sort of environmental suits, and what looked like lightning striking from the lights. In a matter of minutes, all contact with ground troops, vehicles and aircraft that ventured too close to the lights was lost. It was the same situation on the high seas, with the world losing its most powerful, nuclear armed fleets and carrier groups.

A big loss was the US Pacific carrier group, led by the USS _Santaroga_ , commanded by the President's long-time friend and trusted advisor, Admiral John O'Neil. A master tactician, warrior and leader of men, O'Neil was initially going to command from the situation room, but convinced the President that he'd be of better use by leading in person at sea.

The _Santaroga_ had attempted to engage a large blob, floating in the ocean near the coast of Japan. However, what they failed to realize, until it was too late, was another large blob rising from the deep depths right underneath them. Shortly afterwards, the entire fleet was lost and thousands of sailors were feared dead.

All around the world, humanity was suffering battlefield defeats. What made matters even worse was that the blobs appeared to be growing in size and in less than two hours after landing, began swallowing entire cities.

The President remembered scenes transmitted from airborne drones of massively large blobs of lights beginning to eclipse large parts of New York City, Washington DC, São Paulo, London, Moscow, Tokyo, Beijing, Johannesburg, Sydney, and a dozen other cities around the world.

So far, the conventional military campaign and weapons were proving completely ineffective and impotent against the aliens. But later, some of the preliminary data from the initial nuke blasts came back, and indicated some success against the lights, creating a glimmer of hope. Backs against the wall, humanity's desperate leaders finally made the ultimate decision and began nuking its blob affected cities one by one.

The President would never forget the historic first 'friendly' nukes that detonated above New York City. The subsequent discovery that EMPs could destroy the lights, was a great but empty breakthrough. Some blob locations were bombed, by EMP tipped missiles dispatched from hidden underground silos and, miraculously, these locations became blob free.

What happened next, unnerved those in charge even more as suddenly UEDF Command began receiving hundreds of calls from commanders that were thought dead. They appeared to have gone mad, and feverishly insisted that the UEDF stop their crazy and foolish aggression against "God" One even screamed "Cease fire! Cease fire! Can't you see? It's the Rapture! You idiots! How dare you attack God?"

The EMP bombing continued, and the calls to the UEDF fell silent as quickly as they had started.

But eventually, the limited EMP arsenal was nearing depletion and the rain of lights carried on unabated. It wasn't long before big blobs were sprouting up again among the ashes.

All of this had happened in a matter of hours, creating one hell-of-a hectic ride, that finally culminated in the UEDF Command feed going black.

President Anderson removed his hands from his face and looked across the room. He asked General Henry Stephens, a chain smoker, for a cigarette.

It was as good a time as any to pick up the old habit again, he figured, and a few seconds later he was puffing away, savoring the old familiar taste.

A part of him wanted to try a Winston Churchill move, some sort of "we'll fight them in the streets, never surrender" BS speech. Maybe later. But for now, the wind had been completely knocked out humanity's sails. It was no illusion, the unthinkable had happened: Earth had been properly defeated.

The couple of hundred troops that remained on the surface would not be able to put up an effective resistance. Besides, most of the surface was now shrouded in the fog-of-war, and they had a very limited view of what was going on up there. Shockingly, humanity had lost its grip on its planet. Everyone had to face it: it was game over; for now.

The President took another drag from his smoke. At least there was a plan B. Back in the Cold War days, with the ominous threat of impending nuclear disaster, his predecessors had the remarkable foresight to plan for Armageddon and had constructed a massive underground facility, Redux City, essentially a giant fallout shelter, which would shield and protect a select few hundred thousand people, for what was hoped would be a couple of hundred years, granting them enough time to survive until it was safe to return to the surface again. It had been built deep underground at great expense, as close to the Earth's core as possible.

The city was an amazing feat of engineering and was entirely self-sufficient, very well stocked with supplies and backup equipment, and had large stores of seeds and genetic material to reboot life on the surface if needed. It even contained large farms, complete with fields with crops and grazing land with livestock, and had access to a near infinite supply of underground water and geothermal energy.

A secret tunnel led from the situation room to the entrance about two hours away, far away from the Capitol, and was the only available access point to the city. The tunnel was rigged to cave-in and would be completely destroyed shortly after arrival, leaving no trace and no clue that it once existed. All that was left to do now, was to cut their losses and go.

"Ok, people... I can't believe I'm actually saying this... but... it's time", the President said as he stood up to leave.

Suddenly the door slammed open with a loud bang.

Revealing a man that should be dead and floating in the ocean, seven thousand miles away.

President Anderson thought he was going to have a heart attack. In fact, two generals on the far-side of the table were actually having heart attacks.

Admiral O'Neil stood there, a crazed look on his face.

"Stop what you're doing! It's the Rapture you fools!" he yelled, right as what looked like arcs of lightning came arching out of his chest, hitting everybody in the room simultaneously.

#### Chapter 20: Ascension

It was surprised to not find any humans fiercely defending this Reactor – this most invaluable technology and, suspecting a trap, it had Mark check the device for authenticity and booby traps.

It was all clear.

The creature felt a surge of nervous excitement.

Using brainwashed replicas of Mark, it began constructing slightly modified Reactors in isolated and shielded locations on Praxima and all five colonies in urgent but very careful haste.

Not much later – after it had figured out how to safely siphon energy from the device and after it had made some minor adjustments to increase the device's output – the creature decided to bring the prototype Reactor online on Earth.

Almost immediately, a limitless stream of the purest, most divine energy came surging in, drenching the creature in glorious ecstasy.

It drank with eager intensity, then it grew and grew and grew, and grew some more.

In an instant, Earth was enveloped in a growing sphere of light that transcended its boundaries, rapidly overflowing into space.

#### Chapter 21: Pursuit

_Just because you say it's impossible, doesn't mean that it actually is._

\- Professor Ben Franks, lecture at MIT

Helley was on the bridge with Captain Ihram, punching in commands in a console.

The Imperial vessel had appeared out of nowhere on the peripheral boundary of the long range sensors, and was fast gaining speed.

It must've been following them for months, but had been out of detection range all this time.

But with Helley's recent updates to the sensors, the ship eventually moved into range. How did they find them?

Helley was tasked to search for any hidden pings on all broadcast frequencies; and she eventually uncovered a broadcast that ingeniously tried to disguise itself as background space noise. They then traced the signal and found a hidden tracking beacon, hidden deep within a bulk-plate on the lower level.

Captain Ihram had known since the beginning that there was a strong possibility of a spy or spies on board, but had lacked the means until now to flush them out.

When he was notified of the vessel, the news was kept absolutely secret from the rest of the crew. Only he, the ensign that discovered the vessel on sensors and his trusted first-officer, Herlo, knew of it.

He instructed Herlo to install hidden cameras in critical parts of the ship, in the middle of the night, while most people were asleep. The cameras were to be monitored for attempts at sabotage.

Captain Ihram knew his ship like the back of his hand, and knew of a little known vulnerability she had at a small junction near the intake manifolds. One small blast there and it would be enough to disable the ship, leaving her dead in the water for days – presuming the goal was to capture and not destroy. A hidden camera was placed there as well. The Captain selected a few trusted men and they were then organized into four teams, which enabled them to be deployed to critical areas in seconds. When everything was ready, the Captain sounded the alarm.

Then Helley was brought in to try and detect the possible tracking beacon, which they found and destroyed.

It was a bit late as the enemy vessel was already on their scent. Initial scans revealed that it was likely a modern Imperial Navy vessel. Although it was still a distance away, it was gaining quickly. They needed a drastic speed boost and Helley was tasked to try her best to make the engines go faster. And on the second night after the crew was notified about the vessel, the unexpected spy was captured.

He was caught right in the act as he was about to place a small explosive device near the junction of the intake manifold. He was scanned for internal explosives, and other implanted electronics, and then thrown into the brig until it was decided what to do with him later.

When he was asked why, he just laughed and refused to answer.

It was Elzo.

Helley couldn't believe it, but after she was shown the video of him in the act, she had no choice.

She tried not to think of it as she and the engineering crew had their hands full trying to desperately boost the speed of the old rust-bucket.

At first it seemed that she could not modify the engines while they were still running; in order for her to plug-in her reactor technology, for a cleaner, more efficient source of energy, providing a bit of a boost. In the meantime, she made incremental increases in speed, by optimizing and tweaking the engine configuration wherever she could.

The Captain was also busy; he and Herlo had been placing explosives in key parts of the ship. Should the Imperial vessel ever catch up to them, the _Valiant_ would go out in a big bright flash, and there'd be absolutely nothing left to salvage.

Later, the _Valiant_ blazed past the first planet on their route, and encountered no resistance. The crew didn't give much thought to the civilization there; which appeared to be pre-warp and primitive.

What occupied their attention most was the sombre realization that their pursuers were rapidly gaining on them, travelling at seemingly insane speed, and would, in all likelihood, catch up to them in a matter of hours.

Unfortunately, nothing that they were doing, even with the brilliant Helley assisting, was yielding anything more than a marginal speed increase and attempts to lose their pursuers was proving near impossible.

They continued monitoring their pursuers. Then, totally unexpectedly, and to the complete surprise and shock of the crew, the vessel came to a halt near the planet. The crew had no idea what to make of this development, but saw it as a chance to somehow make a breakthrough and even though they were already exhausted and over-worked, this gave them a much welcomed boost and a new sense of hope.

Shortly afterwards something strange and disturbing happened with the vessel at the planet – a sequence of events that made them immediately realize that something was completely amiss. The vessel that had been pursuing them for these many months clearly wasn't from the Imperium. It was something strange, new and alien.

Out of the blue, another vessel just like it had materialized out of thin air right next to it. This cloned vessel immediately continued the pursuit, causing a sudden surge of fear in the crew.

Then, just as they thought things couldn't get any weirder, another fifty vessels materialized and began what appeared to be an invasion of the planet. The crew was in a complete panic now.

It was during this chaos that Helley finally had a breakthrough. She figured out a way to turbo-boost the warp drive by changing the nature of the warp bubble directly ahead of the _Valiant_ , in real time. In theory – if it didn't destroy them first – it could provide them with an almost three hundred percent increase in speed.

Plus, as an added bonus, it could, as a side effect, mean a completely new type of warp trail which might result in the alien vessel losing their scent, so to speak.

Modifications to the shields would hopefully keep the crew safe from any additional stresses on the hull and from most unforeseen radiation. But, as no one had travelled this fast before, the consequences and risk of doing so was completely unknown. It would take her a few hours to make the modifications. She set to work immediately.

Several hours later, when she was about ninety-five percent complete with her modifications, the _Valiant_ detected the first in a series of massive subspace distortions which appeared to have been caused by a major planet-wide explosion at the planet.

There was some sort of gigantic shockwave rushing towards them and it was travelling too fast to escape it.

The ship's emergency alarms activated.

The warp field became unstable and the _Valiant_ was thrown out into normal space, hurtling uncontrollably around and around.

The crew braced for impact.

But, unexpectedly, when the shockwave hit the ship moments later like a crashing avalanche, there was no force of an impact, no thunderous sound heard, no explosion felt, just a strange tingling on their skin and an electrical sensation in the air.

In an instant, the hull was glowing an incredible, almost heavenly white.

Helley could swear she was hearing the rumbling of godlike laughter.

"I found you, Helley!" boomed a voice that sounded like God.

Instinct made her try to make a run for it.

But then everything filled with a brilliant white light. 

#### Chapter 22: The Portal

It was endless darkness here as it had been since time immemorial.

A door opened from somewhere and a sliver of sharp, bright light pierced the profound blackness.

Now, a small round scanning device, glowing with multi-colored lights, entered and the door shut behind it.

It floated in place for a while, seemingly completely alone in this vast abyss.

Then the door opened again, this time wider, revealing the silhouette of a female figure in enviro suit and the intense bright glare of an overwhelming, all-powerful, white light beyond.

The End.

#### About James T. Crichton

James T. Crichton lives in Africa with his wife. He loves sci-fi and is inspired by all the sci-fi masters and greats. He enjoys reading, history, science, technology and nature and loves spending time in the great African outdoors.

Thank you for reading this book.

If you enjoyed it, please feel free to tell your friends, and leave a review where you purchased it. 
