“The creatures are searching for us and Junior thinks they are using huge numbers of ships to search. They must plan to eliminate the only real enemy they’ve ever had attack them, and it’s just a matter of time until they find us.”
Newton and Einstein looked at Edison and lowered themselves to the floor, showing their apprehension. “What can we do?”
“I’m not sure, Newton. I do know that they can check an entire universe with their scanners. If one of their ships comes here they will immediately see all of the wrecked ships at the old universal jump point, and then see the planets where our species has settled. They will know we’re here.”
Einstein raised himself, “If they see all the wrecked ships, wouldn’t they surmise that we were destroyed?”
Edison thought for a moment, “Yes, they might, but then they will come to the determination that the ones who destroyed us are a larger danger than we were. What would you do if you were in their place?”
The two large spiders looked at each other and Newton said, “I would come in force to see if there was a danger here. I suspect they will also see billions of our children on thousands of planets. They could also decide that we simply junked the ships as being ineffective against them and we were developing new ones to do the job.”
“Can we hide from them?”
“How? Our thoughts would be seen by these creatures. We have no choice but to communicate telepathically. That Gamma ship had the best invisibility screens we possess and they saw right through it.”
Einstein lowered himself, then asked, “How many uninhabited planets have we located in our searches that have a suitable atmosphere and climate?”
Edison punched a key on his terminal and said, “More than two hundred thousand.”
“Send the coordinates of those planets to every member of our race. Have them downloaded to the bracelets and assign a hundred different planets to each of those we occupy. They have to come from the jump limit and we will teleport away before their ships can arrive in orbit. We also need to tell all of our planets to make sure they have fed; it’ll be awhile before food will be available. They will have to chase us to attack us.”
Newton looked at the list of planets and commented, “These planets are scattered in more than fifty thousand galaxies. It will be a long chase.”
Edison turned his head upside down, “I’m sure that they will eventually start leaving ships in orbit around those planets to prevent us from coming back to them.”
Einstein raised himself, “True, but until they make that determination it will buy us time to try and find a way to defeat their technology.”
“I don’t think there is anything that will defeat their ships.”
The other two spiders said nothing, but started transmitting planet coordinates to the leaders of their worlds.
The ship came out of its universal drive and the sensor operator began scanning, “Director. There are huge numbers of the green ships.”
“Show me.” The Director looked at the huge blip on the screen and ordered, “Jump to that location.”
The brown ship disappeared in the silver-blue flash of its star drive and entered normal space six hundred miles from the mass of lifeless green ships. The ships were dead in space and had huge holes in their hulls. The Director saw that something had killed these ships. “Send a small craft over and examine the inside of one of those ships.”
A small craft left and flew through a giant hole in the closest green ship’s hull. “Director, everything has been burned inside this ship. There are millions of the Green Creatures floating around with multiple holes in them.”
“Bring your craft back, now.” The Director looked at the sensor operator, “Are there any of the Green Creatures still alive in this universe?”
The sensor operator ran his scan and said, “Billions of them on thousands of planets.”
The Director didn’t know what to think about this situation. He knew that the Collective would need to figure this out. “As soon as the craft returns, jump back to our home.”
The shuttle entered the brown ship’s bay, the Navigator set the universal drive, and the brown ship disappeared.
“Fleet Command.”
“Go ahead.”
“It happened exactly as we expected; a brown ship has just jumped in and examined the mass of dead Eight Leg ships. It sent a craft to go inside one of them to explore it internally. As soon as the small ship returned, the brown ship jumped using its universal drive.”
“Remain on station, Dream Catcher; looks like the Spiders were right. Did the ship appear on your sensors?”
“Negative; and it appears the skull coating prevented them from being able to see me.”
“Send your recording to us.”
“On its way.”
“Valerie, one of the brown ships has entered our universe and jumped away. They’ll be coming soon.”
“Thanks, Manny. Make sure your family has multiple teleport coordinates.”
“I’ve already set that up. Stay safe, Your Majesty.”
“I don’t know if any of us can do that, Manny.”
“I know.”
Jake walked out into the field with a jug of water and didn’t recognize anyone. Miley sent him to the southwestern field to help with their water detail. Every woman in the southern field had made physical contact with Jake, and quite a few from other fields had started leaving their work to come and touch him. The eldest of the Humans, Jackson Grant, had heard about the good luck man, and though he did not believe the rumors he knew that many did. The simplest solution was to move Jake from field to field to make sure that the work was done. He knew that anything that took the communitie’s attention away from the Keepers was a good thing, so he didn’t begrudge the attention being given to the “Good Luck Man.”
Jackson prided himself on his memory and he just couldn’t remember ever having seen Jake. Of course, with three hundred thousand under his care, there had to be some he missed. However, this Good Luck Man was the only one he had encountered so far that he did not remember. He knew his time was up and that he would probably be the next taken by the Keepers. Perhaps he should go touch the man himself. He sighed and watched as hundreds of women walked over and touched the Good Luck Man.
Jake smiled at the women as they touched his hand, his head, embraced him, kissed him on the cheeks, or took water from him and touched his hand as he handed it to them. Jake wondered how much longer it was going to take to find this initiator that Valerie had talked about. Three weeks had passed and so far nothing. He walked out into the middle of the field and held out his arms. He decided that he might as well be open about what was going on. Thousands moved toward him and Jake smiled thinking, “Now that’s what I’m talking about.” At the end of the day more than 9,000 had touched him; only 90,000 more to go in the two adjoining fields. “Where is she?”
The Keepers starship broke back into normal space and the Collective immediately had its information. Now this was interesting. The Green Creatures were found, but it appeared that they were no longer powerful. Their ships had been destroyed and billions of them killed. “All Quadrants, go over this information and prepare to discuss it in thirty intervals.” There had to be a stronger adversary in that universe. The Collective felt the Values Quadrant flinch. It almost decided to reorganize it, but held off as the feelings disappeared. “Don’t distract me again!” It began processing the scans of that universe and evaluating the risks of attacking. The amount of data being processed was enormous and continued for thirty hours.
“Edison?”
“Yes, Sprig?”
“Have you found any way to damage the ships of these creatures?”
“They are called Keepers by the Human colony being held as slaves. I don’t see any way to penetrate their hulls. The only reason we lost to the Realm was because of the hard organic trees that are grown on Cainth and Glod. Our analysis of their hulls tells us that it will reject any form of energy just like our green hulls, and is as hard as any modern alloy. The organic penetrators that killed our ships will have no effect on them. I’m at a loss as to how they developed that material.”