Log Entry #74: Ancient Enemies

When someone has unwelcomed and unannounced visitors, one of the options is to simply not answer a doorbell and to wait a while until they do the decent thing and leave. It is a tried-and-tested method, even if it leaves you feeling afterwards a bit like a tool for hiding inside your own home.

I wish it was that simple in this case, but it wasn’t, and these visitors were more accustomed to immediately breaking down the door and commence trashing your house, without bothering to announce themselves.

I would be oblivious to their arrival if Ision did not urge me to make a few gravity detectors, just because he was a bit paranoid about the creatures who destroyed his civilization. It turns out his paranoia was entirely justified and fortuitous to our survival. (As they say, it's not paranoia if they're really out to get you.)

This was one of the technologies we retrieved from the Knowledge Vault, utilizing the strange phenomenon where gravity can travel faster than light. Gravity detectors can read the gravitational waves that ships make during the translation into real space, hence enabling the observer to discern the possible danger way before conventional, optical, systems could.

Light is fast, its speed is approximately 186,000 mi/s (300,000 km/s), but when the distances are far enough, that can be rather slow. Hell, some of the stars you see in the sky gave off that light (which hits your retinas), thousands of years ago. And if you manage to spot Andromeda Galaxy, that light has traveled for 2.5 million years before hitting you in the face. (Mind-boggling, isn’t it?)

The best reason I could deduce for their sudden arrival was that there was some sort of a probe in the outer Solar System. Most likely left behind by the first demon ship that had followed the angels’ colony ship to here. Today, almost every country on Earth is using autonomous surveillance systems, so that theory was not so far-fetched. Regardless, how that thing remained functional for thirteen millennia—I have no idea (one thing I knew for a fact was that it was definitely not made in China).

Be that as it may, one thing was for sure, they were here. And following Occam's razor principle, it could be no one else but the demons. OK, there was a minuscule chance that it could’ve been some other alien race visitors that decided to come and say hello, but I wouldn't bet on it.

There was no doubt in my mind that there would be a violent confrontation, and Michael’s request that I should remain in the back to ensure continuity of government—was so much bull—I almost laughed in his face. Yeah, as if I would allow him to have all the fun, while I play the politician and watch from a safe distance. Aside from that, my prediction algorithm showed that his chances of survival were in the lower 40% compared to the higher 80% with me at the helm. He wanted to fly the transporter alone, like some sort of barbarian king. I quickly dissuaded him of such nonsense; this AI will be in the thick of it, kicking ass and taking names.

Although, there was also his strategy in case our plan didn’t work out; we would pull Mikell’s ramming maneuver, and blow the freaking demon scout ship out of the sky. I don’t have to tell you the odds of any of us surviving if it came to that (let say I took the time to draw my last will and testament, just in case. It will be delivered to Ares, with instruction of what to do in case we don’t come back.)

A dozen Transporters with two Hammers each, jerry-rigged on their hulls—that’s what I had to work with. Rather pathetic, if you take into account some of the stuff I've managed to make, a gigantic space station for example. The irony of the timing was that I had already found a few hints in the Knowledge Vault about the weapons that could be used in space warfare. If only I had more time to dig deeper and find the designs of the blasted things. The reality is that we would need to rely on Hammers, which was equivalent to throwing rocks at the enemy. Let us hope these rocks will do the job or else we will be royally screwed.

***

The trip took three days—three days of listening to Al moan how bored he was. I will never admit if anyone asks me, but I may have slipped a few sleeping pills into his rations, to have some peace of mind. It worked, he slept for sixteen hours straight (at least he would be well-rested for the meeting with demons). I think Michael figured it out, but he didn’t say anything.

The time came, and Michael had a little chat with the red demon, in a guise of an angel, before everything turned FUBAR. More for them than for us, although I do not feel very good about losing a dozen transporters to their one scout ship. Not to mention twenty of my Hammers that were disintegrated before they came anywhere close to that scout. Even so, four that were camouflaged—did great (those puppies were accelerated to some extremely impressive speeds).

I had to give kudos to the builders of the demon’s scout ship; its shields and armor were far superior to anything we had, and don’t even start me on their inertial compensator technology. I thought their ship would either fall apart or at least that those demons inside would be turned into nothing more than a paste. The amount of kinetic energy transfer was ridiculous, more like being hit by a tactical nuke. Instead, Michael and the others had to fight a live one when they boarded that ship… unreal.

Now, having a prisoner was great; he would be a nice project to break and find out everything he knows. But I was almost ecstatic that we managed to acquire two dead demons (in different degrees of spoilage), and one dinged demon scout ship. I was like a kid on Christmas when he finds out that Santa had brought him all the gifts on his wish list. OK, so there were a few dents here and there, and a good amount of equipment on it was damaged, but still, this was an El Dorado of discovery. The amount of intel I could find out about our enemy was making my AI-Core tingle all over.

This encounter made one thing obvious—we were not ready for any sort of attack from space. That we managed to win the day was more based on luck and overconfidence of the demons' ship captain. I have no intention to again be the idiot who brought a knife to a gunfight.

Yeah, I am talking about the armament we are disturbingly lacking. Who in hell would have thought we would ever need to arm ourselves to fight freaking aliens? That was not one of the scenarios I would have chosen when we got this whole show on the road. Sure, the Hammers were a nice cop-out, and one solution for all problems. I seriously thought we would not need anything better for a long, long time. Who could have threatened us when we held the higher ground and all our enemies were at the bottom of a gravity well? It is a classic situation when one is waiting in ambush, only to realize there is a new threat behind his back.

First of all, those images from the Knowledge Vault gave me the shivers about the utter ruthlessness the demons showed when they bombarded the angels’ homeworld, Gaina. Just in those few minutes we watched, I calculated that several billion angels had lost their lives. It was ruthlessness on a galactic scale, and not something I would ever wish to befall the Earth. Given recent events, I decided to start several projects, that will ensure our odds would be much higher in future encounters. Additionally, I plan to squeeze that piece of ancient memory (a.k.a. the Knowledge vault) for all the secrets that we could find useful. Focusing on weapon systems and defensive armaments. I don’t want to be caught ever again with my digital pants down.

The ancient angels were not a peaceful and loving kind, as their descendants eventually had become. I’m sure there are more than a few goodies inside that big memory cube that can seriously ruin someone’s day. And by someone, I refer to the demons that will return in far less time than I am comfortable with. I’ll make sure the S.U. and the Earth itself would be ready to give them a warm welcome. So warm, it is going to melt the flesh from their bones. We need to prepare for what is to come.

I hope we will have enough time.