Station Cores Book 5 -- Prologue

Prologue – Origin story

“Coming out of trans-dimensional jump, now! We’re almost home, Captain!”

“Incoming Heliothrope ships! Bringing it up on screen!”

“Brolena, tell the other ships to jump, NOW! We’ll distract them until they’re safe.”

“Defensive maneuvers, let’s give them some ti—”

ALANNA056 heard all of these commands over the Promory’s internal communication system, but she still wasn’t prepared for the explosion that abruptly cut off the voice of Captain Praxa. Not only that, but it interrupted the consciousness conversion of the human mind now inhabiting the Station Core that ALANNA056 was assigned to. The human’s body was already disposed of and the final stages of the assimilation were just beginning, when they were violently flung away into the deep reaches of space at high velocity. 

Fortunately, the majority of the conversion was finished, but over the next millennia, ALANNA found that the former military human named Lance Jacobs was not quite…complete. The instability of the new Station Core resident’s consciousness was only exacerbated by the fact that he was “awake” and “aware” the entire trip through the cosmos without anyone but her to talk to. And, she had to admit, she wasn’t programmed to be the best conversationalist. Instead, her gruff, berating manner that she was forced to use while talking to the progressively insane mind in control minimal control of the Station Core only made the deterioration worse.

If there was any type of good news, however, it was that the explosion did very little damage to the Station Core itself. There were a quite a few scratches and gouges that likely occurred during the Core’s ejection from the exploding ship, but nothing that even remotely affected the operation of its systems. Not that Jacobs could do much, since there was a failsafe inside the Core that prevented it from doing anything other than existing until its momentum was stopped.

The one strange thing, though, was that they weren’t alone. Upon their exit from the exploding Promory, another Station Core managed to adhere to theirs through its inherent shielding, which is automatically activated once the consciousness conversion was complete. It was now inexorably linked to them, which would’ve made the long trip through space less likely that her human companion would go insane. Alas, not even the explosion was enough to wake up either the human mind inside or the other ALANNA guide – ALANNA055, if she was correct in her assumption – meaning they had a silent passenger on their trip.

After 1,132 years, 11 months, 3 days, and approximately 14 minutes (by human standards), the two Station Cores managed to drift through space, luckily missing two stars along the way – which would’ve destroyed them – and crashed into a planet. The sheer speed of their travel and the force of their impact killed most life within 2,000 miles of their touchdown; in addition, the destructive power of their unscheduled landing practically split a continent in half, raising a mountain range that extended for miles in a north and southward direction.

The two Station Cores found themselves deep inside the mountain range, surrounded by tons of rock and molten lava that had erupted from the planet’s mantle. The dormant Station Core that hitched a ride with them ended up near them, but even the massive impact hadn’t destroyed its automatic shield. As for ALANNA’s Core, it had been damaged, but not extensively so; many of the systems were still functional, but almost all knowledge data, facility fabrications, and external sensors had been destroyed. Luckily, one drone had survived the impact and started to process of digging them out.

Over the next two thousand years, the insane consciousness inside the Station Core had only one thought that he couldn’t be distracted from – dig. And so that was what they did, digging a massive cavern with the singular drone that essentially stretched the entire length of the mountain range built by the impacting Cores. It was boring, but ALANNA managed to “sleep” through most of it, though for some reason Lance Jacobs refused to do so.

It was probably a mistake, as the already slightly insane human consciousness became even more so. And when a tunnel leading outside of the giant cavern was dug, and a large creature that Jacobs called a “lizard” crawled down to investigate, he added to his insanity with a big dose of paranoia. The human mind started creating rockfall traps, spike pits, and other primitive defenses; he constantly went on about having to defend his perimeter and that they were all out to get him.

As unlikely as it sounded, he was right – in a way. While life slowly recovered aboveground, more and more beasts started to investigate the increasingly large number of tunnels being created near the surface, including more of the large lizards and numerous hairy four-legged creatures. ALANNA doubted they were to harm them – nor could they really hope to, as the Core’s shell was too strong for them to penetrate – but the human killed every single one and converted them inside their internal Molecular Converter.

The only facilities that they could produce – the plans of which weren’t damaged during their earlier impact – was the Bioconversion Lab and Biological Recombinator; once he started hilling and converting the creatures exploring his cavern into Bio Mass, he started creating horrific recombinations.

They were all thoroughly unsuccessful. It wasn’t until he produced an upgraded Bioconversion Lab and started to make larger creatures that he finally succeeded in making a Combat Unit that combined what he called a “bear” and a “monkey” into a monstrosity twenty feet tall. With the presence of the new Combat Unit at his figurative side, he was able to utterly destroy anything that came inside his “base” – which included the entire cavern hundreds of miles long.

The lizards that frequented the tunnels leading down to the cavern were found to be a favorite snack of his – what Jacobs called his new Combat Unit – “Badass Motherfuckers”, or BMs for short. When he found this out, he used his drone to create vast breeding rooms where the quickly spawning lizards (which weren’t actual Combat Units, but for some reason liked to associate with the Station Core’s new Unit) could double their population every month – and they were perfectly ok with cannibalism for sustenance. With a viable food supply of lizards for his BMs, he started to make more and more of the Combat Units for some paranoid reason.

Over the centuries, Jacobs never ventured out of the cavern; he preferred to keep his army and defenses in place and didn’t see a reason to leave. And as insane and paranoid as he was, he hadn’t listened to her for more than a few brief moments of lucidity, which made her suggestions of ways to potentially leave the planet have very little result. She didn’t push him too hard, however, because he frequently threatened to “kill” her and take her offline; that, and any knowledge that they used to have to build any type of space-worthy craft was lost a long time ago.

Eventually, not satisfied with his current humongous army of defenders, Jacobs created an even larger Bioconversion Lab and created an unbelievably large “slug” that had the defense and attack capability to destroy almost anything – and would barely fit inside the cavern. They liked to eat BMs for food, which made the whole process easier, at least; hundreds of the new “Attack Slugs” were created and stationed inside the cavern in certain intervals. 

But the Station Core’s paranoia and unhinged mind knew no bounds; using almost all of his saved resources, he created a, impossibly large Bio Lab that could easily fit six of the Attack Slugs inside. With that, he created one final Combat Unit that was so large it barely fit inside the cavern. After its creation, it managed to break the Lab; although it was entirely an accident, Jacobs considered the destruction of his giant Bio Lab to be an attack – and was convinced that his Combat Units were leading a mutiny against him.

Nothing ALANNA could say to him could convince him that it was literally impossible for them to go against his orders; he took that as another personal attack and looked for a way to defend himself. Through almost three thousand years, the other Station Core had been sitting relatively inert and dormant behind its auto-shield; when the insane Lance Jacobs saw that it was safe and protected – and that nothing seemed like it could harm it – he wanted it for himself.

Jacobs had locked her out of most of his systems, other than the capability of handling Combat Units if the need arose; as a result, she wasn’t precisely sure what he did in trying to obtain the shield of the other Core, but she experienced the feeling of pain for the first time. A massive explosion centered on the two cores that was probably larger than the one that destroyed the Promory rocked the cavern, killing thousands of lizards and Combat Units in the process.

Her Station Core was heavily damaged; all but the heavily protected Zero-point energy reactor had been essentially destroyed, the human consciousness included. As for ALANNA, her connection to the Core had been severed, leaving her adrift and in risk of complete destruction herself. Of the other Station Core, there was no sign of it other than a hole in the ceiling of the cavern; she supposed it had been launched so powerfully upwards that it was likely floating through space again, likely forever – or at least until it got sucked into a star.

There was only one hope for her survival that she could think of: using the slowly breaking nanites to infect and control a new host. Taking control of a Combat Unit was out of the question because of the presence of nanites already there – which would destroy her if she tried to take over. The only option she had was to infect one of the lizards; she quickly did that, but her presence inside of it for some reason caused it to deteriorate so fast she had to change bodies every couple of minutes.

Her “salvation” came in the form of a prey animal that was chased down their cavern tunnels. Her nanites invaded the “deer” and took over; luckily, the presence of her nanites didn’t cause it to deteriorate like the lizards. Strangely, though, the body started to mutate; there was an elongation of its legs and neck, new joints that caused pain from nearly every action, and – worst of all – its primitive prey mind started to change her own awareness.

It didn’t take long before the majority of who ALANNA actually was and what her purpose was, was lost in her assimilation of her new body. She had thoughts of trying to find a new body at first, but she was worried that her nanites had degraded so far that transferring to something else might kill her completely. Eventually, all thoughts of finding another host were lost as they only thing on her mind was revenge; she wanted to destroy the two-legged creatures that had killed the deer’s – hers – family aboveground. Over time, her main purpose of existing merged with her host’s, until she was convinced that the two-legs were actually the Heliothropes that she was instructed to help destroy and protect The Collective.

The reactor was still operational inside her former Station Core, and she still had nominal control over the Combat Units. Her range was very limited, and they were essentially on their own once they left within 100 feet of her new body, but they were used to taking orders and couldn’t think very effectively when outside of her influence – but they were certainly effective. Over time, she had them procreate and expand their numbers, until they were ready to mount a major assault on the two-legs to the east.

The massive creature that had ended up causing her Station Core’s explosion couldn’t leave the cavern because of its size; instead, ALANNA kept it asleep and only woke it up every decade to eat an Attack Slug or two. Therefore, it didn’t join in the assault, but it wasn’t needed – her forces were more than enough to completely destroy the Heliothrope/two-legs homes and smash them to pieces, leaving nothing living anywhere on that side of the mountains. Or, at least, that was the information she got when she looked at some of their visual recordings – which was getting harder and harder to do as she lost herself in her new body.

She built her forces up again after the attack, because she had lost a small portion of her army due to some significant resistance that the two-legs had shown. When she was ready to attack the opposite side of the mountains, she spent an extra-long time ensuring that she had at least half as many as the previous assault – and she was going to go slower to ensure that she wasn’t caught by surprise. When she was sure she had more than enough to destroy every trace of the vile two-legs, she sent out her full forces to wipe them out.

Her army’s first foray into the land on the opposite side of the mountains hadn’t been the best result, but it appeared as if most of the resistance – who had strangely been waiting for her forces – had been wiped out; when her lead BM reported the information to her through a series of grunts and growls, she knew that now was the time to strike while they weren’t prepared for her to assault from all directions.

And once they were all destroyed, she was planning on having them venture farther away, hunting down every single Heliothrope on the planet.