Unholy Trinity Read online

Immediately the Yam Yam tree and my master disappeared, and we seemed to be in a dark wood, outside a treehouse. We waited there for some time, listening to the eerie silence in the wood and seeing the fragile house gently sway by a gentle breeze in the trees. Strangely, the house seemed so fragile, it seemed that a gust of wind would destroy it. Susan carefully knocked on the door, and a creature, similar to a door mouse with wide eyes opened the door and silently looked at us.

  “Oh, it’s you is it?” it said, and walked back in and sat in a strange chair which seem to be hanging upside down, but strangely righted itself as he sat in it. We both walked inside uninvited, and there were paintings and furniture fitted into the room which seemed to be too big for it, but still managed to fit in. The wallpaper was grass, seemingly to be wavering in a non-existence wind, and the carpet; or at least they presumed it was a carpet was covered in red toadstools.

  We sat and looked at the strange phenomenon and waited. Nothing happened. It just looked at us through watery eyes and said nothing.

  “We have come to ask for your help.” I started, but he interrupted with;

  “I bet you have! Messing around with my work, and proving what an idiot I’ve been. I bet everyone is laughing about me. Having a good laugh at my expense! Ooh, the stupid programme actuality thought that infinity existed! What a fool!!” It shouted, and I began to get a sense of the problem facing us. Susan came to the rescue.

  “No one is laughing at you sir! We might presume in our development that infinity is a lie, and we might even be able to prove it with some of our technology, but the truth is that we are an infinitesimal small part of the real reality, and mathematics are the purest form of expression, it is linked to the overall process of diverse life which is beyond our ken, and only when we achieve a thousand rebirths and see the true diversity of life will we realise that there is no end, the journey is everything and endless. In fact how could it possibly end!” she finished, and I was so impressed with her!”

  “Oh you’re good! I’ve come across beings like you before, silver tongued and with all the answers. Rational infinity they argued. Well I believed them then, but I’ve made my decision. I have officially retired from the post. I’m happy here, and want nothing more to do with the job!”

  Susan looked at me and continued with;

  “If that is the case, who is now responsible for looking after it?”

  “No one, I’ve abandoned my post. I’ve had enough. You can have the job if you want?!” it asked, looking more carefully at Susan, as if sensing a likely replacement was facing him.

  “Right, well perhaps you can tell me what is required of me to take over from you?”

  It looked at her carefully - almost craftily and responded;

  “You won’t want to do it when you hear. You will be called to the construct if there are any problems or you have any visitors like yourselves, but importantly, once you achieve your rebirth, you must leave at least part of yourself here to continue looking after it, unless you can persuade someone else to take over your role.” it said, sadness leaking out of its eyes. It was obvious that it didn’t expect this to go well once it had told her the news.

  Susan looked at me and smiled, and my love for her welled up inside of me.

  “I accept.” she said, and the creature looked on with disbelief coming out of every pore.

  “Did you hear me, part of you must stay here forever!”

  “Oh I heard you, how do I control the construct?”

  A smile grew on its face, and it shouted;

  “Yippee! Controlling it simple! It creates its own equation designed around your requirements, but it’s no good humanity trying to distance itself from the brain! I know what’s been going on. As long as you obey these rules, you will have control over the construct. Are you sure?” it added, almost pleading, to make absolutely sure.

  “Yes, I’m sure!”

  It opened a cupboard and took out a big bunch of keys and handed them to her. We immediately found ourselves in something of a control room with dials, a table and two chairs, and Susan said to the equipment;

  “Please restore validity to the programme, repair the damage and enshrine in the equation the truth of infinity.”

  I looked at her, and she smiled and said the tears in reality had all been repaired. I couldn’t believe it. It then dawned on me that I should plan for the future with her in terms of defeating the Darknet.

  She looked at me and said;

  “I know what you’re going to ask, and the truth is father, I don’t know. I have no idea how long it will take to develop the programme before I can become fully conscious there. What I do know is that there are almost three thousand civilisations in this multiverse, and when the Mother realises you are not rushing to rescue me, she shall return out of vengeance and make it a cyborg hell before capturing you and joining with you to force her version of the rebirth. Your priority now is ensuring all civilisations are contacted and added to the alliance, no matter how strange or backward they are. Exploring every multiverse in the reality construct to collect the resonator stones is impossible until you defeat the Darknet first. I suggest to you father that it will take me decades to fully have control inside the Darknet, so you should concentrate on taking full control of your multiverse, and responding to the inevitable second Darknet war in this multiverse, and only when it is fully secure, and I have full programme status in the Darknet can I fully exist there, and our plans for the rebirth can really develop. You must leave now, remember I love you.” and then I was back in the Resonance Cave, and I had to reanimate myself which was difficult, and I realised that being so long out of my corporal body here was probably quite a dangerous thing to do. I would never die, but losing my corporal presence in this reality would be hugely annoying and upsetting.

  Suddenly, Emily was in my arms, and I could feel her tears falling on my face.

  “I thought I’d lost you!” she frantically whispered.

  Chapter Ten - The Big Plan

  I couldn’t remember the last time all of the Hand had been together; albeit without of course Susan’s presence. Two years had gone by, and each of us had initiated a further member whom we absolutely trusted into the Hand, which meant we were not as stretched as we once were.

  We had been reacting to information Susan had been sending us regarding locations of further civilisations which existed in our multiverse, and so far we had added a further three hundred to the alliance, meaning now it was a planetary alliance of 389 planets. 198 of these were advanced civilisations which were continually adding to the alliance’s military forces and pool of shared technology. What we had now was a number of decisions to make. First on the agenda was whether we took civilisations who were centuries behind us in their development, and risked changing their natural development in the name of supporting the alliance and our freedom from the dark forces of tyranny.

  There were impassioned speeches from my Emily and Yvonne against influencing their development unnaturally, and also similar from Dodds and Mad Dog for influencing their development to bolster the alliance forces. In the end I decided that although it was unfortunate that we were forcing civilisations to develop beyond their natural development, we really couldn’t afford to wait for them to catch up too long, and if they could not defend themselves, we didn’t have the resources to spare. The decision wasn’t made, but generally the alliance council followed our recommendations; particularly if it was me directly communicating the decision.

  The next issue was how far should we extend ourselves? Should we search and find all 3000 plus civilisations and hope the Darknet didn’t attack in the meantime? My thoughts were that we couldn’t afford that time. I wasn’t suggesting we not occupy all of the multiverse, but spending time in contacting and discussing treaties was time-consuming. With the 198 realities which were providing military and technology resources, this represented a considerable chunk of our multiverse, with over 36000 battleships, 76000 cruisers and over a millio
n fighters and sixteen million ground forces, I felt that twelve main outposts should be maintained at all times, with a third of our forces deployed in these outposts permanently, with five main fleets been available at positions which can arrive at the outposts within a three day period using our newest version of FTLS. The remainder of our forces to be left in orbit around Oie as a large reserve force of over 6000 battleships, 13000 cruisers and 97000 fighters. I suggested a rota system which kept crews fresh, and a series of defensive arrays linking the furthest of the civilisations with Oie.

  The others agreed it was an ambitious plan, and it also bore in mind that constant reinforcements would be arriving as the civilisations who had to catch up with technology, as well from a sheer manufacturing and replication perspective would eventually add to our forces, meaning we could at least double the size of our military potential within a year.

  The Hand agreed, and when it came to the alliance council, and particularly after I personally delivered it, they agreed as well, and we had our big plan. The other thing they did was make me overall commander of the alliance fleets, with the title Lord General Melville, and every one of the original Hand members generals, with responsibilities ranging from Outpost commanders to liaison chiefs. It seemed they had calculated our strengths well, and we said our goodbyes as once again we were being flung to all corners of the multiverse in something far bigger than the Hand had ever been involved in before. This was now over a huge canvas, with trillions of people’s lives in our hands. It dawned on me the true scale of this undertaking, and the old familiar resolve took hold and I became determined to make this work.

  ∆∆∆

  Just eleven months later, Jnago stood in front of the Huipop tree in the dense forests of GiGre and laughed at the Screep climbing up the tall tree while trying to carry its huge collection of huip fruit. It didn’t seem to realise that it couldn’t possibly climb any higher while keeping all the fruit. Jnago rolled around the forest floor when all the fruit came tumbling down all around him, and the Screep jumped up and down in anger. Jnago scooped up all the fruit and ran along his well-trodden path through the forest to his home to show his Mother. The pink sky seemed tinged with gold as the sunset seemed to be chasing him and he felt exhilarated when he reached home and it was still light.

  He walked in to the rear of the house, underneath the cool shade of a Jabber tree, shouting his Mother’s name and stopped in his tracks. The fruit fell from hands and he screamed. He died three seconds later, as many of the inhabitants had already. A dark energy enveloped the green planet and killed all life immediately it touched them. Above the ground troops, hundreds of thousands of Darknet ships filled the sky, and Lord Grovolk looked at the spreading blackness with a sense of supreme satisfaction. He was pleased Melville hadn’t jumped to the bait, and he wanted to creep slowly into his perception, meaning when Melville realised what had happened, it would be all out war, and time would then begin to run out for Melville.

  ∆∆∆

  Susan’s programme began to pick up signs that there was considerable military movement going on. She knew well enough not to become too inquisitive, but as she monitored the movements and added up what was involved, including Lord Grovolk leading the armada himself, it became clear to Susan that she had to warn Melville. A Darknet invasion of the multiverse was starting, and he needed to be told!

  Part Three - War!

  Chapter Eleven - A Bloody Nose

  The Multiverse had been split up into four quadrants which obviously covered huge areas. Within three quadrants there were three outposts each, and each one was no more than three days travelling time from each other and most of the planets using the latest FTLS drive. Not all outposts had been set up yet when we received the news from Susan that there probably was taking place an invasion from the Darknet, led by a powerful being created by the Darknet mother, who had been a programme and was called Lord Grovolk. She told us that this was an immensely powerful entity, but had also huge experience in battle command. Her final communique suggested a force of at least 300000 capital ships had been employed,

  The trick was, knowing exactly where they were. We knew were they weren’t, but there were several areas which were not so explored, and we had sent three expeditionary forces forward to establish where the enemy was located, and hopefully establish some indication of numbers. I knew these were extremely dangerous missions, and yet I could only afford two divisions as some of the defence arrays were not built yet.

  ∆∆∆

  Admiral Chipchak nervously surveyed the scanners. They were habitually checking every uncharted planet in their allotted sector. Their force was thirteen battleships, twenty seven super-cruisers full of 56013 thought fighters. It was enough to defend them from a skirmish, or enough for them to survive sufficiently to at least get an accurate thought message to Melville of the enemy’s location and size.

  They were currently in the Daga 7 system and investigating an energy anomaly which had alerted the ship’s computers. He didn’t know why he looked at the main viewing screen, but one second there were the predictable planets where they should be orbiting the sun, the next second the sky was full of Darknet ships!

  He sounded the general alert and before they could be destroyed, he sent a thought message to Melville. Transrupter beams ripped through the shields and shortly after the hull. He managed to send a general order to withdraw via their FTLS drive to Outpost Five, before the hull exploded and he was sucked out into the silent vacuum of space along with his crew. 21 capital ships returned with just over 23000 thought fighters to the relative safety of the outpost, and the alliance had received its first bloody nose of the Darknet War.

  ∆∆∆

  Melville was in the command operations room when the report came, and the beauty of thought messages was the detail in them. Admiral Chipchak‘s thought message graphically transferred the correct image that a huge force had entered their multiverse, and he immediate sent three fleets into quadrant two to just establish the extend of the invasion. Each fleet had a communications array which would appear to simply be a piece of rock debris, but would give him and the fleet continually accurate readings of the topography of the fleet and its locations and directions. I didn’t like to be in the dark, and in spite of the huge size of the enemy armada, valid, current information was possibly more important than number superiority.

  In the meanwhile, every available ships was being sent to achieve a secure and deep defensive perimeter which achieved something of a fence around if not all space, then all the space that mattered in terms of protecting their alliance worlds and potential alliance partners

  Once we had an accurate picture of exactly where the Darknet Fleet was, we would have a strongly defensive line of defence, which could be supported in six hours by reserve fleets behind the front lines, and were also supported by very powerful defensive arrays which at the point shortly before their destruction would replicate themselves again, meaning it required huge resources to destroy these arrays, while being attacked by our other defensive alliance forces. It meant giving up on over three hundred civilisations, and leaving them to their fate of destruction or a cyborg hell, but it also meant any attempt at attacking any of the rest of the multiverse would meet incredibly stiff opposition, and rob them immediately of their only advantage, being the disparity between their enormous armada and our steadily increasing forces as the civilisations catching up with technology provided a very valuable lifeline. There was general agreement across the alliance that this was the right strategy, and as soon as the communications array had been deployed, which also had the power of self-replication, the sooner they could begin in provoking the enemy fleet into attacking if they held back.

  ∆∆∆

  Admiral King made sure that their formation was as random as possible, with as a high degree of dampening of energy signals being employed as much as possible. He had heard the reports of the other two fleets that their communications array had been dep
loyed, so his was the only one left, and crucial if the array was to work at all. He had decided to replicate the array already, and had one in tow with the fleet, and he had captured a Tellurian pirate freighter ship and sent that on a circuitous route to the same location with the replica on tow, just in case the fleet was discovered and destroyed. He felt fortunate enough to have encountered the freighter, and felt perfectly in his rights to have compounded the vessel as it was in Alliance space, and had no papers upon request to be there. He had had severe reservations since docking at the last deep space station where reports of a large enemy fleet had been reported. He had left one of his best captains in charge with a skeleton crew, and had sent a thought message to general Dodds to the effect of sharing his plans.

  He had wished them luck, but somehow today he didn’t feel lucky.

  This was borne out when just over an hour later, the viewing screen suddenly became full of thousands of Darknet enemy ships. He sent his thoughts to Dodds and confirmed that they would fight to the death, to give the impression this was the only communications array in existence, and once it was comprehensively destroyed, as it was only when it was fully functioning that it had the ability to replicate itself, would they try to save the remnants of the fleet.

  It was a brave decision because with 18 battleships and 23 cruisers, supported by just over 18000 thought fighters, he would be risking over 36000 of his fleet’s crew to give the impression to the enemy that this was the only array being carried, therefore once they had destroyed it, it would seem to the enemy that the attempt at creating a working communications array had failed.

  ∆∆∆

  Dodds received the communication and passed it on to Melville immediately. He expressed his gratitude to the commander for being so resourceful, and ordered Dodds to ensure the safety of any ships returning from this apparently failed mission. Both Dodds and Melville agreed that the hopes of the entire alliance now were in the hands of a dodgy pirate freighter and a handful of alliance officers. It was a brilliant move on behalf of the admiral in charge, and meant that there was still hope that this would work, but it would be a long night of apprehension before they knew the outcome and they both prayed for the success of the freighter captain.