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  As they came in, an override code was sent from the mothership to the guardian on Mars via the interstellar array. A link from the mothership’s Master Guardian to the Mars guardian was quickly established. Data was uplinked and analyzed. The recurring fake transmitter program that Donnchadh had implanted in the guardian was quickly discovered and disabled.

  Since the only one who could have programming access to the Master Guardian was the Airlia High Commissioner on Earth, the program had to have been put in place by that individual. The only reason such a program would be used would be to fool the Airlia who worked for the High Commissioner into believing contact with the empire was being maintained, when in reality the High Commissioner had no desire to remain in contact with the empire.

  Such an act was treason. There was no other explanation.

  The mothership’s commander, Artad, came to that decision within minutes of examining the data. He quickly issued orders.

  Once inside Pluto’s orbit, the nine Talons peeled off the larger craft, deploying around the nose of the mothership in a protective formation as it headed inward toward the sun.

  On Earth alarms were relayed to the Master Guardian, then to a subordinate guardian deep underneath the palace tower. Reacting to the alarms, the two Airlia on duty quickly awakened the High Commissioner Aspasia from the deep sleep. He issued orders for Excalibur to be removed from the Master Guardian safekeeping and to be brought to him.

  Sword in hand, Aspasia went to a control room shaped as a perfect sphere, centered below the tall tower. As soon as he entered, the door shut behind him, sealing the room. He went to a crystal in the very center of the room, into which he slid the sword. The walls of the sphere came alive with the view from the very top of the temple spire.

  Aspasia placed his hands on the pommel of the sword and pressed. The view swiftly changed from the area visible from the top of the spire to space, linking with other sensors. He immediately picked up the incoming mothership and the Talons. He knew what the deployment of the warships meant—there was to be no bargaining. Whoever was in command of the mothership meant to shoot first and discuss things later.

  But discuss what?

  Aspasia quickly accessed the link to his Master Guardian. He found the probe from the incoming mothership and what had been accessed. He was momentarily stunned. Who had reprogrammed the Master? He realized his outpost had been out of contact with the empire for five hundred years. Little wonder the Talons were deployed. He had spent over 99 percent of the past five hundred years in deep sleep, so it seemed like only a week or so had passed.

  A glowing red dot appeared on the wall of the chamber directly in front of him. It extended upward and downward into a red line, which then expanded into the shape of an Airlia. When Aspasia saw who it was, he knew there was another factor at play behind the rapid deployment of the Talons before an inquiry had been made.

  “Artad,” Aspasia said.

  “It has been a long time, High Commissioner Aspasia,” Artad responded. “And you will refer to me by my proper title: Admiral Artad.”

  “The lack of communication was not—” Aspasia began, but the other cut him off.

  “You are High Commissioner. You have only one duty and that is to prepare the seedlings on this planet for combat to support the empire. My scan indicates you are still on Phase One even though the order for Phase Two was issued long enough ago for it to be well under way.”

  “I never received—” Aspasia once more tried to speak, but again he was interrupted.

  “You are High Commissioner. All is your responsibility. You have failed to report in far beyond the maximum period allowed. It was believed the only thing that could cause such an occurrence was an attack by the Swarm. My ship was diverted from an important mission to see if our seeding process had been compromised here by the Swarm. I arrive only to find deception and failure.”

  Aspasia said nothing for several moments. Artad and he had served together a very long time ago, when Artad had been a lowly first lieutenant. They had always hated each other. And then there was the issue of Harrah. She had been Artad’s mate-to-be, also an officer on the same ship they had all been assigned to. Had been. She was here now on this forsaken outpost with Aspasia. Because of her choice between the two them.

  “Harrah sleeps,” Aspasia finally said. “ Admiral,” he added.

  “I care not,” Artad said, such a blatant lie that Aspasia wanted to laugh out loud.

  “You dare not use the mothership’s weapons, Admiral. You will bring the Swarm here.”

  “I do what I wish,” Artad replied.

  “So be it,” Aspasia said. The image of Artad disappeared from the sphere’s wall and he could see the incoming ships once more. Aspasia had to wonder what kind of power play was going on. Even though it had been millennia since he had last seen Artad, he knew little had probably changed. The seed planets had been a controversial plan, as the best Airlia scientists had speculated that the Swarm was a form of weapon designed genetically by another species. A weapon that had apparently turned against its master and now rampaged through the universe on its own. There were those who wondered if they were not repeating the mistake of whatever race had invented the Swarm. Because of that fear, limits had been deliberately built into the humans—limits that could be removed by the Grail when needed.

  Artad had supported the human seed program. Aspasia had opposed it. When the powers that be on the High Council had swung in favor of the program, Artad’s star had risen as Aspasia’s had dimmed. In the process Aspasia been assigned to be High Commissioner for one of the remote seed worlds. He’d had no doubt Artad was behind the assignment,although he knew the other had not suspected that Harrah would go with Aspasia.

  Wheels within wheels, Aspasia thought as he watched Artad’s ship draw closer. His own mothership was secreted underwater not far from the island. His Talons were deployed, most on Mars, hidden in an underground cavern not far from the transmitter site. Aspasia made contact through the sword and crystal with his Master Guardian and mentally issued orders.

  Donnchadh woke to Gwalcmai’s hand on her shoulder, gently rocking her. “It begins.”

  Donnchadh sat up, the sleep fleeing from her brain. “What has happened?”

  “A shield wall has gone up around the center island,” Gwalcmai said. “All who were inside are trapped there and those outside cannot enter.”

  “They would not put the shield up to protect the inner circle from humans, not at the level these people have attained,” Donnchadh said, knowing as she said it that Gwalcmai had already figured that out.

  Her partner pointed up. “Something is coming.”

  Donnchadh got to her feet. “The question is: More Airlia or Swarm?”

  “Hard to say which would be worse,” Gwalcmai said.

  “If it’s the Ancient Enemy,” Donnchadh said, remembering her briefing by the scientists who had accessed the Master Guardian’s database on her home world, “then none of what we have done will matter.”

  “Then let it be Airlia,” Gwalcmai said, with his never-ending optimism. “Whoever it may be, they are not coming in peace, or the shield would not have been raised.”

  Donnchadh shrugged on her cloak and stuck the daggers in her belt. “Come.”

  They went out into the early morning mist. There were people in the streets, an air of anxiety palpable as they speculated what the change meant. None had ever seen an Airlia shield wall or knew what it was. Donnchadh had watched thousands die trying to breach one. It allowed nothing with energy, whether living or mechanical, to pass through. On her home world they had eventually been forced to dig a tunnel far underneath the Airlia base, at the cost of many lives and years. They’d then smuggled in nuclear weapons and at the designated time detonated them. At that point the shield wall had worked against the Airlia, containing the blast so that everything inside was obliterated.

  In an attempt to gather more information, Donnchadh and Gwalcmai made their w
ay inward, toward the center island. When they reached the last ring island and the rising sun had burned off enough fog, they saw the shield wall. It glittered in the early-morning light, a perfect round cone covering the entire center island and the palace. Its bottom edge touched the water about a hundred meters offshore. It was transparent but there was no mistaking its boundaries as its very energy gave off its outline.

  As they watched, a flock of seagulls flew into it and fell to the water, dead. They could see several boats on either side floating aimlessly, the humans on board killed when they intersected with the wall. A golden saucer was flitting about, circling the spire. On its very top something extended that both of them recognized: a small golden ball on a rod. A weapon of the Airlia that could kill anything within sight. Guides manned the walls and gates of the palace.

  “On the defensive,” Gwalcmai observed.

  “Yes.”

  There were three items on the surface of Mars, in the region that would become known as Cydonia, that were not natural. The first was the Airlia transmitter. A massive dish dug into a mountain, over a thousand meters in depth and three times that in width. At the very center was a glowing green crystal that focused outgoing transmissions while the dish gathered incoming transmissions from the surrounding latticework.

  Not far from the mountain were two other objects. One was a huge pyramid, towering over five hundred feet above the surrounding plain. And near it a large rectangular formation was cut into the surface of the planet.

  The top of the pyramid began to split open, each of the four sides moving away from the others. They reached vertical and kept going, massive hydraulic arms lowering the dark outer sides toward the ground. The interior of each triangular side caught the light of the sun and absorbed its power.

  The left edge of the square base also began to change color as a huge covering panel started to slide open. As it did so, it revealed a half dozen rapier shapes—some of Aspasia’s Talon warships.

  The solar panels poured power into the entire facility. Deep underground lights went on in a cavern lined with rows of deep sleep/regeneration tubes. Twenty in all. The black metal protecting them swung open, revealing the creatures inside. They were brought out of their stasis even as the Mars guardian began prepping the ships. A bolt of golden light arced from cables crisscrossing the side of the chamber down to each ship and they began to power up.

  The defensive preparations did not go unnoticed by Artad.

  Unfortunately for him, his slow reentry into the Sol Systemhad not gone unnoticed either. In the scanner shadow formed by the mothership’s wake, a small Swarm scout craft followed. It was shaped like a spider with a round body and eight protrusions all pointed forward. It had been following the mothership for ten years, patiently waiting to discover its destination. Its sensors were picking up the same thing the mothership’s were: ships and transmitter on the fourth planet from the star; intelligent life and an Airlia base on the third planet.

  The alignment of the two planets was interesting because they were two-thirds away from each other in orbit around the star. Not exactly the strongest mutually supporting defensive position. The scout ship’s mandate was to report all signs of intelligent life back to a Battle Core. However, something strange seemed to be developing. The Swarm was familiar with the Airlia but it appeared as if there were some battle imminent. The scout ship saw no reason for this action by the Airlia other than its own presence, but it also saw no indication that it had been detected. Was there another player involved, another species threatening the Airlia?

  The Swarm inside puzzled over this for a few moments, then decided to continue on course, following the mothership to gather more information before sending a report to the nearest Battle Core. This was something new, and new things worried the Swarm as much as it was capable of being worried.

  Artad split his fleet. The mothership and four Talons headed toward Earth. Five Talons headed toward Mars. Shields went up, weapons were charged. The crews assumed their battle stations.

  The first shots came over three hundred thousand kilometers from Mars as Talon met Talon. As both sides expected, the results were strained shields but no real damage. However, Artad’s Talons didn’t stop to fight the battle but continued their plunge in toward the Red Planet.

  The pyramid, hangar, and power generator were all shielded, so Aspasia wasn’t very concerned with this development. Unfortunately, having been out of the forefront of the war against the Swarm for such a long time, he didn’t know that the Swarm had learned how to penetrate and cause damage beyond the types of shields he used and that Artad had been the beneficiary of this hard-earned knowledge and was now employing it himself.

  Two of the four Talons trapped a small asteroid—a little over three hundred meters long by a hundred meters in width—between them with their tractor beams. The other two fended off the irritating but ineffectual attacks of Aspasia’s Mars-based Talons. The Airlia on Mars, still a bit groggy from being awakened from their deep sleep, watched the approaching craft and the rock caught in their tractor beam with confusion. The confusion turned to surprise when the Mars guardian traced out the approach vector and projected it to be directly at the communications array.

  At fifty thousand kilometers the two craft turned off their tractor beams and let the asteroid be drawn down into Mars’ gravity, aimed directly at the transmitter. The Airlia manning the outpost realized what was happening, but were not overly concerned, as they had the shield up.

  When the asteroid free-fell through the shield, the Airlia on Mars were shocked. They had scant seconds to react before it hit the array. Force equals velocity times mass. It is a rule of physics. The asteroid hit at a high velocity and its solid metal core had large mass. Its size and speed were converted into a hundred megatons of power.

  The transmitter disappeared in a flash of light.

  Aspasia stared at the wall of the sphere, at the image being sent by the Mars guardian of what had once been the interstellar transmitter. He couldn’t believe it—the shield wall was impenetrable to all forms of life and force weapons. How could a simple asteroid—the answer came to him as quickly as he posed the question: The asteroid had no active force other than velocity; and no life. It had been as blunt and archaic a weapon as these humans throwing stones at each other. And it had worked.

  He realized that Artad could do the same with Atlantis. Indeed, as he shifted his gaze to the inbound mothership, he saw that two of the Talons accompanying it had captured another, larger, asteroid in their tractor beams and were towing it along a vector for Earth.

  Aspasia issued new orders.

  Artad could see the third planet clearly on the large curving screen at the front of the mothership bridge. A white-blue planet, perfect for life—at least life in Airlia form. He’d checked the survey records from the team that had discovered the planet over a thousand years earlier during the initial planning phases for the seed program. It had its own indigenous life, but none ranking anywhere on the intelligence scale.

  A warning light flashed as two of Aspasia’s Talons came in on an attack vector. Ineffectual beams of gold were exchanged between Talons, but their goal was neither Talon nor mothership as they concentrated their fire on the asteroid caught in the tractor beam. Not under the protection of a shield, it exploded, splintering into hundreds of pieces.

  Artad nodded. Aspasia was no fool. Artad brought his fleet to a halt a hundred thousand kilometers from the planet. Aspasia’s Talons backed off twenty thousand kilometers, between the two.

  The fragments of the asteroid raced toward Earth, ignored by both sides.

  The Swarm scout ship hid in the shadow of the moon, observing and waiting.

  At Atlantis, almost the entire day had passed without any obvious activity at the palace. The shield wall was still in place and a saucer still slowly flew circles around the spire while Guides manned the walls.

  Donnchadh and Gwalcmai were among thousands gathered around the inne
rmost ring just outside the shield wall, watching and waiting. Darkness began to fall and still nothing changed.

  Until about an hour before midnight when streaks of light appeared overhead. Hundreds of them.

  “What is it?” Gwalcmai asked his wife.

  At first, Donnchadh thought they were seeing Airlia weapons, but as the streaks crossed the sky, she realized what it was that they were witnessing. “Asteroids. Coming into the atmosphere.”

  “Coincidence?” Gwalcmai asked.

  “Not likely. Something happened in space.”

  Most of the pieces of asteroid, deflected off their original course by the destruction of the main body, hit the outer layer of the Earth’s atmosphere and bounced off, heading back out into space. Most, but not all.

  One of the larger surviving pieces of asteroid that Donnchadh and Gwalcmai were watching from the inner ring of Atlantis hit the atmosphere angled too steeply to ricochet away and plunged downward. Its plume of flame was over three hundred miles long as it descended. It left Atlantis behind, crossed the rest of the Atlantic, and went lower over North America, frightening the humans who wandered that land.

  It hit in what would in ten millennia be called Arizona. The land was lush and covered with thick forest. All of which for six hundred miles around was gone in an instant as the fragment struck the Earth and produced a massive crater.

  Other pieces of the asteroid hit in different spots around the planet. Those that hit in oceans caused tsunamis that devastated low-lying coasts in the vicinity. Several others struck land, killing all living things within the blast zones, including a particularly large piece that hit near Vredefort, in what would become South Africa. This strike was so severe that a large rock plain actually ended up inverting.

  Hundreds of thousands of humans that had been seeded around the world by the Airlia died in the impacts and their aftermaths. Millions of square miles of land were wiped clean of all living things.

  Aspasia could not have cared less what devastation had been scored by the initial battle. All spaceships were at a halt as each side considered its next move. Artad stood on the bridge of the mothership, while Aspasia remained in his control sphere, deep under Atlantis. On Mars, the survivors were digging their way out of the rubble caused by the destruction of the interstellar transmitter.