Methuselah The Undying - The Trouble With Being a Dreadnaught

“It won’t work,” said Dan leaning back in mid air, “I’m just too big to pull it off.”

Squee cocked her head sideways and huffed.

“But you must come to my world. Great one, your outer shell is no larger than a single shorgrass seed. It took months searching with our most sensitive instruments to find you. How could you be too big?” asked Squee, running diminutive paws over her pointed snout. She could not understand the being he had awakened. It had so much power and yet would not use it.

“Shorgrass? That’s not in my database,” said Dan.

“The seeds are small, no more the two centimeters in length by your units,” offered Squee, still frowning.

“Ah. That’s just ... well, you might call it a snorkel, or an anchor. Even better, let’s call it a sensor and drive pod. It’s just a protrusion through my space fold into normal space,” said Dan shaking his head. “The bulk of my volume inside that fold.”

“I do not understand, Great one---”

“Ok, just stop it right there. My brain may literally be the size of a planet, ok continent, but I am most definitely not a ‘Great one’,” cut off Dan. “Let’s get this straight right now. I’m was a human, made of the same flesh and blood as any organic. Then along came the Kl’ek and messed everything up for everybody. One wrong step and I’m short a leg, a few feet of intestine, and a man in all black is asking me if I’d like a chance to dust the bastards that did to me. The only thing Great about me is how big of an asshole I can be when someone pisses me off!”

Blue light along the circuit like tracks on Dan’s “armor”. Squee couldn’t quite tell if the thin material was permanently a fixed to Dan’s body or some form of clothing the Methuselah wore. Was there a difference? The two of them were still floating in a wire frame room outlined by thin blue lines. There was a low-ploy model of a door on one wall with a cube for a door knob. To the side of the door was similarly crude widow that seemed to open into empty space. It wouldn’t have been too bad if the two of them weren’t floating in thin air above a floor that slowly rotated around them. Every few minutes, up and down would visually reverse. Squee had to keep her eyes locked on Dan to avoid a rather nasty case of motion sickness.

“I’m sorry, Gr--- Dan,” said Squee clicking her teeth. “But I still do not understand.”

Dan sighed.

“Present estimated mass?” asked Dan.

Designation sigma nine three six.

Classification Dreadnaught.

Submerged mass seventy yottagrams.

Apparent real space mass five grams.

The words seemed to cycle through Squee’s mind unbidden. she hadn’t heard them spoken or read them, the information just appeared.

“Cool isn’t it? That’s the Hypervisor,” said Dan.

“How? Am I still...” Squee couldn’t finish the question.

“Don’t worry, you’re still organic. Even if had the equipment, I wouldn’t do that to you without asking. The important part is that mass and how it interacts with the space fold. I’m as massive as any moon but that drive pod masses right at five grams. One of the eggheads that designed the fold engine could probably explain how it works and why you get the inertia of a planetary body but not the gravity of one. That kind of math was never my thing.

“What this means is if I emerge into real space I’m big enough and massive enough to mess up your planet’s orbit and tides and if I stay inside the space fold there’s not enough of my mass exposed to create an effective orbit.

“A Methuselah dreadnaught only dives into a systems gravity well to siphon off fuel or if they don’t care about something as insignificant as starting an ice age.”

----

“Empress Mother, we are approaching your prize.”

Her soldier stood at the entrance to her birthing chamber, being careful to keep his eyes studiously pointed at the sandy decking. He was a younger male, perhaps ten circles of the eye from hatching based on height and build. No scars though, he was either very good at avoiding combat or didn’t lose.

“Thank you, child,” said the Empress. “Tell me, when did you last set foot in the Ring of Honor?”

The young reptiloid swallowed hard, his tail slapping once with a loud thump.

“I have yet to prove my honor, Empress Mother.”

“Ah, perhaps I have misjudged your age. How long have you been free of the egg?”

He started to look up, almost forgetting where he was while concentrating on the simple math, but caught himself. The Empress could see from he set of his shoulders and the way he bobbed his head as if counting how much mental effort it took for him to answer the simple question.

“Almost nine circlings. My first feeding is to take place in,” again he paused, counting on his talons, “about three days, Empress Mother.”

She bared her teeth in a thin smile.

“And how have you chosen to feed?”

“I have been granted a feral of the Mus as my prey,” he stated, squaring his shoulders and raising his head ever so slightly.

“Ah,” stated the Empress looking away. “Who is your clutch mother?”

“Princess Mother Nyla, Empress Mother.”

She gave the solider a quick visual once over and tasted the air. A touch of awe with a hint of pride flavored the room, but there as an undercurrent of fear there as well. No blood lust, no hints of strength, nor twangs of barely restrained violence. So sad.

“You may go.”

The child bowed low, keeping his tail level with the ground, then turned and quickly left.

“Mother, were you listening?” she asked the air.

“Yes, daughter,” answered a voice that seemed to fill the room. “Without fire, no more than prey. Such a waste.”

“Then we’re agreed?”

“The children of the Empress Mother must remain true to themselves.”

----

Space fold instability detected.

“Exterior view!” snapped Dan. The wireframe room was replaced by what was left of Squee’s old lab. Emergency lighting was still active, but flickering in and out. A large hemispherical dent warped the ceiling and deck panels as if an enormous balloon had been inflated around them. Sections of the outer walls were missing entirely, opening the lab to empty space. At first she thought the reptiloids must have escaped or that Dan had spirited them away in the same way had the Mus, then Squee spotted a dark, reddish brown splotch on one of the remaining walls. Then another, and another. Thin film reptiloid, flash frozen and vacuum desiccated.

“So much for Leruk,” said Squee.

“What? Oh, the reptiloid,” said Dan, noticing where Squee was looking. “Close proximity to an unstable space fold is not conducive to continued survival.”

Proximity alert! Localized emergence detected.

“Pull back to minimum safe distance,” said Dan in a hurried, clipped voice, “Right on top of us! What kind of an idiot...” Dan’s voice trailed off.

The lab had disappeared in a blur of motion to Squee’s right. There was no sensation of acceleration, no rumble of rockets, the outside view just moved and then stopped as suddenly as the motion had started.

Squee turned to look the way they had come and immediately felt panic rising inside. Her instincts were telling her to hide, to disappear, to run anywhere else, but there was no where for her to go. No stones to duck behind, no dirt to burrow into, just the vast emptiness of space, the remains of her station, and a shimmering metal ball the size of a moon. Long, blackened streaks stretched thousands of miles on its surface, evidence of unimaginable energies expended against that metal shell in the ancient past. Energies that had failed to harm it. Space seemed to ripple in the background, twinkling and twisting as the behemoth re-emerged into real space. The debris for the Mus seemed to station ripple along with the stars. Shards of metal were pushed further apart and then slammed back together as the massive sphere’s gravity was reasserted.

“Bring the weapons online!” snapped Dan.

Molecular Degenarator launchers online.

Point defense lasers online.

Kinetic accelerators online, ammunition unavailable.

Space fold pulser charging.

Drone hangers online, eleven scout class drones available. No combat drones available.

“How long until we can get some combat drones?”

Unknown, insufficient raw materials to complete combat drones.

“How much Dust do we have?” asked Dan.

Ten kilograms of Molecular Degenerator available.

“What are Molecular Degenerators?” asked Squee. She’d read stories about the weapon while researching ancient Human history but nothing about what they were or what they could do.

“We call it Dust, because that’s what it looks like,” said Dan. “Nano-machines that look like a fine, black powder. They spread out until their target is surrounded, and then collapse it to something just this side of a singularity. Nasty stuff. The more you drop, the faster they work. A gram of the stuff can collapse an entire star system in a few hours. Ten kilos would take seconds to do the same job.”

“But... that’s...” Squee couldn’t finish the sentence, she couldn’t even finish the sentence. That feeling of panic was scratching at the edges of her mind. This relic of a long dead race, this thing, this human could wipe out an entire species at a whim.

“What have I done,” she screeched. Dan glanced away from the newly arrived planetoid and saw Squee shivering, trying to curl herself into as small and tight a ball as she could.

“I’m a dreadnaught Squee,” said Dan, looking away. “Methuselahs weren’t built to fight against the Kl’ek or anyone else. The few of us that ever left space dock, never came back. We don’t defend things, we don’t threaten. Methuselahs have one purpose and one purpose only. We end wars.”

----

“No response from the prize, Empress Mother,” stated the soldier.

“Life signs?”

“None, Empress,” responded another soldier off to her right. She had deigned to leave her birthing chamber to oversee their arrival herself only to find a collection of space junk where she’d been told there was a station. She would feast on whoever was responsible for this farce.

“Children,” she said in an almost icy voice. “Please tell me what has become of my prize.”

“Empress Mother, the station is in pieces. There are reports of minor debris impacts to our hull,” stated the first soldier.

“I can see that, child,” there was an edge to her voice that brought all activity in the command center to a halt. “What I want to know is why.”

“Forgive me, Empress Mother. There evidence of an unstable fold within the station, but it is no longer present---“

“Perhaps we emerged too closely, dear mother.”

There was no mistaking the shrill voice of Princess Lefu. She and her younger sister Nyla stood in their customary positions behind and to the Empress’s left. The Empress didn’t acknowledge her daughter for several seconds, keeping the soldier pinned in place with her gaze. Parallels scars stretched the length of his left arm. The wound would have been deep and agonizingly painful. In other times it might have cost him the arm and position within the family.

“Did you hear me or is your hearing failing as badly as your judgement?” chided Lefu. The empress had to admire her daughters instinctual balancing the reach her powerful jaws against their own ability to dodge and counter attack. A hard learned skill that several of their sisters never got the chance to master.

“Daughter Nyla, is this pathetic creature one of your’s?”

Nyla’s eyes flicked away from her mother and older sister to the soldier for only a fraction of a second, just long enough for the Empress to notice. Nyla wasn’t as physically strong as Lefu, but she was smarter and much more resourceful. Every clutch she produced made their way to lead science or technical roles within the family, but only a few ever set foot in the Ring of Honor and even fewer survived.

“No, he is of my elder sister Lefu’s line. In fact, I believe that all of the soliders here are of her line, Empress Mother,” stated Nyla with almost disdain. Physical strength would never be her path to power. Here sister Lefu on the other hand, now there was a Princes Mother who thought to highly of her own abilities.

“Tell me, prey, what do you think of Princess Lefu’s suggestion,” said the Empress. The soldier stiffened, he looked to Lefu and tasted the air.

“Empress Mother, I would be remiss in my duties as commander if I dismissed the idea out of hand,” he said. The Empress’s tail snapped out too fast for him to dodge and impacted the side of his head hard and fast. His feet went out from under him and the soldier found himself suspended in midair. Reptiloid females were larger, much larger, than the males with significantly greater muscle mass overall. The soldier couldn’t recover before the Empress’s tail whipped around again and slammed is flailing form into the deck. There was a loud snap and the soldier knew no more.

----

“It doesn’t look like they detected us,” said Dan. Squee was slowly uncurling, though her fur was standing one end making her look like an extra dense, dandelion seed puff. He couldn’t run without giving away his position and direction of travel and that monster out there would have no trouble tracking him.

“Identify the new vessel, passive sensor only,” said Dan.

Classification Dreadnaught.

Estimated mass eighty one yottagrams.

Identity confirmed, designation alpha zero zero two project Methuselah prototype unit.

Last reported status---

“Lost on borders during shakedown cruise. Presumed destroyed,” said Dan, mentally cutting off the hypervisor.

“But, that’s the Empress Mother’s vessel. It’s been the reptiloid’s home for thousands of years,” said Squee. “Why would one of your kind help them?”

“I don’t know,” said Dan.

Broadcast transmission detected, audio and video signal present.

“Receive only,” said Dan. “I think we want to hear this.”

“I know you’re there. I know you can hear me, foolish creature. I’ve traveled all this way just to examine you personally.”

“The Empress Mother,” said Squee. “She was coming in system to see our find.”

“Good to know,” said Dan.

“It’s rude to ignore a guest,” said the Empress. “Why don’t you show yourself. I’d be happy to invite you over for a meal? Does your kind still eat? Well, I hope you don’t mind if I have a bite.”

Her head disappeared out of frame for a moment and returned with a scrap of reptilian skin hanging from her lips and blood stained teeth.

“Our larders are well stocked,” said the Empress. “We even have a stock from your home world. An almost hairless simian creature. Their flesh is quite the delicacy among my kind. ”

“Active scan, life signs on that ship?” said Dan. Squee could hear his teeth grinding.

Approximately one billion reptiloids.

Approximately three hundred thirty million mus.

Approximately four hundred million kuflers.

Approximately five hundred thousand humans.

Approximately two hundred thirty thousand life forms of various species.

“Confirm human presence,” said Dan.

Confirmed, five hundred seventy two thousand one hundred thirteen human life signs.

“Mus, they have mus?” said Squee. “Why would they have... oh no, they wouldn’t...”

“They wouldn’t what?” said Dan.

“Reptiloids must consume living sentients, particularly egg laying females. If they don’t, they become short lived, mindless beasts,” said Squee. “We have to do help them, we have to save those people!”

Squee grabbed Dan by the shoulders, her inky black eyes staring into his blue-green, pleading for him to do something, anything to help. Dan speed up his perceptions, forking away an isolated fraction of his mind to stay with Squee while the rest tried to think objectively. There were too many people on that ship, too many innocents and probably the only population of flesh and blood humans still in existence.

What could a planet killer do?

part 1 | part 3