Guardian Generations

GUARDIAN GENERATIONS

C. Osborne Rapley

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Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2014 by C. Osborne Rapley

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Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter One: After The Fall

Chapter Two: Seonaid

Chapter Three: The Celts

Chapter Four: The Cartigians

Chapter Five: Leaving

Chapter Six: UFO

Chapter Seven: Rescue

Chapter Eight: The Cartigians’ Colony

Chapter Nine: Cousins

Chapter Ten: Extinction

Chapter Eleven: A Trap is Baited

Chapter Twelve: Mordavia

Chapter Thirteen: Training

Chapter Fourteen: Earth

Chapter Fifteen: Fighting for Survival

Chapter Sixteen: A Trap is Sprung

Chapter Seventeen: Generations

Chapter Eighteen: Research Planet

Chapter Nineteen: A Close Call

Chapter Twenty: Delaying Tactics

Chapter Twenty-One: Battle

Chapter Twenty-Two: Retaliation

Chapter Twenty-Three: Rescue

Chapter Twenty-Four: Escape

Prologue

Several hundred thousand years ago, on a planet the other side of the Galaxy, a tall grey-haired woman stood facing her colleagues. The Lantian known as Sinestra had been speaking for several minutes, bored faces looking up at her. She knew the majority were not listening; some were even talking in loud whispers to those sat next to them. She looked around the senate chamber, which was full for this important debate. Seats curved round in tiers facing a raised dais where the leaders of the Senate sat. She slammed her fist on the table in front of her, eyes wide, her mouth a hard line. Senators sitting near her flinched. Now, everyone was watching her in absolute silence.

She took a deep breath. THIS IS AN ABOMINATION! Her shout echoed from the otherwise silent senate walls.

She moderated her voice. She knew full well it was not the time for showing anger; it would not help her cause. We must not do this! Doing things just because we can is not a valid reason. She paused, scanning the faces of the people around her. The senators in front of her had twisted in their seats to look at her. So we are alone in the galaxy, what of it? Does it really matter? She didn’t wait for an answer. If we wait long enough, other intelligent races may evolve. We do not have the right to force the issue. Taking the higher animals from other worlds and genetically manipulating them is wrong, very wrong. A murmuring rose from the benches opposite. Someone from behind her shouted.

What about safeguards?

Safeguards! Sinestra spat. She was shaking; her face flushed. Her hands clenched into fists. She turned on the person who had shouted behind her. So their genetic code prevents evolution! What of it? You have a shutdown sequence that, with the correct chemicals in the water systems, will cause sterility. What use is that when they move to other worlds; you will lose control. What if one of these things mated with one of us, a Lantian? That will put an unknown random element into the genetic code. What of your stupid controls then?

There were mutterings from around the chamber. It is forbidden; it won’t happen.

She glared at the person who had spoken. You cannot guarantee that! How can you be sure? Once this is started, it will be impossible to control. She paused and looked around again. We do not know where it will end. It upsets the natural order of things. We are standing on the edge of an abyss, we must stop and pull back from the edge, not jump over into the unknown. She swept her arm up and around indicating the whole chamber. You all know the risks we are taking if we do this. There can be no other sensible decision other than a total rejection! Sinestra sat down, drained of all emotion. She had done all she could. It now hung in the balance.

The speaker of the chamber stood: Fellow Lantians, members of the Senate, the debate is concluded; it is time to vote on the motion brought before this chamber.

The chamber returned to the normal buzz of many low voices in discussion. Sinestra knew in her heart what the result of the vote would be. She sighed, her anger being replaced by despair. She wanted nothing to do with a galaxy populated by what amounted to synthetic life forms.

The electronic counter totalled up the votes. The yes vote was overwhelming. Sinestra shook her head, stood, and with a final glance around the chamber she left for the last time. She and a few followers had been making preparations for weeks; once it became obvious which way the Senate would vote. In Sinestra’s mind, it was not their place to play God.

Two nights later, five large transport ships lifted from the main Lantian spaceport. Their destination was the furthest reaches of the galaxy, well away from Lantian influence. Their journey would take many months, even with the latest Star Drive technology.

The remaining Lantians went ahead with the population program. They used their own DNA to genetically alter the most promising species they found on other planets. As they accelerated their development, the Lantians taught and shared their knowledge with the other races they had nurtured.

Unfortunately, they had not taken into account that their species had thousands of years of development and were a peaceful people. The new races were young and violent. There were several disastrous wars between some of them, which took the Lantians by surprise. To prevent any recurrence, they set up a system of Guardians to police the peace, to mediate disputes, and to prevent any of the races from going to war with one another. The Lantians built large artificial intelligence computer systems on strategic planets scattered about the galaxy to aid the Guardians in their task. Peace was restored, and despite territorial disputes and misunderstandings between races, the Guardians maintained the peace and helped the new races with their development.

There were never many Guardians, and one day they gathered on a world they had colonised may thousands of years before, as they did regularly. They were caught by a natural disaster. Most of the Guardians were killed, and the central AI computer was destroyed. There were too few Guardians left to police the galaxy, and there were not enough of them to maintain a viable population. As the Guardians died, the galaxy slipped into a dark age. The races warred with one another, setting themselves back, sometimes to a stone-age existence. Without Guardians, the artificial intelligences couldn't function, so they served no purpose. They shut themselves down.

Many millennia passed. On a small forgotten planet we now call Earth, located far from the Lantian home world, Stonehenge was already old; Bronze Age people who, in their turn, were being displaced or absorbed by a new group, had displaced the Neolithic people who had constructed it. The newcomers were warlike, with new and stronger weapons made of iron, a people who would one day be called Celts.

Chapter One: After The Fall

Octavian shivered. A gust of wind blew the snow into his eyes, and flakes melted against his face. The cold cut his lungs when he breathed in, his breath formed clouds that were whipped away by the wind.

He looked around, squinting his eyes shut against the falling snowflakes. The white countryside spread out below him. Behind him, a snow and ice covered rocky outcrop. Below the black trunks of trees stood starkly against the whiteness of the snow. The thin fabric of his Guardian uniform offered him little protection from the cold.

What the hell am I doing here? He asked himself.

With another involuntary shiver, he turned and retraced his fast disappearing footsteps back into the cave he had emerged from.

At least the cave offered him some protection against the wind. The floor sloped down and was covered with loose scree that caused his booted feet to slip. He scrambled back in through the large crack in the wall of the room he had woken up in. It took a little time for his eyes to become accustomed to the gloom after the brightness of the snow.

He sat down and leaned his back against the concrete wall just as the earth beneath shook slightly. Rubble from the cave fell into the room through the large crack in the concrete.

Octavian opened his mind and tried to sense the Guardian Artificial Intelligence, but there was nothing. The computer was silent. He cast his thoughts out further to try to sense anything at all but still found nothing. There were no computer systems within telepathic range.

The room he sat in did appear to be part of an AI bunker, but it should have been several hundred metres underground, not near the surface. He thought back to the last few things he could remember. He had been trying to quell a riot on the planet Cartigia. The Cartigians were angry because the Guardians had prevented their taking revenge against a band of Sicceians who had attacked one of their colonies on a planet several light years away. The Sicceians had been removed from the colony planet by the Guardians and sent back to Sicceia for punishment.

The Cartigians had objected. They wanted to teach the Sicceians a lesson themselves. Octavian sighed; without the Guardians to police the galaxy it would soon deteriorate into war and chaos. The Cartigians had started to get violent. Octavian was about to summon aid from the planet’s AI computer when someone from the crowd had shot him. He had felt the laser burn into his chest. The pain was such that he hardly remembered the familiar lurch as the AI transported him away from danger and into her bunker.

Through the pain, he vaguely remembered her avatar standing over him. She was placing him into a medi-bed to heal his wound. The next thing he could remember was waking up in the near darkness, faint light coming in through a crack in the wall of the bunker. He had stumbled out through the crack in a near daze, hardly knowing what he was doing. It had been the cold of the snow on his face that finally brought him to his senses.

He stood and walked over to the medi-bed. The console glowed faintly, and he could see where a loose part of the ceiling had fallen and caused the automatic revival function to start. The bed must have been set in stasis mode; otherwise, he would have remembered something of what had gone on during the journey here, wherever here was.

He went to the door that should open out to a corridor leading to the Guardian quarters. Every AI bunker was the same, and there was sufficient room for at least four Guardians to live comfortably. At the end of the corridor would be a door to the main hangar where two black ships should be parked.

The AI core was also housed in the hangar. Octavian dismissed the ships; there was no way of getting them out of the hangar without the AI. They were sealed in and had to be transported out using the AI’s transporter system.

Octavian pushed against the door. It creaked, gave a little and then stuck fast, the gap was just enough for him to squeeze through. He stood in the corridor, and the darkness was almost total. There was no way he could possibly explore further without a light. He turned and squeezed back into the ruined medical room. The AI on Cartigia was named Adrasteia. He wondered which AI he would find when he could explore further.

Cartigia was a temperate planet with lush forests to the north giving way to deserts to the south, and a large ocean covered the far side of the planet. There had been some ice at the poles of the planet, but at the height of the summer the northern ice cap almost completely melted.

Octavian searched the medical room in the hope of finding something useful. He found his battle armour, but it was folded away into a belt and to his surprise the power cell was totally depleted. He couldn’t get it to unfold. The power cell was designed to last for years in continuous use and almost last a lifetime when in standby mode.

With the armour was his hand laser. That too was fully depleted. Of the two spare cells he found one with a little power – just enough for four or five shots, no more. His battle staff that was attached to his armour belt would not extend; its power cell was also fully depleted. Octavian frowned, how long had he been in stasis on the medi-bed?

His favourite weapons were his two single hand swords. They were leaning against the wall, complete with their scabbards. A Guardian was free to choose what weapons he liked, and they were encouraged during training to develop skills with at least two different types. He had taken up the staff and the dual wield swords.

At least they don’t need a power cell! He thought to himself.

He had to get a light so he could explore the rest of the facility. One priority was to find some warm clothing; he could then go outside and hunt for food. Part of the Guardian training included survival skills so if there were any game in the frozen waste outside he would at least have a fighting chance of surviving.

His next priority would be to find out which planet he was on. The best way would be to go to the AI core. It would give the name of the AI. He would at least then have some clue as to the planet. There was a further niggling question; why had they transferred him to this cold desolate planet? Why hadn’t Adrasteia treated him on Cartigia? Octavian put that question aside for the moment. He shivered. His first priority now was warmth.

He needed a fire and something with which to make a passable torch. He crawled back through the crack in the wall into the cave. There were plenty of wind-blown leaves on the cave floor, so at least this hellhole had some semblance of a summer with deciduous trees.

He ventured outside. The cold cut through his light tropical Guardian uniform. He could not stay long, or he would suffer from exposure. Luckily an old stunted dead tree stood near the entrance, which he could pull down and drag to the cave. Once he was out of the wind in the cave mouth, he proceeded to break up the old tree. He then dragged the broken branches into the medical room. At least the effort had made him warmer. Using the dry leaves as tinder he lit a fire with the laser on low power, conserving the power pack as much as possible.

Rummaging around the medical room cupboards, he located dressings that he tied to several branches, making passable torches. As long as he remembered to light one before the other went out he should have enough time to explore the bunker.

He tucked his makeshift torches into his belt and lit the first one. When it was well alight he pushed through the door into the corridor. He opened the door to the living area and after a brief rummage located a uniform overcoat. He also located a winter uniform, which although a little too small for him was better than his summer tropical one. In the kitchen, there were a few ration packs. He picked them up and pushed everything he had collected into the medical room for investigation later. He didn’t want to waste his precious torches with details.

Octavian lit another torch and made his way to the hangar door. This one was also stiff and he had to put his shoulder against it to force it open. He was met by a blast of stale musty air. Carefully moving forward, he went inside, and in the flickering light of the torch he just made out the first black ship. He knew that it would be locked down, and he couldn’t gain access without a functioning AI to release the entrance hatch. The hangar was empty except for the two ships and the AI core - that was the size of a large two-storey building. It looked to Octavian as if the core had shifted at some time, breaking the connections to the thermo reactor, which derived its power from the heat of the planet’s core. The Guardian AI computers were designed to last for millennia. Only geological disasters such as this one would cause them to fail. He made his way to the core, noticing that everything was covered in a fine dust. Obviously, no one had been here for very many years.

The name of the AI was usually printed on the side of the core building. He could see faint text under the layer of dust. With his free hand he brushed at the dust and spelled out the name as each letter appeared, A..D..R..A..S..T.. His hand started to shake. It was not possible! He brushed off the last letters, his heart in his mouth E..I..A.

ADRASTEIA.

He dropped his torch, and was immediately plunged into pitch black.

He stood still, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the blackness, and after a few moments he could just see a faint glimmer through the door that he’d left open on the other side of the hangar.

He carefully made his way back, feeling with his hands in front of him. Except for the faint light from the open door, the place was in total blackness. He suddenly staggered back, rubbing his head. He cursed the parked ships, he had forgotten them and he had struck the bottom of the fuselage with his head.

Octavian lifted one hand above his head and felt his way around the underside of the ship. He finally made it to the hangar door without further incident. Once he was through there was light from his fire that flickered through the open door to the medical room.

Reaching the medical room, Octavian slumped down. His mind had been blank after reading the name on the side of the AI core. He leaned forward and put his head in his hands. He was on Cartigia, but this was not Cartigia. The climate should be temperate, wet and raining but this was almost an ice planet. His mind at first recoiled from the answer forming in his thoughts. He swallowed and forced himself to face the only logical explanation.

He must have been in stasis for millennia not a few days, weeks, or even years. It explained the exhausted power cells the condition of the place, everything. His family, Oriana, his stomach churned, they were to be married once he returned; everyone he knew would be long dead if it were true. Even the civilisation he belonged to must have disappeared otherwise why would they leave an AI in this state and not repair it? There was to be a conference on a large island the Guardians used as a training base. He had an invitation to attend had not getting shot interrupted his plans. Perhaps some disaster occurred then, or shortly after otherwise he would not have been left in this place.

His mind teetered on the edge of madness. His breathing was ragged and came in gasps. He felt giddy, and lay down, immediately falling into an exhausted and troubled sleep.

He woke some time later shivering with cold. Light streamed in through the crack in the wall. He glanced at the fire that was merely a few glowing embers. The memory of where he was came flooding back. Right, I was obviously in stasis on the medi-bed for a very long time. I have to take control of this situation.

He shivered again; the fire needed some attention. Octavian stood and went over to the pile of dried wood. He stoked the fire and it was soon burning brightly again. He sat down by the pile of items he had collected from the living quarters, and he had not realised how hungry he was. His stomach rumbled; he felt empty.

He investigated the ration packs first. They were sterilised and sealed so in theory they should last indefinitely in the correct conditions. Of the packs he had found only two had survived in a satisfactory condition. They were dried rations, and the seals had remained intact. It was the ready-to-eat ones that had not lasted. There was also a pan among the items he had collected. He pulled the coat tightly around himself and ventured out of the cave to collect some snow.

When he emerged from the cave, he had to shield his eyes from the bright morning sunlight. The wind had dropped, and it had stopped snowing. His breath hung in the still morning air. He had to breathe slowly, as the bitter cold formed painful icicles in his nose and would hurt his lungs if he were not careful. The coat did however offer him some protection. He quickly gathered some clean fresh snow into his pan, and remembered the survival instructor joking with them, Never use yellow snow! He smiled at the memory. The thought made him feel better. He would survive get back to civilisation and find out what happened.

The snow melted quickly over the fire. Octavian stirred in the contents of one of the dried ration bags, and the smell of the cooking stew made his mouth water. He stirred it for the recommended period, though his hunger was gnawing at him.

Once the stew was ready he lifted it from the fire and ate directly from the saucepan, blowing on each spoonful to cool it. This was the first meal he had eaten since being shot. How long ago was that –hundreds, thousands of years? Even with the stew warming him he shivered. The pan was soon empty and Octavian sighed, with only one more ration pack, he must find food. Once his food supply was secured, he could then think what to do next. He had to find civilisation somewhere.

He stood and walked over to the medi-bed, pulled open one of the side panels and ripped out the wires. He stripped the small wires then constructed a few small animal traps with the wires and wood from the tree he had salvaged.

The