Part 15. New Crisis.
Synopsis: Jason has finally consolidated his control of the android collective and has built a new larger vessel to begin the final mission to destroy all aspects of Tyco's influence. He has also obtained more vessels from Tyco's collective as well as many new androids, some of which were humans that worked for Space Command. His attempts to take out Tyco have not been completely successful, but he now has the assembled brain power to make a concerted attempt.
Chapter 140. New Search.
Sometimes the truth is hard to accept.
We arrived at the Earth-like planet that contained the humans that Tyco used to create an illusion of a human inhabited planet at a brown dwarf star.
"I don't see any evidence of movement or life on this planet," Margaret said.
"The structures look abandoned and deteriorated," Molly said. "I'm not detecting any energy signals from living beings."
I sighed. "That doesn't surprise me, knowing how evil Tyco is."
"I'm not detecting any neutrinos or gamma rays originating from the planet," Marie said. "There is no evidence of an antimatter device or source."
"Alexa and I will go check it out. You're in charge, Molly."
We teleported to the surface and began our search. What we found only disgusted us more than we were.
"There are bodies lying all over the place," Alexa said. "Evidently, Tyco killed all of them."
"He must have done this dastardly deed after he recorded all of them to create the illusion."
"That would mean that he recorded their memories and personality data," she said.
"Yes," I said. I pointed to a large domed building. "Let's go in there and see if we can find something."
We walked into the building's entrance and noted that it was filled with equipment.
"You're right," Alexa said. "That's an android data stack device like the one we found on Helios Station."
"Maybe it still has their data."
We went over to it and Alexa began scanning it with her handheld device. "It appears to have data. I'm not detecting any explosives or antimatter."
"The power source has been removed," I said.
"Why would he just leave the data stack here?"
I shrugged. "I suppose he just didn't care. He had no intentions of resurrecting any of them."
"Something doesn't make sense here," Alexa said. "Look at the images on the wall of this building. They don't show people wearing togas. They're dressed in more modern clothing reminiscent of the mid twenty first century."
"Yeah, you're right. That would suggest that they were deliberately attired in ancient clothing to make us think that they were not from Earth."
"These are probably humans from Space Command, but not from the command division."
I frowned. "Apparently, Tyco didn't want to bother resurrecting them."
"They would have been his enemies if he had," Alexa said.
"Okay, we'll send this unit up to the ship. We can resurrect some of them to find out what really happened here."
Alexa nodded.
After we did some snooping around, we teleported back to the ship.
"We saw what happened down there," Molly said. "That Tyco bastard is a real piece of crap."
"It just gives us another reason to destroy all traces of him," I said. I turned to Judy. "Have engineering look over the data stack unit we brought up from the planet. See if they can determine who's in it."
Judy nodded.
After a few moments, Judy became rigid. "There is a missile coming in at near light speed . . ."
I stopped time so that Alexa and I could determine what its course was.
"It's headed directly to the planet," Alexa said.
"What's its origin?"
"I'll plot a trajectory."
"Okay, let's deflect it from hitting the planet and put the ship's deflectors on high."
She nodded.
I started up time and made the missile fly past the planet and detonate. Our deflectors were able to prevent any damage, but the planet did get a good whack of gamma ray burst.
"What the hell just happened?" Molly asked.
"Evidently, Tyco wanted to make sure that we didn't find anything on the planet. We defected it."
"I have a track of its course going back a thousand light years," Alexa told Molly.
Molly got busy trying to figure out where it came from.
After several minutes, she had a report. "I've traced it back to three possible systems, none of which appear to be habitable."
"Okay, Let's take them one at a time."
"Judy, take us to the closest system," Alexa said. "Go to Yellow Alert status. Drop us out of warp a light year out from that system."
I looked over at her with a curious expression.
"I have a bad feeling about this," she said, her face displaying concern.
I trusted her premonition.
We dropped out of warp a light year away from something that is probably the most dangerous object in the universe.
"Holy hell!" I exclaimed. "That's a magnetar. If we had come out of warp close to it, we would have been ripped apart."
"You're right," Molly said. "Magnetars have magnetic fields millions of times stronger than Earth's. It's capable of ripping iron out of blood cells."
"We don't have blood cells," Marie said. "At least not like we did when we were human."
"True, but there's enough iron in our bodes to be attracted by that monster."
"You can all thank Alexa for us being in one piece," I said.
She received well disserved applause.
"It only shows that we have to be on our toes, so to speak, to avoid Tyco's attempts to destroy us. The question now is; is this where he launched the missile or was it from further away?"
"We should go check that out," Molly said.
"Take us to the next system but make the same safe approach."
"Yes, Alexa."
The next system wasn't a magnetar or anything dangerous. It turned out to be a K3 class dwarf star with two rocky planets and two gas giants. One of the gas giants was orbiting the star in the habitable zone and it had a habitable moon.
"That gas giant is a bit larger than Saturn," Molly said. "The habitable moon is 70% the size of Earth. It has an adequate atmosphere with breathable oxygen."
"There are two vessels in orbit around the moon," Marie said. "Both are Explorer-1 class."
"How interesting!" I said in a sarcastic manner. "We're out here hunting for two ships like that and lo and behold, we just happen to find them in the same galaxy that Tyco had put all of these traps for us."
"Neither vessel is active," Marie said. "They're both on maintenance level."
"Okay," I said after straightening up in my captain's chair. "Let's see if we can find the Tyco trick in this."
"We're going to have to move closer if we want to have any chance at that," Molly said. "We can't get reliable readings this far away."
"Just like Tyco would want it."
"I think that we should be able to prevent an explosion from taking out our ship," Alexa said. "As long as we're out about a hundred thousand kilometers we should be able to stop time and reverse it if an explosion occurs on the moon."
"What if it's an antimatter missile?"
"We could deflect that in time."
I thought about it for a moment before making a decision. "Move us to within one hundred thousand kilometers, Judy. Increase shielding to maximum."
The level of anxiety rose noticeably as we approached the moon. Alexa and I stayed on edge in case something happened.
"I am detecting several thousand androids in the two vessels," Molly said. "They're at low power mode."
"What type are they?" I asked.
"One vessel has red-haired, the other is black haired."
"The moon has vegetation on continents," Margaret said. "The oceans appear to be normal. I'm not detecting any large animal life."
"How old is this system?" I asked.
"The star's spectrum indicates that it's about four billion years old. That would put the developed solar system at around three billion or so."
"I'm not detecting any evidence of extreme power generation," Marie said. "This system appears to be real."
"So, where does that leave us?" I said. "Everything is hunky dory, but here are two of Tyco's vessels just orbiting a habitable moon. There has to be something we're not seeing here."
"The central processor cores of those two vessels are not active," Judy said. "We are not detecting any collective computer activity."
"Wait!" Alicia said. "I just received a message."
"From where?"
"I don't know. It just appeared on sub-space."
"Can you interpret it?"
"I'll put it on the main screen."
We all looked at the message with incredulous expressions.
"I give up. You win."
"What the hell?" Marie said. "Is this from Tyco?"
"I don't believe he would be that naive to think we would believe this," I said in a sarcastic manner.
"Knowing how sneaky he is, I would say we'll see lots more of his shenanigans," Marie said.
"Do you have a trace for that message?" I asked.
"I think it came from some distance," Alicia said. "The quantum shift is large, but it's impossible to get an accurate value." She smiled. "You know how hard it is to pin down quantum parameters."
I sighed. "Okay, let's try to determine how we'll handle this situation we're in."
"I don't think there's any problem with us assimilating the androids in those vessels," Molly said. "We can search for any Tyco code in their positronic brains once we activate them.
I turned to Judy. "Are we able to assimilate them?"
"We already have," she replied.
I turned to Alexa. "Why am I not surprised!"
She gave me a smirk.
I had no idea what we would find in these new additions. My main concern was that they would be tainted by the evil that Tyco had immersed them in. I was about to find out how evil he was.