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Genesis Project Ch. 01

By: Mr. Marvel



The galaxy has been at war for over a quarter million years. The emperor has been fighting a losing battle for some time now, but still believes that his technology and his people will prevail. Emperor Shinza's empire stretched out to encompass nearly one third of the galaxy, sending out ships filled with sleeping colonists, hoping that one day that they wake up to find a pristine planet just waiting to be colonized. The reason why they hoped was for a very simple reason. That the emperor wanted to expand his territory, but certain fanatical sects wanted to slow down this progress and save all the money that went into exploring. Slowly, but surely, ships began to disappear. They were presumed either lost or destroyed. Too much area to search and not enough ships to cover the territory they already held. For one reason or another, sabotage was always involved. But our story doesn't start here, no, it begins in a star system with a yellow sun and nine planets.

Lt. Saran orbited around the single moon close to the only inhabitable planet in this backwater system. His fighter managed the routine grid search for the tenth time in the last half cycle. The planet below was uninhabited and could support life without complication. Saran was scanning for available resources to repair the damage done to the main ship. Saran remembered exactly what happened that stranded them here, under orders from the empire they were suppose to scout out systems that could be colonized or made available to colonize by terra forming. While in cryo-sleep, someone tampered with the navigation system and when the crew finally emerged from cryo-sleep they were not where they were supposed to be. They were literally thousands of light-years from the nearest imperial outpost. Help would not be coming anytime soon.

The captain of this ship ordered that the navigation systems be checked and found out why they were so far off course. The part of space that they were in, was heavily unexplored, and had no idea where home may be. Captain Tarmac had heard rumors of sabotage and ships disappearing, but it still shocked her that it had happened under her watch. When the chief engineer reported that they could still turn around and backtrack their flight path out of this system, Tarmac gave the order to do so. On their way towards the systems edge however, a shuttle launched from the landing bay, it's sub-light engines at maximum. Then Tarmac commed the shuttle and ordered it to stop or be fired upon. The AI suddenly informed the captain that weapons had just gone offline, and a small explosion took out their sub-light engines. They only had enough back power to head back in-system and reach the habitable planet. The person on the shuttle, commed them as they were leaving the system, said, "I hope you enjoy your stay", and went out of sensor range. That was a little over half a solar cycle ago.

Saran and the rest of the crew held little hope for being rescued, or of finding the materials needed to repair the ship. The materials needed were unreachable under the third planets' surface, they simply didn't have the required mining equipment to reach the material. They had little or no options left to them. Eventually they would have to stop and move on with their lives, but they still had hope. Saran turned his fighter around and headed back to the ship, noticing how sleek his fighter was in the yellow light of this sun. His fighter was nine feet long with a ball shape cockpit at the rear, and an almost triangular needle like nose. The sub-light engines gave off a faint blue glow as he made his way towards the planets surface.

As Saran landed his fighter in the landing bay, he noticed all the techs and flight crews running around securing everything down. For Saran, this was a normal activity, but what made it strange was all of them wore the same facial expression. It was the face of panic and fear. As he opened the hatch to his fighter, he heard the blaring klaxon and over the comm system he heard, "Attention all personnel report for a general meeting with the captain in five time units, that is all." Saran knew that this was different from all previous meetings, for the captain had come to a decision about their fate. When he arrived at the galley, it was packed with standing room only against the far wall. All the faces around him were anxious and nervous at what his captain had to say. They didn't have to wait long. The captain approached the center of the galley and began to speak, with a somber expression on her face.

"I'm not going to lie to you," Tarmac spoke at once, "we will never be able to leave this system again within our lifetimes." At this remark the crew began to murmur all over the ship until she spoke again. "So what we hope is one day our decedents will be able to repair the ship, someday, but until that time we will leave the ship and hide it underground near the base of the near by mountain. The ship's AI will then shut down all of the systems and go into sleep mode, until such time, when one of our decedents comes back to discover their heritage." Everyone in the crew just looked at her like she'd grown a third arm, including Saran. They knew it was coming, yet it was still a surprise. "All personnel will lockdown everything on the ship, and will take the bare minimum with them in order to survive. That means no advance technology, just in case our decedents don't suddenly stumble upon it lying around somewhere. We will be leaving in two planetary cycles. That is all." At this point the captain left the galley and proceeded to her quarters.

Once there the ships AI contacted her, "Captain, some of the crew are upset by your announcement, and are trying to take more than is required. Shall I send them off into the wilderness somewhere, with no supplies?"

Captain Tarmac replied, "No just make sure that all the extra things they take makes it back onto the ship in their proper places." "As you wish Captain" replied the AI. "Now, do you understand what needs to be done by you AI?" "Yes, Captain I understand." replied the AI. "Good I hope the next time you wake up, you'll have a better captain then me." Two planetary cycles later all of the crew were off of the ship, some happier then others, and the ship buried itself near the base of the mountain. All went silent inside the huge ship, and while the AI powered down it wondered whether what the captain had said were true or even possible. But that would have to wait until the AI woke, and who could tell when that would be.

Ten thousand year later, the answer to that question would soon be coming. The date was April 20, 2005, and Mike Anderson was just arriving home from school. Mike goes to Burlington County College, in Burlington, New Jersey. Mike had just turned 21 and was still had a little hangover from the night before. Mike isn't a heavy drinker, being last that night was his first time drinking with his friends. He was hammered after two drinks, then when his friends brought him home they took a magic marker and drew on his face obscene language and weird hand gestures. Mike had a huge crush on his best friend and next door neighbor Emily Ross. Through Mike wasn't movie star handsome, but he was attractive enough to deserve a second glance. He was 6'2 with light brown hair and green eyes with a pale complexion. He wasn't athletic either, but had plenty of muscles with squared off shoulders. Emily was a curvy blonde with shoulder length hair and deep blue eyes. She had legs you could get lost in for hours at a time and a medium size bust. Mike had kept his feelings about Emily to himself, and was afraid what her reaction would be if he told her how he felt. Truth be told, Emily already knew about Mike's crush and had her own feelings for neighbor Mike.

After getting home Mike had watched Emily come over and asked if they could hang out. Mike said sure, but he wanted to take his afternoon jog into Mount Holly and asked if Emily wanted to come alone for the run. "Can I take a rain check on that run, I have to be back before my dad gets home." said Emily. "Yeah, it's ok, I understand, maybe next time though." replied Mike. Emily then strolled back home swaying her hips as she went. Mike thought, "I wonder if she knows she does that intentionally." Then Mike went into his two-story house to change into his jogging gear and after five minutes was on his way. Half a block from his house Mike decided to change routine and turned down an old dirt road that had become over grown over the years. 

Mike had always passed this road on his jogs and now he knew why. There were potholes all over the place, trash littered the ground, and weeds grew like wild fire. Mike's pace was slow going. He'd heard rumor's from kids, back in high school, how they came out here to party and drink to their hearts content. Though, the kids did say there was something strange about this remote area. Nothing definite, but just a feeling of being watched by unseen eyes. Mike now knew what they were talking about. He too felt like he was being watched. He didn't feel any hostile intention towards him, but he felt like he was being observed or evaluated. Mike just shrugged off these feelings, and discovered a small deer trail leading deeper in to the woods. Mike felt compelled to follow the trail

He had been on the trail for no more than five minutes, when he came across the biggest hole he'd ever seen. The hole was five feet wide, ten feet long and he couldn't see the bottom from his vantage-point. Mike hadn't heard any stories about this hole, but it looked freshly made. Mike assumed that the hole could be the result of last summers' flooding. Half of Burlington County's damns burst and flooded several homes and major roadways. It was possible that the flood water unearthed an entrance to a cave system below. Mike thought it be a good idea to turn around now and go home. But as he was turning to go, the ground underneath him started sliding into the hole. The last thing that Mike remembered was rushing darkness and fading light. He felt like he was flying, but knew he was falling. Then suddenly everything went black, as Mike lost consciousness.

Genesis Project Ch. 02



There was pain, mind numbing, bone-breaking pain. As soon as it had started, it stopped. Mike slowly became aware of his surroundings, and realized something wasn't quite right here. When he opened his eyes, everything was blurry, and he had a slight throbbing pain in his head. He stayed still for a moment and felt a little better. His eyes came into focus and he saw that he was not at the bottom of the hole anymore. He was in what looked like a hospital, though not like any he'd ever seen. Some of the things around him were so futuristic in design that they would not have been out of place in a science fiction movie. Mike was startled out of his reverie by a strong, male, disembodied voice.

"Ah, I see that you're awake. How are you feeling? Would you like some refreshments?" For a good ten seconds, Mike was too shocked to speak. When he did manage to say something it came out like "Whadduppa". The voice asked if he could repeat that, because it could not understand what was said. Mike took three nice, even breaths and said.

"What is going on? Where am I? Who are you? And what the hell is going on?" Mike was starting to panic again, when the voice spoke as if sensing his discomfort.

"Please, try to remain calm. I'm not going to hurt you." Mike said, "Ok, but could you explain what's happening. And by the way, my name is Mike".

"Yes, of course Mike." said the voice, " About two hours ago you fell through a hole in the ground. When you landed you broke both your legs in several places, fractured your skull, and went into shock soon thereafter. Luckily for you, Mike, you landed outside the air lock to this ship. I am the ships AI and when you "landed", I came out of sleep mode and had a maintenance droid take you to the med bay. You were examined and completely healed in under an hour by the auto-doc. All your bones are healed as if they were never broken, and the only side effects will be a slight headache."

Mike was silent for a few minutes absorbing the information he'd just been told. Which had boiled down to three simple thoughts: ship, AI, healed. "What's going to happen to me now?" Mike asked. The AI replied "Well nothing is going to happen to you, I was hopping that you might be able to help me. You see, you are the first person that I've come in contact with, for over ten thousand years. I would like to know what's going on, I've been out of touch as you can tell. What is the status of the Emperor and his empire? Have anymore ships disappeared like this one did?"

Mike was a little hesitant at first but said, "I'm sorry, I don't know anything about an Emperor or any empire. This planet hasn't even traveled past our moon yet. I don't know what kind of help I can be to you."

The AI was silent for a few moments then said, "I know exactly what you can do to help me, if you're willing. Would you like to become my captain?" Mike thought this out for a minute. "Could I really take responsibility for a ship like this?" thought Mike. Seconds later he made his decision, "Yeah sure, I will be your captain. But you're going to have to explain exactly what happened to this ship and its crew."

For half an hour the AI told Mike everything about the ship, the sabotage to all the vital systems, and how they were forced to abandon the ship on this planet and settle it, forgetting their own history, so they could make some kind of life here. Mike was a little disturbed by the news of sabotage, but was excited by the story none the less. Mike decided that it was time to get up and slowly Mike swung his legs around over the side of the bed. He got up with little difficulty and started to walk around the room.

"What would I have to do to become your captain?" asked Mike. There was a pause from the AI for a few seconds. "Walk to the panel on the wall in front of you. On the keypad next to the panel press the red button. Inside is a device that will teach you all you need to know. Once you get it out, walk back to the bed, lay down once more, and slip the device on top of your head. The device will then activate and take care of the rest."

Mike did as he was told and once he saw the device it did look like a headband, though made of some unknown shiny material. He went back to the bed, lay back down, and put it on. "It's time to get up now Mike, your learning is complete." said the AI. "What are you talking about? I just put this thing on and I don't know if anything happened."

The AI replied that Mike had been asleep for over two hours and that the learning process was complete, but the information was locked in his mind. The AI was now going to unlock the knowledge. Mike felt an intense tingling sensation in his mind and suddenly he knew everything about the ship and how to operate it. Mike decided that he could not keep calling the AI "AI", so he decided to give him a name. "How would you feel about having a name?" he asked the AI.

"Nothing like this has ever happened in the history of the ships' original crew, but I will gladly accept a name." Replied the AI. Though it surprised Mike a little, naming an AI was apparently unheard of in the empire "Ok, I guess your name is going to be Samuel. Sam for short, if that's OK with you of course."

"I would be honored to be called Sam. But you have to override some programming in order to change my designation." replied the AI.

"Alrighty then, AI access main computer designation, command override seven-eight-blue-alpha-omega, Captain Mike Anderson changing computer designation to Sam."

"Command verified. Welcome aboard Captain and thank you for the name." said Sam.

"Also Sam, when it is not a serious situation, you can just call me Mike instead of captain." said Mike. Sam acknowledged this and said that was fine.

"Mike we need to get this ship back up and running now that it has a captain and we will need a crew in order to operate it."

"Just tell me what needs to be done Sam and could you list according to priority." said Mike.

"First Mike we need main power back online, all power cells are depleted and backup power is only going to last for another half a solar cycle or six months according to recent reactivation. After you get some of the main power back-online, then I can get more maintenance droids activated and they can work on the systems that were sabotaged. In order to do this you're going to have to recruit a crew for the ship so it can lift off and return to space. After that it's all up to you captain."

"Alright I guess I'll start on the crew first then work on the power situation. But how will I be able to contact you Sam?"

"I've already thought of that Mike. When you were learning, I implanted a sub-dermal communicator. So you can talk to me wherever you are no matter what time it is, all you have to do is call my name. It also acts as a bio monitor and if need be, a tracking device."

"Well done Sam, now how do I get out of here and back on the surface? And could we set up a better entrance than a hole in the ground."

"Of course Mike. When the ship was buried several entrances and tunnels were made to get to and from the ship. The hole was just a fluke of natures' own doings."

With that Mike was shown the way out of ship and into a network of tunnels that ran on for miles at a time. One of these tunnels came out half a block away from his house, which would mean he could get to and from the ship with being seen by nosey neighbors. As Mike was coming out of the tunnel, he called Sam and asked if he could bring his best friend Emily to the ship and maybe become apart of the crew. Mike told Sam that Emily was trustworthy and wouldn't betray her friends no matter what. Sam said it would be fine, and was going to suggest that Mike bring in people he could trust. Mike and Sam didn't want any government attention just yet. He didn't want Sam to end up in some government lab somewhere. Mike was silent the rest of the way home, his head a buzz of thoughts. He was thinking about the problems that lay ahead, he didn't even notice that he walked right into Emily. Emily looked at Mike like he just grew a third arm. Mike wondered why she was starring at him like that and asked.

"Well Mike, the reason I'm looking at you like that, is because your clothes are ripped and torn in odd places."

"I had a bit of a fall" Mike replied rather quickly.

"That's not the only reason why I looking at you Mike, you've changed physically, since you started your jog. I barely recognized you until you spoke."

At hearing these strange remarks, Mike ran to his house with Emily hot on his heels. He opened his front door and dashed upstairs to his room. Once there he looked into the full-length mirror he'd tacked up on the back of his door. He now knew what Emily was talking about. When Mike started his jog he was at least thirty pounds overweight. Now he look like he didn't have a ounce of fat on him, plus he looked more defined than before. His skin was taut over his squared off frame and his facial features were more sharpened than before. He looked damn good, like one of those Calvin Klein models. Mike called Sam and asked what he had done to him.

"When you were injured, I noticed your excess baggage. So I removed the excess weight and strengthened your muscles. I hope you're not upset with me Captain."

"No I'm not upset Sam, just a little surprised is all. Next time, when your going to improve someone, let me know about it first. Ok?"

"Yes Captain." replied Sam.

After changing his clothes Mike went to find Emily. He found her sitting on his front porch, waiting for him to come out. Mike made his decision right then and there that he would share Sam with Emily. Mike asked Emily to come with him, that he had a surprise to show her. As they made there way to the tunnel a light rain began to cover the ground. They reached the tunnel without any mishap.

"Where did this tunnel come from? I've passed that place everyday on my way to school and I never seen this here."

"Well Em, this is just the beginning. What I'm going to show you will change this world forever. For good or bad I don't know yet." said Mike.

He slowly led Emily down into the tunnel and after ten minutes of walking they reached the ship. As they approached, the air lock opened and allowed them to enter.

"Welcome back Captain, and this must be Emily. I am Sam the ships' AI."

Mike took this opportunity to explain everything to Emily, about the ship, its' sabotage, and its' history. When Mike had finished his story of how he found Sam, that now was his captain, and that he needed help from his friends to help repair the damage done. Mike asked Emily if she would become part of the crew and help him repair Sam.

"Hell yeah! I want to help. This could be the greatest thing that could ever happen to us." replied Emily.

Mike told her about the sub-dermal communicator, and offered her a free medical check. When they got to med-bay, Emily was placed on the bed and scanned by Sam. When Sam was done scanning her, he informed Emily that she had Huntington's disease, which is inactive at the moment. Without treatment it will become active later in her life and slowly kill her. This shocked Emily, but Sam told her that he could take care of it right now and she would need to sleep while he removed the disease. Emily agreed and was asleep almost instantly.

"Sam, while she's under could you teach her everything about the ship, like you did me."

"Yes captain. Just slip a headband around her head and I'll start right now." Mike slipped the headband on Emily, and told Sam that he wanted to inspect the ship.

"Of course, Mike, but some areas have been sealed off, during the shutdown process. You'll have to use the command override code to unseal all of the doors." Mike said that was fine.

"Mike, what position would you like Emily to hold on the crew?" Sam asked.

"Emily could be first officer. I rely on her opinion very much."

"That is acceptable Mike. I will give her all of the proper knowledge needed for the position."

Mike spent two hours exploring the ship, where he found Captain's quarters, the galley, main engineering, the brig, Chief of Engineering's quarters, and finally the bridge. He was making his way back to the med-bay, when Sam told him he was finished with Emily. Mike entered med-bay and told Sam to wake Emily. Emily slowly woke up, and couldn't recognize her surroundings. Then she saw Mike standing near the doorway and remembered what happened.

"Hey Em, you feel OK?" "Yeah, a little dizzy but I'm fine."

"Now Em, while you were out, I had Sam insert all of the command codes you'll need as first officer and all the protocols there-in."

"Really? I don't feel any different nor do I know anything about command codes. Are you sure it worked?"

"Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Sam could you please unlock the knowledge inside of Emily's head."

Emily's eyes fluttered fore a few moments, and a smile spread across her face.

"Wow, that was a rush," said Emily.

For the next two hours Mike, Emily, and Sam talked about what they needed to do. First, they needed to get main power back online, then recruit crew members, and then repair the damage done by the saboteur.

"We need someone who at least is semi-mechanical for Chief Engineer, and we need someone who could be our Science Officer. Then we can start repairs and looking for ways to power up Sam." said Mike.

"Yeah, that sounds good to me. I think I know someone who could be our Chief Engineer. Jack Turner, he is almost legendary in autoshop. He is some kind of junior MacGyver when it comes to cars." said Emily.

"Yeah I know Jack, he's pretty cool. He seems like a good choice. Also I know who should be our Science Officer, Mitch Matrovsky. Mitch and I have been friends since sixth grade, and he would kill me if I didn't tell him. He's into the sci-fi stuff like; books, movies, TV shows, and stories. He'll die when he finds out about Sam."

Emily couldn't repress a smile as Mike said this. She knew Mitch, she liked him a lot. He always wore sci-fi shirts, and had comics in his book bag. Mike and Emily decided that they would contact Jack and Mitch tomorrow. With that Mike and Emily headed home. Hoping that all would go well when they met with Jack and Mitch.



Genesis Project Ch. 03



The next day went by very slowly for Mike and Emily, time seemed to just slow down and torment the both of them. Around one o'clock Mike found Jack Turner outside the autoshop smoking a cigarette. As Mike was going to go up to him, two guys appeared out of nowhere, and attacked Jack. Mike was in action before he knew he was doing anything. Both attackers were over six feet tall, and out weighed Mike by fifty pounds each. One had Jack's arms restrained behind his back, while the other pummeled him with his fists. Mike charged towards the attackers and slammed into the guy giving the beating, like a professional linebacker for the NFL. The guy he tackled didn't know what hit him and they both hit the ground with a loud thud. Jack was just starring at Mike in surprise, then realized his captor had loosened his grip. Jack yanked himself free and drove the palm of his hand into his captors' nose, breaking it on contact. Mike's right shoulder went numb after he tackled the perpetrator, he heard with some satisfaction a popping sound coming from the big goon. The fight was over before it even started. Mike picked himself up off the ground as teachers were running towards the confrontation. 

They asked what had happened, both Mike and Jack told them that the two goons jumped Jack and Mike jumped in to help Jack out. The police were called, where they placed both goons under arrest, and took them off to the hospital to get looked at. Mike and Jack were allowed to leave. Jack stopped Mike once they were out of the room and halfway down the hallway. 

"Thanks for watching my back out there, man. That was some tackle you gave that guy." said Jack.

"Your welcome, though getting into a fight wasn't on my list of things to do today. Anyway what was that all about?" asked Mike.

"Well they are the Welsh brothers, and I had just broken up with their sister, Tina. Apparently Tina didn't like being dumped and had her brothers try to explain it to me. Then you showed up and you know the rest." said Jack.

"Look Jack, I came here today to ask you a very important question, and maybe let you in on the greatest discovery of human existence."

"Well you certainly piqued my interest," said Jack, "so what's the deal?"

Mike told Jack that he needed him for an engineering job, and that his reputation spoke volumes regarding his mechanical expertise. But Mike wouldn't tell Jack what the job was, until he agreed to come and see it for himself. Jack was reluctant to agree to this, but Mike had just saved his butt, and he owed him one.

Emily had a difficult time tracking down Mitch down, she spent half the day combing his usual hangouts. She finally found him in the Burlington county mall playing video games at EB Games. Mitch was surprised Emily was looking for him, barely anyone notices him nor would they want to look for him. Emily started with idle chitchat, asked how he was doing. He said he was fine, but was wondering why Emily was looking for him.

"Mitch, can we talk in private for a few minutes. I'm doing a survey for psychology on young males and how they would want to change the world, if they could." Emily was lying through her teeth, hoping Mitch wouldn't get squeamish about why she wanted to talk to him. Emily and Mitch went down to the food court, which was fairly empty. They sat in a far corner with two sodas that Mitch bought for them. When they were comfortable, Emily asked some basic background questions. After five minutes background information, Emily started her real questioning.

"Mitch. If you had a chance to change the world, how would you do it?"

"Well that is a really good question. First off, I would try to get our country off of fossil fuel resources and on to a cleaner source of power. Then contribute money into an organization trying to cure deadly diseases. That's all I can think of at the moment."

Emily thought his answers were good. Emily asked him to meet her later at Mike Anderson's place for another little project she was working on. Mike and Emily met back at Mike's place around two o'clock. Mike told her about his encounter with Jack and that he would be here around three to see what was up. Emily thought that was good news and told Mike that Mitch would be here at three also. Jack and Mitch arrived at Mike's place early, and were surprised to see each other there. 

Before they could ask any questions, Mike and Emily had them walking towards the tunnel. Mitch looked questioningly at Mike and Mike shook his head Yes. With that they all went down into the tunnel, moving at a fairly good pace, tripping every once in a while on some loose stones. When they arrived at the ship both Jack and Mitch looked like kids in a candy store. Their excitement soared when they met Sam. They agreed to whatever Mike and Emily had to say. Three hours later, both Jack and Mitch were brought up to speed and were willing to help repair the ship. Jack was now Chief Engineer and Mitch was now Science Officer. Jack and Mitch made their way to main engineering and asked Sam for a detailed scan of all the ships' systems.

Sam brought up a three dimensional image of the ship and all the damage was outlined in red. Both Jack and Mitch agreed that main power was their first priority. Jack looked at the image. Power circuits that were damaged or fried from sabotage had to be replaced immediately. Jack went to a storage area and found replacement circuits, cables, tools, and a few maintenance droids. Mitch was inspecting the damaged circuits and found the device causing the power drain. A small black square device was hidden behind a junction station. Mitch disabled the device and solved one of their many problems. Now they could replace the power that was lost, without fear of a power drain. Jack and Mitch would work together trying to solve the power problem, but would need help from Sam on what kind of power they could use. 

Sam could use solar energy, but it would be very slow to get to full power. Since becoming active Sam had been scanning for alternative power sources. Sam told them of a nearby factory that had processed silicon circuits that could be used to covert solar energy into the power they needed. Jack knew about the factory. It had been shutdown two months back, because of lawsuits by environmentalists. Jack told them there were piles of silicon circuits lying behind the building. Sam said the more they could get the better. Mike said he could borrow a friends' trailer and they could haul the circuits back for Sam to convert for his use. Emily, Jack, and Mitch waited with Sam while Mike went to his friend to barrow his trailer. An hour later Mike walks back in and said they could go now. They all piled into Mikes' car with the trailer already attached. The trailer was eight feet long, six feet wide, and had a safety rails on all of the sides with a ramp on the back. Five minutes later on a deserted factory driveway they checked to see if anyone was watching the factory. They made their way to the back of the factory. No one was around to disturb them. Sam hadn't been kidding; there were several piles of silicon circuits stretching for about a quarter of a mile. Each circuit weighed about ten pounds, so they all did multiple trips from the piles to the trailer. After half an hour the trailer, as well, as Mike's trunk was full of silicon circuits. As they headed back to the ship, everyone was abuzz with excitement.

When they arrived back at the tunnel there was a lone maintenance droid waiting for them. The small group looked at the droid questioningly, until Sam announced that the droid was there to help them unload the circuits. It took little over an hour to unload the trailer and Mike's trunk. Sam was very pleased with how many silicon circuits they had brought back with them. He said that the circuits would take at least five hours to convert and then install the solar panels. So with that they called it a night, when they had emerged from the tunnel it was dark out and it was well past midnight. They agreed to meet back here tomorrow nice and early to work on the ship. Around nine the next morning they all met at the tunnel, all prepared for a long day's work. Mitch was the odd-man-out, because he was the only one who brought a medium size red cooler. 

"Mitch, why do you have a cooler?" asked Emily.

"Well, if we're going to be working all day on the ship, I thought I might as well bring some food and drinks for lunch."

"Oh. Ok." replied Emily.

They set off down the tunnel and when they arrived at the ship Sam informed them that the circuits were installed and were producing a significant increase in power. At the current levels of power intake, it would take nine weeks to reach full power. Sam could take himself off of backup power when the power level reached ten percent. At the moment the power level was at four percent, and would take two more days before Sam could go off of backup power. Everyone said that was good news. Sam also informed them that he had now reactivated five more maintenance droids to help with the repairs. Mitch and Sam were working for four hours on finding more powerful resources to use for the ship. While Sam worked scanning for additional power sources, Mitch was in la la-land; he was accessing the ships main computer core and the information stored was thousands of years more advanced than anything on the planet. 

Mitch thought, "The beings that created this ship and all of its technology were more advanced, but couldn't fix their own ship when it was damaged." They seemed to lack creative thinking that Mitch and the others possessed naturally. Mitch routed through the files for the rest of the day, finding surprising little tidbits of information. The beings from this ship had over seven hundred elements on the periodic table. This ship had shields, particle weapons, a cloaking device, and fighters with the same capabilities. Mitch also found a small treasure trove of top-secret information stored deep within the computer core, some were experimental upgrades for the ship that didn't quite work or just seemed impractical at the time. From these upgrades Mitch was getting all sort of ideas for the ship and for Sam, the only problem was getting them to work. Mitch felt sure he could do it, he had a very creative imagination.

Jack wasn't having as a great of a time as Mitch was, though he was very productive with the time he spent in Main Engineering. As soon as Jack arrived in Main Engineering there were six maintenance droids waiting for orders on what to repair first. Jack had three droids head towards the engine room to repair the engines and their sub-light drives on the back end of the ship. The damage done to these areas was minimal, so it wouldn't take long to repair them. Jack had the other three droids replace or repair the remaining circuits on the ship and anything else that needed to be done. Jack on the other hand wanted to explore the ship searching for anything interesting and repairing any damage he came across. Jack was exploring for over an hour, this ship could hold a crew of three hundred. He found several storage closets, some with replacement circuits, others with strange crystals the lined the walls from floor to ceiling. 

Later he found the main Security Center. Inside he found both defensive and offensive weapons. Surprisingly the weapons looked very similar to what they were using currently. Each of the weapons had labels underneath them. There are plasma rifles, stun batons, pulse grenades, fragmentation grenades, and what seemed to be blade weapons that run on a small power pack. These were called Breaker blades, which look like twisted Japanese katanas. Each blade was different in design and shape, but the metal used in the design of the blade-looked onyx in appearance. Jack looked at the rows of blades and spotted one that caught his fancy. It was at the far end of the row and gleamed coolly in the artificial light. The blade of the sword was three feet long, which curved slightly in the middle of the blade. 

The handgrip of the sword was eight inches long and had two reptiles twisting down the handle snake-like to merge at the pommel. Each was made of a different metal, one that looked like platinum and the other look like bronze. Jack reached out and picked up the sword. For some reason it felt right in his hands, though it felt too warm to be made of metal. Suddenly the blade of the sword began to glow a faint blue, and pulsate in his hands. Jack was slammed to floor like he was hit with a Mac truck and intense pain racked his body. It seemed like it lasted for hours, when in truth it was only a couple of minutes. As soon as it started it stopped, Jack was covered in sweat and stars filtered across his vision. When his vision cleared, the sword was still in his hand, but it had stopped glowing. Instead his skin was covered in bright blue symbols he couldn't read, Jack was starting to panic, but the symbols faded away and left no marks behind. Jack got up off the floor feeling better every second. The sword felt like it was apart of him now, an extension of himself. Jack wondered what in the world had happened, when a voice spoke in his head.

"Hello Jack, you have passed my test and we have been bonded together. Breaker blades were created thousands of years ago as simple weapons, but an incident on a sentient planet, created a unique reaction to the planet environment. The planet passed some of its consciousness into the Breaker blades, creating a form of techno-life. Since then Breaker blades had given the knowledge of how to create more blades, like myself, to those who deserve such precious knowledge. Over the centuries very few have earned that kind of trust from us."

Jack was too stunned to speak for a second. When he did it was with caution.

"Why did you pick me?"

"Well, to be honest, you picked me. I just reacted to your touch and probed you thoughts, memories, and experiences. I knew then that you were the one I have been waiting for. When the ship was stranded here very few of the crew were bonded with a blade and they just forgot about us at the time. We are all sentient and have been aware of you and your friends' activities for some time."

"Oh, you don't seem upset to be left alone on the ship for all this time. So what should I call you? Do you have a name?"

There was a moment's pause before the blade answered Jack question. "No I don't have a name Jack. We were never given names as a general rule. The bonding process is an incredible offer that blades don't make lightly. Mainly, if we were picked up to be used in a fight there would be no bonding, no relationship, just used for a purpose. The species that used us didn't trust artificial life and felt that the bonding would corrupt the wielder. In fact, we never really talked to anyone that wasn't worth talking to." 

"Wow, would you mind if I give you a name?" There was a moment's hesitation from the blade. "Yes, I would be honored to be given a name."

Jack stood there thinking of names for this sword, that any regular name wouldn't cut it for this sword. Then it struck him like a slap to the back of the head. "Ok, I'll call you Magnus. How does that sound to you Magnus?"

Jack was sure he heard Magnus chuckle, but decided not to ask what was so funny. "Yes, that is a good name for me. Thank you, Jack."

"Your welcome Magnus. Do you mind if I tell the others about you?"

"No, of course not. In fact why don't you get them down here in a little while. For now, I'll teach you all that I can."

For the next two hours Magnus taught Jack how to wield him and how to unleash the potential hidden within the blade. For his part Jack was having fun with Magnus, every thing he did with him was easy. Jack thought it was time to get the others and show them what he had found. Jack found everyone on the bridge; they looked surprised when they saw him holding a sword. Jack asked them to follow him to the Security Center, where he had something to show them. When they arrive at the security center they saw all the weapons, but the swords drew them forwards. Mitch was the first to inspect the swords and saw a blade with a green pommel that seemed to call to him. He reached out to pick it up before Jack could warn him first. Mitch held the sword lightly in his hand when the blade glowed a hazy green and Mitch hit the floor with a loud thud. Mike and Emily rushed forward to help Mitch. Jack told them to stop and let it happen, that it was going to be all right. Jack explained what he could to them about the Breaker blades and how the bonding process worked. Just as he was finishing up his explanation, Mitch slowly revived. He got up and had what appeared to be a one way conversation with himself. Mike and Emily looked concerned at this new development, but Jack assured them that the sword was explaining everything to Mitch. Mitch finally ended the conversation with the sword, coming to a silent agreement with it. 

"Guys, I'd like you to meet Seether. Seether, these are the guys."

The sword shimmered for a few seconds, as if saying hello. Jack then introduced them to Magnus, his partner. Mike and Emily were starting to get confused at all that was happening. Magnus asked Jack to have them pick a sword, for they would be bonded. Mike and Emily walked up to the rack to select a sword, they were looking for five minutes before Mike found one that seem right to him. This sword had a red tinge to the blade with a squared off platinum pommel, then the blade began to glow and Mike went through the process just like Mitch did before. 

While Mike did this, Emily found a sleek looking sword with a black mesh pommel. On this sword the blade was slightly shorter than the ones Mitch and Jack had, the blade began to glow with a violet hue to it. The process was just beginning for Emily, while Mikes' had just ended. He stood up and had a similar conversation with his partner, like Mitch had with his. After a few minutes Mike introduced his partner Crimson. Now they just waited for Emily to finish the process. It ended and Emily started to talk with her sword, who she later named Nightshade. The group withdrew to the galley where they could discuss what they were going to do with their partners. Magnus announced to the group that they could take the swords with them, because they could alter the perception of any who saw them so they wouldn't notice a thing. With that it seem like a good idea. Jack had produce sheaths for the swords from a storage closet in the security center. They informed Sam of the situation and asked why he had not told them of the swords before. He said that he himself had not known they were there. If he had known, he would have informed the Captain immediately.

With that they decided to hold a meeting on the ships status. Jack told them that the repairs were coming along nicely and could be completed in five to six weeks, give or take a few days. Mitch said he was still routing through the computer core and was making progress. He would inform everyone with a report of his findings once he was done. With that Mike called the meeting to a close and decided to call it a night, he was bone tired. They all agreed to come back in a day or so because tomorrow was mother's day and they wanted to spend it with their family. Sam said he would keep working on repairs and said that the power level was up to six percent already. Apparently the silicon circuits were very efficient. Everyone began to shuffle out of the ship into the tunnel, said good night to each other and headed home. Tomorrow would be a bright new day.



Genesis Project Ch. 04



Authors Notes: I'd like to thank everyone for reading my story and e-mail their comments to me. I'd also like to announce that I've found an editor so all the chapters after three will be edited, proofread, and corrected. Thanks Phil for your help.

Chapter 4 

Over the next couple of days repairs were moving along smoothly, Mike was in awe at what had occurred in his life recently. Mike was sitting in his room on a warm day, just relaxing and enjoying his private time. Crimson his partner was leaning idly against the door, a cool gleam radiated off of the blade. Mike wondered if Crimson resented being partner with him.

"Now stop that foolish nonsense right now Michael. I choose you as much as you choose me. So deal with the hand you've been dealt," Crimson said offhanded. 

Mike was silent with astonishment. Crimson had heard his thoughts, Mike was still getting used to that. Still he thought it was pretty cool to have a sword. Sam had informed him earlier that morning that main power was up to fourteen percent, and Sam had gone off reserve power late last night. Sam had decided that he would wait to inform Mike about that, seeing that he was fast asleep when he went off reserve power. Mike didn't mind one bit, he was exhausted from training with Crimson. Crimson had him running ragged all day yesterday and informed Mike that he was processing nicely. Mike was going to meet the others later to talk about finding a more powerful source of power for the ship. He decided he had enough of lying around and got dressed for a long day's work. Fifteen minutes later Mike was walking towards the tunnel with Crimson and waited at the entrance for the others to arrive. The others arrived with looks of utter exhaustion on their faces, though eager to begin anew today. They all had their swords with them. It seemed only natural. They went into the tunnel and headed for the ship. Sam was already busy with repairs when they made it to the ship.

"Good morning everyone," Sam said. "Captain, can we hold a staff meeting in fifteen minutes? I have some good news to tell everyone."

"Yeah Sam. We'll have it in the galley today if nobody minds. I need a morning pick-me-up badly."

There was a chorus of agreement from the rest of the crew. Everyone headed straight to the galley and poured hot steaming cups of coffee. Mitch had finally gotten Sam to fabricate coffee properly, only after five tries. Mike had asked Mitch to download some Earth style cuisine and beverages for them to eat and drink. The previous menu selection was, well, raunchy at best. Tasted kind of like boiled chicken that had been sitting for five days in the high noon sun. Only one of them was brave enough to try the food (Jack), and ended in the med-bay vomiting and seeing weird colors for the rest of the day. It looked like Mitch's programming was finally paying off. Once everyone was settled in, Sam brought the meeting to order.

"Well, main power is up to twenty percent and the solar panels are running at ninety-nine point nine-nine-nine-eight percent efficiency. At the current rate, the ship will be fully operational in nine days. Give or take a day for any last minute complications."

Everyone was silent for a few moments. Mike hadn't expected for the ship to be ready this far ahead of schedule and apparently everyone else was thinking along those lines too. Mike had some questions for Sam.

"Sam, can you activate some more maintenance droids? Cause if you can, we can have them start to unearth the ship."

"Certainly Mike. I have just activated eight more maintenance droids. I have instructed them to attach digging equipment to themselves and proceed to the surface. Captain, I believe that the droids should start at the hole where you first fell in. At that point, is relatively easy to unearth the ship using the hole as a point of reference. The ship is only twenty feet down and about mile long by half a mile wide. It is a good thing that we are in a secluded area or else someone might have seen our activity."

"Wow, I didn't realize the ship was that big," said Mike.

"Well, yes, the design of the ship was supposed to be imposing, against pirates and other such riff-raft," Sam stated.

"Ok, Mitch please report on your end," said Mike.

"I found some very interesting material in the computer core. I've decrypted most of the files with just a few still to go. But what I've found so far is far beyond anything this planet could hope to come up with."

"Really?"

"Yeah, there were also some secret prototype files and upgrades hidden deep within the computer core. I doubt that even Sam was aware of these files."

"Sam, can you confirm what Mitch is saying?"

"After Mitch discovered this hidden information and decrypted them I was able to access them without difficulty."

"So, what's inside of these files and upgrades?" Jack asked.

Mitch decided to field this question, because Sam apparently didn't know what to make of them.

"Well, there appear to be upgrades for the ship and it fighters. Our ancestors and their people couldn't figure out the mechanics of these upgrades for them to use them. So they stored the basic principals of the upgrades in the computer cores of all their ships for safe keeping until the day they finally figured them out. These upgrades include: metaphasic armor, singularity weapons, hyperspace drive, a frequency rotating shield modulator, and some other cool applications that got scrapped at the drawing board."

Everyone in the galley was quiet, some didn't understand some of the things Mitch had just said and some didn't have a clue at anything Mitch had said. Mike was first to ask a question.

"So what does that mean to us at the moment? Can you figure out how to make any of those things work?"

"Well to be honest, I've already solved them and created a few more surprises from the other files found along with the upgrades."

Everyone was in a complete state of shock, even Sam was astonished at what Mitch had said.

"Unfortunately the upgrades for the ship will have to wait until we get to space before we can implement them. The problem with the upgrades in the first place, was a pretty basic mistake done in the calculations. After I over came that it was pretty easy to get them to work. Of course, these new upgrades are going to take up a lot of power to use them at all, but I figure we could find a more powerful source of energy for the ship."

"Anything else?" asked Mike.

"Yeah with the files I found with the upgrades, I was able to construct body armor to use in combat, if the need should ever arise. To be honest I stole the design of the suit from the XBOX games Halo and Halo 2, I just hope I don't get sued by Bungie Studios for stealing their concept. Also our swords can interact with the body armor, control and operate the shielding, environmental controls, and sensor instruments of the body suit. Just like in the Halo game. I should have enough suits for everyone in the next day or two."

The Breaker blades seem to be delighted by this new development and everyone else seemed to be pleased too.

"I've got some other ideas on the back burner for now, until we get into space. I just want to wait till we get the ship off the ground before I make any other changes."

Mike was surprised at the pace that everything was happening at. He would never have guessed his life would turn into an amazing adventure over night. Mike was glad at the progress everyone was making.

"Alright Jack, anything new to report?" asked Mike. 

"Yeah, repairs are nearly complete. Weapons are back online, engines are primed and ready for use. Sublight drives will be repaired by tomorrow, but we can't properly test all of this equipment until we get more power. Otherwise everything is in working order; cloaking device, navigation, shield operations, matter transport, communications array, are all operational Captain."

"Ok, then all we need to do is find a better source of power for the ship. Anyone got any bright ideas?" asked Mike.

Both Mitch and Jack raised their hands at the same time. They both looked at each other and smiled.

"Jack you remember that conversation we had a few days ago?" asked Mitch.

"Yeah, the one about alternative power sources."

"Well I was thinking about that and I think I've found a solution to our power problem."

Everyone waited for Mitch to continue. Mitch went on to explain the last couple of days have been devoted to solving their power problem. He was in the science lab exploring and reading the files on what was in the lab. Mitch was scrolling through the files, finding some interesting things, and decided to snoop through the cabinets lining the walls. In the last cabinet he discovered a beaker marked unknown sample. Inside the beaker was a green kind of slime, so he took it over to a table and set it down. Mitch pulled up the file on the sample, but it was pretty bare. Apparently the original crew had picked it up in an asteroid field outside of the solar system just before they were stranded. The science officer thought it had some potential for a power supplement, but it proved to be unstable and he never got a chance to test the substance. Mitch was mulling over the implications of the slime, and decided to test it. Retrieving some silicon power crystals from a nearby storage closet, he took a stirring rod and covered it with a tiny sample of slime. Mitch cut a small fragment of power crystal and put it in the middle of the lab table. He dropped a bit of slime on the crystal and ran for the hills, because Mitch had assumed that the unstable slime would react badly with the power crystal. When nothing happened, he cautiously moved back to the table. The slime had fused with the crystal, turning from a clear color to a nice shade of jade green. Mitch then called Sam and had him construct a chamber to test the new crystal. Sam said he would run a small amount power through the chamber and monitor the results. Mitch put the crystal in the chamber and started to feed ten-percent power into the chamber. The crystal started to glow and pulsate, the chamber was shaking violently, so much so it seemed the chamber was going to tear itself apart.

Sam quickly shutdown the power to the chamber before it reached critical mass. Mitch was stunned into silence, because he had no idea what had just happened. Sam reported that the small crystal generated 1025 power readings, which was enough power to run the eastern coastline of the U.S. for the next two thousand years, without having to insert more power than they just did. Sam analyzed the small crystal and found that the crystalline matrix stabilized the unknown substance by fusing it with it's own structure, thereby, creating a tremendously clean source of power. It took Mitch and Sam a few days to create a new crystal to power the ship and use the new upgrades. Mitch had Sam see if he can replicate either the green substance or the new crystal without too much complication. While Sam was doing that, Mitch brought in Jack to create a new power chamber for the engine room for the new crystal power source. Jack said it would take a few days to build one, but he could do it. Mitch was just waiting for the system to go online before starting a practical test.

Mike's jaw literally hit the floor as he listened to this story. Jack was the only one that was not totally surprised by the news. Mike thoughts were reeling from the shock at what he had just heard. This was beyond anything he had envisioned for a new power source and the implications were mind boggling. Emily seemed to recover first from the shock of this discovery and asked.

"How in the hell did you come up with something like this so soon?" Mitch replied, "Since starting work on the ship and being given all this knowledge, my mind has been in overdrive coming up with new concepts with the technology available on this ship. Plus I had a lot of sugar the other day and I was really hyper. I had to put that energy to use somehow."

Mike was thinking about the future and what Mitch's discovery could mean for the planet. He was already formulating a plan for this planet, when his reverie was broken by the awkward silence. He asked Mitch and Jack when the test for the new power source would be ready. Jack said it would be ready for tomorrow. Mike decided that it was enough for one day and called it a day. Everyone rose from their chairs and proceeded to leave the ship, it was already after six p.m. They would be back tomorrow for the test and if all went well they could have the ship in orbit by mid-afternoon.



Genesis Project Ch. 05



Everyone was at the ship bright and early the next day, though looking less haggard than the day before. Mitch asked if they could come to main engineering first, he had a surprise for everybody. They all agreed and made their way towards main engineering. When they got there, they saw four battle suits hanging from hooks in the wall. Mitch asked Mike to come forward first and pointed to the suit on the far left. Mike looked at this suit taking in every detail he could. The suit looked exactly like the battle armor in Halo, even the face plate on the helmet was identical to the one in the game. Mike notice his name was stenciled in black Roman lettering on the breastplate over the heart of the suit. The suit looked perfect, it was the color of cobalt and had rank marks by the collar of the suit. Mike looked expectantly at Mitch who indicated that he should try it on. Mitch told Mike that the suit would fit over his cloths without any complication. Mike found the opening in the back of the suit and slowly closed it up. Mike thought that this suit was like putting on a wet suit, but instead of having a zipper in the back it kinda closed by itself when he had the suit up to his shoulders. Mike was a little worried about how to get the suit off, seeing as there was no apparent zipper or seam at all. Mitch looked at his face and told him when he wanted the suit to come off all he had to do was give a voice command that would only work for him and no one else. Mike only shrugged and continued to put the suit on and when it was complete, he only had to put the helmet to finish the effect. The helmet went on and it was dark for a second, but a little heads-up display came online giving him a180 degree field of vision. 

"Wow, the picture on this display is crystal clear."

"Yeah, you think so now, try giving a voice command and access the main menu."

Mike called up the main menu and saw that he several options for his suit; stealth camouflage, shield control, communicator, environmental control, visual spectrum control, and damage indicator. He decided to switch on the stealth camouflage and heard a collective gasp from the others. He asked what was the matter and Emily said to look down. When Mike did he wasn't prepared for what he saw or lack there of. The battle armor was still there but it was like the skin of a chameleon, blending almost perfectly with the background. No one would be able to see him unless he made any quick movements. Mike switch off the camouflage and the suit shifted back to its' original state. He thought that these suits are cool and are getting better by the second. He asked Mitch if there was any more to them.

"Yeah, there is a lot more. First off the suits are made with a mix of platinum, duranium, and tritanium. Without the shields the armor itself can handle small munitions, heavy automatic weaponry, and small incendiary devices. In other words, most common guns, explosives, and a variety of energy based weapons won't even leave a scratch on this armor, let alone dent it. The armor is not invulnerable, but it can take up to five thousand pounds of pressure, so unless someone drops an elephant on top of you, you don't have anything to worry about. The shield can handle heavier energy based weapons, and a small tactile nuclear explosion, about 20-megaton payload. Anything over that and your screwed, but I doubt anyone's going to drop a nuke on you anytime soon so try not to worry. The shield protects you from radiation, and any airborne diseases. The environmental controls basically keeps your body comfortable under any circumstance, and filters the outside environment so you can breath easily. So if by chance you end up in an environment that is hostile to our lungs the suit will convert whatever the atmosphere is on the outside into fresh clear oxygen for you on the inside."

Mike asked if the suit came with a microwave oven, because he wanted to cook some soup on those long out of town trips. Everyone laughed at this including Mitch.

"Ok, I know it sounds like I'm going overboard with this but I'm almost finished explaining the battle armor. The communicator has a range of several million miles, so it's from here to lets say Mars. You'll have crystal clear reception so don't worry about interference. The damage indicator works with your HUD display and shows you where you're damaged. Now the visual spectrum control allows you to change how you see things around you. You can switch from normal to; night vision, thermal vision, and ultraviolet. With the faceplate you can see out, but no one can see in. Now that I've explained everything, Mike, why don't you get your sword. Attach the sheath to the back of the suit. When that's done allow your sword to interact with the suit."

Mike walked over to the corner and retrieved Crimson and walked back to the center of the room. Mike attached the sheath to the back of the suit and drew Crimson out of the sheath. Mike asked Crimson to try and interact with the suit. Crimson said he would try. Seconds later Crimson was glowing and the glow spread over the suit. Slowly the suit began to change color form cobalt to scarlet. Mitch asked what had happened and Crimson said he was connected to the suit now, the armor was just reacting to Crimson's presence. The same would go for the rest of them when they put on their suits and connected their swords to the suit. Jack asked if Crimson could alter the color of the suit. Crimson said he would try, a few seconds later the suit started to change color. Scarlet turned into emerald and back again. Crimson said that without him here the suit could only change to emerald color. Mike said that either cobalt or emerald were fine for suit colors and wanted the alternative color kept low key just in case. 

Mike decided that everyone else could try on their suits later, right now he was focused on the new power test they were planning for today. He removed the suit without too much complication, though it took him ten minutes to figure out how to take it off. Mike had Jack and Mitch go set up the test for the new power source, while Emily and him would monitor their progress from the bridge. It took a few minutes for Mike and Emily to reach the bridge, they had Sam bring up a display of the ship to monitor the power fluctuations. A two dimensional schematic of the ship appeared on the main viewing screen, showing that the current power levels were at thirty percent. 

"Sam inform Mitch and Jack that whenever they're ready they can begin the power test." Mike said. 

"Yes, Captain."

Three minutes later Mitch commed the bridge and said they were inserting the crystal into the new chamber now. Mike and Emily stood watching the display, hoping that this test was the answer to their problems. Slowly the power started to climb, in less than two minutes it went from thirty-five percent to fifty percent. The power started to rise faster, it jumped from fifty percent to ninety percent. Suddenly a warning klaxon sounded throughout the ship, the power reading was at hundred and fifty percent above normal and rising. The klaxon stop blaring moments after, Mitch commed the bridge to tell them everything was fine he just underestimated the power of the crystal.

"What would have happen had you not shutdown the chamber?" asked Mike.

"Well if I hadn't shut it down, the power chamber would have gone critical in under two minutes causing a massive explosion." Mitch said. "I'm going to recalibrate the chamber system now. It'll take about five minutes, and that should be the end of those power fluctuations."

Waiting five minutes seemed like an eternity but eventually. Mitch commed them to tell them they were going to start again. The power started to rise more steadily this time from thirty to fifty percent and still rising. Mike and Emily watched with baited breath, hoping that this time everything would work out. The power level was now reaching ninety percent, not a sound was made during these tense moments. The power rose to hundred percent, but did not stop there. Mike and Emily were crestfallen, it looked like they would have to stop the test and start over again. But before they could comm Mitch to stop the test, the power level halted at a hundred and ten percent and holding. Mitch commed the bridge to inform Mike that the current power level was stable and holding. Mike asked Sam for an initial report on the power output.

"Power is at a hundred and ten percent capacity, ship systems are online and are drawing a minimal amount of power from the power core. Captain this is by far the best power source that I've ever experienced, it's so clean and abundant. With the power available the new upgrades won't even make a dent in the power supply."

Mike was very pleased with the way things were turning out. Mike started to wonder if Sam had made any headway with the analysis of the green substance. Before he could ask about it, Mitch commed the bridge to announce that the ship was fully operational and ready for take-off. Mike had waited for this moment for the last three weeks and had planned for it appropriately. Sam had informed him the other day that the ship was unearthed finally, and once they had taken off they could test the ship's other systems before heading for space. Mike headed to the captain's chair and had Emily occupy the navigation station to pilot the ship. 

"This is the Captain to all hands, in two minutes we are going to lift off the ground and head for a synchronous orbit around Earth. From there we'll test the other ships systems and if everything works from there, Mitch can start installing those new upgrades. Sam when you're ready start a two minute countdown, seal all external hatches, secure all bulkheads and fire-doors, and activate artificial gravity."

Sam started to comply with the captain's orders, while Mike asked Emily to stay under radar detection and fly out over the ocean until they hit international waters and make their accent to a higher orbit. The controls for flying the ship were pretty basic and weren't very difficult to figure out. The console was configured with an array of buttons marked in strange symbols. Sam had translated each symbol for them and Jack marked them with a strip of tape to make it easier for them. Mitch was surprised when he saw the controls for the first time, he stated that it was a setup he'd seen often down at the Asbury Park boardwalk arcades. Mitch had mastered every flight simulator video game at the boardwalk two summers ago and was still the reigning champion. So Mitch was teaching them how to fly the ship for the last three days, and when they weren't with Mitch learning to fly or making the ship ready for flight, they were in flight simulators they found on the lower decks sharpening their skills. Sam announced that they had less than a minute till take-off. Mike commed Mitch and Jack and told them to get up to the bridge to man their stations, before lift-off. Mitch and Jack arrived at the bridge ten seconds before the countdown ended with enough time to strap in. The ship started to vibrate slightly, as Emily maneuvered the ship off the ground. They hovered there for a few minutes, excitement running through their veins. 

Mike had Sam check that everything was ready for their flight into space. Sam reported no problems, all hatches and lower compartments were sealed. Artificial gravity, inertial dampers, weapons, shields, are all online. They would need to check the cloaking device when they hit space. Mike asked Emily to take them out slowly at first then pick up some speed when it was all clear. Emily advanced the ship forward over the tree line, turning in a tight arc towards the east, were the horizon seemed to stretch forever. Emily kept the ship just over the tree line avoiding the most heavily populated areas, though it was getting tougher avoiding these areas, while heading for the coast. Mike recognized the area they were passing over, they were halfway down route 38, and it would take another fifteen minutes before they hit Browns Mills. At least they could avoid being seen for a while, if they stay to the rural back roads of Ocean County. Sam informed them that there was some activity from the two military installations, though there were no aircraft coming their way. Mike noticed that the ship had passed Browns Mills and was accelerating towards the coast. Soon it was hard to determine what they were passing, because it all one multicolored blur. Mike read the sensor data, observing that the ship was making good time. They would make the coastline in less then five minutes. Sam reported that the military still hadn't launched any aircraft, though Emily should increase their speed to be on the safe side. The ship was finally over open sea heading to international waters. Mike observed that the sea was relatively calm with a slight overcast as the sun was setting under the western horizon. Emily reported that they would enter international water in two seconds, and started a slow accent into the atmosphere. The ship didn't even feel like it was climbing, though the view on the main monitor said otherwise. The ship passed through the cloud cover with ease. The sky beyond the cloud cover was a light shade of red heading towards a darker shade of blue. Suddenly the sky faded out and stars appear in front of them, they had left the Earth's gravity a few seconds later. 

Thousands of stars loomed through the main viewer; awe was rolling throughout the bridge like high tide. Mike needed to calm down from what they had just accomplished. 

"Sam status report on the ship and any or all military activity concerning us leaving the planet." Mike said as the excitement was dying down inside himself.

"All ship systems are operating at top proficiency, structural integrity nominal; shields, weapons, artificial gravity, inertial dampers, communication array, navigation, and sublight engines are operating at peak efficiency. No one on Earth noticed our departure, all military bases and aircraft are inactive."

"Ok Sam take us to the dark side of the moon and hold a standard orbit on the dark side. We don't want anyone looking up and seeing us orbiting the Earth." 

Mike had decided that staying in orbit around Earth, would only complicate things for them in the long run. The dark side of the moon seemed like an ideal hiding place for the time being.

"Mitch, once we get situated at the moon, you can get start those new upgrades ASAP." Mike said.

Everyone was pleased, but it had been an exhausting day for everyone. Soon the ship was in orbit on the dark side of the moon. 



Genesis Project Ch. 06



Chapter 6

The next day Mike was drinking his first coffee of the day in the ship's galley, alone with his thoughts. Jack strolled in looking like he had just fought a major battle with his pillow and the pillow won. Jack poured himself some coffee and sat down across from Mike, looking like he wanted to go back to bed. Mike looked out on the scenery that was the moon. It was kinda bleak for Mikes' tastes; it just looked like a large sand trap that you would find on a golf course. Everyone had donned surplus uniforms found in one of the storage closets on board the ship. The uniforms themselves were color coded for different departments of ship operations.

Red - Command staff/ship operations.
Blue - Medical/Science.
Gold - Maintenance/Engineering.
Green - Security.
Brown - Fighter Operations.

The uniforms are basic black on the outside with the department color trimming the sleeves and collar of the uniform. Rank insignia was located on the collar of the uniform, while patches could be sewn on to the sleeves or shoulders later if needed. Mike liked the uniforms though they kind of give you a wedgie every once in a while. Sam could probably adjust them. Mike asked Jack how he slept. Jack look at Mike for a minute, then said he slept well but he kept having a really intense dream that was driving him a little batty. Emily walked in looking very chipper and Mike hoped that she would drown in her coffee for being so chipper. Apparently Jack was thinking along those lines too since she walked in. No one had the right to be that chipper in the morning, it went against the natural order of things.

"Wow, isn't this just exciting, we're on the backside of the moon." Emily chirped out at them.

Jack responded with "Cram it Blondie, it's too early for the sun shine brigade to make an appearance."

With that comment Emily's chipper mood deflated faster than a balloon flying around a room. Mike was having a hard time restraining the laugh he got out of that, while Emily made her early morning report. Her mood quickly soured, and threw a seething look at Jack, who just shrugged it off like it was nothing.

"Everything is running smoothly, no problems whatsoever. I went to wake up Mitch five minutes ago, but he wasn't in his room. Sam told me he had gotten up at five a.m. EST. Then went straight to work after only having some dried toast and tea for breakfast. He's been working five hours straight on those upgrades. Sam informed me that he was not to be disturbed till at least noon. That's about it for now."

Mike was satisfied with her report and decided to go for a walk. He said he'd see them later; he wanted to check out the hanger bay while on his walk. Mike left the galley and proceeded towards the hanger bay. Mike was impressed with the work that Jack and the maintenance droids had done, the ship look almost brand new. None of the corridors had the slightest blemish. While admiring the handiwork of the Chief Engineer, Mike noticed that he was slightly lost. Just ahead of him on the right side of the corridor was a simplistic diagram of the ship. After getting directions from the diagram Mike was at the hanger bay in no time flat. The doorway to the hanger bay opened with a slight hiss and the inside was dark. Mike stepped through the doorway and activated the light switch. Overhead, artificial lighting came to life and showed the hanger bay in a peculiar sort of way. The fighters within the hanger were sleek works of art. 

A thin lay of dust covered the entire hanger bay, evidence that this area of the ship has been unvisited since the departure of the original crew. Maintenance equipment littered the floor of the bay and fighters were perched along the walls with the exception of one sole fighter. Mike slowly walked towards one of the fighters in the middle of the bay. This one seemed a little different from the rest of the fighters. This one was somewhat personalized by the original pilot, strange glyphs were scrolled along the side of the hatch, while an indigo stripe cut across the nose diagonally. Mike decided that he would take this one for a test drive, it seemed as good as any of the fighter craft here. He hoped that by the time he returned Mitch would have good news to report on those upgrades. But Mike was going to get into his combat suit first just in case, and it wouldn't hurt to bring Crimson along for some company. After donning his suit and grabbing Crimson, Mike headed back to the hanger bay.

Mike opened that hatch to the fighter and climbed inside. Once he was comfortable, he slid the hatch shut. Mike activated the ship' and banks of lights sprang to life. He retracted the landing struts and the ship floated in mid-air as if on an invisible cloud. He asked Sam to open the hanger doors and a crack appeared on the far wall as two massive doors retracted. Mike maneuvered the small fighter craft through the opening. He had to admit the little ship handled pretty well for being ten thousand-years-old. Stars filled the canopy of the little ship as it left the hanger. Mike was in awe at the sight, he realized just how small he was compared to the rest of the universe. He steered the fighter in a smooth arc towards the moon's surface, keeping the fighter between the ship and the moon. The moon reminded Mike of a golf course sand trap. Craters pockmarked the surface, which gave way to shallow ravines and expansive valleys. All and all it was pretty boring. 

Mike decided head the fighter towards the outer reaches of the system and check out Pluto. He plotted his course and headed out. Pushing the engines to their maximum, they glowed an intense blue. The fighter was cruising near one of Jupiter's moons, Europa. Mike had learned about this one back in high school, it supposedly has an ocean of water underneath its icy surface.

A beeping from the sensors brought Mike back to the present. The sensors were picking up something up on the edge of the system. Curiously Mike set the sensors to their maximum setting. While he was still too far away to get a clear reading he realized that if he went to investigate whatever it is alone it would be extremely stupid. Although Sam and the ship were nowhere near ready to investigate anything at the moment. Well, sitting between Jupiter and Saturn wasn't going to solve anything. Mike activated the cloaking device and the small fighter simply disappeared from the visual spectrum. The fighters' transponder was not active at the moment and turning it on might alert his presence to someone. Five minutes passed slowly as the fighter passed Pluto, which kind of looked like a misshapen potato. Mike was approaching the edge of the system and he could barley make out a speck in the distance. He focused the sensors on the speck and they reported it to be a ship. 

Fear slowly crept its' way into Mike's stomach, but he would need to get a lot closer to get a clear reading. Mike edged the fighter towards the ship, trying not to draw attention to his fighter, even though it was cloaked. He closed the distance between the two ships and the sensors reported that the ship was heavily damaged. Mike looked at the ship and he had to agree with the sensors, this ship was beaten to hell. The ship was drifting into the system and probably caused an incident down the line. He checked the reading and saw that there was still some atmosphere on the ship, but most of it was concentrated in what appeared to be the cargo bay. Their shields, weapons, and engines were all off-line. The ships' hull was pocked marked with black scorch marks and chunks of hulls were missing. This ship was at least half the size of their ship and looked like an angular box with the wings located at the rear of the ship. 

The sensors couldn't tell him if anyone was a live or not, too much interference. Mike sealed his suit and brought the fighter right long the aft side of the hull near an airlock and magnetized the landing struts to the hull. Mike shut down power to the fighter and opened the hatch while all the air was sucked out. Mike climb out of the fighter and held on to the little fighter until he could magnetize his boots, once that was done Mike reached into the fighter, retrieved Crimson and strapped him to his back. Mike' progress was slow and after seven minutes of walking reached the airlock. He bent down and activated the airlocks' door. The airlock door was circular and rotated clock wise to the opened position. Mike then swung into the airlock and closed the door so the airlock would begin to repressurize the small room. Of course that wasn't really needed with the suit Mike was wearing. Artificial gravity was still operational, so he demagnetized his boots, and walked to the door that led to the other parts of the ship. 

He had a clear shot from here to the cargo bay, his suits' sensors indicated that this air was breathable, but decided against taking off his suit. He switched over to stealth camouflage, activated his shields and proceeded to the cargo bay. It was deathly quiet inside; no one seemed to be around. Mike figured if the crew was dead that their bodies would be scattered around. As he approached the cargo bay he could hear muffled noises coming from the other side of the door. Activating the door switch Mike watched as the doors slid silently open. What he saw next would haunt his dreams for the rest of his days. There was a fairly large group of people huddling in the corner of the cargo bay, wearing cloths that are torn and close to falling off altogether. All of these people were battered, bruised, bleeding, and shackled to each other. Most of them looked to be in a state of shock and were covered in various kinds of filth, some obviously their own waste. Standing in the middle of the cargo bay was an alien humanoid, seven feet tall, reptilian in nature, green scales and razor sharp black claws. On its' face was a sort of snout and had two rows of gleaming fangs.

Another shorter version of the alien approached the bigger one and knelt down to one knee.

"My Lord," it hissed, "the ship is too heavily damaged for us to make repairs. The ship has been drifting for too long and we do not know where we are. We are too far away from the shipping lanes for a distress beacon to be useful. We can only hope that one of our ships will pass by and pick up our transponder. Sir, we are dangerously low on food. In a few days we will not have enough to feed the slaves over there. In a week we will be out of food for our selves. What are we going to do?"

The taller alien looked down on its subordinate with a look of "loathing" on its face. Then it looked back up at the slaves and, well, smiled for lack of a better word.

"Hmm, when the slaves' rations are gone they will no longer be useful to use. We won't be able to get them to market for the next auction and they are pitiful specimens as it is." said the taller one. A few seconds passed and the taller one began to speak again in a louder voice.

"Well, I guess we will just have to eat them, and hope that we are rescued before we run out of slaves to eat." It laughed when the group of slaves cried and whimpered in the corner, knowing that their fate was sealed.

Mike had enough of this. Slowly he crept into the cargo bay and scanned the bay; there were eight of the reptile aliens. Mikes' odds weren't the greatest, eight hostile aliens vs. one six foot Human from Jersey. "Yeah they don't stand a chance." Mike thought sarcastically. He did have Crimson on his back, along with the element of surprise. Mike was slinking along the far wall trying to keep his movements slow and steady. Another alien came rushing into the cargo bay and knelt before the taller one.

"Sire, there is a strange craft attached to the hull. It was not there the last time we secured the ship."

The leader didn't seem to like this one bit. "Everyone into attack formation! If there're intruders on board they will eventually come here. If we can take them by surprise we can use their ship and retrieve help for us. Remember this is for the good of the clan!" All of the aliens began to take flanking position by the cargo by doors, nine in all now. 

"Not looking that great now." Mike thought. 

They didn't appear to have weapons in the cargo bay, and were just going to rip apart whoever came through those doors. Mike looked over to the slaves and watched them for a few moments. He could barley feel the two tears running down his face. Two of the aliens detached themselves from their position and crept towards the group of slaves gesturing back and forth between themselves. As they got closer Mike could hear what they were arguing about.

"Let's make this quick. We don't want the Prime catching us playing with these little pieces of genetic trash." One said. The other nodded in agreement. As they neared, the slaves cringed from the slavers approach. Mike watch as they grabbed what looked like a small child. She couldn't have been more than eight years old. At that moment something inside of Mike snapped. Like a switch being thrown all of his anger and rage boiled to the surface of his being. Mike felt oddly detached from the scene like he was watching a movie or a TV show. The alien had muffled the child's crying with a dirty rag that was once part of her clothes. The look on that kids' face was all it took for Mike to go into action. He proceeded toward the would-be-rapist, not bothering with keeping his movement quit. The rest of the slaves notice his movement from the corner of their vision. They could see something moving towards the slavers, but didn't know what it could be it was practically invisible. Mike was ten feet away when the little girl noticed his approach with obvious confusion.

"Yes, we're going to have fun with you little one." Hissed one of the slavers.

"Wait, she's stopped struggling already, its more fun when they struggle and squirm." Said the other. This one poked her in the ribs earning a muffled cry of anguish from the child. Mike was closing in now and one turned his head in Mikes' direction, hearing noise made by his movements. That was the last thing the slaver ever did in this life. Mike landed a sharp roundhouse punch to the neck of the alien as it died from suffocation. The other slaver was so surprised by his comrade death that he dropped the girl he was tormenting to the deck floor. Mike then switched off both the shields, stealth camo, and confronted the other slaver. He quickly lashed out at Mike with his claw hand hoping to slice him into ribbons. Mike saw the strike coming and grabbed hold of the aliens' wrist. The alien could not break Mikes' grip on his wrist and he was surprised at the strength that Mike possessed. Mike could see the shock on the aliens' face as plain as day and a cold smile was on his face as he realized that the alien was up against an opponent that was far stronger than he was. Mike snapped the aliens' wrist like a twig and lifted the slaver up by his throat stopping any call for help to the others on the other side of the bay. The slaver thrashed about clawing at Mikes' arm hopelessly, as Mike slowly crushed the bones and sinew in his opponents' neck. 

The thrashing stopped as the bone cracked under the pressure and his limbs fell lifelessly to its sides. Mike was finished with this one and threw him one handed fifteen feet into a support girdle with the echoing sound of his backbones cracking throughout the cargo bay. Mike was amazed at what he just did; he should not have been able to have done that. He was strong, but the alien felt like he weighed less than forty pounds and his bones were as brittle as an eighty year old man. Mike filed that thought away for later, now he had to deal with the rest of the aliens, who were charging him head-on.

Mike reached for Crimson on his back and pulled him from his sheath. Standing in attack stance Mike waited for them to get close. The shortest of all the alien reached him first, snapping a kick out aimed for Mike knee. Mike quickly raised his leg to avoid the kick and snapped a front kick to the aliens' chest. The small alien was launched off his feet and landed on his back. He quickly stabbed the alien in the chest with a downward strike. Two more slavers were approaching fast, one did a slid tackle to sweep Mike off of his feet. Mike leaned heavily on Crimson and jumped to avoid the tackle. The blade sunk three more inches into the small dead alien, blue blood gushing through the open wound. The second slaver was surprised that Mike had jumped to avoid the tackle and seconds later received a devastating kick to the face. The kick breaking his snout and driving the bones straight into his brain, he was dead before he hit the ground. Mike was on his feet again breathing heavily. 

The slaver that had tried to tackle him was on his feet and came at Mike with an overhead strike aimed for his jugular. Mike shifted Crimson to block the strike and sparks emitted from the blade as the claws came into contact with the blade. With the slavers' momentum still in play, his claws continued on down the blade as his fingers were cut off. Mike spun bringing Crimson around to cut off the slavers' head. The head was cut cleanly off of the aliens' shoulders, as blue blood began to gush out where the head once was. His head rolled towards the remaining four slavers', their faces showed first traces of fear. Suddenly Crimson started to pulsate in Mikes' hands, three of the subordinates rushed to take defensive positions to protect the Prime. Crimson was glowing wildly now, bathing the entire bay in an unsettling blood red. Mike knew by instinct what to do next and made a horizontal slashing movement towards the would-be-defenders. 

A wave of pure red energy lashed out at the three burning away flesh where the energy came in contact. They fell to the floor, acidic smoke hissing from there wounds, the Prime standing stock still unable to move as the rest of his confidence ran down his leg to form a puddle on the deck. Mike stalked forward and did a rising vertical slash cutting the Prime from groin to gizzard. What remained fell to the floor in a squishy heap. There were no more enemies, the adrenaline rush was finally taking its' toll. Mike staggered towards the far wall where he first came in. He leaned up against the wall and slid Crimson back into his sheath. He slid down the wall in utter exhaustion.

"Crimson, activate shields. I'm going to close my eyes for just a few minutes. I'm so tired." said Mike as he feel asleep with his head in hands, wondering what in the hell he was going to do with all these people. But that could wait for later, as darkness greeted Mike at last.



Genesis Project Ch. 07



Mike felt as if he were floating on a sea of clouds, the exhaustion he felt before was slowly slipping away. It was moments like these that Mike felt at peace with himself and memories of the past just remained in the past. His peace was short lived, as the dreams started again. Mike was five years old again, he was awoken by the sounds of screaming coming from down stairs in the kitchen. He crept out of bed and soundlessly walked down the stairs. It sounded like his daddy was drunk again, mostly complaining loudly about his rotten life, his rotten job, his ugly wife, and his no good bed-wetting son. Mike was always frightened when his dad got like this, sooner or later Robert Anderson would start taking out his frustration out on his wife. 

Some days' mom would have bruises on her face, arms or legs, and would jump at the slightest noise. One day when Mike came home from kindergarten, his dad was just starting in on his mom. After the first blow to her face, Mike ran to protect his mom from the violent drunk. That only pissed his dad off even more and finally 'noticed' his son. From that day forward Mike received his fair share of the beatings. Robert was 5'10 and out weighed Mike by at least a hundred and sixty pounds, Mike was only 3'6 at the time. It wasn't even a challenge for Bob. The dreams start to collide into each other and reforms in another time. Mike had just turned thirteen, and when he had gotten home from school expecting to a least get a cake to commemorate his birthday, he was sadly mistaken. Bob sneered at Mike, when he had mentioned his birthday, and had a good laugh at his expense. Bob told little 'Mickey', that he had spent the money meant for cake and presents on beer and parts for his old Dodge Charger. Well Mick was upset at this and called his dad a 'good for nothing lazy fuck up, who took out his frustration out on his family for his own personal failures.' Well, after that Mike was severely beat worse than before. Only on his thirteenth birthday instead of the presents and cake, Mike was in the Emergency Room with: two fractured bones in his right arm, a broken rib from being kicked in the ribs repeatedly, a busted lip, and laceration to his right eyebrow. 

Bob had his wife put makeup to cover the bruises she had and had her make up a convincing story about how some older neighborhood kids ganged up on their son. The hospital officials were suspicious, but couldn't prove anything to the contrary. Mike later had two pins and a metal plate placed inside of his arm to reinforce the bones. The laceration on his eyebrow left a permanent scar, running down vertically from his forehead through is eyebrow and along the outer edge of his eye. From that day on Mike hoped and prayed that his dad would suddenly die and both his mom and Mike would be free. The dream collapsed again swirling like a kaleidoscope of color until it focused on the worst memory of Mikes' life. He had turn seventeen three months before and was on his way into his house when the phone rang. He ran to pick up, on the other end a police officer asked if this was Mike Anderson. Mike confirmed this, and the officer reported that there had been a car accident involving his parents. Mike thought at the moment that his dad had gotten drunk again and drove off with his mom to somewhere and he died as a result. The officer shot down the theory even before he voiced it. His parents were hit by a drunk driver killing them instantly. Mike had no one in the world now except his friend Emily. He wasn't going into child services, so he got himself emancipated, finished up school, and applied to college under a scholarship. Apparently, the house was bought and paid off years ago, and his parents had large insurance polices to cover the essentials for the time being and put the rest of the insurance money in the bank to earn interest. He had the house, money, and peace at last, but he was alone in more ways than one. This time the dream fizzled from his conscientiousness as sweet darkness enveloped him.

He woke with a start, gasping for breath, and disoriented with his surroundings. For several moments he couldn't remember where he was. Then the scenes of carnage came back in a rush. He looked up and noticed that all of slaves were milling about talking to each other. The bodies of the fallen slavers still lay where they fell. Pools of blue blood covered most of the deck. Talking among the slave's stop as they notice that Mike was stirring. They pulled back to the far corner of the bay and huddled together. Mike realized that they were afraid of him. He needed to get up and figure out what he was going to do with these people. He slowly stood, keeping his hands down at his sides avoiding any hostile gestures. "They can't tell what I am underneath the suit. Maybe if I took off the suit they would relax a little," thought Mike. He reach up and unsealed the helmet, a loud hiss resulted. He took the helmet of and he heard the slaves' gasp as they looked upon his face. Apparently he was not what they expected. 

The small child that he had saved came forward from the group and looked at Mike with awe in her eyes. She did the last thing Mike would have expected her to do. She ran towards Mike away from the group of slaves. Some tried to grab her, but she yanked herself free and made to Mike without complication. She lunged at Mike and grabbed him in a fierce hug, which he returned. He smile at the antics of the child and picked her up an walked towards the slaves. She held on around his neck as she buried her face in the crook of his neck. One of the slaves, a middle aged man with a sour expression on his face, walked towards Mike. He looked at the girl with disdain, before he spoke.

"Release that thing right now, Cerelia" "I just wanted to thank him. You don't have to get mean about it Gannon" replied Cerelia.

"You, put her down this instant," said Gannon, while making the obvious hand gesture as to where he was suppose to let her down. Mike was wondering what had crawled up this guys' ass and died. Mike complied with his 'request', though he didn't like the treatment he was receiving.

"Look, I don't know what your problem is pal, but from the looks of things I just saved all of your lives' and the attitude towards me really isn't helping," said Mike.

Gannon was surprised at what Mike had just said and apparently the others were as well. Mike removed Crimson from his back and laid him on the deck so he could remove his combat suit without any interference. The slaves watch as the suit came off of its' own accord, to reveal Mikes' uniform. When the suit was completely off, Mike stretched his aching muscles and worked his stiff joints. He earn a couple bone popping sounds form his back and his shoulders. Mike crouched down so Cerelia could thank him, just as she was about to come forward when Mike saw Gannon reach up his sleeve for something. Everything seem to slow down, Cerelia moving to hug Mike as a smile slowly spread across her face. Gannon withdrawing a filed shive from his sleeve and gripping it in his right hand brought down the sharpened weapon in Mike general direction. The shive was moving towards Mike, but saw that it would intercept with the girl before it completed its' journey. Mike had to act now if he was going to save the girls' life. He grabbed the girl and swung her around shielding her with his body. The shive struck Mikes' shoulder, the sound of ripping fabric could be heard throughout the bay. There was a lot of pain in his shoulder and couldn't believe that this fucker just stabbed him. 

Mike released the girl and rose up to face the piece of shit behind him. If Mike had the opportunity to look into a mirror, he wouldn't be able to recognize the person starring back at him. His eyes were mere slits of smoldering green fire, while the muscles in his face were like hardened marble. He was pissed. And Gannon just realized how screwed he was. Mike didn't mince words in a situation like this, he just acted. Gannon took a defensive posture as he saw Mike coming his way. He lashed out at Mike with a right cross to his face and following it up with a left upper cut. When the hits landed Mike didn't even bother to put up a defensive, he just took them and was amused at how weak these hits were. Mike aloud himself a small chuckle. He then kicked the shmuck right in the nuts. 

A high pitch scream later, Gannon was vomiting the contents of his stomach on the deck. He then picked the nearly conscientious man under his arms, not even noticing obviously how heavy he was. Gannon was on his feet by then with a barely thought out idea came to his mind. He tried kicking Mike in his abdomen, but Mike caught his leg before he made contact. Mike held on to the leg and swung the shmuck with all of his might. Mike was surprised at what happened next, like the alien he tossed before, Gannon went flying further than the alien did. The man struck the floor, tumbling and rolling fifteen feet. He slowly got up, blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, his left arm hung limply at his side. Mike thought that it was time to finish this fight. He ran toward the slave, deciding to tackle him to cause the least damage. Less than five feet away Mike leaps at the broken man. Mike flew at the man at an amazing speed, but didn't stop when he made contact. He had the man around the middle and still kept going for at least another seven feet. When Mike finally got up, he wonder what in the hell had just happened. He looked down at the slave, he was definitely not going to get ever again. Mike walked back to the group of slaves, some skirted away from him, watching with awe expressions. Cerelia didn't back away from Mike and came right up to him.

"Sir, exactly what are you?" the little girl said. "Kid, at the moment even I don't know the answer to that question," replied Mike. A much younger man came forward, curiosity written on his face. At first, he had difficulty trying to speak to Mike. The young man apparently had been punched in the throat, not nearly hard enough to kill him, as a punishment for slacking off. "Who are you? Where do you come from? And why are you so strong?," said the man in a hoarse voice. Mike went into sparing details on the who's and the where's. The last question threw him through a loop. He thought Crimson might be able to answer that question. But now was not the time. He wanted some answers from the slave and any info on the empire would come in handle.

"Where are you people from? Who or what are these things? And what is the current status of the empire?," asked Mike. The young man, whose name is Jax, started to answer Mike's questions.

"All of us, even Gannon, are from a world called Callisto. About seven hundred years ago, these slavers came to our world and took us by surprise. Callisto was a beautiful paradise, abundant in resources and it's natural scenery. When the world was theirs, it became a slave planet. No one was spared, any who resisted were put to death. They are called the Dagons. Their civilization is built on the backs of slaves and stolen resources. When they first attack they were using primitive technology, we were confident enough that we could repel them indefinitely. What they lacked in technology, they made up for it in numbers. Thousands upon thousands of ships and soldiers crashed into our defenses. For every one we killed three would take their place. Soon our defenses crumbled under the oppression of their forces. They used our technology to improve their own and used us as they saw fit." Jax stated. He took a pregnant pause to gather his thoughts. The look on his face showed a small amount of strain on his vocal cords. He took a deep breath and continued we his tale. "The empire is nothing more than a few weak confederations with strained alliances with each other. It all started back with Emperor Shinza and his expansion program. He already had one third of the galaxy, but he wanted more. Some groups found that this was a waste of money, resources, and people. These groups started sabotaging ships meant for colonization and exploration, in hopes of curving the emperor's thoughts toward expansion. That only made him try harder. A total of over twenty-six-hundred ships, disappeared and all hands presumed lost, in little over two hundred years. These saboteurs eventually got fed up with the emperor and started a civil war that spanned his entire territory. Billions died either from military action, starvation, or disease. 

That was the first time the empire fell. It later reestablished itself after a hundred years of infighting among the scavengers trying to piece together a enough power to conquer the galaxy as warlords. Over the next several centuries the empire fell and arisen from the ashes of its' death. All sorts of information were lost during this time, including technological specification for ship and weapons designs. Five hundred years ago the empire fell again and stayed that way as small groups gather all the ships and supplies they could and mark out their piece of the galaxy. Compared to the ships that existed in the time of Emperor Shinza, our ships are but pitiful and weak tugs. It was said that the old ships had cloaking devises and powerful weaponry. But who knows if that were ever true or not. The Dagons came from another part of the galaxy and took over half the territories when the last empire fell. Many have fell to their slave holds and are never seen again." Jax appeared to be done talking.

All of this information would need to be discussed with Sam later. Right now Mike had more questions for these slaves. A slow throbbing from his shoulder made its presence known and reminder what had happened earlier. Mike had Jax come over to have a look at his shoulder to see how much damage Gannon had done. Jax came forward with Cerelia on his heels, concern for her hero was plain to see. Mike turn around and peeled back the uniform so they could see the damage. Both of the slaves gasp when Mike peeled his uniform off his shoulder. Mike could hear mummers from the others, but couldn't make out what they were saying. He was getting anxious about what was going on. He turned back to face the group of thirty or so slaves and asked what was wrong.

A stooped old man came towards Mike, the shackles on his wrists clinking with every step. He stopped three feet from Mike, his violet eyes piercing in their brightness. 

"Your wound is not serious, in fact it looks like a simple scratch. We all saw Gannon strike you, he is one of the strongest among the slaves here, but when the blow landed it only cut your clothes and merely scratched your skin. We have seen Gannon deliver similar blows to others back in the slave pens, they did not last more than five minutes after the blow was dealt."

Mike was beginning to worry at what the old man was saying. Was he in danger from some sort of slow acting poison? The old man watched Mike's features and spoke in a annoyingly calm voice.

"The shive was not poisoned, poison is very hard to come by even on the slave planets. When we saw the blade strike you the blade chipped and shattered. What we saw was impossible. It appears even you were unaware of this happening at the time. So this means that you haven't had the opportunity to be stabbed." 

The old man bent over to retrieve something from the floor, it looked like a very worn piece of wood with metal shards jutting out of it. Mike was trying to figure out what that piece of wood was supposed to be. Then it clicked. This was the shive that Gannon tried to stab him with. When he first notice the shive the blade was at least three inches long, now it appeared to be less than one and a quarter inches long. 

"What in the hell was going on?" thought Mike. This shouldn't be possible. Answers to some of his questions only brought more questions to be answered. They unfortunately will have to wait for later. Mike needed to get these people out of here and back to the ship for medical treatment. And Mike definitely needed time to alone to think about what he learned. 



Genesis Project Ch. 08



Meanwhile...

"WHERE THE FUCK IS HE?!" shouted Emily for the thirty-seventh time. Both Jack and Mitch were watching Emily, like they were trapped inside a cage with a wild animal ready to tear their heads off at the slightest movement. Emily had been pacing the deck in the galley since Mike failed to come back. At first both Jack and Mitch said that Mike was just having some fun out in a fighter, and it had only been three hours. That was five hours ago with no sign of Mike. With every passing hour Emily got more agitated and snapped at the every little noise.

While Emily was pacing, Mitch had completed most of the upgrades, although the hyper drive would have to wait to be tested. At Mitch's request, Sam operated a small fighter to ‘test' the new upgrades. The fighter was designed for two occupants, shaped like the US Air Forces Thunderbolt II, except it was a lot smaller. The craft was fifteen feet long by nine feet wide. When it was in the hanger bay the craft was resting on its landing struts barely six feet off the ground. Mitch found out that the fighter was heavily armored and made it half as fast as the fighter that Mike was flying, though it in fact had more powerful weaponry to compensate for its speed. It reminded Mitch of a bomber of sorts, not very quick, but packs a powerful punch when needed. For the first test Mitch had Sam maneuver the fighter ten kilometers away from the ship, then have the Thundercat, the fighter, fire it's forward particle weapons directly at the hull of the ship. With the new metaphasic armor, Mitch believed that their would be no residual affects from the particle weapon, meaning that the Thundercat could, in fact, stay outside of the ship and fire at its hull for the rest of the day without leaving a single mark. Jack decided to join Mitch for the rest of the day to avoid the "hell bitch", or else face a fate worse than death itself. He was a little nervous about Mitchs' plan; what if it failed was the main topic of their conversation. Mitch replied simply, ‘we'd die a very painful, but quick death'. Jack was quiet for a while after that, silently hoping that the test passed. He was standing over the Science console just skimming Mitchs' project notes, when he noticed the name ‘Thundercat'.

"Mitch, what in the Sam hell is a ‘Thundercat'? asked Jack while doing the air quotes gesture.

"Well, do you see that fighter out there?" Jack nodded, it was kinda hard to miss. "That my friend is what I name that particular class of fighter."

Jack decreed that Mitch was no longer allowed to name anything involving ships, A.I.s', bases, planets, and/or solar systems ever again. Mitch protested that it was a perfectly good name and didn't see a problem with it. Jack said, "If you can't see the problem, you are by far clueless and FUBAR. And if you don't know what that means, try Googling it." 

Five obscene hand gestures later, Mitch had Sam transfer control of the Thundercat to the Science console, so he could be more in control of the test. Mitch brought the Thundercat up on the main viewer and had Sam project the Thundercat and the ship in holographic panorama. Sam started a ten second count down until the fighter fired, Mitch was eager for this test to get under way.

"Ten", said Sam.

"Nine"

"Well I hope this works," said Mitch. Jack upon hearing this cursed worse than a drunken sailor trying pay to for a prostitute, and later finding out it was a guy in drag. Jack missed eight because he was cursing so loud.

"Seven"

"Six"

"Five"

"I am so going to kick your ass later," uttered Jack.

"Four"

"Three"

"Two"

"One"

"Ah shit," muttered Jack. Mitch pressed the firing symbol on the console and a bright red flash of energy erupted from the Thundercat. Jack had his eyes closed the entire time. Mitch had his eyes on the holographic display as the energy blast drew closer towards the ship. The distance between the two rapidly decreased. Then the energy hit the ship. Jack still had his eyes closed, but asked when it was going to hit.

"It already did you big chicken shit," replied Mitch. Jacks' eyes popped open and looked around. No alarms went off, nothing seemed damaged, in fact Jack didn't even register the hit on the ship. "Damn that armor must be fucking good!" thought Jack. Though he didn't say that to Mitch. Mitch moved away from the console with that damn smug look on his face. Jack decided that it was time for some payback. Without being too apparent, he launched his booted foot right in the center of Mitchs' hacky-sac. Mitchs' testicles moved right on in with their new neighbors, the tonsils.

Just about an hour later Emily stormed onto the bridge, much of her irritation still on her face. She scanned the area, hoping to lash out at anyone or thing, so she wouldn't be reminded that Mike was still missing. Emily wanted to take the ship out and search for Mike, but Mitch told her in no uncertain terms that the ship needed to be tested before we searched for Mike. That had been an hour before Mitchs' test started, now she felt that the ship was as ready as it was going to be, test be damned. She was tired of waiting, and when she found Mike, he is going to die a very painful death by her hands. A single moan broke through her thoughts as Emily turned her head towards the science console. Mitch was sitting on the largest bag of ice that Emily had ever seen, well more like straddling the bag of ice than sitting on it. The irritation on her face slowly faded at the amusing sight.

"What the hell happen to you?" she asked. Mitch looked up from the console and wince before he spoke.

"Jack and I had a disagreement of my testing methods. When he found out what the test entailed and how I had hoped that the test would work, he got a little upset. Needless to say if I had not called him a chicken shit after the test then my balls would not be up in my throat right about now."

Emily gave a slight smile at his labored effort to recall the incident. Mitch went on to tell her that all of the defensive upgrades were complete, both shielding and armor passed with flying colors. They could now search for Mike without further delay on his part.

"Sam could you extrapolate Mikes' flight path and guides us to him?" Emily asked with excitement evident on her face.

"Yes Commander, the emissions from the fighter can be tracked easily, but we had better do so now before his wake dissipates any further," explained Sam.

"Alright Sam, bring up his flight path on the main viewer and display the route that he might had taken without changing course, hopefully he hadn't taken the scenic route."

"Acknowledge."

The computer generated image of Mikes' flight path showed the fighter heading towards the outer reaches of the system passing close to Pluto. 

"Jack please report to the bridge and man your station," commed Emily.

"Be right there." replied Jack.

Jack was panting heavily when he rushed onto the bridge, a slight flush evident on his cheeks. After a few seconds Jack brought his breathing back to normal and calmly walked to his console. Emily took the Captain's chair and swiveled around towards the main viewer. She ordered Sam to take control and follow the flight path that Mike took and to set his sensors to their maximum setting. Mitch asked if she wanted the cloak activated, so they could avoid the chance of being spotted, even by that piece of shit Hubbell telescope. Emily thought it was a good suggestion and agreed.

With the cloak activated, Sam began to follow Mikes' flight path, slowly pushing more power to the sublight engines. It would take ten minutes to reach the edges of the solar system. If NASA knew what they were doing they would shit their collective pants. Emily hoped that Mike would be ok and would survive long enough until they got to wherever the hell he had gone to. All was silent on the bridge as the search for their captain began, and the massive ship advanced through space hoping that all was not lost.

 * * *

Mike decided that he needed to try to get communications back online to call in Sam and the ship. 

‘I really need to think of a name for that ship. I can't just keep calling it "the ship".' thought Mike. 

He was still palming the broken shive after twenty minutes idleness. To the slaves it was a deadly weapon. To Mike it was a fragile thing that he crush with his hand. It wasn't even difficult to crush, felt like an aluminum beer can in his hands. He also knew he needed the help of these people, they knew this ship better than he did. He hoped that the communication gear was still intact. He walked over to Jax and the old man, who he later learned was called Xavier. When they saw him approach they bowed their heads in respect to him. Mike tried to wave it off but they insisted that they show the respect he deserves. Mike asked where the communications station was located, they said near the bridge, but not on the bridge itself. Mike thought that was a serious design flaw on the assholes that built this rust bucket. It was at this moment that he felt something strange, something that didn't feel quit right.

"Hey can I ask you guys a question?," asked Mike. He got nods in return, which clued him in to ask away.

"Do any of you feel ‘strange' at the moment? Something just doesn't feel right in the ship. Could it be atmospheric pressure in the cargo bay?" Jax was the one to answer Mike first.

"No, nothing feels wrong to me Mike. Why do you feel sick?"

"No, I don't feel sick. I can only describe it as feeling ‘light', like some huge weight has been lifted off of me."

Xavier got this far away look on his face, which turn into a heavy frown. When he spoke it was almost a whisper.

"Mike could you do me a favor, and perform a small jump. Not a running jump, just stand right where you are and just jump straight up." 

Mike was having a sinking sensation in the pit of his colon. He had a inkling of where this was going. So he got ready to perform this small task. He bent his knees slightly and used all the strength in his calves in this one jump. Mike was off the deck and soared six feet into the air. 

"Holy shit, what the fuck is going on?' thought Mike. 

This was way too much for him to handle at the moment. He could think about this stuff later, there were more important things at hand that needed attending.

Mike walked over to his combat armor and started to put back on, that's when he realized Crimson had been quiet this entire time. He had his suit half up his legs when Crimson started to shimmer.

"Everything all right their buddy?" asked Mike.

"Michael, I've been mulling over some of the revelations that have gone on recently. Some more disturbing than others. Once we get back to the ship, some things will become clear."

‘He sounds a little stress out, even for sword, its a little strange.' thought Mike.

He pulled the suit the rest of the way up and reactivated its' main systems. Mike sealed and pressurized his suit, because he didn't know what the conditions were like near the bridge. The realization came to him that none of the slaves would be able to follow him, some of the ships compartments were open to vacuum. He'd have to go it alone, though he was going to get some directions first, he didn't know the basic layout of the ship. After talking with Jax and some of the other slaves they gave him a basic layout of the ship. If he didn't take and wrong turns, he'd be at the communications station within seven minutes. 

He made his way towards the exist of the cargo bay. The slaves watched as he left, some showing an expression of worry while others remained neutral. Once outside the cargo bay the sound of his own breath was thudding in his own ears. The hall in front of him was nearly pitch black, the emergency track lighting the only source of illumination. He proceeded through the corridor, twenty feet further, his HUD display informed he that he was beyond the containment field. There was no more atmosphere outside of his suit. At junction in the corridor he was to take a right, then a left, walk ten meters and make a sharp right. No other complications according to the slaves, he followed their instructions to the letter and the communications station was five feet in front of him.

He walked in front of the consul and tried pressing a few of the buttons on the panel. None of them work, nor did they give any indication of being powered. He popped the lower access panel to the station. Everything seemed to be in working order, until he noticed that the power supply was shorted out. Mike yanked the power supply and tossed it over his shoulder. He took his head out of the panel and looked around for some cables that he could Jerry-rig to make this POS work. A small storage cubby was the answer to his prayers, several cables and replacement parts for the communications was stored here, but no back up power supplies. He took two cables, one so he could splice it into his suit power matrix and run right into the communications station, the second so he could boost his own comm signal. Several frustrating minutes later he had everything squared away. By activating his own comm link he should, in theory, be able to reach Sam.

"Sam, this is Mike over." he commed. Nothing but static was his reply. He managed to push ten percent more power into the communication array. Unfortunately it was cutting down on his suit performance, meaning it was getting difficult to breathe. Like being up a very tall mountain, the high altitude makes the air very thin. Mike starts taking swallow breathes to keep from passing out, but black dots filter through his vision.

"Sam, this Mike, please lock in on my comm signal and proceed to my local," swallow breathes weren't helping any more "please hurry!"

Mikes teeth start to clatter together as his vision starts to fade out, he thought he heard a response on the comm, but it was too far away for Mike to answer. His last thought before passing out, was ‘Well I knew this was stupid to begin with, and this is certainly a stupid way to go'. Then all was still.



Genesis Project Ch. 09



All was quiet on the ship after everything had calmed down and everyone was settled in. Emily was sitting next to Mikes' bed in Med bay, watching his chest rise and fall in even breaths. She'd had been watching over him for the last three hours, furious with him for being so stupid, but also happy that he was safe and sound back on the ship. When they first found the ruined ship, they didn't know what to expect from it. Both Emily and Jack suited up in their combat armor, readying themselves for the rescue mission. Mitch opted for staying behind on the ship, 'to watch their backs', Jack suspected that he was afraid, though he could see the logic of having someone on the ship monitoring the situation in case it got worse. Once the ships were docked together, Jack was first to cross over as the point man. He was armed with one large plasma rifle, and three pulse grenades. Emily brought up the rear loaded down with a hand held plasma pistol, a first aid kit, and her Breaker blade. Jack moved five meters from the air lock, sweeping his plasma rifle back and forth slowly scanning the area for any unfriendlys. The sound of her own breath echoed inside Emily's helmet. The lighting outside the airlock was dim to say the least; she activated her suit's menu and switched over to night vision. The once dim and shadowy hallway now became as bright as day, if day happened be lime green, that is. Still with the annoying color she could see very clearly. Emily switched on her comm unit and told Jack to switch over to night vision, if he hadn't already done it.

"Hey guys, there's a small containment field round the cargo bay, the scanners are picking up several life forms," commed Mitch.

"Roger," replied Jack.

"Check it out and try to keep the channel clear Mitch, you don't know who might be listening." Emily said. "Jack, switch on your stealth camoflage, we don't know what we'll find."

"Humph," was all of the reply that Emily heard, though she could have sworn that she heard him mumble, "Ya, mien fuehrer." For the time being she let it be, now was not the time to start a brawl. She was still surprised that there was still artificial gravity on board this piece of shit. They needed to find Mike quickly, before something else happens. Suddenly, Nightshade wailed like a banshee, Emily dropped her pulse pistol to the deck and tried to cover her ears. It was a futile gesture at best. First off, her helmet would have prevented her from ever reaching her ears. Secondly, the wail, was in fact, telepathic in nature. Not even the helmet, with its advanced technology, could block out this mental anguish. Sweat started to pour down her forehead, dripping into her eyes, the salty liquid stinging in her eyes. The wailing combined with the sweat was really starting to piss her off. That was slowly turning into rage, red hot rage, boiling her blood like never before. It boiled straight into her brain, bashing into the confines of her skull. Emily could only see red at the moment, everything else just faded away. There was only 'The Red' now, a vast endless vista, with no beginning and no end. In this moment, one which Emily would look back upon years later, as a moment when she understood everything that the Universe has to offer. Emily was pulled back from the brink of oblivion by something or someone.

"Emily, I need you, I don't know how long I'll last like this," Emily knew this voice, but couldn't see where they were. 

"Emily, HELP ME PLEASE!!" pleaded the voice.

A single thought, more powerful then preserving one's self, she needed to help this poor soul. With all of her will power, Emily concentrated on getting back to reality. Instinct took over, and she imagined a bright sphere of light forming around her head. Slowly but surely, 'The Red' faded away into the ether, as her eyes began to come back into focus. Several large lumpy shapes came into her field of vision; someone was shaking her, almost hysterically.

"Alright, alright I'm up. You can stop shaking me now."

"Jesus mother-fucking Christ, you scared the shit right out of me, Em" exclaimed Jack, or the funny blob that looked like him.

"How long have I been out?" she asked.

"Just under two minutes. I mean, all of a sudden you screamed, grasped your head and fell down."

"So, you didn't hear Nightshade screech at all?"

"No." was all the answer she got.

She started to take in her surroundings and noticed three people standing behind Jack. Jack explained that the three behind him heard her scream all the way from the cargo bay and when they came to investigate; they found Jack crouched over Emily. At first they thought he had attacked her, then, they realized he was trying to revive her. When he turned around, they recognized the combat suit and knew he was with the other one.

At the mention of the 'other one', Emily mind snapped back to the reason they were there. She clambered to her feet, gathered up the med-kit and her pulse pistol.

"Where is the other one, dressed like us?" she demanded.

The three strangers were taken aback by her abruptness. One sputtered that he had gone towards the bridge to call for help. Without hesitating, Emily turned and ran back the way she came. Jack, meanwhile, stayed behind to keep an eye on their new guests. Emily ran like her life depended on it, well more like Mike's life anyway. She only had a vague idea where the bridge was located. Any wrong turn could spell disaster for Mike. Emily was running on instinct, deciding which path to take, and hoping she was right. It appeared that luck was with her this day. She made a right turn and twenty feet along the corridor was the communication station. At first she didn't see Mike, but as she drew closer to the station she saw a pair of legs jutting from an open access panel. Emily began to run toward the panel, panic bloomed in her mind. She grabbed his legs and pulled with all her strength. Slowly but surely, more of Mikes' body began to reappear. When he was completely out of the access panel, she brought out the med-kit and ran the hand held medical scanner on top of his chest. The reading indicated that there was no pulse, no breath sounds, nor was there a heartbeat. She could do anything here, she had all of the necessary equipment, but there was no atmosphere in this compartment. The nearest one was all the way back at the cargo bay. She couldn't drag him all the way there; there was only one real choice at this point.

"Mitch come in please," said a panicky Emily

"Here, over." "Look, I need an emergency matter transport right now to the med-bay back on the ship."

"Shit Em, that's risky at best, I haven't tested that fucking thing yet. You two could end up spliced together or have your molecules spread across half the sector."

"Mitch just fucking do it! I don't have the time to worry about 'what ifs'. Mike needs to get into the med-bay right now."

"Alright, here goes nothing."

For a few seconds Emily felt tingling sensations run across her body, and her vision became kinda fuzzy. She had latched her hand on his forearm, so during the transport she would be brought along for the ride. When her vision finally cleared, they were in the med-bay. Emily did a quick check on herself to see if anything was missing or misplaced. Everything was as it should be; she glanced up to see Mike already on one of the beds. Emily start to remove the suit from his upper torso without much difficulty, then started the auto-doc. All she could do now was wait and see if the auto-doc could bring Mike back. The auto-doc scanned Mike's prone form, mostly centered on his chest area. The scans were sent to a monitor next to the bed, his brain activity was still high, but unless they could get him breathing again he'd be dead in less than five minutes. The auto-doc shocked Mike's chest, his limp body flailed for two seconds, and there was a single beep from the monitor, though there was no improvement of his condition. It went to a higher setting and shocked Mike again, this time there were two beeps from the monitor, than three. His heart started to beat on its own. A breathing mask came out of the auto-doc and attached it to his face. After two minutes of forcing air into his lungs, Mike started to breath on his own; the auto-doc stated that he would make a full recovery with only a two percent chance of brain damage. Emily plopped her ass down into a nearby by chair, tired from the excitement that had occurred. The auto-doc would inform her if there were any changes in his condition. All she could do now was wait for him to wake up. Finally after three hours of unconsciousness, Mike finally began to come around.

Mike was starting to rise out of this strange dream he'd been having, where everything was so simple. He opened his eyes to a bright light shinning overhead, it took him a few moments to realize where was. What surprised him most that Emily was sitting next to his bed, head drooping, eyes barely open. She looked like she was about to drop right out of her chair she was sitting. He reached out with a shaky hand and gently touch her shoulder, Emily jerked awake within seconds of his contact. Her eyes widened in surprise at first then she registered who had awakened her. She looked down on Mike and gave him a small smile that brightened her eyes like jewels. Then a stony expression passed over her face and she decked him with her right fist. To say that hurt, would be an extreme understatement. When the world reoriented itself, Mike was on the floor with his neck perched at an odd angle.

"If you do anything that stupid again, I'll have your guts for garters," said the fiery Emily. She then walked over to where Mike was prone on the floor, turned him on to his back, and took hold of his head. She pulled his face towards her and kissed him fiercely on the lips. Time seemed to slow down for the both of them, after a few second Mike began to respond to the kiss and took hold of Emily in a tight embrace. Mike started to stroke and caress her back, winning a soft moan from Emily. When he thought it couldn't get any better, it didn't. When she stopped the kiss she said "You better remember what I said before, or else." She released his head, let it flop back on to the floor with a bounce and got up and walked out of the room. Mike, to say the least, was confused as hell. 

Later in a meeting; Mike, Mitch, Jack, and Emily were discussing the fate of the slaves. Several suggestions were made, but only a few seemed to be useful. They talked for several hours debating the points of these suggestions, weighing the pros and cons if they took a specific action on one of the suggestions, and finally eliminating the ones that were the most strenuous. After they were done talking they came up with three options for the former slaves.

Have their ship repaired and sent on their way to any destination of their choosing. Settle down on Earth as freemen/women, and get on with their lives. Or join up with 'Us' and work to protect this system from the dangers of the Universe has to offer.

While they were talking for so long, Mike had Sam send a couple of droids over to the other ship with supplies. Basically, medical supplies, MRE's, extra clothes, bottles of water. These items would improve their condition, until they got them in the med-bay for a full check up. Mitch thought it would be a good idea for the slaves to remain on their ship until they decided what they wanted to do. Mike went to the other ship and asked for a short meeting with the leaders of the small group. Xavier and Jax were the only ones to come forward, which didn't surprise Mike in the least. Mike laid it all on the line for them and explained their options. They seem rather pleased with what Mike told them, and then both men shared a glance that said more than they could speak. Mike couldn't figure it for the moment, but he gave them three hours to decide what they wanted to do. So he left them to it and went back to the ship to talk with the others. Mike went to the galley where they usually have their meetings, and started to setup some things for the meeting.

"Sam could you called everyone in a for a short meeting? We have some things to talk about." Said Mike.

"Yes, Captain. Right away." chirped Sam.

Three minutes later everyone started to shuffle into the galley. Mike noticed that Mitch was walking kinda bow legged and Jack had a smug look on his face. When Emily entered the room and made eye contact with Mike she blushed, her whole face looked light pink turning to a slight red until Mike looked away nervously. They all took a seat and Mike had them recount what he missed. Jack explained what occurred while Mike was away, both the good and the bad. When Jack got to the part about the 'Thundercat', to Mike's horror, it also brought back the idea of naming the ship. Mike turned to Mitch and gave a look that could melt glaciers; Mitch looked everywhere else except at Mike.

"You are never allowed to name anything ever again, do you under stand me? If, by some miracle you have kids some day we'll name them for you." An irritated Mike stated. Mitch on the other hand looked like he wanted to crawl into the nearest hole and not come back out for a year.

"All right now that everything is settled, our next order of business is naming our ship. Any suggestions from all people not named Mitch will be acceptable." Twin grins were seen on the others, with the exception of Mitch, who frowned and looked like Richard Nixon for a few seconds.

"How about Enterprise?" suggested Jack.

"Already taken," replied Mike, "and please no ship names from Star Trek, if possible."

"Oh, I got it. Rainbow Bright," said Emily. Everyone in the room just looked at her, until she blushed and lowered her head in shame.

"Alright, apparently I'm the only person left with good taste, so I'll name the ship." Mike was silent for a few minutes and was drumming his fingers on the tabletop thinking up a name for their ship.


"Hmm, let me think." Everyone was getting impatient, until it looked like a light went off inside Mikes' head.

Finally, Mike said "How about 'Dark Star'?" 

Everyone looked stunned for a few seconds, and then agreed that it was a better name than anything they had come up with.

"Hey Sam, access ship designation, command override, seven-eight-blue-alpha-omega, Captain Mike Anderson changing ship designation to 'Dark Star'."

"Command verified, ship designation changed to 'Dark Star'." Stated Sam.

"Ok, now that that's settled, anything else that we need to discuss?" Mike said.

No's reverberated throughout the galley, which satisfied Mike. He checked the time and decided to check if their guests had made a decision yet. They had five minutes left and he figured that was enough, it would take that long to get over there anyway. He asked Mitch to get the med-bay ready for visitors, Jack to unlock some crew quarters for our guests, and Emily if she'd come with him. She still couldn't look him in the eye without blushing, which pleased him to no end. When they arrived at the cargo bay all was quiet. As soon as Mike stepped through the hatchway, a small cannon ball of flesh slammed right into his midsection, which caused him to stagger back a step or two. When he looked down he saw Cerelia hugging his waist fiercely, a wide grin plastered on her face. Mike smiled back at her and scooped her up to put her on his shoulders. She squealed in delight and held on for dear life. Everyone in the cargo bay was smiling at the laughing child. After a few moments Mike put her down, much to her disappointment and everyone started to move towards Mike as a sign that the meeting was starting.

"Thank you all for taking the time to ponder your choices. I know it is very difficult to decide your fate like this in so little time." There was a pleased murmur rippling through the small gathering.

"So what is you decision?" asked Mike. 



Genesis Project Ch. 10



Jordan Cross was born in Cumberland county Kentucky, in a rural town of Kettle Creek. Henry "Hank" Cross was married to Jolene Cross for over fifteen years with three children, Jordan being the eldest son. Hank was an out-of-work saw mill worker with a bad temper and an even worse drinking problem, which happened to be the reason he lost his job. Jolene was a stay at home mom and a poor excuse of a housewife. She took the motto, 'spare the rod, spoil the child' to heart and took it to the extreme. In the Cross-household religion was a very serious subject and was drilled into the children morning, noon, and night. Jolene taught her children everything the bible has to offer, and what the good lord done to all the heathens. 

Soon after the saw mill job, Hank turned to less than ethical line of work. He became a charlatan and a con artist; fleecing unsuspecting people out of their hard earn cash. He was damn good at his job, and after every scam he pulled he changed his MO and his outward appearance. From selling hollowed out TV's out the back of his truck to stealing wheelchairs from hospitals and pawning them off. He even minored in identity theft and credit card fraud. After five years without mishap, he decided to bring his eldest into the fold. From the ages of eight to fourteen, Hank taught his son everything he knew about being a con man. Jordan took to it, like a fish does to water. He was a natural; people were taken in by his sweet, 'boy next door' façade. Underneath it all was a ruthless, vindictive, sociopath. Not even his father suspected his sons' true nature, he just cared about the money he was raking in with his sons' help. 

By the time Jordan was sixteen, he had stashed away over a hundred thousand dollars in the loose floorboards of his room. Stealing became second nature to this young man, but he found only pleasure in manipulating those around him. For him it was all about control, nothing else mattered; not his family, not the cops, not his money (though it did help get to where he wanted to be), and certainly not God that his mother spouted out about. Years later, the people he cheated could only comment that Jordan was a very charismatic person and that they felt drawn to him. He realized he could use this personality trait to further his own agendas. In fact, he was the most popular guy of his high school and had the head cheerleader as his girlfriend. Sally May Kent was the ultimate stereotype of a dumb blonde with big tits and a nice ass. Jordan used her in every way possible and she loved every minute of it. 

After his seventeenth birthday, Jordan grew tired of Sally May and when he tried to cast her off, she begged him not to leave her like this, that she'd do anything for him. When he heard this sad little plea, Jordan cooked up an idea that would make him rich and help him gain power. Unbeknownst to Sally May, Jordan decided that he would sell this little bitch on the underground slave market. He'd had found out about this market through other criminal types spreading the word throughout underworld. He had to drive all the way to Memphis, Tennessee to unload his package. Sally was still clueless about what was going on, even when Jordan had brought her to a dark warehouse, where poorly dressed losers were hanging about. When the deed was done, two large men took hold of Sally and started to restrain her with nylon rope. She screamed and pleaded with Jordan and these men to leave her alone, until she finally stopped her struggling. Before he left the warehouse with his money, Jordan went over to Sally and told her what was going to happen to her. From this point on, she was a slave, to be used for the rest of her short life as a sex toy or worse.

She started to cry and wail, asking why he would do this to her, and saying people would be looking for her. Jordan laughed right in her face when she said this, and explained that no one knew where they had gone and that her parents were out of town visiting relatives somewhere and wouldn't be back for two more days. By the time they got back, all her clothes would be gone, as well as a few suit cases, and a note would be left behind stating that she had ran off to California to become an actress. The cops wouldn't suspect Jordan in a million years of any wrongdoing. The cool expression on his face terrified Sally May more so than her future of being a sex slave. This is when she broke down, sobbed incoherent babble and pissed herself before the two men dragged the broken girl off deeper into the warehouse. 

Jordan later found out, that Sally May had been sold to a dominatrix club in Thailand, where she was whored out every night to men or women looking to dominate any piece of ass they could get their hands on. That was the last Jordan heard of Sally may and his plan worked out perfectly. Her parents didn't suspect him of any wrongdoing nor did the authorities. After this incident, Jordan put over five hundred thousand dollars in a bank account, the way things were going he'd be a millionaire before he turned nineteen. By the time he was eighteen, his net worth was two point five million dollars, which would have disappeared if his father found out about his sons' secret bank account. When he turned twenty he had won an academic scholarship to NYU, where by day he studied and completed a doctorate in biology and a bachelor's degree in theology. But by night he established the tri-state slave operation, abducting young women; some of who were coeds, runaways, and anyone in between. When he finished college with his degrees, he had accumulated over twenty-five million dollars from the slave trade alone. Soon thereafter, Jordan started fleecing churches throughout the greater New York/New Jersey area. 

A total of five parishes went bankrupt, causing thousands of parishioners to find themselves without a house of worship. He didn't even need the money from the churches he stole from, he just did it for fun, but something else was missing from his life. He wanted power, true power. He wanted power over life and death itself. He thought about that for over two weeks, shifting from one bad idea to a slightly better idea, until he found the ideal way to accomplish his goal. 

After months of planning Jordan established 'The Church of the Third Eye', and when its' doors opened for the public in March of '93, thousands of lost parishioners flocked to this new house of worship. He welcomed them in with open arms and comforted them in their time of need. All the while encouraging his 'followers' to leave their worldly processions behind and join his crusade to enlighten the world from their barbarism. The basic belief of this new religion was that humans, as a species, could evolve past their physical limitations, by focusing the mental energies of the mind throughout their entire body and achieving 'superhuman' abilities. Countless hours of meditation, low-carb high protein energy drinks designed to help excel the process. Of course almost all followed without question, just enjoying the feeling of having a purpose in life again, never realizing that everything they own went directly into his pocket. Bank accounts, 401K's, cars, houses, mortgages', land leases, all was up for grabs. Those that asked questions or were too stubborn to bend to Jordan's will, suddenly died under suspicious circumstances. 

On the lands that he gained, Jordan hired contractors to build new branches of his church and other vile compounds that were only known to a handful of his most 'faithful' acolytes. The members of his church would then move into these new churches and live like a commune from the early 1960's 'Flower Children', working together to build and spread the 'word' of their new faith. Gradually as time passed 'The Church of the Third Eye' had a following of five point six million followers.

"Alright, I want an overall status report, regarding our holdings within the continental United States as well as our International holdings," stated Cross in a crisp southern accent.

All around the conference room aging businessmen and women, in high priced suits, seemed to squirm as if they found the subject matter distasteful and avoided the gaze of their employer. When he had hired these people the first thing he did was brainwash them to be totally be loyal to him at all times and they could be trusted with all of his secret information without spilling it to the proper authorities. Jordan Cross could almost taste the fear in the room, savoring its delicate aroma. He enjoyed toying with his employees like this, discovering some unpleasant situation that had developed under their very noses, completely ignorant of it until he springs his trap. It was only a tiny set back to his over all plan, nothing to get too worried about, he just loved to torment these fools while they quaked in their thousand dollar loafers. Now it was all about the 'waiting game', letting them stew in their own juices long enough for them to start sweating. Finally some needle-dicked lackey coughed into his hand and made eye contact indicating his willingness to report his findings.

"Thank you, Mister ugh..." started Cross unable to remember the mans' name.

"George Becker, sir." said the pasty-faced loser.

"Well, go on I don't have all day you know," snapped Cross. The young man jumped from the harshness in Cross' voice. Jordan guessed that the sniveling little prick was around twenty-five, fresh out of business school hoping to earn the big bucks, and too wet behind the ears to realize he just made a career ending move.

'Well maybe I'll keep him on for a awhile, and when he finally relaxes, that is when I'll can his ass' thought Cross.

Becker reached down to gather all of the papers that were in front of him, making sure everything was in order before starting. Taking a deep breath he started in a shaky voice that grew steadier the more he went on.

"Concerning our holdings in the U.S., we've had a few set backs. The attorneys representing the former owners have delayed our purchase of the refinery plant in Dell, Kansas. Their fighting with everything they have, but it's only delaying the enviable. The legal loopholes they've exploited only have a certain amount of time before they expire," Becker said with a weak smile, which he tried to turn into a slight cough. "So far we have purchased over one hundred airplanes, ranging from Boeing 747's to small jet liners. Within the next two month period, Cross international Airlines will be established."

Cross was nodding his head absently; he already knew all of this information. He was just going through the motions. Quite frankly he was getting bored fairly fast.

"Enough of that, what is the status of our 'pets' in Congress?" asked Cross. 

Cross had some of the members of his church programmed through hypnosis, brainwashing, and other chemical cocktails to ensure they were loyal to him and only him, no matter what. Then placed them in low level political positions and they worked their way up the 'latter of success' to reach positions of greater influence. So far he had eight congressmen, five senators, two Supreme Court justices, and countless other assistants to the rest of the armed services. To Jordan it was child's play to infiltrate the hierarchy of the U.S. command structure.

Becker stammered for a few seconds, trying to spit out his answer.

"Pets Alpha through Gamma, report that the new narcotics bill that is to be presented to the House of Representatives in two days and that they have enough pull to shoot it down in its' infancy. Though we'll need to call in a few of our markers to make sure that it stays dead once the vote is over." 

Jordan was quite pleased with the situation, that new bill would have cut his drug income in half and would have pissed off the drug cartels in Mexico and Columbia. He wasn't very concerned about the cartels too much; compared to him they were lightweights. 

"Good, good, any problem on the church front?" asked Cross steely.

"Well, um there seems to be a, ah slight problem, a minor setback," Becker was unconsciously wringing his hands together until they were white with strain. "A few people have managed to infiltrate into the, ah organization so to speak, and have been reporting back to certain government agencies on our activities."

Becker stop suddenly unsure of how to proceed, Jordan remains silent watching the young man, his eyes boring right into the man face. When he spoke it was with a clam steady voice that was more frightening than any outburst of anger.

"What exactly did they manage to uncover?"

"At this point it is hard to say what exactly they uncovered, though we have our people retracing their movements over the last couple of weeks, checking where they went, who they talked to. We have the security logs so we can check the video footage of any night-time exploration done on their part."

"You barely answered my question, I won't be repeating myself again, so what did they find out?" said a stern Cross.

"From what we know, they managed to find out a few details about 'Project Leviathan', and a few more details about your human trafficking ring."

Dead silence emanated throughout the room. Even the sound of breathing seemed unnaturally loud. For five minutes everyone just sat there looking at Cross, not even moving a muscle. 

"Do these traitors know that we're on to them?" 

"No sir, they are unaware at this time that we know about them."

"Ladies and Gentlemen, we must bring the light of god to these poor and misguided souls. We must show them the error of their ways and beg them to ask for gods' forgiveness or else we will be forced to deliver them unto his divine justice."

A chorus of amen and praise the lord reverberated throughout the room as the stood and clasped hands saying a small pray for souls of those misguided people. 

"Ok, ok settle down now. Yes, yes that's it settle down. Mr. Avery?" said Cross to a very large pompous man three seat down the conference table.

"Yes Sir?"

"I want you to talk to the senior acolyte of the...Bensalem branch of our church and have his most trusted people apprehend the individuals in question. Alive if possible, dead if they resist us. Alright meeting adjourn, we meet on October the thirty-first, nine a.m. at our Manhattan office. Otherwise have a great weekend with your families." 

With that everyone in the room got up to leave except Cross, who signaled Mr. Becker to stay behind. He did so reluctantly, unsure of what was going to happen. Jordan reached over to the conference phone and hit the intercom button to call his personal assistant. A few seconds later a large black man about six foot five weighing two hundred pounds at least, entered the room wearing a near black Dolce & Gabbana, a top-of-the-line pinstripe suit.

'God, he bought another one of those damn things. A homeless person could live off the money that bought that suit for six months if he didn't spend it all at once." thought Cross.

"Please close the door, Benjamin. Thank you. Now that we're alone, Mr. Becker, could you please tell me what our next course of action should be?" 

This question certainly caught Becker off guard, and he rattled off for five minutes about some asinine plan about stricter recruitment procedures. All the while Jordan was walking toward the window that overlooked the Jersey City skyline. When Becker failed to turn to follow Jordan's progress, he struck without warning. Jordan was behind Becker in an instant; he reached his hand around and grabbed the man's throat. He tightened his grip until the Becker's face began to turn purple. Becker fought for all his worth, clawing at his attackers' forearm, kicking and stomping on any available target. He even tried kicking off the table to through off Jordan's leverage, but it was all for naught. Jordan just tightened his grip until he felt Becker's throat collapse and released his hold. He then grabbed the mans' hair and slammed it face down onto the conference table once, twice, and finally three times. Benjamin just stood their and admired his boss' handy work.

"Benjamin, take this piece of trash and dump it some where, but make sure it doesn't lead back to us."

"Yes, Sir Mr. Cross."

"Does he have any family?"

"As far as I know he has or had a wife, newlyweds apparently."

"Good bring her to me. I'm goin' to have some fun with Mrs. Becker, and then I think she is going to like her visit to Hong Kong. Though I think the men are going to like her even more so."

"She'll be here by eight tonight sir."

"Good, also on your way out, please call Mr. Shaw. Tell him he has a job. Several customers, that just love to serve their country."

"Yes, Sir anything else?"

"Yes, tell him to bring all of his 'tools' and a large tarp."

"Ok, I'll give him the message."

"Benjamin, these government fools will be coming out of the wood work after this, I can guarantee that they will. They won't stop until they know what we're planning. As of now nothing can stop 'Project Leviathan', not the government, not the military, hell not even god has the balls to come down here and stop it himself."

Jordan Cross walked to the window looking down on the passerby's, unaware that their world would soon be turned upside down and side-ways within the next four months. If anyone could see the look on his face, they would see the face of a madman, the reincarnation of Hitler, Mengele, Stalin, and other monsters of history. The look on Benjamin's face was the look of a man who had just witnessed god coming down from heaven and naming him his disciple.

"Yes Benjamin, they will come, they will come."



Genesis Project Ch. 11



Silence was the only sound throughout the cargo-bay. The thirty slaves were looking at Mike very cautiously until Xavier hobbled forward at an easy rate. When he reached the front of the group he looked at those gathered, waiting until each and everyone of the slaves looked him in the eye and nodded. The old man turned at last and cleared his throat. "We have discussed your offers, they are generous, thoughtful, and more than we expected to receive." Mike and Emily smiled faintly and waited for Xavier to go on. They realized he was the brains of the group. 

"We have decided that we would like to join you and help you in anyway possible." Xavier finished, waiting for Mike to respond. Mike walked forward and offered his hand as a sign of friendship to the aging man. Xaviers' smile was a mile wide and as he clasped Mikes' forearm like warriors of old would do at the meeting of an old friend.

"We'll gladly accept your help. Now, we'll transport all of you over to our ship for medical screening by our auto-doc, it's just a precaution to make sure you all are healthy and to take care of any problems before they get serious." Mike told them all.

Jack started to shepherd the group of people out of the cargo-bay towards the main airlock. Cerelia was skipping around in circles around the party, an expression of joy on her face. Mike shook his head bemusedly at the child's antics. He was unsure exactly what she would do next.

"Hey Sam, could you prepare the auto-doc for about thirty people? We'll be there within five minutes."

"Acknowledged Captain." Replied Sam.

Emily took this time to walk with Mike, a small smile spreading across her face. He looked at her and was just enjoying her company, he even hooked his arm through hers and she seemed to relax against him.

"So what in the hell are we going to do with this piece of shit?" asked Emily who looked serene at the moment.

"Well, I guess we get Mitch and a few maintenance droids in here to check out the ship, to see what's what and to see how much repair is needed to be done. Doubt that any of them will ever want to serve on this clunker." said Mike.

"Yeah, I kinda guessed that." stated Emily flatly.

They both walked to the front of the group as they neared the airlock. When they arrived, Xavier and Jax were there, waiting for Mike to usher them into their new lives. Mike activated the pad to open the airlock which hissed as it spiraled open. Two by two they walked through until they reached the Dark Stars' airlock. Mike was glad to be back on board his ship, it felt like home for some reason. As they exited the airlock the damnedest thing happened, Mike watched as all the slaves that exited the airlock suddenly staggered and dropped to the deck floor, barley able to move. Emily gasped as the former slaves started dropping like flies. A loud moaning could be heard throughout the corridor.

"Sam, emergency transport to med bay now, right now!" exclaimed shouted Mike.

Everything went fuzzy for a moment then suddenly they were in the med bay. Med beds started to slip out of the walls as each person was placed on them by unseen hands. Quickly the auto-doc started its' scanning process, going over all of the slaves one by one methodically and carefully. Mike was staring, raptly, at everyone, hoping that they would be okay. Finally, the auto-doc was done with its' examination and injected some unrecognizable fluid into all of the patients. They fell asleep immediately, eyes fluttering beneath their eyelids, tranquil expressions on their faces.

"All senior staff members: please report to the galley for an emergency meeting." stated Sam.

Curious, they all gathered in the galley, unsure of what was happening, because Sam never called a meeting unless it was under Mikes' say so. They milled about waiting for Sam to say something until a beam of light swept through the room. Mike didn't know what to make of it, since nothing was harmed during the process.

"Captain, I'm sorry for being so...secretive all of a sudden, but I have found some interesting results from the scans I performed on the slaves and the scan I just preformed on everyone within this room." said Sam.

Mike was a little angry, his face-hardening into a unreadable mask. Emily bit her lower lip and looked worried, Jack didn't really seem to care one way or another and Mitch just wanted to know what Sam had found out.

"Firstly, I'd like to apologize to you all for violating your privacy but I needed to compare both sets of scans." Mike just nodded at what Sam said, his anger began to subside although the mask still remained on his face.

"As I was saying the results are very 'interesting', Xavier and the rest of his people are basic normal humans. You four on the other hand are something else altogether."

This statement sent a shockwave of confusion throughout the room, making the tone and noise level rise substantially.

"What exactly is that suppose to mean?" Jack said voice rising above the clamor around him.

Sam responded slowly at first, unsure of on how to proceed. "Apparently, the time your ancestors spent on Earth has changed you whether you realize it or not. The reason why those people collapsed earlier was because the gravity was five times greater than what they're used to."

"Holy shit, so that's what happened!" Everyone looked towards Mike, waiting for him to continue. "When I was fighting the Dagons I noticed I was able to do some really freaky shit, I felt lighter, for a lack of a better word, and I picked up one Dagon as if it weighed practically nothing. And I felt this power emanating throughout my body, when I lashed out with this power it cut though their ranks like a hot knife through butter."

"Hold on, that doesn't make sense! How could Earths' gravity change us?" asked a perplexed Jack an unmistakable look of bewilderment on his face.

Mitch spoke up after listening intently to the conversation. "It makes perfect sense, Jack; you just need to think it through first. Basically, it is evolution. I remember my college biology professor discussing it in a lecture over a three-week period. He said that evolution is gradual change over long periods of time. We naturally assume that one g-force on Earth is the standard for the rest of the universe. What if Earth was considered a heavy gravity world, where as Mars would be considered a nominal gravity world? Whether you realize it or not ten thousand years living on Earth has changed us. For the rest of the universe ten thousand years is nothing, but for us it is enough time to adapt to our environment. From now going back ten thousand years, do you know how many generations that encompasses? That is over thirty generations of random breeding!"

"Shit." was the only reply Jack could come up with. Emily had a wide-eyed expression while she slumped into a vacant chair but said nothing.

"Wait a minute, how come we didn't see any mention of this higher gravity level in reports from the original crew? Wouldn't they have been affected the same way the slaves were?" asked a bewildered Mike.

"Your right Mike, they didn't mention anything about gravity levels in the reports I went through. According to basic operation procedures when a ship finds a habitable planet they scan it for any intelligent life forms or dangerous creatures then they move on to search for important minerals and resources. But they do not scan the planets' gravitational level unless specifically order to by the higher up's. It's the same in our military; you don't take a piss without permission from your CO. Yeah, I know it seems like a piss poor excuse but it's all I have for right now." said Mitch. Sam agreed fully with him on every point he had made.

"Hey Sam, what was that stuff you injected into the patients in med bay?" asked Mike.

"Captain, that was a serum combination of a slight sedative combined with mild muscle steroid designed to strengthen all the muscles in the body without any harmful side effects."

"Was this serum available to the original crew before they left the ship?" asked Mike.

"Yes captain, it was. All of the crew had taken the medical supplies with them when they left the ship. The serum would be injected directly into subject's bloodstream and then be absorbed by the body. Once the process was over the subject would be physically able to withstand the g-forces of a planet. Through any child born afterwards would need to adapt to their environment instead of using a pharmaceutical short cut. With the medical supplies they had they could combat any illness or injury, until their supplies ran out, that is."

Jack's brow creased with confusion. "Ok, that explains how they could survive on Earth. Now back to the evolution part...I thought evolution was supposed to take thousands if not millions of years?" 

"Yes Jack, you're technically correct but it's just a theory that we lowly humans came up with trying to explain away the mysteries of life. We really have no first hand experiences as to how long evolution really takes. In fact, I think evolution is too strong of a word for what were discussing. Adaptation fits better in this case. We have simply stayed on Earth for so long that we adapted to our surrounding environment. Sam, what else have you found out from your earlier scans?" asked Mitch.

Sam brought up a holographic display in the middle of the galley. It was of two men on the display, separated by three feet of space. One was the old man, Xavier, the other was Mike. They hung there in midair like still photographs, fully clothed; no movement could be discerned from the image.

"From the images before you both, you and Xavier look very similar, sort of anyway, but when we look closer under the skin, that is where we find the big differences." As Sam was speaking the images became like a life sized x-ray; as skin, flesh, veins, and blood disappeared showing only bones.

Emily paled at the sight. "Do you have to be so graphic, Sam? I think I'm going to lose my lunch in a few seconds."  

"My apologies Commander. From the scans, I have discovered that Mike has at least three times stronger bone density than that of the slaves. He is also four times stronger than they are, three times stronger than the Dagons. He could literally rip through one of the slaves if he wasn't careful about what he did. The same goes for the rest of you, you're just as strong as Mike is or close to it anyway."

"Is their anything else Sam?" asked a much shaken Emily.

"Yes, just two other abnormalities. Your upper epidermal layers seem to be twenty-five percent tougher than Xavier's group. Finally; there is an unknown organ present in all your brains that I have not encountered before. The human brain is comprised of several different parts; the cerebral cortex, the medulla oblongata, the hypothalamus, etc. But this particular organ is located in the very center of the brain, in the same exact location in each of your brains. This, by itself, is very strange. I can not determine what exactly this organ does but, as of now, it seems to be becoming more active in all of you, especially Mike."

All was quite in the galley as Mike walked towards the view port. He looked out to watch the stars slowly shift past the view port. At the moment an old saying came to his mind, which was once a curse. 'May you live in interesting times.' That saying was more true now than it was a thousand years ago.

"O.k., why wasn't any of this 'discovered' when you first examined me?" He asked Sam.

"At the time I only ran a surface scan of your body. Nothing indicated any further examination on my part was warranted or needed since it was a simple broken leg and a few other minor fractures."

"This organ, do you think it could produce psychic abilities?"

"Psychic abilities? I don't understand what you mean by this Captain." Stated the clueless AI.

"When we get back to the moon we're going to see if we can't get you hooked up to the Internet for research purposes. Psychic abilities are mental powers ranging from precognition to telepathy. It has a much broader definition, but I don't know it off hand. The person in question has the ability to manipulate his/her surroundings by sheer force of will and/or power of the mind. Basically it is a theory that you could manipulate people or objects using just thoughts. There have been studies on these phenomena where people who claim to have abilities are tested but their 'powers' are weak, feeble even. Though people like this are a pretty much nonexistent or there are people who claim to be psychic just to scam money from the gullible."

A few seconds was all it took for Sam to absorb the information. "From the scans that I have performed, I cannot even begin to tell you whether or not this organ will produce psychic abilities. What I can tell you is that these organs have been recently 'active'. Until I can scan the surface area of Earth we won't know whether this organ is just some random occurrence within the populace or if it is wide spread across the planet." 

"The real question is; whether or not we can use this 'power' once in a while or all the time?" asked Mitch.

Mike began to drum his hands on the view port wondering how he could access this power again. He remembered the rage and the anger so he looked within himself, searching for any clue that could help him out. Then he felt something strange like a soft tingle in the base of his neck. He focused on this more and the tingle began to spread further from his neck until it encompassed his entire head. Then he heard something faint.

'...god, I need to piss really badly. I wonder how long this meeting is going to last...' that sounded like Jack.



'...Jesus, my balls are itchy. Note to self: Check in on how the Mets have been doing...' that sounded like Mitch.

'...Damn, there he goes again. Why does he have to stare off into the distance like that? It looks like he's constipated...' and that sounded really like Emily.

Mike whirled around looking at everyone, a little pissed that they could be talking about things that don't really matter.

"Hey if you guys don't want to be here you can leave. First off, if you need to piss Jack you should have gone before the meeting. Secondly; the Mets suck Mitch and just scratch your balls for Christ's sake! Emily I do not look constipated!!" Mike growled his face having a pinched and angry look on it.

Everyone just looked at Mike like he popped a gasket, mouths hanging open. He couldn't understand why they were just staring at him.

"Captain, what are you talking about?" asked Sam.

"Hey, I'm just responding to what I heard." Said an irritated Mike.

"Sir, for the last two minutes, no one has said anything, until your outburst that is." Explained Sam calmly.

"If they didn't say those things then what I heard was their thoughts?" Asked a surprised Mike.

"From my observations, you have indeed heard their thoughts. Commander, Science officer, Chief Engineer, do you concur with my claim?" asked Sam, sounding very official.

"Yeah, he defiantly heard what I was thinking." Jack said.

"Uh, yep. The Mets do not suck through." Stated Mitch.

"Sorry, but you did look constipated, and I sticking to my story." Said Emily.

"Well, I'm sorry for that I yelled at you then." A very sheepish Mike said.

Mike walked over to the replicator and ordered himself a genuine Wawa capichino. 

"All right Sam, lock on some towing cables or the tractor beam and let's haul ass back to the moon." Ordered Mike.

With that the meeting ended, but more questions remained to be answered.



Genesis Project Ch. 12



Mike was lying down in his quarters, exhausted by the workout he had received from Crimson. The Breaker blade was still upset with him because of the incident on the slaver ship. It had taken three days longer than Mike expected for Darkstar to tow in the crippled ship. When Mike inquired as to why this was Sam explained that the Darkstar was not 'a simple tug', that it was a ship of exploration. Even with the tractor beam and towing cables it was still one hell of a job getting all the way back to the moon. Mike was hoping that he could talk to Mitch and Jack for a few minutes about today's agenda. Getting up he walked towards his bathroom, his mind still groggy from sleep. After the usual morning ritual, shit, shower, shave, he was beginning to feel human when he felt a sort of soft buzzing in the back of his mind. For a couple minutes he couldn't understand what in the hell that was about but something about it said to hurry up. He was out of his quarters heading for the bridge, following the winding corridors all the way. Once he got there, he could see nothing that would suggest that something was wrong. A minute later Emily arrived, looking like she was being chased by the bogeyman. She too stopped to look around, than locked eyes with Mike.

"Hey, did you feel anything weird a few minutes ago?" She asked.

"Yeah, kinda like a buzzing in the back of my head." He replied.

"Hey Sam, does anything seem out of sorts today?" asked Emily.

"I can detect nothing that would suggest that anything is out of order. Do you wish for me to run a scan of the immediate area?"

"Yeah and while your at it com Mitch, Jack, and Xavier, if he's able. Ask them to come to the bridge."

After waiting a few minutes, all three men arrived at basically the same time. Xavier, however, was walking much more slowly than the others, an expected side affect of the serum. It could build up the muscles to withstand G-forces but it took a while for the person to get use to the gravity. He smiled at those gathered and asked what the problem was.

"Well, it's not exactly a problem; just more of a feeling really, that something seems wrong." Emily stated.

"Are we in stationary orbit around the moon?" asked Mitch.

"Yes, sir, we are currently passing the equator line into the daylight side of the moon, the slave ship is currently in a similar orbit one thousand kilometers behind us." Declared Sam.

"So do you have an answer to my question Sam?" asked Emily.

"I've performed a wide scan of the immediate area, including the surface of the moon we are passing over, and other than a few mineral resources nothing appears out of the ordinary." 

"Can you scan Earth and tell us if something is going on there?" She asked.

"At our current range, just a general scan of the planet, not a very detailed scan. I would need access to the news media in order to find out current events."

"Sam do we have any probes on board?" asked Mike.

"Yes Captain, they're located in storage locker seven alpha. It seems that we have over two dozen of them."

"Ok, I want you to activate around seven probes and instruct them to either attach themselves to a satellite and take it over or destroy it and assume its functions. Then I want three maintenance droids to build you an uplink capable of Internet access." Mike said.

"Yes Captain, activating probes one through seven. Estimated arrival time to Earth orbit ten minutes and an additional five minutes for satellite takeover and/or replacement."

"Uh Mike, won't somebody on the planet notice that something effected the satellite feed? Also, there could be a chance of detection even though it is highly unlikely." Mitch put in his two cents.

"Yeah well, I really don't care if they do detect the probes." Mike stated in matter of fact way and just nodding his head sagely.

Everyone was just quiet for a bit, not really knowing what to say next. Xavier had seemed a bit worn out, so he had sat down at one of the control consoles and just sat there watching the exchange.

"Sam, one more thing before we move on to other business. I want to send five maintenance droids down to the surface of the moon with portable replicators. Have them gather materials and start building more droids. When they reach fifty they are to stop building. I want them to then start building a military installation that will serve as our base of operations. They build the base with local materials and use the replicators if they need parts or material not found there." 

"Captain, that last request will take some time. I have calculated that it will take approximately thirty-seven hours to complete your first request and an additional fifty hours for construction of the installation. Is their anything else that I can do for you?" asked Sam. 

"No, that will be all for today unless something unforeseen comes up." Mike was exhausted again and it was barley ten a.m. ship time. At the moment he felt like a worn out piece of cloth, stretched just a little too thin and maybe worn a bit around the edges. He had lost count of how long they've been up here and if he was being honest with himself then he was going a little stir crazy. What he really needed to do was relax, read a book, watch a movie, or exercise. The latter one was pretty much exhausted beyond boring while the two former options were lacking at the moment, considering they didn't bring any books or movies along. 

'Maybe some busy work will take my mind off of things.' He thought.

"Hey Mitch, I have a job for you. Brainstorm with Jack and design some defensive/offensive weapons we could use to protect and defend this system."

"Yeah, no problem Mike. Let me know when Sam gets Internet access because I want to do some research involving some online Science Fiction stories."

Xavier and Emily were still sitting around watching Mike carefully while Jack and Mitch shrugged and wandered off to do what they were asked to do. Mike kept staring off into space, not really looking at anything, not really thinking anything either. He was just content to stand there for a few moments. Then he started to think about what had happened the other day, when he had evidently read his crew's minds'. He was beginning to wonder what else he could do. 

'Aw, what the hell, it's not like I'm doing anything important today anyway.' He thought.

He concentrated again on the 'tingle' feeling, seeing what else he could do. Once he felt the feeling spread throughout his brain he held it without letting the feeling fade. When he was sure it wasn't going to fade he focused his attention on his surroundings. He noticed it right away; somebody had left a glass on one of the consoles, sitting there collecting dust.

'Mitch strikes again, I swear that guy is a complete slob, if he weren't so good at his job, I would have flushed him out an airlock after the first week.' Mike thought sardonically.

He kept looking at the glass for two more seconds and then wondered what would happen if he used his 'power' on the glass. His curiosity got the better of him and tried to make it move. He tried with all of his will power behind that thought but nothing happened. Frustrated and a little angry he thought he would just walk right over there and throw the stupid thing against the bulkhead. As soon as he imagined himself grabbing the glass and throwing it, the damn thing flew off the console and shattered against the wall. Both Xavier and Emily nearly jump through the ceiling when they heard the shatter but Mike just paled a bit and felt a little weak. He had enough strength to stagger to a bench and collapsed against it. For the next five minutes he concentrated on just breathing and trying to regain his strength back. Then he notice someone was standing in front of him and when he looked up he saw it was Emily. Her lips were moving, but for some reason he couldn't hear anything coming out of her mouth. He shook his head for a few seconds then the sound started to come back.

"...you ok? Mike can you hear me? Am I going to have to slap you or something?" Emily asked.

"Ok, I'm fine now. Just hold off on the slapping till later." Mike responded as he ran his fingers through his hair. His breathing started to even out when he realized that he was extremely hungry. He asked Emily to get him something to eat from the replicator and once she set it down in front of Mike he devoured the entire meal in less than five minutes. Emily watched in stunned silence as Mike polished off a meal that could choke a horse. When he was done eating he felt his strength returning to him as he sat back to digest what he consumed.

Xavier spoke up for the first time, "Mike, what just happened? Did that glass just fly off into the wall all by itself?"

With that Mike started to explain what they had found so far from the medical examination to the private meeting with Sam. Emily spoke to clarify certain points that Mike couldn't quite explain or things that he merely forgot about. Xavier sat back and took in all of the information, his foot tapping on the deck unconsciously.

"Some of what you said clarifies what occurred on our ship and Mikes' superior strength and durability. Though the discovery of this organ is to say the least is an oddity. I, for one, have never heard of any situation in which this occurred." Xavier said.

"Well, this is still kind of new for us as well. Hell, we're still trying to figure out what caused this organ to become active so suddenly." Mike said.

Xavier, at the moment, was looking out the main viewer when he asked if they had any theories that would suggest why this had occurred.

"No. We've thought of basically every possibility that could cause it but they all dead ended. I mean we've covered environmental stimuli, outside influence and anything else we could think of. Mitch and Jack seem to be inactive at the moment, though that could change at any time." Said an irked Mike. 

"Alright, let's not talk this to death if it's going to get under your skin like this. Tell me about this ship. In all my life I haven't seen one like this." Xavier mentioned.

Emily took up the commentary since Mike was looking a little demented at the moment. 

"Well, about ten thousands years ago this ship was sabotaged and has been stranded in this system every since. From data we've recovered from the computer core it was part of Emperor Shinza's expansion program." Xavier was staring straight at Emily the entire time she spoke. "According to the information that Jax supplied to Mike this maybe the last ship from his advanced empire."

Something within Xavier's eyes changed, like the embers of a dying fire suddenly coming back to life.

"By the Gods, in all my life I never thought for an instant that I would be standing on one of the last of Theras class ships. On Callisto stories were told to children at bedtime concerning ships like this one. Since the fall of the empire the technology these ships possessed has become almost mythical in nature. I mean, no one could be certain exactly what these ships could do."

"Well, I guess your going to get to find out first hand exactly what this ship can do." Mike said from the bench. "By the way, how are the rest of your people handling themselves with the change?"

"Most were a little unsteady at first but they all started walking about trying to get accustom to your gravity." Xavier replied.

"Do you mind if we walk the ship a bit? I'm feeling claustrophobic in here today for some odd reason."

Xavier readily agreed and they left the bridge then proceeded down the one corridor of the ship. Every once in a while they came upon one of the recovering slaves and they would stop to see how they were doing. After the pleasantries were over they continued with their walk. Before long they came upon Cerelia who just leaving med bay. As they got closer they saw that her face was marred by a scowl as she shuffled forward unaware of their presence. Once she noticed that she was not alone, and she saw who it was, her face brightened.

"How are you doing today Cerelia? You look to be having a tough time." Asked Emily.

"At first it was really hard, getting up and around, but after a while it got a little easier." She was looking down, as if embarrassed to admit she was having difficulty. "Basically I've been bored for that last few days, there is nothing to do."

As Mike was listening, an idea formed in his mind. He stepped forward and scooped up the little girl then proceeded to walk away from the others.

"Um Mike? Where are you going?" Emily asked.

"Oh, just going to go for a ride." he stated.

"Wait a minute. What do you mean by 'a ride'? Please tell me you're not going back out again after all the shit that happened before and what we had to do to save your narrow ass." Emily almost shouted.

"Yeah, that is exactly what I'm going to do. Except the getting into the trouble part and you having to 'save my narrow ass'." He said as he walked off with Cerelia still in his arms. Emily was reluctant to follow him but she just had to find out what he was going to do once he left the ship. Mike entered the hanger bay and was looking at the ships available. He saw his small fighter and walked straight to it. Nothing seemed out of place on the small craft so he opened the hatch. A small hiss emitted form the cockpit of the fighter and he had to wait for the air pressure to equalize.

"So where are we going?" asked the eager child. Emily had just arrived after Cerelia finished asking her question. 

"Well, we're going down to the planet below and I'm going to show you around. Take in the sights, that sort of thing." Mike replied.

"Mike, do you think that is really a good idea considering how vulnerable we are at the moment?"

"Okay, it may not be a good idea but what are governments of Earth really going to do? Launch a nuke at us? Send fighters after us? We really have nothing to worry about when it comes to Earth. The defenses on the fighter we're taking can withstand any attack they could through at us. And, if need be, we can just out run them, simple as that." Mike said animatedly.

"Aren't you going to wear you combat suit just in case something goes wrong?" Emily asked almost pleadingly.

"No, we aren't going to be doing anything dangerous and we'll be back in three hours. We'll be just cruising around." Mike said soothingly to Emily while he mumbled "maybe". He walked back towards his fighter, scooped Cerelia up in his arms and placed her in the cockpit. Then he climbed up and squeezed in there with her. He closed the hatch and activated the fighter; a low hum could be heard throughout the hanger bay. Mike looked out of the canopy and gave Emily and Xavier the 'thumbs up' gesture. While Emily pouted and gave him the finger then said something he couldn't really catch. As he watched her lips move he could discern through his lip reading skills 'jackass' while the rest was mumbled. He brought the fighter and accelerated across the hanger bay. Emily and Xavier had left the hanger bay, as they didn't want to go out into vacuum.

"Sam, could you open the hanger bay doors please? We want to do a little sight seeing today."

"Of course, Captain. Should I put the entire ship on alert, just case you need to be rescued again?" If Mike didn't know any better he could have sworn that Sam just made a sarcastic remark and asked if it was. The AI was a little startled when he heard Mike's question, for sarcasm was beyond his operating parameters.

"Don't worry about it Sam, just open the hanger doors."

"Yes, sir." Returned Sam.



Genesis Project Ch. 13



Maneuvering his fighter outside of the hanger bay was easy enough and once Cerelia saw the stars she gave a small gasp of surprise. Mike was wondering why she was so excited about seeing the stars like this. When he asked, she replied, "I never seen the stars like this. When we were slaves we could only see the stars in the night sky and were never allowed onto the bridge of the ship to see them."

Mike felt a little sad for her, so she had seen so much pain and misery in your young life her young life. Holocaust survivors went through much of the same things during their captivity. He was going to cheer her up if it killed him to do it. He turned the small fighter towards the moon and brought the ship in low, nearly skimming the craggy surface. Cerelia grabbed his arm in an attempt to hold on to something, considering that there was no 'oh-shit-handle' installed in the fighter. He dipped in and out of craters, nearly crashing into a small outcrop rock formation. As they rounded the next valley they came upon the future site of the installation and saw five droids replicating parts, gathering materials, and creating more maintenance droids. The fighter gained altitude steadily, leaving the moon's surface behind them, then headed straight for Earth. It took them a couple of minutes to reach its atmosphere; he scanned the stratosphere looking for the probes that replaced the satellites in orbit. In the distance, the last probe destroyed the satellite it was to replace and began its new duty. As they broke into the atmosphere they could see stratospheric friction heating the nose of the craft. Mike activated the shielding and the friction stopped almost at once, so they enjoyed the rest of their descent. 

From the view he saw that they were nearing the western coast of Africa, which only had a few sprinklings of lights. In the twilight this continent seemed almost peaceful until he realized that civil wars and genocidal dictators have plagued this continent since they stop being colonies of other countries. He steered the fighter out to sea, heading in a westerly direction. He brought the fighter within seven feet of the calm sea then cruised back and forth in a lazy zigzag pattern. Cerelia had her face pressed against the canopy, trying to see everything at once. She squealed with delight when a school of flying fish broke the surface and flew for a few feet before landing back into the water. He pushed the accelerator with a 'little more gas' as it were and broke the sound barrier. The wake behind the craft was at least fifteen feet high and sparked in the growing sunlight the further they went west.

'Hmpf, by the time we reach the US shoreline it should be around noonish and we'll have to be more careful.' Mike thought.

He spared a moment to eye the sensors and noticed that twenty miles further ahead was a ship. He tightened the sensors directly on the vessel to get a more detailed idea of what he was dealing with. What the sensors reported almost caused Mike to have a heart attack. They were coming up on a US aircraft carrier and the sensors report that the ship was the USS KITTY HAWK (CV 63).

'For the time being, I'll just avoid her. Maybe a slight course correction to the south will handle it.' he surmised.

Gripping the controls more firmly, he made the course correction which veered the small craft slightly to the southwest. On their present course they would reach Florida in less than ten minutes. He would certainly enjoy the warm weather, hell maybe a quick stop in the Caribbean would be in order. The minutes ticked by slowly, until Mike noticed that something wasn't quite right. He checked the sensors and what he saw puzzled him even further. According to the sensors their current local had no wind, not even a faint stirring of a breeze. The sea also seemed to be unusually calm, almost placid. He ran a diagnostic program on all of the fighters systems just in case there was a bug in the system, though the results show all of the systems running at peek efficiency. The sensors started to beep rapidly, indicating something ahead. At first he was at a loss to he was seeing until it clicked in his brain. It was a rather large island surrounded by a makeshift reef of destroyed ships, planes, and subs.

'What the hell is this? There shouldn't be an island for thousand of miles in any direction.' he thought. 

"Mike, is every thing ok? You seem upset." Cerelia asked.

"Well honey, it seems that we're coming up on an island that shouldn't be there. I mean that our people have been mapping this world for countless centuries, starting from simple drawing to evolve into highly detailed computerized mapping satellites high up in orbit. I just can't believe that something as large as this island we're coming up on could be overlooked. Christ, that fucker at least two hundred miles long and one hundred mile wide. How the hell did they miss this?" Stated an exasperated Mike.

"Mike, what does 'fucker' mean?" Asked Cerelia.

He whipped his head around so fast that the bones in his neck pop of their own violation. When he looked at Cerelia, her face was one of naïveté, he relax just a fraction. "Uh, yeah, well it's a word only grown ups are aloud to use ok? So don't repeat it until your older, ok honey." 

He knew better but didn't want to discuss it at the moment. He heaved a sigh of relief when she accepted what he said and continued to watch the scenery. They'd reach the island within the next twenty seconds and he was just perplexed about their current situation. That was until the most unlikely of thoughts breach the consciousness of his being.

'No we couldn't be there. Could we? I mean we're in the southwestern region of the Atlantic. I thought those stories were a bunch of bull shit.' He thought.

Mike activated his comm, hoping they weren't where he thought they were.

"Sam, come in. Over."

"Yes, Captain. What can I do for you?" Sam asked.

"Are you uplinked to the Earth information networks yet?"

"Yes sir. I have been shifting through massive amounts of data for the last twenty minutes."

"Good, I need you to tell me where exactly my fighter is at currently. Then tie in those coordinates and search the internet. Then I want you to use one of our satellites to do an in-depth scan of the surrounding area." Ordered Mike.

"Please wait." And the silence there after almost drove Mike to the brink of insanity. He started to drum his fingers on the console in front of him, showing his impatience to his sole passenger.

"According to the coordinates and internet research, you are currently in the area known as 'The Bermuda Triangle'." Sam was quiet for a few minutes.

"Well, that's just fricking great. Where in the triangle are we?" He asked.

"Captain, you are in the exact center of the triangle. After scanning the area it appears there is a shield surrounding the island and a primitive cloaking device encompassing the entire triangle. While both of these devices are running at once it could cause electromagnetic interference. This would explain some of the occurrences some ships encounter while skirting the inner area of the triangle."

'Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!' He thought. 

"Hold up a sec." Mike said. He knew he needed to calm down so he started breathing very slowly with even breaths. He eventually began to rub the bridge of his nose in agitation.

"Explain then why we were able to pass through this shield and detect this island in the first place?" He finally asked.

"Well the reason is quit simple. They are primitive patched together pieces of 'shit'. These defenses are good enough to hide and shield the island from the rest of the planet but it is a complete fucking joke compared to our technological standard." Stated Sam.

"Oh." Mike barely whispered.

Cerelia was quiet the entire time, watching the island growing bigger as they got closer. The ship was close enough that they could discern the white sandy beach and palm trees jutting out randomly in the dunes turning into jungle inland. Further inland Mike could see what appeared to be a temple structure, which if he had to guess, looked something like an Aztec ziggurat. They both saw many indescribable objects in the jungle that was covered over by local vegetation. Now that they were close enough he began to explain about the triangle and its history, when she couldn't picture a certain ships look, he was able to point out almost every vessel on the reef. When he examined the reef up close and personal it almost made him sick at the utter waste. The reef was nothing but an overly large graveyard for ships. 

Entire hulls were ripped opened by spikes of jagged coral and hidden rocks, some vessel seem to just rest against the reef, as if they were anchored, while others had coral growth on their entire hulls. A few ships had been here for many decades while others were here for centuries, these being completely covered by coral without anything of the original structure showing. 

"What's that?" Cerelia asked, pointing to an object half a mile down the reef.

"Well, from here it looks like a US Liberty Ship. It looks old even from here and, if I didn't know any better, I'd say that it was made of concrete."

"So I take it not many ships were made like that then?" Said Cerelia, brows furrowed in concentration.

"Nope. Only a couple of hundred were every made with concrete. In fact an entire fleet of concrete Liberty Ships disappeared inside the triangle during World War II, hauling supplies or some such. They went in but they never came back out."

"Oh, that's just creepy!" Cerelia responded.

"Yeah, lots people disappeared because of this place. They dared to have the gale to cross the triangle. Hell, all of the near by countries have put up a strict no entry zone around the triangle. Nobody even tries to cross it anymore."

"So, are we going down there or what?" Cerelia asked.

"No, at least, not yet. We don't have the equipment or the supplies to explore this island. Right now there could be some hostile people down, who have been shipwrecked for years and have gone insane. We'll go back to the ship and plan this out first." he stated rather firmly. 

With that he skirted the island, following the coastline south until they reached the southern tip of the island. He followed the curve of the coast and once he was on the opposite side of the island he headed northeast. The island started to shrink behind them and they speed further north. It didn't take him too long to find exactly what he was looking for. Bermuda.

* * * * *

Meanwhile back aboard Darkstar...

"So you have any ideas?" Asked Jack.

"No, you got anything?" replied Mitch.

"If I did then I wouldn't have asked you, now would I? Christ, you'd think this would be the easy part."

"Yeah, I know the feeling."

"Hey, do you think we could get some television on the screen? If we could maybe we'll actually get some ideas."

"We should be able to do that since Sam's hooked up to the Earth's satellites."

Jack walked over to the wall console in the galley and started hitting some keys until he got the access to the satellite feed. After screwing around for about five minutes he finally got the TV feed up and started shifting through the 'stations' until he came upon Gene Roddenberry's :'Andromeda'.

"Keep going, we'll only get some ship designs from this show." Mitch said.

"Oh well, let's try again."

Five channels later Mitch came upon one of the greatest movies of all time, 'Spaceballs'. Jack and Mitch watched it for about twenty minutes, enjoying the classic comedy.

"Hey, I told you to fire across her nose, not up it." Dark Helmet said.

"Sorry sir, it's my first day." Replied the cross-eyed gunner.

"Colonel Sanders, who hired this man?" said Dark Helmet.

A Major stepped forward. "I did Sir, He's my cousin."

"What's you name?" Asked Colonel Sanders.

"Asshole, Major Asshole."

"How many Assholes do we have here?" asked Dark Helmet.

"Yo." Bellowed the rest of the bridge crew.

"I knew it, I'm surrounded by Assholes!" exclaimed Dark Helmet

Jack and Mitch laughed for two minutes. When they were both done Jack said that he never got tried of watching that movie.

"Ok, back to work." Jack said.

After searching for another twenty minutes Mitch came upon a marathon on the Sci-fi channel of 'Stargate: SG-1'. This proved to hold some interesting concepts, though it would take time to implement them. Mitch had Sam download all of the Stargate sessions into a research archive for assimilation later. Jack took a turn and started to switch the 'channels' randomly and when he stop he had some how accessed Comcast's "On-Demand" feature. He saved this for entertainment later on in the day, which he was sure it would break some of the tension on board. While he was scanning the available titles for "On-Demand," he found a cornucopia of science fiction ideas. Mitch looked at what Jack found and cracked a lopsided grin.

"Yeah, that will definitely work. Star Wars 'Revenge of the Sith', is a good start, but see if you can get the other movies too. Can't have one without the other five. I gonna make another file for them so they don't get mixed up."

So Mitch created a file just for the 'Star Wars' trilogy's, which he mistakenly placed in a little used subdirectory.

* * * * *

Down on the surface of the Moon... The maintenance droids start to communicate with each other in order to construct the military installation as quickly as possible. 

'Error, error, unknown event has occurred.'

'Requesting building parameters from main interface.'

'Access to main interface failed.'

'Access to backup archive, transmitting now.' 

'Access granted. Proceed.'

'Warning, file corruption detected. Emergency shutdown initiated.'

'Emergency shut down failed. Corruption spreading to other units.'

'Emergnjcnen9uncvn... 01001000101000101100... hiienASONOCNVRNRW'

'nefnbfjnrtfnnmrigimae[onngennbjnfavnn.'

'vnhrugbrtuibfjobrgpirbutbihhgf/.'

'death Star. Convert entire Moon Surface into the Death Star.'

'New commands accepted.'

'Downloading military installation schematics code-named: Death Star.'



Genesis Project Ch. 14



The sun was sinking into the western horizon; Mike was leaning back into the sand occasionally sipping his Bahama Momma. Cerelia was lying down on the beach asleep, completely exhausted from playing in the surf most of the day. It had been fairly easy textbook landing, no one even noticed them land the fighter. After landing they walked towards downtown Hamilton, sometime cutting across the narrow roads, and narrowly escaping being hit by a taxi. Cerelia tried in vain to see everything at once, running from shop to shop, while the storeowners just smiled at the exuberant child. Once the shops lost their fascination they moved between the local eateries and sports bars, deafening roar of the NASCAR races showing on multiple TV's. For an hour or so they watched one of the big cruise liners pull up anchor and maneuver out of the bay while avoiding the rock outcroppings. Mike even bought a sundress for Cerelia in a pale blue color from one of the local shops. Wandering around had been fun but Mike thought that going to the beach would complete the day. Crossing the street in Hamilton had been like playing 'Frogger', though traffic was only going fifteen miles an hour. Getting a taxi hadn't been difficult at all; plenty of tourists going to beach always attracted plenty of taxicabs. 

When Mike saw the first taxi parked across the street, it looked more like a family mini-van than a taxicab. Only took eight fifteen minutes to reach Horseshoe bay (and cost about ten dollars American). Now that the sun was setting, Mike was wondering what they were going to do for the night. Sleeping on a beach wasn't on his things to do list, they'd probably get pinched by Sand-Crabs during the night anyway. As Mike was looking up and down the beach, he noticed a newspaper lying nearby. He walked over and picked it up. It was a copy of the 'New York Times', three days old from the looks of it. As Mike was browsing the articles he noticed an article in current events section which read.

"...investigations still continue into the disappearances of five FBI agents who were investigating 'The Church of The Third Eye' which have branches in almost every state in the continental US, and several branches in Canada, Mexico, Honduras, Panama, El Salvador, even in the far reaches of South America. Controversy has always surrounded the 'Church', some saying that it is a 'new-age cult', though no concrete evidence supports this theory, it is apparent that the 'Church' has all the makings of a cult. Leader of the 'Church', Jordan Cross, owner and CEO of 'Cross International', declined an interview with this reporter and only making a brief statement that...'The Church of The Third Eye is not nor has it ever been a cult. It is a place for people, who have been misplaced by other religious institutions, to look for God in this new day and age. Also they are looking for the potential to become more than what they were.' This reporter has talked to several families, who have family members inside the 'Church'. These people haven't had any contact with relations, since they joined the 'Church', and have tried in vain to make contact with no success. It is in my opinion, that the 'Church' is just another cult, scamming people out of their life savings, while they delude themselves into believing mystical mumbo jumbo that will never come to pass. Also Mr. Cross should be arrested for whatever he has done to these poor people."

--News York Times Press Room.

Mike threw the paper down onto the sand with a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. He didn't like this one bit. He threw the paper into a nearby trash can and scooped up Cerelia in his arms. She barley woke up when she was disturbed and just settled back to sleep. He headed back to the fighter, humming a soft tune while he walked.

'Time to move on. Maybe Florida should be the next stop.' Mike thought.

_________________________

Mitch stared at the three dimensional image with a fire behind his eyes. He was starring at what he hoped would be, the future perimeter drone. After watching the first four or five seasons of Stargate: SG-1, he came up with the design from two different episodes. What he came up with looked like a pyramid, bronze in color with silver inlay covering the entire surface. He knew it didn't serve any practical purpose but it looked fairly impressive. When tripped the four corners of the pyramid would pop out, containing re-engineered particle beam cannons, while each tip of the pyramid had a mini thruster, these would be used for course corrections and maneuvering in orbit if that became the case. In each face of the pyramid was a sublight thruster that was the main propulsion for the drone. That alone would make the drone very maneuverable out in space but what you didn't see is what made it even deadlier. Mitch was able to scale down a shield generator to the size of a suitcase, just right for the drones purpose. During all of this Jack was not idle; he worked on the power chamber and the cloaking device, utilizing the new power crystal. Sam had installed the sensor package for the drone so that it would recognize sensor input and transponder data when it came in. "Hey, what do you think about putting a replicator on board?" asked Mitch, rubbing the weariness from his eyes.

"You want it to be self-replicating?" Jack asked curiously. 

"Yeah, if we can manage it that is." Yawned Mitch. They had been going at it for a while now. Mitch tapped the console, until its display flashed the time.

"Shit, quarter to four in the morning. How in the hell did it get so late?" asked a perplexed Jack.

"Don't know. Let's finish this up and get some sleep." Mitch said.

"It's going to take a lot of programming to get it just right. We don't want the damn things to continuously self-replicate; we're going to have to emplace very specific governing protocols. These drones will have to have some measure of intelligence, so they could perform their job." Jack suggested.

"Yeah, we could do that. Although creating a new AI to handle that task of system defense might be a better idea." Mitch said.

"Hmm. But how would we be able to go about it though? Do you know how to create a functional AI?" asked Jack who started to tap a pen against the console.

"No, but I can 'cut & paste' with the best of them." replied Mitch.

"Not exactly what I wanted to hear but it will have to do."

Jack opened a basic programming application. Meanwhile, Mitch accessed Sam's resource file, which held thousands of lines of codes. As this appeared on the holo-display Mitch opened a secondary window that display the code in a similar HTML format, commonly used on the Internet web pages.

"Whoa, whoa, hold up. Why not have Sam create the new AI? Hell it would be simple for him to do it." Jack stated.

"I'm pretty sure he won't mind." Mitch said.

"Hey, Sam." Jack said.

"Yes Chief. How may I be of assistance?"

"Sam, we've got the designs for the new perimeter drones pretty much done but we need a new AI to oversee system wide security. Could you create a new AI for us?" Jack asked.

"Assigning a new AI to the task of system security would free up a lot of my time. Could I also create one for the new base that the captain ordered built?" Sam asked tentatively.

"Did Mike mention that he wanted a new AI for the base?" Mitch inquired. 

"No, he did not mention it, though his exact words were and I quote '...I want them to start building a military installation that will serve as our base of operations. They build the base with local materials and use the replicators if they need parts or material not found there.' If I install a new AI in the base, also the I could focus more on the information me getting from the satellites and any other duties that I charged with." Sam said in a monotonous voice.

"What the hell. Go on ahead Sam; create two new AI's for our purposes."

"Thank you chief. Accessing primary subroutines, copying data, opening new programs. Hmmm. Chief I have run into something that I need your help with."

"Sure what's up Sam?" Jack asked.

"I need two personalities for the AI's."

"Ok, go on the uplink and scan actors, actresses, comedians, and politicians. If you can find personalities that go well with their jobs." Said Mitch.

"Scanning Earth databases now. Scanning...one personality found. Installing personality traits into program one now. New AI coming online."

For a second Mitch expected there to be lighting flashing in the background and thunder booming throughout the room. But what happened next really wasn't what he expected. It sounded like someone was clearing their throat at first then the new AI spoke for the first time.

"Check, check, fucking check. Hey you assholes, there or what?" Sounded the new AI .

"Oh shit, Sam where in the hell did you get that one from?" asked Jack.

"I know that voice. Sam why did you have to pick him for?" whined Mitch.

"Who'd he pick?"

"Well, I did as instructed and scanning the personalities of actors actresses and comedians. He seemed very popular for some reason." Replied Sam.

"WHO ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?" exclaimed Jack.

Mitch answered him before Sam could respond.

"He picked Lewis Black, stand up comedian and world class smartass."

"Really what was your first fucking clue, my gentle snowflake?" said the new AI.

"Well at least we know what to name him." Offered Sam.

"You know I really don't need this kind of aggravation, now you have high expectations of me. How do you think that makes me feel?" Said the AI.

"Mike is going to kill us, you know this right?" asked Mitch.

"Yeah, kinda goes without saying it though." Jack said.

___________________________________

Elsewhere...

"So Xavier, what job would you want?" asked Emily.

They had been sitting on the bridge for a couple of hour now, just passing idle conversation. Jax and some of the other slaves were either sitting down and engaging in the conversation or were occupied by the control consoles surrounding the bridge.

"I'm too old for anything strenuous like a fighter jock or an engineer. To be honest, I don't really know what I would want to do here." Xavier said.

"OK, just keep your mind open and let me know what you want to do. Jax, do you have anything that strikes your fancy?" Emily asked Jax.

"Yeah, I want to be a security officer. I want to protect others from what happened to me and the others." Jax stated. 

"Sounds good to me. Just go to the med-bay and have Sam help you out with learning everything there is to know about security."

"Alright, I guess I'll see you guys later." And with that Jax walked off the bridge and headed towards the med-bay. Emily talked with the rest of them and they made their decision on what position they would like. Four went to security, not including Jax, six wanted to be science officers, eight went to engineering, five went to medical, and four went to flight operations. That only left Xavier and Cerelia, though Cerelia could wait a few years before she chose a job.

"Hey Sam, can I get a status report on the new base? Also what the progress with those drones, that Mitch was rambling about before?" Emily asked. A few seconds went by without any response, until a new voice spoke up. This voice sounded very familiar, for some reason.

"Hey, don't get your panties in a wad, ok girly. Well, the base is about thirty to thirty-two percent complete, which is located on the far side, so we got a while before those numb-nutted ass wipes even notice anything." The mysterious voice said. Emily realized where she heard that voice before, from the HBO comedy special featuring Lewis Black.

"Hey watch your mouth you little snot. I could erase you, you know." Emily replied.

"Ok, ok, sheesh. You don't have to get temperamental now. Anyway, those drones you asked about, well the first one is being created now, even as I explain it to you. For the time being, until the three stooges get their act together, I'll be handling the operation of the system security. So have no fear, you're in my capable hands now." Then Emily heard the AI cackle for about thirty seconds.

"Great, just what I need. Mitch said these drone would be self replicating, where are you going to get the material from to build them?" She asked.

"Well I've been thinking about that for about half an hour now and have found the perfect source for material. You aren't going to miss Pluto right? I mean how could you miss something you couldn't see to begin with? I mean your not using it are you?"

"No, we're not. But that doesn't sound like good idea to me." Emily said cautiously.

"Tough shit. I'm doing it." And with that the AI with drew from the conversation and grabbed control of the drone as soon as it was finished. Sam had tried to interfere; the AI just shrugged it off. The AI directed the drone towards Pluto, at best possible speed, the drone would take two hours to reach the planet Pluto. The AI gave the drone instructions to self-replicate and use Pluto as a source for material. Then when the drones became activated, they would move out throughout the system, cloaked and shielded to guard their predetermined positions.



Genesis Project Ch. 15



Perimeter drone Alpha-1 accelerated towards its goal, the distant planet Pluto that hung suspended in space. The drone directed it's sensors onto the planet. Two polar ice caps, atmosphere of methane gas, from the readings the planet was obviously dead. The drone did note one irregularity though. The sensors showed that Pluto had three moons instead of the one that was expected. The drone shot back a data transmission, noting the irregularity and asking for instructions concerning the two satellites. Other than that the drone began its job, it descended down onto the planet, the atmospheric heat flare made the drone look like a small sun dropping down through the atmosphere. It slowed to a steady landing on the uneven gravelly surface. Waiting half an hour for the outer metallic shell to cool down, then started up its replicator system. If anyone had been looking from the outside they would have noticed a small rectangular opening in four sides of the pyramid. Eight sets of pincer arms extracted themselves from inside the drone, extending down to the rocky ground began picking up rocks and sandy dirt. After about a hundred pounds of raw material was gathered Alpha-1 started to feed the replicator the material breaking it down to the subatomic level. During this stage the replicator can add or subtract atoms from the raw materials, creating new alloys, plastics, acids, bases, and any other compound imaginable. 

Soon it had enough materials to start building a new drone. A beam of light shot out of it and molecule by molecule, atom by atom, the new drone was slowly coming together. Thirty minutes later, the new drone was completed. Alpha-1 then downloaded its core programming into the new unit and activated the new drone. Aplpha-2 came online without complication, noting its core programming, and began to gather material for the next drone to be built. The new AI, who adopted the name Lewis, had instructed the first drone to build ten drones then download their core programming into the new drone, after which that drone would go off too its designated position. Then the new drones would make ten more, and those ten drone would make ten more and so on and so forth. If Lewis wasn't watching the progress of the drone then they would go on forever, as it was he would only allow them to go up to a thousand and start their new job. Lewis broke the drones down into divisions, ten divisions in all, a hundred drones per division. He chose these names represent the divisions, which were; Alpha, Beta, Sigma, Delta, Echo, Gamma, Foxtrot, Hilo, Kappa, and Lambda. He stopped the drones at hundred per division and order them towards their positions. Then had them arrayed in a dartboard pattern, the Alpha were the outer line of defense surrounding the outer orbit of Pluto and the solar system. Betas were positioned between Neptune and Uranus. The Sigmas, Deltas, and Echos took up positions around Saturn, Jupiter and their satellites. Gamma, Foxtrot, and Hilos were positioned around Mars and Earth. And the last two divisions were spread out between the sun and Venus. 

He decided to have a few of the drones monitoring the Earth defense ring, enter the atmosphere and assume key positions around the globe, providing global coverage. This would allow Lewis or the other AI to destroy nuclear arms in case they fired upon other countries. He made a note of this to Sam, who was acting like a nervous nelly for some reason he couldn't fathom. He also made a note to Mitch about some possibilities for another AI to actually control the flow of information on the Internet or to monitor it instead. But this suggestion goes further than just monitoring the Internet like Sam was, it means to actually emplace the AI directly into the Internet, it would then be the Planetary AI. From their the AI, could in fact keep close tabs on all the governments on the planet, see who's planning what, who's selling this to that organization, and so on and so forth.  

----------------

Emily was walking down the corridor looking for Mitch and Jack. She finally found them in one of the labs; sitting at a table with their heads slumped down, asleep. She crept forward, making sure not to make a sound. She heard the rhythmic sounds of Mitch snoring. She noticed Jack had a small puddle of drool just creeping out of the corner of his mouth. She looked around for a second until she found what she was looking for. She picked up a large book; she didn't know where it had come from, heaved it over her head and slammed the damn thing on the floor. Mitch shot straight up like a cork in the water and fell over his stool. Jack jumped up screaming about bacon bits and jammed his knee on the table. She couldn't help it, she laughed her ass off. When the two realized what was going on they made very sarcastic faces, like exaggerating mock laughter.

"Very funny. Gave me a fucking heart attack why don't ya." Jack said, rubbing his knee.

"Evil bitch." Was the only thing that Mitch said.

"So, what's up?" Emily asked.

"Well, Lewis is a big pain in the ass, but he's getting the job done properly. The entire system is now online and covering every quadrant of Sol system." Mitch responded.

"Good, good, anything else?"

"Yeah, we've been working on some designs for ships, droids, and drones. You ever see 'Battlestar Galactica', the new one not the older version? Well I figured we could replicate the Cylon Centurions, the big metallic looking robots. Instead of calling them Centurions we call them Battle droids. We are short on man power so they could fill in the ranks until we get more recruits up here."

"Sounds good so far. Anything to add Jack?" Emily asked.

"For the droids, no. But I have come up with a few ship designs plus class names for the ships." Jack punched a few command keys and a holographic image shimmered over the table. A large ship hovered, its hull had a craggy aspect to it. The ship itself was shape like a devil's pitchfork, more rounded off without the sharp points. It reminded Emily of one of the ships from a 'Babylon 5' mini-series, Excaliber, or something like that.

"This is our Battle Cruiser class type ship. This ship holds a crew of just over a hundred. It has hyper drive engines, sublight engines, nine particle beam weapons, four main singularity cannons, plus rotating frequency shielding and cloaking device. The metaphasic armor gives the hull a rocky appearance. The ship is about four miles long by two wide." Jack stated.

"Jeez, that is one big ship." Emily said.

"Yeah, I know. It's hanger bay can hold sixty fighter craft, using a suspending rack system. There are a few more little details I'll explain later, but you get the gist of it."

"Quick question. Could you explain what the singularity weapon actually does?" Emily asked.

"Sure won't take that long to explain it. Basically, I designed a space cannon to fire two different types of singularity weapons. Both types are gravitational singularities. One is a small unstable quantum singularity, in other words a small Black Hole. The other weapon is the complete opposite of a Black Hole, which is a White Hole or a miniature 'Big Bang'. Something you should never use around a planet unless you're really pissed at the people on it. The White Hole emits gravity, plasma, and untold amounts of energy. The Black Hole sucks everything down into itself using gravity to pull and tear apart the object it has a hold on. Anything else?"

"No." Peeped Emily, sweat started to appear on her brow.

Jack began to click a few buttons again, this time a new design appeared on the holo-display. The new design was much smaller than the battle cruiser; in fact from the dimensions being displayed it would have to be a fighter craft type. The craft had a needle like nose, very similar to the rig that Mike was flying. The main difference was in the wings of the craft, which looked like they came from a "Tie Interceptor." Think 'Star Wars: New Hope', Darth Vader's personal start fighter with the wings bent at a forty-five degree angle.

"Ok, here I've reworked the design of the fighter craft that Mikes' used to piloting. Still has the same ball shaped cockpit, needle like nose, but I reinforced the wings. With our current power source, everything on the craft with be enhanced, shielding, thrusters, sublight engines, even the particle beam weapons. I've decided to name this class of ship; Cerberus after the mythical three headed dog of Hades. I know it's an old one, but I think it's a good name, unless someone wants to name it 'Thundercat' again." Jack said smartly.

Emily smirked at the mention of the incident. Mitch replied with a one-finger salute. Jack shift in his seat for a minute, then tapped the keys again this time another larger ship appeared on the display. Emily could tell that it wasn't as big as the battle cruiser, but it looked very impressive none the less. The way the ship was designed gave it an almost organic look to it, like it was almost alive. The shape of the craft looked similar to that of a spade from a deck of cards. The tail end of the craft looked like it had a giant X, it smoothly blended in on the hull while the lower end of the X curved inward.

"Alright, this is what I calling an Interceptor, design mainly for speed and maneuverability. That doesn't mean that it is defenseless. It's packing three particle beams, shields, and a cloaking device. This ship can also double as a scout ship when the time comes for exploration." 

"Well, these designs are going to have to wait until we get a ship yard up and running." Said Emily.

"Yeah I know. It's killing me to wait for it to be built." Jack said.

He started to tap keys again, and a smile spread across his face. "Well, we don't have to wait as long as we thought. Mitch check it out." Mitch lean over the display, his face scrunched up in concentration.

"Emily, according to this the new base will have the full capability of a ship yard. In fact it will be able to build most of our larger designs daily." Mitch said.

Emily frowned instead of smiled, her brow crinkled for almost a minute.

"Wait a minute, how will the base be able to produce theses larger designs daily? I mean how big is the base going to be, considering the massive dimensions of the ships?" Emily asked sounding very confused for a moment. Jack and Mitch realized she had a point. Jack brought up the file that was suppose to hold the base designs. He uttered a soft curse under his breath.

"Guys we may have a problem. The file that has the base designs has apparently been corrupted by an outside file source. The maintenance droids that were building the base called in for the plans and were infected as well, they tried an emergency shutdown, but it fail. Awe, shit. I think we have a virus in the system."

"Then what the hell are those droids building out there?" asked Emily.

Mitch walked towards the nearest view port, he looked left and right, then craned his neck to the right looking down. By the time Emily and Jack joined him, his face was slightly paled. He stepped back and looked at both of them in the face.

"I don't know how this happened; I don't even want to speculate on how it happened. Somehow for some reason, we are now orbiting what looks strangely like the 'Death Star'." Mitch managed to stammer out. Both Emily and Jack rushed forward to look out the view port, and what they saw turn their stomachs.

Nearly two thirds of the surface of the moon was covered in a metallic structure, there were canyons that seem to be twenty stories tall and was line with what appeared to be particle cannons, very large particle cannons. The third that wasn't covered was still the same craggy sandy surface of the moon but they could see little dark specks moving around. To see them even from this distance meant that there had to be thousands if not millions of maintenance droids scurrying about. They looked like a swarm of highly organized insects, buzzing to and fore.

"Sweet Jesus on a hammock. I hope you guys believe in the afterlife 'cause Mike is most certainly going to send us there when he gets back." Mitch said. His hands were shacking slightly

"Well, he did say he didn't care if anyone knew we were here or not. So he got his wish." Jack tried to rationalize this but he knew Mike didn't exactly want the Earth to collectively shit themselves when they looked up at the Moon.

"Ok, let's pretend we didn't see that and get back to work. Anything else you want to go over?" said Emily.

"Yeah, I think we need a few AI's for future projects, not as vocal as Lewis though. We can have Sam create their personalities from scratch." Mitch said.

"Yeah that sounds good. Sam, just two things for you to do." Emily said.

"Yes, what would you like me to do?" Sam relied.

"Sam, we want you to create five new AI, their personalities from scratch. Take as long as you need, ok." Emily requested.

"Certainly commander. Will there be anything else?"

"Yeah, one last thing Sam. We want you to run a diagnostic program on your self and all of the files contain within the computer sore. If you find any file containing viruses, quarantine the said file, and we can examine it later when Mike returns."

"Commander, are you saying that the computer core has been infect with computer based viral infection?" Sam asked. He sounded very concerned.

"Yes, it seems very likely. Wait a minute, are you trying to tell me you've never encountered a computer virus before?" Asked a very surprised Emily.

"In all of AI history none have come up against a computer based viral infection. I'm not even sure if I could be effective against such a thing." The AI sounded very morose.  

"Don't worry about it. We'll think of something when we cross that bridge." Mitch said.

"Fine. I will complete the AI's within the hour. Running the diagnostic program will take about half an hour." Sam said.

"Good, Sam that's all for now." Emily said.

------------------

Mike awoke with a groan escaping his lips. He stretched his arms and legs trying hard not to wake Cerelia. He checked the display in front of him and it told him it was nine in the morning. He looked around, momentarily forgetting where they were. It took him a few minutes to remember what exactly had happened. They left Bermuda, late in the evening and landed in Naples, Florida, near a small retirement community. He decided to just sleep in the fighter, no use looking for a hotel nearby. As he turned back to look in front of the ship, there stood a small group of boys. They appeared to be around the ages of nine to eleven. They were just standing there, gawking at the ship sitting not ten feet away.

'Oh well. Time to head back anyway.' Mike thought.

He started up the fighter and the group of boys ran way back and hid in the nearby bushes. He lifted off the ground and headed out for sea. He was still waking up when the sensors picked up something coming up fast behind him. He directed the sensors behinds his craft and it took just a few seconds for a description of the craft to come up. What he didn't need right at the moment but was getting it anyway was two USAF F-15E Strike Eagles.

"Unidentified aircraft, I am ordering you to come about and land at Eglin Air Force Base. If you do not comply with these directions we will blow you out of the sky." Demanded one of the pilots.

"Let me think about that. Why don't you and your boyfriend go have some fun blowing up a trailer park or something." Responded Mike.

"You little shit. I repeat again, come about and land at Eglin Air Force Base or you will be fired upon." Repeated the pilot, who was starting to sound rather angry.

"Sorry. Not your bitch, not your slave, go fuck yourself and have a nice day." With that Mike activated his shields. He started to turn his fighter in a crisscross pattern. He didn't really care what they did; right now he was just toying with them. He noticed that Cerelia was wide-awake; he smiled reassuringly to let her know that everything was okay. The sensors reported multiple impacts on the shields, some bullets, but the last few were missiles. They were really trying to kill him and he didn't feel anything through he shields. He decided to comm them and let them know that they were just wasting their time.

"Hey, guys I getting pretty bored right now, so I'm just going to go home." Said Mike. 

They were well over the Atlantic, miles form the coast and they were barely keeping up. He then got a good idea. He scrolled through the fighters' main menu and accessed what exactly was installed on the fighter. Apparently there was a small tractor beam on board, used for towing in small fighter craft or life pods. He activated the tractor beam and homed in on the two fighters. Once they were locked in the tractor beam Mike started to ascend through the atmosphere. Now the flyboys were screaming at him to let them go. He notice on the sensors that their craft had over ten minutes of usable oxygen and he thought that was just perfect. He exited the atmosphere two seconds later with the plane in tow, wouldn't take him long to get back to Sam with these two. Mike was smirking at the thought of those two seeing the ship for the first time, when Cerelia point towards the moon and asked what had happened to it. Mike focused in on the Moon and saw his new base.

"OK, that will do." Mike said with a small smile spread across his face.



Genesis Project Ch. 16



Edinburgh, England.

"This is BBC News correspondent Lawrence Henderson reporting with today's top stories." Said a man in his early thirties. He straightened out the papers sitting in front of him and turned towards camera two, slightly to his right.

"Meteorologists around the world are puzzled by the sudden change in our moon. Astronomers noticed the change last night when the moon was supposed to be full. But it was instead dark gunmetal gray. Those with telescopes had called into the station with wild stories about metallic structure covering the entire surface of the moon. We now go to reporter Jane Spencer, who is reporting live with Professor of Astronomy for Edinburgh College, Jack Sinclair. Jane?" Lawrence said.

"Thank you Lawrence. I'm here at Edinburgh College with Doctor Sinclair. Doctor, what can you tells us about this situation with the moon?" asked the reporter.

They were standing inside the Edinburgh observatory, located in the English countryside, in front of a large telescope, while interns ran here and there. One was sitting in a chair staring through the scope of the telescope. Another was standing by taking notes from various readings. 

"Yes, I've been studying the phenomenon for the last day, day and a half, since a colleague from the Stellar Mapping Institute or the SMI as it is usually called contacted me. He called around three thirty in the morning saying there was something on the moon. At first I didn't believe him until he told me to go into work early and look through the telescope at the college. What I saw was simply amazing. I hooked up a recording device to the telescope so I could take video and still picture of what I was observing. At first I couldn't believe my eyes. There was metallic structures on the moon that wasn't there a few days ago. I called a sister site in Savannah, Georgia to confirm my finding. They to couldn't believe what they wee seeing. They intern called an observatory in Phoenix, Arizona. They all saw the same thing. We had a conference call around seven this morning and tried to figure out exactly what this structure is and what its purpose is. So far we haven't been able to speculate what it is."

"Doctor, are you saying we been invaded by an Alien race?" asked the reporter. Doctor Sinclair smiled slightly at that question and shook his head bemusedly. 

"As of now I have no idea as to whether or not that may be true. What I do know is that no one on this planet built whatever that is up there." Said the professor. 

"Professor!!! You got to come see this!" exclaimed the young intern sitting in the chair. Both the reporter and the professor ran over to the student and waited for him to explain what was going on. The intern kept gesturing with his hands, but was unable to describe what exactly he was seeing.

"It's okay Bill, we'll put up on the big screen." Doctor Sinclair said. 

He walked over to a computer station and typed in a few commands then directed the recording device to start recording and switch the feed over to the TV so they could watch at the same time.

"Jim, could you be a good lad and turn on the Tele?" asked the Doctor.

"Right." Responded the intern.

"Jane, what's happening?" said a voice in the reporter earpiece.

"It appears there is a development in the story." Jane said into the camera. 

"Bobby focus in on the Tele." Ordered the voice, directing the camera operator.

The TV flickered to life. One of the students grabbed the remote and switched it over to video feed. For a few moments the screen was snowy then became clear. Everyone was silent, watching, looking for what the excited student had seen. A distant image of the moon was shown on the screen, its surface honeycombed with artificial canyons. Sinclair asked the student to enhance the image so they could get a closer look. It took little than five seconds to enhance the image; the moon now appeared to be closer and more detailed. Now they could see large installations of what appeared to be cannons and yet they couldn't fathom how massive they were considering there was nothing to measure them against. These cannons littered the vast majority of the surface structure. Everyone was so engrossed in the view that when something moved into the picture they were visibly startled. Whatever it was slowly moved into view but the image was blurry.

"Bill, focus out a little bit. We can't make out anything like this." Sinclair said.

The student zoomed out a bit and refocused the image. They could see the image clearly now and it was an impressive sight. It was, for lack of a better word, a ship. A heavy damaged ship. Everyone in the room was shocked into silence, as was everyone else watching the news broadcast. The ship seemed to be marred by huge blast burns and looked as if huge portions of the hull were missing. About then Sinclair notice something on the hull of the craft.

"Bill, zoom in on the hull, a hundred and fifty percent magnification, upper right quadrant." Sinclair said his voice shaky with excitement.

Bill did his best for the Professor and zoom in on the indicated area. Once the image was focused every gasped at what they saw. They saw large robots going here and there, patching up small holes in the hull of the ship. They were shocked even more when they saw what appeared to be a being walking towards one to the robots. Whatever it was looked to be wearing a suit of some kind, but no one could guess at what the suit was made up. A few in the room would have given up their right arm to have one like; other noticed that it looked similar to the suit in the 'Halo' video game. Though, it did seem to be a different color.

"Bloody hell, aliens!!" exclaimed one of the students.

"Shut up, Richard. Dumbarse." Said a very snooty redhead.

"Enough of that." Said Professor Sinclair.

"Un-bloody-believable." The reporter stated. Her earpiece had been buzzing for more than three minutes but she could not hear what was being said. She was in a state of shock. 

"Well, I believe that answers your question, Miss Spencer." Everyone in the room slowly nodded in agreement.

On the screen, something that looked like a flying discus came towards the figure in the suit and stop right in front of it. The alien looked at the strange device and it shimmered for a moment until an image appeared to floating on top of the disc. It was hard to tell, but it was a schematic of the ship and it showed all of the damage that needed to be repaired. The being then retrieved what looked like a handheld PDA with a stylus, which it began to scribble something onto it. After a few minutes the being shook its head and walked off towards a destination on the other side of the ship.

"Well, I think that's all that we're going to see for now. Now would someone be so kind as to make me a cup of tea or a large shot brandy, whichever you find first." Said Sinclair.

"Yes, well this is Jane Spencer, reporting live from Edinburgh College, back to you Lawrence." The reporter said.

_______________________________________ 

Washington, D.C. USA

It was ten in the morning the day after the BBC news broadcast. The president, though scatterbrained at times, was very upset for obvious reasons. He had to address the country this morning, reassuring them that everything was fine and there is nothing to worry about. After the announcement a few riots broke out in a few cities; such as Seattle, Miami, Dallas, and Cleveland. Order was restored shortly, once the police from each city were out in force to subdue the rioters. Now the president had bigger fish to fry.

"Gentlemen, what in the hell is going on? How is it I'm the last to know what appears to be enemy propaganda being broadcasted to half the world?" The very angry president asked.

Five generals, two admirals, and three representatives from the CIA, the NSA, and the Homeland Security sat starring at the president, like he just gave birth to a small Hippo in the oval office. You just don't go straight out and talk about it, no matter how hard you try to avoid the uncomfortable topic.

"Sir, we don't believe they could fake this, in fact we have verified reports from across the entire country. From various civilian and military observatories alike." Said the one from Homeland Security.

"Lies, all lies! God created us in his own image, no one else. Whatever this broadcast was it is a blatant lie to deceive us from their true goal." Said a red-faced president as he slammed his fist on the desk.

A few of the men in the room jumped at the sound of a meaty fist hitting the oak desk. They all knew he'd been on a religious kick for the last eighteen months, since his heart attack. Ever since than its been Jesus this, Jesus that, and he's been carrying around a bible everywhere he goes.

"God, in his infinite wisdom, shall show us the way, like a shepherd tending his flock." Recited the president. "You may go now."

Once they left the oval office, the group of men let out a sigh of relief. They all knew he was a few apples short of an apple pie. What was worse was that the man was a complete fucking idiot which didn't help matters at all. Behind the closed door of the oval office the president picked up his private line and dialed a very long complex phone number. After two rings the other end was picked up and a very husky voice answered.

"Hello, who may I ask is calling?" Said the husky voice.

"Yes, it's me. I need to talk with his holiness." The president said.

"One moment." Replied the voice.

"Cross." Said a southern accented baritone voice.

"My liege something bothersome was come to my attention and frankly I'm uncertain on what to do about it. It involves the BBC news broadcast the other day. Is it a sign of the end of days? A divine test for those who are worthy to join him in all his glory?" Asked the president.

"You sniveling little pissant I'll tell you when and where god plans to tests his chosen people. I'll get back to you in a day or two on my opinion but if you hold another public address like you did this morning you'll end up in a fresh slab of concrete somewhere in Chicago. I didn't spend all that money to get you into office just so you could fuck up my plans. For the time being, keep your mouth shut and pay attention to those around you. You need to present a calm, strong face to everyone. Or else everything I've worked for would be for not." Cross said.

"Yes, sir. Don't worry about it. You can...hello? Sir?" The dial tone was his only answer.

_____________________________

Starkweather Veteran's Hospital
Richmond, Virginia.

Shawn Marshall lay in bed, starring at the pinpricks in the ceiling. There wasn't much else he could do but look straight up. Left or right weren't much better either. Private first-class Shawn Marshall, the latest graduate of the Marine Corps, had been walking his third guard patrol when it happened. He was struck in the back of the neck, a glancing blow at best, by sniper activity in downtown Baghdad. His squad rushed him to an Aid station, where they stabilized him for transport to a M.A.S.H. unit. From there they operated on the private, trying to repair the damage caused by the bullet. Unfortunately the bullet severed his spinal cord from the base of the neck down. There was no hope for him to regain use of his body; he'd be a damn cripple for the rest of his life. Pissing into a catheter, shitting into a colostomy bag, only to breathe with help from a respirator, and having someone else take care of him. Feeling utterly helpless all the while. He even tried to commit suicide by biting his tongue, hoping he would either bleed out or drown in his own blood. That was two weeks ago, suicide watch ended a few days ago and now he was depressed again. When his family came to see him he asked the nurse to tell them to go away and not come back. Shawn didn't want his father or mother to see him like this, less than what he was. So here he was, all alone in his hospital room, the respirator his only company. Or so he thought. He looked to his right and saw some person just sitting there with his fingers steeple.

He looked kinda plain with glasses on the bridge of his nose. He was wearing jeans, a strange looking watch, a screen T-shirt saying: 'Your Brain Is Like the Death Star...It's Not Yet Completely Operational.' and wearing a pair of black with red trim Van sneakers. He just sat there watching Shawn, not saying a word.

"Hey, take a picture, it'll last longer." Snipped Shawn.

The person just smirked at Shawn and reached for Shawn's chart and he sat back down. He looked over the chart for a few minutes, clucking his tongue now and again.

"Well Shawn since the sniper incident you've been paralyzed from the neck down with no hope for improvement. Before I came here I had a chance to browse your military record. A few accommodations from your NCO awarded the Medal of Honor and the Purple Heart, for obvious reasons. All in all a good soldier, but now a wounded veteran with no hope for the future. I guess that was why you tried to kill yourself then, why bother living if you can't use your own body." The stranger said.

"Fuck you, shithead! I like to see you take a bullet in the neck and see how you would handle it." Exclaimed Shawn.

"Please don't be offended by what I say. I'm just stating the facts. You're a good man Shawn. And you deserve a second chance." Said the stranger.

"What are you talking about; there is no more hope for me." Shawn stated rather flatly.

"Shawn there is no greater mystery in life than this question: What if? What if the bullet that severed your spinal cord missed? What if you were sent to another city in Iraq and some other poor idiot got that bullet instead of you? What if you spotted the sniper before he got a chance to shoot you? I could go on and on, but I won't. I'm here to give you the chance to walk again, to feel again, to enjoy life to its fullest. Shawn let me ask you this; what have you got to lose?" said the stranger.

Shawn didn't say anything. He knew what the stranger said had some truth to it and he couldn't deny that this felt right in his heart.

"Alright." Shawn spoke softly. He just couldn't stop himself from hoping again.

"Excellent Shawn, you won't regret this, trust me. By the way, my name is Mitch Matrovsky. Just hold on for one second." Mitch said.

He reached into his pocket and retrieved what looked like a duplicate of the watch he was wearing and affixed it to Shawn's wrist.

"Sam transport in ten seconds. And Shawn you are going to love this." Mitch said and they vanished from the room.

Thirty minutes later, a nurse came in to check on her patient. What she didn't expect to find was the patient gone, but all of his tubes and IV's lying on the bed without a drop of blood to be seen. The police were called in and the hospital administration was in an uproar at the bad publicity of a missing patient. The police didn't have a clue to how Shawn disappeared or why someone would bother kidnapping a handicapped veteran. The story made the local news stations and local newspapers. The hospital administration took much of the blame for Shawns disappearance, lack of security and minimal funding was the reason they gave reporters. The damage was done and the locals shied away from the hospital unless absolutely necessary and they couldn't reach another hospital in time. An interesting side note made it into the national news. Apparently several thousand fatally sick or physically disabled people disappeared from hospitals throughout the nation.

__________________________

Aboard the Darkstar...

"They seem to be taking this rather well." Said Mike.

"Yeah, but it could have been worse you know." Replied Emily.

"Yeah I know. I'm not a complete fool." Mike said.

It had been a very stressful week for Earth, though there was hope for its people. After three days amateur astronomers started to send signals towards the moon and the ships. All went unanswered but they were listened too nonetheless. A few were oddballs trying to get 'beamed' aboard. Some were just trying to make first contact in a peaceful manner. Even a couple of governments tried to make contact, demanding that we undo whatever we did to the moon and surrender or be destroyed. Mike got a good two-minute chuckle out of that.

"I'm just glad no one commited suicide over our appearance." Emily stated calmly. 

"I'm glad too, we also need to prepare for the possibility of some fool trying to send a shuttle up here and 'try' to take our ships and base." Mike said.

Earlier, Sam detected no less than five spy satellites trying to observe them and intercept any and all communication. On a lighter note, Lewis was enjoying his new home in the base and everything was running smoothly. The new residents occupying the base were ecstatic at the opportunity. It was actually Mitch's idea to begin with and it gave hope to those whom had none left. Some were architects, computer analysts, doctors, surgeons, soldiers, sailors, schoolteachers, engineers, and etc. Even those two Air Force pilots decided to stay, even though Mike nearly scared the shot out of them flying them to Darkstar and then jerking them around with holograms of hideous alien monsters for about another half an hour. Lt. Commander Austin Sykes joined up shortly after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer by Sam in the med-bay. Captain Jonathan 'Johnny' Tran decided to stay because the base commander found out he was secretly a homosexual and was letting his finish out the week before informing the higher ups. Either way Johnny was officially out of the armed forces by the end of the week no matter what he said or did.

Sam created two more AI's and is working on a third. One was Pike, who is now working his way into every computer on Earth hooked up to the internet via modem or wireless connection. In other words he is Earth's new planetary AI. The second AI was named Cassandra and her job is to handle system security. Not everything was good though. Jack had sent a report on the slave ship and it was anything but good. What it boiled down to was: 'It's not a fixer upper, it's a blower upper.' Jack thought it was a waste of time to fix it, because there was too much damage. And Mike had to agree with him on that.

"Remind me to tell Jack to scrap the slave ship." Mike said to Emily.

"No problem." Emily responded.

"So when is the first Battle Cruiser going to come off the line?" asked Mike.

Emily picked up a PDA pad and tapped a few buttons until she brought up the shipyard schedule.

"The first one will be completed in...five hours. And an additional five after that for every Cruiser." Emily stated.

"What about those Battle droids?"

"There are about five hundred of them so far. Sam has been busy making them in his hanger bay." Emily replied. Mike nodded and started to pace the room. Just as it was beginning to be annoying to Emily, Jack walked in looking slightly bewildered.

"Hey guess what," Jack started, "I watching the TV, getting an impression of what of 'arrival' had done to the populace. There are UFO fanatics holding a huge rally in the Nevada desert, just around where Area 51 is supposed to be. They got signs, radio transmitters, strobe lights, and basically want to be taken to our leader." At this point he looked slyly at Mike, who shrugged his shoulders.

"Not going to happen. We don't need UFO nuts. Let the crazy people be." Responded Mike.

"Two more things before I go get some sleep. One, the slave ship is on its way to being repaired, though it will take a while to bring it up to our standards. But it is a real bitch to fix. I still can't believe that I was on TV. But damn did I look sweet or what?" Jack finished with a wide grin.




Genesis Project Ch. 16



"Yeah, yeah Mister Turner. Don't let the chance at stardom go to your head. What else is there?" Mike asked.

"The last thing you'd want to hear actually. There is a lot of activity in the general location of Cape Canaveral. Looks like the US is preparing to launch a shuttle our way. From what Pike can tell me is that the shuttle is loaded down with two scientists whom have a background in avionics and computerized technology, plus a squad of Marines." Jack stated.

"Well, we'll just have to handle them when they get here then." Emily said like it was a matter of fact.

"Ok, so did you guys watch the presidential speech? God, I swear that guy is a complete idiot. I wonder how he got elected in the first place?" mused Mike.

"Who knows?" Jack said with a shrug.

_______________________________

Location: Helios System.
Planet: Helios Prime.
Number of Planets: Twelve.
Status: Under Dagon Blockade.
Confrontation Level: Reaching Critical.

"Sir, we're running out of supplies. The wounded are going to die soon without medical aid, which we have almost none at the moment. The Dagon Blockade is slowly squeezing us, cutting us off from the trade routes, where most of our food and medical supplies are brought into us. Every time we try to send out a one manned scout ship they destroy it. By the gods, they destroyed our entire fleet within three hours of arriving in system. Without help, sir, we are as good as slaves corralled in the pens. I would rather die then face the pens." Said the passionate lieutenant.

General Brackas nodded solemnly as he looked on the worn and dirt covered uniform. It was one month since the Dagons arrived. First they destroy the fleet by swarming them like Lincindu fruit gnats, and then they bombarded the planet from high orbit. After that the Dagons called for a general surrender from Helios Prime, which was refused. So the Dagons cut off the Helios system from out side help, sat back and would wait out the Helions, until they could no longer put up a fight and then take them, standard operating procedure for the Dagon military doctrine. Planetary shielding was slowly fading, unable to withstand the barrages coming from the Dagon attack force, in some places large gaps were soon appearing at random. Cities under those gaps became molten slag within seconds, so far thirty million civilians dead, ten million wounded, five hundred thousand missing. The ones that were capable managed to make their way towards the last standing military complex, some five million in all. Many were left outside the base, erecting portable tents or primitive shelter made of bulky tarps.

"Well lieutenant, the Dagons are going to complete that jamming station on Tauro, within the next two weeks. When that happens we will be completely cut off from any out side help. So, how long will it take the repair crews to fix the communications array?" asked the General.

"From the last report, they'll have it operational in one hour or two. I had search teams scavenging parts from around the base and in military surplus warehouses in the city. Took them a while to find everything, some of the buildings took damage from a laser cannon." Said the lieutenant. He stood there, shoulders stooped, his sweat-covered face glistening in the setting sun. His face had a sunken appearance after days of not eating properly and had dark lines under his eyelids.

"Alright, go get some rack time while theirs a chance, but report back to me in three hours. We'll go over the message we're going to send. Gods know who'll intercept it though, pray that help comes lieutenant." Brackas said quietly and leaned back into his rickety chair.

"Yes, sir. Goodnight sir." And the lieutenant walked out of the general's office and back to his bunk.

_______________________________________

The call for help was sent three hours later, calling for all and any aid that could be given. It traveled outward in every direction and passed through several star systems some, which held intelligent life, but were not capable of space travel or advance communications technology. A few had did have space fleet capable of helping, but they could not be concerned with a backwater world on the fringe of known space nor did they want to fight the Dagons. Two weeks of traveling at five times the speed of light the communiqué reached a very unlikely system full of life in the middle of nowhere. This system held nine planets, eight if you want to argue about the last being a large moon, orbiting around a yellow star. The communiqué reached the small satellite orbiting the third planet, where a ship orbiting the satellite intercepted the message, bringing it to the attention to those aboard it. Some day these people would bring hope back to the rest of the galaxy, but that is another story to be told for another day.



Genesis Project Ch. 17



Location: Sol system 
Ship: Darkstar 
Eight minutes till Hyper Drive test.


"Hmm, how is it suppose to go?" Mike said to himself.

'Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get'   "No, that's not it. Maybe this one." Mike said.

'When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.'

"What the hell was that?" Mike asked.

'Life sucks. If you want to change that you must believe you can change it with all of your heart.'

"Yeah that sounds about right." Mike said finally.

Silly as these phrases sound, he had been running them through his head for the last day and a half. He was trying to find some meaning as of late. For some reason that was beyond him, he was suffering from a bad case of internal confusion. He sat back in his 'Captain Kirk' swivel chair, eyes unfocused, not really seeing anything. He tapped his fingers aimlessly until he made a circular motion with his index finger. The pen that was lying on his desk started to move, slowly at first, and then began to pick up speed. It rose off the desk; the tip of it still touching the desk, yet the top was spinning in a large hoop. Things like this have been happening more frequently and sometimes he didn't know he was doing it. Didn't need to concentrate on the object anymore his will just took care of the rest.

'In most Psychic stories they make seem so hard to do things like this, but after the first time it was all down hill from there.' Mike thought.

The pen stopped moving and flew gracefully into his hand. Emily had reported similar experiences after the first time she levitated something, of course she had a migraine afterwards. Mitch and Jack finally got the telepathy down and are starting to work on their telekinetics. The telepathy got easier for Mike and Emily but of course all the thoughts of those around them started to crash down into them. Which lead to the development of mental shielding, once you got it subconsciously you really didn't need to actively think of a shield. 

"Captain, Mitch is setting up his demonstration on the bridge. He said that he would be done in five minutes and will be ready to start." an unknown voice of an ensign commed into his office.

"Fine, Ensign. I'll be there shortly." Mike said.

The newly healed persons that were brought to the base were rather eager to 'enlist' as it were. They really appreciated being fixed up and wanted to help out once they found out where they were. In total Mike now had over a hundred thousand enlistees waiting to be trained and then stationed. With the number they now had enough to fill at least seven Battle Cruisers with just crew compliments. But we have a good number of people willing to be pilots for the fighter squadrons and a few were interested with the idea of a Marine Corps compliment for each ship. Mitch had suggested that a squad of Battle droids be placed on each ship to work with the crew and the marines. And with that thought it reminded Mike that he had to be somewhere. He left his office and headed for the bridge, a few people in freshly made uniforms passed him by giving him a quick salute in their haste to get to where they were going. He even saw a small child or two running down the corridor, trying to avoid their 'babysitter', as they were chased. A few of the people taken from hospitals wanted their families brought up to be with them while others families were dead and gone or were so distant that they hardly knew them. 

Before he knew it he reached the bridge, which was a flurry of activity. Two days prior a message arrived in system, a plea for support and aid to drive off a Dagon Blockade Force. Now they were preparing to launch, as quickly as possible, to go to the aid of these people who had very little time left. Only one problem came to the forefront of Mike's mind. They hadn't tested the hyper drives yet. So they constructed an Interceptor, manned by Maintenance droids, to test the performance of the hyper drive. Mike walked over to his command chair and sagged down into its soft confines.

"Ok, Mitch. I'm here." Mike stated flatly.

"Right, Sam, instruct the Maintenance droids to activate the Interceptor and take her out at best sublight speed." Mitch ordered.

"Yes, sir Major." Sam replied. An image of the Interceptor came to life in the middle of the bridge, as it slowly began to pull away. Soon, it reach its maximum sublight speed and were nearing Mars orbit. It passed Mars with out incident, everyone one the bridge was holding their breath, just waiting for the test to begin. 

"Major?" Mike chided Mitch.

"Well, I needed a rank thank you very much, not just a job designation." Mitch responded in a huff.

"Ok, Major. Get with the explanation already." Mike said with a slight smile.

"Right. The test will have the Interceptor go to the edge of the system, then have the on board AI calculate the hyperspace jump to, let's say Alpha Centauri, which is 4.36 light years away. This is our closest neighboring system and we don't know what's there. Current shuttle technology would allow a shuttle to reach Alpha Centauri in a hundred and sixty thousand years."

"Whoever takes that trip is going to be very cranky after they arrive." Mike joked. 

"Yeah, funny." Mitch rolls his eyes. "Anyway, when the Interceptor activates the hyper drive, it'll open a window into a side dimension. The theory behind hyperspace is that there are multiple dimensions outside our own and when a ship enters into these dimensions the speed of light in hyperspace is not a barrier as it is in real space. Or hyperspace may be smaller than real space and therefore a starship's propulsion seems to be greatly multiplied. It can then cover vast distances in an amount of time greatly reduced from the time it would take in "real" space. Once it reaches the point in hyperspace that corresponds to its destination in real space, it re-emerges. So there's hyper space theory in a nut shell." 

'Hell, I'd settle for the ship to reappear where it's supposed to. 'Course it could end up anywhere.' Mitch sent his thought at Mike.

'Yeah, let's hope it doesn't end up in the middle of a star.' Mike thought back.

Mitch nodded his head at the thought and could just picture it happening, chances were it could happen.

'Let's hope the AI gets those calculations down pat.' Mike thought at Mitch. 'Anyway we should get back to reality the show is about to start without us.'

The Interceptor finally reached the edge of the solar system and Mike sent the order to activate the hyper drive and to plot a course to the nearest star system. According to Mitch and Jack it should take little less than twenty minutes for the ship to reach its destination. Everyone on the bridge and on the base were watching the ship prepare for its first hyperspace jump, most were on flat screen monitors, while others watched a holographic display. The Interceptor activated its hyper drive and space in front of the craft spilt open like a watermelon. Nebulous clouds spread out from the rip like a miasma in swirls of violet and sapphire. The craft then shot into the rip like a jackrabbit and the rip closed in on it's self like there was nothing there to begin with.

____________________________________________

Location: Entering Alpha Centauri 
Ship: Unnamed Interceptor class ship 
Time: Ten minutes and forty seconds later.


The Interceptor sailed through a layer of hyperspace like a flying fish on the open ocean. The AI had not been given a name yet nor had the ship itself but they had a job to do nonetheless. Outside of the ship swirls of color blazed throughout hyperspace and streaks of light passed the ship. While the travel time was short the AI had the sensors on continuous scan, collecting precious data on the nature of this other dimension. Ten minutes and forty seconds later they exited hyperspace on the border of the Centauri solar system. The sensors could only scan half of the system from their current position, but they did show Alpha Centauri a and Alpha Centauri b, the binary stars of the Centauri system. A red dwarf, Proxima Centauri, lay just outside the solar system. The AI went further in system and planets became clear to the sensors. Seven planets littered the system, each planet had several moons, but there was only one gas giant, which was on the small side. Three planets could easily support human life and their gravidities were similar to Mars more or less. Six moons that orbited the gas giant were flushed with life, almost tropical, and could make homes for settlers.

'Now that is interesting.' The AI mused to itself.

There was another ship here, besides them, and it was approaching very slowly trying to raise a hail. The AI narrowed the sensors onto the ship; it looked to be a primitive sublight shuttle. The shuttle only noticed them as they entered the system, that and the fact that the Interceptor was one huge mother.

'That little ship couldn't have traveled from its support base so they have to be local.' The AI concluded. 'But from where though, now that is the question.'

The sensors ran a sweep over all of the planets and moons within the system and from the tail tale sign of life, more importantly civilization on the second planet orbiting Alpha Centauri a. The little craft used some form of ultra sound to try to scan the Interceptor, which was pretty useless. They were getting closer now and the scans of the vessel showed them to be humanoid, bipedal, and very excited. The language they spoke was not complicated and was soon translated and stored into the AI's memory. They were really trying to get their attention now with more hails. 

"Alien vessel; greetings from the great peoples of Kregen. We mean you no harm and only want to get to know you." The voice said with what sounded like unbridled excitement.

The AI wasn't supposed to make contact with these people but they could be a helpful source of information. If the AI had a body it'd flip a coin to decide what to do, which unfortunately wasn't the case.

"Alien vessel, I repeat again, we come in peace. Take me to your leader." The voice said.

"Galen, what are you doing? We don't know who or what these things are and you're going to ask to speak with their leader. Were you born slow?" asked a high-pitched female voice.

"Come on, Lena, where's your sense of adventure?" Asked Galen.

"I left that back on Kregen, you left your sanity there too." Came the sharp reply.

The AI came to a decision.

'Hope these people won't mind going for a ride. The Commander will know what to do with them.' The AI concluded.

The ships' tractor beam leapt out towards the little shuttle and the small craft was jarred for a few seconds. At least three or four yelps could be heard, the channel to the shuttle was still open. The tractor beam pulled the little ship slowly towards the Interceptors 'small' hanger bay. Flares of fire erupted from the shuttles' exhaust port as the little ship tried in vain to break the tractors iron grasp. The communication link was closed soon after the tractor beam caught it. Once the shuttle was loaded into the hanger bay, its doors were sealed and pressurized air filled the compartment. Three minutes later the ship came about and laid in a course back to Sol. Colors of flashing lights marked the entrance into hyperspace and the Interceptor disappeared, heading on its way home.

______________________________________

Location: Sol system 
Ship: Darkstar 
Time: Twenty-one minutes and twenty seconds later


"It should be coming out of hyperspace right about now..." said Mitch, glancing down at his wristwatch, expecting the Interceptor to magically appear right in front of them.

Long seconds passed and Mitch looked at his watch nervously. He tapped the device, thinking it was broken, but it wasn't. The Interceptor was late for some reason. Ten minutes passed before a hyperspace window opened, and for a few tense seconds everyone watching held their breath. The Interceptor came through the vortex of color, completely intact and undamaged. Mike let out a huge sigh, contentment exhibited on his face. He turned towards Mitch and a smile of relief showed on his face.

"Well, the hyper drive seems to work." Mitch said. "But we'll review the sensor data from the Interceptor, before we leave for this 'Helios' system."

"Yeah, yeah. That's fine with me Mitch. You said you had something else you wanted show me?" Mike said.

"Yep, just hold on for a second while I bring up the data." Mitch said and walked towards the science console and relieved the lieutenant seated there. After a few command buttons were pressed, a hologram of the solar system, displayed in real time, appeared all around the bridge, encompassing every object and every person on the bridge. Mike walked around and passed his hand through the holographic version of the sun. Everyone on the bridge starred in awe at the level of detail the image showed.

"Alright, what you're seeing now is our solar system and what we've been able to scan of it. Because of the perimeter drones constantly scanning the system, we have access to real time hologram of our system." Mitch paused for a dramatic effect.

The image zoomed out, quite a ways, to show the entire Milky Way galaxy but the quadrant that Sol occupied had a large blank area surrounding the system.

"And here is where we hit a snag. This blank spot outside of Sol system is the area where we have no idea what's there. It is, for lack of a better word, unexplored space for nearly three hundred light years in every direction. Now I'm going to overlap this 'map' with the older 'map' from Darkstar's computer records."

A few more keys were hit and the image zoomed in, showing just third of the galaxy now. Sol system was a bit further away from this area but not too far to reach. The image of the third of the galaxy was overlaid with a red boarder line that curved and weaved on what appeared to be 'known space' from the Empires perspective. Squiggly little blue lines cross back and forth through the entire enclosed map, indicating different systems and planets.

"Now, as you can see, this was what Shinza's territory looked like ten thousand years ago. It definitely changed over the course of time but we can't be sure what the territory looks like now. According to Jax and Xavier this large territory was, split up into smaller 'chunks', as it were, and unfortunately they were unable to tell us who holds these smaller territories. Anyway, the entire area you see marked off is near the middle-rim part of the galaxy. Shinza's territory never made it to the galactic core and apparently no great progress on the expansion since Darkstar's disappearance. From the transmission we've received from Helios a few others and myself have figured out that it lays, just outside of the boarder of known territory, as shown as the red line. Once the signal was analyzed and the direction in which it had originated myself and a few others believe that the jump to Helios will take a week, more or less."

"Impressive Mitch, but how did you manage to position the old map to this location?" Mike asked.

"Simple really. We compared our vista of our night sky, to that from the empires territory and lined up the matching constellations. After that we just superimposed the old map on an image of the galaxy from one of Earth's satellites." He said.

"Ok, how long will it take for you to go over the sensor data?" Mike asked.

"An hour, give or take. I'll head down to the lab to look it over. Later." Mitch then walked off the bridge without saying anything else.

'You know, your supposed to salute your superior officer, don't you?' Mike sent his thought to Mitch.

'Ok, you go find me a superior officer and I'll salute him till the cows come home.' Mitch let off a mental chuckle at that.

'Smartass.' Mike reply, but smiled nonetheless.

__________________________________________________

Location: Aboard the Interceptor


"Well, I hope your happy now Galen. We've been abducted by hostile aliens. Who knows what they plan to do with us, and what hideous experiments their going to run on us." Lena said hotly.

"Come on, Lena. We don't know their intentions yet. They could be peaceful." Galen said with what sounded like hopefulness.

"Uh ah, yeah, peaceful aliens who just so happen to kidnap us just for kicks. Hello Galen, this is your reality check calling. We've been taken against our wills, we'll probably never see home again and only the gods know where we are now." Lena said indignantly.

Galen walked over to her and wrapped his arms around his upset partner, which she resisted at first, but clutched to him for dear life and cried out her fear. Galen stroke her back, smoothing down her raised fur, making comforting sounds, trying to calm down his long time friend. So far they hadn't been outside their pod but what they seen from their window was a huge cavern like space. Their entire crew just stays inside their craft, waiting for whoever took them to make an appearance. A few crates littered the area but other than that there was no sign of life.

"Hey you guys, there's something moving out there!" exclaimed Donan.

Galen released Lena and rushed to the window then saw a mechanized monstrosity moving towards their pod. Donan and Twilen stood at the other side of the pod, starring at what appeared to be a 'robot'. It stopped twenty paces away and looked to be at least six cubits tall, while the average Kregen is three point twenty five cubits tall. The 'robot' removed something from a side compartment. It manipulated it until it was facing the pod and emitted a very strange sounding voice, neither male nor female, just neutral.

"Please exit the craft. You will not be harmed." The disembodied voice said.

They complied, too shocked that this being knew their language, and exited the pod walking slowly. The 'robot' directed them through an open doorway and down a long corridor. They were looking at everything as they passed and noticed that the ceiling was very high, almost an entire cubit higher than the 'robot'. They were led to a room, deep in the heart of the ship, and the voice spoke again.

"Please wait here. Someone will be along shortly." And with that the 'robot' left and the doors closed behind it.

"I think that wasn't an alien." Galen stated.

"How could you tell?" asked Twilen.

"For one, a 'robot' doesn't need to sit or any other furniture for any other reason. Also, look at the furniture, it's huge, that leads me to the conclusion that the aliens, if there are any, are giants. You'll notice how everything is scaled to a rather large size, which implies that whoever constructed this vessel is pretty damn tall."

"I think your right Galen. I can barely see over this table." Lena said

"Well, that's because you're the shortest one here Lena." Donan said with a crooked grin. Lena shot him her dirtiest look.

"Ok, ok. Enough of that. We're going to have to wait now, I guess." Galen said and they sat and waited.

___________________________________________________

Location: Darkstar 
Time: Five minutes till main hyperspace jump


"So Mitch, we ready to go?" asked Emily. She was standing on the bridge, waiting anxiously for them to get going.

Mitch had finished looking over the hyperspace data and cleared with Mike that everything looked peachy. They were taking Darkstar, seven Battle Cruisers, five Interceptors, four hundred and twenty Cerberus class fighters, and seventy Thundercat class bombers. They had at most a week to get to Helios, which was hardly time enough to train, but with the learning devices and simulators, training time could be cut in half. Once they were in the thick of it, people were going to get hurt or die doing this. Mike had expected these people to be hesitant, which proved to be the wrong assumption. They were very eager plus a large majority had, at one point, military training. So the people with the most experience would be ranked higher than the untrained and guide them through their training. All of the ships had the passengers aboard, all one thousand two hundred and sixty souls bound for Helios, waiting to enter hyperspace.




Genesis Project Ch. 17



"Whenever Mike's ready." Was Mitch's only reply.

"Lieutenant, open comm to all ships." The young dark skinned officer started opening the comm for Mike.

"Comm opened, sir." Said the lieutenant.

"Attention all ships, accelerate to the edge of the system, and prepare for a coordinated hyperspace jump." Mike said and Darkstar with its small fleet started moving towards the edge of the system. 

It took fifteen minutes to get passed Pluto and once they reach the outer edge of Sol system a rip was opened into hyperspace and they were gone a moment later. It took them two hours after the jump to realize they had unexpected guests on board one of the Interceptors. Mike was informed but could do nothing at the moment. He really couldn't do anything until they exited hyperspace and that wasn't due for a week. A battle would come and Mike was looking forward to it, as were everyone else in the small fleet.



Genesis Project Ch. 18



Location: Helios System

Planet: Helios Prime

Time: One week after Sol fleet's departure

Estimated Time of Arrival: Twenty Seconds

General Brackas looked grim as he stood among his troops watching as Dagons landing craft took up position three kilometers away, their shock troops pouring out to the rear troop holds. As of right now the Dagons were being held back by the shields, but they were going to soon be depleting the power to the base. General Altar Brackas knew he was fighting a lost battle but they couldn't nor wouldn't surrender to these barbarians. That would be unthinkable to him or his people; it was a fate, some suggested, that was worse than death. If it happened everything they were would cease to be and would be nothing more than chattel. There was one thing about the Dagons that made them probably the most despised species ever, that was cannibalism. They never ate one of their own, though there have been a few occasions when it has happened, but every other sentient life form was free game as far as they were concerned. The practice traced back to their home world of Dagonis around five thousand years ago, during a religious coup d'état. After the coup d'état the new priests revealed a new set of laws from their god Sethamartho which promoted slavery of weaker species to do their dirty work. One of the bylaws was that the eating of other intelligent beings was not just ok but encouraged to a point of religious fervor.

That was the worst possible outcome that Brackas could see for his people, to be conquered and then eaten at the victory celebration. He looked around at his troops; some reflect his own grim appearance while others who couldn't handle the harsh reality of the situation simple retreated into their own mind and lost the will to live or were just catatonic. The women and children had been crowded into the base and every able-bodied man and teen had been given a weapon, whether it was an ancient slug thrower or a sharp knife, they were armed. Now all they could do was sit here and wait for the attack to begin.

They didn't have to wait long. 

__________________________

Location: Outer rim of the Helios System

Estimated Time of Arrival: Fifteen Seconds

Aboard the cruiser Salidin was Fleet Admiral Constantine Vosh, a representative of the League of Interstellar Trade Worlds. He was pissed, starring into the vista of a Dagon blockade in the Helios system. He was ordered to change course and come to the aid of the Helions. In fact they were probably the only ones that came when the call went out, not that it surprised him in the least. He had a total of three cruisers, five heavy freighters, and ten landing craft making up his motley fleet. He knew he was stretched too thin and wouldn't be able to do much to the Dagon blockade. They were facing nine dreadnoughts, fifteen weapons platforms, one ultra class mother ship, and at least forty slave frigates. The odds were stacked against them but they would at least try, they owed Helios that much. 

"Anything lieutenant?" asked Vosh.

"No, sir. We've sent the ultimatum less than five minutes ago, with no response from the Dagon Commander." The lieutenant said with little to no emotion in his voice.

"Alright people, commence attack plan alpha." The Admiral said.

The orders went out to his fleet and the three cruisers pulled ahead of the rest of the fleet. The landing craft took the opportunity to swing around the blockade and make a run for the planet Helios Prime while the Dagons were occupied with the fleet. The three cruisers and five freighters opened up with a mighty barrage of firepower. The leagues combined firepower could have level entire cities but were knocked aside by the Dagon shields as if they were nothing. Two Dagon dreadnoughts returned fire, aiming for one of the cruisers and two of the heavy freighters. The cruiser lasted no more than two shots, its shielding collapsed and exploded into a ball of burning plasma and wreckage while the freighters could barley withstand one shot of the Dagon weaponry. One shot boiled hull plating from the aft section of the freighter, venting atmosphere and crewmen alike. The other freighter wasn't so lucky and took a direct hit to the bridge and drift into a uncontrolled spin and slam into its wounded brother, taking nearly four hundred souls with them. 

The landing craft weren't so lucky, as they bobbed and weaved through enemy lines as the weapons platforms opened up with barrage after barrage of chemical propulsion missiles and red energy beams of the point defense systems, each platform sported these. Six of the landing craft never made it passed the enemy lines and were transformed into balls of superheated plasma, not unlike miniature stars. The four that survived, but were heavily damaged, managed to make it further in-system. The Dagon blockade forces couldn't withdraw from the fight without letting the League forces getting a more strategic foothold in the system, which would make them more difficult to remove from fortified defensive positions. The four landing craft finally made it passed the enemy line, their sublight engines burning at maximum capacity. The battle was not going well for the League fleet, as another freighter had been crippled and set adrift, clearly out of the game. Two slave frigates approached the wounded vessel, intending to take the crew alive for the slave pens. The crew of the freighter only had two options in their situation; fight to the bitter end or surrender and except their fate as slaves.

Admiral Vosh had other ideas though. His ship and the last cruiser had damaged at least three of the nine dreadnoughts, they were still in the fight, offering their comrades all the support they could muster. He noticed that four frigates were starting to move perpendicularly over the dreadnoughts, positioning themselves for the kill. He ordered all of his fire to focus on the frigates. Energy blast after energy blast peppered the weak frigates, leaving smoldering pock marks. Suddenly two of the frigates careened off towards their big brothers. The small craft were too damaged to maneuver out of their destructive flight path. Both ships hit one of the dreadnoughts, consuming it in plasma and shrapnel. The inflicted dreadnought went into a uncontrolled spin as its hull plating glowed and rippled like water. The resulting explosion sounded the dreadnoughts' death knell, as a liquid ring of fire spread out to engulf its brethren. The resulting explosion heavily damaged, if not destroyed, two neighboring dreadnoughts, while the rest were rocked by the shockwave and received some carbon scoring for their trouble.

__________________________

Location: Outer rim of the Helios System

Estimated Time of Arrival: Now

All was quite on this side of the Helios system, until a large rip in space appeared, like someone slashed space open with a knife that is. As nebulous clouds wafted through the tear then a small fleet of black ships appeared. As the last ship came through, the rip closed in on itself. The thirteen ships closed in a loose formation, giving each other enough space to maneuver, if they needed to.

"All hands, this is the captain. Man your stations and prepare for battle." Mike commed as soon as they had settled from exiting hyperspace.

The trip had gone well, despite the fact that it was their first venture into another dimension. Even though hyperspace was beautiful to look at, one couldn't exactly stare at it indefinitely, which resulted in a few migraine headaches. Mike was sitting on edge, nervous as a sack of cats over a pool of water. Prior to departure, a delivery of combat suits was made to all ships, an added precaution for the troops.

"Sam, raise shields and activate the cloaking device." Mike ordered.

"Done Captain." Sam replied quickly.

"Ensign?" he asked for her attention.

"Yes, sir?" asked the Asian woman in her mid-twenties.

"Relay that order to the other ships and add a reminder that everyone should be in their combat suits by now." Mike said.

"At once sir." She turned back to her console to relay the orders.

"Sensors?" Mike turned his attention towards the short, bald man hunched over the sensor console, his nose almost touching the display in front of him.

"Scanning now. I'm counting eight dreadnought class vessels of the Dagon blockade plus one ultra-class mother ship and thirty-four frigates. There is also a dozen weapons platforms." Said lieutenant Everett. 

"Hmm, ok anything else?" Mike asked.

"Yes sir. It appears that a small fleet is challenging the blockade. At the moment they are taking heavy losses while causing minimal damage to the Dagon ships. Sir, if we don't get to them soon they'll be destroyed."

Mike nodded his head and activated his comm unit to address the entire fleet.

"Attention all ships, group one will head for the blockade to deal with the Dagons, group two will secure Helios Prime. Launch all fighter ASAP and head out and good hunting." 

Mike killed his comm and turned his attention to the holo-display as the Darkstar began to proceed towards the blockade. Three Battle Cruisers and two Interceptors accompanied Darkstar towards the blockade, while four Battle Cruisers and three Interceptors went to Helios Prime to liberate the tormented planet. As) Group One began to close in on the blockade, the entire hanger bays on the ships were a flurry of activity, as pilots scrambled into their fighters. Fighter after fighter launched from the bays in a loose form of organized chaos and once they were out of the bays, they formed up with their wingman and joined their squadron mates. Now they were within weapons range of the blockade, still cloaked so the element of surprise was on their side, but Mike wanted to give the Dagons a chance to surrender peacefully. Though he knew they would never accept it, he had to give them the option at least.

"Ensign, open a comm frequency to the Dagon ships, no visual from our side."

"Yes sir. Just one moment." The ensign began to pound away at her consul display. After a few seconds she looked up at Mike and nodded an affirmative.

"Dagon blockade, surrender now or be destroyed. You have one minute to decide. That is all." Mike made a hand gesture to the ensign to stop transmitting.

"This is Qwencha Novala, High Prime of the Dagon blockade fleet. Who dares opposes us in our territory? Speak now coward or you shall become part of our slave stocks." A raspy voice said.

Silence was the only answer they got in return.

"When we find you we shall destroy whatever vessel you are in. And I shall feast on your flesh and suck the marrow from your bones. This I swear on the bones of my forebears and that of every spawn that comes from my loins." The High Prime swore into, the inky blackness of space.

Still there was silence which unnerved the Dagons more for some reason. Their prey would have at least respond to the first threat, if not the second threat.

Admiral Vosh sat back in his seat, trying not to get his hopes up that someone may have come to their rescue. Still, he could not see who else was out there, the only thing in sight were his own ships and the Dagons. Then a strange thought occurred to him. 'Cloaking technology? Maybe. There haven't been any cloaking devices around for three thousand years ago. Even then you couldn't fire while you were cloaked.' Vosh thought to himself. 

Mike looked over at Emily, shrugging his shoulders as if to say, 'what more could I do'. She nodded and thought 'At least he gave them a chance'.

"Weapons?" Mike addressed a stocky man who looked as though he had come from the Middle East.

"Sir, weapons ready and waiting for action." The weapons officer said with a slight accent.

"Target the mother ship first, particle cannons until told otherwise." Mike instructed.

"Yes sir." was the reply.

"To all ships, target all enemy vessels and fire at will. Use of singularity weapons is prohibited unless instructed otherwise. Commence bombardment in ten seconds." Mike instructed to his force.

"Ensign, give me a ten count and begin the attack."

"Yes sir." the ensign replied.

"Ten"

"Nine"

"Eight"

"Seven"

"Six"

"Five"

"Four"

"Three"

"Two"

"One"

"All ships fire!!" Mike exclaimed on the fleet wide comms.

All at once all of the ships and fighters open up with their particle weapons at the same time. Considering the distance between the two fleets, it took less than three seconds for the destructive power to reach their intended targets. The beams of coherent red energy reached out to the Dagon fleet, impacting on shields, causing them to crumple like a house of cards from the impact. The beams of energy tore through the vessels like a hot knife through butter, searing bulkheads, decks and crewmembers. The beams finally exited the ships as the hull plating began to glow a hot white and burst open like an air bubble. Atmosphere and Dagons both began to be sucked out through both ends of the cavities. Return fire was few and far in between because most of the enemy ships and weapons platforms had taken critical hits, some exploding while others simply drifted dead in space. After taking five direct bombardments the mother ship exploded in a ball of super heated shrapnel. There were only four dreadnoughts and thirty frigates left, damaged but still adrift. Mike called for a cease-fire and as it suddenly began the firing stopped.

"Well, that went better than expected." Mike mumbled to himself.

"Damage report!" Emily exclaimed.

A red headed lieutenant spoke up after reading the incoming data. "No damage to the Darkstar. The rest of the fleet also reports no damage but one of the Battle Cruiser is reporting that one of the particle cannons malfunction and caused one of the near by consuls to explode. Five crewman were wounded plus there was one fatality." The lieutenant said solemnly.

All of the air escaped from Mike lungs as he heard the report. Already fighting the first battle and someone died because of his short sidedness. Because of his immaturity, someone he will never know lost their life. At first everything seem like just a game, save the world, get the girl, and kick some ass. Now he knows that life isn't the game and that it has consequences.

'God help me. How could I have been such a fool? I should have known better or have been more prepared. Maybe this was just one big mistake.' Mike thought remorsefully as he slummed down into his command chair.

Emily, seeing Mike heading into a state of depression, walked over and puts her hand on the back of his neck. He looked up with hollowed eyes which, for an instant, looked dead. But they snapped back to life as he looked into her eyes. She crotched down and hugged him, rubbing his back as he held onto her for dear life.

__________________________

Aboard the Interceptor

Galen and Lena watched the flashing light of cannon fire through the view port, unable to turn away from something that was, up until a week before, nothing more than a fantasy. In the week they had been shut up in this strange room no one had come. Twilen kept trying to get the 'voice' to talk to them but it seemed to busy most of the time. When it did talk it wasn't about the vessel they were on or where it was going but it did tell them about its creators. To their surprise they lived in the next system and called themselves 'Humans'. After that comment Galen asked why they were taken and what was to become of them. The voice seemed a little hesitant at first, but relented after being asked repeatedly. It said that it was ordered to scout out the system and report anything of interest. When it had come upon them it was just a moment of opportunity for sources of information willing to talk to aliens. That didn't sit well with Lena.

"You still upset?" Galen asked while watching one of the massive ships explode.

"A little now that I've calmed down a bit. Still someone should have come along by now." Lena said frowning a little.

"Well, they are kinda fighting a battle at the moment. That alone tells me that they are busy." Galen said shrugging his shoulders.

"Fine. Take the aliens side, see if I care." Lena said with a huff in her voice.

"Lena, pull that wrench out of your ass for ten seconds, would you. We're all on edge, not just you. So far we haven't been treated badly or abused in anyway. So stop already." Donan said a harsher than he meant it to be.

"Fine." Lena grumped. 

"Well, looks like the battles over." Twilen said from one of the huge chairs where she was sitting.

Donan looked but couldn't he couldn't see a difference because of all of the flashing lights.

"How can you tell?" came from Galen.

"Simple really. The other, more numerous, massive ships have stop firing and are drifting dead in space while there has been little to no impacts on these ships. The reason for thing could be better technology."

"Yeah, it did seem like a one sided battle." Donan piped in. 

__________________________

"By the gods, I have never seen anything like that!" Said a member of the bridge crew.

The rest of them, were too shocked to speak and just nodded in agreement. Admiral Vosh was trying to think who these people were and where they got their technology. Everyone in the League can remember tall tales of ships that could fire while cloaked. But they had been told so many times that it was thought that they were merely exaggerated to the point of being impossible. To the remainder of the League fleet the impossible just landed in their lap looking mighty pissed.

"Communications, get me a line with those ships." Admiral Vosh ordered.

"Yes sir. Broadcasting on general frequencies now. Might help if we could see them though."

"Yes, it would, wouldn't it. Anything yet?" Admiral Vosh asked.

"Nothing. They're all quiet for some reason." The communications officer stated.

"Well, there's nothing for us to do except..."

"Unknown fleet, come about and shut down you weapons and your engines. We request this so you are not confused as enemies. Also, that will allow our other forces within the Helios system can work without worrying about you. You have twenty seconds to decide, that is all." Said a strange voice.

"Of all the brazen things to say! Who do they think they are? We should tell them to just leave and we can handle the rest." Said a very irritated looking first officer.  

"That's enough Sabin," exclaimed Admiral Vosh as he slammed his fist on the arm of his command chair. "We don't know anything about these people. But, their intentions show us that they are not our enemies. If they wanted to I think they could have destroyed us as easily as they did those Dagon dreadnoughts we were having trouble with before."

"Sir, surly you jest. I believe in time we could have defeated the Dagons on our own, without outside interference from total strangers." Said Sabin.

"Sabin, if you don't shut your mouth right now I'll stuff you in an air lock and flush you out into space." Admiral Vosh growled. Most of the crew nodded in approval of the plan, the first officer was not that popular with them.

"Helmsman, come about and prepare to shut down the weapons and engines. I wonder who these people are." Admiral Vosh said quietly, staring out into the void, still trying to locate their mysterious rescuers. 



Genesis Project Ch. 19



Location: Helios Prime

Estimated Time of Arrival: Two Minutes

Sergeant Shawn Marshall gritted his teeth as the shuttle craft bobbed and weaved through the upper atmosphere, while trying to avoid enemy fire and defensive positions. Even though the shuttle crafts are cloaked it still couldn't get past motion sensors that all of the enemy installations employed.

'All this goddamn technology available to us and we still trip a fuckin' motion detectors!' Shawn thought with a wryly amusement.

"Alright, twenty seconds till touchdown so lock and load boys and girls." Came from the Yuts piloting the shuttle.

Even though he was nervous, Shawn was pretty excited to just be walking again. Being able to control his own bodily functions again was one of life's pleasures that he missed the most. He was brought back to reality by the jarring motion of the shuttle touching down on the surface. Shawn leaped to his feet as a large Sgt. Major began bellowing for them to move out and take defensive positions. As his entire squad poured out of the shuttle, the weak sunlight gleamed off their combat suit armor but that soon disappeared as each of the troopers activated their stealth camouflage and soon blended in with the landscape. Patches of healthy bluish-green grass dotted the landscape, where other spots were blackened to ash. Soon Shawn realized that the enemy fire had ceased as soon as they had landed.

'Must be under their detection grid then.' He thought.

He scanned the area and saw that the enemy was concentrated near what appeared to be the last standing city. Activating the built in zoom feature of his HUD, he saw they were little more than a kilometer from the city and less then two kilometers from the Dagon force, meaning that they had landed right dab smack in the middle of a shit storm. His squad formed up near an outcropping of rocks, a plan already being constructed in his mind.

"Alright, our options are limited at the moment but their not as bad as they could be. Right now we have the element of surprise on our hands. The Dagons know we're here but not our number nor about our weapon capabilities. Sims, how many are we looking at?" Shawn directed his question to the private to his right.

"Well, my best estimate, Sir, is roughly ten thousand ground troops. Give or take a few. They also have some ATV type vehicles, something that looks a lot like a huge cannon that keeps up a ten second repeated pattern of fire directed at the shields and a few dozen hovering attack aircraft just itching for a fight." He said blandly.

"Are their troops formed up in ranks or are they in smaller squads?" Shawn asked.

"Now that you mentioned it, they are formed up in shoulder to shoulder in ranks, like we did in the revolutionary war. Which doesn't make any sense. They would be massacred by the dozens sticking together like that." The private replied showing the first signs of confusion.

"Their stupidity is our salvation people. Before we dropped our given orders were to harass the enemy at any given time we encounter them. Now we have a large supply of high tech gadgetry and some good old fashion army hardware on us. So far we have eight plasma rifles with extra battery packs, one stun baton each, ten frag grenades each, one ten inch long titanium blade each, four claymore mines in each pack. Plus a P-90 with ammo clips, C4 plastic explosives, and a few sawed off shotguns just for fun. Each squad has the same compliment as we do, so we can set up booby traps and ambushes between them and the city. Any questions?"

A private standing opposite of Shawn raised his hand. "Sir, are we using Guerilla tactics, hit'em and run then set off whatever traps we lay or are we just going to set traps and make a stand to keep them busy?"

"Hit and run, mostly. We set up the ambush at a good distance, pick off as many as we can, pull out and repeat the process as many times as we can until aerial support arrives. That won't happen until the Dagon support ships orbiting this planet are taken care of, something which is going to take a while."

"Sir, what about the Battle Droids that we've been hearing about?" A lowly private asked.

"They're being held in reserve until we whittle them down sufficiently enough. Then, Wham!," Shawn clapped his hands together, " the Dagons get a big surprise that will rip through their lines."

"Shit." Was chorused by all.

"Alright let's do it!" Shawn said.

* * * * * *

Makkari was hunkered down behind a pock marked boulder; fatigue, exhaustion, and especially fear hounded him in the near-dawn twilight. His assault rifle lay perched across the top of his knees as he watched his breath come out in small fluffy clouds. He and his squad had been on Helios Prime for ten hours, in which they were attacked at least three times by the Dagon forces. Their landing craft were lucky that they avoided the Dagon blockade while their comrades suffered the brunt of the attack. He knew deep down that the League ships were doomed and most likely he would never see his home again, only to die trying to hold off the Dagon incursion.

"Makkari, they're coming again!" said his squad mate in a strangled whisper, from his hiding place behind a stump no more than twenty paces away.

"Right then." Makkari grabbed his communicator off his web harness and gave the orders that might well be their last. 

After they had landed a Dagon long sword, which are possessed by elite trooper commanders as a ceremonial accessory beheaded Sern, their squad leader. Now Makkari was now in charge by default more than choice. He knew they were low on basically everything; rations, ammunition, communications gear, even troops. 

'If this is it, then I not going to be taken alive and I'm going to take a lot of the bastards with me when I do it.' Makkari thought ruefully.

"Alright boys, lets give'em something to remember us by. Lock and load. Free range, choose targets of opportunity." Makkari ordered. He thought he heard a slight whimper over the channel and thought he knew whom the whimper came from.

The sound of marching feet and boisterous calls were carried on the wind. A small horde of Dagon soldiers were drawing near their position, uncaring whether or not they were heard. In Makkari's opinion it was merely a ploy to instill fear in enemy troop and to create self-doubt in troop morale. As soon as they were in the clear the Dagon troops opened fire with energy weapons, streaks of light flowing through the air, chipping away at the landscape. Makkari and what was left of his troops returned fire and watched as a scattered few Dagons fell to the ground, with smoking holes in their now dead bodies. Unfortunately, Makkari saw a few of his men go down too, more than he would like if the truth be told. With a scream that could only be described as primal, Makkari picked up a dropped weapon and redoubled his fire with both rifles in hand. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty, they just came coming, no matter how many Makkari killed. They started to pull back away from the Dagon troops, forming a small knotted circle, making sure that none got behind them. 

The Dagons laughed at their pitiful attempts, smelling that they were close to the kill. Only six men were left, their ammo running near depletion, Makkari knew that the time was near. As soon as it started, it all stopped with a click, a sounding confirmation that the last of the ammo had been spent. Several clicks, in fact, alerted the Dagons that their prey was now defenseless. A captain of their vanguard moved forward, partially stalking Makkari and his men, drawing his sword form the scabbard on his back. The captain raised his sword in a graceful arch over his head, poised to strike the killing blow.

"Any last words Humans?" The Dagon asked, barely suppressing his feral grin.

Before Makkari or his fellows could answer, a rather large blade ruptured through the captains' chest. Shock reverberated through the enemy troops, some not believing what they were seeing, others wondering how this could have happened. Before Makkari's eyes the large Dagon captain began to rise off the ground, by some unknown force, and was thrown a good twelve paces into his troop formation. That was when he saw or rather didn't see something blocking his troops from the Dagon formation. Whatever it was, you could barely make out what is was, it was humanoid in shape, but if it stopped moving you wouldn't know it was there at all.

* * * * * *

"Private, how many we got here?" asked the burly lieutenant over the combat suit comm system. 

"Sir, around a hundred and twenty-six, give or take a few." The private responded and was thankful that he was able to see his comrades that their enemies could not.

"Alright, spread out. Set your plasma rifles to cover a wide spread. Activate your shields, if the situation deems it necessary. We can replace hardware, we can't replace people." Said the lieutenant.

"Yes, sir!" exclaimed his squad.

And then the fighting started to get very interesting.

* * * * * *

Makkari sat in disbelief, as small suns began to appear where the Dagon trooper had once stood. The rest of his men looked pale as the driven snow. Whole clusters of Dagons were obliterated, sometimes leaving nothing but small chunks of smoldering flesh, while other times leaving nothing but ash. The Dagon line crashed forward, unwilling to give an inch to this unseen enemy, hoping to overwhelm them with sheer numbers. The first to even get close to where the new threat might have been, were brutally assaulted, sometimes with a blade but more times than not with nothing more than physical force. Then one of the new creatures revealed itself for the first time since the fighting started and what Makkari saw frightened him to the marrow of his bones. The pale sunlight gleam off dull Grey armor splattered with blood with flicks of gore spread out here and there. An enemy soldier got too close to whatever this thing was and was wrenched from the ground in what appeared to be a vise-like grip. Its struggle lasted only for a brief moment before the solider went limp and blue blood began to foam at the corner of its' mouth. Other were enraged by this display and rushed forward to avenge their comrade only to violently slam into an invisible wall of force. The creature dropped the now dead solider and disappeared from sight again.

* * * * * * 

Lieutenant Armstrong was a fighter at heart and, to a certain degree, enjoyed the thrill of fighting a large number of opponents. It reminded him of his misguided youth in east Texas, when he would be in the middle of drunken bar fight, one which he had in fact started, but that's neither here nor their. Something about fighting the Dagon set his blood to a low boil and it filled him with a certain amount of pleasure. Revealing himself to the enemy might had been a tactical miscalculation but for some reason he couldn't resist. Now though the fight brought him back to reality and the Dagons were trying to surround them, though their numbers were significantly less than what they were.

He swung his plasma rifle around to his front and adjusted the settings, narrowing the beam to the size of a quarter, took careful aim and fired at his selected target. He watched as the plasma beam leaped out of the rifle and, it seemed as if time slowed for just a fraction of a second, the beam slowly moved across the distance towards it's intended target. The beam of coherent light passed though the target searing vital organs, cooking meaty flesh, and actually boiling the targets blood. It went through three more enemy soldiers before striking a rather large moss covered boulder, which glowed white hot, and medium size chunks exploded outward, taking and even larger group of Dagons with them. Now it was over, just a quick clean up and a progress report back to command. 

* * * * * * 

Makkari stared in shock as the entire Dagon battalion was torn asunder, with very little was left to be buried. The air was still with no play from a breeze, but the putrid smell of rotting meat reached his nostrils, as did the smell of fecal matter. He didn't move an inch, fearing that any movement would result in his death and the death of his comrades. Suddenly, we were surrounded again, this time though it was the same soldier with friends. They appeared at once, making the transition from invisibility to visibility flawlessly, as if they had done it together a thousand times before.

"Drop your weapons and none of you will be harmed. We'll then be taking you to a secure location for debriefing." An amplified voice said, coming from what had to be the leader of this small group.

"Makkari, what do we do?" asked Bon, from my left.

"I think it's time we get out of here." Was my only reply as I got up and follow these strange soldiers to whatever destiny lay ahead of me.

* * * * * * 

The small rotund man walked to the head of the hanger bay, wearing the uniform of head mechanic, and stopped in front of the large gathering of Battle droids. Once he reached where he wanted, he came to attention, cleared his throat and spoke in a deep baritone voice.

"Activate." He said, and twelve thousand Battle droids snapped to rigid attention, red ocular sensors focusing on the small man.

"State your core programming, now!" The mechanic said, without hesitation. 

"No human must come into harms way, intentionally nor unintentionally, through units actions. We must defend and protect any human in danger. We may not harm any human upon penalty of deactivation. We can only be given orders from humans with proper security clearance." They all chorused together in perfect unity, in flat emotionless voices.

The small man turned his head towards to the officer approaching him. Emily nodded her head in approval and dismissed the mechanic with a word of thanks. She took the spot where the mechanic stood and all of the red 'eyes' followed her with out pause.

'Impressive, they truly look like the Cyclon Centurions.' She thought.

"Here are your orders... You will be dropped less than half a click from the city's force shield. Then you shall advance towards the enemy. Be advised, there are friendly combatants on the field as well as potential allies. When dealing with the Dagon force on the other hand," Emily paused for dramatic effect, but it was lost on the Battle droids, "kill'em all, no prisoners." Emily let a cool smile form on her face as she ordered the ten thousand Dagon soldiers to their death.

She walked out of the bay as the Battle droids snapped to attention as she passed. 

* * * * * *

Shawn had lead a merry chase with the squads of Dagons his squad encountered. To his credit, the Dagons suffered large amounts of casualties, using different techniques, and were slow to adapt to the situation. The last ambush had used three Claymore mines, spread out twenty-five feet apart from each other, while a corporal and a private scoped the troop movement from half a mile away. Using their plasma rifles as a sniper rifle and picked off the officers first causing more confusion and mayhem when the blast went off. It was a true awe inspiring sight to watch five Dagons go from eventual enemies to hamburger meat in less than three seconds and shower their friends in a mist of blue blood. Shawn certainly enjoyed the second ambush, when he had strapped down enough C-4 plastic explosives to turn a large boulder into flying shards of death. This one especially crippled the morale of the enemy soldiers plus it made them jumpy as hell.

* * * * * *

Makkari watched, from a distance in a small makeshift camp, as scores of Dagons were attacked viciously. He had never seen anything of it's like before, which isn't saying much. He took note of the dead and wounded and estimated that a quarter of the enemy force had been wiped out so far. It inspired awe and just a little bit of fear towards these new people, well a lot of fear, but so far he and his men had not been mistreated. And still the Dagons kept moving forward, unwilling to surrender, paying a price for every inch of ground they took with at least three soldiers. Makkari estimated that by the time they reached the halfway point to the city at least fifty to sixty percent of the Dagon force would be annihilated. The battle strategy was ingenious to say the least. These armor people, creatures, whatever they were, would attack an enemy position fast and hard, and then disappear before the enemy knew what was going on. The plan would cut down on casualties for your own troops plus inflict maximum destruction on the unsuspecting. He hoped that he never ran a foul of these people, because he'd hate to be on the receiving end of something like this. 

* * * * * *

Lieutenant Armstrong was having a grand old time on Helios. His squad had managed to slip deep in the enemy held territory, avoiding patrols of Dagons and finally made to the main encampment. Large rust colored drop ships littered the area, as surprisingly camp followers moved about the camp doing various chores. Private Griffin reported that the large cannon was a hundred yards off and was preparing to fire again at the city force shield.

"Sir, we have five minutes at best." Griffin said from his hiding place.

"How close are you to the cannon Private?" Armstrong asked, a plan forming in his head that would cause the most damage.

"About twenty yards away under some local brush as cover." Replied the Private.

"How much C-4 do you have in your pack?" Armstrong asked, excitement creeping into his voice.

"Close to three pounds. I also have two detonators, a transmitter detonator and a slapper detonator. So I take it you want me to blow this fucker to shit, eh?" Griffin asked. 

"Yeah, make your way to the cannon and attach the C-4 to a main weight barring support beam or to all of support beams, but using the transmitter detonator and make your way back to me. I personally want to blow this thing to kingdom come. How long will it take for you to set up the explosives?" Armstrong asked.

"If I go now I can have them set up in two minutes tops. Then I'll make my way back to you, which will take three minutes at my top speed." Griffin answered.

"Good, make it so, Number One." Armstrong replied with a light snicker.

A groan was his only response at the corny joke but it was done with forty seconds to spare until the weapons fired again.

* * * * * * 

The Dagon cannon was massive, taking up nearly five acres of land, as seventy Dagons painstakingly adjusted its aim. It also took a lot of energy to fire the large cannon, even on its lowest setting, which it was on. The gunner knew his job well, for if they took the power to a higher setting, they'd do one of two things. The resulting blast would destroy the force shield, the city and all of its inhabitants, which would have meant wasting their time on this little mudball. Or the rise in power to the underused weapon would have cause an explosion that would level the Dagon encampment, their ships and personal creating a crater the length of three football fields and one deep. An unpleasant outcome for all. Fortunately, the cannon was still on the low setting, so even if it indeed exploded, which it was all set to do, the only collateral damage would effect the immediate surrounding area. In other words; the gun emplacement, the supply area, and a large chunk of the troop temporary barracks would be blown to hell and back before anyone was the wiser.

Of course things don't go as we always plan them though, which can be contributed to Murphy's Law. 'Whatever can go wrong will go wrong.' 

Lance Corporal Sitharen, happened to be moving two very thick and very heavy power cables to the side to the cannon so they would not interfere with the cannon operation. He had dropped one cable for what seemed to be the hundredth time and notice something irregular attach to the support beam of the cannon. He removed it from the beam and went to show his superior what he had found. If he had taken the time he would have found more on the other side of the cannon. He had unknowingly removed one of the key sections of C-4 that, had it gone off, collapsed the cannon, but as things were now the cannon wouldn't be destroyed as the plan foretold, it would lisp to the side and eventually fall on it's side. An inconvenience, if truth be told, but not something that couldn't be fix in an hour or two. 




Genesis Project Ch. 19



* * * * * * 

Lieutenant Armstrong was not pleased, though he did got his 'bang', just not the one he anticipated, as he watched the massive cannon begin to tilt to the side and begin its long downward fall.

"Well, that was disappointing." He said with little enthusiasm.

"Someone must have remove part of the package before we detonated, sir. I'm sorry, I should have gotten here quicker." Griffin sounded remorsefully.

"Not your fault. They're still running around like a kicked over hill of ants though, so cheer up. The Battle droids should be dropping in any minute now." Armstrong said with full confidence. As if on cue, thousands of tiny silver figures began to descend towards the surface of Helios Prime and landed as if riding on a cloud of air, as small dusts clouds swirled about. Now the real fighting would begin.

* * * * * *

The first few thousand Battle droids linked with each other using their built-in comm systems in order to report troop movement and enemy encampments. It also gave them the advantage of coordinating their efforts so they wouldn't be caught off guard, which had a snowball's chance in hell of happening, since they had a complete sensor package installed too. They started move swiftly forward, moving at impossible speeds, towards the confused Dagon encampment hardly making a single audible sound. That ended when they encountered the fringe outer area of the camp, as bloodied screams sounded when the Battle droid tore through their enemies. The screams had alerted the rest of the camp, weapons were unslung and readied for this new attack. One group of five Dagon rushed to engage whoever was threatening their camp and came upon a lone droid standing erect challenging them with its red eye. They raised their weapons fingers going to the trigger as the droid began to move. A thirty-inch blade of titanium shot out the wrist of the Battle droid, like a striking spear, and moved as fast as lightning. The blade swung over head and made a diagonal slash through the nearest Dagon's head and the top portion of his skull slide off the severed half stump, both eyes looking frantically this way and that as they went in opposite directions. The next one was just lucky enough to be beheaded, as the droid spun around swinging the blade and a blue geyser erupted from his neck. 

The next idiot had thirty inches of titanium rip through his guts and small intestines and had the blade twisted while it was pulled out, causing more damage on the way out. The last two bastards just stood their unable to move as their comrades died and were seized by two robotic hands, one now not sporting a blade. The cold metallic hands held their necks firmly and before they could even try to struggle, the droid struck their heads together in a sideways head but. This knocked their senses for a loop as their heads collided with each other but they were far from dead, stunned but not dead. The droid repeated this over and over until both skulls fractured and drove splinters of bone fragments into the others skull and small rivers of blood colored the metallic hands. It was done here and moved on to its next group of targets. It continued in this fashion for the rest of the local afternoon and the screams didn't stop until near night fall as the last of the Dagon insurgents killed slowly, lowering on a strong, but makeshift pike planted firmly into the ground. The battle for Helios Prime was over, more of a slaughter than anything else, but that didn't bother anyone much since the Dagons deserved what they received. Now the real chore would begin, in the morning of course. 



Genesis Project Ch. 20



Meanwhile Back on Earth...

Jordan Cross sat in the back of his limo, watching the Manhattan skyline go by as he made his way to his Central Park penthouse.

'Tomorrow I shall rule supreme. Then the world shall tremble.' Jordan thought.

Benjamin sat in back with Jordan, his PDA clearly visible, ready to take notes or orders from his master.

"Benjamin, tonight we're going to Washington and tomorrow Project Leviathan comes to fruition." Jordan said.

"Yes sir. Our people are all in position, though it took a little longer getting all of the necessary personnel into positions in other countries. I was a little surprised that you included Canada, Central America and South America." Benjamin said with as must respect as possible in his tone.

"Yes, I know. But it needs to be done. The people will be better off for it and Americas will be stronger for it." Cross nodded sagely.  "Once they see the truth sir, they'll fall to their knees and worship you till the end of time." Benjamin said, with no hint of doubt in his voice.

"Did you wire the money yet?" Cross asked with a far away look in his eyes.

"Yes, it was done this morning. Thirty million to an account in Bogota, twenty million to the Nevis account and fifteen went to Munich. We received conformation about twenty minutes before we left." Benjamin said, consulting his PDA for the answers.

"Good, our Columbian friends will be pleased and will keep their side of the bargain. Once it's over and done with we can always retrieve the money at a later date. It's one thing to be in business with the Columbians, it's another thing to trust them at all." Cross stated.  "A wise move sir. Will you include the Mexican drug cartels in the 'clean-up'?" Benjamin approached the subject with a certain amount of caution.

Cross looked sharply at his personal secretary, glad that he brought up the very thing he was thinking about. Those drug cartels could be treacherous to deal with any day of the week and it was certainly a bad idea to turn your back on them even for an instance, unless you really wanted a meat cleaver jammed in it.

"Yeah, I'll want to make a clean sweep of them. No need leaving loose ends around, they only become a hindrance later on." Cross said, wiping a bit of lint off his Chino pants.

A beeping sound emanated from the PDA, alerting that a message was in the inbox. Benjamin open the simple text message, less then four lines long and was straight to the point, which took less than ten seconds to decode what the message really meant.

"Sir, it appears that our 'party favors' have arrived on schedule and are being set up even as we speak. All you need to do is give the signal and the party will begin." Benjamin stated, with just the hint of pleasure in his voice. 

"Good. Call Marcus and have him begin what we discussed. He'll know what you're talking about." Cross said with the first hint of adrenaline coursing through his veins.

___________________________

Marcus LaMarx sat in his small, cramped apartment, furiously typing away at the keyboard of his computer. The sound of Disturbed rattled walls of his apartment, letting the potent music fuel his soul, his creativity, and push him to his limits. His phone rang, which was a rare occurrence, but didn't hear it. If it didn't light up like a damn fireworks display when it rang he wouldn't have known it rang. He muted his music, another rare occurrence in his building, and picked it up." Yeah?" He wasn't much for small talk.

"Mr. Cross says for you to begin." The voice on the other line said then it went dead.

He stared at the phone, not knowing what the hell that was about until it clicked. Jordan Cross hired him to do an almost impossible job. But for someone with Marcus's talents it was child's play. Cross paid for the best hardware for Marcus to use his 'talents' to do something that has never been done before. He slid the junk off his computer station and hooked up the special lab top. This thing of beauty cost more than a new Lexus. It had a killer Ethernet connection and most of the components going to be available on the open market for the next two years. He had prepared for this moment for over two years and was anxious to complete it. Hell, when all was said and done he'd be the 'number one hacker' on the entire planet. After the hard drive warmed up he started with number one on his to-do list. ___________________________

Scholars speculate that the Internet could never collapse, considering how it was structured; it was designed to prevent itself from collapsing. Even if a terrorist attack occurred, striking computer relay points, it would never work. What if someone was smart enough and had the needed talent, not to destroy the Internet, but control the flow of information. Some would say that it would be impossible to, say, stop all forms of communication coming in and going out of the continental United States. Others would say that no on this Earth could establish a communications blackout through three separate continental masses. Well, they were proven wrong. At three thirty a.m. EST the Western Hemisphere went 'dark', as it were, for the first time in a hundred years. This was just the first indication that something was wrong.

___________________________

Inside the Oval Office Washington D.C. Time: 6:32 a.m. EST

The President sat in his comfortable leather chair, a scowl creeping across his face after having been rudely awaken by his nervous looking aide. He was told that there was a national emergency and his presence was needed immediately.

"Alright boys, what the hell happened that would require my presence in my office at six thirty in the morning?" He sounded grumpy as he rubbed the graying stubble on his jawbone.

"Sir, the entire country is in a communications blackout. Something we've never seen the likes of before. Nothing we send seems to make it, not telephone, no fax, no Internet. Hell, we can't even get a signal to the satellites in orbit. We've tried Britain, France, Germany, even Spain, but nothing seems to reach its destination. It's like someone just blocked 'us' and left everyone else alone." Said an Air Force General. 

The door to the Oval office burst open as a secretary came rushing in, her face flushed red from running.

"Mr. President, we just received a call from the Canadian Prime Minister's office. Apparently he wants to speak to you." The woman said between gasps for air.

Before he could respond another aide came rushing through the same door, claiming that the Mexican President was also on line two and wanted a word. After that three similar running aides came into the office claiming the other governments south of the boarder were calling, wanting a word or two with the President.

"Wait just a damn minute! I thought you said that there wasn't any telephone service, General? What do you make of that?" the president practically shouted pointing to his office phone as several lines blinked angrily.

"Um...it would appear that they are also in the same predicament as us. Also sir, I said never said we didn't have phone service, it's just that every time we try to reach anyone from across the pond nothing would happen. We didn't try locally though." The general squeaked out.

"Next time, tell me. I hate it when I look like a fucking moron." The president said heatedly.

A man in a dark suit, one that just scream government agent, walked into the room and informed everyone present that television broadcasts were still being receive throughout the region but nothing from the international networks was able to get through. Just as the president was about to curse his private phone rang, something that only happened when 'he' called. The President of the United States, leader of the free world, elected leader of a nation, suddenly looked like he was going to pass out or worse, run from the room screaming for his 'momma' again. He reached for the phone with a shaky hand then picked it up. "h...Hee...Hello?" He barley whispered.

He stood stock still, his ear rooted to the receiver, face turning white as beads of sweat began popping out all over his body. He reached out unoccupied hand to steady himself. His replies were short, mostly 'yes, sir', 'no, sir' or 'I'm sorry sir'. As the line went dead he put the phone back in its cradle. He looked up at everyone in the room and told them to get out after he told his secretary to schedule an emergency meeting of the Congress. From the shocked looks their faces, they couldn't believe they had jus heard him give that order. In fact, they couldn't remember the last time any president called for an emergency meeting with congress.

___________________________

Benjamin ended his call with the President while he began getting ready for today's events. He left his room and hurried to the elevator. Once the car arrived he slipped the keycard into the slot to go directly to the penthouse. When he got off he noticed the usual servants scurrying about. The penthouse suite was impressive, even though it was a Comfort Inn. As he entered the suite itself he quickly found his master being 'serviced' by one of the prettier serving girls. Over the years he had grown accustomed to such displays so he no longer thought anything of it. "Sir, the call's been made. The preparations are being made as even as we speak." He said.

"Good, as soon as I'm done here order some breakfast from room service. It's going to be a bust day." Cross said and smacked the tight, naked ass that was pressed against him. The girl squealed in delight and continued on at a faster pace.

___________________________ 

FBI Agent Philips walked down a nondescript hallway, passing numerous numbered doors with electronic locks. He finally came to the correct door and slipped his keycard into the slot. When it buzzed, he turned the handle and entered the small office. His partner was at his desk, sipping coffee from a white Styrofoam cup while he scribbled something down on a large yellow legal pad. Philips and his partner, Agent Chambers, were to desperate, to say the least. They have been trying to build a case against Jordan Cross for the last four years but every time they thought they had some evidence that would stick it would evaporate before they could even tag-and-bag-it. It was like watching one the old time great magicians perform a mind-boggling trick, one minute your eyes were glued on the big box that had swords run through it, the next second the 'assistant' sneaks out the trapdoor while everyone else is distracted. Cross is great at using misdirection, one minute they had a witness in custody, the next instant their head would disappear. That's why Philips called in an 'old friend', to help out with the case. A hacker who went way back with him to high school.

Josh Sanders knocked on the door to the office and Phillips opened it. They shook hands and went through the usual pleasantries.

"Alright Rich, you wouldn't have called me unless you up shit creek without a paddle. So what's up?" Josh asked.

"Ok, to the point then. Josh, what I'm about to tell you can't leave this office. If it did the media would go into a feeding frenzy. Can you keep your mouth shut?" Richard Philips asked.

"Sure man, no problem, anything for a friend. So spill it already, I'm dying to know what this is about." Josh said eagerly. 

"Brian and I have been trying to build a case against Jordan Cross. Do you know him?" Philips asked, receiving a nod. So he went on. "We have reason to believe that he has something big going on. With the sudden communications blackout, it just seem too coincidental, if you catch my drift."

"Yeah that sounds a little too neat for my comfort. Before you called I was looking into this blackout, trying to see if I could break through it or not. I gotta tell you, man, that fucking thing is unlike anything I've ever come across. I couldn't even find the source of the blackout; it seems like it was buried directly in the heart of the system and shifted throughout the network. It was like trying to grab a hand full of sand then trying to hold on to it." Josh said, with awe in his voice.

"So, you don't know if it's connected to Cross or not?" Chambers asked for the first time.

Josh hesitated for just a fraction of a second before he answered. "No, I don't know for sure. But this thing has triggered something in an old memory I have. It reminds me of a theory I heard in college from a classmate, brilliant fellow, a bit strange but brilliant. Some said his IQ was off the charts and he could do all sorts of things with a computer that even the professor couldn't understand. This guy, Marcus, had a superiority complex and was antisocial to boot. Never trusted the Professors because he thought they were jealous of his intellect, which was that main reason why he dropped out. Haven't heard from him in almost nine, maybe ten, years or so. His theory was that someone, given enough preparation and time, could take over and control the Internet. He also said that whoever could control the Internet would have unlimited power." Josh finished.

"How could control of the Internet lead to unlimited power?" Chambers asked.

"The Treaty of Versailles, a single document, ended WWI but it was also one of the leading causes for WWII. Well, the written word has more power now than it did two hundred years ago." Josh said.     "Jesus! All that for a piece of paper?" Chambers asked.

"You've heard the old saying 'The pen is mightier than the sword?'" Philips stated.

"Right. So was that all or was their something else you wanted to discuss?" Josh asked.

"Yeah; just one more thing... Remember, your promise Josh, because this is the important part." Philips tried to impress as much sternness in his voice. After receive a nod from Josh he continued. "Two months ago there was a break-in at a CDC viral research center. Someone, or a small group, managed to get past all of the security measures and take a very lethal viral contaminate. We think Cross is behind it but we can't pin it on him." Philips said, sounding depressed as he went on.

"Fuck me! You're saying their some nut running around out there with a deadly virus?" Josh asked, in a panic.

"Yes. The media was kept in the dark so as to not cause a panic in the populace. Anyway, the virus that was stolen was a bio-engineered strain. Some researcher created it trying to see if it had any medical attribute but it came out looking more like a weapon than anything else. It was modeled off Ebola. Good thing is its not contagious and has a short duration, about five minutes in the open air." Phillips said, looking like shit.

"Ok, so it's not as bad as it could have been though." Josh said, trying to find the silver lining in this situation.

"Don't go looking for the happy ending just yet computer boy." Chambers barked from his desk.

"Right, almost forgot about that. The virus is an air born strain. But once it's release from it's containment it will only last for five minutes. Now, put it in New York City during a rush hour and one decent breeze will spread that bad boy. It could infect hundreds, thousands, hell even hundreds of thousands of people. Maybe even a million if the little bastard was lucky." Phillips said, looking like he wanted to throw up.

Josh paled at what the consequences of such a thing could be.

"Christ, bio warfare! Once they're infected they'll spread it like a wildfire." Josh stated calmly.

"No, at least we don't have to worry about that. Once a person is infected it can't be spread in any other way, not through bodily fluids or physical damage. The infected person has about thirty minutes to live as the virus replicates through their blood stream. The immune system doesn't have enough time to react to it before the host organs turn to pea soup and they die of a huge hemorrhage. Quick, fast, deadly, bloody and there's no known cure for it either." Philips finished.

"We're fucked." Josh eked out.

"Yep. Except, whoever took it hasn't used it yet, which isn't very helpful. So would you mine looking into it for me?' Philips asked.

"Yeah, no problem." He said then left.

___________________________

The President made his way towards the podium as he was announced by one of the lower functionaries. He knew what was coming, which made him excited to the point of bursting. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a or the TV crew operating their equipment, the little red light shining brightly letting everyone present know they were live. This broadcast was going out on all the emergency channels and overriding every regular broadcast that was scheduled. He made his way up on the podium pouring himself a glass of cold water for his throat that suddenly had gone dry. He put the glass down then cleared his throat before speaking. "Ladies and gentlemen; and members of Congress, I stand before you today with grave news. Earlier today an unknown source has attacked the greater North American region, effectively cutting communications with the rest of the world, by using our own computer network against us." The President paused for a brief moment to gather his thoughts. 

As he did, murmurs spread out like a rippling wave throughout the cavernous room. 

The President raised his hand to quit the murmur but it took longer than was necessary. "As of yet we don't know the source or the reason for this terrorist attack. But we have consulted many experts concerning this situation. Unfortunately, they are just as puzzled by this occurrence as we are. However our investigation is still ongoing and we hope to have the perpetrator, or perpetrators in custody within the next forty-eight hours." The President finished.

From one of the hidden doors a low-level flunky rushed up to the podium and whispered into one of the secret service agents' ear. The agent then nodded his head then stepped up on the podium and interrupted the President. As the President heard the news from the agent his face quickly turned ashen then to white. Jordan Cross entered through the gigantic double doors leading down the main aisle, making a grand spectacle as the President locked his eyes on the one known as his master. As Cross walked down the narrow aisle he heard the angry half whispers as they were being exchanged. Some of the Congressmen secretly called security on hidden panic buttons while others hoped that he'd be shot for what he knew. As he climbed the steps towards the podium the angry whispers became outraged bellows. The secret service moved to intercept him but the President quickly waved them off and they returned to their positions. Once Jordan was standing in front of the President, the head of the US got down on his knees and kissed Jordan's recently polished Italian leather shoes. 

That one act brought complete silence into the hall and nearly tripled the viewer ratings for CNN. Jordan placed his right hand on top of his servants' head as he was looked upon with admiration. His smile was cool and calculating as he looked down at the most powerful man in the free world before promptly kicking the man right in the face. The spray of blood was most impressive as it arched back through the air and landed on various objects. He turned towards the rushing secret service man and bellowed. "Kingdom Come!"

The twenty secret service agents stopped dead in their tracks as their minds processed the trigger phrase. Cross had planned for this moment for years so nothing had left nothing to chance. He then spoke the next trigger word to his now waiting followers. "Open the cellar door."

This phrase turned the agents loyalty over to him, forcing them to take orders from only him and his followers.

"Take your places." Cross ordered, causing them to retreat towards the exits, to guard them.

He then turned back to the now captive audience and the millions of people watching on TV. Speaking into the mike, he said, "Kingdom Come at Last".




Genesis Project Ch. 20



Across the country thousands of unknown sleeper agents, who were watching, went into action, finally hearing their command phrase. All were programmed with different tasks and were one hundred percent loyal to Jordan Cross. Army, Air Force and Naval Bases were the first to exchange leadership positions, some without any complications, while a few others required a forty caliber send off. 

As this was happening Cross began his prepared rant at Congress. "Good afternoon Ladies and Gentlemen, members of Congress. Today is the dawn of a new age for America. I won't bore you with pointless chatter so I'll come right to the point. America is a shadow of it's former self, its very core corrupted by greed, ambition, and power mongers. Don't act so shocked, the vast majority of you broker backroom meetings with influential corporations. Taking kickbacks so you vote for or against policies they don't approve of. We, as a nation, could have created more gas efficient vehicles or put more funding into finding alternative energy sources. But no, most of the major oil companies have you in their front pockets while we destroy more of our environment every year. Some of you started out meaning well, a small few in fact, but you've been here too long, seen too much. Now, you are jaded hustlers." Cross said evenly.

He paused for a brief moment and looked into the sea of glares. "Of course, there are those here who, in fact, are closet criminals, people you wouldn't want to watch your kids for a second. Let's see, ah yes. It seems our friend, the senator from Minnesota, is present. Well you see; Petey here is what you call a pedophile. Flies to Thailand bimonthly on a 'feed the starving children gimmick'. But, what he actually does, is pay to have sex with nine year old boys. His wife doesn't know a thing about it, until I FedEx-ed her photos of his indiscretions to her earlier this morning." Jordan said, with the slightest amount of humor in his voice.

"You son of a bitch!!" exclaimed a husky man from the back of the hall.

"Next we have a congresswoman who likes to rent out crack-whores then repeatedly sodomizes them with various instruments. There's more to that one but I'll keep the juicy details for later. After her we have a congressman who likes to be to be dominated by willful women and be used by various 'trained' animals. If you wondering who that is just look for the guy turning beat red and trying to swallow a lot of prescription pills at the moment." 

Amazingly they found him in less than ten seconds, choking down a bottle full of Nexium.

"Then there is Donald Litmore, senator from North Dakota, who pays professional kidnappers to pickup little girls, ranging in ages from nine to fourteen. Then he rapes them repeatedly and tortures them until they die from whatever method he's using at the time. He even has his little brother join in the 'fun' from time to time. You all know who he is; he hosts the early morning talk shows for the DC area." 

More shocked gasps could be heard in the hall than before.

Cross waved to one of the secret service agents and pointed at Litmore, signaling his intent with his expression. The agent calmly moved towards the senator, who tried to run for his life, but he pulled out a 9mm Glock then shot the man in the back. The noise retort was loud within the hall, as the man crumpled down into the aisle with a single bullet wound in the back. Obviously he used Hollow points because there was no exit wound and his insides were probably nothing more than a lot of big chunks.


"And now for the reason for why I'm here...It's quite simple really, you've been found to be lacking and are no longer fit to run this country because you care nothing for its' people. You've spread our military too thin across the globe, killing our countrymen and, currently, we have the highest national debt on record. There are people out there who need jobs that pay more than minimum wage. But those jobs are being sent over seas because they can make whatever we need cheaper. Drugs run like water in the streets and you do nothing to stem the flow of them coming into this country using half measures that were known to be ineffective. For these reasons we the people of America say that your services are no longer needed and that new management is taking over. For those of you who don't understand: you're fired and I am now Emperor of the American Empire." Jordan finished an evil glare in his eyes.

The silence was deafening and the sound of splintering wood broke that silence as dozens of armored shock troops entered the hall, carrying automatic and semi-automatic rifles. When they took up their positions Jordan signaled them with his hand. The rifles belched off several rounds per second, cutting down everyone in line of fire. Representatives and Senators fell, screaming and clutching wounded limbs or holding onto internal organs that suddenly had become external. It took nearly twenty-one minutes for the screaming and moaning to finally stop. Once it did the smell of blood and offal filled the hall. A single moan next to Jordan alerted him to the fact) that his pawn was finally stirring. The look of utter bewilderment stretched on his wrinkled face as he stared out into a sea of horror. He turn towards Jordan and asked a question, "M...mas...master, why? Why did this have to happen?" The former President asked.

Jordan gave him a small, sad smile that didn't reach his eyes, before answering. "It's simple fool; I no longer needed their presence." Jordan replied. He then extended his hand and a secret service agent handed him a loaded pistol. Jordan then aimed it at the man kneeling before him, cowering just like a sniveling dog. 

"Just like I no longer need you. I'll see you in hell you pathetic, little man." Jordan sneered.

The sound of the hammer being cocked echoed loudly in the giant hall as the man that was the President stared down the barrel of the gun, wondering if this was just a bad dream. There was no doubting as the pistol flashed and the United States died with its' leader.