King of All I Survey-Chapter 178: Destroyer of Worlds

Dad’s question hung in the air heavily as we waited for Joe to answer.

"Five hundred-twenty,"

"Billion? Five-hundred-twenty billion survived?" Dad asked. When no answer came, his voice dropped, "Only Five-hundred-twenty million out of 2 trillion people survived the attack?"

"No."

"Thousand? Joe, tell me it was Five-hundred-twenty thousand at least." Dad pleaded, a desperate note in his voice.

"There were five-hundred-twenty survivors."

"Christ! Joe... and the attackers? How many did they lose?"

"Zero casualties, no equipment damage."

"Damn..." Dad ran out of words at that point.

I didn’t have any. So, I just watched the screen. The view took us once around the circumference of the world flying high above the ground. The surface was mostly cities, great sprawling metropolises of metal and glass.

"There were cities under the oceans as well, though not as densely as those above ground," Joe explained as the view flew us over one of the sickly green oceans. As if sensing my curiosity, he said, "The rich color of the oceans is a product of bioengineering. The people of this world crafted a... super algae to create more oxygen to sustain the planet as it became crowded. The same algae could be filtered from the water easily and consumed for sustenance. The oceans had been fished out long before that time, as the growing population demanded more and more food."

A shoreline city rose on the far horizon, I guessed it was the same city over which our view started. Yes, when the view reached the start point, it slowed, then resumed moving, but downward this time. We had been higher than I thought, so I had badly misjudged the scale of the buildings. They were enormous, I’d guess more than a mile high and immensely wide.

When the view was close enough, I saw people... well... Yes, people, but not human people. They were carapaced, covered in a hard, shiny shell-like material that shone iridescently in the sunlight, reflections flashing different colors as they moved. I have no idea what they were doing on the roofs of the building, enjoying the outdoors, I suppose. The actions and jerky motions were so non-human that it was jarring to my perception. There were huge crowds of them covering the roof tops. I looked more closely. Were they crawling over each other? Yes, when the paths of two intersected, instead of waiting for one or the other, or changing paths, they simply continued straight along one crawling right over the other... I couldn’t see how many legs they had, their bodies were... well, beetle-like, but also kind of like a centaur. At the front of the rounded carapace body, there was almost a 90-degree bend, with a more slender though still hard-shelled torso which had four ’arms’ with maybe three ’elbows’ or bends. Each arm ended in a collection of little hooked spikes. I couldn’t count how many.

Again, as if sensing my questions, Joe chimed in. "The people of this planet had four arms and eight legs. The arms each have 6 rigid, hooked fingers that move from a central nexus you might call a hand. The legs each have two larger hooked digits. Their unique anatomy led to a highly complex mathematical system based alternately on base 24 and base 40 systems. This system proved very effective ad advancing the understanding of quantum physics for the rest of the galaxy years after the events you are about to witness, although the people you see here did not advance their own science in that direction."

I knew those systems, I realized. They have been a part of the advanced mathematic systems that I had learned via direct implant training in order to understand the true nature of the universe (well, almost true. Joe still obfuscated the parts that would allow the creation of another universal mind like his). It led to the question, how had their math survived and to whom did Earth pay a royalty to acquire it?

"For the next part, I will spectrum shift the representation of the energies so they will be visible to you on the screen," Joe informed us.

The view continued to descend, seeming to land on one of the rooftops among the scurrying insectoid-ish people there. Then, it swung around to look at the sky. It was as if the camera were on the rooftop, low so we saw the bug-things walking past, and walking is really less accurate than scurrying...anyway, we saw them going about whatever unfathomable business they were going about. The sky was mostly clear but had a few small clouds moving past with the upper-level winds.

Suddenly, there was a ship there. A spaceship, I mean, a sphere of something like metal, defense shields augmented by Joe so we could see them glittering all around it. The bug defenses must have been pretty good, almost instantly lasers shot up from the ground. Missiles flew at it at untrackable speeds, impacting within two seconds of its arrival. The beams of the lasers seemed to disappear just before they hit the ship, then reappear on the other side of the ship as if nothing had been in their path. Shields winked on in great sheets of energy extending over the city in a plane. More shields appeared over each building encompassing the aliens on the rooftop as well as the building and extending deep into the ground.

The ship seemed completely unaffected by the laser and missiles striking it by the hundreds. A larger one struck, and a massive fiery mushroom cloud rose up, leaving the ship entirely unaffected. It didn’t even rock from the forces of the nuclear blast.

Then the spherical ship pulsed once, emitting a broad continuous sheet of energy toward the planet’s surface. It was like a broadbeam energy blast that covered all the space within our view, for an instant, it winked out at the upper defense shield. Then, it reappeared inside the shield continuing downward. It winked out again as it approached the building shield and winked back into existence inside it. All the bug creatures slumped to the ground and stopped moving. Our viewpoint then lifted and swung around again looking back down at the city, the rooftops were covered in unmoving black, chitinous corpses. The buildings looked entirely undamaged. Then the view descended back toward the spot where it had been. The view of the corpses got entirely too close, their large bodies lied flat on the rooftop, legs folded beneath them or splayed out depending upon the position they were in when the creature fell. The formerly upright torsos were now prone as well face down toward the rooftop.

The view passed through the rooftop into the room below, more corpses were inside. The view slowed and changed direction, coming to rest on a viewscreen which was white with black lines of varying thicknesses criss-crossing it. A caption appeared on our display. It read: "Planetary Defense Status, Loss, Certainty 100%. Casualty prediction: Total Loss. Action: Unconditional Surrender."

Joe began speaking again, "The battle itself was shown in slow motion so you could track the action visually. The entire elapsed time between the arrival of the ship and the death of the planet’s inhabitants was .98 seconds.

"It would have been faster, but the attackers waited to fire until they had secured 520 of the natives and removed them from the target zones. 520 being the number required for genetic diversity of a breeding population according to the attacker’s analysis."

There was silence for about thirty seconds, as Dad and I tried to wrap our heads around two trillion people being killed in less than a second. Finally, Dad shook his head as if clearing cobwebs. "Joe, back up to the start of the battle play it in a series of still shots explaining fully everything as it happens, one step at a time."

I looked at him. That’s why he’s my tactical advisor, I thought. Then I turned my attention back to the screen and listened with full my full attention.

The tactical breakdown started with the view of the sky from the rooftop, Passing bug aliens visible in the still.

"The native beings are engaged in recreational conversation. Laying and following scent trails, the pattern and intersections create a kind of complex written conversation with each participant contributing to the overall conclusion and then criss-crossing it to reaffirm points or downvote them. The writing on the viewscreen at the end is the written equivalent."

"Cool," I said.

The frame changed. Actually, it was identical except now the alien sphere ship was in the sky.

"The Galactic Rim Ship, a mid-sized attack vessel, jumps in with a series of Local Interdimensional Travel Jumps. The time between jumps, time during which the ship was in physical space in each location was seven-tenths of a millisecond. The total time from the moment the ships first appeared in system from a long-range jump to the time when the weapon was fired at the planet was less than two seconds. Planetary defenses did, however, begin engaging before the ships arrived at the planet."

"As soon as the ships arrive, they began locating genetically varied individuals to maintain a breeding population. Then transporting them into the ships, with an advanced form of LITV technology that penetrates defensive energy shields. That delayed the ship’s offensive actions, long enough for the defenders attacks to be relevant."

The frame advanced. Now lasers lanced through the air ending abruptly before striking the ship and reappearing beyond the ship, continuing ineffectively into space.

"The first energy beam weapons of the defenders arrive at the attacking vessels four milliseconds after they appear in within the atmosphere above the planet. Without the delay of finding and retrieving the captives, the attacker would have fired and left the area before this. Had they done so, the first barrage of energy weapons and missiles would have been launched, but the AI controlling planetary defenses would have surrendered as soon as it recognized the death of the planet’s inhabitants."

"Wait." Dad interjected. "AI? The planets defenses were controlled by an AI like you?"

"No. There is no AI like me. I use the quantum structure of the universe for essentially unlimited capacity. The people of this world had very advanced computer systems, but relied on what Earth would call conventional circuitry, though it was well beyond your capabilities. They had a vast computer network controlling planetary defenses and assisting many other aspects of their civilization. The existence of the network is the reason the Galactic Rim Empire decided to simply destroy them after initial discovery of the world rather than engage in any sort of trade agreement first. The AI network contained all the knowledge of any valuable IP the planet might offer. By destroying the people and accessing that information directly, the raiders reaped a tremendous windfall of products, including the mathematical system which is part of the system widely used throughout the galaxy today."

"Are you saying the royalties we paid for advanced math systems went to people who murdered two trillion people for it?"

"In part, yes. The system is based on an amalgamation of many different systems from many civilizations, but yes, a part of that royalty payment went to the Galactic Rim Empire for their contribution resulting from this raid."

"We’re going to have to have a conversation about that, Joe. I can’t reward this kind of thing. That’s just paying them to do it again," I said frustration evident in my tone.

"It will be difficult to avoid products which have no contribution from similar raids," Joe replied.

We’ll see," I said. "Let’s get back to the attack itself."

The next frame showed missiles impacting the ships shields. The lower half of the sphere ship was effective covered in explosions in various states of progression. The large nuclear blast was just beginning its expansion.

"The Galactic Rim Empire ships use advanced shields with much higher strength and resistances than ordinary energy shields. That nuclear blast would have torn through the shields you have been using here on Earth, for example. The massive number of high energy laser strikes experienced by the attacking ship would also overload your shields, causing them to fail, temporarily. The ship is enveloped in a field that does not absorb or reflect energies such as the lasers but displaces them by creating an area where the boundaries of space itself are... misidentified to the incoming energy."

The next image showed the bright pulse of the enemy ship firing upon the planet as the mushroom cloud began to rise from the nuclear explosion.

"Wouldn’t detonating a nuke over their own city have created an EMP and knocked out their own systems?" Dad asked.

"The defensive shields would have easily negated any such effects as well as radiation or concussive force. The shields would not have been lowered until the upper atmosphere was scrubbed clean of radioactive fallout."

"Hmmm."

"The attacker used a negative energy wave very precisely tuned to counterbalance one particular energy as it washed through it. The energy created by living cells was countered and dampened by the attack. Leaving electronic systems and other forms of energy completely unaffected."

"It’s an anti-life beam? I asked.

"Effectively, yes," Joe replied as he advanced to the nest still image. This one showed the overhead view looking down on the rooftops littered with alien bodies.

The image advanced again to the display screen we had seen at the end of the video. We knew from Joe’s earlier explanation that the crisscrossed lines on the screen were a visual represention of the patterns of chemical trails the aliens used for communication, their writing.

"As soon as the AI defense system realized that the population had been killed, it realized that it had no effective defense or offense against the alien attackers. It opted to try to save itself, the last remaining vestige of the civilization, by a complete surrender to the attackers. If it had advance knowledge of the attackers’ capabilities, It might have tried a preemptive surrender in an attempt to save the populace."

"Would that have worked?" Dad asked.

"No, the attackers would see the unpredictability of future action by the aliens as a risk. Wiping the data from the AI, for example, would have been a huge financial hit to the attackers. They chose to eliminate the chaotic uncertainty of life from the equation altogether."