The Copernicus Deception (The Human Chronicles Saga Book 15) (15 page)

Chapter 20

The Incus were miners, builders and manufacturers and ambitious to a fault. Recently, they had begun building their own line of plasma bolt launchers, taking what MK Weapons Systems was doing with their line of flash weapons and attempting to improve upon it. They had met with only limited success.

The Incus were running into the same problem MK had, and that was the competition from the Humans and their projectile-type devices.

When compared to ballistic weaponry, the limitations of energy devices were obvious, and everyone admitted it. They lacked firing capacity and range. The Human’s weapons could fire hundreds of rounds between reloads, and the range was easily ten times longer than even the best hand-held bolt launchers. The only advantages energy devices had over projectile weapons were their light weight and the ability to recharge. Yet in combat, those advantages became irrelevant. The means to saturate a target with hundreds of rounds, plus at much greater distances, was what everyone wanted. In addition, projectiles could pass through standard energy shields with impunity.

So the Incus began an aggressive campaign to create their own line of projectile weapons. Of course, the Humans were light-years ahead of them in both design and manufacturing, and their reputation as the galaxy’s foremost fighting force didn’t hurt either.

Yet to even attempt to compete with the Humans, the Incus needed raw materials, and in this case, metal.

They began to scour the region around Incus for every source of the required material they could find. This included both inhabited and uninhabited worlds, plus asteroids, which proved to be the most efficient means of acquiring this raw material, and for the least cost.

When they ran out of fertile fields within their own space, the Incus began making illegal forays into surrounding territories, slipping into metal-rich asteroid fields and absconding with all they could before being discovered.

It was a six-ship fleet of Incus mining vessels illegally in Cadonic space that set the current state of affairs in motion.

The Zaniff Field was a rich source of heavy metals, and the giant rocks were just drifting there in space, asking to be harvested. Those objects that were small enough and with near-consistent content were grappled and pulled away, making a slow, yet steady getaway back toward Incus space. Mining operations didn’t stop during the journey; the Incus would take what they could get, even if discovered and the asteroid abandoned.

That was when they discovered The Wall.

It was definitely of artificial origin, yet when the surrounding rock was dated, the first revelation was made. It was over seven billion years old.

Since the creation of the universe—this universe—went back fifteen billion years, there had been at least four cycles where material was recycled through star creation and destruction. The oldest material was absorbed long ago by super-giant stars with short lifespans. Their unstable nature didn’t allow for long-term development before they grew to such proportions that they ended their lifecycle in tremendous supernovas.

The new elements created within these explosions flew out into space, only to congeal once again into new stars, followed by even more supernovas.  The early universe was a very chaotic and dangerous place.

Yet after three of these cycles, the universe had expanded enough that some stability came to the newly formed star systems. The plethora of planets surrounding these suns were given time to mature and for life upon them to evolve. Yet this stable period had begun only recently in galactic history, about five billion years ago. Most everything older had gone into the recycle bin of the universe long ago.

So when the seven billion year old rock was discovered—and within it the remnants of an ancient structure, the Incus began speculating as to what they had found.

It was commonly accepted that life had evolved to advanced stages within most of the preceding recycle periods, with each successive cycle creating more prehistoric civilizations than the one before. The universe is resilient. Creatures came and went without ever leaving a trace. By the time a race evolved, reached maturity and died off, a million years of civilization might have passed. By then, most species were ready to call it quits. They’d lived long enough.

The Incus reasoned they had found a very small chunk of an ancient civilization from either the late Third Cycle or the early Fourth, the one the galaxy was currently experiencing. The age of the surrounding rock didn’t necessary mean that was the age of The Wall, but it did place the civilization that built into within the three to five billion year range. The asteroid might be one of the last remaining traces from the parent planet, having miraculously avoided being drawn into a stellar fire over the course of billions of years. And not only was the age of the rock significant, it was also the discovery of signs of ancient intelligent life. It was a truly remarkable find, one that on its own would have made headlines across the galaxy.

Or it would have until they discovered The Artifact.

It was dug out of the alien wall, having disrupted electronic drilling equipment operating in the area at the time. The signal was powerful and distinct, leading searchers to it. Yet once discovered, the artifact fell silent.

The four-and-a-half inch diameter green orb was sent back to Incus, where scientists began to unlock its secrets. Inside the globe they discovered two thin rectangles of metal. The metals comprising these strips were common—nothing special, even in the galaxy of today. Yet infused on their surface was a pattern of complex circuits placed there by living beings that had died out long before any star currently ablaze within the Milky Way even existed. And when placed together at the right angle, these circuits did an amazing thing.

They produced power.

It was a hybrid kind of energy for sure, more than electricity, more than plasma. Some thought it to be dark energy, but that wasn’t correct, either. Whatever the energy was, the strips seemed to draw it directly from the surrounding space, whether in a vacuum or an atmosphere. And although it was found that the strips took some of this energy to keep themselves fed, they produced ample surplus power for external use.

The Incus began to speculate on the uses for such technology. As small and compact as the device was, the possibilities were endless. However, most civilizations in the galaxy didn’t have an energy shortage. Thousands of years before, the Klin had perfected cold fusion, so nearly everything these days ran on cheap and abundance electricity. Yet even with all the advances throughout the millennia, fusion reactors had never gotten smaller than a meter square in size. So from the perspective of the Incus, only one truly evolutionary use for such a small and sustainable energy source came to mind.

Flash weapons.

Here was the solution to how these devices could compete with what the Humans were producing. With a reciprocating power source—as the effect came to be known—flash weapons would have unlimited firing capacity. And the increase in power meant more concentrated beams, capable of maintaining integrity over a ten kilometer range or more. In fact, with rapid fire and sustainable beams, the Incus could envision the first true ray-gun in history, the dream of every weapons manufacturer since the dawn of time.

But then the artifact disappeared.

This event proved not to be that unusual. The orb appeared to have its own means of locomotion, at least over short distances. The orb would often vanish for days on end before being discovered in some innocuous location, appearing almost defiant in its independence.

It also possessed a form of artificial intelligence, although no one had been able to communicate with it.

The Incus were a realistic race. They knew they couldn’t keep this technology to themselves forever. Even so, they began work on power modules that were proprietary in nature, and that would destroy themselves if tampered with. Eventually, even these security measures would be breached. But until then, the Incus could see themselves taking over the entire weapons market throughout the galaxy.

However, their current conundrum came from the prolonged absence of the artifact during its most-recent sojourn. The Incus had the metal of the strips identified, as well as electron scans of the circuit design. They felt confident they could recreate the pattern. Yet even though they had met with some success, their knockoff devices did not have the full power of the original, barely producing enough extra to be measured. There was still work to be done before they could reveal their RPS—Reciprocating Power Source—to the galaxy.

But now the artifact had disappeared—and stayed gone. If they didn’t locate the original, then the Incus weapons—although still revolutionary—would be no more than an incremental improvement over current technology, and not the sea change they were hoping for.

What the Incus didn’t know at the time was that the orb had been stolen and secretly smuggled out of the system by agents for the Silean gangster Onix Gru.

Chapter 21

Adam returned to the cargo bay with the metal orb in his pocket. Through his ATD, he felt that he could hear the tiny object essentially purring as he went about his work, helping Coop, Kaylor and Jym reload the contents of the hold.

Coop wasn’t much help. Instead he spent an inordinate amount of time checking and double-checking everything before a container was resealed.

“The engines are repaired?” Jym finally ventured to ask.

“Uh huh,” Coop said. “There was a bus line break in the main generator actuator. Seventy-year-old engines tend to have that happen quite often.”

“We checked the bus lines when we came aboard,” Jym said.

“It was a floating break. Very hard to see. It tripped the actuator, causing a ripple effect along the motivators.”

Jym opened his mouth to say something more, but couldn’t think of a better rejoinder than: “Oh.”

“She’s fully functional now, which is good.” Coop looked at Adam. “The Gradis will be here tomorrow to take possession of the ship.” His eyes conveyed a desperate plea to his fellow Human. Adam may have been reading more into it than was there, but he got the feeling Coop was saying,
help me find it
.

Whatever
it
was.

Adam casually brushed his left pocket, making sure
it
was still there. The orb purred a little louder, at least in Adam’s mind.

Three hours later they called it quits. There was still a lot of miscellaneous cargo piled about which they hadn’t found containers for, not in the allotted time. It wasn’t as bad as it had been, so the Visidorans would have to bear the rest of the blame. Coop grumbled about the reduction in service fees he saw coming; but at least he wouldn’t be paying for the entire ship and its cargo….