Chapter 350 (1/2)

The system was cold and dead. There had been spaceships in the system recently, but after a few had landed dropships and had their troops mill around shouting slogans for a while before they got bored and left, the spaceships had all engaged their engines and jumped out of the system.

A handful had stayed behind. Curiosity, something that had only recently reared its head again, had made them examine the system to figure out what had happened and how long ago.

The inhabitants of the system had been xenocided. Wiped out to the very last. The atmosphere poisoned, the ground turned to irradiated ash, the oceans nothing more than a toxic stew. Cities were wiped out, only a smattering of ruins around the dark craters lined with glass of orbital strikes. Not even a single satellite remained functional.

Those who stayed behind left just an hour too early.

If they had stayed, they would have been witness to a most curious occurrence.

On the smaller of the two planets firmly in the green zone around the stellar mass a white rectangle appeared in mid-air. Only a foot thick, it was eight feet wide and twenty feet high. It was made of pure white energy that hummed slightly.

A robot poked its head through. The head was fashioned in such a way to look fearsome, with strange angles and bright red eyes. It looked down, looked up, turned and looked to the left and right, then withdrew. It then appeared on the other side of the 'door', repeating its actions.

It withdrew and the door closed by narrowing from one side to the other, the bar winking out.

The wind moaned as it blew radioactive dust through where the door had been.

On both planets the door appeared again and a large spider emerged, made entirely of metal. It daintily stepped down out of the door, settled down into the blasted gray dust, and went still as the door closed. The orb of its abdomen began to heat up and the spider laid down what appeared to be several egg sacks.

The door opened and the spider withdrew.

The planet made almost a full rotation, the egg sack getting larger and larger, before it burst.

Small orbs erupted from the sack, immediately swarming away. They began spreading out, scanning the planet, sampling the air and water, measuring the contaminates.

After three full rotations they vanished into tiny glowing spheres of white light that appeared. From orbit it looked like the planet was covered in twinkling stars.

Again, the system went back to being empty. Dust moved across bones that were fused and had a slight sheen of plasma glass on them. Collapsed buildings, reduced to rubble and washed by thousands of years of radioactive acid rains continued to slowly moulder as the even the hyperalloys and advanced construction techniques gave way to the march of time.

Almost two planetary rotations passed. During that time, the orbs appeared around planets, in the asteroid belts, and around the stellar mass. They winked out in small twinkles of white light.

Silence ruled the system, as it had for thousands of years.

In a far off impossible space that existed nowhere but everywhere, a command line appeared.

RESTORE? Y/N?

An exuberant shout, full of a plea to be forgiven for a past transgression, was shouted.

YES!

Another planetary rotation went by.

The door opened again, the robot poked its head out, looking around. This time, after it withdrew, the robot stepped out. It was large, heavily armored, its surface a light drinking matte black. It had two arms, two legs, and moved crisply and with sureness. It was carrying what appeared to be a large silver briefcase. Two more came out, carrying a long silver cylinder that looked remarkably like a spaceborne torpedo fired by a capital vessel.

The first robot waved its hand.

Two more robots came out, with wooden sawhorses. They set them down and the two robots carrying the silver tube set it down on the sawhorses while the newcomers quickly went back through the white light doorway. The first one set the briefcase on the torpedo while the two that had carried it moved back to the doorway and vanished.

Inside the briefcase were tubes and wires, analog counters and dials. On the outside there were strange symbols, four of them.

G. E. C. K.

The robot adjusted the dials, tapped some of the buttons, then stepped back. It then opened a panel on the side of the torpedo, revealing a big red button that lit up with an interior light.

Reaching out as far as it could, it extended one finger and pressed the button with one fingertip. It was cringing away slightly and the finger shook as if the robot was a nervous biological. As soon as the button clicked the robot began running, lifting its knees almost to its chest, flailing its arms.

The robot ran back to the door, diving through.

The sound of ”WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP!” echoed across the barren landscape.

For long moments nothing happened. The wind moaned, the dust blew, and the long term isotopes decayed with atomic regularity.

It was repeated, placing the torpedo, on the second planet in the green zone. The larger one. Then on each of the other planets in the system.

The last one had been placed, the robot swimming spastic through vacuum and zero-G to reach the door. Another robot leaned out of the door, urging it to hurry. After a second it reached back into the door then held out a long rod with a net on one end for the robot to grab. It didn't go far enough. The swimming robot undid a belt made of leather and threw the buckle end out. On the third try the belt wrapped around the net and the robot was pulled back through the door.

The synchronized atomic clocks reached their countdown and the torpedoes questioned the silver briefcase.

Nothing happened.

A robot poked its head out, looked around, then extended its arm out to look at a gear driven timepiece on its wrist. It shook its wrist, then held the timepiece up to the side of its head, then tapped the timepiece.

It vanished.

It reappeared, dressed in heavy combat armor, being pushed by robot arms out of the doorway. It held a stick in one hand and it turned to shake one fist at the door before slowly, carefully, slowly approaching the briefcase.

Two robotic arms extended out of the doorway, one hand holding an inflated bag made of pulped wood product. The robot with the stick reached it out carefully, shaking, and poked the briefcase.

The two hands slammed together, the bag making a loud popping noise at it ruptured.

The robot with the stick ran back to the doorway, waving its arms over its head.

”WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP!”

It dropped the stick.

More time passed.

Another robot poked its head out. It had a bag of ice on its head, where the metal head was deformed by a lump, held in place by a strap of cloth. Around one of its eyes was painted a black circle. It moved toward the stick on the tips of its feet, arms up by its chest, wrists limp. It bent down, grabbed the stick, and made rapid, short steps on its tiptoes up to the briefcase.

It poked it with the stick.